(Los Angeles Times) Lawrence Korb - After his arrest and indictment 25 years ago, Jonathan Pollard agreed to plead guilty to one count of giving classified information to a U.S. ally. In return for his guilty plea and his cooperation with the U.S. government, the U.S. attorney pledged not to seek a life sentence for Pollard. The average sentence meted out to individuals convicted of giving classified information to an ally is seven years, with average time served about four years. Despite the terms of the plea bargain, in 1987 Pollard was sentenced to life. My former boss, Caspar Weinberger, the Secretary of Defense at the time, made a statement implying that some of the information that Pollard had supplied to Israel made its way to the Soviet Union, information that led to the loss of many lives. Weinberger's contention has since been debunked. The information that the Soviets received at the time most likely came from Soviet spies Aldrich Ames, a former CIA counter-intelligence officer, and Robert Hanssen, a onetime FBI agent. R. James Woolsey, the CIA director from 1993 to 1995, stated after examining the Pollard case file that none of Pollard's information went to the Soviet Union. The writer, a former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration, is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
2010-11-01 10:05:55Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive