Why President Obama Refuses To Pardon Israeli Spy Jonathan Pollard

Wikimedia CommonsJonathan Pollard in a photo dated April 10, 2011As President Barack Obama traveled to Israel, more than 2,000 gathered outside Israeli President Shimon Peres' house to call for the release of dual American-Israeli citizen Jonathan Pollard.

Pollard, 58, is serving a life term in a North Carolina prison after pleading guilty to spying for Israel from June 1984 until his arrest in November 1985.

The former Navy intelligence officer — using his Top Secret and Sensitive Compartmented Information access to national defense information — provided Israel with thousands of pages of U.S. intelligence on military and technical intelligence on the Soviet Union, Arab states, and Pakistan.

The lobby for Pollard's release has become a mainstream cause in Israel. (Even supermodel Bar Refaeli chimed in.)

The argument is based on the position that he has already served 28 years for actions that benefited a key U.S. ally but did not harm the national security of the U.S.

More than 200,000 people have signed an online petition for his release and top Israeli officials have indicated that they will ask Obama for his release. (In 2010 officials offered to extend the temporary moratorium on settlement construction in exchange for the Pollard's release.)

But last week Obama told Israel's Channel 2 that he is not about to free Jonathan Pollard from prison because he “committed a very serious crime."

Prosecutors in the case stated that "Pollard compromised a breadth and volume of classified information as great as in any reported espionage case" in U.S. history.

In 2006 Pollard's handler, superspy Rafi Eitan, told the newspaper Yediot Aharonot that Pollard provided "information of such high quality and accuracy, so good and so important to the country's security" that "my desire, my appetite to get more and more material overcame me."

Israel Bureau Chief of Defense News Barbara Opall-Rome recently described Pollard as "a man who committed a serious crime for financial gain and glory."

From her op-ed in Haaretz:

"Pollard was not sentenced for unauthorized transfer of classified information to Israel, but for espionage, pure and simple. U.S. law does not distinguish idealistic from nefarious motivations, nor does it matter whether classified documents were stolen on behalf of friend or foe."

Pollard issued a public apology in 1997. His lawyer says his health is failing as he suffers from diabetes, high blood pressure, and kidney stones.