it’s just been released that this guy will be paroled in November. Do you agree with this decision?
I agree. Allies even spy on each other. The US with regard to Germany, France, etc. are recent examples. Cold War allies (of which Israel was a part on OUR side, not the communist side like the PLO and other anti-Israel actors like pre-Sadat Egypt) did a lot. Pollard’s been in for too long. This will also help relations with the Jewish State. Obama’s been poor on that. I say release.
It’s one thing if an independent parole commission thinks he’s met the standard required of parole. It’s quite another if this was done as a political favor because of the controversial Iran deal.
I’ve said many times that I’d be perfectly happy if he spent the rest of his life in prison. From what I’ve read, he stole secrets for his own benefit and tried to sell them to South Africa and Pakistan, as well as use secrets to aid his wife’s business. The amount of stuff he stole was quite incredible. He’s a despicable, untrustworthy, worthless person. I personally find it quite offensive when someone insinuates, or outright says, that he was treated unfairly. Bullcrap. He deserves everything he got, and in light of this news, probably more.
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Looks like Pollard’s release would be consistent with the terms of his sentence when it was originally imposed: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/doj-jonathan-pollard-is-eligible-for-mandatory-parole-in-november/2015/07/24/7f8990ca-324b-11e5-8f36-18d1d501920d_story.html.
With that in mind, and without either condoning what he did or saying he’s a great guy, I would not oppose his release after 30 years in Federal custody.
Thirty years sounds about right. I’ve read somewhere where it says that Pollard has to remain in the US for another five years on parole, but I’d be ok with stripping his US citizenship and deporting him, too.
I agree-it costs us $60,000/year to keep him-strip his citizenship and throw him out.
It sounds like they have to parole him given the terms of his sentence.
I’m glad he served his full sentence and wasn’t released earlier than his sentence allowed as a political ploy. But likewise, I think he’s served a sentence adequate to his crime. So assuming the parole board doesn’t find some legitimate reason to keep him, I don’t have a problem with his release.
Might want to think that over a little. What would you use as the standard for determining when someone could be stripped of their citizenship, if such a process even existed for native citizens?
If he goes to Israel and gets a hero’s welcome, *that *would bother me, a lot. It would also be what you’d expect from Netanyahu.
Native US citizens are not “stripped of citizenship” for conviction of treason or espionage – now, if Israel were to officially declare him an agent and offer him a pension, and he accepted, that could be read as manifesting an intent to relinquish citizenship. Which we are not obligated to honor. Better let’s NOT send him off to any hero’s welcome anywhere.
If in fact the mandatory part of the sentence has been properly served and it’s time for parole, with the various conditions entailed (control of his movements, no profitable book deal, etc.) for the rest of his life, I have no problem. I have a bigger beef with the people who were all “but he did it for Israel, it should not be so bad!” Israel, Russia, hell, Costa Rica… espionage is espionage.
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He’s due for parole. If the people in charge of determining whether he should get parole decide he can get out, I have no particular objection. Nor will I object if they decide he needs to stay in for another five years, or whenever the next parole review is.
As far as stripping his citizenship goes, we don’t do that for natural citizens. If he goes to Israel and accepts a policy level position in their government, we might could view that as an intent to relinquish his U.S. citizenship.
That’s easy. “US Citizens who are convicted of spying on the US for foreign governments” is a pretty small and specific class of people. I have no problem giving them the boot, assuming we don’t immediately hang them from the yardarm.
Yeah, I don’t care about that. I care that he fulfills his sentence. Whatever happens next is not my problem. I just want to emphasize the “go” part. He can go be the King of Jerusalem. Whatever. Just as long as he goes and never comes back.
I know we don’t. I’m saying we should, when it comes to traitors.
An uproarious welcome wouldn’t surprise me. Pollard is also reportedly due a big payday from “wages” the Israelis have been stashing in a foreign bank account for him (the full article can be accessed via a Google search).
Pollard was probably going to be released within the next year, whether as a bizarre payback to the Israelis for the Iran nuclear deal mess, or as an pre-election stunt to benefit Hillary Clinton (on the dubious assumption that it would help her with the Jewish vote). If it is not possible to keep the traitorous weasel in prison for the rest of his life, then we should make sure that 1) he never gets to collect any of the money waiting for him, and 2) the Israelis pay the costs of incarcerating him for the past 30 years (hey, it could come out of Pollard’s paycheck).
Fat chance of either of those things happening.
While a parolee, he would not be eligible for a passport, right? So Israel would have to smuggle him out. And probably would, too.
I thought we should have (if it’s hanged, not hung…) stranged him up decades ago, but I’ve found other, more recent, things to hate. If it’s in keeping with his original sentence, yadayadayada. Doesn’t mean I’m happy.
Fuck it, let him rot. As for Israel, look at it the other way around: if an Israeli citizen had spied for us, just for the money, sold secrets to the Palestinians, wouldn’t they be a wee bit reluctant to release him or her to the US? Fuck that shit.
He didn’t do it because he cared about Israel – he did it for himself.
30 years is enough. Time to put an end to it.
He plea bargained. There was no trial, and he didn’t admit to this. You are just repeating prosecution leaks. I don’t find what he admitted to at all defensible. But I don’t believe that prosecution leaks deserve much credence, regardless of the target.
As you may know, according to the US Constitution, “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.”
Personally, I think that there’s a more than reasonable doubt that Israel – and South Africa, and Pakistan – are enemies of the United States. To prove to me that someone committed treason beyond a reasonable doubt, show me a declaration of war against alleged enemy. I guess I could consider convicting a US citizen of treason if they were involved in shooting Americans in an undeclared war. But spying for Israel, or China, or Pakistan, or Russia, or, for that matter, the old USSR, isn’t treason.
An interesting, albeit academic, question may be whether people who fancy themselves respecters of the US constitution can call the crime of treason by a different name – say, espionage – set a treason-length sentence for it, and ignore the constitutional treason definition.
Even in the world leader for draconian sentences, the United States, thirty years for spying for a country that is more or less an ally was, AFAIK, an unprecedented sentence. The Justice Department got him to agree to it by saying that otherwise his then-wife would get her own draconian sentence (instead she served, I believe, about thirty months).
I suppose that Pollard is guilty. But if prosecutors were threatening to give my wife a draconian sentence, maybe I’d admit to anything. When the prosecution engages in those kind of threats, the right to a trial is basically dead.
Are there worse examples of draconian American sentencing practices? Definitely. The execution of Ethel Rosenberg, who had a secondary role in the nuclear spying, is one. For more recent non-espionage examples, see:
What evidence is there, exactly, that Pollard provided information to anyone other than Israel?
Can a persons’ citizenship be revoked if it would leave them stateless? Just wondered.
The US can’t revoke the citizenship of natural born citizens at all.