Former Mossad intelligence director Rafi Eitan said Friday that the United States government broke an oral agreement with Israel that Jonathan Pollard would only serve about 10 years in prison for passing classified information to Israel. Pollard has served more than twice that long under a life sentence handed down in 1987. Interviewed by Voice of Israel government radio, the former Minister of Pensioner Affairs said that the U.S. claimed Pollard helped frame American agents in the then-Soviet Union and decided to leave him in prison for the rest of his life, even after it became clear he was not involved in that.
In a letter to President Barack Obama two weeks ago, former Assistant Secretary of Defense Lawrence J. Korb noted that the average sentence for Pollard's offense was four years and even under today's law only ten years. He said he had first-hand information that the severity of Pollard's sentence was due to the anti-Israel attitude of his boss, then-defense secretary Caspar Weinberger.