From RMNews -- At the end of this article will be a link to a Rumor Mill News article titled "WILL BILL CLINTON FREE JONATHAN POLLARD?". To fully understand all the ramifications of freeing Pollard -- for both Israel and the United States -- Please read this article.

Published Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2000, in the San Jose Mercury News

Jewish leaders continue to press
Clinton to free spy Pollard
INTELLIGENCE OFFICIALS OPPOSE RELEASE OF ANALYST WHO GOT LIFE TERM

BY DAVID JOHNSTON
New York Times

WASHINGTON -- As President Clinton nears the end of his time in office, he is facing a new round of pressure to free Jonathan Jay Pollard, the convicted spy whose life sentence has become a battleground between Jewish leaders and intelligence officials.

Administration officials said Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Israel raised the issue with Clinton on Monday, and the president essentially restated the official position on the matter, telling Barak he would review the issue along with other clemency requests.

But the officials said Israel and Jewish leaders in the United States would probably continue to press Clinton to commute Pollard's sentence before his presidency ran out. Senior law enforcement and intelligence officials were just as likely to maintain their strong opposition to freeing Pollard, a civilian naval intelligence analyst who in 1987 was sentenced to life in prison as a spy for Israel.

A Clinton administration official traveling Tuesday with the president in Ireland said the case was not under review. ``From time to time, Prime Minister Barak has raised this issue, but there's nothing new,'' the official said. ``That is not under active consideration.''

U.S. Jewish leaders have long lobbied on Pollard's behalf, and in New York earlier this year, Hillary Rodham Clinton was pressed during her successful race for the Senate to support clemency. She endorsed an improvement in Pollard's confinement conditions, but did not support releasing him.

In Israel, the case has been championed by both Labor and Likud Party governments. But if Pollard is released, Barak, who faces an election as early as February, would probably claim the victory as his accomplishment, saying it was the product of a relationship that he nurtured with the White House.

The president considers pardon and clemency issues throughout the year, but often announces decisions at the holiday season. They are rarely announced earlier, particularly in an election year.

In recent days, Pollard's attorneys have filed a motion in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., seeking to have Pollard's sentence vacated. ``We have advised the court that we have requested President Clinton to grant him clemency to time served,'' said Eliot Lauer, a Pollard attorney.

Tuesday, government officials said the White House had given no indication that Clinton planned to reopen the Pollard case.

Even so, one official who opposes clemency said such a review was expected despite White House denials. He said a concession to Pollard's supporters in the waning days of Clinton's presidency, when such actions are almost risk-free politically, would still arouse deep resentment among law enforcement and intelligence officials.

The Pollard case has been hotly debated for years. Two years ago, the case nearly shattered peace negotiations at Wye Plantation in Maryland when Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister at the time, demanded that Pollard be freed. George Tenet, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, threatened to resign if Clinton acceded to the Israeli demand. In the end, Clinton refused to free Pollard.

At times Clinton has seemed poised to grant some form of clemency, as a gesture to promote the Middle East peace effort. He has considered clemency for Pollard on at least three occasions, in 1993, 1996 and 1998, and once ordered a separate reassessment of the case, which concluded that Pollard had seriously damaged national security.

Some officials said Clinton, who wields exclusive clemency authority, could weigh a variety of options, among them shortening Pollard's sentence or allowing him to be transferred to an Israeli prison, where Pollard, who obtained Israeli citizenship in 1995, would almost certainly soon be released.

Law enforcement and intelligence agencies have vigorously opposed such a step, saying Pollard's crimes were far too serious to provide any basis for clemency. Each time, faced with unequivocal opposition, Clinton has backed away from the case.

Pollard, who worked at the Navy's Anti-Terrorism Alert Center in Suitland, Md., has said he was punished too severely; he says he obtained information that the United States should have been supplying to its ally. But U.S. officials have said he betrayed vital secrets to the Israelis, who did not cooperate fully with investigators or return all the documents Pollard provided them.

In an interview, Joseph diGenova, the prosecutor in the Pollard case, reflected the unyielding view of many government officials. ``This is a decision of such gravity that it will taint this president's legacy forever,'' he said. ``It is absolutely indefensible from either a legal or humanitarian standpoint to grant clemency to this American citizen who had done the gravest kind of damage to the United States.''

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