Israel Jurist Refuses to Join Pollard Probe

JERUSALEM — An eminent Israeli jurist Thursday dealt a sharp setback to his government’s hopes to quiet U.S. and domestic criticism of its role in the Jonathan Jay Pollard spy affair when he refused to serve on a special investigating committee.

Former Supreme Court Chief Justice Moshe Landau, 74, turned down the committee chairmanship because the two-man panel’s powers are too restricted, he said.

Within hours, the government announced that the president of the Israel Press Council, Yehoshua Rotenstreich, 76, has agreed to serve in Landau’s place, joining industrialist Zvi Tzur, a 61-year-old former army chief of staff, on the committee.

While he is a respected Tel Aviv attorney, Rotenstreich does not have the prestige of jurist Landau, who was the presiding judge at the 1961 war crimes trial of Adolf Eichmann. And the setback raised new questions about whether the committee will get to the bottom of the Pollard affair.

No Commitments

Casting additional doubt on the probe was Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s statement Thursday that he will not consider himself bound to accept any recommendations of the committee. “We haven’t committed ourselves to anything,” he said.

Unlike a full-fledged judicial commission of inquiry, an investigating committee has no power to subpoena witnesses or to make them testify under oath. And its recommendations carry no legal weight.

Landau’s rejection of the post recalled a similar move by the late Chief Justice Yitzhak Kahan when he was originally asked to look within a similar framework into Israel’s involvement in the 1982 massacres by Lebanese Christians at the Sabra and Chatilla camps in Beirut.

Kahan took on the job only after the government agreed to a full-fledged judicial inquiry into the affair. And the now-famous Kahan Commission report ultimately cost one Cabinet minister and several army officers their jobs while rocking the foundations of then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s government.

Denies Panel Is Powerless

Rotenstreich said in an Israel radio interview Thursday that he does not agree that the investigating committee lacks power.

“The teeth of the committee is that if (it) will feel that something is being hidden from the committee, it will, with a bang, resign and inform the public, which is a much bigger impact than anything else,” he said.

Rotenstreich said that in his opinion, there is no major practical difference between an investigating committee and a state commission of inquiry. “This difference may be theoretic, but practically, as far as I’m concerned, there will be no difference,” he said.

In his letter of appointment, Shamir told the newly appointed Pollard investigators that they “will be authorized to receive all the information concerning this case that you require according to your judgment, whether in oral or written form, from any person whom you so desire.”

‘Rules of Secrecy’

Shamir added that “the obligatory rules of secrecy concerning preservation of the security and foreign relations of the state shall apply to your deliberations,” and he asked that they submit their report “to the Cabinet through me . . . at the earliest date possible.”

Senior Cabinet ministers developed a consensus this week about the need for an investigating committee. Whether that consensus will survive Landau’s rejection of the assignment and Rotenstreich’s appointment will not be clear until the Cabinet’s next scheduled meeting, which has been postponed until Tuesday because of a Jewish holiday.

Planning Minister Gad Yaacobi said Thursday that he will seek the appointment of a full-fledged judicial inquiry into the affair.

Much may depend on how the United States reacts. Acting on instructions from Secretary of State George P. Shultz, Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering met here Thursday with Shimon Peres, Israeli foreign minister and alternate prime minister, to inform him of the American view. Pickering refused afterward to discuss his meeting with reporters.

Pollard is the former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst whom a U.S. court sentenced to life imprisonment last week for passing hundreds of top secret military documents to Israel.

Apology for ‘Rogue’ Operation

The Israeli government apologized to the United States over what it termed an unauthorized, “rogue” espionage operation after Pollard was arrested in November, 1985. And it said it disbanded the intelligence unit that had recruited him.

But the promotion just five days before Pollard’s sentencing of the Israeli air force officer who was said to have been his first “handler” raised a new storm of protest in the United States and doubts about the sincerity of Israel’s contrition.

Shamir, who originally opposed any investigation into the Pollard affair, reversed himself Wednesday because of what his spokesman called “the realization that somehow there was a loss of credibility in what the government was saying” about the Pollard affair.

Burton Levinson of Los Angeles, national chairman of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, said he told government leaders here Thursday that they should suspend Col. Aviem Sella, the air force officer who allegedly recruited Pollard, and Rafi Eitan, the head of the intelligence unit that Pollard served, pending the outcome of the investigation.

Levinson described Israeli officials as cool to the idea, however.