Chicago Tribune Editorial
December 11, 1995
When Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres meets with President Clinton at the White House Monday, he is expected to pull the president aside and issue a quiet plea for the release of convicted spy Jonathan Pollard.
Clemency for Pollard also was the last request made of Clinton by the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin before he was assassinated.
There are good reasons to release Pollard now, 10 years after his imprisonment on charges that, as a U.S. naval intelligence analyst, he gave away top secrets to the Israelis. But none of those reasons has anything to do with requests by Israeli leaders.
Quite simply, making Pollard serve any more of his life sentence would be unjust.
Espionage is, without doubt, a terrible offense, but American courts traditionally hand down sentences of far less severity to those convicted of spying for "friendlies" than to those who spied for "hostiles."
In recent years, people convicted of spying for Britain, Egypt and the Philippines, for example, have received sentences of no more than six years - and were paroled halfway through their time.
Of those convicted of spying for the former Soviet Union, about a dozen received sentences of 15 to 30 years, while nine are serving life imprisonment.