Israel to demand spy's release from Obama during his formal visit

Iran Press TV

Tue Mar 19, 2013 9:54AM GMT

In his upcoming Israeli trip, the US President Barack Obama will face a new, more rigorous demand by current and former top officials of the regime as well as Zionist activists to set free an Israeli spy from a US prison.

The president of the Israeli regime Shimon Peres will lead the effort, joining major Zionist activists such as "Nobel Prize-winning scientists, retired generals, celebrated authors and intellectuals" and other supporters of the notorious spy, former US Navy intelligence analyst Jonathon Pollard, who plan to stage a "hunger strike" for his release during Obama's three-day visit that will begin Wednesday, The New York Times reports on Tuesday.

Pollard, a Jewish American at the time he volunteered to spy for the Tel Aviv regime after approaching an Israeli officer in Washington in 1984, was denied entry into the Israeli Embassy in the US capital after he was discovered 18 months later.

The Israeli regime first disowned their spy, claiming that "he was an actor in a rouge operation," the report says.

In 1995, however, Tel Aviv granted Pollard Israeli citizenship, and Benjamin Netanyahu, in his first term as the regime's prime minister in the late 1990's, officially recognized Pollard as an Israeli agent.

In an unprecedented move, meanwhile, American officials have since allowed top Israeli cabinet members and other officials to personally visit and meet with the anti-US spy in his North Carolina jail.

Well-known pro-Israeli former top US officials, including ex-director of the CIA James Woolsey, and former secretaries of state, Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, have joined Zionist officials and activist in calling for Pollard's release based on what the Israelis are promoting as a "humanitarian" consideration.

"I will sum it up in three words: enough is enough. It is not humane to keep him (Pollard) in jail any longer," former Israeli Education Minister Amnon Rubinstein is quoted as saying in the report.

"Our message is so human and it comes from friendship, so who better to convey it than Peres?" said spokesman for the campaign to free the Israeli spy, Adi Ginsburg.

Obama said in a recent interview with an Israeli TV channel that he was "sympathetic to Israelis' emotions and would ensure that the usual rules of review were applied in his (Pollard's) case," the report notes, adding that he had no "immediate" plans to see Pollard free.

A number of US observers, meanwhile, believe that Obama will eventually order the release of the Israeli spy, using his privilege at the end of his presidency to pardon and set free any criminal he wishes from the US prison system. Previous American presidents have ordered the release of hundreds of convicted criminals at the end of their final presidential terms.

Although most details about the reportedly significant amount of American military intelligence Pollard passed to the Zionist regime remain classified, "recently declassified documents from a 1987 CIA damage assessment" indicate that he provided Israel with US intelligence data on the regime's "Arab adversaries and the military support they received from the Soviet Union," the report adds, without identifying specific countries.

Pollard, according to the report, "delivered suitcases of copies of classified documents to the Israelis every two weeks."

"The copious disclosures posed multiple risks to American intelligence sources and methods, and to American foreign policy interests," it adds, citing the CIA assessment report.

This is while former US President Bill Clinton, a particularly close Israeli ally during his two-term presidency from 1993-2001, attempted to release Pollard towards the end of his second term in office but was rigorously challenged by top US military and Republican officials and experts, who ultimately foiled the move.

MFB/MFB