Jonathan Pollard, the American Navy employee who spied for Israel in the mid-nineteen-eighties and is now serving a life sentence in Federal prison, has wormed back into the news again. It is said the Obama administration is commuting his sentence and will release him as a sop to Israel for the recent Iran treaty.
If that is true then the Iran Treaty must be a lot to apologize for.
Pollard has always been that curious mixture of dangerous threat and jerk. He used to lie about being a spy in college. When he eventually was recruited by the Israelis he was deeply in debt. He then became a heavy cocaine user and tried to set up a number of unlikely arms deals with friends and foes alike.
By his own estimates, Pollard passed to his Israeli handlers more than 800 classified publications and more than 1,000 cables, probably the largest cache of materials ever passed through espionage. “Much of what he took, contrary to what he'd have you believe, had nothing to do with Arab countries or the security of Israel," former Director of Naval Intelligence Thomas Brooks said in a "Foreign Policy" interview. It “had everything to do with U.S. collection methods, to include most specifically against the Soviet Union.” Then Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger said, "It is difficult for me...to conceive of greater harm done to national security." The Pollard loses were more than simple data losses, they were loses of process.
In 1993 Secretary of Defense Les Aspin reported that Pollard had tried 14 times to disclose classified information in letters written to various recipients from his prison cell.
Nonetheless Pollard insists he is essentially innocent of any crimes against the United States, rather he was just trying to protect Israel from its enemies. Somehow these terribly arrogant, destructive and dangerous people are constantly trying to assume the high-ground. (The Rosenbergs said they wanted to level the nuclear playing field away from the dangerous Americans so they gave American nuclear secrets to Russia.)
RASIN is an acronym for radio-signal notations. The manual, which is classified "top-secret Umbra," fills ten volumes, is constantly updated, and lists the physical parameters of every known signal. Pollard took it all. "It's the Bible," one former communications-intelligence officer said. "It tells how we collect signals anywhere in the world."
Defense Intelligence Agency's Community On-Line Intelligence System DIAL-COINS contained all the intelligence reports filed by Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marine attaches in Israel and elsewhere in the Middle East--and their sources. Pollard got them.
National SIGINT Requirements List is essentially a compendium of the tasks, and the priority of those tasks, given to various N.S.A. collection units around the world. So American bias and interests, sometimes projected out decades, could be inferred by examining them. Pollard again.
And all of these crucial sources went to Israel.
Then to Russia. Russia.
The Israelis used the information to barter for Russian Jews to be repatriated to Israel. According to William Casey, the late C.I.A. director, "For your information, the Israelis used Pollard to obtain our attack plan against the U.S.S.R. all of it. The coordinates, the firing locations, the sequences. And for guess who? The Soviets." Casey then explained that the Israelis had traded the Pollard data for Soviet émigrés.
Maybe the "Godfather" was wrong; maybe we should keep our friends closer.
If that is true then the Iran Treaty must be a lot to apologize for.
Pollard has always been that curious mixture of dangerous threat and jerk. He used to lie about being a spy in college. When he eventually was recruited by the Israelis he was deeply in debt. He then became a heavy cocaine user and tried to set up a number of unlikely arms deals with friends and foes alike.
By his own estimates, Pollard passed to his Israeli handlers more than 800 classified publications and more than 1,000 cables, probably the largest cache of materials ever passed through espionage. “Much of what he took, contrary to what he'd have you believe, had nothing to do with Arab countries or the security of Israel," former Director of Naval Intelligence Thomas Brooks said in a "Foreign Policy" interview. It “had everything to do with U.S. collection methods, to include most specifically against the Soviet Union.” Then Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger said, "It is difficult for me...to conceive of greater harm done to national security." The Pollard loses were more than simple data losses, they were loses of process.
In 1993 Secretary of Defense Les Aspin reported that Pollard had tried 14 times to disclose classified information in letters written to various recipients from his prison cell.
Nonetheless Pollard insists he is essentially innocent of any crimes against the United States, rather he was just trying to protect Israel from its enemies. Somehow these terribly arrogant, destructive and dangerous people are constantly trying to assume the high-ground. (The Rosenbergs said they wanted to level the nuclear playing field away from the dangerous Americans so they gave American nuclear secrets to Russia.)
RASIN is an acronym for radio-signal notations. The manual, which is classified "top-secret Umbra," fills ten volumes, is constantly updated, and lists the physical parameters of every known signal. Pollard took it all. "It's the Bible," one former communications-intelligence officer said. "It tells how we collect signals anywhere in the world."
Defense Intelligence Agency's Community On-Line Intelligence System DIAL-COINS contained all the intelligence reports filed by Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marine attaches in Israel and elsewhere in the Middle East--and their sources. Pollard got them.
National SIGINT Requirements List is essentially a compendium of the tasks, and the priority of those tasks, given to various N.S.A. collection units around the world. So American bias and interests, sometimes projected out decades, could be inferred by examining them. Pollard again.
And all of these crucial sources went to Israel.
Then to Russia. Russia.
The Israelis used the information to barter for Russian Jews to be repatriated to Israel. According to William Casey, the late C.I.A. director, "For your information, the Israelis used Pollard to obtain our attack plan against the U.S.S.R. all of it. The coordinates, the firing locations, the sequences. And for guess who? The Soviets." Casey then explained that the Israelis had traded the Pollard data for Soviet émigrés.
Maybe the "Godfather" was wrong; maybe we should keep our friends closer.
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