Latest / None of Your Business Podcast / 30 Years. One Truth

Transcript

30 Years. One Truth · None of Your Business Podcast

• 0:00
  So I I said to to Hashem, I said to God that look, just like
• 0:04
  Avril Marvino when he negotiated for the survival of Sodom and
• 0:09
  Gomorrah. I said, look, if I stop doing
• 0:14
  these 10 bad things, And I thought about it and I said 8:00
• 0:19
  and 6:00 and then I settled on five and God agreed 5 And I
• 0:25
  start doing these five good things, save me, and that was
• 0:32
  it. None of your business, Oshi.
• 0:37
  None of your business, Michael. It's the None of Your Business
• 0:40
  podcast hosted by Michael Anoshi.
• 0:42
  Welcome back everybody to the None of Your Business podcast.
• 0:45
  I'm your host Michael Greenfield and join with me today as a
• 0:48
  special Co host Mr. David Vegan. It is so nice of you to be here.
• 0:55
  It's amazing to be. Here you fill the seat a lot
• 0:56
  better than Ushi, by the way, Only 'cause we're in Israel,
• 0:59
  Only 'cause we're in Israel. I'm saying, you know, when it
• 1:01
  comes to being here like. I'm so happy to be here.
• 1:03
  This is something we've been looking forward to doing this
• 1:05
  for a long time. This is great.
• 1:06
  Absolutely. And we have such an amazing
• 1:08
  guest today and I want to get right into it.
• 1:10
  Before I do, I just want to thank all our subscribers, all
• 1:12
  our comments, all our feedback, negative or positive, you know,
• 1:16
  we love it. We like to hear what you have to
• 1:17
  say and today we like to hear what this man has to say.
• 1:21
  Jonathan Pollard is here with us and what a moment for us to be
• 1:25
  shared. Welcome to the.
• 1:26
  Program. Thank you.
• 1:27
  It's a pleasure to be here. Really it's, it's just like I'm,
• 1:30
  I have goosebumps. You're just sitting here with
• 1:33
  you and feeling that, you know, just years ago on our fridge
• 1:37
  growing up in Brooklyn, NY was free.
• 1:40
  Jonathan all over our refrigerator.
• 1:42
  I mean, there was, you know, pictures of us as children.
• 1:44
  Well, trust me, you did more for me than the government of Israel
• 1:47
  did, so I I appreciate it very much.
• 1:50
  Wow, wow. You know, something I've learned
• 1:52
  about you over the past, you know, 20 minutes of talking to
• 1:55
  you offline and when I met with you is the fact that you're so
• 1:59
  transparent in everything that you say.
• 2:02
  I feel like you, you don't hold back any punches.
• 2:05
  And it's just a great feeling to talk to someone like that.
• 2:07
  And how did you get to that point?
• 2:09
  Candor is very good both for the listener and for the speaker,
• 2:14
  because you get to Emmett, you get to truth, and this is
• 2:18
  something that we lack in this country right now.
• 2:21
  You can't believe anything the army says.
• 2:24
  You can't believe anything the government says.
• 2:27
  You can't believe everything your wife says.
• 2:31
  You can or you or you must. Absolutely no.
• 2:33
  You can, because if it gets to the point where you must, then
• 2:37
  you should look for somebody else.
• 2:39
  They're too. They're too big and strong.
• 2:42
  No, it's just the reason October 7th happened was because of
• 2:48
  government lying and military lying that you can say it's a
• 2:51
  misconception that happened. But there were two
• 2:55
  misconceptions on October 7th. 1 was of course the one we know
• 3:00
  that the army and government made a horrible mistake to which
• 3:06
  they have not been held accountable and the people of
• 3:11
  this country made had a misconception in believing them.
• 3:18
  And 1 can be forgiven. The other one is treason.
• 3:23
  So as far as I'm concerned, I tell people, you may not like
• 3:27
  what I say, you may not agree with it, but you should know
• 3:32
  that I'm telling you the truth is I see it.
• 3:34
  I've been, I was lied to for 35 years.
• 3:36
  I know what it's like to be on the receiving end of that and I
• 3:42
  will never inflict that on anybody else.
• 3:44
  Wow, You know, I, I have to tell you that the concept of
• 3:47
  transparency and being honest is something that I live by and
• 3:52
  David here knows me for a while and he can attest to that.
• 3:54
  And it's just the feeling of freedom in of itself, just being
• 3:57
  able to speak the truth, never have to watch about what you're
• 4:00
  saying and who you're saying it to.
• 4:01
  And that's what I'm learning from you.
• 4:02
  And that's why I'm so excited here.
• 4:04
  Before we start, Dave, why don't you tell us and the listeners a
• 4:07
  little bit about who you are, you know, because being as a Co
• 4:11
  host, just give us a, you know, a quick rundown.
• 4:13
  I. Tell them the most the most
• 4:15
  important thing about who I am. Please.
• 4:17
  Haim, Michael and I, we are Mahatunum, as they say.
• 4:22
  My son Labi is married to Michael's son Aviva, Michael's
• 4:27
  daughter. Yeah, let's do that again,
• 4:29
  Michael. And that's OK In Tel Aviv, by
• 4:31
  the way, that would not have been a mistake.
• 4:33
  Michael and I are Mahatunum. That means that we are we're in
• 4:37
  laws with each other because my son Labi is is married to
• 4:39
  Michael's daughter Aviva. And we are very happy about that
• 4:43
  because Aviva is my favorite vegan.
• 4:45
  Did I just say that? Yes, yes, it's out there.
• 4:47
  It's in public. We don't edit this thing.
• 4:49
  By the way, just perfect warning both of you.
• 4:51
  We don't edit this podcast. We've been here for four years.
• 4:53
  We came from Chicago four years ago we moved here, we made
• 4:56
  aliyah and since then I've been doing a number of things.
• 4:59
  I've been tour guide and I'm also a podcaster.
• 5:04
  We have a podcast called Israel Take Three.
• 5:06
  We've been exploring different topics related to the war,
• 5:09
  related to hostages, related to all different topics since
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  October 7th, and now we're moving on to other topics.
• 5:16
  That's what I've been doing, podcasting.
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  I'm a journalist by trade, also a rabbi, and trying to combine
• 5:21
  those pieces together in a sort of educational package.
• 5:25
  People are trying to understand Israel and understand how to
• 5:28
  navigate the landscape and make sense of this really crazy,
• 5:32
  nuanced world called Israel. Not that I understand it, but to
• 5:36
  the best of my ability, I help people to understand that
• 5:38
  through the journalism and the podcast.
• 5:40
  I have to say the first time I met you and Jonathan, it's a
• 5:42
  great story. You'll appreciate this is we
• 5:46
  really felt Israel as a whole when we made Elohim for my
• 5:53
  daughter and your son is we lifted our glass.
• 5:56
  We were in our apartment in Jerusalem and we lifted our
• 5:59
  glasses to make a lehayim. My daughter, his son, him, his
• 6:02
  wife, me, my wife, we all raise our glass and we make a lehayim,
• 6:06
  the official lehayim. As we're raising our glass, his
• 6:11
  son gets a telephone call. Army.
• 6:15
  And he realizes that it's somebody he has to pick up.
• 6:17
  And he goes, guys, before we clink, let let me just pick up
• 6:19
  this. I'm so sorry.
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  He picks up the phone call Talk. About chills.
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  I have the chills now when you're telling this story.
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  And he got the call that his immediate commander was just
• 6:28
  killed and he was the one to get the phone call because that was
• 6:31
  just the protocol of how they did it after next of kin.
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  The way he transformed from getting emotional and just
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  living in that moment of my. My world is colliding and
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  everything is just falling apart.
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  But right now I have to pick it back up and get back to the I.
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  I remember the night of my wife and I were celebrating our 2nd
• 6:58
  wedding anniversary so I arranged to get rid of the kids.
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  Had a nice bottle of wine, nice music.
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  And the phone rang and I put it on speaker and it was a friend
• 7:11
  of mine who's a military rabbi. And he said, we need you at Har
• 7:16
  Herzl. And I said, why?
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  He said we have too many bodies and we need you to help dig the
• 7:25
  graves. So I said, why are you calling
• 7:27
  me? And he said, because I know
• 7:30
  you'll keep your mouth shut. So I and I was kind of trying to
• 7:35
  explain to him that, you know, this is a special night for me
• 7:40
  and my wife. And all of a sudden I see my
• 7:42
  wife walk into the bedroom with a thermos of coffee and Tahili
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  and she says, go, they need you more than I do right now.
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  So transformed. And I spent the night on on her
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  Herzl, Mount Herzl, the military cemetery with a complete cross
• 8:00
  section of Israel. There were no arguments, there
• 8:02
  were no political debates, nothing from guys full of
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  tattoos and metal piercings all the way over to uranium.
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  I was filling the white sandbags and as the sun came up, I looked
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  at one of the coffins and I knew the guy.
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  And it was very difficult at that moment to kind of balance
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  out my joy of celebrating my wedding anniversary with a
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  wonderful woman with the loss of a wonderful guy with six
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  children and a loving wife. But I wasn't really angry or
• 8:48
  depressed at the situation. It's war.
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  But I was depressed and very, very angry at the people who led
• 8:56
  us into this trap because that man should have been alive.
• 9:00
  He should have been able to go home to his wife and children,
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  and he should have lived a wonderful life.
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  He was a professional soldier, but he he should have had the
• 9:11
  chance to have a, a full life. And that was taken from him.
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  And that also is part of Israel. It's not that the enemy takes
• 9:21
  our lives. We we're accustomed to that.
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  What we're not accustomed to is having our loved ones offered up
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  as a sacrifice by our presumed batters in the government, in
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  the military. That man should not have died,
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  but he was betrayed and abandoned by the same people
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  that betrayed and abandoned me. On October 7th, my security
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  phone rang. It's a Shabbat.
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  I was getting ready to go across the street for services.
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  Shabbat services. And I have to answer it because
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  it's glowing red. So and it was the telegram, the
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  the Nukpa GoPro of what they were doing.
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  And my wife looked at it and she said, you know, this is sick.
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  What is this like Fauda? I mean, is this a movie?
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  And I said, no, it's real. And she started crying.
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  And at that moment my life changed.
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  How so? Up until that moment, I had
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  assumed that I was the exception to the rule.
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  My abandonment and betrayal was an outlier.
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  But what I realized on October 7th, watching those videos,
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  those horrible videos, was that the entire country had been
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  abandoned and betrayed. And that's when things began to
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  change for me in terms of my, the possibility of me going
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  political or having any association with the political
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  process, AKA the swamp in, in Israel.
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  So you go from moments of joy, I'm getting ready to celebrate
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  Shabbat to absolute fear and anger and a feeling of Nakamov
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  revenge for what happened. I I have refused to wear a
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  yellow hostage pin because the whole movement, the left has
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  taken over and I warned certain people about that.
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  They changed from being anti judicial reform to, you know,
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  pro hostage to get them out, to prioritize the rescue of the
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  hostages to the exclusion of everything else.
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  And it was meant specifically to undermine the credibility of our
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  conservative coalition government.
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  So I, I didn't wear a hostage pin.
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  And when confronted by, I remember 1 instance near Kicar
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  parties where they used to gather in Jerusalem, they, they,
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  they left this, this woman came up, American Anglo screaming at
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  me, where is my hostage pin? So I looked at her and I just
• 12:09
  said, do you know who I am? And she said, yes.
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  I said, well, did you wear a pin for me?
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  And she said, no, why should I? You're a fascist.
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  OK, that that was. And I thanked her for her candor
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  on that. So I wore a pin that said nakama
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  because the yellow pin reminded me of the yellow star that the
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  in this case, the the enemy made us wear.
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  And I, I refuse to do that. My, my position on the hostages
• 12:42
  was quite controversial here. It didn't gain me any friends or
• 12:49
  allies. But I tell the truth and I, I, I
• 12:54
  related this story always of a submarine commander in war whose
• 13:00
  submarine is damaged by enemy action and the boats going down.
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  His responsibility as commander of the boat is to rescue the
• 13:07
  boat, keep the boat and as many of the crew as possible alive.
• 13:12
  So in some cases that you have to close off the damaged part of
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  the ship, in this case a boat, and sacrifice the few in order
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  to guarantee the lives of the many.
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  And this was a concept that just people could not understand here
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  because they've been brainwashed and to the point where they,
• 13:37
  they don't understand what it takes to fight terrorists.
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  You, you cannot validate the taking of hostages because what
• 13:46
  we've done now is, is just that we validated the taking of
• 13:50
  hostages. And no Jew now is safe anywhere
• 13:54
  in the world because of that. So again, it's a controversial
• 13:59
  thing. I did a lot of videos for the
• 14:02
  right wing families Tikvah and they were about bringing the
• 14:09
  their loved ones back through strength, you know, So as I
• 14:15
  said, I didn't get any friends or allies by my position.
• 14:21
  But sometimes you have to look at the bigger picture.
• 14:25
  You have to step back. And This is why we elect leaders
• 14:28
  to make those hard decisions, but unfortunately we lack those
• 14:34
  types of leaders right now. I just wanted to jump in and ask
• 14:37
  you a question about that, because I remember reading that
• 14:40
  when, when you when you said, I think the quote was something
• 14:43
  along the lines of maybe, maybe who knows?
• 14:45
  Because the media says what they want to say, but it's came
• 14:48
  across as something along the lines of the hostage families
• 14:51
  should be put in detention camps or detention.
• 14:53
  Centers, No. What what happened was this was
• 14:56
  on Channel 14 and they take a lot of liberties, especially
• 14:59
  with me because I'm not a babista, you know, I'm, I'm not
• 15:03
  a Benjamin Netanyahu, you know, supporter.
• 15:08
  So no, what I said was that if the the leaders of the left
• 15:13
  wing, the hostage Family Forum and some of the family members
• 15:17
  themselves don't shut up because they were undermining our
• 15:23
  ability to prioritize winning the war and they were the worst
• 15:28
  thing, they were going overseas and mobilizing enemies of ours,
• 15:33
  ostensibly to help the hostages of their objective was to
• 15:36
  undermine our ability to prosecute and win this war.
• 15:40
  I said they the quote I used. And Israel can sometimes be a
• 15:46
  very provincial place to live, I said, quoting Cicero.
• 15:52
  And I quoted the Latin, which I won't do now, but it it was in
• 15:57
  times of war, the law is silent. And in this case, these
• 16:02
  particular family members and the movement that itself, left
• 16:06
  wing movement, we're aiding and abetting the enemy.
• 16:09
  So I, I, I get all that and, and that makes sense.
• 16:12
  And I think everyone in Israel, there's AI think there's a
• 16:14
  misconception that in Israel you have people who want the
• 16:16
  hostages to come home and people who don't want the hostages.
• 16:18
  That is, but that is, of course. False.
• 16:20
  We all, everybody, every Israeli, every Jew wants two
• 16:23
  things. We want to win the war in Iraq
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  and Hamas, and we want to bring the correct.
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  And the question is, the political question becomes how
• 16:31
  do you prioritize one over the other?
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  And some people prioritize winning the war.
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  Some people prioritize bringing the hostages home.
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  I happen to have been more on the side of prioritizing winning
• 16:40
  the war. I have sons that are soldiers.
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  I don't want my sons to go in and fight and be.
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  And. Be and be held back from being
• 16:46
  able to because of this. So my question for you was, did
• 16:50
  anything change in your mind? What did anything change in your
• 16:54
  heart, let's say, when you watch those hostages come home to
• 16:57
  their families last week? Because for me, even as somebody
• 17:00
  who did prioritize the war over the return of the hostages, I
• 17:04
  have to be honest, I sat there and I cried and I couldn't help
• 17:07
  but cry when I saw what was going on.
• 17:09
  And part of me said to myself, maybe this really did need to
• 17:12
  happen for the country to be able to heal and move forward.
• 17:14
  And even though logically it makes no sense.
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  And yes. We no, I felt nothing.
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  Absolutely nothing. If anything, later I felt rage
• 17:29
  over this hysterical optimism that ensued.
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  It's like people are so depressed and so discouraged and
• 17:39
  so fearful that they'll grasp at any reason to feel good.
• 17:46
  Well, I didn't survive 30 years in prison living according to
• 17:50
  those beliefs. I look at things very cold and
• 17:57
  crystallized, and what I saw reminded me of a defeated nation
• 18:02
  getting their prisoners of war back by surrendering.
• 18:05
  That's what I saw. I'm, I mean, I'm sorry to say
• 18:10
  this, but on October 8th, I was asked by certain people, you
• 18:19
  know, from my opinion on how, what we should do.
• 18:22
  Because I had, when I came home, I had briefed a scenario.
• 18:25
  I used to be on a red team, what they call it in Washington and
• 18:29
  the enemy team and I briefed a war in, in Gaza.
• 18:35
  And one of the former chiefs of staff said, what are you wasting
• 18:39
  our time for? We are never going back into
• 18:42
  Gaza. And I said that's a recipe for
• 18:45
  for for defeat, if you think so, because the enemy has a vote.
• 18:49
  So I gave a scenario full confession.
• 18:53
  I never imagined them coming across the border and taking
• 18:56
  hostages. OK.
• 18:58
  So I, I said we have to prioritize winning the war.
• 19:03
  And I said I I feel that the Prime Minister should make a
• 19:08
  public announcement to Hamas. You either return our living
• 19:14
  hostages and the remains of the dead ones within 24 hours, where
• 19:19
  there will be nothing left. From Jabariah in the north to
• 19:23
  Rafah in the South, the largest, tallest building will be in
• 19:26
  Anthill. I have always opposed urban
• 19:30
  warfare because it devalues the lives of soldiers.
• 19:36
  It's a horrible, horrible mode of fighting.
• 19:40
  I've studied Stalingrad, I've the worst one was Manila,
• 19:44
  believe it or not, in 1945. It was a meat grinder and we
• 19:49
  can't afford it. I mean, if you're being
• 19:51
  utilitarian about it, we can't afford to lose soldiers.
• 19:54
  We can't. And for me, the most sacred
• 19:58
  individuals in Israel, above and beyond the Rabbanim and the
• 20:03
  Sadiqam and the Mikubalim. Are the men and women that put
• 20:08
  on the uniform to defend us? We owe them everything.
• 20:13
  And yes, another controversial statement I've made was that the
• 20:18
  the most effective killer of Israeli soldiers are the rules
• 20:21
  of engagement promulgated by leftist and enforced by judicial
• 20:27
  commissars down to the company level.
• 20:31
  I I don't care about the enemy. I am not my enemy in the sense
• 20:35
  that I I would authorize just the indiscriminate killing of
• 20:39
  civilians. But I will not send soldiers
• 20:42
  into a building that has a target because they're civilians
• 20:47
  and enemy civilians. I won't do it.
• 20:50
  I'll take the building out because those men and women are
• 20:54
  my brothers and sisters and I will not squander their lives on
• 20:58
  the altar of some political correctness.
• 21:00
  I'm not going to do that. I remember a busload of young
• 21:06
  paratroopers. Tan Kanim stopped.
• 21:08
  I was coming back from Malava Malka.
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  I sobered up immediately and they all piled out and they were
• 21:15
  surrounding me. Most of them were Anglo.
• 21:18
  And they asked me what is it like to be in combat?
• 21:21
  What is it like to have people shooting at you?
• 21:23
  What is it like to be scared? And I looked at them and I, I, I
• 21:30
  told them a story that my father told me before.
• 21:33
  I'm from the Vietnam generation. And he said, to whom do you owe
• 21:38
  your loyalty as an officer? Who do you owe?
• 21:41
  Who do you? And I said the commander in
• 21:44
  chief, he said, no, the Congress, no, the flag, no, the
• 21:51
  Constitution. I mean, that's what we swore to
• 21:53
  defend against enemies, foreign and domestic.
• 21:55
  He said no. I said, how about my commanding
• 21:59
  officer? And my father said, oh hell no,
• 22:02
  he was a cavalry officer from 193233, veterinarian, then human
• 22:08
  doctor. He said you owe your loyalty,
• 22:12
  unqualified loyalty to the man at that time, the man on either
• 22:16
  side of you. And if the orders you receive
• 22:20
  compromise them to any degree. He said, I'll be proud to visit
• 22:23
  you in in the stockade in the military prison.
• 22:27
  Those are the people you owe your loyalty to.
• 22:30
  So I told them this and their officer wasn't too happy with
• 22:36
  what I, but he really wasn't happy with what I did next.
• 22:39
  I said, do you all have the purity of arms?
• 22:42
  A little pamphlet? And they said yes.
• 22:46
  I said, let me see them. And I got about 50 of them.
• 22:51
  And I said, I'm going to do something right now that I hope
• 22:53
  will save your lives. And I went over to a trash can
• 22:57
  and threw them all away. I said, everything in there is
• 23:04
  in a voter's honor. There's nothing Jewish at all in
• 23:07
  there. We're given our orders from
• 23:09
  Torah. We we understand how we fight
• 23:12
  from Torah, not from that. I said, do you did?
• 23:15
  Have you guys read that? Yeah.
• 23:17
  They said, yeah. I said, do you agree with any of
• 23:20
  it? No, I said, so forget about it.
• 23:23
  Shoot straight shoot to defend the guy or woman on either side
• 23:27
  of you and fight al Qedush Hashem, because that's you're
• 23:30
  fighting God's war right now. So they got on the bus, they
• 23:35
  looked a little bit relieved and the officer came up to me and
• 23:40
  said, I've, I've sent a message that you have nothing more to do
• 23:45
  with talking to soldiers. And I said, well, hopefully a
• 23:49
  Hamas sniper will save me the effort of doing the same for
• 23:53
  you. So he he didn't like that, but I
• 23:59
  didn't care. So yes, there are moments where
• 24:08
  you get a phone call and you're in another reality.
• 24:13
  You're a totally different reality.
• 24:16
  But that's one foot in that the other foot is getting ready to
• 24:20
  say Lahaim and you have to somehow balance or merge both of
• 24:25
  them. I was at a soldiers Leviah in
• 24:31
  which the mother jumped into the Kevin screaming and I was
• 24:38
  standing back from the grave and all I heard was the voice coming
• 24:43
  out of the grave and some guys jumped in and got her out.
• 24:50
  But we as a people have not waited 2000 years to be offered
• 24:57
  up as carbonate by our betters presumed betters.
• 25:05
  I can honestly say that I've never shaken the hand of any
• 25:08
  terrorists or their representatives.
• 25:11
  I have pulled a trigger on quite a few of them, but I've never
• 25:16
  shaken their hands. I never will.
• 25:19
  People here for some reason, and it's because of the
• 25:22
  indoctrination of the media and our presumed elected leaders,
• 25:27
  they're not elected, They're chose.
• 25:29
  They're chosen by the political party.
• 25:31
  We don't have really accountable representation here as we
• 25:36
  understand it, say from the United States where you can go
• 25:39
  into a a congressman's office or a senator's office and hold the
• 25:43
  guy responsible woman responsible for her actions.
• 25:45
  You can't do that here. So for me, one of one of my
• 25:55
  goals, if I ever get elected is to make sure that we have a
• 26:01
  different way of electing people in this country where we have
• 26:06
  accountability in the Knesset. We don't have it right now.
• 26:10
  We just don't have it. Our educational system is
• 26:14
  wretched. Our judicial system is
• 26:18
  appalling. I was in court a couple of days
• 26:21
  ago with my wife on another matter, a family matter, and I
• 26:25
  was sickened by the attitude of the judge.
• 26:30
  Misogynistic is hated women, you know, no question.
• 26:34
  And he was open about it. But this, this rot runs through
• 26:39
  the entire judicial system. How can you say we have a
• 26:43
  democracy, We have a, a jurisocracy?
• 26:52
  I think that's the way I put it. Unelected judges from one
• 26:57
  political, from one side of the political spectrum who feel that
• 27:01
  they have the right to dictate to us and override the will of
• 27:05
  our democratically elected legislature.
• 27:08
  This is not a democracy. So I met, I was asked to meet
• 27:13
  with four officers, Air Force officers in the height of the
• 27:18
  judicial, anti judicial reform protests, coup d'etat, which is
• 27:23
  what it was. And I took them to lunch at a
• 27:27
  very nice restaurant and I, I asked them a very simple
• 27:31
  question. I said, you guys have all said
• 27:32
  you're not going to fly the reservist, you're not going to
• 27:35
  fly if the judicial reform package is passed, correct?
• 27:39
  Yes. OK, I said, would you agree that
• 27:43
  you would fight for the Landon people of Israel, irrespective
• 27:47
  of the government, just for the Landon people of Israel?
• 27:50
  I didn't say al Petorati Israel. I left that out, right?
• 27:54
  I'm Israel, Alice Israel, Al Petorati Israel.
• 27:57
  That's my philosophy. But I left al Petorati out and
• 28:01
  they said no. It kind of shocked me.
• 28:05
  So I said to them, OK, I have just three questions left for
• 28:09
  you. Did we have a free and fair
• 28:11
  election? And they answered yes.
• 28:14
  I said, did you guys win? And they said no.
• 28:20
  I said, so you lost, right? Yes.
• 28:22
  OK, can you get over that? No.
• 28:27
  And I said, why not? And they said because people
• 28:29
  like you don't know how to run a 21st century government.
• 28:35
  And I said, what are people like me?
• 28:36
  Who who are you referring to? They said this whole God thing.
• 28:40
  Oh, I said, oh, well, that's thank you.
• 28:43
  That makes it all clear. So I said, would you excuse me?
• 28:48
  I, I have to go to the men's room and, you know, the food was
• 28:53
  coming. So I got up and I walked around
• 28:56
  and talked to the maitre-d' whom I I know.
• 28:59
  And I said, you see those four guys there?
• 29:02
  He said, yeah. I said that they're going to pay
• 29:04
  for their meals. I, I have another appointment I
• 29:06
  have to run to. So later that night, I got a
• 29:09
  call from one of them screaming at me, you know, how could you
• 29:13
  do this to us? That you, you, you, you promised
• 29:16
  to pay for our meal and you disappeared and we had to pay
• 29:20
  for the meal. I said, well, you know, I guess
• 29:23
  I'm just kind of stupid, you know, I don't know how to run a
• 29:27
  21st century government. Wow.
• 29:33
  You know, I have to tell you that, you know, part of our
• 29:36
  podcast and the things that we do is learning from other people
• 29:39
  and growing with them and hearing the messages.
• 29:41
  And already, you know, such a short time and I'm already
• 29:44
  getting so much of that. But I need to step a little bit
• 29:48
  back because I did tell you that I grew up with your face on our
• 29:50
  refrigerator and the free Pollard.
• 29:52
  I just want to understand a little bit who you are.
• 29:55
  Like, who were you when you were 10 years old?
• 29:57
  Where did you grow up, if you don't mind?
• 29:58
  Give me a little bit of the backgrounders.
• 30:00
  Who are you as a person? Did you grow up religious?
• 30:02
  Did you grow up in New York? And I know nothing.
• 30:04
  I, I, I only know after free Paul Arden and it happened and
• 30:07
  we celebrated. But I'd love to know.
• 30:10
  And especially for my audience, who's listening?
• 30:12
  How'd you grow up? How did you get into the spy
• 30:14
  business? How did you the?
• 30:16
  Short story was I was born, I had a Brit Mila, I had a bar
• 30:20
  mitzvah, I went to college, almost made it to Vietnam.
• 30:26
  You're that young? It was in prison for 30 years.
• 30:29
  Lost my wife here in Israel when she got me home, remarried a
• 30:34
  friend of hers with seven children, which I didn't know
• 30:37
  about. Seven children, 6 girls and and
• 30:42
  here I am. OK, great.
• 30:44
  But we gotta step back a little bit.
• 30:45
  We gotta step back after your breasts.
• 30:48
  After my. After.
• 30:49
  My bread after your bread, right?
• 30:51
  Exactly before. My bread.
• 30:53
  You should understand that. My family, Yeah.
• 30:55
  Where are they? From who are you?
• 30:57
  Yeah, who? Am I?
• 30:57
  I'm a product of the past? Obviously, yes, of course.
• 31:01
  My distant ancestor was the GRA. Wow, the villain that got on
• 31:06
  through my mother. It was a Direct Line, and it's
• 31:11
  strange because a lot of my views, especially on aliyah,
• 31:16
  religious aliyah, can be traced right back to what he proposed
• 31:21
  back in the 1700s. I grew up in Texas, Galveston,
• 31:28
  TX to be exact, So I'm not really an American, I'm a Texan.
• 31:32
  Love it that. Explains a lot.
• 31:34
  That does explain a lot every you know.
• 31:37
  OK, good. Take me now to to your Bar
• 31:38
  Mitzvah. No, before my BAR, yeah, Every
• 31:42
  boy, when I was growing up and I, you know, I'm a little bit
• 31:45
  older than I think both of you, every boy on his 10th birthday
• 31:50
  got a gun, in my case a rifle. And my father, who was a
• 31:55
  high-ranking Army officer and a doctor and a research scientist,
• 32:00
  gave me the only advice on gun safety that has ever seemed to
• 32:07
  be logical in my mind, which is if you're going to point the gun
• 32:11
  at somebody, pull the trigger. If you're not, don't point the
• 32:14
  gun at them. And in Texas, this was heresy.
• 32:19
  But I grew up with that. And then eventually my father
• 32:24
  took a position at the University of Notre Dame, which
• 32:28
  was a cultural shock for me because the Catholic University,
• 32:31
  and it was in the North. And when I was in school in
• 32:38
  Texas, we didn't learn about the Civil War, we learned about the
• 32:42
  War of Northern Aggression. And every morning when we put
• 32:46
  hand on heart, we had, we didn't have Abraham Lincoln, we had Sam
• 32:52
  Houston, we didn't have the Stars and Stripes.
• 32:55
  We had the Lone Star flag. And we sang the eyes of Texas.
• 33:00
  And all the Mexican kids sat in the back and we're quiet.
• 33:04
  That's where I grew up in the South.
• 33:07
  Keep going. I never experienced any
• 33:11
  anti-Semitism in Texas. You know when you have a Second
• 33:17
  Amendment enforced, even down to 10 years old, you tend to watch
• 33:21
  your mouth very carefully around people.
• 33:23
  So I never experienced anything. It's not to say I didn't
• 33:27
  experience it up north. It was very bad for me.
• 33:33
  I was usually the only Jewish kid in class is school.
• 33:37
  And my father basically said, you know, you got to tough it
• 33:42
  out and it was hard as a young, young boy.
• 33:47
  As a teenager. No, before that or even before
• 33:49
  that. Before that, you know fighting,
• 33:52
  you know a mob of anti semites. But my father told me pick one
• 34:00
  and make sure he doesn't come back again.
• 34:03
  So I did that and finally he gave me a knife.
• 34:05
  Juice, yes. And finally he gave me a knife,
• 34:11
  which was the origin of my ability to use a knife, which
• 34:14
  saved my life on a numerable occasions in prison.
• 34:18
  And I I cut somebody. And so I was brought into the
• 34:20
  principal's office a a drunk Irishman anti Semite.
• 34:26
  And he said give me the knife. I took him literally.
• 34:32
  So I drove the knife into his $3000 Herman Miller desk and he
• 34:39
  screamed and called the police and my parents showed up and I'm
• 34:43
  just sitting here. I'm not really scared or
• 34:47
  embarrassed or anything. Oh, I'm sorry, you're not a
• 34:49
  teenager yet. Even no, no, no, no.
• 34:51
  And so my father came in. He was apprised of what happened
• 34:55
  and he looked at me and he said, did, did, did you do this to put
• 34:59
  this knife in the desk? I said yes Sir, I did.
• 35:03
  He said what did the desk do to you?
• 35:06
  You should have put it between the guy's eyes.
• 35:10
  So that's my dad, great guy. So I was excused from attending
• 35:14
  that school again and I went to a Catholic school.
• 35:18
  Wow. Saint Joseph's and that was the
• 35:22
  beginning of my formal Jewish education because they brought a
• 35:26
  rabbi in from Chicago Orthodox Skokie to when they when the
• 35:30
  Catholic kids had catechism, I had and I was obliged to wear a
• 35:35
  keeper. Do you remember who he was?
• 35:37
  No, I can't. OK.
• 35:38
  I can't remember, young guy. Yeah.
• 35:40
  And it was wonderful. Apparently the Monsignor had
• 35:44
  warned everybody in the school that if there were any
• 35:49
  disrespectful remarks made to me, they their hide would be
• 35:54
  worn out, and I was. He's carrying a knife.
• 35:58
  No, I, I was amazed at how violent the nuns were.
• 36:02
  I mean, I, I was scared to death of them.
• 36:06
  They, they would beat boys up right in the classroom.
• 36:09
  And of course, the boys couldn't do anything.
• 36:11
  And what, what, what crime had they committed?
• 36:12
  Or they talked in class. So you think the rod Band
• 36:15
  weren't the only one to hit us when we.
• 36:16
  Were no, no, no, the, these, these, these women with the big
• 36:20
  habits. I mean, they, it was, it was
• 36:23
  incredible. Actually.
• 36:24
  Fast forward, there was a time in the United States where if
• 36:28
  you were a, a pastor or somebody from the clergy, you could fly
• 36:35
  for 1/2 price. So I was flying from South Bend
• 36:39
  IN to San Jose. I was attending Stanford at the
• 36:43
  time. And so I said, well, this is
• 36:46
  crazy. It's $125.00.
• 36:49
  This, this is, this is insane. So I went to the Notre Dame
• 36:52
  bookstore and I, I bought a Roman Catholic shirt and pants
• 36:56
  with a collar and everything. And I had some cards made-up.
• 37:00
  Father Jonathan Pollard, Jesuit order, you know, the ladder,
• 37:04
  Jesus Christ, you know, the whole thing.
• 37:06
  And I had a huge crucifix. I mean, it's something that
• 37:09
  gangsta rappers use, you know, but but at the time it may it
• 37:13
  served the purpose. And I went up at the United desk
• 37:17
  and she looks at me and she says, you know, father.
• 37:20
  And I gave her the card Pollard. I said yes.
• 37:25
  And she said OK, you know, we're going to let you fly for 50%.
• 37:29
  And I said thank you, my daughter, and I was feeling
• 37:33
  really good about. This sounds like the first time
• 37:35
  you were a spy. No, the first time I was a spy.
• 37:39
  I really don't want to go into that.
• 37:43
  My sister hates me to this day. For something you did then,
• 37:46
  yeah. I was a little.
• 37:47
  Kid, what was it I caught? Her I caught her doing something
• 37:50
  and I ran to my mother and father and I said I want a room
• 37:54
  now and my father said you never inform a rat on your family.
• 38:01
  And that's when I learned the idea of a you never Moser a Jew.
• 38:05
  And I was punished. I'm not my sister.
• 38:08
  So I learned that when you, you know, when you're an agent, you
• 38:12
  you better know what you're saying and to whom you're saying
• 38:15
  it. So at any rate, I'm standing
• 38:17
  there feeling very good about myself.
• 38:19
  And there's a tap on my shoulder and I turn around and there is
• 38:22
  the Provost of the University of Notre Dame priest.
• 38:28
  And he says, Father Jonathan. And I said, yeah.
• 38:33
  And he picked up the cross. Sorry.
• 38:35
  He picked up the cross off my chest.
• 38:37
  And he said, never say that Jesus Christ didn't do anything
• 38:41
  for you and laughed. He laughed.
• 38:45
  My mother was incandescent. My father thought it was pretty
• 38:50
  funny. But my mother, she was a strict
• 38:56
  Yankee from Pittsfield, MA, and my father was off a dairy farm
• 39:02
  in upstate New York on Hudson, Hudson River.
• 39:05
  And so I I was in college mechanical engineering.
• 39:12
  What did you think you wanted to do then?
• 39:14
  I wanted to be a naval architect.
• 39:17
  I wanted to design warships. And designing warships is is
• 39:22
  much about the technology of buoyancy and strength
• 39:27
  coefficients and things like that, as it is the aesthetics of
• 39:30
  the ship. And I remember one of my
• 39:32
  professors giving us an example of this, of a destroyer, the
• 39:37
  stacks. And he said, what is this?
• 39:40
  You know, this is a warship, right?
• 39:42
  And we all, you know, he said, no, he put another slide up.
• 39:47
  And this was a Russian warship, the same class, same tonnage,
• 39:52
  but it had something different. It had a more pronounced bow,
• 39:57
  raked bow. And the funnels were tilted.
• 40:01
  And they had what was called Dracula's capes on them as
• 40:05
  sensibly to funnel the smoke away from the aft of parts of
• 40:09
  the ship. But it gave the impression of
• 40:11
  speed to the ship along with the bow.
• 40:15
  And he said this is how aesthetics scare the enemy,
• 40:20
  because he said this looks dangerous.
• 40:23
  And we all nodded our head. He said, remember that when you
• 40:26
  design A warship. So eventually the war was over,
• 40:35
  came home, and I didn't know what to do.
• 40:39
  You owe the Navy four years. I'm on reserves.
• 40:42
  So I called my mother from San Diego.
• 40:44
  The pay phone. Collect call.
• 40:48
  No, I, I had changed. They would have accepted it.
• 40:54
  And I said, mom, I'm, I'm home. OK.
• 40:57
  So I said I don't know what to do.
• 41:00
  And she said, well, you're going to go to law school now.
• 41:02
  I said I never applied. She said no, I did.
• 41:06
  She got my transcripts, she got my LSAT scores and she applied.
• 41:10
  She wrote the essays and she applied to all these law schools
• 41:13
  that I got into. So I, I was horrified.
• 41:17
  And I said, where am I going? And she said, oh, Notre Dame,
• 41:23
  she said you can go there for free, get a free law degree
• 41:26
  because your dad teaches there. But she said you're going to be
• 41:29
  in your old high school room and you're going to have a, you
• 41:34
  know, a, you have to come home with your father from school.
• 41:39
  You know, you can't go out. There are no girls, no drinking,
• 41:42
  no smoking, nothing. And at 9:00, we're having tea
• 41:46
  and pastry and you're going to continue working until 11 when
• 41:49
  it's lights out. And I said, I'm back in hell.
• 41:54
  So I said, you know, is, is this what you had in store for me?
• 41:59
  She said, well, I told you a long time ago that you had three
• 42:03
  options for employment. You could be a doctor, a lawyer
• 42:07
  or a plumber. And I said, why a plumber?
• 42:12
  And she said, well, remember the time where we had some pipe
• 42:15
  problems in the kitchen and you were bent down on your hands and
• 42:18
  knees trying to fix the pipes and everything?
• 42:21
  I said, yeah. She said, well I looked down and
• 42:25
  I said that's the tuchus of a plumber.
• 42:30
  You have the head for a lawyer and the tuchus for a plumber.
• 42:32
  Tuchus for a plumber. So after a year I was
• 42:36
  reactivated and I went to MIT for naval ship architecture and
• 42:41
  the first ship I I designed. This was before computers and so
• 42:48
  we had to use a slide rule. And, you know, so the professor
• 42:53
  who was an Admiral, old guy, did the numbers himself and he said
• 42:57
  your ship was buoyant for less than a minute after it took a
• 43:04
  torpedo and it turned turtle and the entire crew died.
• 43:08
  What do you have to say for yourself?
• 43:12
  So I looked at all the other young aspiring naval architects,
• 43:16
  Navy naval architects there, and I said my men died with honor.
• 43:22
  And he said, no, Mr. Pollard, they didn't.
• 43:25
  They died screaming for their mothers.
• 43:28
  So redesigned the ship, which Bro Hashem, was good growing up.
• 43:33
  It was a schizophrenic, typical schizophrenic Jewish life.
• 43:38
  My parents were not Orthodox. They were a traditional, so my
• 43:43
  mother had a glot kosher kitchen.
• 43:47
  Anything that came into that kitchen she had to look at to
• 43:50
  make sure there was an acceptable heckscher.
• 43:54
  The meat had to come from a kosher butcher shop.
• 44:00
  Make sure that he didn't put the thumb on the scale when he cut
• 44:03
  cut the meat. I didn't believe it until I saw
• 44:06
  it that. Actually happened.
• 44:07
  Yeah, it actually happened. But we would go out and have
• 44:12
  shrimp cocktail. Interesting.
• 44:15
  Or meat or chick. I mean, we never had pork ever.
• 44:18
  I never, I've never had pork at all.
• 44:22
  I've never mixed meat and milk. We were always Shoma Shabbos.
• 44:27
  I'm gonna stay home. And but there was a little bit
• 44:32
  of schizophrenia. I mean, we would drive to the
• 44:34
  Shoal with everybody else. It was what I call a Conservadox
• 44:42
  Shoal. So we had him a pizza,
• 44:45
  everything. But we would, the parking lot
• 44:48
  was closed and we would park down the street along with
• 44:52
  everybody else. There was no eye contact made,
• 44:54
  no Shabbat Shalom, nothing. Just head down and we would walk
• 44:59
  to Shoal, heads held high like we were virtuous.
• 45:04
  You know, we were, we were Shalmer Shabbos.
• 45:06
  No, we weren't. Did you?
• 45:09
  Were you sure my shop was in prison?
• 45:11
  Is that when you started becoming more observant?
• 45:13
  What happened in prison? I know I'm jumping a little.
• 45:17
  Bit no, no, it's OK. I was asked initially to I
• 45:25
  disappeared for six weeks. Nobody knew where I was after my
• 45:29
  arrest. And the question I was asked
• 45:34
  before my rendition, I was, I think I might have been the
• 45:39
  first person to have been renditioned before 911.
• 45:43
  And what happened with the Taliban and the ISIS guys that
• 45:52
  were, that were Al Qaeda guys that were treated this way.
• 45:55
  I was asked 2 questions. Who are who are your team
• 45:58
  members? Where did they were?
• 46:00
  How are they getting out of the country?
• 46:01
  And I, I don't know. OK.
• 46:04
  And then they put a list in front of me.
• 46:07
  This was within the second day of all the major Jewish leaders,
• 46:13
  American Jewish leaders, they said, just put a check next to
• 46:16
  them, all of them. I said, why?
• 46:18
  And they said, well, you're confirming their association
• 46:22
  involvement with your espionage activities.
• 46:25
  And I immediately understood that this was an effort to
• 46:28
  decapitate the American Jewish leadership.
• 46:32
  And so I said, no, you don't. Most another Jew maybe in a
• 46:36
  kosher bed din, you can tell the truth, but for the going, you
• 46:40
  keep quiet. So that night I was knocked out,
• 46:45
  bag over the head. I don't know where we were.
• 46:48
  We're up in the mountains because it was cold, very cold.
• 46:52
  And I was in a stone cell, no clothes.
• 46:55
  And for six weeks, you know, I was asked the same questions.
• 46:58
  You know you're going to sign not.
• 46:59
  I knew that if I signed, they'd kill me because you don't want
• 47:04
  someone like me coming into the court beaten up, tortured, and,
• 47:10
  you know, having had his confession, if you will, or
• 47:14
  testimony coerced. So I'm not going to sign that
• 47:17
  under anything. So for six weeks, my back was
• 47:22
  broken in four places. I have a plate in my head right
• 47:26
  now, my ankles, my toes, my knees, my hips, fingers, wrists,
• 47:32
  elbows, shoulders. Everything was broken and I was
• 47:35
  raped for six weeks during that whole time.
• 47:39
  And a Rabbi Rob here in in Rosalyn asked me, what were you
• 47:46
  davening for? Well, I wasn't really davening.
• 47:51
  I was just asking God to either have let me die quickly or just
• 47:57
  keep my mouth shut. And luckily he kept my mouth
• 48:00
  shut. Many years, many, many years
• 48:04
  later, I was in our house here in the Usalaim and the Mossad
• 48:09
  came to see me and Esther Elia Shalom was sitting next to me.
• 48:13
  She, I hadn't told her about this.
• 48:16
  She didn't know where all the injuries came from, but I
• 48:19
  didn't, she didn't press the issue.
• 48:23
  So I'm, I was asked to cosign or countersign a document that I
• 48:28
  had not talked. They had already signed it.
• 48:33
  So I just, you know, turned the page.
• 48:35
  I'm looking at what's there. And it was everything that was
• 48:38
  done to me. So I, I asked them naively, how,
• 48:44
  how do you know this? How do you know all this?
• 48:47
  They said, oh, well, we signed off on it.
• 48:51
  We, you were Hefka, you know, we didn't really think you'd live
• 48:54
  and here you are. So you have to sign this.
• 49:00
  This is why I'm under the protection of the Shabak and not
• 49:05
  the Mossad. They clearly want They still
• 49:09
  have an issue with me and it's not me personally.
• 49:12
  It was a conflict, interagency conflict between the
• 49:16
  organization I work for, Lacham, which is an activity of the
• 49:20
  Ministry of Defence, and the Mossad competing agencies.
• 49:25
  And they just used my arrest as a means of destroying A
• 49:32
  competing sister agency in Israel, which still exists by
• 49:36
  the way. So when they brought me back to
• 49:42
  to Washington, my lawyers finally found me.
• 49:46
  The judge just looked at me and said, I understand this is in a
• 49:49
  sick, closed courtroom. I understand that you slipped in
• 49:52
  the shower. And I said, no, your honor, I
• 49:55
  slipped twice. He said, well, you're a smart
• 49:59
  boy, you just keep that story. So after I was sentenced.
• 50:05
  We could we just back up for one second because I know like,
• 50:08
  you're the first spy I've ever met.
• 50:10
  Have you ever met another spy? No.
• 50:12
  You have any young children? Official professional spy, yeah.
• 50:17
  And they can be pretty professional.
• 50:19
  You know, my first espionage case?
• 50:21
  What? Was that with your with your
• 50:22
  sister? No, actually it happened before
• 50:25
  then. I'm just remembering it.
• 50:26
  I was a little little little boy.
• 50:27
  I was losing my baby, my milk teeth at this point and my
• 50:31
  mother, Aliyah Salam said put the your tooth in an envelope
• 50:34
  under your pillow and the tooth fairy will come.
• 50:39
  So I woke up the next morning and there was 1/4 and I said no,
• 50:45
  this, this, this. It just struck me as being
• 50:47
  inadequate. So I came down the stairs with
• 50:51
  my dog and I sat at the table and my mother said what did the
• 50:57
  tooth fairy bring you? And I said nothing, the tooth
• 51:01
  fairy doesn't exist. And I saw my father look at me
• 51:05
  and my mother looked at my father and she said I promise
• 51:09
  you the tooth fairy will come tonight.
• 51:12
  So woke up the next morning and there were two quarters there.
• 51:18
  And then I understood, OK, I know this game.
• 51:21
  OK. So I came down the stairs crying
• 51:25
  and I slipped it up onto my seat and my father's looking at me.
• 51:29
  And my mother said, what did the tooth fairy bring you?
• 51:32
  I said I don't believe in the tooth fairy.
• 51:35
  She didn't bring me anything. And my father put his hands out
• 51:39
  because I he knows he's going to get hell looking at my mother
• 51:42
  shaking his head. And she looked at him and she
• 51:45
  said the tooth fairy will come tonight, won't she?
• 51:50
  My father said yes. So the next morning I woke up
• 51:53
  and there was a dollar. I'm rich.
• 51:57
  I'm going to buy comics. I'm going to buy bubble gum.
• 52:01
  I'm going to buy, I'm going to buy all my friends kool-aid.
• 52:04
  Everything is out for a it's rich.
• 52:07
  So I know it's $1.75. OK, You know, you got to keep
• 52:12
  track of these things. So I came down and I got up on
• 52:15
  my seat looking rather sad. And my mother said, what did the
• 52:20
  tooth fairy like an interrogator?
• 52:22
  What did the tooth fairy bring you last night?
• 52:26
  And before I could say anything, my father got up and he said the
• 52:32
  blankety blank tooth fairy gave you a dollar last night, didn't
• 52:36
  she? And I said yeah, yeah, she did.
• 52:39
  So I learned the limits of deception at that point, so.
• 52:43
  Your career started early, but as far as professional spies,
• 52:46
  you're the first one I've ever met.
• 52:48
  And maybe later you'll show us your exploding pen and your shoe
• 52:51
  camera and all the cool gadgets that we all know you must have.
• 52:54
  But what? What is espionage?
• 52:56
  What does that mean? I mean, what did you do?
• 52:59
  What, what happened? I'm just like, I don't even
• 53:01
  really understand what that even means.
• 53:02
  What was the process? Yeah, let's let's rewind back
• 53:04
  there. So you're, you know, you're in A
• 53:06
  and who managed you back? How did you get recruited?
• 53:08
  This is the part that. I wasn't recruited.
• 53:09
  This is the part that I'm curious about.
• 53:11
  Yeah. What happened, thank you, was I
• 53:13
  was placed. I was in the Middle East for
• 53:16
  quite a while, doing certain things.
• 53:18
  I was in New York actually before that for quite a while.
• 53:21
  Well, you're designing ships at this point.
• 53:23
  That's where we're back at. At that point, because the War
• 53:27
  on Terror had begun and because I was from Texas and knew how to
• 53:31
  handle a gun and didn't seem to care too much about killing
• 53:37
  people. And I tried to explain to the
• 53:40
  Navy guys talking to me that, you know, if you're a
• 53:45
  professional soldier or sailor, you, you have to be prepared to
• 53:49
  kill. And they didn't.
• 53:51
  They said, no, you seem to like to kill.
• 53:53
  And I said, where did you get that?
• 53:56
  They needed bodies. So, you know, they put me down
• 53:58
  as somebody they could depend on.
• 54:00
  So I was a year, year and a half in New York.
• 54:03
  Absolute mayhem, no Miranda rights, nothing, nothing.
• 54:08
  Just target, eliminate. And then I went to Europe for a
• 54:12
  while and then the Middle East. Working on behalf of the
• 54:16
  government? Yes.
• 54:17
  In the Navy, Yes. Doing missions.
• 54:19
  Doing missions, yeah. Whatever mission they would
• 54:21
  give. You whatever they would give me.
• 54:23
  OK, anything that you're allowed to talk about.
• 54:24
  No, OK. I don't think so.
• 54:26
  OK. And that's for a very good
• 54:29
  reason. I appreciate that I don't want
• 54:31
  the Shabak or the Mossad after me, so.
• 54:34
  Yeah, there's, there's some really bad people out there.
• 54:36
  Yeah, who have long memories. I didn't appreciate the US
• 54:40
  attorney during my sentencing, informing the whole world that I
• 54:44
  was the Israeli intelligence officer that put together the
• 54:47
  raid on the PLO headquarters in Tunis in October 1985 that was
• 54:52
  designed to kill Arafat. Somebody talked here and alerted
• 54:56
  him. Wow.
• 54:57
  And that came out there and it. Came and I looked at the the
• 55:00
  prosecutor and I said thanks for putting a bull's eye on my back.
• 55:04
  And because 91 of them of the 417 guys had died in the in the
• 55:09
  air strike. And he said, you don't have
• 55:11
  anything to worry about. You're never getting out of
• 55:13
  prison. Well, when I came home, I was
• 55:16
  informed on TV that the PA had put a $1 million bounty on my
• 55:23
  head. And I guess it was typical of
• 55:27
  me. I just kind of sat there for a
• 55:29
  second and the interviewer said, do you have anything to say
• 55:33
  about that? I said yeah, I'm I'm worth a
• 55:35
  little bit more than that. You do have security outside,
• 55:39
  right? Yes, I hope so.
• 55:41
  Well, thank God we all believe in Hashem here, so we're
• 55:43
  protected by that. I, I, I do.
• 55:45
  But you're you're, you're serving missions.
• 55:47
  You're doing. OK, So what happened was I was
• 55:53
  put. Nobody knew I was Jewish.
• 55:55
  I mean, I didn't eat pork. How did I explain that I'm a
• 55:59
  vegetarian? Sure.
• 56:01
  And then you nobody. So I'm weird, you know, I'm a
• 56:02
  vegetarian. OK, fine.
• 56:07
  I was put on the team that was handling the US Israel
• 56:11
  intelligence exchange agreement. And we would, it's a quid pro
• 56:15
  quo. We would give information to
• 56:17
  Israel or Israel would give information to us.
• 56:19
  We would do evaluations respectively, hand it back,
• 56:22
  whatever. I apologize for someone that's a
• 56:24
  little bit of a unknown in this world.
• 56:26
  So this is in what part of the time frame is this and the?
• 56:30
  This was about 1983. So in the in the early 80s,
• 56:34
  there was something going on between US and Israel, something
• 56:37
  that you can explain to me a little bit more about what was
• 56:39
  happening. At that time, I mean, it's, it
• 56:40
  was publicly known at the time that we were the USI have
• 56:45
  trouble with pronouns sometimes that the US and Israel were
• 56:49
  exchanging intelligence on various things.
• 56:53
  And what happened just before that was we in Israel raided the
• 57:03
  Iraqi nuclear reactor. Now, my involvement in that I I
• 57:08
  cannot confirm or deny. OK, I I want to be, I don't like
• 57:12
  lying, but I don't like telling stories that I'm not supposed
• 57:16
  to. So I can't I can either confirm
• 57:20
  it or deny my alleged involvement in this raid.
• 57:23
  OK, so right after that raid, Casper Weinberger was the then
• 57:30
  Secretary of Defense and Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, who was had
• 57:35
  moved from the director of the National Security Agency to the
• 57:38
  deputy director of the CIAA. Son, I saw out of the worst
• 57:42
  order. We're outraged that we had used
• 57:49
  some of the material from the intelligence exchange to carry
• 57:54
  out the raid. You're welcome.
• 57:59
  So luckily my involvement with that wasn't quite known because
• 58:06
  there were, there were a lot of people involved with the
• 58:08
  exchange at the time. So they swore blood revenge.
• 58:11
  Why? Because we, the US, the Israelis
• 58:14
  had angered 1 Middle East ally at the time, Saudi Arabia.
• 58:22
  So what happened was there was an undeclared intelligence
• 58:24
  embargo that was enacted. And by the way, this all came
• 58:31
  out in the open. And This is why I can talk about
• 58:34
  it. When Admiral Bobby Ray Inman was
• 58:36
  going to be nominated, I believe it was for the Secretary of
• 58:41
  Defense. And this issue came out and he
• 58:45
  went postal on a press conference explaining the whole
• 58:51
  thing. I mean, if I had said half of
• 58:54
  what he said, I, I would have gotten additional charges.
• 58:58
  But he, he, he helped me. I mean, he just laid it all out
• 59:02
  as the genesis, the brace sheet of what happened with my
• 59:06
  involvement with the Israelis. So I'm seeing, you know, a list
• 59:11
  of things we're supposed to exchange.
• 59:14
  And I'm only, I am only in possession of a fraction of it.
• 59:19
  So I went up the chain all the way to the second secretary of
• 59:22
  Defense's office saying, what the hell is going on?
• 59:24
  And they said just, you know, if they have a problem with an
• 59:28
  enemy system, let them lose a couple of airplanes and they'll
• 59:30
  figure it out. You know, they're smart Jews,
• 59:32
  They'll figure it out. So I understood what was going
• 59:36
  on. And eventually it got to be too,
• 59:42
  too much. And I made contact and it was
• 59:53
  clear that I had crossed the line.
• 59:56
  So I basically made aliyah. I had had citizenship long
• 1:00:05
  before it was officially acknowledged that I'd had it.
• 1:00:09
  I had a $2.00. So who would?
• 1:00:10
  I paid taxes, everything. Did I receive a salary?
• 1:00:14
  Yes, just like CIA agents who received 2 salaries, 1
• 1:00:19
  officially and the other one from whatever their cover
• 1:00:21
  business is. I paid taxes on it.
• 1:00:24
  I mean the whole 9 yards. And I'll give you an example of
• 1:00:29
  something. At one point, we got
• 1:00:33
  information. This was before we had
• 1:00:35
  satellites, reconnaissance satellites here, the OPEC series
• 1:00:38
  in Israel. And so we heard information that
• 1:00:41
  there was a massive chemical warfare plant built in a place
• 1:00:45
  called Samara in Iraq. This is during the Iran Iraq
• 1:00:48
  war. And there was an official team
• 1:00:54
  coming to the United States to determine whether that was so.
• 1:00:59
  But I was tasked to determine whether there actually was
• 1:01:03
  something there. So the team, we met in a safe
• 1:01:06
  house and the team came to see me and said, well, we were
• 1:01:10
  assured by everyone in the Pentagon that these are just
• 1:01:13
  rumors. OK.
• 1:01:16
  So I took them into an another room where I had laid out the
• 1:01:20
  the mosaic, the pictures of the largest chemical warfare plant
• 1:01:24
  in the world, built by the Bechdel Corporation, by the way,
• 1:01:27
  that Casper Weinberger used to work for.
• 1:01:30
  It was a, you know, insecticide plant.
• 1:01:34
  That was the cover. And I remember one of my
• 1:01:37
  colleagues looked at this incredible facility and kind of
• 1:01:43
  rolled his eyes at me and he said, you see on a ton, it's
• 1:01:45
  sometimes better to deal with reliable ally, reliable enemies
• 1:01:50
  than unreliable allies. And we had to fly 2 aircraft on
• 1:01:58
  that plant to verify it. And we lost one of the planes.
• 1:02:04
  And so two families that I visited when I came back was to
• 1:02:08
  apologize for the loss of their children, their husbands,
• 1:02:15
  because they died to protect me. So, you know, there were no hard
• 1:02:20
  feelings. I mean, it's war.
• 1:02:22
  This is Israel and it's war. So a spy.
• 1:02:29
  It's very difficult actually sometimes to remember who you
• 1:02:32
  are because my boss, Rafi Eitan, not the general, not the Ramat
• 1:02:38
  Kaal, Rafi Eitan, his memory be a blessing, but the stunk that
• 1:02:45
  directed Lacham. At the time he was known as Rafi
• 1:02:47
  the Stinker and had a nasty habit of abandoning agents.
• 1:02:52
  I did not know that. So I was given my collection
• 1:03:01
  orders. Basically all the documents were
• 1:03:07
  supposed to have been given to Israel under the terms and
• 1:03:11
  references of the US Israel Intelligence Exchange Agreement.
• 1:03:16
  And a couple of times he went off the Derek asking me for
• 1:03:19
  political information, blackmail information that could be used
• 1:03:23
  on political leaders in Israel. And I said no.
• 1:03:27
  And he wanted to know the identity of American agents in
• 1:03:31
  Israel. And I said, that's forbidden.
• 1:03:35
  I'm not going near that. And it was lucky I drew that
• 1:03:38
  line because that you can get a death penalty for that.
• 1:03:44
  And he looked at me and said, OK, you can do that, all right.
• 1:03:49
  But he said, one of them is going to kill you, and one of
• 1:03:53
  them did. There was an agent and ACIA
• 1:03:56
  agent on the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee
• 1:03:59
  that ratted me out. If I if you ask if I had to do
• 1:04:07
  it over, would I still do what I didn't?
• 1:04:10
  And yes, I am not a traitor. My indictment says so.
• 1:04:18
  The indictment said that I I was unauthorized, but I transmitted
• 1:04:23
  illegally transmitted national security information to a major
• 1:04:27
  non NATO ally. Parenthesis Israel and in caps
• 1:04:32
  without intent to harm. But a problem 2 problems cropped
• 1:04:40
  up in my life at the time. 1 was the fact that there was a Soviet
• 1:04:47
  spy in the CIA. You might remember him, Aldrich
• 1:04:50
  Ames. He was a mole who was ordered by
• 1:04:55
  the 5th Directorate of the KGB to blame me for all the then
• 1:04:59
  ongoing deaths of American and Russian agents and British
• 1:05:03
  agents, MI 6 agents that were dying in in Russia because of
• 1:05:06
  his treason. And they compromised a low level
• 1:05:12
  Soviet agent here in Israel to kind of prove the circle, you
• 1:05:17
  know, the information came here and it got transmitted somehow
• 1:05:22
  to the Russians or the Soviets. So one of the prosecutors came
• 1:05:28
  to see me at one point aft long after I was sentenced.
• 1:05:32
  And he said, do you remember when the judge had you stand up
• 1:05:35
  and ask you if you had any remorse for all the deaths you'd
• 1:05:41
  'cause I said, yeah, I remember that.
• 1:05:44
  He said, what did you say? I said, yes, I'm I have remorse
• 1:05:48
  that there wasn't one more. He said, where was your mind?
• 1:05:53
  Where was your head? And I said, my head, my mind, I
• 1:05:56
  it was in Tunis. We missed Arafat.
• 1:06:00
  That was the whole point of the operation.
• 1:06:03
  He said, well, that's not where the judge's mind was.
• 1:06:05
  The judge's mind was in the basement of the Lefortovo
• 1:06:08
  prison, KGB prison in Moscow. And I said, why?
• 1:06:14
  He said, well, Alder James, who had just been caught, had gone
• 1:06:20
  into the judge's chambers. Ex parte was illegal.
• 1:06:24
  And it described for the judge in excruciating detail how one
• 1:06:27
  of the CIA agents, General Igor Trechakov, had been fed feet
• 1:06:33
  first into a furnace in front of his family.
• 1:06:38
  And I said I didn't have anything to do with that.
• 1:06:41
  And he said, well, we know that now, But Ames was quite
• 1:06:46
  persuasive in pinning everything on you.
• 1:06:50
  So when the judge asked you, all he heard was you were sorry you
• 1:06:56
  didn't kill another US agent. He said, did you notice how many
• 1:07:00
  security agents were in the courtroom that day?
• 1:07:03
  I said I thought it was a bit excessive.
• 1:07:05
  And he said that's because there were a lot of CIA field
• 1:07:08
  operatives that had volunteered to come in and kill you in court
• 1:07:13
  for what you'd done. And I said I didn't have
• 1:07:18
  anything to do with that. And he said, we know that now.
• 1:07:22
  So Senator Deconcini, Dennis Deconcini, who was then from
• 1:07:27
  Arizona and was then the chairman of the Senate
• 1:07:30
  Intelligence Committee, wrote a letter to Clinton, President
• 1:07:36
  Clinton, it was signed by everybody on the committee
• 1:07:43
  saying that I should be released and sent home because I, I was
• 1:07:46
  fall, had been falsely accused in camera for a crime I didn't
• 1:07:50
  commit. And Clinton's response in
• 1:07:52
  writing, which I have, it said that we know that now, but that
• 1:07:57
  Mister Pollard had become too valuable as a bargaining chip
• 1:08:02
  with Israel. That's in writing.
• 1:08:05
  Wow. So the other problem I had was
• 1:08:10
  the fact that I, I don't know if you guys remember Iran Contra.
• 1:08:13
  No. Oliver North of.
• 1:08:15
  Course Oliver North. That's right.
• 1:08:17
  Well, one of the trips that I came home here, I was briefed
• 1:08:23
  into the program of selling weapons to Iran at a profit and
• 1:08:29
  then using the profit to arm the contras in Nicaragua, which was
• 1:08:35
  illegal, was illegal. So OK, I did what I was.
• 1:08:42
  You know, I'm a good soldier. I I opened up bank accounts for
• 1:08:46
  them. This is where the origin of my
• 1:08:48
  bank account in Switzerland comes from.
• 1:08:51
  I yes, I opened up bank accounts for the American participants
• 1:08:59
  and later in Tax Court after I was sentenced without a legal
• 1:09:06
  representative present, which was kind of weird.
• 1:09:09
  You're guilty, by the way, in Tax Court and have to prove your
• 1:09:12
  innocence. It's like the Code Napoleon.
• 1:09:14
  I come into this court in my jumpsuit, orange jumpsuit.
• 1:09:17
  I just been given a life without parole.
• 1:09:20
  I mean, it was. And the three judges, all Jews,
• 1:09:22
  look at me and say, you know, Mr. Pollard, you're in a lot of
• 1:09:24
  trouble. I said, yeah, tell me something
• 1:09:26
  I don't know. I just came from federal court
• 1:09:28
  across the street. So they said, well, we know
• 1:09:31
  about this bank account, but we don't know the names.
• 1:09:34
  We have the numbers, but we don't have the names.
• 1:09:37
  So things could go well for you if you give us the names.
• 1:09:43
  And they said we have a document from the bank that said you had
• 1:09:47
  no withdrawal rights, you just deposited money.
• 1:09:51
  So we know this isn't yours, but we want the names.
• 1:09:56
  I said, I don't recollect. I can't remember.
• 1:10:01
  They said, why? They didn't mean anything to
• 1:10:04
  you. You're Israeli.
• 1:10:06
  They're American. I said, no, these are patriots.
• 1:10:10
  They didn't use that money for their personal gain.
• 1:10:15
  And they said, well, it was against the law.
• 1:10:16
  And I said, well, what I learned in law school was the laws and
• 1:10:19
  asks, and this is the real world, so I'm not.
• 1:10:25
  So the judges looked at me and they said, well, Jonathan, for
• 1:10:29
  the next 5 minutes, you're going to be a very rich man.
• 1:10:34
  And I said, why is that? And he said, because we're going
• 1:10:36
  to put you down as the owner of these bank accounts.
• 1:10:42
  And I said, but you just told me it's I, I had no withdrawal
• 1:10:47
  rights. They said, we make the rules in
• 1:10:48
  this courtroom. So they said for 5 minutes,
• 1:10:52
  you're an extremely rich man. So I asked for two things.
• 1:10:56
  I said, could I have a cigarette?
• 1:10:58
  So I got a cigarette and I'm smoking.
• 1:11:01
  And I suddenly looked up at them and I said, can I assign any of
• 1:11:05
  the money to my mother or father or my family, or is that OK?
• 1:11:10
  And they said no, Mr. Power, and it's not OK, It's just a turn of
• 1:11:13
  phrase that you're the owner of the money.
• 1:11:16
  So I kept asking for cigarettes. So when I left, as the door
• 1:11:20
  closed behind me, I heard the Marshall screaming that that son
• 1:11:24
  of a bitch stole my pack of cigarettes.
• 1:11:27
  I just put it straight down and yeah.
• 1:11:31
  I, I have to ask you, you know, because again, hearing and
• 1:11:34
  speaking to you with your amazing demeanor in terms of,
• 1:11:38
  you know, just being so easy to speak to, good memory, calm,
• 1:11:43
  happy. I keep bumping.
• 1:11:45
  Actually, The funny thing about the memory was they kept telling
• 1:11:48
  me in court that I have a photographic memory that I
• 1:11:52
  should never be let out of prison because I can recall
• 1:11:54
  everything. And I remember looking at the
• 1:11:57
  judge and the judge looks at said what I said.
• 1:12:01
  I don't know why I'm here. I don't know my name.
• 1:12:04
  I don't know why I'm here. I mean, I was joking.
• 1:12:07
  And he said, OK, you know, you're you're not on Johnny
• 1:12:12
  Carson right now, you know, shut up.
• 1:12:14
  So. But but as I'm curious, like,
• 1:12:17
  you know, when you found out the news, I'd like to understand
• 1:12:20
  that process you mentioned earlier or something.
• 1:12:21
  I can't get out of my head. Six weeks, no one knew where I
• 1:12:24
  was. I'm trying to understand what
• 1:12:25
  that means. I know there was a tremendously
• 1:12:27
  long article that you did recently in the past year where
• 1:12:30
  you discussed, yeah, where you discussed the treatment that you
• 1:12:34
  had a broken tooth that happened to you, amongst other things.
• 1:12:37
  Well. You have to understand, the
• 1:12:38
  first prison I went, they couldn't beat or rape the
• 1:12:42
  information out of me, so they put me in a special prison which
• 1:12:45
  was 150 meters down. If you don't mind, where were
• 1:12:49
  you when you first got arrested? Where was this?
• 1:12:51
  Where? Where Washington?
• 1:12:52
  Physically, you were in Washington.
• 1:12:54
  Washington, DC. You were at home.
• 1:12:55
  You were in a condo. You were in a hotel.
• 1:12:57
  What? What happened?
• 1:12:59
  I went to. I had let me back up for a
• 1:13:01
  second when I realized that the walls were closing.
• 1:13:04
  That's what I'm asking exactly. I I went back to Israel through
• 1:13:08
  a circuitous route and I talked to Rafi Etan at the time and I
• 1:13:13
  said, look, I've given, I've given you everything that was
• 1:13:17
  required now reassign me, let me retire from the Navy and just
• 1:13:24
  reassign me to Europe. It's hard to believe this, but I
• 1:13:27
  was actually selling weapons for this organization Lockham, and
• 1:13:33
  they were taking the money for other project.
• 1:13:36
  I mean, you don't put a guy like me in that kind of danger, be
• 1:13:41
  that as it may. So he looked at me and he said,
• 1:13:46
  what's your code name? I said Danny Cohen.
• 1:13:53
  He said, do you remember when I gave you that code name in
• 1:13:55
  Paris? And I said, yeah.
• 1:13:57
  And I told you, you know, like, why did you give me that code
• 1:14:00
  name? You know, you could call me
• 1:14:02
  Jaime Lipschitz for all I care, but why did you name me Danny
• 1:14:05
  Cohen? He said, well, as we told you,
• 1:14:08
  we had a Ellie Cohen in Damascus and now we have a Danny Cohen in
• 1:14:13
  Washington. He said, we told you that the
• 1:14:17
  risks to the respective agents lives were the same.
• 1:14:21
  We knew that if you were caught, there was a high probability
• 1:14:25
  that they would kill you. So I said yeah.
• 1:14:29
  And I told you at the time that that was bad karma.
• 1:14:33
  So he said, remember, I promise to get you out.
• 1:14:40
  I said, yeah, I remember that. He said, well, that promise
• 1:14:43
  still stays. It's a bald faced lie.
• 1:14:47
  But he said, I'm going to tell you the same thing we told Ellie
• 1:14:49
  Cohen when he came here and sat right where you are and said the
• 1:14:56
  walls are closing and they're on to me.
• 1:14:59
  He said you have to go back for one last mission.
• 1:15:06
  The Syrians, in this case with me, the Syrians are planning a
• 1:15:11
  surprise attack on the Golan. We're not quite ready for that
• 1:15:16
  right now, but there's a piece of military equipment that they
• 1:15:21
  need from the Soviet Union that they need to to get before they
• 1:15:27
  decide to go forward with this called a standing start
• 1:15:31
  offensive. And he said the question you
• 1:15:37
  have to ask yourself is whether your life is more important than
• 1:15:40
  the lives of all your fellow citizens.
• 1:15:43
  And they deployed army units on the Golan.
• 1:15:47
  And he explained some more things to me about what could
• 1:15:50
  happen if this occurred. And I had to make a decision.
• 1:15:55
  And I said, OK, I'll go back. That's what a soldier does.
• 1:15:59
  Wow. At that point you were able to
• 1:16:01
  stay in Israel. Yeah.
• 1:16:03
  And you could have avoided technically.
• 1:16:05
  Everything I would have just retired, disappeared.
• 1:16:10
  Yeah. Wow.
• 1:16:12
  So I went back and I, I, I have to admit, there was a moment of
• 1:16:17
  hesitation on the plane where I just, for a moment, you know, I
• 1:16:22
  just sitting on it. I, I have to stay.
• 1:16:24
  And then the plane moved. So it was too late.
• 1:16:28
  And you're, you're married at this point?
• 1:16:30
  Yeah. For how long?
• 1:16:32
  Few years. Few years.
• 1:16:34
  Yeah. Yeah, a few years.
• 1:16:34
  So you're heading back to Washington?
• 1:16:37
  Back to Washington. Wolves are closing in.
• 1:16:39
  He's sending you on your final mission, so to speak, saying.
• 1:16:42
  It's important. And, and what and what happened
• 1:16:44
  was two days before I was arrested, there were some
• 1:16:50
  Israelis in town to meet me. They did not have diplomatic
• 1:16:54
  immunity. I was very concerned about that,
• 1:16:56
  but they decided to come see me for operational reasons.
• 1:17:00
  And I just had a feeling. And I came back very late at
• 1:17:08
  night and I pushed the false ceiling up above my desk and
• 1:17:13
  there was a camera. So the alarm bells went off and
• 1:17:19
  my first instinct was to run, not tell anybody, just run right
• 1:17:25
  then. But I couldn't because I didn't
• 1:17:27
  have the information yet that was needed.
• 1:17:31
  It was a direction left to right, whether the equipment
• 1:17:34
  coming out of the Soviet Union in question was going to Libya,
• 1:17:38
  which was to the right, or going to Syria, which was to the left.
• 1:17:44
  So two days later I got the information and I was arrested
• 1:17:50
  later that night before I could transmit it.
• 1:17:54
  Where were you when that happened?
• 1:17:56
  In the parking lot. In the parking lot where?
• 1:17:58
  You lived where I worked. Where you.
• 1:17:59
  Worked. So some guy came up to me and
• 1:18:02
  put AI could feel it was a shotgun in the back of my head
• 1:18:06
  and I said I sure hope you're police.
• 1:18:11
  And the guy put an FBI badge in front of me.
• 1:18:13
  I said OK he said just put your hands up.
• 1:18:16
  He took my gun and he said gotta come back with me.
• 1:18:20
  I said no problem and they're trying to interrogate me.
• 1:18:26
  You know, like, why are you doing this?
• 1:18:27
  Why are you doing that? Where?
• 1:18:28
  Do you take you to right then and?
• 1:18:29
  There to an interrogation room in my building.
• 1:18:32
  You knew where you were at that. Oh yeah, I knew that the, the
• 1:18:35
  Rab, I was going down the rabbit hole.
• 1:18:38
  And so I had a, a red tipped cigarette that was a cyanide
• 1:18:44
  tipped cigarette. And you know, I, I just thought
• 1:18:48
  at that moment, you know, Jews don't commit suicide.
• 1:18:52
  We buy retail and you know, I just decided I I'm not going to
• 1:18:59
  go with this route. You had it on you.
• 1:19:01
  Yeah, it was a pack of cigarettes.
• 1:19:03
  Yeah. Red tip.
• 1:19:05
  I put a red tip on it to, you know, I'm not going to give this
• 1:19:08
  to a friend of mine, you know? Remind me not to bum a
• 1:19:11
  cigarette. From yeah, no.
• 1:19:12
  I don't smoke. Anymore.
• 1:19:13
  So officially. So I realized it was it was
• 1:19:19
  over. So I asked if I could call my
• 1:19:22
  wife at the time and which they allowed.
• 1:19:24
  And I mean, they're listening to me.
• 1:19:27
  She was part of the operation. And I gave her a code word on
• 1:19:33
  Passante in passing. I gave her a code word and she
• 1:19:36
  said, OK, so goodbye. And I said yeah, goodbye.
• 1:19:44
  They didn't figure out what was going on.
• 1:19:45
  They were listening to the conversation.
• 1:19:47
  But it was very quick and natural.
• 1:19:50
  So she dodged the FBI tale. She did what she was trained to
• 1:19:56
  do, and she warned the Israelis get out and she was supposed to
• 1:20:04
  go with them. But This is why usually they
• 1:20:09
  never have real husbands and wives on teams like this,
• 1:20:12
  because she came back. She should have gone with them.
• 1:20:17
  And when I saw her at the house. They're ransacking the house.
• 1:20:21
  I looked at her and I said, why are you here?
• 1:20:24
  And she said I couldn't leave you.
• 1:20:26
  I said, well, we're both going to die.
• 1:20:28
  Then I said that doesn't make any sense.
• 1:20:34
  So that not I knew the drill because I'd done it myself.
• 1:20:39
  I'd conducted operations like this.
• 1:20:41
  You, you leave the agent, this is under suspicion, free and
• 1:20:46
  watch where he goes, who he talks to, what he does.
• 1:20:50
  So I had a, a secret phone landline that was in the
• 1:20:54
  apartment which they never found.
• 1:20:56
  And I called and I explained what happened very briefly and
• 1:21:00
  they said, OK, call us tomorrow. OK.
• 1:21:06
  So I went to work and I did what I was told to do.
• 1:21:10
  This is after you were arrested. Yeah, I, I, but I'm free.
• 1:21:13
  Right, because this is the process.
• 1:21:14
  The process. I have to ask you, where's that
• 1:21:17
  hiding spot? So.
• 1:21:21
  You could say none of. Your never believe where it was.
• 1:21:24
  I I I want to hear it though. No, no, no, no, I'm sorry.
• 1:21:26
  There's there's some things in this line of.
• 1:21:29
  You could just say none of your business.
• 1:21:30
  No, I wouldn't say that. Well, that is just.
• 1:21:33
  I'd have to kill you if I told you, that's all.
• 1:21:36
  So the next night I get the call and I said, OK, I've I've, I've
• 1:21:43
  done what I was supposed to do. I've confessed to being a
• 1:21:45
  Pakistani spy, called misdirection and I said I'm
• 1:21:52
  ready for extraction. And that's when the ground fell
• 1:21:55
  out from under me and the voice said, Rafi, never put together a
• 1:22:01
  rescue plan for you, an extraction.
• 1:22:05
  He said you're to come to the embassy tomorrow.
• 1:22:07
  I said that's stupid. I already confessed to being a
• 1:22:11
  Pakistani spy. I mean, I had Pakistani money in
• 1:22:14
  the house. I had fake tickets on PIA to
• 1:22:18
  Islamabad. I had pictures photoshopped of
• 1:22:21
  me with certain Pakistani generals.
• 1:22:23
  I mean, it was all done. It was set and I passed my
• 1:22:25
  polygraph. So much for the accuracy of the
• 1:22:29
  polygraph. Well, you're a pro.
• 1:22:32
  They're tricks, OK? And they said no, you, you come
• 1:22:37
  in tomorrow at this time. So I did.
• 1:22:41
  And there was only one tale behind me.
• 1:22:43
  Everybody else was at the Pakistani embassy waiting at a
• 1:22:47
  helicopter overhead. So we pulled into the embassy
• 1:22:52
  and I, you know, just looked around and everybody had come
• 1:22:55
  out to see me. And I said, I'm home, right?
• 1:22:59
  Yeah. You're you're OK.
• 1:23:02
  And then a few minutes later, the chief of security came out.
• 1:23:05
  My No new and no. And he said Jerusalem wants you
• 1:23:11
  to leave the embassy and come in the front door.
• 1:23:14
  And I'm looking up this driveway and there are hundreds of agents
• 1:23:17
  and there's a sniper and helicopter.
• 1:23:19
  You know, I'm waving at him, you know, all this crap.
• 1:23:23
  And I said, you know, I'm going to die if I go up there.
• 1:23:27
  And he said those are your orders.
• 1:23:31
  I said, why don't you just shoot me and just say you thought I
• 1:23:35
  was a terrorist and take my wife in.
• 1:23:38
  She was very sick anyways, I'd say I said take her in and
• 1:23:43
  they'll they'll let her go. Said no, we don't have orders
• 1:23:49
  for that. You have to leave.
• 1:23:51
  So just before I got in the car, he held the door and he said, I
• 1:23:54
  need your last report left or right.
• 1:24:00
  And I just OK, I said write to Libya and he's I said repeat
• 1:24:08
  that she did. And I told him some other things
• 1:24:11
  which he repeated and he said, Hustler, I won't tell you what I
• 1:24:20
  responded to that. And so they arrested me when I
• 1:24:25
  got out. Since coming home, I've been led
• 1:24:31
  to believe that there is a very good probability that the person
• 1:24:36
  in Jerusalem that ordered my expulsion was a Soviet agent.
• 1:24:43
  They had to have me arrested to protect the Ames.
• 1:24:48
  They had to do it. So I still don't know for sure.
• 1:24:54
  I don't know who it is, but there it's a wilderness to, I
• 1:25:02
  mean, to paraphrase an author who wrote an interesting book on
• 1:25:07
  the National Security Agency or no such agency, it's a
• 1:25:10
  wilderness of mirrors, literally.
• 1:25:14
  So eventually I went to this prison and the commander looked
• 1:25:23
  at me. The warden looked at me and he
• 1:25:24
  said, you know, you see the grass, the sky, fresh air.
• 1:25:27
  What is the matter with this guy who's a Goliath of America,
• 1:25:31
  former Marine? And he said, when you come out,
• 1:25:34
  you'll be in two forms. You'll either be alive because
• 1:25:37
  you've agreed to cooperate, or you'll be an old man in a body
• 1:25:41
  bag. OK, so I just for the first
• 1:25:47
  time, it was like a bot called that came out of my mouth.
• 1:25:49
  I said, you know what? You don't run the world, God
• 1:25:52
  does. I don't know why I said it.
• 1:25:56
  So he looked down at me and said, we'll, we'll see.
• 1:26:01
  So this elevator took me down very slowly.
• 1:26:04
  I mean, it's a psychological thing.
• 1:26:06
  They, they want you to feel the, the bore, the pit.
• 1:26:11
  And I got down and there were 31 other men there.
• 1:26:17
  I'd never saw them, but there were 31 doors and they were all
• 1:26:20
  in there for the same reason. They weren't talking.
• 1:26:25
  And so they put me in this cell that was 3 square meters, so you
• 1:26:29
  can figure out how much space I had just put down. 3M sticks by
• 1:26:34
  3M sticks by 3M sticks. You couldn't stand up in there
• 1:26:39
  and slam the door. Light never went off.
• 1:26:43
  Nothing to read, nothing to write, no visits, no phone
• 1:26:47
  calls, nothing. You're buried alive.
• 1:26:52
  So I sat there on this little tiny plank that was the bed of
• 1:26:57
  concrete, and I had my first conversation with God.
• 1:27:04
  And I apologize for not talking to him ever before, but I said,
• 1:27:09
  you know, things are kind of tough for me right now.
• 1:27:11
  So there are no atheists in a foxhole.
• 1:27:13
  I I just assumed God had a sense of humor, you know?
• 1:27:17
  You know, he made women. He had to have a sense of humor,
• 1:27:19
  you know? So whatever did I say that?
• 1:27:22
  Edit that, Michael. Yeah.
• 1:27:24
  No editing. Yeah.
• 1:27:25
  OK. No, no, don't, don't edit it.
• 1:27:27
  You know it's who I am. So this, this is, I'm sorry,
• 1:27:30
  just so the sequence of events, this is how many days after you
• 1:27:33
  got arrested this. Oh, this is 2 years later this.
• 1:27:36
  Is 2 years later. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:27:37
  This is the place that you were going to spend the rest of your
• 1:27:39
  life. My life in so I I said to to
• 1:27:43
  Hashem, I said to God that look just like Avril Marvino when he
• 1:27:47
  negotiated for the survival of Sodom and Gomorrah.
• 1:27:52
  I said, look, if I stop doing these 10 bad things.
• 1:27:57
  And I thought about it and I said 8:00 and 6:00 and then I
• 1:28:03
  settled on five and God agreed. 5 And I start doing these five
• 1:28:08
  good things, save me. And that was it.
• 1:28:15
  And so the first meal I had, I, I threw up because of the meal.
• 1:28:20
  I don't know what it was. I I hoped it was dog food
• 1:28:24
  because dog food is sterilizing. And it was the same meal I had
• 1:28:29
  three times a day. No, no variation.
• 1:28:34
  And so one day the door opened. I never left the cell.
• 1:28:39
  There was a toilet in there, a little toilet, a little sink for
• 1:28:44
  water. And they said come.
• 1:28:47
  So I came out and I first thing I said was what year is it?
• 1:28:52
  And it was seven years later. And I said, OK, are my mother
• 1:29:00
  and father alive? Because they were very poorly at
• 1:29:04
  the time. And they they said, yeah,
• 1:29:06
  they're alive. So first time I said Baruch
• 1:29:09
  Hashem. So I looked down the hall and
• 1:29:13
  all the doors were open and I said, what?
• 1:29:15
  What happened to them? And they said they all committed
• 1:29:17
  suicide. So I said, I'm the lone
• 1:29:19
  survivor. And they said, yeah, we can't
• 1:29:22
  afford to keep this place open for just you.
• 1:29:25
  So that was the second time I said Baruch Hashem.
• 1:29:29
  So I got on the elevator and I literally came into the light.
• 1:29:34
  And guess what? There's the same warden and I
• 1:29:39
  have a problem sometimes with time and place.
• 1:29:43
  This was the wrong time and it was definitely the wrong place.
• 1:29:47
  I'm shackled, I'm handcuffed behind my back.
• 1:29:51
  And I just went up to him. I looked at him and I said, you
• 1:29:54
  see, God runs the world, not you.
• 1:29:58
  And he knocked me out, broke, knocked a tooth out of my head,
• 1:30:03
  which I still have. And I, when I kind of came to, I
• 1:30:08
  was laughing. The blood was all over me, you
• 1:30:11
  know, I could taste it. And he was trying to finish me
• 1:30:15
  off and they were holding him back.
• 1:30:18
  I was smart enough not to say anything to him at that point,
• 1:30:21
  but I just thought, well, I made that guy really mad and I was
• 1:30:25
  happy about it. So the next prison, the last
• 1:30:30
  prison I went to, I had never heard of before either.
• 1:30:33
  It was in the South in North Carolina.
• 1:30:36
  And the first I got there and the the warden said there are
• 1:30:40
  5000 inmates here, nobody's going home so you're going to
• 1:30:44
  wear this. It was a red T-shirt.
• 1:30:46
  So you're condemned. He said let me ask you 2
• 1:30:49
  questions, are you going to talk?
• 1:30:54
  And I said no. He said good, don't your your
• 1:30:59
  time will go better. Don't talk.
• 1:31:03
  And he said, do you have a knife?
• 1:31:05
  I said, what is this a trick question?
• 1:31:07
  I said, no, I don't. And he handed me one.
• 1:31:10
  And he said, you're you're going to need it today.
• 1:31:12
  You know how to use that. I said, yeah, I know how to use
• 1:31:15
  one. He said, well, you're going to
• 1:31:17
  definitely have to use it today. Don't hesitate.
• 1:31:20
  And I said, OK. And he was right.
• 1:31:25
  So I spent the next 23 years there kind of in a military
• 1:31:30
  section. My roommate was Delta Force.
• 1:31:33
  He was an assassin and he also had been abandoned and betrayed.
• 1:31:38
  So we had a kind of a bond in common and we watched each
• 1:31:44
  other's back that they didn't lock the doors.
• 1:31:49
  So there were a lot of people getting killed at night.
• 1:31:52
  So we put a trip wire up and one would stay awake in the dark
• 1:31:58
  with a knife, and then after an hour they'd wake the other guy
• 1:32:02
  up and they'd switch. So for 23 years I never slept.
• 1:32:08
  I mean, it was just what you had to do there.
• 1:32:10
  And some of the hardest time I did was when they moved somebody
• 1:32:15
  in next door to me by the name of Bernie Madoff.
• 1:32:20
  Now, I've known a lot of immoral people in my life.
• 1:32:25
  I have been known also to violate many of the laws of man
• 1:32:29
  and some of the laws of God in the course of my storied career.
• 1:32:35
  But Bernie was the first amoral man I ever met.
• 1:32:43
  Amoral. You might call him a sociopath,
• 1:32:47
  I don't know. But he was amoral and we did not
• 1:32:51
  get along at all. I had very little to do with
• 1:32:57
  little to do with him. He couldn't do the time and he
• 1:33:02
  was trying desperately to get somebody to kill him.
• 1:33:06
  And I was sitting at the table with two Gangster Disciple
• 1:33:11
  contract killers, very dangerous people, and I could sit with
• 1:33:17
  them because I'm not a rat. So they were fine.
• 1:33:21
  We were talking and Bernie came up and said he used the N word
• 1:33:25
  and said what are you doing with these two?
• 1:33:27
  Whatever. And I said, Oh my God, I looked
• 1:33:31
  at the two guys and said, look, I just got my clean shirt for
• 1:33:34
  the year. Please.
• 1:33:36
  You know, I don't want any blood on me.
• 1:33:37
  And they said, honey, don't worry.
• 1:33:39
  He said he can't do the time. He's not going to he's we're not
• 1:33:42
  going to touch him. Don't worry.
• 1:33:47
  So at one point, he, he baited me, goaded me, and he said
• 1:33:53
  something very disrespectful about my wife, Esther.
• 1:33:57
  And I just turned around and looked at him.
• 1:33:59
  And I said, what? What did you say?
• 1:34:02
  And he repeated it. You never insult a man's wife in
• 1:34:07
  prison, ever. You don't, you don't do that.
• 1:34:11
  But his insult was way over the line.
• 1:34:15
  And the same two guys pulled me off him telling me or, you know,
• 1:34:22
  come on, you're smarter than this.
• 1:34:23
  He wants you to kill him. So he went to the hospital and
• 1:34:28
  broken sternum, broken arms. I mean, it was I went, I snapped
• 1:34:35
  and several weeks later, but nobody ratted on me.
• 1:34:38
  It was strange. The the captain called me in and
• 1:34:42
  she looked at me and she said a little bird told me that someone
• 1:34:46
  looking just like you put Madoff in the hospital.
• 1:34:51
  You want to respond to that? I said, does the little bird
• 1:34:56
  have a name? And she said, I'm, I'm not going
• 1:35:00
  to have him killed. I I know what you're capable of.
• 1:35:02
  I'm not going to have him killed.
• 1:35:04
  So she said just answer me yes or no.
• 1:35:06
  And I said, Captain, for as long as I've known you, I've never
• 1:35:09
  lied to you, correct? And she said, yeah.
• 1:35:11
  I said, I'm not going to answer this question.
• 1:35:14
  And she said, OK. She said, in that case, you tell
• 1:35:18
  the person, she looked right at me who did this, that if I catch
• 1:35:23
  him, he's gonna do six months in the hole on bread and water.
• 1:35:28
  And I looked at her and I said, why would you do that?
• 1:35:31
  And she said because he didn't finish the job.
• 1:35:34
  Wow. And I said, well, I'll tell him.
• 1:35:40
  I'll tell him. I'll pass along the advice.
• 1:35:43
  He was universally loathed. In the end, he killed himself
• 1:35:48
  again. No, no, no, no, no.
• 1:35:50
  He died. He was very sick.
• 1:35:51
  He had a number of ailments, and I remember when he had two sons
• 1:35:56
  who died. One committed suicide, the other
• 1:35:58
  one died of leukemia, cancer. And in both cases he came to me
• 1:36:02
  and asked me how do I say Kaddish and what do I do?
• 1:36:05
  And I told him with the first boy that hung himself, a
• 1:36:12
  troubled young man, a troubled man.
• 1:36:15
  I said you have to give money to Sedaka.
• 1:36:20
  It's either for the elevation of his soul.
• 1:36:24
  And he said I'm not a, you know, fucking Friar, I'm not going to
• 1:36:28
  do that. Why should I give any money?
• 1:36:33
  And I said you have to, you know, you have to do this.
• 1:36:39
  He said I'm not going to do it. So I did.
• 1:36:43
  I was making $0.20 an hour in the factory at the time and I
• 1:36:47
  gave $5 to a charity for the elevation of this boy.
• 1:36:51
  So and I did it for the next son who died of he wouldn't give a
• 1:36:55
  penny. Nothing.
• 1:36:57
  Nothing for his own sons. No, that's that's amoral.
• 1:37:04
  That's not immoral. What happened to you?
• 1:37:08
  What happened to your roommate? I'm still paying his legal fees.
• 1:37:12
  He's still, he's still there. Yeah, he's completely innocent.
• 1:37:16
  I've known a lot of men in prison who were overly punished,
• 1:37:20
  but he's the only one I know who was completely and utterly
• 1:37:24
  innocent of the crime that he was, crimes that he was
• 1:37:27
  convicted of. He was out of the country at the
• 1:37:30
  time. He had an affair with his wife's
• 1:37:32
  best friend. Best friend, of course, had to
• 1:37:34
  tell her. Her brother was an explosive
• 1:37:37
  ordnance guy for the Army. They made a bomb, went off.
• 1:37:39
  His fingerprints were on the bomb, and he was out of the
• 1:37:43
  country in the army. Refused to tell the court that
• 1:37:47
  he had an alibi because it was classified.
• 1:37:52
  And so he got more, more time, 3 consecutive natural life
• 1:37:58
  sentences. And the judge himself said, you
• 1:38:02
  know, I, I know you're innocent. So let the guy go.
• 1:38:05
  I mean, what's the problem? Well, that's American justice.
• 1:38:08
  I'm sorry. So he was a bona fide Noahide,
• 1:38:12
  by the way. First one I ever met and from
• 1:38:17
  from birth. I mean he was genuine no hide
• 1:38:20
  the genuine item and I hope I can get him out.
• 1:38:24
  I don't know, do you? Have people that visit him on
• 1:38:26
  your behalf. Is that allowed to be careful
• 1:38:28
  about that? You know, I've got to be really,
• 1:38:30
  really careful. You you can't leave Israel,
• 1:38:32
  right? Is that?
• 1:38:33
  No, I've, I've left Israel many times.
• 1:38:35
  Oh, you have? Oh, yeah.
• 1:38:36
  For business. For business, Yeah, Mostly
• 1:38:38
  Europe. Eastern Europe mostly.
• 1:38:40
  You're not going to America, though.
• 1:38:41
  That's no, no. One of the reasons why I had to
• 1:38:44
  get out of the country is fast as I did was because we were
• 1:38:48
  told that the incoming Biden administration was going to
• 1:38:52
  indict me for obstruction of justice, asking for a life
• 1:38:56
  sentence. And it's now it's a sealed
• 1:38:58
  indictment. So if I ever decide to go back,
• 1:39:02
  and there's no the only reason I would go back to the United
• 1:39:05
  States would be to get my parents and move them to Har
• 1:39:08
  Harman Koch or Har Aze team or something to bury them in Kevin,
• 1:39:12
  Israel. I see.
• 1:39:14
  So there's no reason for me to go.
• 1:39:17
  If you don't mind because we're going to need to wrap up soon.
• 1:39:19
  And I don't want to, to be honest with you because there's
• 1:39:24
  so many things that come out of talking to you and you know, I
• 1:39:29
  don't know if it's ever going to go left or right, you know, pun
• 1:39:31
  intended, You know, in terms of the discussions, didn't see that
• 1:39:35
  coming in terms of the relationship and who you were
• 1:39:38
  with and Bernie, that story. But I, I'd like to know if you
• 1:39:41
  can take us to the part where, because again, I'm remembering
• 1:39:44
  as a kid and the whole world was advocating for you, protesting
• 1:39:48
  for you. And it, it meant a lot for me.
• 1:39:52
  And, you know, I, I could say on behalf of a lot of people that
• 1:39:55
  are in my family, friends and circle.
• 1:39:57
  When we found out the news that, you know, the redemption is
• 1:40:01
  coming and we went through the process of you going into
• 1:40:05
  prison. Can you take me a little bit
• 1:40:06
  through the process of you getting out in terms of what,
• 1:40:09
  how did you hear about it? What was that like for you?
• 1:40:11
  You know, I, I. Came up.
• 1:40:14
  It just, we don't believe in coincidence as Jews, but it just
• 1:40:19
  so happened that I came up from my first parole hearing,
• 1:40:23
  statutory parole hearing at the time of the political debate
• 1:40:30
  over the Jikpoa with Iran, the Joint Comprehensive nuclear
• 1:40:35
  agreement with him. And the first parole hearing was
• 1:40:40
  a disaster. And my lawyers were telling the
• 1:40:48
  assistant attorney general for national security the fact that
• 1:40:52
  there were any number of people, including the former head of the
• 1:40:56
  CIA, that was advocating for my release because I'd come up with
• 1:41:00
  a number of technological developments that would be good
• 1:41:04
  for the United States. And the guy on the TV, this
• 1:41:08
  assistant secretary, assistant attorney general, said, you
• 1:41:12
  know, we don't care. We don't care.
• 1:41:15
  You know, you're staying in prison for the rest of your
• 1:41:17
  life. And I looked at my lawyers and
• 1:41:19
  they said, say whatever you want now, just don't curse.
• 1:41:22
  So I looked at the guy, and I said, you know, the tragedy of
• 1:41:26
  this situation is you hate me more than you love the United
• 1:41:29
  States. And he went berserk.
• 1:41:35
  Oh, my lawyer looked at me and said, you know, that was good.
• 1:41:37
  You got him. You got him.
• 1:41:40
  So the second hearing came up about 3-4 months later and I
• 1:41:45
  just said, why am I going? I said, well, you have to.
• 1:41:50
  Unbeknownst to me, the Obama administration had decided to
• 1:41:55
  use me as a means of embarrassing Israel and those
• 1:42:00
  people in on the Senate in particular that were kind of
• 1:42:04
  backing Israel's call for the United States not to reach a
• 1:42:08
  nuclear agreement with Iran. So I show up to this hearing and
• 1:42:14
  the first conversation is, well, you're going to be going to New
• 1:42:18
  York and, you know, it's. And I just looked at my lawyer
• 1:42:21
  and I said, what? What's he said?
• 1:42:23
  Just be quiet, Just listen And OK.
• 1:42:29
  And I didn't know that that day on CNN and everywhere else there
• 1:42:34
  was this barrage of horrible anti Israel propaganda coming
• 1:42:39
  out from the government that this man who got paroled today
• 1:42:44
  was responsible for though the worst, you know, treason in the
• 1:42:49
  world. And, you know, so many agents
• 1:42:51
  died. It was just total lies.
• 1:42:52
  But it was meant to embarrass Israel.
• 1:42:55
  Well, like Balaam and Balak kind of backfired.
• 1:43:00
  So the day before I was supposed to be released, I was called to
• 1:43:07
  the warden's office and the secretary looked at me and she
• 1:43:10
  said, you know, I'm really sorry, Jonathan, but you're not
• 1:43:14
  being released. OK?
• 1:43:17
  So I went back home steaming, and I called Esther Shalom.
• 1:43:23
  She was my Mora and I, you know, the worst thing you can call an
• 1:43:28
  Israeli is a Friar. That's the worst thing.
• 1:43:31
  You can call him a murderer and call him a two timer.
• 1:43:33
  You can call him anything you want.
• 1:43:35
  You don't call an Israeli A Friar.
• 1:43:37
  Those are fighting words. That's how I felt.
• 1:43:41
  So she said, OK, be quiet. Be quiet, Davin, Davin, whatever
• 1:43:47
  comes into your head, which I did.
• 1:43:51
  And two hours later, I was called back to the warden's
• 1:43:54
  office and the secretary looked at me and she said, I am so
• 1:43:57
  sorry. I switched the names.
• 1:44:01
  You're leaving tomorrow at 7:00. So this is the only bracha I
• 1:44:08
  give to people what I daven for because or what I said because I
• 1:44:14
  know it works. I don't know him.
• 1:44:17
  It's on or the two of you or so I'm calling me.
• 1:44:22
  That's what I said and I just came into my head.
• 1:44:26
  So there is there is there are two things I would like to share
• 1:44:30
  with you or three things just if I could.
• 1:44:33
  In conclusion, one day it was very snowy and the roads were
• 1:44:40
  impassable. And the captain came to see me
• 1:44:43
  and said, you know, we don't have visiting today.
• 1:44:46
  The cameras are off. They're all frozen solid, you
• 1:44:48
  know. But your wife is in the visiting
• 1:44:51
  room, Esther. She walked 10 kilometers in the
• 1:44:55
  snow. You couldn't even see the road.
• 1:44:57
  She just walked. And he said my own wife would
• 1:45:01
  kill me if I didn't let you meet.
• 1:45:03
  So he took me into the visiting room, you know, there you're not
• 1:45:08
  supposed to touch your wife, you know, nothing.
• 1:45:12
  So, you know, the captain just said you can kiss her if you
• 1:45:16
  want, it's OK, you know, now, a restrained kiss.
• 1:45:21
  So I said OK, I kissed her. So we sat down.
• 1:45:24
  I had my arm around her and we're watching the snowfall and
• 1:45:28
  I look over at the officer and he's snoring and I know that the
• 1:45:34
  cameras are off. I said, excuse me?
• 1:45:38
  I went over and I woke him up and I said you want to make
• 1:45:42
  $1000? And he said, what do you have in
• 1:45:47
  mind? And I said just leave.
• 1:45:50
  I said I know the cameras are off.
• 1:45:52
  Just stand outside the door for 20 minutes, you know, and keep
• 1:45:57
  locked the door. And he looked at her and he
• 1:46:00
  looked at me and he said, you know, if it were anybody else,
• 1:46:04
  he said, I know you want kids. He said if it were anybody else,
• 1:46:08
  I would say fine. But he said, if she gets
• 1:46:10
  pregnant, it's my neck because I I'm going to lose my job.
• 1:46:16
  I'm sorry. And I said, oh, it's, it's OK,
• 1:46:18
  it's fine. I sat down.
• 1:46:22
  So Esther looked at me and she said, what was that all about?
• 1:46:26
  So I told her and she hit me in the shoulder very, very, very
• 1:46:32
  hard. And I said, what did you do that
• 1:46:34
  for? She said, $1000.
• 1:46:37
  That's all I'm worth. And I said it's all the money I
• 1:46:41
  have in my all the years in prison, working, slaving in a
• 1:46:44
  factory, This is all my money. So this, the second story was
• 1:46:51
  what happened. There was a a man, an older guy
• 1:46:54
  who had broken out of every prison he was sent in, never
• 1:46:57
  hurt anybody. It was a serial bank robber,
• 1:46:59
  very successful, embarrassed the police.
• 1:47:01
  He was dying of pancreatic cancer and they were not giving
• 1:47:05
  him pain medication. They wanted him to suffer, and
• 1:47:09
  boy did he suffer. So one night the guys came and
• 1:47:14
  got me and said he wants somebody to kill him.
• 1:47:17
  You, you got to deal with him. I mean, you talk him out of it
• 1:47:20
  or something. I mean, you, you, he never
• 1:47:22
  ratted on anybody. So he's a righteous guy with us.
• 1:47:25
  So you don't want something bad to happen to him.
• 1:47:28
  So I sat down next to him on his bed.
• 1:47:30
  He was crying and I held his hand and he said please kill me.
• 1:47:34
  Please. I'm begging you.
• 1:47:36
  I can't take this anymore. The pain.
• 1:47:40
  So I looked at him and I said, listen to me.
• 1:47:44
  You know you're going, right? He said, yeah.
• 1:47:47
  I said you're going to be before God soon and you don't want to
• 1:47:53
  go down, you just want to go up if you can.
• 1:47:58
  So you have to live another day and another day.
• 1:48:01
  And he said, why? I said to bless God, that's why.
• 1:48:09
  And he didn't understand really what I was talking about.
• 1:48:13
  And another friend of mine who also was dying of cancer, but
• 1:48:17
  they were going to let him go home on compassionate leave.
• 1:48:19
  He had maybe a month to live in the metastatic.
• 1:48:23
  He isn't going to be. He ripped the Vicodin patch off
• 1:48:27
  his arm and it left a blue line, which meant another five years.
• 1:48:34
  And he slapped it on the guy's neck.
• 1:48:37
  And the guy just kind of relaxed.
• 1:48:40
  And we were all stunned. I, I looked at him and I said,
• 1:48:42
  what did you do? Are you crazy?
• 1:48:45
  You're, you're, you can't, you're about to go home after
• 1:48:48
  God knows how many years you've been 3536 years in prison.
• 1:48:53
  What the why did you do that? He said, I listened to what you
• 1:48:57
  said to this guy and he said, you know, I've lived a very bad
• 1:49:01
  life. I've killed a lot of people.
• 1:49:04
  I've done a lot of bad things. He said maybe what I just did
• 1:49:10
  will look good in God's eyes. So of course, within about an
• 1:49:15
  hour he was arrested. There was a rat, he was
• 1:49:18
  arrested. And I the next day with hundreds
• 1:49:22
  of inmates, black, brown, oriental, white, whatever, we're
• 1:49:27
  lined up at the internal security office to plead for
• 1:49:30
  this guy. So finally I, I indexed up and
• 1:49:34
  I, I looked at the officer and he said, what are you doing in
• 1:49:37
  here? You never talked to us.
• 1:49:38
  And I said why I was there. And he said, you see the shred
• 1:49:43
  the paper? And he said, I said, yeah, he
• 1:49:45
  said I shredded it. He said I can't charge him after
• 1:49:49
  what he did. He said it was one of the most
• 1:49:53
  altruistic things I've ever seen in prison.
• 1:49:56
  So he's going to go home in 2 days.
• 1:49:58
  We're going to advance it and let him go home.
• 1:50:01
  So in two days, almost everybody in the prison was lined up to
• 1:50:07
  say goodbye. Why?
• 1:50:11
  Because in an environment like that where life is really,
• 1:50:15
  really cheap, for somebody to stand up and do something like
• 1:50:21
  that with nothing to gain from it kind of gave us all hope in
• 1:50:28
  man. So he died about 3 weeks later.
• 1:50:34
  The last thing I have to tell you is one day Esther came to
• 1:50:37
  see me and she had been sent by the cabinet B BS Cabinet and I
• 1:50:46
  was surprised. I said what are you doing here?
• 1:50:47
  And she said Kerry, the Secretary of State had offered
• 1:50:53
  to release you. I said what's the catch?
• 1:50:58
  She said he wants 150 terrorists with blood on their hands to be
• 1:51:03
  released. And she said you can't come home
• 1:51:07
  if you agree to this. You're going to stay here in the
• 1:51:11
  mid bar for the rest of your life free but in the desert.
• 1:51:17
  But she said before you answer me, I said why why why?
• 1:51:21
  Why am I being asked? And she said, BB is putting it
• 1:51:24
  on you. It's up to you to decide whether
• 1:51:28
  this deal goes forward or not. I mean, I thought at the moment
• 1:51:32
  that's a really horrible burden to put on me because I know I'm
• 1:51:36
  never getting out otherwise. But he also understood what I
• 1:51:41
  was going to say. So she said, before you answer,
• 1:51:46
  I want you to understand that whatever you decide, whether you
• 1:51:51
  decide in prison to stay in prison, I will stay here with
• 1:51:53
  you or if you decide to stay in the mid bar as she called it, I
• 1:52:00
  will stay with you. That's why over her grave on her
• 1:52:05
  stone, you know, kind of 1/2 moon half circle is the quote
• 1:52:11
  from Tehelim. I knew you were in your youth in
• 1:52:13
  the in the desert. I loved you when you were youth
• 1:52:16
  in the desert. So she said, what's your answer?
• 1:52:20
  So I said no, she said, well, could you give me a slightly
• 1:52:25
  longer answer because I have to go back and, and brief the
• 1:52:28
  cabinet. I said, you know, hell no.
• 1:52:31
  And she said, no, you know, you're an educated man.
• 1:52:34
  I thought, you know, could you just give me an educated answer?
• 1:52:38
  And I said, OK, fine. There are three reasons.
• 1:52:40
  Number one, it would devalue the life of the victims #2 it would
• 1:52:45
  lower deterrence, would encourage other murder, other
• 1:52:49
  Arabs to murder Jews. And thirdly, it would it would
• 1:52:52
  inflict terrible pain on the families while they might want
• 1:52:57
  me out. Not this way.
• 1:53:00
  So she said that's a very, those are very good answers, but it's
• 1:53:02
  not the Jewish answer. So I said, OK, what's the Jewish
• 1:53:07
  answer? And she said there are only two
• 1:53:09
  ways you can come home, either as a Met, you're, you're dead
• 1:53:14
  and we'll put you in Knesset. Yes, I am.
• 1:53:17
  Or you'll come home as an old man and kiss the ground.
• 1:53:23
  I thought why isn't there a third way that I could come home
• 1:53:26
  as a young man and just you know, but that that's what she
• 1:53:29
  told me and she said I want you to remember something.
• 1:53:32
  Go back to the Mera Galim. They actually voted to stay in
• 1:53:39
  the mid bar for their COVID and she said we've been paying for
• 1:53:44
  that ever since. So she said that is why you said
• 1:53:49
  no, because you don't want more pain and suffering on the Jewish
• 1:53:54
  people because of your decision to stay in the mid bar.
• 1:53:58
  And I said that's the Jewish answer.
• 1:54:00
  And she said yes. I said, OK, you can put my put
• 1:54:03
  my name on that. But that's why I kissed the
• 1:54:05
  ground when I came back. I it just seemed like the
• 1:54:12
  natural thing to do. So I'm really happy that you
• 1:54:18
  spent time telling us about her because it was on my mind a lot
• 1:54:22
  and I appreciate that. Esther, you know, look what she
• 1:54:26
  did at the end of her life. She did the shit of with my
• 1:54:30
  current wife. She just had hours to live.
• 1:54:35
  And you know, when I asked her why, why did you do this?
• 1:54:40
  You know, I heard the words. I was living in dread hearing.
• 1:54:43
  She said, I'm, I'm going today and I want you to be happy.
• 1:54:52
  There was a moment when I was asked to go up to the Golan,
• 1:54:57
  Ramata Golan to look at some things.
• 1:55:00
  And she insisted on coming. And I said, sweetheart, you
• 1:55:05
  can't walk. You know, you can barely
• 1:55:08
  breathe. You know what she said?
• 1:55:09
  I, I, I have to go. So I carried her and she said,
• 1:55:16
  take me up to the top of this little hill, which I did.
• 1:55:20
  And there's Syria on one side in Lebanon, I mean, within a couple
• 1:55:24
  of meters. And we have security around us.
• 1:55:28
  And she said, Look North, I Look North.
• 1:55:32
  And she said, what do you see? I said, I see Hezbollah.
• 1:55:37
  I mean, the flags were everywhere.
• 1:55:39
  And she said, look further. What do you see?
• 1:55:43
  And I said more Hezbollah and she said no, look with your
• 1:55:49
  nephesh as far as you can see, what do you see?
• 1:55:55
  I said I don't know what she said Erez Aatsvi.
• 1:56:01
  So she said I won't be around to see it, but hopefully you will
• 1:56:07
  be. So my parting gift to everybody
• 1:56:12
  is that we should all be Zoha to see that what she saw.
• 1:56:19
  Amen. Thank you so much for sharing.
• 1:56:21
  Really, really appreciate today and wow, thank you, Dave for
• 1:56:28
  being here. Thank you for the unbelievable
• 1:56:30
  opportunity to be part of this. And this was amazing.
• 1:56:32
  This is by me as the millions of people that bump into you and
• 1:56:37
  you know, usual I am every day. This was not a coincidence.
• 1:56:41
  No, we don't believe in coincidence.
• 1:56:42
  Exactly. And I can't wait to give Sedaka
• 1:56:46
  in Leila Nishmas, your previous wife, Bass Raisel Bracha, have
• 1:56:54
  an aliyah. And may all the Nashamas that
• 1:56:57
  are not with us have an aliyah. And thank you again for your
• 1:57:02
  heroism, for for thank you for being who you are.
• 1:57:05
  Thank you for your transparency. Thank you for your love of life
• 1:57:10
  and for infusing that into this session and this discussion.
• 1:57:14
  Guys, thanks for subscribing, thanks for listening, thanks for
• 1:57:18
  getting involved. I can't ask for more.
• 1:57:21
  And thank you, Hashem, for this opportunity, for being here
• 1:57:24
  today. And that's a wrap.
• 1:57:27
  Thank you. Thank you.
• 1:57:28
  Wow, that was amazing.