Double standard

Jonathan Pollard is serving a life sentence for passing along U.S. military secrets to Israel. Documents released by Edward Snowden reveal that the Obama administration has been spying on top Israeli officials, including the prime minister and defense minister, as well as two Israeli embassies.

Anybody see a double standard at work here?

Pollard spent seven years in solitary confinement. He cooperated with the prosecution, pleaded guilty, and had been assured by the prosecution that by doing so he would not be given a life sentence. Peter Perl wrote in the Washington Post in 1998:

His guilty plea enabled the government to avoid a trial that would have disclosed secret information, including the extent of U.S. spying on its Arab allies. In exchange, the Justice Department said it would inform the court of Pollard's cooperation and seek a "substantial" prison term, but not life.

Among the secrets Pollard had sold: diagrams of the Palestine Liberation Organization headquarters in Tunis, which had helped Israel in its 1985 bomb attack on the PLO; details of Soviet arms shipments to Syria; information on the Pakistani program to build an atom bomb; Iraqi and Syrian chemical warfare production capacity; the capability of Libyan air defenses; and much more.

Most significant, Weinberger said, Pollard's selling raw intelligence material disclosed the all-important "sources and methods" of U.S. intelligence-gathering. The Israelis, or anyone who subsequently might obtain the data, would know the capability of American electronic eavesdropping, the placement of U.S. strategic facilities, the extent of code-breaking ability, and would probably be able to learn the identities of agents and spies in various countries.

If the Pollards weren't in enough trouble, they made it worse for themselves by very bad public relations. Both Jonathan and Anne gave media interviews before their sentencing. They were apparently violating their plea agreement not to give interviews, and they did not show much remorse.