Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will put aside concerns that raising the issue publicly might backfire and issue the first public request for the United States to release Jonathan Pollard from his sentence of life with no parole. Pollard, a former civilian intelligence analyst for the U.S. Navy, was charged with transferring classified materials to a friendly nation – a charge that has typically resulted in offenders serving sentences of about seven years. But Pollard, who has been incarcerated since 1987, was accused of compromising the safety of American operatives and other sensational allegations never revealed to the public – actions that many now believe were actually committed by Aldrich Ames, the former CIA agent who was later discovered to have been spying for the Soviet Union. It was Ames who wrote the damage assessment on Pollard that so infuriated the presiding judge and former Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger resulting in Pollard’s over-the-top sentence. Pollard agreed to a plea bargain, but its terms were switched by the judge and he received the sentence of life with no parole. There is no indication of whether President Obama is willing to consider the pardon. [See below for link to Arieh O’Sullivan’s supporting story and video report – ed.]