Ex-CIA Head: Anti-Semitism Likely in Pollard Case

Story by the Associated Press; curated by Dave Urbanski

JERUSALEM (AP) — Former CIA Director James Woolsey says anti-Semitism could be a factor in the U.S. refusal to release a Jewish American jailed for spying for Israel.

Amb. R. James Woolsey (Image source: Foundation for Defense of Democracies website)

Woolsey told Israeli Channel 10 TV Saturday that Americans who spied for other countries including Korea and Greece were freed after short sentences, while Jonathan Pollard is still jailed after 25 years.

Pollard was a civilian intelligence analyst for the U.S. Navy when he gave thousands of classified documents to his Israeli handlers. He was arrested in 1985 and later sentenced to life in prison.

"I certainly don't think that it is universally true, but in the case of some American individuals, I think there is anti-Semitism at work here," Woolsey said.

He said others who did the same as Pollard were freed quickly.

Woolsey was a guest of TheBlaze's Buck Sexton on his radio show last Saturday and said the Obama administration's dealings with Iran over nuclear disarmament have been “roughly equivalent" to the Nazi appeasement by "Neville Chamberlain’s at Munich in the 1930s.”