How did Pollard’s giving classified info to Israel, an ALLY, actually hurt the US? Does anyone know? Or was he more akin to Edward Snowden, who is being punished for embarrassing the Fed.gov?
Pollard didn’t spy for Israel for altruistic reasons. He did it for money and to advance his wife’s business interests. Among other things.
Having said that, he’s already served far more time than others under similar circumstances.
The original NCIS investigation apparently revealed that the two of them were trying to sell this information to Pakistan and South Africa -- neither of which had anything remotely to do with Israel at the time.
Caspar Weinberger called it the most destructive acts of espionage the U.S. had seen in decades. Do a Google search on "RASIN Manual" to see what Pollard's most egregious acts of treason entailed.
We have a lot of “allies”, but we don’t share everything with all of them. I don’t care if he was passing classified cooking recipes to the Canadians, it’s not okay for an American soldier to pass classified intelligence to a foreign government without our permission.
Do you realize what a mess it would create if every member of the armed forces or intelligence agencies with a security clearance were allowed to decide for themselves what classified information foreign intelligence agencies should know?
Pollard will be released in 11/2015, barring any problems in prison. There’s no reason to cut him any more slack then that.
His information went to Russia during the height of the cold war to try to kill Americans.