Tenet's Resignation: Hope for Pollard?

Arutz7 News - June 4, 2004

George Tenet, Director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, has resigned - immediately arousing hopes among Pollard-supporters that Pollard might now be released. However, it is now being revealed that Tenet was not necessarily the main or only force behind the American refusal to release the Israeli citizen from prison.

Pollard was - and still is - serving a life sentence for "passing classified information to an ally" - Israel. Tenet's involvement with the story began to take root during the Wye Plantation talks between then-Prime Minister Netanyahu and then-U.S. President Clinton in October 1998. As part of the negotiations between the two countries, under which Israel agreed to withdraw from an additional 13% of Judea and Samaria, Clinton agreed to free Jonathan Pollard from prison. However, at an advanced point in the talks, Clinton told Netanyahu that he could not release Pollard, because Tenet had threatened to quit. [J4JP: Jonathan Pollard's release was the deal maker which allowed the Wye Accords to be finalized. Clinton reneged only AFTER the Accords were publically announced, and a public signing ceremony was announced. This created intense pressure for Israel forcing her to sign the Accords and to uphold her end of the deal to free murderers and terrorists. Israel paid a steep price in blood for the release of Jonathan Pollard - which to this day has never been collected. See The Wye-Double Cross Page for details.]

A participant in the talks, Netanyahu-aide Uri Elitzur, told Arutz-7's Yosef Meiri today what happened: "Netanyahu told me afterwards that Clinton had told him that Tenet had threatened to resign. Tenet and [then-Secretary of State] Albright were sitting in the room while Clinton was talking to Netanyahu, though they could not hear the conversation. But it was clear to me that they were watching Clinton and knew the gist of what he was saying. Whether Tenet actually threatened to quit or not, I have no idea - but I do know that Clinton was a bare-faced liar, just as the entire American public later found out with the Lewinsky fiasco."

Malcolm Hoenlein, Executive Vice-Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, has now provided further proof that Clinton might not have been speaking the truth. Hoenlein told a JTA interviewer yesterday that he received a phone call from Tenet immediately after the Wye Summit, in which Tenet denied that he had ever threatened to resign if Jonathan Pollard were freed.

The Justice for Jonathan Pollard Organization also says that the Tenet threat is a "ridiculous excuse." The organization says that this scenario's "implausibility was vividly demonstrated a few months later when Clinton freed the FALN terrorists over Tenet's vehement objections and actual threat to resign."

If Tenet did not threaten to resign, ask observers, then why did Clinton backtrack on his promise to Netanyahu? Was this a joint Clinton-Albright-Tenet scheme to keep Pollard in prison?

In any event, Justice for Jonathan Pollard says that this White House-spread "canard has become thoroughly entrenched and used by Jewish leaders as an excuse for inaction." The organization blames Hoenlein for not having dispelled the myth right away, thus enabling the galvanizing of "resources to lobby quickly, quietly and effectively for truth and justice," and forcing Clinton to honor his commitment to free Jonathan Pollard long ago.

"In any event," says Pollard's Israeli attorney Larry Dub, "Tenet's resignation removes a great obstacle from our way, and we hope that Prime Minister Sharon will finally take action and submit a strong demand for Pollard's release."