SHIMON PERES IS KEEPING JONATHAN POLLARD IN PRISON (The Real Reason Why Pollard Sits)

by Barry Chamish

In early May, ’03, I was hired by a group of Israelis now organizing
rallies on behalf of Joanathan Pollard’s freedom to find out why, defying
all reason, he is still sitting in prison. The people who approached me
were highly dissatisfied with the official Pollard organization run by
Esther Pollard and in fact, suspected her of sabotaging all alternative
efforts to liberate her spouse. Since I took on the project, I have noted
Esther Pollard’s interference with demonstrations, speakers and even one
webmaster (www.jonathanpollard.com) working on behalf of justice for
Jonathan Jay Pollard.
I don’t know what her motivations are, perhaps they are just a
personal need for attention, perhaps they are more sinister, but with
Esther Pollard at the helm, no new evidence has emerged that could possibly
result in Pollard’s release. Recent excitement over the revelations that
Pollard was sitting for the crimes of master spy Aldrich Ames, as written
by John Loftus, are not revelations at all. I discovered the exact claims
in a prominent Maariv article from 1985, since repeated often in the Hebrew
press.
To sort out the puzzle, I referred to a wide variety of sources and
was unfortunate in having a personal expert nearby. He is Joel Bainerman,
author of the 1992 classic book on Iran Contra-related felonies, Crimes Of
A President. He thoughtfully provided me with relevant text, as well as his
rough notes and contacts.
One of his contacts was William Northrup, who lives in a kibbutz near
Beersheva and was held in a New York lockup for 10 months on suspicion of
illegally selling military hardware to Iran. He insists that the Americans
came down hard on Pollard because he exposed the Bechtel Corporation’s
production of chemical weapons in Iraq.
In the same lockup for the same crime was Ari Ben-Menashe, who wrote
a tell-all book called The Profits Of War. He became a primary source for
Seymour Hersch and Joel Bainerman, though far from their only one. All have
been besmirched by the official Pollard organization but that doesn’t mean
their facts are all wrong. I use what I have judged to be likely truths.
By the same token, I have utilized many more conventional sources
and their basic facts are far from consistently reliable. It was a task
just sorting out the dates of the known history. Pollard, himself, insists
that he started his spying in July, 1984. Loftus and Aarons have him
identifying an arms shipment in April of 1984. That would make the
Hersch/Ben Menashe claim that Pollard began his clandestine work in 1981,
more plausible.
But once one excuses the inconsistencies, a very consistent story
emerges. Pollard thought he was helping Israel protect itself and that his
material would fall into honest, trusted hands. Sadly for him, it fell into
the grimy paws of Shimon Peres and he used it to create a crime empire,
broadly called Iran Contra. It is the fear of exposing Peres and his
cronies, that is the real reason why the Israeli government has made no
sincere effort to free Joanthan Jay Pollard.
It’s a fairly complicated story and I will lead you through it by
way of other people’s research. When I comment you will see three stars ***
at the beginning and end of the commentary. For instance:

*** In 1987, a government commission of inquiry headed by Abba Eban issued
its report on the Pollard Affair. It concluded that the man most
responsible for the fiasco was Shimon Peres, who became Prime Minister in
late May, 1984. He was not only apprised of Pollard’s intelligence, he read
it daily. Receiving smaller portions of blame were Defence Minister Yitzhak
Rabin and Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir.
This long buried report is, naturally, long forgotten because Peres
spent a good week denying every word in it and arranging the end of Eban’s
political carrer. But let us not forget, the official investigation
conducted by the Israel government concluded that Peres was the chief
culprit.***

LEADING THE COVERUP

Amir Oren, Haaretz, 1998: “Shimon Peres was almost as concerned about
domestic policies as he was about the American reaction. He was proud of
the fact that he, Rabin and Shamir refrained from mutual recriminations and
how that prevented the media from turning it into an Israeli Watergate.
Peres worked hard to prevent public discussion…”

Zeev Segal, Haaretz 24/10/95: “One body that studied the subject was a
committee headed by then MK, Abba Eban. In a report published in May, 1987,
the committee…totally rejected the claim of the government of Israel,
which stated that the Pollard affair was a ‘rogue’ operation.”

Washington Report On Middle East, Jan/Feb 2003: “Eban disappeared from
political life after 1987 (for) a report criticizing Labor Party leaders
Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin for using American Joanthan Jay Pollard to
spy on the United States. Both rebuked him and the next year his name was
left off the candidates for parliament.”

Seymour Hersh, The Samson Option, Random House, 1991: “The Israeli
Officials most tarnished by the scandal were Rafi Eitan and Aviem Sella,
but Eitan did not suffer financially. He was subsequently named to a high
administrative position with Israel Chemicals, the largest state-owned
enterprise in Israel. His surprising appointment was authorized by none
other than Ariel Sharon, who had been named Minister of Trade and Industry
in 1984.”

***And Sharon is not the only high present official involved in the
coverup. Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein was the legal attache to the
Washington Embassy Pollard was ejected from, and later tried out a coverup
tactic that Washington attorney Leonard Garment found odious. Such details
must be presented in a wider-ranging future report. For now let us get to
the heart of the matter at hand…Iran Contra.***

IRAN CONTRA

Federal Government Watch Discussion List: “The back channel came alive
under Vice-President Bush from 1984-91. The channel was used to direct the
laundering of American money to the PLO. Although Pollard didn’t know it,
when he warned the Israelis that a PLO arms shipment was going through
Greece in 1984, he inadvertantly blew the whistle of the White House’s
first transaction of arms to Iran…In the summer of 1984, Pollard noticed
a pattern of vessels going back and forth from Greece to Yemen, where the
PLO had a major base. Pollard passed the tip to the Israelis. In the summer
of 1984, the Israelis tipped off the Greek authorities who seized an entire
shipload of arms believed destined for the PLO. Neither Pollard nor the
government of Israel was aware that they had smashed George Bush’s first
shipment of arms to Iran. Pollard never realized that he had busted the
most secret White House operation of modern times. The summer of 1984 Greek
shipment was a dagger over George Bush’s head.”

Loftus, Aarons, The Secret War Against The Jews: “Pollard notified the
Israelis, who passed word to the Greeks, who raided the arms ship. None of
the players knew that this shipment was directly connected to an event two
months previous, in which US hostages had been kidnapped in Lebanon. The
ship had not been commissioned by Arafat but by US Vice-President Bush and
was ultimately destined for the patron the of Lebanese kidnappers, Iran.
The shipment marks he true beginning of the infamous Iran Contra scandal.

Winston  Mideast Analysis And Commentary 8/13/99: “Pollard inadvertantly
exposed the first shipment of arms-for-hostages in what became the Iran
Contra scandal. As he was in the Naval Intelligence Anti-Terrorism Unit, he
saw this shipment, one year earlier than is generally known, and believing
it to be arms for the PLO or Iraq, revealed it to the Israelis. This alone
would make it imperative for the Iran/Contra planners to keep him locked up
forever.”

***Enter Peres. Pollard provided the data that exposed Bush’s arms for
hostages operation. Of course, a moral Prime Minister would have demanded
that Bush put an end to this arming of Israel’s worst enemies. But Peres is
not remotely moral, so he saw the bigger potential of this nascent crime.
He wanted in and the crime expanded into what we know as Irangate.
How do we know this? Because when Pollard discovered the arms ship,
Israel had no role in paying America’s enemies off with arms for releasing
hostages in Lebanon. But by September, Peres had sent a team to Washington
consisting of Yaacov Nimrodi, the former Ambassador to Iran, Al Schwimmer,
former head of Israel Aircraft Industries, and David Kimche, chairman of
the Israeli branch of the Council On Foreign Relations.
After that, Israel was right in the middle of the operation. This is
basic indisputable logic. Israel joined the operation only after Pollard’s
intelligence exposed the existence of it. That means Peres wanted a piece
of the pie and must have used Pollard’s data to get his cut of the action.
The easiest way in would have been threatening to expose the arms
for hostages operation and bring down Bush and his team. We call such a
threat, blackmail. And that’s how Pollard’s good intentions were used. And
not for the last time.
Shortly after Pollard’s capture on Non.22/85, the Peres team of
Kimche, Schwimmer and Nimrodi all quit the operation. In laymen’s terms,
they hauled ass out of there. But Peres didn’t want to give up all the
goodies that came with Iran Contra. So in January 1986, he replaced the
team with his anti-terrorism advisor Amiram Nir. He was murdered in 1989 in
Mexico shortly before he was to testify to the Senate Committee
investigating Irangate.
Lest one think Iran Contra wasn’t worth the trouble, look how much
just one member of Peres’ team brought in for his effort and then consider
what Nir knew. Finally, note who else quit his post in the wake of Pollard;
the American National Security Advisor, Bud McFarlane, who resigned in Dec.
85.***

Joel Bainerman, Crimes Of A President, SPI Books, NY, 1992, raw notes and
final text: “In June l991 an Israel police investigation was opened to
determine if Nimrodi withheld profits from the sales from the Defence
Ministry.
A month later Nimrodi made a public declaration in a Tel Aviv court
stating that he had acted on his own behalf in his arms dealings with
the Iranians and thus all the profits from the deals were his. He
claimed he earned $37 million from the Iranians, but after paying for
the missiles and other expenses, he says he took a loss on the deal of
nearly $750,000. (Inside Israel, August, l993)

Those same bank records in Switzerland could have become a nightmare
for some Israeli government officials, namely Prime Minister Peres,
even shedding light on why the Israeli government never allowed Nir
(or Schwimmer and Nimrodi) to testify before Congressional
investigations. Was Peres perhaps worried that Nir would disclose that
it was his role in the diversion of money from the Iranian arms sales
to the Contras or that he personally authorized the establishment of
the fund to initiate covert anti-terrorist operations?
Indeed Nir knew a great deal about U.S. and Israeli arms sales to Iran
because he was the roundabout via everyone’s activities passed
through. He must have known who set up the Swiss accounts, who
controlled them, and how much went to the Contras and how much to
middlemen like Ghorbanifar and Secord’s pockets? He sat in on crucial
meetings in Teheran, Frankfurt, Washington, Tel Aviv and London. He
knew of all covert operations and where the money originated from to
fund them.
In an interview with YEDIOT ACHRONOT after leaving office in March
l987 Nir said that Shamir went out of his way to protect his name and
reputation, in Israel and in the U.S., while Peres simply “left him to
the dogs” adding that “the moment you need support from him (Peres),
he vanishes.”‘

DID POLLARD HAVE HELP?

Codevilla, MENL 24/7/00: “He gave them that part of the flow of US
intelligence which they used to receive regularly, but which the US cut off
in 1981…This consisted of intelligence ‘products.’ It was satellite
pictures, reports of all kinds, electronic directories and so forth.”

John Loftus, Moment, 6/03: “Jonathan Pollard didn’t have the ‘blue stripe’
clearance according to intelligence sources I spoke with. That was the
bombshell that would clear him of any possible connection to the deaths of
our Russian agents.”

Codevilla, ibid: “Jonathan Pollard could not have provided codes, because
he did not have any access to codes.”

Ari Ben-Menashe, Profits Of War, Sheridan Square Press, 1992: “McFarlane,
in fact, had been providing computer access codes of intelligence reports
to Rafi Eitan, according to Eitan. Sitting in Tel Aviv, Eitan would request
computer access codes for certain items he was interested in.
A  representative in Washington, a woman named Iris, would pass the request
to McFarlane. He would then give her back the specified access codes. She
would give the codes to Pollard.”

Consortiumnews.com  8/6/03: :The issue was brought to the high court by
former national security advisor Robert McFarlane who claims he was libeled
by a 1991 Esquire magazine story linking him to the Jonathan Pollard spy
case…Both courts ruled that McFarlane failed to show that Esquire
displayed a reckless disregard for the truth.”

***Now we move into stage two of the exploitation of Jonathan Pollard.
Pollard was assigned to receive and analyse satellite photos of ship
positions and look for aberrant routes. That would have made the discovery
of Bush’s arms ship natural. But for the next piece of Peres blackmail, he
would most likely have needed help.
Pollard uncovered a crime the equal of Iran Contra: the American
corporation Bechtel was making chemical weaponry for Saddam Hussein. And
Peres instinctively knew he could milk this discovery for all it was worth
because Defence Secretary Caspar Weinberger was a VP of Bechtel before
choosing public service and Secretary of State George Shultz was a former
Bechtel CEO.
I have no doubt that Pollard passed the Bechtel gas data to Israel
but how he got it is still in dispute. Perhaps he received satellite photos
which exposed the factories, but it seems more likely that he was given
intelligence much higher than he was entitled to receive. For that he would
have needed help from one of the few entitled to receive top secret access
codes and Robert McFarlane as National Security Advisor was one those few.***

BECHTEL AND CASPAR WEINBERGER

Codevilla, MENL 24/7/00: “This memo contained the lie that Pollard caused
the deaths of countless US agents. It also reportedly said the Israelis
sold part of that information to the Soviet Union. All of these things are
not only untrue, they were known by Weinberger not to be true…The policy
was building up Iraq, a policy to which Weinberger and much of the rest of
the US government sacrificed true American interests in the 1980s. We
supplied Saddam Hussein with not only arms but with intelligence and
forbearance…The main thing is we permitted, licensed and financed large
American corporations to build plants there. The infrastructure that is
being bombed in Iraq right now is mostly American-built. Now we get to the
deeply embarassing part. One of the companies involved was Bechtel, with
whom Caspar Weinberger and George Schultz, Secretaries of Defense and
State, had close personal relations.”

Federal Government Watch Discussion List, Yahoo, message 631: “”As Jonathan
Pollard discovered to his horror, the German nerve gas factories
constructed in Libya and Iraq are using the identical formulas used on Jews
at Auschwitz… President Bush Sr. was good friends with Saddam’s Deputy
Foreign Minister and made personal phone calls to one of his former Yale
classmates to obtain American funding for Bechtel’s oil pipeline in
Iraq…The Bechtel corporation was even building Saddam Hussein a chemical
factory he could use for poison gas production.”

Counterpunch.org, 9/4/03: “Schultz worked at Bechtel, so did Caspar
Weinberger.Bechtel was listed by Iraq in its report to the UN weapons
inspectors as one of the companies that helped supply Saddam with equipment
and knowledge for making chemical weapons. Bechtel in the 1980s was prime
contractor on PC1 and 2, two petrochemical plants constructed in Iraq which
had dual use capacity. So I guess the bottom line is that the
Bush-Cheney-Rumsfield squad are now holding Saddam Hussein accountable for
chemical weapons of mass destruction – the same weapons which these same
officials ignored in pursuit of the Aqaba pipeline project.

IRAQ PIPELINE

Barry Chamish, The Fall Of Israel, Canongate, Edinburgh, 1992:”By 1985
Syria had closed down Iraq’s pipeline to the Mediterranean and Iran was
blockading the Persian Gulf.Iraq wanted to build an alternative pipeline to
Aqaba, Jordan’s Red Sea port, and the American corporation Bechtel agreed
to construct this multi-billion dollar project, but only if it received
assurances that Israel would never blow it up, not even in wartime.
American Attorney-General Edwin Meeese approached Peres who agreed in
return for $70 million a year to be transferred to the Israeli Labor Party.
When word of the bribe leaked, Meese was forced out of office, but, as
usual, scandal escaped Peres.”

Joel Bainerman, Crimes Of A President, Notes And Final Text:

“Pipeline deal. To be built by the Bechtel company. It would feed 300,000
barrels of oil each day from Iraqi oilfields to a terminal at the Jordanian
port of Aquaba. As part of the arrangement, then Israeli Prime Minister
Shimon Peres’s Labor party would receive up to $1 billion over a ten year
period in return for a pledge not to bomb the pipeline in the event of a
war.”

McFarlane was also the major White House backer of the Iraqi pipeline deal.
To bebuilt by the Bechtel company it would feed 300,000 barrels of oil each
day from Iraqi oilfields to a terminal at the Jordanian port of Aquaba. As
part of the arrangement, then Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres’s Labor
party would receive up to $1 billion over a ten year period in return for a
pledge not to bomb the pipeline in the event of a war.

Originally, it may have been intended to have this money come from
the Pentagon’s budget. When John Poindexter took over from McFarlane as
National Security Adviser in December l985 he killed a plan his predecessor
had come up with to have secret payments made to Israel out of a heavily
disguised National Security Counsel-controlled appropriation in the
Pentagon’s budget. (Washington Post, March 5th, l988) “The idea was for it
to come out of the defence budget on an installment basis,” one source was
quoted as saying. “It was, to be a payment to the Israelis to be good.”
(Washington Post,February 25th, l988)
.

It may be nothing but a mere coincidence, but Israel’s spy in
Washington, Jonathan Pollard, was operating throughout McFarlane’s period
as National Security Advisor. A month after Pollard was arrested, McFarlane
resigned. Yet six months later he is leading a delegation on a secret
mission to Teheran. Why didn’t National Security Adviser Poindexter go?

McFarlane’s ties to Rafi Eitan, then the Prime Minister’s
Anti-Terrorism Advisor and who would later be named as the Israeli
intelligence agent behind the masterminding of the Pollard affair, also
need to be investigated.

Counterpunch.org, 9/4/03: “Bechtel and the State Department were having
trouble getting the right degree from the Israeli Labor Party that the
pipeline would be off limits to attack. Bechtel and Reagan administration
officials were trying to get complete assurance from the Labor Party that
the pipeline would absolutely not be attacked.”

***So here’s what the Peres government did with Pollard’s intelligence:
they put the squeeze on Bechtel and that meant on Caspar Weinberger. The
threat was simple enough: if you guys at Bechtel don”t find a way to
funnel me a lot of money, $700 million will do, we’ll expose the Iraqi gas
plants and sabotage your pipeline deal. Hence, the insurance policy excuse
was formulated under great duress.
When a very peeved Weinberger discovered that it was Pollard who was
passing Peres his blackmail weapons, he showed no mercy. He intervened with
Pollard’s judge and made sure he got life for a five year crime knowing the
Israeli government could put no stop to him or risk its own massive exposure.
Weinberger is home free. In 1992, President Bush pardoned him for all
Iran Contra-related crimes. Shimon Peres was just chosen as head of the
Israeli Labor Party. And unless this little piece of the whole truth is
thoroughly investigated, Jonathan Pollard will sit for good in his cold,
cold cell.***

end

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