Three Organizations Denounce "Investigation" of Pollard Case

Justice4JP Release - June 25, 2003

To Friends and Supporters of Jonathan Pollard:

Our organizations: Justice for Jonathan Pollard, Pollard Action Now, and The Committee to Bring Jonathan Pollard Home denounce the recent "investigation" of the Jonathan Pollard case by Barry Chamish and deplore the layers of lies it contains.

We vigorously reject Chamish's claim that we - the only organizations involved in organizing rallies for Jonathan in Israel - hired him to check out the time of day, much less to investigate the Pollard case. We regard his ad hominem attack on Esther Pollard, the one person who we all rely on and who has been the key to our success in recent days, to be despicable and a great disservice to Jonathan's cause.

We wish to point out that only hours before Chamish published his public attack on Esther, Rabbi Chaim Suissa of HaRav Mordecai Eliyahu's office, had occasion to speak with Chamish on behalf of the Rav regarding the pirating of Jonathan Pollard's web site. Chamish spewed his invective to Rabbi Suissa, who roundly and soundly denied that there is any truth to Chamish's claims. Rabbi Suissa told Chamish that he and HaRav Eliyahu have visited Jonathan on numerous occasions; that unlike Chamish, they know Jonathan and Esther very well. Well enough to know that anyone who wants to help Jonathan should be supporting and assisting Esther's efforts on his behalf, not attacking her. Rabbi Suissa urged Chamish to contact Esther and speak with her about how to help Jonathan. He had no idea that within hours Esther would be the focus of a Chamish attack on the internet.

By the above anecdote, our organizations wish to make it unequivocally clear that Chamish KNOWS that he is lying: lying about our organizations hiring him, lying about Esther, and lying about a new and independent web site bearing Jonathan's name. Be aware that all 3 sites: jonathanpollard.org; jonathanpollard.net and jonathanpollard.com are the legal property of Esther and Jonathan Pollard. No other individual has the right to use Jonathan Pollard's name.

A "friend" of Chamish's recently exploited a bureaucratic error on the part of the Registrar to hijack jonathanpollard.com and is currently using the site unlawfully. This unauthorized individual claims to be helping Jonathan by stealing his name. Chamish claims to be helping Jonathan by defending this thief and attacking those who seek to have Jonathan's property returned to him. Jonathan's attorneys and technical staff are currently pursuing remedies to have the pirated site immediately vacated and returned to its lawful owner. We advise readers to boycott the dot.com site until further notice. Please do continue to visit the official J4JP web site at jonathanpollard.org .

In his article, Chamish uses the attention he creates through the above attacks to slip sideways into an attack on John Loftus who recently wrote an important expose on the Pollard Case. He belittles the Loftus article, claims that it reveals nothing new and directs the reader to his own thesis of why Jonathan Pollard is still in prison. His theory is a hodgepodge of fact and fiction which may sound good to the average reader, but is thoroughly unreliable.

For example, he portrays Jonathan as some kind of computer hacker who needed "computer codes" to access information for Israel. However, in 1985 when Jonathan was arrested, large main frame computers ruled, not personal computers. While P.C.s did exist at the time, they were not yet in widespread use. Consequently that was not how security information was stored or retrieved at that time. Moreover, it should be noted that Jonathan never had the clearance or the training needed for handling codes or cryptological material.

Chamish casts Bud MacFarlane as "Mr. X" , Jonathan's alleged co-conspirator, passing these imaginary "computer codes" to Jonathan via Rafi Eitan. Laughable! In fact, there was no Mr. X., and there were no computer codes, and there was no need to devise elaborate systems to retrieve information. The Israelis had reference numbers for the material they needed, derived from previously-supplied information, received through regular channels, which enabled them to know what to request from Jonathan. See the article "Was There Another U.S. Spy Tasking Pollard? - Mr. 'X' Exposed" for a full discussion of these topics.

Another example: Chamish belittles a wealth of new information in the Loftus article "The Truth About Jonathan Pollard" by dismissing as old news the scapegoating of Jonathan Pollard by CIA mole Aldrich Ames. Chamish proudly states that he "discovered" the truth about Aldrich Ames in an obscure article that ran in Ma'ariv in 1985. Indeed?! Ames was not arrested until 1994, but Chamish read about Ames crimes 9 years earlier!

The above are just a few examples of Chamish's penchant for reshaping facts to fit his own specifications. Chamish's entire theory about Jonathan, while charming to the uninformed, is riddled with half-truths, twisted facts, blatant lies and major historical inaccuracies. Just putting this kind of article out on the net helps in certain quarters to take some of the heat off of the impetus to actually do something about the Pollard issue. In other words, Chamish's article does nothing to further Jonathan's release, but it DOES provide yet another excuse for the public to rationalize Jonathan's continued incarceration, dampening the drive to fight for his release.

The question to be asked is: why is Chamish trying so hard to undermine anything good, or positive that has occurred for Jonathan Pollard lately? Why is he telling outright lies, defending knaves and bashing the heroes of this case while cooking up a cock-eyed rationale for Jonathan's tragic plight which can neither be proven nor enforced, only used as an excuse for Jonathan's continued incarceration? Why does he want the attention away from the Loftus article? Who is Chamish really working for?

Frankly we do not know and we do not care who Chamish works for. Better people than he have gone up against us and failed. But we do know who Chamish is and we do know what he is. And that he is neither neutral nor a friend of this case.

Our respective organizations: Justice for Jonathan Pollard, Pollard Action Now, and The Committee to Bring Jonathan Pollard Home have joined hands and produced 3 very successful, well-attended rallies in recent weeks. Everyone in Israel senses a new momentum growing. The grassroots are solidly behind us in working to bring Jonathan home.

We recommend that our readers and those on Mr. Chamish's email list let him know what they think about his lies. After all, if he can lie so blatantly about Jonathan Pollard, what else is he lying about?

{signed}

Larry Dub, Legal Counsel for Justice for Jonathan Pollard
Eli Joseph, Director of Pollard Action Now
Nissan GanOr, Chairman of The Committee to Bring Jonathan Pollard Home

J4JP Postscript, June 29, 2003

Barry Chamish is currently recirculating an old and long-discredited article by Ronen Bergman (Ha'aretz, March 1997) about Esther and Jonathan Pollard. This libelous article was supplied to Chamish for redistribution by his colleague, David Bedein. J4JP would like to point out the irony: Chamish is doing exactly what he wrongly accuses John Loftus of, recycling old material as if it were new. In providing this piece of libelous fiction to Chamish for mass distribution, Bedein damages his own credibility as a journalist and shows himself to be lacking in moral judgment. J4JP would like to point out that both Chamish and Bedein are aware that some time ago Jonathan Pollard filed a criminal complaint for slander and libel against both Ronen Bergman and Ha'aretz Newspaper in Jerusalem Magistrates Court. The case is still in process. The fact that they knew this and it did not stop them from recirculating Bergman's slander and libel speaks volumes.