JERUSALEM - Former President Bill Clinton's last-minute pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich has embittered the wife and supporters of Jonathan Pollard, charging that support for Rich from top Israeli officials and prominent American Jews came at the expense of a pardon for the imprisoned spy who worked for Israel.
"A very clear message was sent about which [case] was going to make a difference to the government of Israel and the American Jewish establishment," said Pollard's wife, Esther, in an interview from Toronto.
In the weeks leading up to the Rich pardon, Prime Minister Ehud Barak and former Prime Minister Shimon Peres weighed in with Clinton on Rich's behalf. Recommendations for a pardon also came from a former chief of the Mossad spy agency, Shabtai Shavit, and Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert.
Clinton told a television call-in show Thursday that "Israel did influence me profoundly" in deciding to grant the pardon. A congressional panel and the U.S. Justice Department are also looking into whether Clinton was influenced by a large donation from Rich's former wife to Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign and a pledge by her to give $450,000 to Clinton's presidential library.
Information released by a congressional committee shows that Rich's associates also cast a wide net for help from American Jewish leaders, including Rabbi Irving Greenberg, chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, and Marlene E. Post, chairwoman of Birthright Israel, which subsidizes mass trips to Israeli for American Jewish college students.
Pollard was frequently mentioned as one of those whom Clinton might pardon in one of his final acts before leaving office Jan. 20, although U.S. national security agencies have consistently opposed freeing him.
A former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst, Pollard was sentenced to life in prison in March 1987 for selling secrets to Israel in a case that caused major strains between the United States and the Jewish state.
Although the full extent of the security damage he caused has never been disclosed, U.S. officials reportedly believe he gave Israel, among other things, a manual used by U.S. intelligence to intercept other countries' communications, help in identifying CIA sources within the Palestine Liberation Organization and locations of U.S. warships.
Pollard's wife and supporters say he gave Israel information essential to its security about Iraq's development of weapons of mass destruction.
