Spycatchers: Freeing Pollard while pursuing Snowden sends "mixed signals"

Former investigators who thought they’d put convicted U.S. spy for Israel Jonathan Pollard in the slammer for life lashed out today at news that the Obama administration is using his release as a bargaining chip in Mideast peace talks.

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“How do you do this after Snowden?” fumed the former top prosecutor who won Pollard’s conviction, Joseph diGenova.

DiGenova was referring to former National Security Agency contractor and admitted classified documents thief Edward Snowden, on the lam in Russia since last June.

The FBI and Naval Criminal Investigative Service never fully assessed the exact amount of classified military and intelligence files Pollard sold to Israeli agents for more than $600,000 beginning in the mid-1980s until his 1985 arrest, ABC News sources involved in the investigation said. But Pollard himself once estimated that he forked over 360 cubic feet of documents, which the sources said pertained to much more than Israel and included secrets about U.S. intelligence capabilities that made it into the hands of spies in Russia, South Africa and other countries.

“Nobody who has seen the classified damage assessment thinks Pollard ought to be freed,” diGenova told ABC News.

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