Re: Review of the Jonathan Pollard Case

Dear Mr. President:

Mr. President, I am writing to request the right to review the material submitted to you by the Justice and Intelligence and Defense departments regarding my client, Jonathan Pollard; and the right to rebut obvious untruths and misrepresentations that are certain to be contained in those submissions.

I note with dismay that, in reviewing the Jonathan Pollard case, you have sought only the opinion of those authorities with vested interests, and whose public opposition to my client's release has been rife with slander, false allegations and gross distortions of the facts.

For example, George Tenet, head of the CIA who recently had the audacity to publicly threaten you, the President of the United States, in order to prevent you from exercising your constitutional authority to grant clemency to Mr. Pollard, can hardly be called a disinterested party. Mr. President, as you well know, under Tenet the CIA has initiated a witch-hunt to rid the agency of Jews holding security clearances. Furthermore, CIA spokespersons under his auspices have in recent days libeled my client in the media calling him a "traitor" even though they clearly know he was never charged with treason, and falsely accusing him of crimes for which he was never indicted.

Another example, the Defense Department, responsible for the 1996 Memo labeling all Jews as unreliable citizens (for having "too close ethnic ties with Israel" and naming Israel as a "non-traditional enemy") used the Jonathan Pollard Case to justify these blatantly anti-Semitic charges against all Jewish Americans and the State of Israel. It has also been widely reported that representatives of the joint chiefs of staff have indicated a determination to exploit my client by prolonging his incarceration as a symbolic warning to other Jews working for the national security establishment.

As for the Justice Department, this is the agency responsible for what appellate court justice Stephen Williams termed, " a complete and gross miscarriage of justice" in the Pollard case. As you know, Mr. President, this is the agency responsible for violating the plea agreement it made with my client, and for inappropriately bandying about the term "traitor" in regard to his case. While the appellate court forced Justice to apologize for the inappropriate use of this term, the damage has been done and spokespersons from the Department continue to slander my client in the media under cover of anonymity.

Not a single authority has, to our knowledge, been invited to meet with you or to submit to you an accurate, honest, non-partisan assessment of the case. Indeed, many of the allegations against my client are so egregious a child could refute them. Yet, no one to date has been afforded the opportunity to do so. For example, the unsubstantiated claim that Jonathan Pollard transferred a massive quantity of material to Israel is absurd! To have moved the volume of material being claimed, over the short period of time in question, would have required the use of a large moving van! Given the opportunity, I would gladly submit to you the twisted formulation by which the various agencies have permitted themselves to promote this outright lie.

Mr. President, as my client's rabbi, Ha Rav Mordecai Eliahu, shlita has previously written to you, there are ironically, parallels between your personal situation and those of my client. Just as your attorneys are now appropriately demanding the right to see the material being prepared for impeachment in order to allow you to mount an adequate defense, elementary justice and a sense of fair play dictate that the same opportunity must be afforded to Jonathan Pollard to answer his accusers.

I look forward to your favorable response.

Very truly yours,