Convicted Spy Jonathan Pollard

In response to “Jonathan Pollard: Has the Punishment Come to Outweigh the Crime?” Commentary, Jan. 18:

As Anne Pollard’s father, I have little regard for either Rabbi Avraham Weiss or the team of Norman Polmar and Thomas B. Allen. Similarly, I wish my daughter had chosen her husband better.

Polmar and Allen continue to peddle the Weinberger story that Jonathan Pollard was the most damaging agent in U.S. history and therefore deserved his sentence of life without parole in solitary confinement. When I asked my daughter if she wanted to appeal to the President for a pardon, she replied absolutely not, as it would require her to admit guilt to a crime. She could not, and would not, ask for a pardon because she was guilty of no crime. (She did spend 3 1/2 years in prison as an accessory after the fact to her husband’s possession of classified documents in their common apartment, but never to any involvement in the espionage, as Polmar erroneously said in your article).

Not so Caspar Weinberger, whose crimes were against the government and people of the United States. I have long suspected that Weinberger’s fury and personal vendetta against Pollard were unleashed by Pollard’s revelations of the crimes committed by Weinberger and others involved in the secret, illegal arms deals with Iran, Iraq and Nicaragua. Shortly after Pollard’s arrest in November, 1985, disinformation specialists such as Polmar (who reporters quoted as unnamed sources) were positioning Pollard as a “nut,” one evidence of which was that papers found indicated the U.S. was selling arms to Iran, and in November, 1985, only a “nut” would come up with something like that.

As to Polmar, it was Pollard who told me that he personally as well as others in Naval Intelligence used Polmar frequently to disseminate disinformation, a role Polmar weakly denied after a similar story of his in the Washingtonian.

If it were my choice, I don’t think I’d hire Pollard for a sensitive job. Nevertheless, Pollard was never indicted for, nor ever accused of compromising U.S. agents, nor of anything beyond the single count of “passing information to a foreign government.”

But compared to Weinberger and others in government who subvert our democracy with their secret, and often illegal, deals, Pollard was a piker. And if your buddy is the President, you can get away with it. In one area, I agree with Rabbi Weiss. If you make the President’s buddy mad and you’re a Jew, you could wind up three levels below the surface of the earth, buried alive.

BERNARD R. HENDERSON

New York