Jonathan Pollard

In 1998, Israel's Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu publicly admitted that Pollard had in fact been an Israeli agent. Many U.S. officials, including several secretaries of defense, opposed any form of clemency. Among them was President-elect Joe Biden, who at the time of Pollard's arrest was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In 2011, Mr. Biden reportedly told then-President Barack Obama, who'd been considering clemency for Pollard, "Over my dead body are we going to let him out before his time. If it were up to me, he would stay in jail for life."