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Israel's Spy Was Right About Saddam<br>August 6, 1998 - Angelo M. Codevilla - The Wall Street Journal<br><br>Former naval intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard confessed to passing<br>classified documents to Israel without authorization between 1981 and 1985.<br>For this, he was rightly sent to prison for espionage. People who spy for<br>allied countries and who spare the U.S. government the revelations of a<br>trial usually get sentences averaging four years. What extraordinary things,<br>then, must Pollard have done to draw a life sentence?<br><br>Prison sentences are supposed to be proportional to the harm done. The<br>preface to the still-secret memorandum filed with the court by<br>then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger states that "it is difficult to<br>conceive of a greater harm to national security than that caused by<br>[Pollard]." But while Pollard's espionage subverted US policy in the Middle<br>East, it barely hurt Washington's intelligence operations.<br><br>Pollard gave the Israelis analysts' reports and satellite<br>photographs--bread-and-butter intelligence products. He is not accused of<br>giving away operating manuals or descriptions of the functioning of the<br>satellites or of any other collection systems.<br><br>The kind of documents Pollard passed are written carefully to disguise the<br>communications and agents on which they may be based. No U.S.<br>communication-intercept system was taken out of service or had its budget<br>affected because of the Pollard case. Nor was any U.S. agent forced "out of<br>the cold." Pollard's damage to these sources and methods was theoretical.<br><br>The U.S. had given--and was continuing to give--Israel photos taken by the<br>very same satellites from which came the secrets Pollard passed. There were<br>no technical differences between the pictures Pollard was passing illegally<br>and the ones the U.S. government was passing legally. These photos did not<br>help the Israelis learn more about the satellites than they already knew. In<br>fact, the U.S. government had briefed them and other U.S. allies on the<br>capability of the satellites--especially after CIA officer William Kampiles<br>sold the KH-11 satellite operating manual to the Soviets in 1978.<br><br>The difference between the pictures the U.S. government was giving to Israel<br>and the ones that it was withholding lay not in sources or methods, but in<br>the subject. Some senior officials of the U.S. government had decided that<br>Israel should not have certain information about Iraq and other Arab<br>countries because the officials did not like what Israel was doing with it.<br>By passing precisely that information, Pollard damaged U.S. foreign policy.<br><br>The fact that U.S. policy toward Iraq during the 1980s was bad did not give<br>Pollard any right to subvert it.<br><br>Some senior U.S. officials were angry at Israel for getting in the way of<br>their Middle East policy. In 1981, shortly after Israel had bombed the<br>Osirak reactor that had been the centerpiece of Saddam Hussein's nuclear<br>weapons program, Deputy Central Intelligence Agency Director Bobby Ray Inman<br>went to Capitol Hill to criticize the Israelis, who had used U.S. satellite<br>pictures to plan the bombing. Mr. Inman said they had harmed sophisticated<br>U.S. efforts to build an important relationship with Saddam. Therefore he<br>personally had just cut Israel off from satellite information about Iraq and<br>later began to send satellite pictures to Saddam.<br><br>Mr. Inman was acting on behalf of many of the principal makers of U.S.<br>foreign policy, including Mr. Weinberger and later Secretary of State George<br>Shultz, who during the 1980s sacrificed much for their vision of a fruitful<br>relationship with Saddam. Mr.Inman reported to incredulous senators in 1982<br>that U.S.intelligence no longer supported the conclusion that Iraq was a<br>major sponsor of terrorism. High-level officials dismissed concerns about<br>Baghdad's purchase of a chemical facility that became the centerpiece of<br>Iraq's chemical and biological weapons program and during the 1980s these<br>officials provided Saddam with U.S. weapons and intelligence. These<br>officials also knew about--and failed to hinder--the transfer of German<br>technology to the Saad 16 missile factory in northern Iraq.<br><br>This policy, vigorously pursued by Washington until the very eve of the Gulf<br>War, turned Iraq into a danger to mankind. This policy helped supply the<br>technologies that killed U.S. soldiers in the Gulf War--the technologies for<br>which inspectors now are searching fruitlessly and that may well kill other<br>Americans in the future.<br><br>Pollard's sin is blowing the whistle on an embarrassing policy--a sin for<br>which he is serving a life sentence instead of four years.<br><br>Messrs. Weinberger, Shultz and Inman had every right to be wrong about<br>foreign policy; Pollard had no right to express his disagreement through<br>espionage. Nevertheless, it is wrong to criminalize differences over policy,<br>and to use the justice system for personal vengeance. In the U.S., the<br>penalty for subverting policy is being fired. For espionage on behalf of<br>allies,the usual penalty is four years. Pollard has more than paid his debt.<br>----------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>----<br>Mr. Codevilla, a professor of international relations at Boston University,<br>served on the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee between 1977 and<br>1985. Codevilla acted as an advisor to the Senate Select Committee during<br>the Pollard arrest and conviction.<br> <b off></b>
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