Often asserted, never supported.
Why Jonathan Pollard Got Life In making its case against Pollard, the government traveled a great distance: from choosing in its indictment not to charge Pollard with injuring the United States, to listing in the Victim Impact Statement allegations of damage to American interests, to raising in Secretary Weinberger's January declaration the specter of danger to American lives, to accusing Pollard of "treason" in Weinberger's eve-of-sentencing supplemental declaration. It almost appears that the government leveled a charge of lesser magnitude against Pollard; successfully secured his guilty plea; and then post-facto kept upping the ante, to the point where a life sentence became almost inevitable.
Now why would they do that ?