Former U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz today sent a letter to President Barack Obama requesting that Jonathan Pollard be released from prison.
George Shultz served as the U.S. Secretary of State from 1982-1989. Prior to that, Shultz served as U.S. Secretary of Labor and as U.S. Secretary of the Treasury. He is currently the Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
Jonathan Pollard, who just began his 26th year in federal prison, has repeatedly expressed his remorse publicly and in private in letters to many Presidents and others. His health has deteriorated significantly during his two-and-a-half decades in prison.
Pollard’s life sentence is grossly disproportionate when compared to the sentences of others who have spied for allied nations. In addition, countless elected officials, individuals from the national intelligence arena and the legal world, as well as religious and community leaders, have described Pollard’s sentence as excessive, and have called for his sentence to be commuted.
The following is the text of the letter to President Obama:
January 11, 2011
The President
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20500
Dear Mr. President,
I am writing to join with many others in urging you to consider that Jonathan Pollard has now paid a huge price for his espionage on behalf of Israel and should be released from prison.
I am impressed that the people who are best informed about the classified material he passed to Israel, former CIA Director James Woolsey and former Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Dennis DeConcini, favor his release.
I find the letter you received from former Attorney General Michael Mukasey of the Bush administration particularly compelling.
With my respect,
Sincerely yours,
George P. Shultz
{Noam Amdurski-Matzav.com Newscenter}
as far as we knoow geurges schultz was a ctaunch supporter f israel and the jewish people
Unbelievable. With Prime Minister Netanyahu joined by 109 Knesset Members as well as 31 members of Congress and highest ranking US Goverment officials such as Secretery of State George Schultz, I would imagine that President Obama would/should be favorable to granting clemency and commuting Jonathan Pollard’s sentence from Life to Time Served. We should stary a 24/7 Tehillim Project in behalf of Pollard until his release.
To continue Comment # 2 from “Minyan Regular”:
. . . And we must intensively be Mispallel for “Yehonasan Ben Malka.”
Note that from the letter it is clear that Sec. Schultz did not have access to the Pollard dossier
Obama will probably wait until closer to 2012 to grant clemency to pollard to garner more Jewish support/votes
to verite:
actually, he was known as anti israel.
which makes this letter alll the more surprising.
yes, my shul saysthe misheberach for “yehonatan ben malka”.