The Strange Case Of Jonathan Pollard – OpEd

By

By Gordon Duff
Few outside the “secret world” understand much about Jonathan Pollard, the American spy who has spent the last 26 years in prison. The American news media tells us that he spied for Israel, gave them locations of Palestinian “terrorist” training camps that, for some reason, America had refused to hand over to Israel.

America gives Israel so much else, why not this or is the “cover story” perhaps not the story at all and why 26 years?

Each year more Americans, after pressure from powerful Israeli advocacy groups join Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in demanding Pollard’s release, and each year it is refused. What is never explained is why.

The real story of Pollard is classified, not just Top Secret but above that, it can never be published, not more than I am doing now.

Perhaps this is a good time to start, this being a low point in relations between Israel and the United States with every attempt being made by Israel to see President Obama removed from office even though he has made the usual humbling public announcements of fealty to Israel as have his recent predecessors and the majority of members of congress.

All seem to agree that the 1967 USS Liberty incident, where 34 Americans were killed by Israel didn’t happen, the utterly fictional version of the 1967 War is taught in American schools and certainly a totally fictional version of the seizure of land from Palestinians is more than just misrepresented, Americans are encouraged to cheer the daily bombings in Gaza, the murder of civilians in a virtual “open air prison” using American weapons as part of a mythic “war on terror.”

Today’s issue is Pollard, and many pundits expect that this year is the year he will be released. Those opposing his release, and they are many and powerful, never give their names. I know some, if not all of the real story.

Those who oppose Pollard’s release are top military and civilian intelligence officers including members of “special operations” or “Black ops” groups, people who are not so public and vocal but whose views, especially strong views, carry an implied threat.

The question then, is why these people are so angry that they demand life imprisonment for Pollard. Actually, this isn’t true, they demand his execution, his as the execution of others who have committed similar crimes and were arrested but released at the request of President Bush (43). Other investigations by the FBI were simply quashed, dozens of them, all aimed at Israeli spy rings operating inside the United States.

In a sense, Pollard is a symbol for these other injustices.

Here are facts, facts that can never be in evidence, not for many decades, facts that explain the anger, explain the bitterness and explain the lengthy imprisonment which so many Americans who are more “friends of Israel” seem to want ended.

Pollard is said to have spied for Israel. In a sense this was right. There was mention of China and Pakistan, even Turkey but in truth, the material that went to his Israeli handlers was given to the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.

So much material was passed over that there was discussion in Moscow of a nuclear “first strike” against the United States, you see, we have our spies too.

The most damaging document turned over by Pollard was the “NOC list.” “NOC” means “non-official cover,” the term used for real spies, many of whom were either behind the Iron Curtain or subject to arrest by governments unfriendly to the US.

1,100 of those names, real people, many career CIA agents, were arrested, questioned under torture and executed because of Pollard.

This is the actual number.

In the entrance of CIA headquarters is a wall of stars, each representing the death of an American agent who can never be named. There are 83 names on this wall, not 1,183 names.

Americans can never know their intelligence networks around the world were “rolled up,” their “best and brightest” tortured and killed. Recruits joining the CIA, “assets” being asked to assist American intelligence agencies are never told of the abandoned 1,100 remembered only by the silence, the implied threats and the continued incarceration of Jonathan Pollard.

What could be more dishonorable than a memorial that is a lie?

The 1,100 deaths, really murders, isn’t the whole story but rather a small part. NATO plans for the defense of Europe from a Soviet ground invasion were in the stack, plans for weapons systems, so many codes, codes that could disable key defense systems were there also, enough was handed over, through Israel to the Soviet Union to nearly bring about the destruction of the entire planet, ending all live, the future of every man, woman and child would be ended if the majority of credible scientists are correct in their predictions.

Pollard is said to have gotten a few thousand dollars, some jewelry and little more. What Israel got we can only guess.

The real issue isn’t just that Israel fails to acknowledge its crimes against the United States, as it failed to acknowledge the attack on the USS Liberty or, more recently, the attack on the Mavi Marmara that has brought about the chilling of relations between Israel and Turkey.

The real issue is that the spying, the duplicity continues unabated, shamefully so. Not only has there been no offer of compensation, no apology but that Pollard’s release is demanded along with a promise that more crimes of the type he was responsible for will continue each day.

We aren’t just talking broken promises, homes bulldozed, walls built, civilians killed, the endless misrepresentation of everything Israel touches, from their “Palestinian problem” to their current policy of expelling African workers for reasons that can only be described as racial prejudice to their continual lobbying for misrepresentation of Iran’s nuclear program.

With 50% of young Israeli’s refusing mandatory military service, with America bankrupt, streets filling with the unemployed and homeless, many of them veterans of a decade of wars a few support, banking on America’s inability to learn from past mistakes, to continue to follow Israel along a path of destruction may not be quite the reality Netanyahu is banking on.

Pollard may yet be the undoing of Israel.

Gordon Duff is a Marine Vietnam veteran, a combat infantryman, and Senior Editor at Veterans Today. His career has included extensive experience in international banking along with such diverse areas as consulting on counter insurgency, defense technologies or acting as diplomatic representative for UN humanitarian and economic development efforts.

Press TV

Press TV is a state funded news network owned by Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB). Its headquarters are located in Tehran, Iran and seeks to counter a western view on news.

One thought on “The Strange Case Of Jonathan Pollard – OpEd

  • June 30, 2012 at 8:33 pm
    Permalink

    The tail is waging the dog. There is an Israeli fith-column oprating in the U.S. but Americans blinded by religion refuse to see it.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *