…It took Williams much of an opinion of 5,000 words to sketch the sleaziness, the slyness of the semantic evasions, by which the government broke its promises. To those of us invested in both the American Constitution and the Jewish struggle, it was a heart-breaking picture.
Jonathan Pollard is in the news again this week, after our former director of Central Intelligence, James Woolsey, told Israel’s Channel 10 that he suspects anti-Semitism could be a factor in America’s refusal to release the spy from his life sentence. I hadn’t ever heard such a blunt statement from any high government officer. It sent me back to the court record – and to Shakespeare’s Macbeth, in which the witches introduce the drama with the warning that “fair is foul, and foul is fair.”
Macbeth got into it because of a memorable dissenting opinion by a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. That’s the bench sometimes referred to as the mini-Supreme Court, in that it gets a lot of the disputes that directly involve the federal government. It was the court that spurned Pollard’s appeal for a new sentencing hearing and, in effect, doomed him to a life sentence on a plea bargain on a single count.
The ruling against Pollard was from a three-judge panel. The two judges in the majority were – and still are – widely admired (including by me): Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who would eventually be elevated to the Supreme Court, and Laurence Silberman. They reckoned Pollard hadn’t made his case and, the key point, missed his chance to appeal his sentence. He waited too long. Their opinion struck me, given all that was involved, as pettifoggery.
No so the dissent by Judge Stephen Williams. He didn’t accuse anyone of anti-Semitism. He sided against Pollard on the question of whether the government had improperly coerced his plea by threatening his wife. Williams also supported trial court judge, Aubrey Robinson, who’d handed down the original life sentence, against the claim that the judge ought to have recused himself during the bid for a new sentencing hearing and that he should have held a hearing on contacts he’d had outside of open court.
Williams, however, went on to find that the government had breached its side of the plea bargain agreement in a way that was a “fundamental miscarriage of justice.” He made some preliminary comments about the general judicial insistence “on a reasonable and not a niggling interpretation for plea agreements,” given that the “defendant has given up his right to a trial that satisfies due process.” Wrote he: “If fulfillment of the promise is to mean anything, it cannot refer only to the promise pared to its literal bone.”
The government, as Williams reprised it, made three promises. One was to bring to the court’s attention Pollard’s cooperation and “represent that the information supplied was of ‘considerable value’ …” Two was to refrain from seeking a life sentence. Third was to limit what it said to “the facts and circumstances.” Williams concluded that the government “complied in spirit with none of its promises; with the third, it complied in neither letter nor spirit.”
It took Williams much of an opinion of 5,000 words to sketch the sleaziness, the slyness of the semantic evasions, by which the government broke its promises. To those of us invested in both the American Constitution and the Jewish struggle, it was a heart-breaking picture. The most galling feature – at least to my ear – was the use by the government of a statement from the defense secretary at the time Pollard committed his crime, Caspar Weinberger.
Weinberger had ginned up a memorandum saying that “the punishment imposed should reflect the perfidy of [Pollard’s] actions, the magnitude of the treason committed, and the needs of national security.” What was so appalling about that – and pointedly marked by Williams – is the use of the word treason. For the Constitution provides that “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”
Both the government and Weinberger knew what they were doing. They could have won a severe sentence without that libel. Yet they spoke of the crime as if Israel were an enemy. It was inaccurate. It was wrong. And it was a violation of a written contract. It may be that one dissenting opinion doesn’t amount to a verdict. But given that Judges Silberman and Ginsberg boiled down their opinion against Pollard to the timing of his motion, Williams is the most substantive review we have.
It was at the end of his dissent that Williams quoted Macbeth. He said he didn’t want to be “too critical” of the government and allowed that the analogy was “inexact.” But he said the case reminded him of “Macbeth’s curse against the witches whose promises – and their sophistical interpretations of them – led him to doom.” Then the famous lines: “And be these juggling fiends no more believ’d / That palter with us in a double sense; / That keep the word of promise to our ear, / And break it to our hope.”
Seth Lipsky is editor of The New York Sun. He was a foreign editor and a member of the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal, the founding editor of The Forward and its editor from 1990 to 2000. His books include “The Citizen’s Constitution: An Annotated Guide” and most recently “The Rise of Abraham Cahan.”
I don’t know how Pollard does it! After 29 years? I would have given up by now. On the other hand I probably would not have taken the risks he did knowing that at the end of the day there would seem to be no one there. 🙁
@ yamit82:
Yes, I guess you are — as you still haven’t refuted what I wrote in the post to which you referenced your comment.
Every administration has mysterious deaths associated with it. (Clinton’s had, quite literally, hundreds.)
— Neither the fact that the persons died, however, nor the fact that the circumstances may have been ‘mysterious,’ establishes, of itself, ANYTHING beyond sheer coincidence.
Nor have you yet shown how any purported “US death squad” was his (i.e., Reagan’s).
FURTHERMORE, I’m still waiting for evidence of RR’s ‘treason.’
And then there is this:
1. The Demos took the Senate in the ’86 midterms, and retained the House they already had.
2. RR had more political enemies in DC (in both parties) than a mountain elk has ticks — to say nothing of a hostile media (no alternative media in those days of the “Fairness” Doctrine) which had hated him passionately & unrelentingly for the previous 40 years.
— Given the above, do you honestly think that if they believed they had even a ghost of a case for impeachment, that they would have hesitated for a heartbeat to go for it?
Who’s TRULY in denial here?
@ a href=”#comment-63356000121916″ title=”Go to comment of this author”>yamit82:
My Father,strangly,rather respected Casey,two tough street kids with smarts,going head to head.
@ honeybee:
This new computer is driving me insane. Still trying to learn to cut and paste,Loki l was fried when a dump truck took out the electric pole making a turn from the paved road onto the dirt road. The driver had two outstanding traffic warrants and was arrested on the spot. Very exciting, caught up on my TV,watched “Homeland”,mandy Pantakin ain’t half bad looking, especially when he’s being tough. Finished my painting of “Zev” from a lambs eye view!,looks just like I wanted, jumpin off the canvass right at the viewer, will try to send you a photo, if I learn how.????
@ yamit82:
Tx stole me aways from the ol’man. Ad if you come for Tx’s lady, your ol’hide may be forfeited .
honeybee Said:
Apparently, look how Casey ended up?
@ yamit82:
My Father investigated Casey,when my Father was a Tman. He said Casey and Tx were the only two men he could not break under questioning. Tx is a slippery devil.
@ dweller:
Still in denial Tonto!!!! 😛
Other mysterious deaths that may be related to his US death squad:
William J. Casey was CIA Director during the Reagan/Bush Administration. He died 2 days before he was to testify in May 1986 about his and others’ involvement in the Iran/Contra scandal. 😉
@ yamit82:
Saw them. Very little that was new. Where’s the part that points directly to ‘Treason’? (You do understand the word, right? — You know that it’s not just a nasty epithet that you get to toss around whenever your meds wear off, right?)
RR was no SOB; no fascist; no antisemite; no idol of mine. And calling him any or all of those things won’t make it so, howsoever much YOU might wish it.
Bush the Elder may WELL have been dirty; wouldn’t surprise me (altho “dirty” is not necessarily synonymous with “treasonous”).
In any case, he surely was not RR’s ‘Sancho.’ There was little love lost betw them.
— RR took him as a running mate ONLY because after he got nomination (despite the Party leadership’s strenuous efforts to deny it to him), it was the only way he could unite the Party, when winning the election hung in the balance.
And you have YET to show that RR was himself dirty (or to any degree even implicated), let alone ‘treasonous.’
I wouldn’t know. Are they?
Altho it’s not clear to me that your idol & mythical character, Kahane, came out of central casting; I’d had him (or his image on this website) pegged for something more out of the St Patrick’s Day Parade.)
dweller Said:
See my comments https://www.israpundit.org/archives/63594195/comment-page-1#comment-63356000121871
Tip of the iceberg: You SOB fascist antisemitic Idol RR and his Sancho Panza(Nazi) VP Bush were dirty!!! Both should have both been impeached and tried for high treason and murder. Of course bullshit myths are more comfortable for brain dead idealists and lovers of dead mythical characters out of central casting.
dweller Said:
dweller Said:
See my comments https://www.israpundit.org/archives/63594195/comment-page-1#comment-63356000121871
Tip of the iceberg: You SOB fascist antisemitic Idol RR and his Sancho Panza(Nazi) VP Bush were dirty!!! Both should have both been impeached and tried for high treason and murder. Of course bullshit myths are more comfortable for brain dead idealists and lovers of dead mythical characters out of central casting.
@ yamit82:
Still assuming facts not in evidence, I see.
I have NO problem with truth; quite the contrary. But lies & myths are always told in the NAME of “truth.” Therefore such “truth” needs to be tested out. If YOU have a problem with that policy, it is INDEED your problem; I can’t help that.
I gave POLLARD a fair hearing too, but not merely because I identified with him or his plight; I did it for fairness’ sake. I found that he was no traitor; a bissele nebechic, but no traitor. I do the same for everybody, and that includes govt officials.
Treason is a serious charge to lay at ANYBODY’s door. It warrants a thorough examination, regardless of whom it’s aimed at.
That’s because you limit yourself to only the possibilities you’re prepared to accept.
Desire is a superb motivator & energizer. But she makes a piss-poor counselor, and a jaundiced judge.
You have yet to learn that.
Quite so. Even as just affirming it does not make it so.
I’m still waiting to see it.
I read The Secret War Against the Jews when it was published in the mid-90’s, and I don’t recall corroboration of the particular matters I challenged in my earlier posts above.
@ yamit82:
You have offered a total of some 75 minutes’ worth of videos in this post and your previous one. I have less than 15 minutes of time today left to me on the clock, and tomorrow will be a short day as well. If you want me to see something particular, I must ask you to identify the precise location on the specific video in question — or otherwise to excerpt, or link to, a transcript of the video, so I can read it for myself.
What does he SAY his evidence consists of?
dweller Said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAI2GlLsIhs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wklB7tYflEQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5On1eg_yvPg
@ dweller:
Neither cheap nor hatchet. That you have a problem with truth in favor of lies and myth is your to work out.
I could never really figure out whether you are naive, stupid. Just denying something does not make it incorrect.
As I said there is corroboration from different credible sources.
Like:
The Secret War Against the Jews
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwRjRHgWdHE
The Secret War Against the Jews Part #1 and part #4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwRjRHgWdHE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeUmB_WQG4w
@ yamit82:
What’s his evidence? — show it to me.
There was already a Nicaraguan avenue for illegal drug flow, but it wasn’t from the Nica Resistance. It was from the Sandinista regime. During the 80’s I used to see smuggled photos of Tomas Borge (one of the nine Commandantes) himself loading large bricks of white powder into single- & twin-engine planes.
RR’s support for the Resistance/”Contras” was a perfectly legitimate attempt to carry out a two-century-old policy put into place by James Monroe:
— to keep the world powers out of the Western Hemisphere. And the fact that the regime was Marxist made it all the more vital to pursue the policy.
USSR had been systematically pouring MASSIVE quantities of military hardware (billions of dollars’ worth per yr) into the Sandinista regime with the idea of spreading it throughout the the Americas — and the liberal/Demo-dominated Congress was determined to see a Sandinista-Soviet victory in Hemisphere in the teeth of the Monroe Doctrine, and was willing to tie the President’s hands to do it. The 10-12 million dollars’ worth that Ollie North & friends scraped together by-hook-or-by-‘crook’ (and w/ Israeli facilitation) for the Nica Resistance was bubkis; it was chicken feed, it was nothing. It’s outrageous that it was so little; a total DISGRACE. But it wasn’t drug money.
There was no “Reagan CIA.” CIA is Exec Branch, but it isn’t part of the WH apparatus. It’s part of the State Dept.
But if you have hard evidence that CIA (under anybody‘s order) “funnelled cocaine into America,” then bring it. I’ve heard the claims constantly for 3 decades, but whenever somebody actually calls the game, nobody ever produces any evidence — or even reliable reportage — as if the allegation were sufficient unto itself. It isn’t.
Sure, THAT’s why. . . . Coulda, shoulda, woulda. Everybody‘s got a hypothesis.
Funny how WHATEVER the hypothesis consists of, it always seems to mirror the preexisting inclinations of the particular hypothesizer who offered it.
I’m still waiting to see some facts.
@ yamit82:
Their intentions were NOT part of what he discovered. Those intentions may be reasonably inferred, TBS, but they were not part of the actual info.
Anybody can assert ANYTHING. Still waiting for credible evidence.
And you believe this because Gorbanifar says so? — LOLROF.
Garden-variety, left-wing caca — set out under the sun for 30 days, it’s good for fertilizing the tomato plants.
Little else.
Cheap hatchet job.
@ yamit82:
Quite possibly so
— but from what I can see of this video — a coarsely-constructed piece of hatchet work, amounting to little more than loudmouthed accusations from 911-‘truther’ types & other leftwing loonies — I’d have to say it’s clear that those who accused Pollard of “treason” aren’t the only ones capable of such blustering, irresponsible slanders.
The brief discussion of Pollard himself is the ONLY part of the presentation that is reasonably accurate — except that while Pollard was certainly no mamzer, he was only part-“hero” (he was also, frankly, part-nebechl, part-shlemiel, etc). And except for the following comment from a post at the end of the video, from one who styles herself “ScuzzyLilAmerWhore”:
Dear Scuzz: The Osirak reactor was bombed in 1981 — some years BEFORE Jay Pollard ever began his spook career; it’s absurd to say he made that raid possible.
Whoever made this hateful vehicle needs to get a life.
The idea that USA was, in fact, ‘allied’ with Iran is arrant nonsense & paranoid poppycock — and the charge of “treason” against Administration officials is the sheerest bilge. (DOS may have wished us in bed w/ the Mullahs, but there’s no substantive evidence of it.) Trying to get hostages back was a sincere attempt to avoid leaving any man on the field; it’s just that simple.
Its manner of execution may WELL have been (or not have been) unwise, but it was neither ‘cowardly’ NOR the product of ‘treachery.’ (Was David ben-Yishai guilty of ‘treason’ for hanging out with the P’lishtim when he was on the lam from Saul’s hit squads? — You could make a FAR better case for ‘treason’ & ‘treachery’ there than over the Iran hostage deal.)
It’s clear that the Administration genuinely thought it was dealing with a go-between in Tehran, as most Americans in 1981-85 (and even for many yrs thereafter) had no clue as to the actual relationship between Iran & Hezbollah beyond a mere “philosophical affinity.” The Ayatollah Assahollah snookered ’em, pure & simple; we should’ve had better intel.
The assertion that “Reagan’s greatest fear” was a Soviet invasion of Iran may well have concerned a legitimate fear, but it doesn’t sound like RR’s mindset or even that of his Administration’s inner circle — not as to that part of the world.
A Soviet invasion of Iran (or absorption into the Soviet orbit) surely WAS a major concern of the State Dept, however, in 1953 when the CIA cooperated with the Brits in removing Mossadeq — and my money is on DOS again in THIS instance (viz., State feared a USSR invasion in early ’80’s). That would help explain why the left hand seemed to never know what the right hand was up to throughout this entire affair: viz., it’s clear that DOS was poking around backstage, virtually from the project’s inception.
Israeli Spies: Dan Raviv
Published on Oct 28, 2013
D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kVtrB3_t70
Jonathan Pollard – interview with Caroline Glick
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6_aGnuI9vA
bernard ross Said:
Hero Jonathan Pollard Saved Jews From AmeriKKKan Treachery:
John Loftus confirms the details of this allegation!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBRNcpTPAJA
Chamish says that Pollard stumbled across the Iran contra situation and Israel(peres) wangled into the deal. Perhaps the blowup of Iran contra made Pollard the scapegoat for Peres, Perhaps the weinberger/reagan/bush group blame Israel/peres for the exposure. Its strange that Israel seem s to make no real pressure for Pollard. Perhaps Pollard is being held to make a bad Pal deal, accepted by Israel, palatable to the Israeli public.
The injustice against Pollard was evident early on. Years ago author John Loftus revealed that the crimes that Pollard was accused of were committed by Aldrich Ames of the CIA and Robert Hansen of the FBI and both are serving life sentences. I blame the U.S Jewish establishment that betrayed Pollard from the start. They refused to properly investigate the case and chose to blindly accept the government’s charges. They were governed by cowardice and feared to be accused of dual loyalty. They willingly sacrificed Pollard just to appear loyal. Even Israeli leaders betrayed Pollard. This is yet another chapter in the sordid history of Jewish self-betrayal.
I’m left wondering how those who shelter behind the grim wall of Law manage to sleep at night. Such people, although they possess the intellectual credentials that enable them to pass judgement on their fellow men, possess no wisdom, and it is wisdom that to some extent softens that grim wall and offers some humanity to their decisions.
This is mendacity, and such mendacity will ultimately have consequences other than mere loss of sleep.