Jonathan Pollard to Fight for Freedom in US Court

Justice4JP Release - September 16, 2000

To the Editors of The New York Post
From Mrs. Jonathan Pollard

Dear Sirs,

Re: "Pollard's Wife to Lobby NY Senate" by Andy Soltis (NY Post, 09/16/00)

My husband, Jonathan Pollard and his attorneys plan to file a new lawsuit this month that will make the Wen Ho Lee Spy case look like small change.

The information in this lawsuit is indispensable to President Clinton's executive review of Jonathan's case. We are certain that once he sees the legal brief, the President will want to do the right thing and commute Jonathan's sentence to time served. Unfortunately, all of our efforts to meet with him or his legal counsel have been in vain.

While Jonathan's legal brief virtually guarantees that justice will ultimately be done by the courts, there is no need for justice to be delayed by the system. It is precisely for cases like this that the President of the United States was granted the powers of executive clemency to commute a sentence so that a grave judicial wrong could immediately be set right.

Therefore, my only goal in seeking a meeting with Mrs. Clinton is to present my husband's legal brief, and to have her speak with our attorneys, Eliot Lauer and Jacques Semmelman of the Park Avenue NY law firm Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle so that she may act as a facilitator to bring the issue to her husband's attention.

If Mrs. Clinton finds the evidence that our attorneys will present to her compelling (as I am confident that she will), then all I would ask is that that she make the connection between her husband and our attorneys. I am not asking Mrs. Clinton to call for Jonathan's release or to do anything more than she did for Edgar Bronfman, namely to act as a facilitator. (Mrs. Clinton was recently honored by the WJC for bringing the Holocaust Restitution issue to her husband's attention and for making the connection between Mr. Clinton and Mr. Bronfman.)

I am also seeking meetings with other high profile individuals, including Rick Lazio, to solicit their assistance in getting the Pollard case out of the inappropriate political forums where it is currently being exploited and back into the only two venues where it belongs: namely in court, and in the President's executive review.

It is not now, nor was it ever, my intention to lobby Mr. Lazio on clemency for my husband. Since previous Republican senatorial candidate, NYC Mayor Rudi Giuilani, distinguished himself for years in his efforts to seek justice for Jonathan Pollard, it was our assumption that Mr. Lazio might also have some interest in seeing justice done. To date my efforts to meet with Mr. Lazio have been rebuffed.

Additionally, the Post completely misrepresented our reaction to Mrs. Clinton's intervention to prevent my husband's transfer to a violent and hostile unit. My husband and I are deeply grateful to Mrs. Clinton and to all those who intervened on my husband's behalf. We were upset only by the publicity that the matter received. For a prisoner, such publicity is tantamount to "disturbing a hornets' nest" while he is still living there.

The NY Post's distorted, politically-skewed caricature of my efforts to get my husband's case out of political back-room deals and squarely back into the President's review is unprincipled. Its failure to clearly convey the message that my husband, not me, is filing a new lawsuit is a misrepresentation of the truth.

(signed)
Esther Pollard
Mrs. Jonathan Pollard

cc Mrs. Hillary Clinton