Donald Rumsfeld: U.S. shouldn't release spy Jonathan Pollard

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Monday slammed recent news that convicted spy Jonathan Pollard could soon be released. Pollard, a civilian analyst for the U.S. Navy, was sentenced to life in prison in 1987 after pleading guilty to selling classified information to Israel.

“Releasing spy Jonathan Pollard doesn’t make the #IranDeal any less of a disaster for Israel & the free world,” a tweet from Rumsfeld’s Twitter account read on Monday morning.


In a subsequent message, Rumsfeld posted letters from 1998 and 2001 urging Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush not to release Pollard. Seven former defense secretaries signed the December 1998 letter, including Rumsfeld, who served in the same capacity in Gerald Ford’s administration, and future Vice President Dick Cheney, who served in that capacity with George H.W. Bush.

In the March 2001 memo, sent to Bush, Cheney, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell and then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Rumsfeld called any measure to free Pollard “enormously damaging to our efforts to keep spies out of our government.”

Releasing Pollard was a bad idea in 1998 & 2001. It is not a better idea today. via http://t.co/kaSMo2yCnR pic.twitter.com/ADigmDgDh4 — Donald Rumsfeld (@RumsfeldOffice) July 27, 2015

In the past, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has urged Pollard’s release from a federal prison in Butner, North Carolina.

The Wall Street Journal reported late last week that the White House is indeed preparing to release him, with the hope that his release would help ease tensions between the two countries following the nuclear deal with Iran. In the past, the current administration has been noncommittal to his specific case.

“I have no plans for releasing Jonathan Pollard immediately, but what I am going to be doing is to make sure that he, like every other American who’s been sentenced, is accorded the same kinds of review and the same examination of the equities that any other individual would provide,” President Barack Obama told an Israeli outlet in 2013.

The Obama administration has pushed back against the notion that Pollard’s release would be tied to any other foreign policy issues, including the Iran deal. There is “absolutely zero linkage between Mr. Pollard’s status and foreign policy considerations,” NSC spokesman Alistair Baskey told reporters last week.

The Justice Department has said that it expects Pollard to serve his full sentence. He is nonetheless eligible for parole this November because his offenses were committed before November 1987, and he was arrested in November 1985.

A previous version of this article misstated Powell’s title.