Jonathan Pollard was turned down in his first application for parole.
“The breadth and scope of the classified information that you sold to the Israelis was the greatest compromise of U.S. security to that date,” the parole commission said in an August letter to the Israeli spy, according to the Jerusalem Post, which obtained the letter and broke the news in its weekend magazine Nov. 21.
“You passed thousands of Top Secret documents to Israeli agents, threatening U.S. relations in the Middle East among the Arab countries,” the parole commission letter said. “Given all this information, paroling you at this time would depreciate the seriousness of the offense and promote disrespect for the law.”
Pollard, a former U.S. Navy analyst who was sentenced to life in prison in 1987, had not applied for parole until now, the Post said, in part because he favored a presidential commutation, which would release him unconditionally. He has been eligible to apply for parole for 19 years.
Parole likely would require a period of remaining in the United States. Pollard, 60, was made an Israeli citizen in the 1990s and wants to move to Israel.
Part of what changed Pollard’s mind was an Israeli television interview with President Barak Obama in March 2013 in which the U.S. leader said that he would make sure that Pollard “is accorded the same kinds of review and same examination of the equities that any other individual would be provided.”
Pollard, the Post said, understood that to mean that Obama would ensure that any parole process would be fair.
Last week, Obama received a letter from former senior U.S. government officials familiar with the classified letter written by then–Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger that reportedly is keeping Pollard in prison.
The officials, including former CIA director James Woolsey; former National Security Adviser Robert MacFarlane; former chairmen of the Senate Intelligence Committee; and Sens. Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.) and David Durenburger (R-Minn.), criticized the parole process as “deeply flawed” and said the Parole Commission Decision document was based on “a patently false claim.”
The parole commission said it would review Pollard’s case again next year. — jta