[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 63 (Wednesday, May 14, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E917-E919]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
FAIRNESS FOR JONATHAN POLLARD
______
HON. ELIOT L. ENGEL
of new york
in the house of representatives
Tuesday, May 13, 1997
Mr. ENGEL. Mr. Speaker, I am entering two articles into the
Congressional Record which deal with the case of Jonathan Pollard. It
is important to have these articles printed because the American people
deserve to understand all aspects of Jonathan Pollard's case.
I do not believe that what Jonathan Pollard did was right. It was
wrong; it broke the law and Jonathan Pollard deserved to be punished.
Jonathan Pollard is the first to admit that. In fact, at a recent
meeting I had with him at the Federal prison in Butner, NC, where he is
incarcerated, he told me that he was wrong and deserved to be punished.
My problem with the entire Jonathan Pollard case is that while I
don't expect him to be treated any better than anyone else committing
similar acts, I certainly don't expect him to be treated any worse. The
fact of the matter is that Jonathan Pollard has now served more than 11
years of a life sentence, far greater than anyone else convicted of
similar crimes. In fact, a number of people convicted of spying for
enemy countries, such as the former Soviet Union, have been given
lighter sentences than Mr. Pollard--who was convicted of spying for a
friendly country.
It is my understanding that Mr. Pollard pled guilty and avoided going
to trial in exchange for a promise that the Justice Department would
not ask for a life sentence for him. Although the Justice Department
did not per se request a life sentence, others, including Caspar
Weinberger, did. Thus, Mr. Pollard was given a life sentence, even
though he had been led to believe he would face lesser punishment.
The two articles I am submitting into the Congressional Record tell
of the disparity of the Pollard case when contrasted with another
person who passed classified information to Saudi Arabia. As one can
tell from the articles, the indictment of the person accused of spying
for the Saudis was subsequently dropped in exchange for a last minute
plea bargain agreement offered by the Navy in which the alleged
perpetrator spent not 1 day in jail and received only an other-than-
honorable discharge.
[[Page E918]]
I believe that questions of fairness and equity need to be addressed
in the Jonathan Pollard case. It is my contention that Jonathan Pollard
has not been treated justly when one contrasts his length of
incarceration with others who have been convicted of similar crimes.
People should be punished when they break the law. No one, however,
should be singled out for harsher treatment than others convicted of
similar crimes. I believe this happened in the case of Jonathan
Pollard.
I ask that articles by Alex Rose, entitled ``A Tale of Two Spies,''
and Morton Klein, entitled ``Double-Standard Spying,'' be printed at
this point in the Record.
A Tale of Two Spies
(By Alex Rose)
From November, 1992 to September 1994, Lt. Cmdr. Michael
Schwartz delivered secret national defense information to
Saudi Arabia. A 15-year Navy veteran, Schwartz was
subsequently arrested and indicted for violating both the
Uniform Code of Military Justice and various federal
statutes.
The indictment stated that while he was assigned to the
U.S. Military Training Mission in Riyadh, Schwartz had
willfully compromised sensitive information ``with intent or
reason to believe it would be used to the injury of the
United States, or to the advantage of the Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia.'' According to press reports, the documents in
question included classified digests, intelligence advisories
and tactical intelligence summaries. These documents were
classified up to the secret level and specified ``no foreign
disclosure.''
Although Schwartz was scheduled to be court-martialled for
his action, he accepted a last-minute plea agreement offered
by the Navy. While such arrangements are not unusual,
particularly in espionage cases involving American allies,
Schwartz' so-called ``punishment'' was unprecedented:
``other-than-honorable'' discharge from the Navy. In other
words, Lt. Cmdr. Michael Schwartz was not obliged to spend a
minute in jail.
For a remarkably similar offense--giving classified
information to an ally--Jonathan Pollard received a life
sentence with a recommendation that he never be paroled.
What are the differences between the two cases?
The obvious ones have anti-Semitic overtones: Schwartz is
not Jewish, and Pollard was spying on behalf of Israel. Not
nearly as apparent is that the U.S. Government--which had
expressed official outrage at Israel's ``arrogance'' in the
Pollard case and proclaimed loudly (without offering any
evidence) that his espionage was the worst in American
history--has handled the Schwartz case with kid gloves and
virtual silence.
Even the Jewish War Veterans, whose lack of sympathy for
Pollard is a matter of record, was nevertheless moved to
revulsion by the Schwartz affair. The JWV said that it
believes ``that when compared to other crimes of espionage by
Navy personnel, both to enemy and friendly governments, the
punishment is a farce. In each of the other cases, harsh
prison sentences, including life-time sentences, were meted
out.'' The Jewish veterans also questioned what information
was passed to the Saudis, and who in the Saudi royal family
knew of the Schwartz espionage.
Other questions, as well, beg answers:
Have the Saudis been asked for a formal apology?
Have they promised not to recruit any more American
intelligence officers or to close the intelligence unit
responsible for the affair? Have the Saudis agreed to
allow participants in the operation to be questioned by
American counter-espionage authorities? Have they returned
all the stolen documents? What other countries may have
seen the information Schwartz gave to the Saudis? (This
item loomed large in the Government's assessment of
Pollard. Why did it lose its relevance for Schwartz?)
Granted, the Navy's unwillingness to address any of these
issues may be understandable; but it's also important to
recognize the fact that a mindset like theirs, which
subordinates American interests to protecting Saudi
sensitivities at all costs, can have deadly consequences.
Anyone doubting this need only recall the bombing of our
Khobar Towers facility in Dhahran two years ago. Reacting to
the inadequate security precautions that allowed this outrage
to occur, a Washington Post editorial of July 12, 1995
observed that ``The suggestions of American reluctance to
offend the culturally delicate Saudis by demanding more
attention to the security of Saudi Arabia's American
protectors amount to an intelligence failure of a profound
sort.'' No doubt this same type of craven fear of ruffling
Saudi Arabia's feathers was the principal reason why Schwartz
did not have to stand trial nor suffer a jail sentence, and
was not referred to by the Secretary of Defense as a
``traitor''--something which Pollard, by the way, was falsely
accused of being by Caspar Weinberger.
Although the Government subsequently apologized for
Weinberger's groundless charge, this episode should remove
any doubt as to what the Department of Defense's actual
attitude towards Israel was at the time of Pollard's arrest.
It also tends to confirm what many in the Jewish community
have believed all along; namely that the Pollard affair was
used by certain elements within our national security
establishment as a means of tarnishing the popular perception
of Israel as both a valuable and reliable ally. After all, if
Pollard was a ``traitor'' as Weinberger had stated who, then,
was the ``enemy''? That Schwartz was never used to smear the
country he served, further highlights the politically-driven
distinction our government drew between these two cases of
``friendly'' espionage.
There are, of course, other aspects of the Schwartz case
which President Clinton obviously never even considered
before he turned down Pollard's last clemency appeal. For
example, the Government's decision not to prosecute Schwartz
calls into question CIA arguments that Pollard cannot be
released because he knows too much. This is an absurdity.
Schwartz was spying until recently, whereas Pollard has been
in prison for more than 11 years! How is it that Schwartz is
not a threat to national security but Pollard is?
The President also seems to have been heavily influenced by
the views of Joseph DiGenova, the U.S. attorney who
prosecuted Pollard. Briefly put, DiGenova feels that
individuals caught spying for close allies like Israel should
actually be punished more harshly than those caught spying
for enemies, since there is a greater ``danger'' that
individuals would feel more predisposed to help friends. If
there is any merit to this logic, it has been totally lost in
the government's refusal to prosecute Schwartz vigorously,
rather than to have set him free. But nobody, apparently,
brought this to the President's attention.
Lastly, our government sought to justify its decision not
to prosecute Schwartz by claiming that the information he
provided Saudi Arabia was ``less sensitive'' than what
Pollard gave to Israel. One needs to recall, though, that
Schwartz was indicted and confessed to a serious crime.
Clearly, some punishment was therefore warranted beyond his
mere ``less-than-honorable'' discharge from the Navy. The
fact that this did not occur demonstrates that extra-legal
considerations came into play in the disparate treatment. In
other words, politics was allowed to corrupt the U.S.
judicial system. Anything, then, the national security
establishment might have to say about the relative
sensitivity of Schwartz' information is simply too tainted to
be believed. Yet, the same intelligence and defense agencies
who rescued Schwartz from prosecution are the very ones who
have counselled President Clinton to adhere to a policy of
``selective prosecution'' towards Pollard. So how objective
could their advice have been?
It seems, though, that nobody has seen fit to point this
out to the President; and unless somebody does, Clinton will
never know why his refusal to commute Pollard's sentence
threatens to undermine one of our most important legal
traditions: namely, the assurance that when a person is
convicted of breaking the law, he or she will receive
approximately the same punishment that any other person would
receive for a similar violation that was committed under
comparable circumstances. However, given the way Schwartz was
preferentially handled, this principle of equal justice has
been grossly violated in the case of Jonathan Pollard. But
Clinton not only declined to correct this situation by
granting Pollard clemency, he did so in a way that placed his
own imprimatur on Pollard's clearly-aberrant life sentence.
What a growing number of people are slowly recognizing,
though, is that if our legal system does not work for Pollard
because of who and what he is, it could fail each and every
one of us, as well, both as Jews and as Americans.
In our society, justice cannot simply be a theoretical
concept--it must be seen to be done. Only in this way will
our much-touted system of checks and balances have meaning.
It is critical, therefore, that Congress investigate how a
Saudi spy (Schwartz) was permitted to act with impunity while
an Israeli spy (Pollard) was treated as an enemy agent. Two
spies, two countries and two vastly different punishments
cannot help but leave one with the distinct feeling that
there is a double standard in need of challenging.
____
[From the Jewish Press, Apr. 11, 1997]
Double-Standard Spying
(By Morton Klein)
We all know what happens to an American who illegally
passes classified U.S. intelligence data to Israel: life
imprisonment, repeated refusals by the President to grant
clemency, leaks to the media of false allegations against the
defendant and against Israel. That's what happened in the
Jonathan Pollard case. He broke the law and he was,
understandably, punished for doing so.
In the case of Pollard, he helped a country that is
America's closest ally in the Mideast. The information
Pollard illegally gave Israel helped protect it from Arab
aggression.
What happens, on the other hand, when an American illegally
passes classified U.S. intelligence data to an Arab
dictatorship that can hardly be described as a reliable ally
of the United States? Lieutenant-Commander Michael Schwartz
was last year arrested for providing such data to Saudi
Arabia. A U.S. Navy grand jury indicted him on the charge of
espionage, which carries a sentence of life imprisonment. His
punishment? An ``other than honorable discharge.''
Not a day in jail. Not a penny in fines. And not a word of
concern from any Clinton Administration official about the
fact that Saudi Arabia, which is supposed to be an ally of
the United States, was using a spy to steal American
intelligence secrets, just months after American soldiers
were dying in defense of Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War.
[[Page E919]]
U.S. officials would not even publicly admit that the Saudis
had recruited Schwartz; they told The Washington Post that
Schwartz had not been hired by Saudi Arabia, but rather ``was
only trying to be friendly and cooperative to a U.S. ally.''
The government's handling of the Schwartz case is
particularly troubling in view of the many recent Saudi
actions that fell far short of what one would expect from an
ally:
Saudi Arabia refused to let the U.S. use its territory to
launch the recent missile strikes against Iraq.
The Saudis rejected America's request to let the FBI
interrogate four terrorists who were involved in last year's
attack against U.S. Army personnel in Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi authorities prevented the U.S. from capturing one
of the world's most wanted terrorists, Imad Mughniyah of the
Syrian-supported Islamic Holy War group, who was responsible
for the 1983 bombing that killed 241 American Marines in
Lebanon. Mughniyah was on an airplane that was scheduled to
land in Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. informed the Saudis that
they intended to arrest him during the stopover. The Saudis
responded by preventing the plane from landing, so that
Mughniyah could escape.
I recently had the opportunity to speak with Jonathan
Pollard by telephone, from his prison cell in Buttner, North
Carolina. He is now in his 12th year of incarceration,
although no other individual convicted of a similar type of
spying for an ally of the U.S. has ever served more than five
years in prison. Jonathan asked me: ``Why am I still in jail,
while Michael Schwartz is walking free?'' Good question--one
that Jewish leaders should be asking Clinton Administration
officials at every opportunity.
____________________