Ex-CIA Chief Calls for Release of Pollard
Convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard must be released, former CIA chief R. James Woolsey wrote in a letter to the editor sent to the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, arguing that one reason Pollard has remained in prison for as long as he has was that he was an American Jew.
Woolsey, who has voiced his support for the release of the convicted spy in the past, wrote in the letter that, while he had “recommended against clemency for Jonathan Pollard early in the first Clinton administration when I was director of Central Intelligence, but now, nearly two decades later, I support his release. What would I say has changed? The passage of time.”
“When I recommended against clemency, Pollard had been in prison less than a decade. Today he has been incarcerated for over a quarter of a century under his life sentence,” he added.
The former U.S. intelligence chief then said that the Israeli spy has been penalized in a harsher manner than other spies the United States apprehended, and that of “the more than 50 recently convicted Soviet bloc and Chinese spies, only two—Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen—also received life sentences, and two-thirds of these some-50 enemy spies served or have been sentenced to less time than Pollard has already served.”
For more, go to Haaretz.com
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO