Lawyers: Israeli spy Pollard to be paroled in November

[txradioguy]

Attorneys for convicted spy Jonathan Pollard said Tuesday the U.S. has granted his parole after 30 years in prison for spying for Israel. He is due to be released in November.

They said the decision followed a parole hearing earlier this month before the U.S. Parole Commission.

Pollard, 60, has been imprisoned since November 1985 on charges that he was selling classified information to Israel. He was arrested as he tried unsuccessfully to gain asylum in Israel's Washington embassy.

Since then, the case has stoked passions and divided opinions, with supporters arguing that he was punished excessively given that he spied for a country that's a U.S. ally. Critics -- including prosecutors and government officials -- call him a traitor who damaged the nation by disclosing a trove of sensitive documents.

There was no immediate comment from the Justice Department.

The U.S. has previously dangled his release, including during Israel-Palestinian talks last year. His pending release could be seen as a concession to Israel, which strongly opposed the just-concluded U.S. nuclear deal with Iran. But federal officials rejected that idea.

Pollard has battled health problems in recent years. He is serving his sentence in North Carolina.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/07/28/lawyers-convicted-spy-pollard-to-be-paroled-in-november/

[thundley4]

I'm thinking this will piss the DUmmies and other liberals off.  Yet they will still continue to defend Bradley Manning and Obama spying on everyone in the world.

Angela Merkel has a right to have Obama charged with espionage, doesn't she?

[Mr Mannn]

Obama is tossing Israel a bone to mollify them after handing nukes to a genocidal Iran.

[txradioguy]

Obama is tossing Israel a bone to mollify them after handing nukes to a genocidal Iran.

I wish Israel would tell the U.S. "sorry...don't want him anymore"

[Eupher]

Obama is tossing Israel a bone to mollify them after handing nukes to a genocidal Iran.

^^^^This.

Espionage is espionage. I don't care if you're spying for your Methodist minister next-door-neighbor, it's still a breach of trust that had serious consequences.

According to this link, he stole so many documents that the Israeli's had to get two high-speed copiers. Pollard had an SCI clearance, which is at least one level above top secret.

He was in the business of selling classified information and would've sold it to anybody, according to the link.

He approached the Pakistanis, he approached the South Africans, he approached the Australians. He turned over classified information to a South African attaché just as a show of good faith.

...

Jonathan Pollard was pretty good about telling us all the information that he had given over. And as a consequence of that, one of the things that we do usually with espionage agents, or at least that I did, is I would write an Affidavit for a senior officer to sign that explained what the harm was. So of the things that he gave us, I selected 19 different documents that represented the different categories of information that he had turned over to the Israelis. And I — just using each one, I explained what the harm is from this type of information, not from this document, but from this type of information and gave it to Secretary Weinberger. And Secretary Weinberger made his edits to it. One of his edits — I have to tell you about this. One of his edits was he put in a sentence in there that said that if the death penalty were available, I would have no hesitation in recommending it. I crossed that out. And the next version I sent in to him, he put the same thing back in. And finally I said Mr. Secretary, if we can’t ask for the maximum punishment which is life, we can’t say that death is appropriate. He finally got the picture. But anyway, this Affidavit was then given to Judge Aubrey Robinson, who is now deceased and I took it to him personally. I sat in an out room while he read it and gave it back to me and said thank you very much, that’s all he said. And then we went to sentencing. And at sentencing, the prosecutors really didn’t say anything. They got up and they said he’s done harm, he should receive a substantial sentence, but that’s about the character of all they said. Jonathan Pollard got up and talked about what he had done and how sorry he was, and by the way I really didn’t do anything that caused any harm. And Judge Robinson said come up here young man. And he pulled out the Affidavit which he now had in his hand. And he pulled it open to a few pages and he said okay, now explain this one. And Jonathan Pollard couldn’t answer what it was, because it was a very big deal. In fact it has been made public now, so I can tell you what Judge Robinson was pointing at. It was something that’s what we all the Raisin Manual. And the Raisin Manual is — was at that time, a document that described all of the communications capabilities of the Middle East and how the NSA could attack them. And Judge Robinson just said explain this one young man and he was done. So at sentencing, Jonathan Pollard got life, which as I said, meant about thirty years. He has been there for about 27 or 8 years at this point. He has been eligible for parole for some time. He will not ask for parole because he wants clemency so as soon as he steps out of prison, he can leave the United States and go to Israel. - See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2014/04/pollard-information-weinberger#sthash.6Ys1cOOq.dpuf