20 January 1999. Thanks to Anon.
++ Source Alleges Netanyahu Asked Clinton to Postpone Pollard Decision ++ Israel Gov't. Puts Official Visits to Pollard On Hold ++ Pollard an Issue in Israel Campaign - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - http://www.jpost.com/News/Article-0.html The Jerusalem Post, 20 January 1999, 02:49 Source: PM Asked Clinton to Postpone Pollard Decision By Batsheva Tsur JERUSALEM (January 20) - Despite earlier Israeli pressure on US President Bill Clinton to review the case of convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has now asked Clinton to put off making his decision until the impeachment hearings are over, a source said yesterday. Following the Wye summit, Clinton had assured Netanyahu that he would review all the material - from both advocates and opponents of Pollard's release - at this time. At the time it was not clear that the Senate impeachment hearings would be under way now. Netanyahu felt that it would not be polite to put pressure on the US president to decide when he is under duress, the source said. Netanyahu's spokesman Aviv Bushinsky yesterday denied that the prime minister had requested such a deferral. "The opposite is true," he said. "The prime minister is most grateful that President Clinton has kept his promise to review the possibility of an early release for Pollard." Meanwhile, advocates of Pollard's release have not yet submitted their arguments to Clinton, although the US defense establishment already has recommended that the spy continue to serve his full term - life imprisonment. An additional reason for Clinton's delaying the review decision is a pending request for a meeting with him lodged by three Jewish leaders - World Jewish Congress head Edgar Bronfman, Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz and Nobel Prize laureate Elie Wiesel - who wish to put Pollard's case before the president. When the White House reportedly suggested that the three meet instead with Attorney-General Janet Reno - who also is due to make recommendations in the Pollard case - Bronfman was unusually piqued, the source said, and insisted on an invitation from Clinton. No date has yet been set for such a meeting. Asked yesterday whether he had submitted arguments in Pollard's favor to the White House, Pollard's lawyer Larry Dub confirmed that he had not. "There is no one to submit them to," he said. "We have not received any response to my December 4 letter to President Clinton or to my two subsequent letters to [White House legal counsel] Charles Ruff." He said there was still no willingness on the part of the US to explain what "information" Pollard had passed on to Israel and what evidence there was against him. Dub yesterday denied again that any encryption codes had been passed by his client to Israel. "Pollard did not have access to such encryption data," Dub said. "Frequency signals manuals without encryption codes are useless." In a letter last week to Ruff, Dub said he had pointed out that on December 18, 1998, "an ex-NSA senior cryptologic traffic analyst, David Sheldon Boone, pleaded guilty in US District court in Alexandria, Va., to having provided the Soviets with, among other things, ... a manual listing all US reconnaissance programs and signal collection systems, on or about the time that my client was sentenced." Dub said that this "calls into question the motive of those 'government officials' who continue to lay the blame for this crime on Jonathan Pollard." President Ezer Weizman yesterday revealed that he had written to Clinton two years ago to request clemency for Pollard. Weizman said that the initiative had come from Attorney-General Elyakim Rubinstein, who was minister at the Israeli Embassy in Washington when the Pollards were arrested and sought asylum there. Weizman was speaking to reporters during a visit of British parliament members of the Conservative Friends of Israel group. Copyright 1999 The Jerusalem Post - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - http://www.jpost.com/News/Article-5.html The Jerusalem Post, 19 January 1999, 02:13 Goverment Puts Official Visits to Pollard On Hold By Hillel Kuttler WASHINGTON (January 19) - Visits by Israeli government officials to imprisoned spy Jonathan Pollard have been put on hold while the campaign proceeds to attain his release, Israeli Embassy officials said at the beginning of the week. The officials did not say that the decision is an explicit one decided on by either Pollard or the Israeli government, but only that, in the words of one, "now all the effort is being put in to bring about his release - that is what he wants and rightly so - and everything else is less important." The slowdown comes as President Bill Clinton decides on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's request to free Pollard, an issue discussed during the Wye negotiations. Leading American foreign policy, intelligence, defense, and judicial officials last week transferred to Clinton their recommendations on the matter. The embassy's public affairs officer, Avi Granot, the government's new liaison to Pollard, has made only one visit to Pollard in his six months on the job. Last autumn, Pollard cancelled, at the last minute, a visit by Industry and Trade Minister Natan Sharansky and his wife Avital. An embassy official had no explanation for the change in procedure, and said that Pollard has not instructed Granot to cease visiting. Ambassador Zalman Shoval said yesterday he has no direct contact with Pollard, and another embassy official said that Shoval speaks on occasion with Pollard's wife Esther. In the past two weeks, a bevy of op-ed articles have appeared in leading American publications, the majority of them arguing for Pollard's continued incarceration for passing secrets to Israel in the early 1980s. Shoval said he supposed that the articles have been appearing because "there are people who are afraid that the [president's] review can lead to his release," whereas that possibility was given little chance of happening before. Copyright 1999, The Jerusalem Post - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990118/V000275-011899-idx.html Associated Press, 18 January 1999, 18:21 EST Pollard an Issue in Israel Campaign By Sari Bashi Associated Press Writer JERUSALEM (AP) -- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday urged his challenger in upcoming elections to do more to free convicted spy Jonathan Pollard, leading to accusations he was turning a sensitive nonpartisan matter into a campaign issue. Netanyahu told reporters he was "saddened and disappointed," that opposition leader Ehud Barak had refused to sign a letter to President Clinton requesting the release of Pollard. A former civilian analyst for the U.S. Navy, Pollard was convicted of espionage in 1985 for giving Israel tens of thousands of top-secret documents. He is serving a life sentence in a North Carolina prison. Since then, every Israeli prime minister has requested clemency for Pollard. "Jonathan Pollard acted on behalf of Israel on a mistaken mission that he never should have been sent to, but he served his time," Netanyahu told reporters before a meeting Monday with Pollard's Israeli attorney. While insisting that Pollard's case was "not an issue for the elections," Netanyahu said, "Ehud Barak must sign this letter." In the letter, obtained by The Associated Press, Netanyahu wrote Clinton that "the unfortunate Pollard affair has driven a wedge between our peoples and governments. We believe it is time to put this unfortunate chapter behind us." Barak accused Netanyahu of exploiting the case to win points ahead of the May 17 election. Recent opinion polls show the two men running neck-and-neck. Barak defended himself, telling Israel radio he has made private appeals to Clinton on Pollard's behalf. "Netanyahu, unfortunately, is thinking only about the elections. If Pollard is released, it won't be as a result of the actions of this government but in spite of the damaging measures of the government and its leader," Barak said. Ofir Pines, a lawmaker in Barak's Labor Party, said he would resign as chairman of a Knesset subcommittee on Pollard to protest Netanyahu's comments. A request for Pollard's release in October nearly derailed a U.S.-brokered Mideast peace accord when Netanyahu reportedly linked his agreement to a clemency deal for Pollard. Under last-minute pressure, Clinton promised to review Pollard's case. However, top U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, have advised against an early release. Copyright 1999 The Associated Press - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -