Petition Push for Pollard

(thanks to IMRA)

BI-PARTISAN GROUP OF SENATORS ISSUES HISTORIC CALL TO THE PRESIDENT TO RELEASE JONATHAN POLLARD

Four Former Chairmen Of The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Call For
Clemency For Pollard

In a historic display of bi-partisanship, a group of eighteen prominent former United States Senators recently wrote to President Obama and asked that he commute Jonathan Pollard’s sentence to time served. This letter, which marks the first time that a group of Senators have united to request clemency for Pollard, is an indicator of the solid support for Pollard’s release as a matter of justice. In particular, retired senior
American legislators and officials, no longer bound by party goals or political considerations, are now overwhelmingly in support of Pollard’s release. The signatories on the letter to the President include Senator Steven Symms (R-ID); Senator Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ); Senator Alan Simpson (R-WY); Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA); Senator and Secretary of Energy Spencer
Abraham (R-MI); Senator Birch Evans Bayh II (D-IN); Senator Robert Bennett (R-UT); Senator Donald W. Stewart (D-AL); Senator Connie Mack (R-FL); Senator Joseph Davies Tydings (D-MD); Senator Conrad Burns (R-MT); Senator Timothy E. Wirth (D-CO); Senator Larry Pressler (R-SD); Senator Robert Burren Morgan (D-NC); Senator David Durenberger (R-MN); Senator Byron Dorgan
(D-ND); Senator Donald Nickles (R-OK); and Senator Larry Craig (R-ID).

“We do not condone espionage, nor do we underestimate the gravity of Pollard’s crime,” wrote the Senators in their letter to the President. “But it is patently clear that Mr. Pollard’s sentence is severely disproportionate and (as several federal judges have noted) a gross miscarriage of justice.”

“After more than two decades in the harshest prison conditions, Mr. Pollard’s health is declining...Commuting his sentence to time served would be a wholly appropriate exercise of your power of clemency – as well as a matter of basic compassion and American justice.”

Four of the Senators who signed the letter are former Chairmen of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence...

The Senators’ letter to President Obama comes in the wake of numerous calls for clemency for Pollard from prominent government officials, high-ranking individuals in the national intelligence arena, leading professionals in the legal world, and renowned religious and communal leaders.

Former CIA Director James Woolsey, former White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum, and former Deputy Attorney General and Harvard Law Professor Philip Heymann, each of whom is fully aware of all of the contents of Pollard’s classified file and with the facts and circumstances of this case, have long been on record calling for Pollard’s release.

...Pollard’s life sentence is grossly disproportionate when compared to the sentences of others who have spied for allied nations. Despite the fact that Pollard entered into a plea agreement and fully cooperated with the prosecution in his case, he nonetheless received a life sentence and a recommendation that he never be paroled, which was in complete violation of
the plea agreement he had reached with the government...

That, now, is something.

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