Thursday, October 22, 1998.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu(L) and President Clinton(R) consult at Wye River Conference Center.
" The Times article noted that a White House spokesman told a reporter that Clinton was simply “newly impressed by the force of Mr. Netanyahu’s arguments.” "
On February 27, 1997, a pleasant spring morning in Tel Aviv, the members of the Committee of the Heads of Services drove from their various offices around the city along the broad road called Rehov Shaul Hamaleku to a guarded gate in a high blank wall tipped with barbed wire. All that could be seen of what lay behind the wall were the roofs of buildings. Rising above them was a massive concrete tower visible all over Tel Aviv. At various heights were unsightly clusters of electronic antennae. The tower was the centerpiece of the headquarters of the Israel Defense Forces. The complex is known as the Kirya, which simply means “place.”
At a little before 11:00 A.M. , the intelligence chiefs used their swipe cards to access a building near the tower. Like most Israeli government offices, the conference room they entered was shabby.
The meeting was chaired by Danny Yatom, who had recently been appointed as Mossad’s latest chief by Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu. Yatom had a reputation as a hard- liner, very much in keeping with Netanyahu. The Tel Aviv rumor mills had it that the new Mossad chief had “baby- sat” the embattled prime minister when Netanyahu’s colorful private life threatened his career. The men around the cedarwood conference table listened attentively as Yatom outlined the strategy to be adopted should the “situation” with Mega become a full- blown crisis.
Israel would deliver a strongly worded protest that its Washington embassy’s diplomatic status had been violated by the bugging— a move that would undoubtedly cause embarrassment to the Clinton administration. Next, sayanim connected to the U.S. media should be instructed to plant stories that Mega was an incorrect decoding of the Hebrew slang Elga, which had long been Mossad- speak for the CIA. Further, the word Mega was part of one well- known to U.S. intelligence. Megawatt was a code name it had until recently used jointly with Mossad to describe shared intelligence. For good measure sayanim should add that another word, Kilowatt, was used for commonly shared terrorist data.
But, for the moment, nothing would be done, Yatom concluded.
In March 1997, on receipt of information from Mossad’s katsa in Washington, Yatom took action. He sent a yahalomin team to Washington to follow- up on the katsa ’s report that President Clinton was repeatedly indulging in phone- sex calls with a a former White House aide, Monica Lewinsky. He was making the calls from the Oval Office to her apartment in the Watergate complex. Knowing that the White House was totally protected by electronic counter- measures, the yahalomin team focused on Lewinsky’s apartment. They began to intercept explicit phone calls from the president to Lewinsky. The recordings were couriered by diplomatic bag to Tel Aviv.
On March 27, Clinton once more invited Lewinsky to the Oval Office and revealed he believed a foreign embassy was taping their conversations. He did not give her any more details, but shortly afterwards the affair ended.
In Tel Aviv, Mossad’s strategies pondered how to use the highly embarrassing taped conversations; they were the stuff of blackmail— though no one suggested any attempt should be made to blackmail the president of the United States. Some, however, saw the recordings as a potent weapon to be used if Israel found itself with its back to the wall in the Middle East and unable to count on Clinton’s support.
There was common consensus that the FBI must also be aware of the conversations between Clinton and Lewinsky. Some strategists urged Yatom to use “the back- door channel” with Washington and let the FBI know Mossad was aware of the president’s phone calls: it would be a not- very- subtle way of telling the agency to back off in their continuing hunt for Mega. Other analysts urged a wait- and- see policy, arguing that the information would remain explosive whenever it was released. That view prevailed.
In September 1998, the Starr report was published and Yatom had left office. The report contained a short reference to Clinton warning Lewinsky back in March 1997 that his phone was being bugged by a foreign embassy. Starr had not pursued the matter when Lewinsky had given her testimony before the grand jury about her affair with Clinton. However, the FBI could only have seen the revelations as further evidence of their inability to unmask Mega.
Six months later, March 5th 1999, the New York Post published in a cover story the revelations in the original edition of this book. The Post story began: “Israel blackmailed President Clinton with phone- tapped tapes of his steamy sex talks with Monica Lewinsky, a blockbuster new book charges. The price Clinton paid for the silence of the Mossad spy agency was calling off an FBI hunt for a top- level Israeli mole.”
Within hours of this complete distortion of the facts in the book (which I had carefully checked with sources in Israel), the Post ’s version had appeared in thousands of newspapers around the world. The essential point of my story, that public prosecutor Kenneth Starr had not fully pursued his impeachment investigation into Clinton, was lost.
Starr had noted in his report that on March 29, 1997:
“He (Clinton) told her (Lewinsky) that he suspected that a foreign embassy (he did not specify which one) was taping his telephones. If anyone ever asked about their phone sex, she should say that they knew that their calls were being monitored all day long, and the phone sex was a put- on.”
The president’s words most strongly indicated he was aware that he had become a potential target for blackmail. By talking to Lewinsky over a public phone network— there is no evidence he had attempted to secure the phone in her apartment— the president had indeed left himself open to interception by foreign eavesdroppers and, even more so, to the powerful microwave vacuum cleaners of the National Security Agency. Given that any incumbent president routinely gets NSA reports, he would also have known that his calls to Monica could well end up on the Washington rumor mills.
A sense of the panic my revelations created in the White House can be seen from its briefing to correspondents by Oval Office spokesmen Barry Toiv and David Leavy. There is a shifting- sands feeling about their responses that the official White House transcript has retained.
Q: Why did the president reportedly tell Monica Lewinsky that he was concerned about his phone conversations being taped?
TOIV: Well, as you know, other than the president’s testimony in this case, we really haven’t commented on specifics, on other specifics like that and we’re not going to start now.
Q: When the president heard about this, was he concerned by it, was he shocked by it? What was his reaction, Mr. Toiv?
TOIV: To be honest, I haven’t gotten the president’s reaction to the book.
Q: Well, why did he say that to Monica Lewinsky? Why did he warn her?
TOIV: I’ve already not answered that question. (Laughter). I’m sorry.
Q: I know you’ve not answered it, but it’s very valid, really.
TOIV: Well, again, we’re not going to get into commenting on specifics beyond what the president has already testified to.
Q: I don’t understand why you think it’s legitimate for you not to comment on the president of the United States supposedly saying that he thinks a foreign government is taping his conversations. For you just to say, no comment.
TOIV: There have been questions about all sorts of comments that have been made or testified to and we have not gone beyond the president’s testimony in discussing these and we’re not going to do that.
Q: That’s because you’ve said it’s unseemly and it’s about sex. This is about the national security of the United States and the president supposedly saying that a foreign government is taping his conversations. And you’re just going to say sorry, no comment?
TOIV: I am not going to go beyond what he has already testified to.
Q: You’re not denying it. You’re not denying it.
LEAVY: Obviously, we’re not aware of a mole at the White House. But it’s the long- standing practice for people who speak at this podium to refer calls to the appropriate authorities who undertake these types of investigations.
Q: Was there any attempt by the president to intervene in any kind of investigation or search for a mole?
LEAVY: No. There is no basis in that allegation whatsoever.
Q: Well, there is a basis for it. There is a sworn testimony that Lewinsky gave that attributes to the president a comment that a foreign embassy was taping—
LEAVY: And Barry just answered that question.
Q: His answer was that he is not going to comment on it. That’s not much of an answer. With all due respect.
LEAVY: Let me say two things— noted.
TOIV: I wouldn’t go beyond my comments.
LEAVY: Yes, I’m definitely not going to add to Barry’s comments. But let me just say this. We take all the necessary precautions to secure the president’s communications. There is absolutely no basis for the allegation in the book.
Q: Are you getting that from CIA or FBI, or are you getting it out of just an automatic reflex?
LEAVY: You can take that as authoritative.
Q: I understand that you would have his communications secure. However, if he picks up the phone and calls some ordinary citizen at 2:30 A.M. in the morning at their apartment, what’s to say that that person’s phone couldn’t be tapped? Does your security system prevent that?
LEAVY: There is some very serious allegations in this book, and what I am saying is that there is absolutely no basis for the allegation. So I have to leave it at that.
Not one serious newspaper made any attempt to follow up those revealing responses. It turned out that Mossad was not the only organization that had taped the sex phone calls. The Republican senator for Arizona, Jon Kyl, a member of the Select Committee on Intelligence, told his local newspaper The Arizona Republic that, “a U.S. intelligence agency may have taped telephone conversations between President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. There are different agencies in the government that make it their business to tape certain things for certain reasons, and it was one of those agencies.”
Kyl refused to identify to the newspaper who the agency or agencies were: “That’s something I absolutely can’t get into in any greater detail.” Of his sources he said, “By virtue of who they are, they have credibility. You can assume that they are people who at some period in time have been in the employ of the federal government.” He went on to compare the existence of the tapes to the “smoking- gun” evidence in the Watergate scandal.
These explosive allegations from a respected politician were never pursued into the public domain.
According to at least one well-placed Israeli intelligence source, Rafi Eitan had received a phone call from Yatom reinforcing the need to stay well clear of the United States for the foreseeable future.
Rafi Eitan did not need to be told how ironic it would be if he fell victim to the very technique that had made him a legend— the kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann. Even worse would be to be quietly killed by one of the methods that had burnished his reputation among men who saw assassination as part of the job.
Thursday, October 22, 1998.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu(L) and Palestinian Authority Chairman Arafat(C) consult at Wye River Conference Center.
Thursday, October 22, 1998.
Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat(L) and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu(R) shaking hands at Wye River Conference Center.
Netanyahu said to have offered Lewinsky tapes for Pollard
WASHINGTON — Israel attempted to use tapes of former US president Bill Clinton’s steamy conversations with intern Monica Lewinsky to leverage the release of Jonathan Pollard, a new book on the Clinton family’s political enterprises has claimed. In the book, titled “Clinton Inc: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine,” author Daniel Halper relies on on-the-record interviews with former officials together with a close analysis of documents termed “the Monica Files” to paint a salacious – and uncomplimentary – picture of one of the most prominent political families in the United States.
Halper reviewed hundreds of pages of documents compiled as a contingency to use in case the former intern ever was involved in legal action against Clinton.
According to the author, the documents indicate that during the Wye Plantation talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, held in Maryland in 1998, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pulled Bill Clinton aside to press for Pollard’s release.
Halper said that Israel had found new leverage to push for Pollard’s release.
“The Israelis present at Wye River had a new tactic for their negotiations–they’d overheard Clinton and Monica and had it on tape. Not wanting to directly threaten the powerful American president, a crucial Israeli ally, Clinton was told that the Israeli government had thrown the tapes away. But the very mention of them was enough to constitute a form of blackmail,” Halper wrote, adding that “according to information provided by a CIA source, a stricken Clinton appeared to buckle.”
Former US president Bill Clinton speaks at Georgetown University on Wednesday, April 30, 2014 (photo credit: Georgetown University)
Halper noted that “intelligence officials in the United States or Israel will of course not confirm on the record the extent or substance of Israeli eavesdropping,” but also cited an article published in 2000 by the magazine Insight, that claimed that Israel had “penetrated four White House telephone lines and was able to relay real-time conversations on those lines from a remote site outside the White House directly to Israel for listening and recording.”
Israel has denied such claims in the past as “outrageous.”
Pollard, a former US naval analyst, was found guilty of passing sensitive documents to Israel, and sentenced to a life sentence in prison for the offense. He remains a cause celebre in Israel, and there have been repeated efforts throughout the past twenty years to secure his release.
Halper cites seemingly corroborating information, including a contemporary New York Times article from November 1998 which reported that the two leaders had discussed Pollard’s release during the ill-fated conference and that “the Israelis had told the president something that opened up the possibility of Pollard’s release, something Clinton had explicitly ruled out during the first six years of his presidency.” The Times article noted that a White House spokesman told a reporter that Clinton was simply “newly impressed by the force of Mr. Netanyahu’s arguments.”
According to Halper, during the special investigation by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr “Lewinsky told prosecutors that Clinton suggested that “they knew their calls were being monitored all along, and the phone sex was just a put-on.”
Halper adds to the narrative claims by the Lewinsky legal support team that “they found evidence that the British, Russians and Israelis all had scooped up the microwaves off the top of the White House.” Halper also offered as evidence the memoir of former Russian president Boris Yeltsin, who wrote that Russian intelligence had picked up on Clinton’s “predilection for beautiful young women.”
Clinton’s “predilection for beautiful young women,” however, was far from a state secret; it was in fact widely discussed even during Clinton’s initial presidential election campaign.
Netanyahu’s threat, according to Halper, spurred Clinton to consider action. Halper claims that Clinton brought the request before CIA director George Tenet. Tenet, however, threatened to resign his position if Pollard was released, and Clinton backpedalled on the idea.
Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky at a Los Angeles premiere in 1999 (photo credit: Monica Lewinsky image via Shuttershock.)
Halper is not the first to claim that Israel illicitly taped the steamy conversations between Clinton and Lewinsky and tried to leverage it to its advantage. In 1999, UK author Gordon Thomas claimed that the Mossad had collected some 30 hours’ worth of phone sex conversations between Lewinsky and Clinton and was using them to blackmail the US or to protect a deeply-embedded mole in the White House.
Thomas also claimed that the Mossad was behind the deaths of Princess Diana, Robert Maxwell, William Buckley, and the 241 Marines killed in a 1983 barracks explosion in Lebanon. At the time, Netanyahu’s spokesman described Thomas’s allegations as “unmitigated drivel.”
Halper, the online editor of the Weekly Standard, says that he “was well aware that the former (and perhaps future) first family and its massive retinue of loyalty enforcers, professional defamers and assorted gadflies would rue my intent to examine the real Clintons” and had been warned “of what to expect from the Clinton PR team.”
In a piece that he wrote for the Huffington Post late Tuesday, Halper said that all of the warnings he had received about clever steps to downplay the impact of his book had proven true.
Copies of Halper’s book were sent out in PDF form to hundreds of reporters days before the book’s official release by a previously unknown individual, in what Halper suggests was an effort to reduce the impact of the book’s release.
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