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Q: How does the SecDef feel about the release of Jonathan Pollard? The President has asked his senior advisors...
A: The President has asked the Attorney General and the Director of Central Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense to give him recommendations by January 11th, and Secretary Cohen will do that. I think it's premature to discuss what his recommendation will be until then.
Q: It seems that Pollard's activities affected this building as much or perhaps more than any other...
A: As I said, I don't want to suggest that there will be... President Clinton has reviewed this now twice and has decided against releasing Jonathan Pollard. He has now undertaken another review. I have no reason to expect that there will be major changes in the advice he gets from some quarters, but I think we just have to let that play out. Every department will look at the information at its disposal and make up its decision and send it to the President.
Q: Could you tell me, in the past has this building opposed any release of Jonathan Pollard?
A: In the past, it has. Yes.
Q: Is there anything in particular that the Secretary will be doing between now and January 11th in preparing...
A: Our goal is to pull together a unified Department of Defense position on this. That's the Secretary's goal. He'll be, obviously he'll be getting input from the Navy and he'll be getting input from various intelligence offices in the Department of Defense, and he'll pull that together into one recommendation and send it to the President.
Q: Will he be reviewing the damage that was done by Pollard, espionage activity?
A: I'm sure that various agencies will reassess the damage. Yes.
Q: Does he get a specific assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency on this, or...
A: We haven't... We just got the letter fairly recently and we're in the process of organizing to produce a response. I don't know the details of exactly what will happen, but we are trying to pull together information, views, analysis from all parts of the Defense Department, package it into one recommendation, and send it over to the President.
Q: How long has it been since there's been a review of this situation?
A: I think the last one was in '95 or '96, I believe.
Q: You said on two separate points here, that number one, the building has in the past opposed the release of Pollard. But you also said, correct me if I'm wrong, that you had no reason to believe that there would be any change...
A: I'm not aware that there is new information available at this stage. But one of the reasons for having a review is to look at what's out there. I'm not aware that there is any new information. But one of the things that all people will be looking at is whether there is new information or whether it should be viewed in a different light. That's all part of the analysis.
...............http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Dec1998/t12031998_t1203asd.html