In a move welcomed by supporters of Jonathan Pollard, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin has written to President Clinton asking that Pollard’s sentence for spying for Israel be commuted.
The news surfaced as Pollard’s supporters gathered in Washington on Tuesday to lobby members of Congress for his release.
At a news conference Wednesday, Clinton acknowledged that he had received a letter from Rabin about the Pollard case.
The president said he had yet to receive a report from the Justice Department about Pollard.
“I will not make a decision on the Pollard case until I get some sort of indication” from the Justice Department, Clinton said.
According to a source familiar with Pollard-related activities, the letter asked Clinton to commute Pollard’s life sentence to time served, on humanitarian grounds.
The letter also anticipated opposition to a commuted sentence within the U.S. intelligence community, but it urged commutation nonetheless.
In addition, the letter seemed to acknowledge the impropriety of Pollard’s actions, the source said. The letter was sent between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the source said.
David Kirshenbaum, one of the participants in a meeting Tuesday with Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Itamar Rabinovich, said the envoy had told the participants of the letter’s existence and had implied that it had been sent recently.
Kirshenbaum, who participated in the Pollard lobbying day, said that he had heard rumors of the letter and that the group had asked the ambassador to confirm them.
The Israeli Embassy would not comment on the meeting.
Sources were not sure whether Rabin and Clinton would discuss the letter and the Pollard case during their scheduled meeting Friday.
Pollard supporters hope Clinton will commute Pollard’s sentence. They believe his sentence was disproportionately long when compared to the sentences given to people convicted for spying for other, hostile countries.
Pollard, a former civilian naval intelligence analyst, is serving the eighth year of a life sentence for spying for Israel.
A petition seeking clemency is pending in the Justice Department. Sources expect it to be forwarded to the White House in a month.
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