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Friday February 16, 2007

Just what is keeping Pollard behind bars?

by james d. besser

The group Justice for Jonathan Pollard last week issued a release that encapsulated why the convicted spy, now in his 22nd year in prison, won’t see daylight anytime soon.

The release was a letter sent by an admirer in Israel extolling Pollard as a “hero” of the Jewish people. The fact that the missive was distributed by the Pollard organization suggests an endorsement of the view that the spy’s actions were somehow praiseworthy.

At every stage, the long Pollard saga raises more questions than answers, such as why Pollard and his supporters so consistently say things that seem almost designed to keep him in jail.

With Pollard and his wife beginning a new round of activism — this week they are encouraging supporters to call the White House every day — here is a chronology of the unanswered and unanswerable.

• Why did Israel decide to spy on its only real ally in the world — and then magnify the risk by using a young amateur?

Israel may have had gripes about whether Washington was sharing all the intelligence it had promised, as Pollard supporters claim, but it’s hard to see how any threat could justify the huge risk in recruiting a spy in Washington.

And forget James Bond; Pollard had nothing to recommend him as a spy except for his position in naval intelligence and his adolescent zeal.

• Why did the U.S. national security establishment react to Pollard’s extensive spying with a fury that was absent in other notorious spy cases?

Various observers have suggested hostility to Israel by top Pentagon officials, embarrassment about lax security, efforts to cover up other spy scandals and personal animosity by a few individuals, most notably former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger. Others have noted the impact of Pollard’s own words.

In reality, the explanation is probably a blend of those and other factors. Anybody who claims the Pollard affair is simple is either peddling some ideology or smoking something prohibited by law.

But it’s hard to swallow the claim by some Pollard supporters that it’s just old-fashioned anti-Semitism — the new Dreyfus case, as they like to assert. Too many committed Jews and strong supporters of Israel have looked closely at the case and concluded Pollard doesn’t deserve to get out.

Why do key documents having to do with Pollard’s sentencing remain under seal? It’s hard to imagine how national security could be damaged by releasing decades-old information — and release might put to put to rest a lot of theories about the case.

• Why did Israel abandon Pollard after his sentencing?

Initially, the Israeli government just wanted to keep quiet in the hope the whole thing would blow over. Later, Pollard’s abandonment was compounded by his penchant for lashing out against Israeli leaders he said weren’t doing enough to win his release.

Maybe they weren’t — but what politician is going to go out on a limb to help someone who routinely skewers him or her from some distant jail cell?

• Why does Pollard allow himself to be used by those with a political agenda?

Some Jewish leaders have quietly sought to win Pollard’s release on simple humanitarian grounds.

But others have turned him into an icon — a symbol of what they see as rampant anti-Semitism in high U.S. government circles, or of hatred of Israel, or of the corruption of all but the furthest right-wing politicians in Israel, or just of the inevitably of Jewish suffering in a cruel world.

They hold rallies extolling Pollard as a hero; they treat him as an oracle, whose commentary on Israeli policy is valued (of course that has something to do with the fact his loathing of various Israeli governments matches their own).

Many of Pollard’s “friends” give the impression he is more valuable to them as a suffering inmate than as a free Israeli. And they seem to be doing everything they can to ensure that result.

n Why doesn’t Pollard understand that his words and actions undermine his efforts to win commutation?

Here’s a simple fact: an American president might be willing to commute the sentence of a remorseful, repentant spy, but not a spy who even hints that his actions were justifiable.

Yet that’s exactly what Pollard is doing — if not directly, then through the “official” Justice for Jonathan Pollard Web site, which, despite a “remorse” page, continues to disseminate material depicting him as a hero or explaining how his actions helped Israel.

No doubt the psychology here is that Pollard needs to emotionally justify the wasting of his entire adult life in wretched penitentiaries. That’s understandable — his situation is, by any reasonable measure, a tragedy.

But what provides emotional solace may be the biggest factor keeping him in prison.

Pollard, rightly or wrongly, believes the deck is stacked against him when it comes to parole, the normal route out of the slammer.

But the words and actions of Pollard and his so-called friends create the conditions under which no president is likely to offer the only other way out: commutation, an essentially political process.

Pollard may get satisfaction from those fringe players who call him a hero, but he’ll have to enjoy it in jail.

James David Besser is a Washington correspondent for Jewish newspapers across the country.

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