A senior United States Defense Department official has called on President Barack Obama to release Jonathan Pollard immediately. Pollard has been in prison since 1986 on a conviction for passing classified information to Israel.
In a letter to Obama, the official says that the life sentence that Pollard is serving is harsher than what he was supposed to receive, considering the offense, and that the seriousness of the sentence stems only from the involvement of then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger's anti-Israeli stance and not the merits of the case.