Monday, September 27, 2010

Released FBI files related to Pollard case reveal Jewish Zionist Israel-firsters run amok in America, U.S. officials studiously looking the other way

From:
Free Pollard Now, Pay Later

Declassified FBI file reveals cost of ignoring Israeli espionage
(AntiWar.com) -- by Grant Smith --

The proposal to free spy Jonathan Pollard in exchange for Israel extending a temporary freeze on settlement building has now received support from four Democrats in Congress. Although many claim Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu initiated this latest bid to free Pollard, it may not be that simple. Since the 1990s the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations has publicly and privately called for Pollard’s release. The 52 organizations in the Conference constitute a key block in the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) executive committee. Hitching Pollard’s release to any suitably strong vehicle – whether steaming in from Israel or propelled from within the U.S. – is therefore an AIPAC priority. Like its behind-the-scenes support for Israel’s clandestine nuclear weapons program, Pollard’s release is not something AIPAC can lobby for openly. This is because – as with many of AIPAC’s initiatives – freeing Pollard is both unpopular and a zero-sum game in which America must lose in order for Israel to win.

The logic behind exonerating one massive illegality to temporarily stanch another seems to be that in exercising clemency the U.S. will win time to advance the so-called “peace process” underway between Israelis and Palestinians. But will freeing Pollard instead only touch off yet another crippling wave of Israeli espionage against the United States? Has exercising leniency toward the many instances of Israel-related espionage ever worked in the past? Over 400 pages of FBI news clippings [.pdf] released on Sept. 7, 2010, in response to a 2009 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for files about the 2005 AIPAC espionage investigation reveal one inescapable reality: now that the “free Pollard” initiative is underway, American governance will likely suffer greatly whether or not President Obama ultimately chooses to reward yet another crime committed in the name of Israel...

The newly released FBI clipping file also includes an Oct. 20, 2006, Time article detailing a federal investigation into whether Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) – in exchange for help from AIPAC to obtain leadership of the House Intelligence Panel – agreed to intervene with the Bush administration to convince it to go easy on AIPAC’s Weissman and Rosen. Again prosecutorial leniency prevailed, and nothing came of the Harman investigation. By 2009 reporter Jeff Stein revealed that Harman had been overheard on a 2005 federal wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department to reduce espionage-related charges against the indicted pair.

A fascinating read, the FBI’s news-clipping file provides a timely snapshot of how Israel-related espionage cases undermine the rule of law and poison governance in America. In case after case, solid evidence gathered by law enforcement, independent investigative reporting, and criminal indictments gave way to elaborate PR campaigns alleging anti-Semitism and demanding DOJ and judicial leniency under various outrageous pretexts. Rosen and Weismann’s prospects were buoyed by the oft-repeated slogan that in soliciting and distributing closely held U.S. national defense information, the pair were only “doing what reporters do every day,” a deeply flawed slippery-slope analogy. Firefighters light small fires to rob advancing blazes of fuel – just as arsonists also sometimes set things alight...It is clear from the news clippings that AIPAC’s goal – as exercised though Rosen and Weissman – was gathering enough kindling to set ablaze U.S. military strikes against Israel’s arch-nemesis Iran, securing inside information on the president’s policy options and other fuel it could use to incite the media and public before George W. Bush left office. While it is touching that the FBI was at the time thumbing through Mother Jones articles lamenting that the forces behind the launching of one disastrous war on false pretexts in the Middle East were jockeying for yet another, the totality of the FBI file documents the collapse of the rule of law through DOJ intransigence. The DOJ should have indicted AIPAC for espionage in 2005 – which probably would have led to its demise – rather than gingerly pursuing two AIPAC operatives (one is now suing AIPAC for “defamation”). Instead, a DOJ back-room deal permitted AIPAC to walk, culminating in the current bid to free one of the most notorious spies ever caught on American soil and a renewed drive to hit Iran through any means. The DOJ has, over time, proven to be a moribund destination where Israeli espionage cases go to be ignored, neglected [.pdf], or pardoned...MORE...LINK

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