Leonard Garment

Leonard Garment was a prominent Washington attorney and former aide to Richard Nixon. He was hired by Israel in June 1986 to represent Colonel Aviem Sella, the Israeli handler of Jonathan Pollard, after Pollard gave up Sella's name. Garment's goal was to find common ground between Washington, D.C. and the government of Israel and settle the matter before it led to more damaging press.¹

Garment flew to Tel Aviv to interview Sella and speak with Israeli officials. The Israeli position, as outlined to Garment, was that Sella had done nothing more than meet socially with Pollard and that there wasn't the slightest indication of spying on his part. Garment, however, began stalling for time and refused to file the proffer as initially written, saying it needed more work. He returned to Washington, D.C. to try to negotiate a diplomatic solution.¹

During a meeting with a six-man Israeli delegation in August 1986, Garment was pressured to file the proffer. He eventually lost his temper and warned the Israelis that if they made a move in his direction, he would throw them in the pool. It was later agreed that Garment would withdraw from the case quietly. Garment informed U.S. Attorney Joseph E. diGenova and Deputy Assistant Attorney General Mark M. Richard that he was leaving the case because he was not sure whether his client was Aviem Sella or the Israeli government.¹

INSLAW and the Ratiner Dismissal

Garment was a senior partner at the Washington firm Dickstein, Shapiro & Morin during the period when the firm represented INSLAW in its litigation against the Department of Justice over the PROMIS software. INSLAW's lead litigation counsel was Leigh Ratiner, another Dickstein partner who had taken an aggressive posture on behalf of the company.

Garment met with Deputy Attorney General Arnold Burns during the course of the INSLAW litigation. Shortly afterward, Ratiner was dismissed from Dickstein, Shapiro & Morin. Ratiner subsequently filed a wrongful dismissal suit against the firm and settled for $600,000.

INSLAW founder Bill Hamilton alleged that the sequence of events reflected deliberate interference: that Robert Maxwell had contributed $600,000 from a joint U.S.-Israeli intelligence fund to engineer Ratiner's removal, using Garment's access to senior DOJ officials as the mechanism. Hamilton argued that Ratiner's aggressive discovery strategy had begun to threaten exposure of the international PROMIS distribution network. The Bua Report (1993) found no credible evidence to support any of these allegations and concluded that no improper influence had been brought to bear on Ratiner's separation from the firm.²