Pro-Pollard at the WSJ (and Anti)

Two letters over at the Wall Street Journal, one from former CIA head Woolsey:-

It's Time to Commute Jonathan Pollard's Sentence

Regarding Martin Peretz's "The Mendacious Movement to Free a Convicted Spy" (op-ed, June 25): I 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.

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.

The recently convicted spies for such countries as Saudi Arabia, Ghana, Ecuador, Egypt, the Philippines and South Korea are serving less than a decade. One especially damaging Greek-American spy, Steven Lalas, received a 14-year sentence, just over half of what Pollard has already served.

Pollard has cooperated fully with the U.S. government, pledged not to profit from his crime (e.g., from book sales), and has many times expressed remorse for what he did.

There is absolutely no reason for Pollard to be imprisoned for as long as Ames and Hanssen, and substantially longer than spies from other friendly, allied, and neutral countries. For those hung up for some reason on the fact that he's an American Jew, pretend he's a Greek- or Korean- or Filipino-American and free him.

R. James Woolsey
Washington

Jonathan Pollard agreed to a plea bargain in return for a lighter sentence, saving the government the cost of a trial. The government reneged on this agreement and gave Pollard a harsher sentence for spying for an ally than it had given to any other spies guilty of comparable offenses, or to many of those spying for hostile nations. In 1991 Pollard asked for a new trial. He was denied one because of technical reasons resulting from mistakes made by his lawyer. In a dissenting opinion, Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Williams called the case "a fundamental miscarriage of justice" and wrote in 1992 that he would have ordered that Pollard's sentence be vacated.

Judge Williams asserted that Pollard should be granted a new sentencing hearing before a new judge because the U.S. prosecutors violated the spirit and the letter of the agreement they had made with Pollard when he gave up his right to a trial and agreed to plead guilty to spying for Israel.

Margot Gardner
Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

My comment that I left there:

Dear Nonsensesuch,

where exactly is that street named after Pollard in Israel.  I live here and would love to see it.  Some kook by the name of Barry Chamish claims its in Mitzpeh Ramon but the map claims it isn't there.  Maybe this is a hoax and that anti-Zionists and anti-Semites pick up on these things and implicitly beieve them due to their natural tendency to trust conspiracy theories and anything anti-Jewish and anti-Israel without even checking?  You wouldn't be one of those, would you?

By the way, if your name is real Lemuel (which it isn't but who cares?), can we call you lemming for short?

In any case, Laird Wilcox is wrong.  Nothing went to the USSR but ask a good American like Walker or Aimes about that.  The only millions that have died are his brain cells.

(k/t=IMRA)

^