Jonathan Pollard's Unique Situation - Editorial

The Jewish Press (NY) - December 15, 1999

This past weekend came the revelations that the Russians had successfully planted an eavesdropping device in a conference room at the State Department located on the same floor as the offices of the Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and that a Los Alamos Laboratory scientist suspected of stealing weapons secrets for the Chinese was indicted for improperly downloading secret information.

As expected, these developments triggered countless talk show commentaries from Congressmen involved with intelligence matters, as well as former CIA and other intelligence officials, as to the damage allegedly caused to national security. Comparisons with other security breaches and lists of arch spies of the past drove the various discussions.

What struck us was the fact that, as far as we can tell, not one of the experts even mentioned the name of Jonathan Pollard or the effects of his spying for Israel.

Given the fact that when President Clinton purportedly determined to free Pollard from his Draconian life sentence, a veritable wall of opposition arose in the intelligence community with the claim that his spying immeasurably damaged U.S. national security and that he remains a substantial threat to this day; one would have rather thought then that he had earned at least some mention.

Surely this is just another indication that Pollard is in the unique situation that he is in now - no one who has spied for an ally has ever been sentenced to life imprisonment - because he spied for the Jewish State and Caspar Weinberger and his crowd simply cannot abide this insult.