President Barack Obama was considering clemency for Jonathan Pollard until Vice President Joseph Biden prevented it, the New York Times reported.
“President Obama was considering clemency, but I told him, ‘Over my dead body are we going to let him out before his time,’ ” Biden said during a meeting with rabbis in Boca Raton, Fla., according to the newspaper. “If it were up to me, he would stay in jail for life.”
Pollard was sentenced to life in prison in 1987 for spying for Israel. He is scheduled for mandatory parole in November 2015. In recent months, Obama has received a flood of clemency appeals on behalf of Pollard from Congress members and former U.S. government officials.
Pollard recently underwent kidney-related surgery that was deemed successful.
Obama is relying on Biden for help in his re-election campaign with Jewish-American voters, the New York Times article said. Biden, through his foreign policy work in the Senate, has built lifelong ties with Israeli politicians — something Obama does not have on his resume, the report pointed out. — jta