Rafi Eitan, Pollard's Handler, Speaks Out

Aaron Lerner posts a translation of a short piece on the Reshet Bet website:

The government perpetuates injustice done Pollard

Former Minister Rafi Eitan on "Meeting Point": "Even though the Americans know that Pollard did not help exposing agents, they do not reduce the life sentence imposed on him"

Former Minister Rafi Eitan, who had been Jonathan Pollard's handler, said that the American legal system perpetrated an injustice to Jonathan Pollard and broke a verbal understanding with Israel that he would serve only 10 years in prison.


Eitan said on the "Meeting Point" program on Reshet Bet that in his view, the testimony [IMRA affidavits] of former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, that the information Pollard passed to the Soviets helped expose U.S. agents in the Soviet Union led to the harshening of his sentence.

However, even when it became clear that Pollard was not related to the affair, the Americans decided, for their own reasons, to keep him in jail for life.

Lerner adds:

Unknown to Pollard, behind the scenes, American officials were secretly blaming Pollard for the damage caused to American intelligence by a mole. A mole who turned out to be Aldrich Ames. Aldrich Ames was the very same intelligence officer who participated in the preparation of the damage assessment that was used to indict and sentence Pollard. Pollard was never indicted, convicted or even aware that these accusations were being made secretly to pervert the sentencing process and secure a life sentence against him. Incredibly, the arrest of Ames in 1994 did not put an end to these false accusations or to Pollard's grossly disproportionate sentence.

See The Ames Case and Pollard February 25, 1994 - The Jerusalem Post   
The Ames Disclosures September 28, 1994 - The Jerusalem Post

But somehow, facts and revelations have no effect on the enormous injustice that just seems to keep growing.

Technorati Tag: Jonathan Pollard and Aldrich Ames and Rafi Eitan.