ber,” details no outsider could havenknown. Carver argues that the Housenand Senate Intelligence OversightnCommittees ought to ask the FBI ornother members of the counterintelligencencommunity to testify “on thenhistory of Israeli espionage against thenUnited States.” The aim of such a congressionalninvestigation, says Carver,nwould be “not to harm the American-nIsraeli alliance but to strengthen it.”nStephen Green has prepared a chronology,n”Israel’s 40-Year History ofnEspionage Against the United States,”nwhich lists hitherto unpublicized casesnof such spying.nLaqueur’s review, which ran in thenJune 5 New Republic, begins with andramatic (at least to me) revelation. Inn1956, a member of the Polish Politburo,nStefan Staszewski, handed overnthe text of Khrushchev’s sensationalnanti-Stalin speech (now that was anpiece of real glasnostl) to an Israelinjournalist, Philip Ben, a correspondentnfor Le Monde and Ma’ariv. In turn,nBen passed on the speech to what Laqueurnsaj’s was “an Israeli connection,”nwho then conveyed it to James Angleton,nhead of the CIA’s counterintelligencenoperation, who gave it to AllennDulles, who gave it to The New YorknTimes. Thus began, says Laqueur,nhimself author of a book on US intelligence,nA World of Secrets, “a long periodnof cooperation between the Americannand the Israeli intelligencenservices.” Such cooperation, says Laqueur,nis “the rule between friendlynnations … At the same time, suchncooperation has always been less thanntotal.”nLaqueur argues that Pollard was notnan “evil man” because he did not engagenin espionage, as Kim Philby did,nto harm his country and to aid its enemies.nPollard was, however, “disloyal,nhe lied constantly, and he was incrediblynstupid.” (Laqueur’s argument herenis weak, since Pollard may indeed havenharmed, however unwittingly, the US.nIsraeli intelligence, after all, is also vulnerablento penetration. In fact, two IsraelinKGB agents are now in jail.) LikenCarver, Laqueur believes that the authorizationnfor hiring Pollard must havencome from higher up. “It would be interestingnto know what this person (ornthese people) thought when he (ornthey) gave the green light to an operationnthat was bound to end in disasternsooner or later.” The “worst case”nquestion not apparently raised by topnIsraeli decision-makers was this: whatnwould be the costs to the special relationshipnbetween the United States andnIsrael were the operation exposed?nThe Pollard case, Laqueur writes, is “anprime example of an intelligence coupnturned failure precisely because thenquestion was ignored.”nWhat was “scandalous” about thenPollard affair, says Laqueur, was “thenease with which Pollard collected documentsnthat he had no business seeing.”nIn light of other penetrations, itnwould appear that the US intelligencencommunity “has become infinitelynmore vulnerable than ever before.”nThe time has come, he insists, to askn”searching questions — not about deterrentnsentences for culprits like Pollard,nbut about the general value of ournpresent-day intelligence operations.” Inwould add a demurrer to that sweepingnindictment. Laqueur seems to havenforgotten the Church-Pike investigationsnof the CIA and what those probesndid to counterintelligence, as well asntheir aftermath, the leaks and exposes,nand Philip Agee’s treason. (It’s startlingnto think that someone like Agee, whonpublicized names of CIA agents andnexposed them thereby to infinite peril,nwalks the streets free, lectures for money,nand travels the world over continuingnto expose US intelligence, whilenPollard is in the slammer for life.)nJoseph Sobran, a controversial editornand columnist, compares Pollard tonColonel Oliver North (National Review,nJune 16). Like North, Pollardn”felt frustrated that this country wasnapparently ‘unwilling to defend its ownninterests,’ and he feared Israel wouldnpay the consequences.” Pollard considerednCaspar Weinberger an enemy ofnIsrael and a friend to the Arabs. It wasnthe then-defense secretary’s still classifiedn46-page memorandum to thencourt regarding the damage Pollard’snactions had done American securitynthat was crucial in Judge AubreynRobinson’s decision to sentence Pollardnto life. Yet, as Sobran points out,nthe US-Israeli relationship “peakednduring the Reagan years.” Pollard, saysnSobran, took refuge “in a Jewish racialnmystique:”nWorst of all was the Israeli government’snbehavior, says Sobran. Havingnnnpledged to cooperate with the US tonundo the damage, the Israelis “thennlied, stonewalled, and evaded. Theyndisplayed contempt for the sensitivitiesnof American Jews and for their Americannbenefactors in general.” That behaviornmust have been the reason whynthe Washington lawyer Leonard Garment,nwhose services were sought bynthe Israeli government during the Pollardncrisis, removed himself from thencase. According to Blitzer, Garmentnconcluded after a few weeks “thatnIsrael had no intention of fully cooperatingnwith the United States.”nThe most important article is StephennGreen’s, published in the Mayn22 Christian Science Monitor, titledn”Damage Caused by ‘Friendly’ Spies.”nA lot of Green’s information, he says,ncame from documents released undernthe Freedom of Information Act andnfrom interviews with current FBIncounterintelligence agents, or withnretired FBI and Justice Departmentnofficials.nGreen is critical of the Blitzer booknbecause it “allows Jonathan Pollard tonpick apart selected portions of the USngovernment’s case while ignoring ornmisrepresenting other portions.” Interestingly,nGreen discounts the possibilitynof another spy. Early in his espionage.nPollard supplied a compendiumnof current classified military documentsnthat is updated every threenmonths. This lists and describes tens ofnthousands of documents, “a virtualnroad map for Pollard’s handlers. Nonneed for Mr. X.” So when Israelinintelligence asked for certain documents,nthey knew exacdy what theynwanted because of the compendium.nBut what was it they wanted? Greennsays that many of the documentsnsought “had nothing to do with thenMiddle East at all.”nThe purloined documents contained,naccording to Green, details ofnUS and Soviet intelligence, communicationnand military capabilities, detailsnabout US naval positions, aircraft stations,ntactics, and training operations.n”Much of this material,” writes Green,n”could have been of interest to onlynone country — the Soviet Union.”nGreen says that during the Pollardninvestigation, an (unnamed) Soviet defectornin US custody revealed that innaddition to the two Soviet spies servingnprison terms in Israel, “there was anNOVEMBER 1989/27n
January 1975April 21, 2022By The Archive
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