Every time an administration gets the idea to release Pollard, the intelligence community puts its foot down. They are so serious about it that they would be willing to destroy a presidency to prevent it.
Ruthless doesn’t even describe it.
If push comes to shove, I would not be surprised if they killed Pollard to prevent his release.
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I don’t get the hostility towards Pollard.
Pollard did wrong: He did the crime — and he has done the time. Now let him go to Israel, where he wants to be.
He was not giving intel to an enemy, as many others have done (and, at times, as I understand it, received lesser sentences).
It has been stated before that Pollard was given a very heavy sentence for what he did — heavier than the minimum sentence required.
Question are you and the “intel community” equally upset with Clinton for permitting missile tech to be given to the ChiComs. (Last I heard, he is not in prison.)
Talk about selective indignation.
Once you give intel to someone, even a "friend", you have no control of where that intel will wind up. I've heard some of the intel he gave to Israel, eventually fell into the hands of the ChiComs.
I have no idea about the particular quirk that makes them so enraged at Pollard; what matters is that they are. Whenever it is proposed, they always send in their heaviest hitters, whoever has most pull in Washington, so it is no joke.
I would guess that whatever he did, it was a lot worse than what he was punished for; but both the US and Israel will not publicly say what that was.
Importantly, this would not be a first. In past, Israel has carried out some staggering espionage operations in the US that were so extraordinary that they were hushed up by both sides, such as the theft of nuclear weapons klystrons; and the enigmatic, but large scale effort by Israeli “art students” to penetrate the US DEA.
In the klystron case, it was a brilliant operation, and the unnamed man who was the ringleader was captured and sentenced to life in prison in an almost secret trial, after he plead guilty. This was not done casually, as it was a key element to the entire Israeli nuclear program.
In any event, I still think that, for whatever reason, the US intelligence community will again be adamant about Pollard.