Posted on 05/17/2005 6:49:09 AM PDT by Destro
17 May 2005 11:14:42 GMT
Israelis 'hopeful' on release for U.S. spy Pollard
By Dan Williams
JERUSALEM, May 17 (Reuters) - Israel expects imminent progress in its bid to secure the release of Jonathan Pollard, an ex-U.S. Navy intelligence analyst convicted of spying for the Jewish state in the 1980s, political sources said on Tuesday.
They said Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, keen to shore up support among Israeli right-wingers split by his plan to withdraw from the occupied Gaza Strip this summer, raised the issue with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last month.
Israel's ambassador to Washington, Danny Ayalon, was to meet Pollard in prison on Tuesday -- the first such visit by an Israeli envoy -- to deliver an "expression of concern" from Sharon, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.
"We believe and hope there will be progress in the matter of Pollard during the summer," a source in Sharon's office said.
Past U.S. administrations have stood firm in the face of Israeli appeals to free Pollard, who was sentenced to life in prison without parole in 1986 for passing secrets to Israel.
Former CIA director George Tenet reportedly threatened to quit in 1998 after then-U.S. President Bill Clinton agreed to review the case, which jarred Israel's ties with its chief ally.
Tenet's successor Porter Goss, then a congressman, in 1999 sponsored a House resolution demanding Pollard be kept behind bars, saying: "The amount of information he sold is immense, the American lives he has put at risk are irreplaceable and the damage he did to our national security is incalculable."
Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom told reporters last week that he and Sharon had decided "concrete action" was needed on Pollard. "Twenty years in jail is a long time," Shalom said.
Pollard's lawyer said the Israeli ambassador's jail visit suggested Israel was "treating the matter seriously".
"The significance of this is in stepping up the importance of the issue," attorney Larry Dub told Israel's Army Radio. "Until now, something that would not have been too costly, sending the ambassador, had not happened."
Asked about the renewed Israeli efforts to free Pollard, the spokesman for the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv declined comment.
Israel has said Pollard was recruited by a maverick intelligence unit, which was dismantled after the scandal broke.
Earlier this month, U.S. Defence Department analyst Larry Franklin was arrested on charges of disclosing top-secret information on potential attacks on American forces in Iraq to two employees of the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC.
Sharon, who is to address AIPAC -- the American Israel Public Affairs Committee -- in Washington next week, has said Israel had no involvement in the Franklin case.
It ain't gonna happen. Ever. And frankly, I'm tired of hearing about it.
Pollard SHOULD HAVE BEEN hung.
Here is how the game is played:
We have to do everything we can to hold him otherwise other spies in our country will be encouraged.
Israel has to appear to do everything it can to get him out, otherwise their spies will become discouraged.
Until there is some strategic importance for releasing him he will stay where he is.
Maybe in a pine box.
Agreed. However I would be interested in knowing why Isreal chooses to spy on us after we've spent billons of tax payer dollars for their security.
Somebody will be along to explain it all to you shortly; the last thread like this, I actually saw somebody post that it was all okay, that WE should have given it to them in the first place.
Israel can hope all they want, this scumbag traitor will never see the light of day. Too bad we don't execute these a-holes anymore.
So now Vicente Fox is posting here? Unbelievable!
I have posted previously on this traitor. He did tremendous harm to the US. Excluding Clinton, perhaps he did more harm that any person previously in the history of the United States. In addition, some, if not all, the information that he passed to Israel probably went to the then Soviet Union. To respond to this leak required millions of dollars and hundred of thousands of technical man hours of labor. Pollard should die in prison and be buried in a prison cemetery somewhere as a lesson the other spies. Are there any Chinese or Russian spies reading this?
Bush and the GOP would be committing political suicide if Pollard was released on their watch.
Bush and the GOP would send a strong message if Pollard were killed on their watch. It would send a message to our so-called allies that we take espionage serious in this country and that Americans will not support their tax dollars being given to any country that takes hostile action against us.
They should put a sturdy rope in his cell, and make sure the light fixture is strong enough to hold him.
They spy on us because the ARE dependent on us - they need to know which way we'll jump on certain things, before they go down.
Pollard has already been tried and received a sentence. You can't execute him without violating our own laws.
FEET FIRST!
How long was he sentenced for?
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