By Bernard J. Shapiro
Wednesday, 5 May 2010
THERE IS NO MAGIC CURE FOR CONFLICT
OBAMA THINKS THERE IS, IF YOU SACRIFICE ISRAEL
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
25th Anniversary Review Series - Article #20:
Caspar's Ghost - Weinberger Memo Omits Key Involvement
by Edwin Black
Justice4JPnews - May 6, 2010
To mark Jonathan Pollard's 25th year in American captivity - which is also
his 25th year of abandonment and betrayal by the government of Israel - J4JP
will be reviewing some of the best-written, most informative, and most
interesting articles, essays and information written about the case over the
last two and a half decades.
This is article number 20 of the series, written by Edwin Black, an
award-winning author and journalist, best known for his book "IBM and The
Holocaust". This article, originally published in The Jewish Week [NY] in
June of 2002 reports on Black's interview with former US Secretary of
Defense, Caspar Weinberger (now deceased) following the publication of
Weinberger's memoirs.
During the interview, Black presses Weinberger to explain why his memoirs do
not mention Jonathan Pollard. After all, when Pollard was sentenced,
Weinberger ranted and raved that Pollard was "the worst spy" in the history
of the US!
Weinberger unabashedly responds that the Pollard case had really been a
"minor matter" which had been exaggerated, blown out of all proportion to
serve another agenda.
In the 8 years since this nugget of truth was made public by Weinberger, not
a single American official or Jewish leader has had the moral integrity to
act on this stunning revelation! Jonathan Pollard is still in prison after
25 long years, not because of what he did, but because his case was blown
out of all proportion to serve another agenda!
A little additional history sheds a lot of light.
Earlier in the same year that Black interviewed Weinberger, Jonathan Pollard
was very much on the journalist's mind. At that time, Black had been
commissioned by the American Jewish Federations to write an apparent
whitewash of the Pollard case for their newspapers. It would appear that
such a whitewash was needed to relieve the pressure Jewish leaders were
feeling from their constituents as a result of their callous indifference to
Pollard's plight. Relying on his reputation as an award-winning
investigative journalist, the Federation newspapers published Black's piece
as if it were some stunning new analysis of the case. It was nothing of the
sort.
Black's "analysis" minimized the injustice to Pollard, blamed the victim,
and assured Jewish readers from coast to coast in America, that if Pollard
will just sit still for another year or two, his lawyers will be able to
clear up this whole "misunderstanding" and Pollard will be free in no time
at all. American Jewish community leaders breathed a sigh of relief and
shelved Pollard once again.
In the 8 years that have passed since then, Jewish leaders (with very few
exceptions) have virtually ignored the Pollard case and written Pollard off
as if he were already dead (G-d forbid). American congressmen and senators
take their cue from the leaders. Their collective indifference is even more
outrageous in light of Weinberger's admission - nearly a decade ago - that
Pollard's sentence and the accusations leveled at him were out of all
proportion to the actual offense he committed!
Twenty five years into a life sentence, Jonathan Pollard continues to rot in
prison with no relief in sight.
---
CASPAR'S GHOST
Weinberger memoir omits key involvement
Edwin Black - Special To The Jewish Week (NY) - June 14, 2002
Caspar Weinberger's plain-prose memoir, generally devoid of emotion,
recounts his rise to the top of the defense establishment and his
controversial tenure there.
What "In the Arena" [Regnery] does not recount is his pivotal involvement
with the Jonathan Pollard spy case. Weinberger was called upon by the judge
to assess the damage Pollard, a civilian Navy analyst, did to national
security.
Asked in an interview why he omitted the incident, Weinberger casually
replied, "Because it was, in a sense, a very minor matter but made very
important." Asked to elaborate, Weinberger repeated, "As I say, the Pollard
matter was comparatively minor. It was made far bigger than its actual
importance."
Pressed on why the case was made far bigger than its actual importance,
Weinberger answered, "I don't know why — it just was."
In the first chapter, Weinberger bluntly lays to rest the assumption that he
was raised Jewish, noting that both his father and grandfather were
indifferent to any religion dating back to a synagogue quarrel in Bohemia
involving the family three generations earlier.
Weinberger instead was influenced by his mother's interest in the
Episcopalian Church. Later, during his Harvard days, he became an active
Episcopalian, noting that his "faith in God has been an enormous influence
and comfort all my life."
Weinberger's intense interest in things military started with his "illegal"
attempt to join the Royal Air Force in 1941 to fight Germany before the
United States joined the war. (He was turned down because of bad eyesight.)
Later he did enlist in the Army, serving in the South Pacific. There he met
an army nurse, Jane, who would become his wife.
Weinberger tells how his World War II service was invaluable training for
when he became secretary of defense in 1981.
"In particular, I was stuck by the terrible lack of foresight that had left
America so unprepared (in 1941) — materially, psychologically, and in
trained manpower — for war. ... In 1981, I saw that, again, we had basically
the same shortages of equipment and qualified personnel at the height of the
Cold War."
Laced throughout the book is Weinberger's immense devotion to and admiration
of Ronald Reagan, whom he credits with winning the Cold War. The turning
point, Weinberger writes, was "when President Reagan, in perhaps his most
major violation of conventional wisdom, blatantly told the world that
Communism was an Evil Empire."
It was Weinberger, of course, as secretary of defense, who built up
America's military might to show the Soviets that Reagan meant business.
An exception to the emotionless telling of his life is a chapter in which
Weinberger laments the "horribly debilitating" toll of his indictment by the
special prosecutor during the Iran-Contra debacle. Weinberger insists Reagan
was totally unaware of the conspiracy. The personal humiliation for
Weinberger and his family, and the financial toll in legal bills, is retold
mincing no words.
See Also:
The Admiral Bobby Ray Inman Page http://www.jonathanpollard.org/inman.htm
Weinberger: Pollard Case "A Minor Matter"
--
JUSTICE FOR JONATHAN POLLARD
Website: http://www.JonathanPollard.org
============================
PERFIDY
Pollard & The Secret War Against The Jews
Last week I received a large parcel with Jonathan Pollard's return address complete with his prisoner number 09185-016. Inside I found about 500 photo-copied documents including virtually every op-ed written about his case plus copies of hundreds of letters written to President Bill Clinton on his behalf by important personalities, Jewish organizations, Senators, Congressmen, and lawyers. The sheer volume and diversity of the material was quite overwhelming. I had long been a supporter in the "justice for Pollard battle." In short, I didn't need convincing. There was no cover letter with the material and I wondered about Pollard's motive for sending it to me.
I started looking through the material anxiously searching for a clue as to why it was sent. First skimming rapidly and then reading intently, slowly the missing pieces began to appear in the puzzle.
The answer is closely tied to a new book by John Loftus and Mark Aarons entitled, THE SECRET WAR AGAINST THE JEWS: How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People (St. Martins Press, 1994). Pollard had included among the papers several book reviews of this monumental book (658 pages) which exposes many of the dark secrets of the CIA, British Intelligence (M16), and our own State Department. Here are just a few samples of the startling revelations:
1. In order to entice Sadat to sign a treaty with Israel at Camp David, the CIA provided Egypt with satellite photos, intercepts, the location of Israel's nuclear force, and virtually every Israeli military secret. Carter had no knowledge that his Camp David Accords were supplemented by intelligence given to Egypt that betrayed Israel.
2. To evade the laws requiring proper authorization for wire taps, the CIA and M16 would bug each others targets and regularly exchange information. A favorite target of the CIA were politically active American supporters of Israel. Files were even kept on every Jewish child attending summer camp in Israel.
3. In order to spy on Arab terrorists, M16 infiltrated many organization and even took a leading role in planning and training terrorists for attacks on Israel. Although they had advance notice of a planned attack on a Pan Am or El Al plane in Rome in 1973, they "forgot" to mention it to the Mossad, with whom they were supposed to share intelligence.
4. The CIA set up a special "Jew room" in 1945-6 devoted to spying on Israel and Jewish Americans. No Jew was allowed to work there. The US Navy banned Jews from serving in their surveillance ships.
5. In 1967 Israel notified America of its planned attack. The Americans promptly tried to warn the Egypt and Syria. As the battles progressed the Americans did everything possible to spy on Israel and provide that information to Israel's enemies. The USS Liberty, a CIA surveillance ship, sailed close to the southern Israeli shore and close to northern Sinai, and began monitoring the battles there.
The gathered information was sent to a British listening post in Cyprus, complete with precise electronic maps of the holes in Israeli lines. It was then relayed to the Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian military. Fortunately the short duration of the war prevented the Arabs from utilizing the intelligence. The fact of American perfidy remains.
Pollard's misfortune was to land right in the middle of this dark and dirty game of betraying Israel. As a naval intelligence officer, he began to notice a large flow of extremely important intelligence from the Middle East which was not being shared with Israel as agreed to in numerous American-Israeli agreements. During his trial Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger told the Judges that Pollard's spying had greatly damaged American security.
Aldrige Ames had yet to be uncovered but had already left a trail of dead US agents in Europe. Weinberger knew that Pollard could not have been responsible for compromising American agents, but took advantage of this information to successfully get Pollard a life sentence despite an earlier plea bargain. Later when Pollard was up for parole last year, the CIA leaked the story that Pollard was continuing to be a danger to American security.
President Bill Clinton ignored a massive amount of high level appeals to commute Pollard's sentence, despite the fact that he had promised during the election campaign to be lenient.
Why is it so important to certain government agencies like State and the CIA to keep Pollard locked up? The answer is clearly a desire to protect those agencies from too much scrutiny concerning their anti-Israel bias and actions. Most of the American people and their elected representative are quite friendly to Israel. The Jewish community has always considered America a friend and ally. I believe that a tremendous revulsion would sweep this country, if the truth about America's treachery toward Israel gained wide exposure. Pollard was in the "belly of the beast" and knows the awful truth. I believe that Weinberger among others at the CIA and State Department would do anything to keep Pollard from being able to tell his story on TV or in the Op-Ed columns of newspapers. Can you imagine Pollard on Nightline telling Ted Koppel how the US has been giving Israel's military secrets to her enemies or how the State Department plotted to deprive Israel of the fruits of its military victories?
I believe that pro-Israel activists need to begin demanding that all the branches of the US government live up to the friendship for Israel expressed by the electorate.
==========================
Bernard J. Shapiro is director of the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies www.freeman.org in Houston, Texas and is editor of its political magazine, THE MACCABEAN. This article was published in the Jewish Herald-Voice (Houston, Texas) on March 22, 1995 and in the April 1995 issue of THE MACCABEAN.
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