Move to Free Jonathan Pollard

I find it ironic that President Clinton was visibly moved by “Schindler’s List,” a move about a man who violated his country’s laws to save Jews, but that he is still unwilling to free Jonathan Pollard, who, 50 years after Schindler, broke his country’s laws in an attempt to prevent another Holocaust.

I wish that the President would express his appreciation of Oskar Schindler’s actions by freeing Pollard; a year in an insane asylum and seven years in solitary is punishment enough for a man whose only motivation was his concern over the possibility of another Holocaust at the hands of a nuclear--and chemically armed--Iraq and who only transmitted information to which Israel was entitled by a solemn agreement between it and the U.S.

SI FRUMKIN

Studio City

In response to Leonard Garment’s article (“The Penalty Has Gone Beyond the Crime,” Commentary, Dec. 20): I am vehemently opposed to the author’s view of rationalizing the acts of someone who takes the law into his own hands.

The fact that the U.S. government withheld vital information concerning Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and bacteriological warfare capability is a serious matter. However, it is an absolute aberration for an individual to take matters of foreign policy into his/her own hands by acquiring sensitive government information and passing that information on to an ally without appropriate approvals. Such high-profile aberrations were, are and shall be punishable under the strictest codes of law.

If Pollard felt so compelled to take these matters into his own hands, he should have used a more conventional method, like diplomacy. I do not condone the “crime” of silence, nor do I condone individuals conducting U.S. foreign policy in a manner that is not conducive to normal diplomatic behavior.

FRED CZARSKE III

Torrance

As a free-lance journalist specializing in U.S. covert operations, my research has frequently led me to sources and materials that overlap the covert operations of sometime-U.S.-proxy-agent Israel.

As a reader of the Hebrew press I can tell you that Leonard Garment would get a very strong argument from both the journalists and former Israeli Mossad and Aman (military intelligence) agents who have written extensively on the Pollard spy case. The general consensus is contrary to Garment’s assertion that “Though Pollard was eventually given money, on the initiative of his handlers, it is generally recognized that money was not the motive for Pollard’s decision to transmit U.S. intelligence information to Israel.”

Israeli intelligence and Mossad agents have described how Pollard wangled first-class accommodations on the French Riviera for his rendezvous with his Mossad handlers, and have quoted Pollard’s specific requests for payments that would make any ideological Zionist blush. Garment seems to be at this late date trying to revive the ideological motive angle used by Pollard in his own defense. Israeli mainstream journalists were repeating this line, catering to the masses of Likud supporters who wanted to see Pollard get off, as a prelude to clearing the names of the Israeli military brass who ran the LEKEM spy ring in the U.S. Eventually even mainstream Israeli journalists got around to noting Pollard’s big-ticket expense account, and his less than pure motives.

MITCH RITTER

Berkeley

It is ironic that Caspar Weinberger--who was doubtless responsible for the withholding of knowledge about Iraq capabilities that should have been shared with Israel under treaty as an ally, and so creating the dilemma for Pollard, which led to his crime and whose crucial affidavit falsely accused him of treason--was pardoned on Dec. 24, 1992, by President Bush for the four counts of perjury and obstruction of justice in the Iran-Contra scandal without standing trial.

I understand Weinberger would not now oppose Clinton’s commuting Pollard’s sentence to time served. He has already served five years longer than anyone else convicted of a comparable crime.

LIONEL OKUN

Seal Beach

It appears that Pollard truly was treated unfairly and given a much harsher sentence than was warranted.

Nothing Pollard did resulted in one iota of harm to the U.S. The U.S. had promised our ally, Israel, to keep it informed and warned of potential threats from its hostile neighbors.

The judge dissenting on Pollard’s harsh sentence, Stephen Williams, said: “The government’s actions were such a ‘fundamental miscarriage of justice’ that the sentence should be overturned.” U.S. disingenuousness in its policy toward Israel’s legitimate defense in the midst of hostile enemies is a major reason for Israel’s fears in the present peace process.

IRVING E. FRIEDMAN

Laguna Niguel