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Removing the stain of so-called American Justice
Removing the stain of so-called American Justice
By Jonathan Rosenblum – Mishpacha Magazine – February 1, 2017
http://tinyurl.com/h9nnuqn
You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore,” Richard Nixon said bitterly at
his “last press conference” after losing his 1962 race for governor of
California. In any event, Nixon proved a poor prophet: Six years later, he
was elected president, and Watergate still lay in the future.
Barack Obama made no promises about going quietly into the night upon
leaving office. He and his family intend to stay in Washington, D.C., and he
has served notice that he will not hesitate to speak out on the questions of
the day.
Still, I have searched my heart and find no ambivalence about the loss of a
favorite subject. My relief at no longer having to write the words
“President Obama” is pure.
Before leaving office, however, President Obama provided plenty of
last-minute material by ordering his UN ambassador to abstain on UN Security
Council Resolution 2334, and by exercising his power to pardon and commute
sentences.
He commuted the life sentences of 214 individuals, most convicted drug
traffickers, and that of unrepentant Puerto Rican FALN terrorist Oscar
Lopez-Rivera, who was responsible for dozens of bombings, at least one
fatal. Most notably, Obama commuted the 35-year sentence of Bradley/Chelsea
Manning — who turned over 500,000 military reports and 250,000 State
Department documents to WikiLeaks — after seven years in prison.
Fox News quoted intelligence sources saying that the “Taliban went on a
killing spree” of locals in Afghanistan who matched the descriptions of
sources mentioned in the documents passed to WikiLeaks. By letting Manning
off from 80 percent of his sentence, writes Andrew McCarthy — lead
prosecutor of the first World Trade Center bombing — the United States has
sent a message to all would-be intelligence sources that the US treats the
reckless endangerment of their lives as a minor crime.
Edward Lucas, author of The Snowden Operation: Inside the West’s Greatest
Intelligence Disaster, describes how intelligence services go into panic
mode whenever a breach is discovered and shut down any operation whose cover
may have been blown. Multiple breaches increase the problem exponentially,
as every piece of data must be assessed in terms of its utility with other
data in enemy hands. Accordingly, the massive amount of data handed
WikiLeaks by Manning wrought havoc with US intelligence.
The leniency shown to Manning immediately invites comparison to the
treatment of Jonathan Pollard, who served 30 years for spying for Israel.
When Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger submitted his secret impact
statement at Pollard’s sentencing hearing, he likely believed that documents
provided by Pollard had resulted in the exposure of Soviet sources. It has
been known for decades, however, that CIA official Aldrich Ames and FBI
agent Robert Hanssen sold the names of the American agents to the Soviets,
and deflected suspicion to Pollard. Ames was not arrested until 1994, eight
years after Pollard’s sentencing, and Hanssen not until 2001.
Jonathan Pollard committed serious crimes and was punished far more severely
than any operative ever convicted of transferring information to an American
ally. Even today, after his release from jail, he remains subject to onerous
conditions, which include wearing an electronic transmitter around his wrist
and continuous government monitoring of any computer he uses (a condition
that prevented him from securing employment).
Jonathan Pollard has long since ceased to constitute a security risk,
according to former CIA director James Woolsey. Unlike Manning, he did not
act to harm the US military; he did not cost the United States valuable
human intelligence assets, as did Manning; and he paid a price over four
times greater than Manning.
President Obama should have removed the onerous restrictions remaining on
Jonathan Pollard, as he did for Manning. President Trump should do so today.
The commutations issued by Obama call to mind another federal prisoner as
well: Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin. Obama believes that the statutes under
which the convicted drug traffickers were sentenced — sentences legislated
in large part at the insistence of the Black Congressional Caucus, alarmed
by the crack epidemic in black neighborhoods — were too onerous.
But the 27-year sentence handed down to Rubashkin for fraud on a bank loan
application was almost entirely the result of prosecutorial abuse. Under
federal sentencing guidelines, the sentence was based on the financial
damage to the bank in question.
Federal prosecutors told the trustee in bankruptcy that they would nix the
sale of Agriprocessors to any entity with any connection to Rubashkin family
members. As a consequence, one potential offer of $40 million for the
bankrupt business, which would have been adequate to pay off the entirety of
the bank losses, was withdrawn, and the business eventually sold for less
than a quarter of that amount. Those same prosecutors then suborned false
testimony from counsel for the trustee in bankruptcy to cover up what they
had done.
Four former US attorneys-general, two former FBI directors, and dozens of
law professors and former justice department officials have written to the
US Attorney for the Northern District of Iowa calling upon him to remove the
effect of the fraud perpetrated by prosecutors in his office. In the absence
of that fraud, Rubashkin would have been sentenced to under four years; he
has already served more than seven.
The drug traffickers were sentenced under the mandatory sentencing
requirements in place at the time of their convictions. Sholom Rubashkin was
sentenced so harshly solely because of prosecutorial fraud.
President Trump should commute the rest of his sentence immediately and
remove the stain on American justice.
—
The writer is director of Jewish Media Resources, writes a regular column in
The Jerusalem Post Magazine and Mishpacha Magazine and is the author of
eight biographies of modern Jewish leaders.
Source: http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=72140
