Caspar Weinberger Lies 1999
Middle East Quarterly - Fall 1999
http://www.jonathanpollard.org/1999/100099.htm
Justice for JP Introduction:
In a recent interview with Middle East Quarterly, former U.S. Secretary
of Defense Caspar Weinberger became very agitated when questioned about
Jonathan Pollard. (Text of the interview follows below).
If the 1987 Weinberger memorandum were declassified and released today,
in 1999, it would reveal that Caspar Weinberger is still peddling all of
the same old lies that he used then to secure a life
sentence for Jonathan Pollard, in spite of a plea bargain to the
contrary.
The Weinberger memorandum was submitted to the sentencing judge at the
last moment. Pollard and his attorney saw the document for only moments
before sentencing, and were never given the opportunity to challenge the
false charges it contains in court. No one on Pollard's defense team has
ever been able to access the classified document again - not even
attorneys who have all of the necessary security clearances. Even though
denying Pollard the opportunity to challenge the document in court is a
clear violation of his constitutional right to due process, the Weinberger
memorandum remains secret and inaccessible to this day.
In the MEQ interview that follows, Weinberger made strong and patently
false statements about Pollard in an apparent attempt to quickly dispense
with the topic, and became ever more agitated when the interviewer would
not retreat from the subject.
What makes Weinberger's statements below all the more stunning is that
he still tries to peddle all the same old lies about Pollard, as if his
audience were as gullible and uninformed now as it was when the case first
broke 15 years ago. Text follows:
Interview with Caspar Weinberger
Excerpted From Middle East Quarterly - Fall 1999 Edition
[Justice for JP Facts appear in square brackets].
MEQ: You have been quoted saying that Jonathan Pollard
"should have been shot." Is this accurate?
Weinberger: Any traitor who did what he did should be shot.
[FACT: Only treason - which is legally defined as spying for an
enemy state in time of war- is legally punishable by death. Jonathan
Pollard did not commit treason. He was never charged with treason, nor was
he ever tried for treason.]
MEQ: You describe him as a traitor.
Weinberger: I thought Pollard did a very great deal of a damage
to the United States.
[FACT: There was never any hard evidence produced by either
Weinberger or the prosecution to support the false claims that the
government made in the media that Jonathan Pollard damaged U.S. national
security. Indeed Pollard was never charged with harming the U.S., its
agents, codes, or war plans.]
Weinberger continues: The Walkers and others also did a very
great deal of damage.
[FACT: This is a false comparison. Whereas the damage claims made
against Pollard were made only in the media, never in court, the damage
charges against the Walkers were made in a court of law and backed up by
hard evidence. Several well-documented volumes have been written detailing
the explicit damage done to U.S. national security by the Walkers.]
Weinberger continues: My views here have nothing to do with his
religion or his beliefs or anything of that kind.
[FACT: MEQ did not make this accusation. Weinberger makes it
himself.]
Weinberger continues: There are some lawyers who have been paid
to say, "Yes, but it wasn't treason."
[FACT: The U.S. Appeals Court transcript of the 1991 Pollard appeal
clearly shows the court reprimanding the government for falsely referring
to Pollard using the terms "traitor " and "treason",
and reminding the government that in a court of law only the legal
definition of the words are relevant. The government concedes the
"error" and apologizes.]
Weinberger continues: Using the term loosely and avoiding all
the technical definitions, I would say he caused us a very great deal of
additional problems in a difficult situation.
[FACT: Weinberger misled the court by presenting his own opinions
and views as if they were a legal assessment of Jonathan Pollard's
actions. This is why in a subsequent ruling the sentencing judge wrote
that Caspar Weinberger "may not have been neutral and detached"
in his role in the Pollard case. Unfortunately by the time that the judge
came to this conclusion, Pollard had already received his life sentence
and the damage had been done.]
Weinberger continues: I said everything I knew about Pollard at
the request of the United States District Court.
[FACT: It is more likely that Weinberger intervened on his own
initiative as there is no evidence of any request for his input by the
court. In fact the prosecution has steadfastly refused to explain how it
is that the Secretary of Defense came to be invited to submit a last
minute secret memorandum to the judge virtually at the time of
sentencing.]
Weinberger continues: I gave them an affidavit that was
classified because it went into great detail about the extent of the
damage that was done and the number of lives of our people that were
endangered.
[FACT: Weinberger's assessment of Jonathan Pollard's activities
damaging U.S. humint capabilities was based on the CIA's damage assessment
which was written by the master mole himself, Aldrich Ames. Ames deflected
suspicion away from himself by transferring the blame to Pollard. Even
years later, when Ames was finally arrested and appropriately indicted for
the crimes he had accused Pollard of, no adjustment was made to Pollard's
case or to his sentence.]
Weinberger continues: That covered a lot of sources and methods
at the court's request.
[FACT: Weinberger's damage claims against Pollard are largely
speculation and worst-case scenario prognostications. For example,
Weinberger speculated that Pollard had harmed U.S. agents, and did so
based on the assumption that Israel may have traded the information
provided by Pollard to the Soviet Union, which in turn endangered American
agents in the Soviet Union. In point of fact, both the CIA and the Israeli
national security establishment have repeatedly confirmed publicly that
not one iota of the information that Pollard passed to Israel was ever
officially transferred to and/or illegally obtained by the Soviet Union.]
Weinberger continues: Others seem to have seen it (the
Weinberger memorandum) and talk about it very freely; I don't.
[FACT: Government officials who have leaked information to the media
from the classified memorandum have in fact committed a criminal offense.
Yet, the government has never investigated or charged those government
sources who have done so, in spite of repeated requests by Pollard's
attorney. Moreover, since the government has never allowed even those with
security clearance on the Pollard defense team to see the Weinberger
memorandum, there is no one in a position to rebut the vicious leaks.]
Weinberger continues: I'm sort of an anachronism because I still
respect classified documents.
[FACT: There are 2 possible reasons that the government will not
allow Pollard or his cleared attorneys to access and challenge the
Weinberger memorandum.
Either (A) the document contains such sensitive information that
releasing it would endanger American national security
or (B) the document is so full of lies that its release would not
withstand public scrutiny, let alone judicial challenge.
Given that Weinberger himself is an indicted perjurer and the
intelligence community's track record for honesty is at best
"spotty", it is far more reasonable to assume that the
government's refusal to release the Weinberger memorandum has more to do
with the embarrassment that the government will suffer over its long-held
intransigent position on the Pollard case, than over any threat to
national security.]
MEQ: You are saying that calling Pollard a "traitor"
is in the general sense, not in a lawyerly sense.
Weinberger: It's the smallest kind of footnote, if anything. The
fact is he did tremendous damage and how you want to define it doesn't
really make any difference.
[FACT: If Jonathan Pollard had done the kind of damage Weinberger
claims he did, the government would have been obliged to charge him and
try him for harming the United States. The fact that he was neither
charged nor tried for this offense puts the lie to Weinberger's
accusations.
Weinberger can talk all he wants, but the bottom line is that there was
never any hard evidence presented in court to back up his claims. Indeed
to this day, no one has ever been able to demonstrate a single example
where even one agent was harmed, or any intelligence collection program
was suspended or compromised as a result of Jonathan Pollard's actions.]
MEQ: Some people have become quite fixated on the word
"traitor."
Weinberger: The rule is, I don't talk about this matter at all.
What I had to say, I said in the classified affidavit. I have nothing else
to say. Some years ago, a long, presumably scholarly, legal piece came out
to the effect that treason had to consist of this and that; this is
totally irrelevant.
[FACT: Caspar Weinberger's attitude reflects both contempt and a
cavalier disregard for American law, and the definitions and legal
distinctions contained in the espionage statutes.]
Weinberger continues: It's the damage that he did that counts.
[FACT: Weinberger still insists that Pollard be punished for a crime
that he never committed and for which he was never charged - damage to the
United States. Worse, Pollard has never been allowed to see the evidence
and to defend himself against this lie.
The bottom line is: where are the dead agents, broken codes, ruined
collection programs and compromised technology that one would expect to
find littering the intelligence landscape if Jonathan Pollard were in fact
responsible for all the damage that Caspar Weinberger attributes to him.]
Weinberger continues: It wasn't just him - Aldrich Ames and
others also did tremendous damage. They all need to be punished.
[FACT: Weinberger's insidious symmetry equating Pollard with Ames is
egregiously false. Unlike Pollard who passed classified information to an
ally, Ames' actions aided and abetted an enemy of the U.S. Ames
compromised American intelligence programs and was responsible for the
deaths of American agents. Ames also participated in writing the damage
assessment of Pollard's actions and shifted the blame for his own crimes
to Pollard. Even when Ames was finally exposed, Pollard's sentence was
never adjusted.]
MEQ: The Victim Impact Statement filed by the U.S. government
sometime between May 1986 and January 1987 predicted that Pollard's crime
would threaten U.S. relations with its Arab allies and reduce U.S.
bargaining leverage over intelligence with the Israelis. A dozen years
later, how do you assess the accuracy of those predictions?
Weinberger: I'm not familiar with that statement; I suppose I
should be.
[FACT: The Victim Impact Statement (VIS) is a primary document used
to assess the impact of a crime and to determine appropriate punishment.
Weinberger's ignorance of this document and the statements it contains
speaks volumes about the reliability of his own assessment.]
Weinberger continues: The whole case was a source of very
considerable potential danger and damage to the United States, primarily
from the vantage point of information, intelligence sources, and methods
that were lost. We were impacted very severely.
[FACT: Fifteen years later, any potential damage that Weinberger
speculated might eventually surface, never has. America's continuing
strong relationship with both Israel and the Arab nations is reflected in
its key role in the Middle East peace process. Indeed intelligence-sharing
with Israel has greatly expanded since the Pollard case, which would not
have occurred if Jonathan Pollard's actions had had the damaging effect
that Weinberger claims.]
Weinberger continues: That was the exact subject matter of the
information that the judge wanted in the case, and he made a formal,
official request to me for it.
[FACT: This is a stunning and damning statement.
If Weinberger is lying, why won't the prosecution say how it was that
Weinberger got to deliver a last minute secret memorandum to the
sentencing judge that damned Pollard to a life sentence in spite of a plea
agreement to the contrary?
Worse still, if Weinberger is telling the truth, then the sentencing
judge appears to have deliberately blind-sided the defense. That is, the
sentencing judge never informed the defense that he had invited a
submission from the secretary of defense and he certainly made no
provision for the defense to see the submission in advance. Nor did he
allow the defense counsel adequate time to study the submission and
prepare a legal defense to challenge to it. The sentencing judge would
thus have willfully deprived Jonathan Pollard of his constitutional right
to confront and challenge his accusers in a court of law.
Moreover by admitting in a subsequent ruling that Caspar Weinberger
"may not have been neutral and detached" the judge may have
compounded his unethical treatment of Pollard by belatedly admitting the
questionable credibility of the government's key witness and yet not
adjusting Pollard's sentence accordingly.]
Weinberger concludes: I've told virtually everyone who has asked
me that I have nothing further to say about Pollard, so printing comments
that I've made would cause everybody to rush around and say, "Well,
you talked to the MEQ, now talk to us." And I have not really talked
to anybody about it.
Justice for JP Summarizes:
- Weinberger repeatedly insists that Pollard be severely punished for
crimes which he did not commit, was never charged with, and for which
he was never tried, namely treason, and harm to the United States.
- Weinberger shows a contempt and a complete disregard for American
law and the notion of judicial equity.
- Weinberger refuses to recognize that American law makes a number of
clear distinctions to determine the severity of an espionage offense
according to an established legal standard.
- Weinberger ignores the principle of equal justice where legal
precedent establishes the usual punishment meted out for each offense.
- Weinberger makes numerous accusations against Pollard without a
shred of hard evidence to support these charges.
- Either Weinberger is lying about how he came to submit his infamous
secret memorandum to the sentencing judge at the last moment before
sentencing, or
- Weinberger reveals his participation in the sentencing of Jonathan
Pollard as a deeply unethical move on the part of the sentencing judge
to deprive Pollard of his constitutional right to due process.
- Weinberger claims that he is not driven by any personal animus
towards Pollard, Israel or the Jewish people. The absence of any legal
explanation for Jonathan Pollard's excessive sentence and harsh
treatment - unchallenged secret evidence notwithstanding- does not
support this claim.
The following points should also be noted:
- The plea bargain that Jonathan Pollard entered into with the
government dealt with the only offense with which he was charged: one
count of passing classified information to an ally. This offense
carries a median sentence of 2 to 4 years.
- There were no other charges against Pollard other than the one count
of passing classified information to an ally, and no additional
charges were dropped as a result of the plea agreement.
- In complete violation of his plea agreement, Jonathan Pollard
received a life sentence on the basis of false and misleading secret
evidence - Weinberger's still classified memorandum - which Pollard,
to this day, has never been allowed to challenge in a court of law.
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