Seymour Hersh's Disinformation Campaign

Morton Klein, National President, Zionist Organization of America
The Jewish Press, January 29, 1999

In a widely publicized article in a recent issue of THE NEW YORKER, journalist Seymour Hersh claimed Jonathan Pollard should stay behind bars because - according to Hersh - some of the data Pollard gave Israel was then forwarded by the Israelis to the Soviet Union.

But Hersh neglected to inform his reading public of a crucial point - he made the same allegations back in 1991, and they were based on a source that turned out to be, in the words of THE JERUSALEM POST, "a notorious, chronic liar." In other words, Hersh is just recycling information from a discredited source in order to harm Pollard. Perhaps that is not surprising, considering Hersh's long record of extreme anti-Israel bias.

In 1982, for example, he gave a speech at Hiram College in which he "compared Israeli attitudes toward the Palestinians to American views toward the Vietnamese and the Nazis' policy toward Jews. (according to NEAR EAST REPORT)

The fact that Hersh has stooped to recycling allegations that were discredited eight years ago is an indication of the weakness of the case made by Pollard's enemies. No reasonable case can be made to keep Pollard in jail any longer. Pollard is the victim of an outrageous double standard, in which he has been punished far more severely for spying for an ally of America than the punishments given out to those who have spied for nations that are not friendly to the United States. The time has come for President Clinton to grant clemency to Jonathan Pollard.