Jonathan Pollard - Why is he not being released

In the DEBKAfile Special Analysis entitled "Israeli state comptroller's report will not affect Jonathan Pollard's fate" (click to read full report) explains that the main conclusions of state comptroller Michah Lindenstrauss's report, published Thursday, Sept. 3rd, does not address intelligence and political realities. It will not affect the US decision to keep Jonathan Pollard in his life sentence without parole, given in 1985 for spying for Israel, nor ease his exceptionally harsh conditions of imprisonment.

The Debka report mentions five reasons why Pollard may not be freed anytime soon:-

1. For the US administration, Jonathan Pollard was never just an Israeli spy but a cog in a machine which encompassed the counterintelligence systems of China and the Soviet Union at a difficult stage in the Cold War. As a member of the US Naval intelligence staff, one of the most secret of all clandestine agencies, he was in contact with foreign agencies other than Israel's.

2. To this day, the Americans have not fully comprehended the true role played (or not played) by Israeli intelligence in Pollard's contacts with other services. That he was paid by some apparently led to his exposure and capture.

3. Broad circles in the US intelligence community believe Pollard was not the only spy Israel employed in the US at that time. They suspect a second senior Israeli agent was operating in the US at the time, apart from Pollard and his Israeli controller, former minister Rafi Eitan.

4. The Americans believe that the secrets Pollard passed to Israel ended up being transferred to Moscow.

5. For the Americans, the Russian angle ties Pollard to Aldrich Ames, the American CIA counter-intelligence officer who spied for Russia in the 1980's and 90's. For 14 years, Ames managed to expose the entire US counter-intelligence apparatus to Moscow at the cost of many lives.

This is not the place to explain how the two espionage affairs interact or why, but it must be stressed that as long as Aldrich does not see the light of day - and he has absolutely no chance of this for now - nothing will change in the US determination to keep Pollard in jail for the rest of his days.

We all hope and pray that the US government will reopen the case and allow Jonathan to have a fair trial. It seems that he was not given a fair chance and there were some severe irregularities in the way he was railroaded into prison. If other agencies got hold of information it was probably the mossad that passed it on in order to obtain some other information from the Russians or Chinese. In addition, Jonathan has spent long enough in prison, has shown regret and his health is in bad shape. Even within the US intelligence community, many believe that Jonathan was a scapegoat, and that he was not given a fair Trial. He has suffered enough!