Lenny Ben-David, who served as Israel's number two diplomat in the United States seven years ago, wrote in an Israeli newspaper Tuesday that former Prime Minister Ehud Barak could have brought about the freedom of Jonathan Pollard when Bill Clinton was U.S. President between November 2000 and January 2001. Pollard is serving a life sentence in an American prison for handing over classified documents to Israel.
Ben-David, writing in Ha'aretz, said he drafted a memo recommending a "behind-the-scenes campaign" to free Pollard through the influence of religious leaders. The memo included tactics of keeping Pollard out of the public eye after his release.
"With a great sense of disappointment, I sensed that the strategies presented in my memorandum might have been redirected to securing the pardon of Mark Rich, an American financier who escaped to Switzerland in 1983 after being indicted for tax evasion, money laundering and illegal trading with Iran," Ben-David wrote.
Ehud Barak, who was Prime Minister at the time, "interceded with Clinton on Rich's behalf... Rich was pardoned; Pollard was not."