Freed Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard’s lawyer faced a skeptical appeals judge as he tried Wednesday to convince a three-judge panel to ease his client’s parole conditions.
Pollard’s lawyer Eliot Lauer tried to win a relaxation of conditions requiring Pollard to submit to a curfew and monitoring of his workplace computer and his whereabouts. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did not immediately rule.
Circuit Judge Reena Raggi seemed to side with the government, saying parole conditions only had to be rational.
“It doesn’t have to be supported by a preponderance of the evidence or any other proof,” she said.
Pollard was freed in 2015 after serving 30 years for giving secrets to Israel. He pleaded guilty in 1986. Prosecutors say he gave secrets to Israeli agents in 1984 and 1985 when he worked as an intelligence research specialist in the U.S. Navy.
Lauer argued that it was unfair to force a financial company that wishes to employ Pollard to submit to computer monitoring.
“There’s simply no legitimate government purpose other than creating an embarrassment and a burden on Pollard to hold a white collar job,” he said. “It’s simply unfair to expect a financial firm to have computer monitoring. This is not a situation where you’ve got a pedophile or a drug dealer where you can put some search terms in and block it,” Lauer said. “You cannot today, as a college graduate, have a white collar job and not use the internet. And effectively this prevents that.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Rebecca Sol Tinio said the parole conditions were reasonable, especially for someone serving a life sentence who remains under the jurisdiction of parole authorities.
She called him an “extraordinary and very unusual parolee” who caused “enormous harm to the United States.”
In June 1986, Pollard pleaded guilty to conspiring to deliver national defense information to a foreign government, giving secrets to Israel.
(AP)
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4 Responses
Still not clear why someone who betrayed his country and a sworn oath, and has reinforced stereotypes of split loyalties over every Jew serving in sensitive government positions is in any position to demand relaxation of his parole conditions. He is fortunate to be out of prison.
To say he caused “enormous harm to the United States.” is simply a lie. There was no harm to the US as the documents related to an enemy country not the US. Other spy’s of enemy country’s who really caused enormous harm to the US got away with 4 years.
Gadolhadorah also has split loyalties mainly to the US and the state of Israel and a little bit not very much to the religion he or she was born to.
Jonathon should have changed his name to Jeanine and Obama would have commuted his sentence…
Gadolhadorah
Do you have any idea what went on? How about the time the director of a certain security agency had to attend to something, leaving the deputy director in charge, with the instructions to share certain information with Israel during his absence (which itself was based on orders from the President of the United States). But during the absence the deputy director conspired with Weinberger to withhold the information, and upon the director’s return Weinberger bullied the director into accepting the new status quo. The same Weinberger who led the assault of alleged “treason” against Pollard. The same Weinberger who was impeached on how many different charges but pre-pardoned by the President before trial (and the legislature was going to impeach Weinberger on even more charges but gave up when they saw that the President was simply going to keep pre-pardoning him anyway).
It became obvious to certain people who told me at the time that Israel’s policy of the requiring “safe” rooms was instituted (at least partly if not more) because (to put it in layman’s terms even if it is not exact) of the intelligence that Pollard provided Israel on the manufacturing capabilities of WMD by Israel’s enemies. And those plans instituted at the time is what made the option of Israel’s non-involvement in the Saddam wars (to name one) feasible.
And so forth ad infinitum (these were just simple example in layman’s terms of the situation).