Free Jonathan Pollard
WASHINGTON -- "A Dupont Circle neighbor said he seemed 'more like a nerd than a spy.'"
"The rabbi of the South Bend, Ind., temple where he was bar mitzvahed described him as an 'outstanding scholar and your prototype all-American boy.'"
Those were my words as a young reporter on the metro staff of The Washington Post, writing 28 years ago about the arrest of Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard outside the Israeli Embassy.
"President Clinton yesterday denied clemency to convicted spy Jonathan Jay Pollard, saying that the 'enormity' of his crime and the 'considerable damage' it caused meant that Pollard's life sentence for spying for Israel should not be reduced."
That was me, eight years later, as a still-young reporter promoted to the White House beat.
Today, no longer young, I woke up to the news that President Obama is considering releasing Pollard in a bid to keep Israeli-Palestinian peace talks from collapsing.
It seems like time.
I hold no brief for Pollard, now 59. He betrayed his country -- for money. The Post editorial page described Pollard in 1999 as a "contemptible and duplicitous mercenary whose misdeeds were reckless and threatening to American security," and that sounds about right.
Writing in The New York Times in January, M.E. Bowman, a former Defense Department official who coordinated a damage assessment of Pollard's espionage, asserted that "there are no other Americans who have given over to an ally information of the quantity and quality that Mr. Pollard has."
On the other hand:
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