Wake Up, America!

Let us suppose for a moment that an individual enjoying the full confidence and trust of the United States government was given access to the most secret information possessed by the US military, to include how it would react to an attack by an aggressor armed with nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.  Let us further suppose that that individual violated his trust in the most egregious and vile fashion, offering to sell the information to anyone, but eventually settling on a nation ostensibly friendly to the US but not in any way a formal ally.  The individual then proceeded to deliver defense secrets literally by the carload, not only information that might plausibly have been construed as relevant to the buyer’s own security, but also strategic defense information that could conceivably have led to the deaths of millions of American citizens.  That information was then bartered and re-sold to an enemy who was in a position to use it to devastate the United States, together with sources and methods information on intelligence operations that in short order led to the deaths of many American citizens and also foreigners who had been cooperating with the United States.

Let us further suppose that the individual who stole the secrets was eventually caught because the sheer volume of what he was stealing was detected in spite of the indolence and incompetence of his superiors and he was convicted and imprisoned for life.  In the damage assessment made after the arrest, it was determined that the espionage had been the most devastating ever experienced by the United States of America, both in volume and in the sensitivity of the information that had been betrayed.

Fast forward a few years.  The country that paid the man to steal the secrets becomes a major beneficiary of US assistance and uses the money to set up a lobbying organization that effectively manages key players in the federal government and the media, making it virtually invulnerable to any criticism.  Pumped up by hubris, that country seeks on several occasions to obtain the freedom of its spy, claiming inaccurately that he was only taking information used for purely defensive purposes.  Fast forward a few more years and legislators in the US Congress known to be advocates of the foreign country that bought the secrets join in, calling for the release of the convicted spy.  The media, also compromised and in the pockets of the foreign lobby, obligingly does not report the tale of American legislators who have apparently sold out.

I am, of course, referring to Jonathan Pollard and his friends in Israel and the United States.  Pollard did more damage to the United States than any spy in history.  And it was genuine damage, not just a mass of documents that had been routinely classified.  Pollard’s Israeli handler, aided by someone in the White House who has up until now evaded arrest, was able to ask for specific classified documents by name and number.  The Soviets obtained US war plans, passed to them by the Israelis in exchange for money and free emigration of Russian Jews without any regard for the damage it was doing to the United States.  The KGB was able to use the mass of information to reconstruct US intelligence operations directed against it and a number of Americans and US agents paid with their lives.  Pollard also revealed to the Israelis and Soviets the technical and human source capabilities that US intelligence did and did not have, which is the most critical information of all as it underlies all information collection efforts.  Compounding the problem, the United States has never actually been able to accurately ascertain all of the damage done by Pollard because the Israeli government has refused to cooperate in the investigation and has not returned the documents that were stolen.

And make no mistake, Pollard did it for money.  He has since wrapped himself in the Israeli flag and promoted himself as an observant Jew to justify his crime and to obtain his freedom.  He is reported to be a very popular person in Israel, an Israeli citizen by act of parliament, and there is a square in Jerusalem that has been renamed "Freedom for Jonathan Pollard Square."  There is also an active "Justice for Jonathan Pollard" movement in the United States supported by the heavyweight Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.  Never before has there been such a transformation, with a despicable lowlife spy who sold out his country for money turned into a hero.

Pollard is just one symptom of the asymmetrical relationship that makes many mutter "wag the dog" whenever the subject of Israel comes up.  If ever a foreign country has stuck its thumb in the eye of Uncle Sam, it is Israel in its willingness to take the United States for a ride while always demanding still more.  And when it demands more it is invariably given more, with US politicians and mainstream media ever willing to genuflect and do what is right for the kleptocracy in charge in Tel Aviv.

The latest criminal outrage is a quartet of congressmen who are calling on the Obama Administration to free Pollard to "advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks."  Well, first of all, everyone knows that the talks are kabuki, designed to accomplish absolutely nothing while advancing the standing of Obama prior to the US congressional elections in November.  Israel continues its creeping annexation of the West Bank aided and abetted by Washington, which will do nothing substantive to stop the illegal and immoral activity.  Abbas presumably is being bought off to stay silent while the play unfolds and Hamas, which should be sitting at the table, has been excluded. 

That means that the congressmen in question, who actually took an oath to uphold the US Constitution, know that they are doing nothing but throwing yet another bone to Israel.  The congressmen are Barney Franks of Massachusetts, Edolphus Towns of New York, Anthony Weiner also of New York, and Bill Pascrell of New Jersey.  Mark their names well.  Franks and Weiner are presumably acting due to tribal solidarity, but Pascrell and Towns are the straight men in the routine, brought along to make the Free Pollard movement appear to be less than a complete ethnically based sell out. 

It is time for the American people to rise up and throw these bums out.  Putting them in jail for malfeasance and corruption would be even better.  I would like to see a panel of USS Liberty survivors and widows and orphans of the dead intelligence officers question Franks, Weiner, Pascrell, and Towns about their plan to free Pollard.  Better still, I would like to see some US veterans groups and their publications develop a backbone and take up the cause, finally saying that enough is enough since it is our soldiers, sailors, and airmen who have paid the price in their blood for the Israeli connection.  And then there is the intelligence community.  Its leading lobby, Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO), has long ignored Israeli espionage and prefers to regularly express concern about "Islamofascism."   Look in your own backyard folks, it is the Israelis who are skinning us alive, not the Muslims, and Pollard is the poster child of what exactly is being done to us.  He is sometimes cited as proof that spies for Israel are caught and punished, but the truth is that he is the only one who has done hard time in jail and only because of the enormity of his crime while all the others have somehow slipped through our criminal justice system.  Franks, Weiner, Pascrell, and Towns are only the latest in a long line of collaborator politicians who should sometimes sit back and ponder where their loyalty actually lies.  If they persist in their Pollard campaign, they should be regarded as not fit to sit in the congress of the United States.  And that goes for anyone else who decides to lobby on behalf of Pollard.

An opportunity is coming in November to remove the snakes from Congress.  Let’s organize to get rid of Franks, Weiner, Pascrell, and Towns.  To be sure they will be replaced by others who are probably just as attached to Israel or fearful of its lobby as they are, but the time will inevitably come when allegiance to a foreign nation that is a strategic liability for the United States will become unseemly.  May that day come soon.

Author: Philip Giraldi

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is a contributing editor to The American Conservative and executive director of the Council for the National Interest.