Should Pollard be in Gitmo?

[2pac Shakur]

Or is Guantanmo only for Muslims?

Pollard to get a day in court
in latest twist of famous spy case
By Edwin Black



WASHINGTON, Aug. 12 (JTA) ? Sept. 2, 2003 is going to be a big day for Jonathan Pollard: The American Jewish spy is going to get another day in court.
Pollard?s lawyers will have 40 minutes in a federal courtroom to explain why they should be permitted to continue efforts to rescind the life sentence he received 18 years ago for committing espionage for Israel.

Years of tenacious motions by attorneys Jacques Semmelman and Eliot Lauer either have been vigorously opposed by government attorneys or allowed to languish in the court.

Now U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Hogan has granted Pollard and his attorneys ? who are working on the case pro bono ? a hearing.

Semmelman and Lauer will get 30 minutes to argue why they should be permitted to appeal, the government can take a half hour to respond, and then Pollard?s attorneys will be granted 10 minutes for the last word.

http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.a...ntcategoryid=3

President Bill Clinton is loath to antagonize America's politically powerful Jewish community, which strongly supports the Democratic party. But the president is also under intense pressure from the national security community not to free the Israeli spy. CIA director George Tenent has threatened to resign if Pollard is pardoned. Seven former U.S. secretaries of defence, some of whom are Jewish, also demanded Pollard remain in prison for life.

After years of denials, Israel finally admitted Pollard, a U.S. Navy civilian analyst, was not a "rogue agent," as it originally claimed, but a spy for Israeli intelligence.

Pollard caused enormous damage to U.S. national security. He gave Israel top-secret U.S. military intelligence and diplomatic codes; names of nearly 100 U.S. agents in the Mideast, who were then "turned" by Israel; NSA code-breaking techniques and targets; intercepts of foreign communications; and U.S. war-fighting plans for the Mideast.

According to CIA sources, Pollard provided Israeli intelligence with names of important American agents inside the former

Soviet Union and Russia who had supplied information on East Bloc weapons and war plans. How the agents' names were linked to the secrets they supplied - a major breach of basic intelligence security - remains a mystery.

Some of the enormously sensitive secrets stolen by Pollard may have been either sold, or bartered, by Israel to the Soviet Union.

A number of key CIA agents in the East Bloc were allegedly executed as a result of Pollard's spying. The KGB likely gained access to top-secret U.S. codes - either directly from Israel, or through spies in Israel's government. In short, Pollard's treachery caused one of the worst security disasters in modern U.S. history.

FBI investigators discovered Pollard was being directed to steal specific secret data by a senior administration official, known as "Mr. X." But the White House, unwilling to stir up a domestic political storm, quashed the investigation.

http://www.aci.net/kalliste/pollard_em.htm

[Course 4 Escapee]

Whether Guantanamo is only for Muslims or not is irrelevant. Pollard should have been executed as well as the numerous other spies that have been busted over the last 10-20 years.

[Tim><]

Pollard has been in solitary since conviction. Are you surprised that he would attempt to appeal? Or is this just your usual veiled antisemitism?

[2pac Shakur]

Originally Posted by J-Rab

Pollard has been in solitary since conviction. Are you surprised that he would attempt to appeal? Or is this just your usual veiled antisemitism?

I'm surprised he was granted a hearing.
Compared to how Muslims that are being held on simple visa violations, it's outrageous.
Or do you got something against Muslims?

[Tim><]

You are surprised he was granted a hearing after almost 18 years of solitary confinement?

He won't be released . . .

[2pac Shakur]

WASHINGTON - Jonathan Pollard, given a life sentence for selling military secrets to Israel, appeared in public for the first time in 16 years Tuesday as his lawyers tried to help him win early release.


Pollard looked heavier and grayer than the man who stood in the same courthouse and admitted espionage in 1987. The bearded Pollard wore a yarmulke and a green shirt stamped "Arlington County Jail."


He nodded hello to his wife in the courtroom's front row, and then sat with hands folded and did not speak as his lawyers argued the government should be forced to turn over secret files that could help his request for clemency.


"Jonathan Pollard is sitting here in court today. He asks only for justice and a fair sentencing, as guaranteed by our Constitution," attorney Jacques Semmelman said. "He has not had that."


Jewish religious leaders and other supporters filled several rows of the courtroom. Pollard's 89-year-old father, from whom he is estranged, sat separately in the back row.


Government lawyers argued that another judge was right to reject Pollard's claims and he should not be allowed to press the case further.


U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan did not immediately rule on Pollard's requests.


Pollard, 49, was a civilian intelligence analyst for the Navy when he copied and gave to his Israeli handlers enough classified documents to fill a walk-in closet. He was not paid when his spying began in 1984, but acknowledged that Israel later began paying him a few thousand dollars a month.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...than_pollard_4


Meanwhile...

NEW YORK (CNN) -- The father of an Australian man held at a U.S. detention facility in Cuba for 19 months complained on Monday that his son still has had no charges filed against him, has not had access to an attorney and has never been allowed to talk with his father.

Terry Hicks, father of David Hicks, was joined at a news conference by Michael Ratner, an attorney for the Center of Constitutional Rights, and Stephen Kenny, the Australian attorney for Hicks.

They demanded that the father and son be allowed to talk, and that the younger Hicks be given access to an attorney.

They also said they do not believe David Hicks will receive a fair trial from a military tribunal.

"It is an outrage that the U.S. government put him before a tribunal that is essentially a court of conviction not of justice," Ratner said.

http://us.cnn.com/2003/LAW/07/28/guantanamo.australian/

[Tim><]

Do you really not understand the difference? Pollard is an American citizen, and thus allowed the same legal rights afforded to all American citizens. Among these rights is the right to an attorney. Geneva conventions for detaining enemy combatants include neither the right to an attorney nor the priveledge of seeing family. Moreover, I would be very distressed if they were allowed to continue said contact. They are entitled to a visit from the International Red Cross to determine whether their captivity meets said standards. In the event that it does not, there are procedures to be followed to rectify the situation. Among these procedures is not attorney visitation nor family contact.

What bothers you so much about the way Pollard is being treated? He is a spy; he committed treason. He has been sentenced to life imprisonment. Despite requests from Israel, he has not been released. After spending 18 years in prison, he has been granted a parole hearing. I doubt he will be released.

So I reiterate, what bothers you so much about the way Pollard is being treated? Do you feel that he should have been given the death penalty; while this would be a constitutional possibility, it is rarely the penalty of choice. Are you shocked that Israel would have a spy in the US? Are you naive enough to believe that countries do not universally spy on friend and foe alike? The major difference is that it is much easier to spy on a friend.

It seems to me like the US has handled Pollard in a very unbiased fashion. He has been afforded to the rights guaranteed to him by the Constitution of these United States. He has not been granted anything further. It is my hope that he will remain in prison for committing treason against the United States. I value both the ideals and security of this country. I value the laws in this country and wish to see them upheld. I feel that Pollard should be punished to the full extent of the law in much the same way that I feel that the sixty-some-year-old teacher that deciced to act as a human shield in Iraq. For some reason, you seem to want some sort of selective treatment of Pollard (although I think that neither of us are sure how this treatment could possibly be different).

I guess the only difference between the two of us is our motivation. I am interested in seeing Pollard remain behind bars due to the severity of his actions. You seem to have some other motivation; I gather this from two sources. First, I notice an inconsistency in the way you want to handle punishment for treason. Second, I notice that you seem to want to repeatedly mention Pollard without any context for your outrage; you have yet to mention anything that even you believe is wrong with this case.

These inconsistencies bring me sqaurely back to the only semblence of an argument which you have provided:

Originally Posted by 2Pac Shakur

Should Pollard be in Gitmo? Or is Guantanmo only for Muslims?

Here you mention religion, not Israel. Here you make the inference that Pollard is getting different treatment due to the fact that he is not a Muslim. The obvious paranthetical comment is that Pollard is a Jew.

Are you a racist, II-P? More specifically, are you an antisemite? I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you are not. If this assumption is correct, can you give a cohesive response to the points I have made in this post?

[2pac Shakur]

Pollard gave away the equivalent of a walkin closet filled with classified American documents to Israel.
It is widely believed many agents lost their lives because of Pollard's treason.
When he was charged, however, the govt. acted as if there are rules in place, and absolutely no way of circumventing them. Pollard is, after all, an American citizen.
I agree with this type of behavior by the govt.
But I can't stand the inconsistent treatment given to other American citizens...

Jose Padilla is the U.S. citizen who supposedly plotted to detonate a ''dirty bomb.'' Since his capture--not on the battlefields of Afghanistan or Iraq, but at Chicago's O'Hare Airport--he has not been charged with any crime. Yet, for more than a year, Padilla has been held incommunicado in a South Carolina military brig.

Padilla's indefinite detention, without access to an attorney, has civil libertarians up in arms. That's why the Cato Institute, joined by five ideologically diverse public policy organizations--the Center for National Security Studies; the Constitution Project; the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights; People for the American Way, and the Rutherford Institute--filed a friend-of-the-court brief in Padilla vs. Rumsfeld, now pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/other...edt-ref11.html

And I'm sure there are plenty more stories like that, in the name of "fighting terror".
There are rules in place. Just because we're fighting a war on terror, those rules shouldn't be suspended (almost exclusively it's happened in cases against Muslims). Just like the rules shouldn't have been suspended in the war on drugs, or the war on Communism.
If Pollard gets his hearing, let's be prepared to do the same for everybody we've thrown in jail related to 9/11. Muslims and all.

[Tim><]

Even if that was your point, you are insinuating something else. If you feel that Pollard's treatment was equitable, why do you keep quoting it as though there was wrongdoing? If you feel that Jose Padilla is being given unfair treatment as an American citizen, why do you lump him together with foreign terrorists? If you would like to make a post attacking Padilla's treatment, make a link to http://www.chargepadilla.org/ without the Pollard references. I wouldn't even have a problem with the Pollard reference if not for the immediate mention of religion. It is clear to me that Pollard has not received preferential treatment due to his religion or anything else. It is also clear to me that 17 years have separated the arrests of Padilla and Pollard; it is my opinion that this, more than anything else, causes the difference in their treatment. That, and the fact that Padilla was captured with a bomb in an airport . . .

[2pac Shakur]

Originally Posted by J-Rab

Even if that was your point, you are insinuating something else. If you feel that Pollard's treatment was equitable, why do you keep quoting it as though there was wrongdoing? If you feel that Jose Padilla is being given unfair treatment as an American citizen, why do you lump him together with foreign terrorists? If you would like to make a post attacking Padilla's treatment, make a link to http://www.chargepadilla.org/ without the Pollard references. I wouldn't even have a problem with the Pollard reference if not for the immediate mention of religion. It is clear to me that Pollard has not received preferential treatment due to his religion or anything else. It is also clear to me that 17 years have separated the arrests of Padilla and Pollard; it is my opinion that this, more than anything else, causes the difference in their treatment. That, and the fact that Padilla was captured with a bomb in an airport . . .

I think it's political.
Do you think Pollard would be in this position today if he gave those secrets to any country other than Israel?
1987 would've been the last we saw of Pollard.