The Hunting Horse: The Truth Behind the Jonathan Pollard Spy Case [Hardcover]

Elliot Goldenberg (Author), Alan M. Dershowitz (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2000

In 1987, former Naval Intelligence officer Jonathan Jay Pollard was sentenced to life in prison for passing classified information to the Israelis - the only person ever to be so severely punished for spying on behalf of an American ally. Why was his sentence so harsh? This fascinating, intensively researched book, by investigative journalist Elliot Goldenberg, finally reveals the whole story. After numerous interviews with top intelligence operatives and government insiders, Goldenberg is able to make a strong case that Pollard's sentence was not due to the severity of the damage he inflicted on the security of the United States. His greatest crime, Goldenberg insists, was that Pollard inadvertently stumbled upon and threatened to expose secret dealings between President Reagan's most-trusted advisors and Saddam Hussein. "The Hunting Horse" (the Israeli code name for Pollard) provides a rare glimpse into what may be the greatest cover-up in American history, a world of secret agendas and covert operations that is too often kept hidden from congressional overseers.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Goldenberg follows up his earlier book, The Spy Who Knew Too Much, to explore what convicted spy Jonathan Pollard uncovered about the relationship between the U.S and Iraq before the Persian Gulf War. Pollard, a former naval intelligence officer, was sentenced to life imprisonment following his conviction for spying on the U.S. for Israel but was never convicted of treason. Goldenberg's latest book is based on prison correspondence with Pollard and interviews with government officials, as well as the wealth of other books that have been written on the case. Goldenberg notes Pollard's bitterness that the U.S. government reneged on an agreement for leniency in exchange for a guilty plea. Goldenberg recalls how Pollard was lured into spying, and his conflicted loyalties to his country and his ancestral land. Pollard was motivated by his distress at discovering that the U.S. wasn't honoring agreements to share information with Israel. Goldenberg makes a strong and well-researched case that the government's relatively harsh treatment of Pollard and continued campaign to discredit him give credence to his claim of a cover-up. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"appropriate for a synagogue library...introduction to the Byzantine world of Middle East politics, espionage, and oil-interest machinations." -- Association of Jewish Libraries Newsletter

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 299 pages
• Publisher: Prometheus Books; 1St Edition edition (September 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1573928542
• ISBN-13: 978-1573928540
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,939,831 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An apologist's view, October 12, 2010

By 

Rickme - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Hunting Horse: The Truth Behind the Jonathan Pollard Spy Case (Hardcover)

The vast majority of this work is about other individuals and events. Elliot Goldenberg, the author, then justifies and rationalizes Jonathan Pollard's actions from these perspectives never denying he betrayed America but going to great lengths to detail what he did not do.

Jonathan Pollard is a traitor whose loyalites lie with another country and betrayed his own. He is quoted, in the book, saying he 'wants to go home' sic. Israel. Israel, our puported ally, has never given an accounting of what Jonathan Pollard took from America and turned over to Israel and then what Israel then did with this information. However, Israel never misses an opportunity to seek his release.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A Pitiable Travesty Of A Joke, August 26, 2009

By 

Steven Sica "tired typist" (New York City) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Hunting Horse: The Truth Behind the Jonathan Pollard Spy Case (Hardcover)

The author is a committed partisan of Israel and a total apologist for Zionism. Which of course is his total right. But when he attempts to extend that right to defend blatant lawbreaking against the US government and the compromise of US intelligence assets, by our ever-popular "Most Reliable Ally In The Middle East," he goes too far and must be denounced for the, to put it mildly, confused and curious loyalties he so clearly holds.

Eliot Goldenberg's basic method, if we can call it that, is to summarize the various charges made against Pollard, and then claim those charges to be untrue based upon information provided to him by his "confidential sources." At almost no point is anything cited that can be verified by the reader - interviews with named sources, primary sources such as US gov't documents, secondary sources such as other books, contemporaneous news coverage, law reviews, journals of political opinion and analysis and the like. Only the author's many "confidential sources," in which we are supposed to have complete trust and total confidence. I hope I'm forgiven if I remain both skeptical and unconvinced.

I'm wondering exactly who these sources are : the Tooth Fairy? Tinkerbell? Santa Claus? Aesop? The Brothers Grimm? Bambi and Thumper? Snoopy? Daffy Duck? The Hulk? Hunter Thompson? Timothy Leary? Judith Miller? Jayson Blair? Talk about building castles in the sky! I doubt there's event one subatomic particle of truth to all the various "evidence" Goldenberg conveys to us from his "confidential sources." The information the author provides, such as it is, and the arguments he attempts to build, such as they are, make this book more fabulist than fabulous. I suspect Goldenberg's list of sources is limited only by incredibly fertile imagination of the author of this travesty masquerading as a book, and the expediency of the many arguments he proffers in his cosmically futile quest to convince the rest of us that Pollard is a victim of a Dreyfus-like injustice. All at the hands of Anti-Semites, Arabists, Big Oil, Holacaust Deniers and the rest of the usual imaginary suspects who consistently fail to view every Israeli word and deed with the identical levels of breathless worship as does Goldenberg and his like-minded partners-in-crime. Keep pitching, Eliot; you're sure to get an invitation to speak before an AIPAC conference, as well as becoming a lifelong joined-at-the-hip buddy of dubious carbon-based life forms like Alan Dershowitz, Abe Foxman and Morton Klein.

By all means read this "book." If you're still trying to decide if a massive and ever-changing double standard on behalf of Israel is being advanced in this country, here's a fine example of just such propaganda-meistering. Goldenberg's "work" is nothing more than hysterical preaching to the already [and irrevocably] converted. The rest of us, without emotional or sectarian ties to "The Light Unto The Nations" are advised to hold our breath, to keep our eyes peeled and to step very carefully around the many piles of polemical poop with which Goldenberg has so widely and promiscuously scattered accross the political landscape in his quest to get Pollard off the hook.

"The Hunting Horse"? Indeed! I'd recommend retitling this book "One-Trick Pony."

4 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally the truth..., October 9, 2007

By 

Yoda (Hadera, Israel) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Hunting Horse: The Truth Behind the Jonathan Pollard Spy Case (Hardcover)

Finally, a book that reveals the hypocricy behind the so-called Jonathan Polllard case. From being a rogue operation by Mossad agents (contrary to what U.S. prosecutors claimed) to the fact that Pollard was only giving Israel information that it should have been given to begin with (by the very laws and agreements Congress passed and approved of) to the racial nature of the case to the political pressures brought to bear by Weinberger and other degenerates against this great man.

The book's main weakness is that it does not examine in detail the heroism of indviduals and organizations that have been actively working on Pollard's behalf (i.e., Dershowitz, George Will, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, AIPIC and many editors of the Wall Street Journal [the latter by publishing so many supportive articles in their fine newspaper]).