(JTA) — Another former White House official has called for clemency for Jonathan Pollard.
Bernard Nussbaum, White House counsel under President Clinton, sent a letter to President Obama on Feb. 5 saying that keeping Pollard in prison is a "miscarriage of justice."
Nussbaum opposed pardoning Pollard, a civilian U.S. Navy analyst who was convicted for spying for Israel, when he served in the White House. He said in his letter that he studied Pollard’s file "extensively" and believed it was time for Obama to commute his life sentence.
"I, too, believe that Jonathan Pollard has been appropriately punished for his conduct, and that a failure at this time to commute his sentence would not serve the course of justice’ indeed, I respectfully believe, it would be a miscarriage of justice,” Nussbaum wrote, according to The Jerusalem Post.
In January, Obama received a letter from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu requesting clemency for Pollard. Also, in recent weeks, others have written separate letters to Obama requesting clemency, including U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz; Michael Mukasey, the most recent Republican U.S. attorney general; and Harvard Law School professor Charles Ogletree, director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a likely Republican candidate for the 2012 presidential nomination, during a visit to Israel last week called on the United States to release Pollard.
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