Remember the Jonathan Pollard spy case? Read this from Whowhatwhy.com.
Now, documents that the CIA has been fighting to withhold for years, released to relatively little public notice in recent months, show that Pollard’s advocates may have been right. The documents were obtained and released by the nonprofit, private, National Security Archive. A federal panel agreed with the Archive that the CIA had no basis for continuing to withhold its 1987 Damage Assessment.
The whole idea behind Pollard’s conviction and life sentence was that he was harming the United States by spying on it for Israel. But one recently-released CIA document, a “damage assessment” of the case from 1987, suggests that the crux of what he was collecting for Israel was not about the United States at all.
The CIA document shows that Pollard’s Israeli handlers were particularly keen on getting information that they believed vital to Israel’s defense, including material on Egyptian missile programs, Syrian unmanned planes, and Soviet air defenses. They were especially interested in what Soviet advisers were talking to their Syrian clients about.
The new revelations are important because they cast a more nuanced light on a hot-button issue—and give credence to the notion that even allies constantly seek to obtain information from each other that they believe essential to their own security—regardless of how they obtain it.
Wrong. He was engaged in espionage, not against Russia, not against Syria, he was engaged in espionage against the United States, period. Those Jonathan Pollard apologists are always trying this stuff, always appealing for a pardon, always making excuses for him. Don’t fall for it. He was a mole, a traitor, and by rights he could have been executed for treason.
That’s not what the article said. They said what he was doing was more complicated, not that he wasn’t guilty.
It tries to mitigate and soften who did what and why. “Nuance.” “Hot-button issue.” “Even allies.”
If it hadn’t been a serious breach, they wouldn’t have nabbed him. And another thing to consider when writing *anything* about the IC: You never know what you aren’t told. You could learn something much later that turns everything on its head. You can only judge it in broad strokes by what you can verify, and in a case like this, I can almost guarantee there are reams of stuff we’ll never know. The first, last, and only thing you need to know about the IC is that it is an institution to collect information, and an institution for deception, especially as regards its institutional prerogatives. You can’t assume anything or rely on anyone to tell you the truth. Ever.