US Releases Spy Jonathan Pollard After 30 Years In Prison

Jonathan Pollard, the former Navy intelligence analyst convicted of spying for Israel, was freed from a federal prison in North Carolina.

Pollard, a former U.S. Navy Investigative Service civilian analyst, was sentenced to life in prison in 1987 after pleading guilty to selling classified defense documents to Israel.

Attorneys for Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard announced on Friday that they are planning to appeal the conditions of his parole just hours after he was released from a federal penitentiary following a 30-year incarceration.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who lobbied U.S. officials on Pollard’s behalf, welcomed his release.

“Throughout the years, we have felt Jonathan’s pain, and felt responsible and obliged to bring about his release”, Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin said in a statement Friday.

The one-paragraph missive did not mention Pollard’s desire to immediately move to Israel, which would require a waiver of federal parole rules.

“We know that he is out of jail; we can’t give more details”, said the spokesman, who asked that his name not be published to avoid personal attention.

“Obviously, the one thing at issue is the requirement that he remains in the United States”, Rhodes said, according to Fox News.

President Reuven Rivlin also congratulated the Pollards on their reunification.

Lawyers Jacques Semmelman and Eliot Lauer said Pollard had been a “model prisoner” and that there was no reason to fear he might commit acts of violence or reveal further U.S. intelligence that by now, in any case, would be so outdated as to be meaningless.

Over the course of decades, Pollard’s prison cell became a kind of pilgrimage site for conservative Israeli politicians, who elevated Pollard’s case rather than helping him keep a low profile. “We heard about Jonathan Pollard being released so we altered our schedule and slowed it down and changed it so we would be here”, Jackson said.

According to the Israeli daily Haaretz, Israeli officials are concerned that a celebration by the government over his release might hurt efforts to persuade the American government to allow him to leave to Israel. He eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.

But that view is not shared in U.S. intelligence circles – where the fact that Israel had a spy passing on classified American military documents for a year and a half was galling. Pollard has secured a job in the finance department of an investment firm in NY.

In an interview in 1998 Pollard said the price he had paid for spying had not been worth it.

“Jonathan has served his time right down to the very last day, to the very last minute”, she said to reporters.

In the ensuing years, multiple governments in Jerusalem pressed for Pollard’s release, only to be rebuffed by successive USA presidents.

An official with the Justice Department said that parolees required special permission to travel to a foreign country and they must demonstrate a significant need to travel.

“The parole after 30 years was expected by many, even without the Iran deal”.

“After all this time, we want him to get out without any difficulties of any comments in the press”, said Kenneth Lasson, a law professor at the University of Baltimore who supported Pollard’s bid to have his sentence shortened.