Next Stage in Pollard Case, a Push for Parole, Expecting Wider Support

The push to free Jonathan Pollard has not been ended by President Clinton’s refusal this week to grant a clemency petition.

Supporters of the former Navy analyst, who is serving a life sentence for spying for Israel, plan to continue their struggle.

Their new goal is ensuring that Pollard will be released in November of next year, when he first becomes eligible for parole, 10 years after he was arrested outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington.

“We’re going to continue this campaign,” said Pollard’s father, Morris Pollard.

For months, Pollard’s supporters had awaited the day when a promised Justice Department review would land on Clinton’s desk and the president would fulfill a campaign promise to review the case.

That day came Wednesday. Within hours Clinton had accepted the recommendation of Attorney General Janet Reno and the unanimous views of the law enforcement and national security agencies against clemency.

Clinton said in a statement that Pollard committed “one of the most serious crimes against our country — placing national security secrets of the United States in the hands of another country.”

He said he based his decision “upon the grave nature” of Pollard’s offense and “the considerable damage that his actions caused our nation.”

The decision on whether to grant clemency had reportedly already been discussed at the White House. with senior Clinton aides arguing against clemency. Departing counsel Bernard Nussbaum, as well as former Deputy Attorney General Philip Heymann, were said to have argued on behalf of elemency.

‘AN OVERLY HASTY DECISION’

But Pollard’s advocates had hoped for an opportunity to make the case one last time with White House officials, and in a statement, Seymour Reich and Karen Rubinstein deplored what they called “an overly hasty presidential decision.”

Reich and Rubinstein are president and executive director, respectively, of the American Zionist Movement.

Their statement accused Clinton of failing to consider that “Pollard was guilty not of treason but of a single count of passing classified information to a U.S. friend and ally, Israel; that an agreement to plead guilty in exchange for less than a life sentence was broken by the government; that Mr. Pollard has already served eight years, most of it in solitary confinement, and that Mr. Pollard had cooperated fully with the government in the investigation of his spying activities.”

In fact, Clinton said in his statement that he had considered the argument that Pollard deserved a shorter prison sentence because he spied for a friendly nation.

“I nevertheless believe that the enormity of Mr. Pollard’s crime, the harm his actions caused to our country, and the need to deter every person who might even consider such actions, warrant his continued incarceration,” said Clinton in his statement.

The leaders of the American Zionist Movement said they “do not intend to drop this issue. We fully intend to press for Mr. Pollard’s release on humanitarian grounds when he becomes eligible for parole next year.”

A similar view was voiced by Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, president of the Synagogue Council of America.

“We have to keep up the pressure. It took nine years for (Natan) Sharansky to get out Soviet prison, under vastly different circumstances. Jonathan Pollard committed a crime, he’s paid for it and he should not be abandoned to a life sentence,” said Lookstein.

Lookstein said that in 36 years in the rabbinate, “I can hardly remember an issue on which there is so much unanimity in the Jewish community, among the rank and file and among Jewish organizations.”

But it remains a question whether, over the next year and a half, Pollard’s supporters can overcome a definite ambivalence in the Jewish community toward Pollard. The ambivalence has been evident in the positions of several national Jewish organizations that had refrained from calling for commutation of Pollard’s sentence, either saying nothing or simply calling for a review of the case.

A request for parole, based on the premise that Pollard is far from guilty but that after 10 years will have served enough time, may win wider support.

Reich said that many in the community who hesitated to get involved for commutation said they would address the matter when parole comes up.

And Phil Baum, associate executive director of the American Jewish Congress, agreed, saying that “when he becomes eligible for parole, I have no doubt there will be wide support for it within the Jewish community.”