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Tuesday, March 08, 2011

Kissinger Calls For Pollard's Release

Here is the text of Henry K.'s letter to President Obama:

March 3, 2011

The Honorable Barack Obama
President of the United States
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

I would have written this letter sooner but for a long trip abroad, from which I have just returned. While I was gone, I gave much thought to the question of clemency for Jonathan Pollard. At first I felt I did not have enough information to render a reasoned and just opinion. But having talked with George Shultz and read the statements of former CIA Director Woolsey, former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman DeConcini, former Defense Secretary Weinberger, former Attorney General Mukasey and others whose judgments and first-hand knowledge I respect, I find their unanimous support for clemency compelling.

I believe justice would be served by commuting the remainder of Pollard’s sentence of life imprisonment.

Respectfully yours,
Henry A. Kissinger


Check out Kissinger's biography at Wikipedia. Here is something that I never new about him:
Kissinger underwent basic training at Camp Croft in Spartanburg, South Carolina, where he was naturalized upon arrival. The Army sent him to study engineering at Lafayette College, Pennsylvania, but the program was canceled, and Kissinger was reassigned to the 84th Infantry Division. There, he made the acquaintance of Fritz Kraemer, a fellow emigrant from Germany who despite the age difference, noted Kissinger's fluency in German and his intellect, arranged for him to be assigned to the military intelligence section of the division. Kissinger saw combat with the division, and volunteered for hazardous intelligence duties during the Battle of the Bulge.[11]

During the American advance into Germany, Kissinger was assigned to de-Nazify the city of Krefeld, owing to a lack of German speakers on the division's intelligence staff. Kissinger relied on his knowledge of German society to remove the obvious Nazis and restore a working civilian administration, a task he accomplished in 8 days.[12] Kissinger was then reassigned to the Counter Intelligence Corps, with the rank of Sergeant. He was given charge of a team in Hanover assigned to tracking down Gestapo officers and other saboteurs, for which he was awarded the Bronze Star.[13] In June 1945, Kissinger was made commandant of a CIC detachment in the Bergstraße district of Hesse, with responsibility for de-Nazification of the district. Although he possessed absolute authority and powers of arrest, Kissinger took care to avoid abuses against the local population by his command.[14]

In 1946, Kissinger was reassigned to teach at the European Command Intelligence School at Camp King, continuing to serve in this role as a civilian employee following his separation from the Army.[15][16]
He was a fighter, not just an academia geek.

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