Former Attorney-General Michael Mukasey has sent a letter to President Barack Obama asking him to commute the sentence of convicted spy Jonathan Pollard to time served, the Jerusalem Post reported.

Pollard, now 56, is a former intelligence analyst who was sentenced to life in prison in 1987 on charges of spying on the United States for Israel. He is incarcerated at a federal prison in North Carolina.

Mukasey wrote, “[Pollard] has not been alleged by anyone to have had any motive to harm the United States. In these circumstances, a life sentence can only be considered utterly disproportionate to the crime.”

“I had occasion myself to consider life sentences, and indeed to impose them,” Mukasey wrote, alluding to his service as a federal judge in the Southern District of New York. “In more than 18 years on the bench, I imposed such sentences on four defendants.”

Supporters of Pollard have contended that he acted only after discovering that information vital to Israel’s security, including data on the capabilities of Syria, Iraq, Libya and Iran to use weapons of mass destruction, was being withheld from Israel, a staunch ally of the United States.

Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said he would issue a formal public request to Obama to release Pollard. This will mark the first formal request by Israel for Pollard’s release, according to Haaretz, Israel’s oldest daily newspaper.

Pollard’s wife, Esther, said during a Wednesday interview with Israel Radio that her husband is in very ill health and has been hospitalized in prison three times recently, the Post reported.

A former Federal Bureau of Investigation research specialist who says he was fired after coming under false suspicion in an espionage-related investigation of a pro-Israel group has sued to clear his name.

The plaintiff, who filed as John Doe in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, says in the Jan. 7 complaint he was fired in 2008 in connection with the probe of two American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobbyists, Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman.

The former analyst says he believes he was targeted because he’d faxed unclassified Foreign Broadcast Information Service documents to AIPAC, although he said in the complaint he wasn’t given a reason for his termination beyond unspecified security concerns.

The government in May dropped espionage charges against the AIPAC lobbyists, after an appeals court ruled the defense could use classified information at trial. The U.S. also faced an uphill battle in complying with a lower court order to prove the AIPAC lobbyists had intended to harm U.S. interests when they disclosed Pentagon information about Iraq to the media and an Israeli diplomat.

The former FBI analyst who got caught up in the affair also alleges the Bureau targeted him because of his Jewish faith, and that his First and Fifth Amendment rights were violated when he was fired and stripped of his security clearance without due process. He seeks at least $201,000 in damages, reinstatement to his job, and the right to a “name-clearing hearing,” among other redress.

The plaintiff worked on Capitol Hill for two House members and a U.S. senator, then as a Department of State intelligence research specialist from 1999 to 2003, the complaint says. He was on contract with the Department of Homeland Security before starting with the FBI in 2004, the complaint says. He specialized in Palestinian terrorist front groups in the U.S. and terrorist financing.

The FBI placed him on unpaid administrative leave on Oct. 29, 2005 and terminated him in 2008. He had held a security clearance at the Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information level, the complaint says. He is represented by Washington, D.C., attorney Mark Zaid.

Mary Jacoby contributed to this report, which was corrected to reflect that the former FBI researcher’s complaint says the Bureau did not give a reason for his termination.

Remember how Spain was considering an investigation of high-level Bush administration officials for torture? Turns out, Spain’s Congress has buckled to international pressure and reined in its judges by changing their jurisdiction, limiting it to cases that have a clear Spanish connection, and do not already have a home-country investigation under way.  The Spanish government was being pressured to take such action by China, Israel and the United States.  You can read the full Wall Street Journal article here.

Laura Rozen at Foreign Policy’s blog has the scoop. The irrepressible Davis, a partner at the Orrick law firm, made his name as media adviser to President Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The hiring of Davis signals that Harman intends to hit back hard on the story, in which she reportedly was caught on a government wiretap offering  to help two pro-Israel lobbyists accused of spying. It’s been a PR disaster for her.

Rozen also draws our attention to a discrepancy in the reported record about whether it was an NSA or FBI wiretap that picked up Harman’s conversation with the Israeli agent. CQ broke the story, saying it was an NSA wiretap, but The Washington Post reported April 22nd that it was the FBI monitoring the conversation.