CHAPTER 4
Waging Peace
CIA Director George J. Tenet told President Clinton last month that he would find it difficult to remain as director were convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Jay Pollard released as part of a Middle East peace agreement, according to sources.-Washington Post, November 11, 1998
Difficult" is the wrong word. "Impossible" is closer, but even that doesn"t do the situation justice. Here is what happened in mid-October 1998 at the Wye Plantation Conference Center, a beautiful 1,100-acre estate along the Wye River, on the Eastern Sh.o.r.e of Maryland. The story itself, though, begins three years earlier, with a brutal murder.
The November 1995 a.s.sa.s.sination of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin-by an Israeli opposed to the peace process, less than two years after Rabin had shared the n.o.bel Peace Prize with his foreign minister, Shimon Peres, and Ya.s.ser Arafat-had a profound effect not only on Rabin"s countrymen but on the Palestinians. The Israelis were accustomed to Palestinians cheering on the rooftops whenever disaster struck across the border. Not this time. Rabin"s murder sparked an outpouring of genuine emotion among the Palestinians, and with it, the entire Israeli perception of their neighbors began to change. Peres had been handed Rabin"s job, his legacy, and his momentum, and for a few months, peace seemed not just conceivable between the Israelis and the Palestinians but genuinely possible.
Then, beginning in late February 1996, came a wave of suicide bombings-four in nine days that left more than sixty dead-engineered by the militant Islamic group Hamas. Arafat, who had been elected to the presidency of the Palestinian Authority that January, reacted with surprising speed, arresting scores of militants, including the man suspected of recruiting the suicide bombers, and raiding more than two dozen Islamic organizations and inst.i.tutions thought to lend financial and other support to Hamas.
To us at CIA, it was evident that Arafat had been surprised by the violence. Hamas was stronger than he realized, strong enough to threaten his power. The bombings had done more than derail the peace process-that was an old story in the Middle East. This time they had called into question the whole structure of the process and the premises on which it was built.
It is difficult to overstate the importance of Middle East peace. The issue transcends humanitarian concerns to stop the violence and suffering. And it is even more important than the desire to eliminate a root cause for much of the global terrorism that plagues our world. The best hopes and the worst fears of the planet are invested in that relatively small patch of earth.
In March 1996, desperate to restart negotiations, a high-level U.S. delegation flew out to the Middle East to meet with leaders there. Aboard were Bill Clinton, still finishing up his first term in office and with a reelection campaign in the offing; Dennis Ross, Clinton"s special envoy to the region, with amba.s.sadorial status; my then boss, John Deutch; and others. In flight, Dennis would later tell me, Clinton asked a very simple question: What do we have to do to save this? And out of that was born the Summit of the Peacemakers, held that spring at the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. The idea of the summit was to demonstrate unmistakably to the Israelis what had been so evident before Hamas went on its killing spree-that they were not alone. The Palestinians were threatened by the same things Israelis were; they, too, condemned these kinds of violent acts.
Clinton and the others didn"t stop there. On that same flight, a second realization was born: that without simultaneous progress on security issues, the political process alone was never going to bring peace to the Middle East. Every deal in the world could be struck with all the goodwill imaginable, but unless the Palestinian and Israeli security forces were in constant communication and working to achieve mutually beneficial goals, Hamas, or some similar group, would always be able to destroy what the politicians had created. The Israelis wanted to know that terrorists would not be given safe harbor by the Palestinians. The Palestinians, in return, wanted to know that their people would not be crushed by an oppressive Israeli security apparatus.
Clinton and Ross agreed on the principle but said that someone would have to be in charge of making the security arrangements, and Deutch apparently said, "I know just the guy for the job." It turns out that I was the guy. Security was the key. You can talk about sovereignty, borders, elections, territory, and the rest all day long, but unless the two sides feel safe, then nothing else matters.
To be honest, I wasn"t enamored of suddenly finding myself in the middle of all this. At one level, it was a natural fit. CIA already had significant ties to the security forces in both Palestine and Israel, and we had aided and abetted plenty of negotiations. But our job in those instances was to provide behind-the-scenes input and insight to the actual negotiators, not to sit at the table ourselves. This new plan called for taking on a quasi-diplomatic role in what was largely a political process, and initially that struck me as inappropriate for someone in my position.
There was no way that my new role wouldn"t become very public, very soon. The DCI had volunteered me, and the president had agreed. Under those circ.u.mstances, I couldn"t say no. But I made it absolutely clear from the beginning that we wouldn"t be mediators or umpires. That was a policy maker"s job, and at CIA, we don"t make policy; we implement it. As I saw our role, it was to be an honest broker, someone both sides could turn to and both sides could trust. The more the Palestinians and Israelis initiated dialogue on their own, the less we were in the middle, the better off everyone would be.
"Listen," a Palestinian negotiator said to me one day after a grueling session, "we know you have a close and strategic relationship with the Israelis that we will never be able to re-create with you. All we ask is that you be fair." That"s a principle to live by in the Middle East, and it was our gold standard from start to finish.
In early March 1996, just days before the Peacemakers summit convened at Sharm el-Sheikh, and in the first real exercise of my new duties, I flew to Israel with some of our top people to begin trying to forge common ground between the Israeli and Palestinian intelligence services. And sure enough, the story went public before my plane touched down.
Citing anonymous sources, the Jerusalem Post Jerusalem Post reported on March 10 that "the American delegation was headed by deputy CIA director George Tenet." In the reported on March 10 that "the American delegation was headed by deputy CIA director George Tenet." In the New York Times New York Times, Tim Weiner wrote that "official meetings between an American intelligence official of Mr. Tenet"s rank and his Palestinian counterpart may be unprecedented."
I can"t say if that"s so, but the emphasis on security issues as a parallel track with the political issues-the recognition that without security there could be no peace process-was unique, at least in my experience. Dennis Ross, the lead American negotiator at Sharm el-Sheikh, made the same point forcefully to Ya.s.ser Arafat. "The peace process is over unless you do something on the security issue. And you can"t fake it-it has to be real," as Dennis later recounted his conversation with the Palestinian chairman. The message got through. The bombings had already convinced Arafat of the threat Hamas posed to him, personally and politically. Once Dennis had helped him understand that we stood ready to help and that ours was an offer he couldn"t refuse, Arafat told Bill Clinton that he was willing to engage in talks with the Israelis, and the peace process was once again up and running. Sort of.
As so often happens with these things, life and other concerns intervened. The Wye River summit that was meant to be the second leg of an ongoing process kept getting put off. Like everything in the Middle East, except the onset of violence, it took longer than expected. When the conference was finally held, in October 1998, more than two years after the Sharm el-Sheikh gathering, I had been DCI for fifteen months.
Dennis tried to set the table for Wye by meeting beforehand with Mohammed Dahlan, the Palestinian security chief, on the beach in Gaza. Dennis"s message was essentially what he had said to Arafat two years earlier: The Palestinians had to be ready to make concessions to the Israelis on the security front. They needed to accommodate Israel"s concerns in unprecedented ways. Then he went on to list what those were going to be. Dahlan"s response was predictable. No, he could never agree to that. He would look like a quisling, and on and on. Fine, Dennis told him, we"ll change the words, but we cannot alter the substance. Dahlan said yes to that-he really didn"t have a choice-but Dennis was still uneasy. Without a security proposal, he would have no leverage on Bibi Netanyahu, who had succeeded Shimon Peres as prime minister in the spring of 1996, and without leverage, nothing was going to get done.
When Dennis returned, he asked me to fly out to the Middle East and help the Palestinians develop a specific security plan that they would then bring with them to Wye-an insurance policy, of sorts, that the leverage would be there when he needed it. And thus I found myself, only days before a summit was to begin, locked into the secure Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility-or SCIF, as it"s known-at the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem with Mohammed Dahlan; Jabril Rajoub, chief of the Palestinian Security Service on the West Bank; and Amin al-Hindi, leader of the Palestinian General Intelligence Service.
These men, who would be my counterparts in countless meetings in the years to come, shared some traits. Several of them spoke decent Hebrew, an artifact of having spent years as prisoners in Israeli jails. They also were compet.i.tors among themselves. It was sometimes hard to know where their official talking points stopped and their personal agendas started. I was accustomed to politicians with egos and agendas, however, and I struck up warm personal relations with them all. Perhaps it was my Greek ancestry, but I was used to people speaking emotionally, with lots of arm-waving and raised voices. Dahlan in particular was p.r.o.ne to launching into histrionic rants about slights real and perceived that had been visited on his people. Of course, he always had a purpose in mind.
My goal, as per instructions, was to move beyond all that and get on paper the specific concessions that the Palestinians were prepared to make and implement. Their goal, it soon became apparent, was to do anything but.
At first I figured they were just fundamentally disorganized and incapable of doing graphs and opening up Microsoft Word so they could start writing things down. Before long, though, I came to realize the Palestinians were simply concerned that anything they put on paper had a high possibility of getting leaked to the Israelis, and from the Israelis to the media, before anyone ever got to Wye. That would mean trouble in their own communities for having made concessions, but from their point of view, it also was imprudent for them to commit to anything, on paper or in face-to-face negotiations, before they had seen the color of Israeli money and knew what reciprocal concessions the Israelis were willing to make.
Four or five hours of hard jawboning didn"t budge them from their position. They had no intention of showing their cards in advance, or even sitting at the table. I left the consulate that day uncertain what, if anything, the Palestinians might show up with, but at least they understood we were serious about getting the job done.
My second appointment was more successful, or so it seemed at the time. Dennis had also asked me to meet with Ami Ayalon, chief of Shin Bet, the internal Israeli intelligence service. Dennis worried that Netanyahu was for political reasons going to demand security requirements that went beyond any reasonable standards. A retired Israeli navy admiral, Ami was a real straight shooter-and we could count on him not to play games. For our get-together, he was accompanied by one of his deputies, Israel Ha.s.soon.
In our first Israeli-American meeting at the U.S. consulate, I saw hopeful signs. If Ami said the Israelis were prepared to negotiate security issues in good faith, and if he believed that the concessions we were urging the Palestinians to make would be acceptable to Israel, then Wye might really prove to be a turning point. That"s basically what Ami told me when I saw him-a good omen, except that he also told me he was not going to be a part of the Israeli delegation at Wye. Dennis later theorized that Netanyahu wanted to leave him at home because Ami, like Rabin, just couldn"t lie. Physically, both men were incapable of it. You can"t play team poker when your partner can"t put on a poker face. For his part, Ami explained that he didn"t want to get involved in what was sure to become political theater. I shared that feeling, but it was strange to think of negotiating security arrangements without the chief Israeli security official in the room.
By October 15, 1998, when everyone had gathered at Wye River, Ami Ayalon seemed to be about the only person who wasn"t there or on his way. Benjamin Netanyahu and Ya.s.ser Arafat headed their delegations, of course, but the second tier were also key players in the peace process. Abu Ala, Abu Mazen, Saeb Erakat, Jabril Rajoub, and Mohammed Dahlan were there along with Arafat.
In addition to Ariel Sharon, the Israelis had Shlomo Yanai, the chief military planner, and Meir Dagan, Netanyahu"s counterterrorism advisor; Gen. Mike Herzog, head of the Israeli Defense Forces" strategic planning division; and Gen. Amos Giland, a superb intelligence officer. Israel Ha.s.soon showed up to represent Shin Bet, and he ended up being one of the unsung heroes of the entire affair.
In addition to the president, the U.S. team included Sandy Berger; Secretary of State Madeleine Albright; Dennis Ross; Martin Indyk, a.s.sistant secretary of state for the Near East; Stan Moskowitz, one of CIA"s senior officers in the Middle East; and Gemal Helal, the State Department interpreter. Vice President Gore showed up on Sunday afternoon for a few hours to add his presence as well.
Naturally, such a distinguished a.s.semblage gathered for so momentous a purpose attracted a huge opening press conference, held in one of the large meeting rooms. I chose to sit upstairs and wait it out. Although I"d grown accustomed to my role in these negotiations, I still wasn"t comfortable with such a public display.
I was on hand, though, later in the week, for what to me was the most emotional moment of the entire event. At President Clinton"s urging, King Hussein and Queen Noor of Jordan flew in from the Mayo Clinic, where the king was being treated for cancer. The king gave a poignant speech, urging both sides to listen to each other and be prepared to make concessions to the greater goal of regional peace. That alone would have been riveting, but the fact that the king had made this effort while he was so clearly struggling for his life-he"d lost a great deal of weight and all his hair, even his eyebrows, to chemotherapy-bathed the moment in emotion and heroism.
But this was Bill Clinton"s show from the beginning. The president was someone who loved to try to solve big problems, and they don"t get much bigger than this one. But there was more to it than that, more to it even than regional security and humanitarian concerns. Finding a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian issue might have had a major impact on the conditions that promote Middle Eastern terrorism. Clinton understood what was ultimately at stake, and he had been working his entire presidency on finding a solution.
As he always did, he had read up extensively on the issues. It was incredible how much detail he was steeped in and how easily he could call it back up. And he had no intention of letting this meeting fail, however long it took. Late at night, sometimes at two or three in the morning, you could hear Clinton"s helicopter lifting off for the White House, where he would work until dawn on budget issues. In the mornings would come the thump-thump-thump of the helicopter returning. I have no idea when he slept, or how long he might have gone without sleep altogether. We arrived at the Wye Center on a Friday expecting to be heading home no later than the end of the next Monday. By Tuesday, with no end in sight, I had to start scrambling for clean clothes.
My part of the operation didn"t exactly race along either; in fact, it was a roadblock in the entire process. Without a security arrangement, the political side of the equation was never going to fall in place; and without something hard and fast on paper, from both sides, we were never going to get there.
As I had a few days earlier in Jerusalem, Dennis spent hours that first Sat.u.r.day trying to get the Palestinians to commit to the plan we had laid out for them. Meanwhile, the Israelis sat and stewed, waiting for Dennis to give them equal time. By the first joint session late that afternoon, Netanyahu and his gang had worked themselves into a fine and deeply suspicious lather, and I still had nothing concrete to show them from the other side.
The script had called for this to be a very small meeting, just a few princ.i.p.als from either side. I was going to walk in, say something like "Here"s the security piece, just waiting to be signed, sealed, and delivered." Instead, eight or nine people showed up from both camps-the room was jammed-and Netanyahu was having none of it.
"Look," he said, "as much as we like and trust you, we haven"t seen the substance of the security plan. You have seen it, but we haven"t seen anything. So how are we supposed to know? This is our security, not yours." I couldn"t argue with that. He was right, so I told him, "Bibi, I will work this. We will go and do it." And that became my life, day and night, for the next five days.
Odd memories persist from that time. I can recall chatting with Meir Dagan, the Israeli counterterrorism advisor, during a break in the negotiations. I asked if he knew Gen. Amin al-Hindi, the head of the Palestinian external security service. Meir looked straight at me and said, "I know Amin al-Hindi. I chased him around the West Bank for two years trying to put a bullet in his head." "Well," I told him, returning his smile, "he is on the other side of the room. You could end the whole thing right now. Just go over and pop him." Happily, he understood that my suggestion was a rhetorical one only.
During another break, at a time when I was deeply frustrated by the fact that no progress was being made, I ran into Mohammed Dahlan. "Let"s go to the game room," he said to me. "I"m going to teach you how to play Israeli jailhouse pool." "What is that?" I asked. "What are the rules?" "Oh," he told me, "it"s simple. The guy who gets the most b.a.l.l.s in loses." So for the next hour and a half, in the elegant Wye Plantation game room, the two of us worked our way around the pool table, doing everything we could not to get a ball close to a pocket. I never asked Mohammed exactly what lesson I was to take away from the experience, but it seemed to be a metaphor for the entire peace process. I think the game of pool was his way of showing me that committing on the security side would shift the pressure to the political arrangements, but neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis were anxious to get there.
Dahlan could be problematic himself. In the Palestinian manner-and the Israeli one, for that matter-he was p.r.o.ne to long tirades. That"s where the Shin Bet representative, Israel Ha.s.soon, came in so handy. When Dahlan was just about to go round the bend, Ha.s.soon-in a singsong voice that steadily but slowly increased in volume-would begin to repeat and stretch out Dahlan"s familiar name: Abu Fahdi, Abooo Faaaahdi, Abooooooo Faaaaaaaaaahdiiiiii. Then Ha.s.soon would speak to Mohammed in Arabic in a hushed tone, and suddenly we were back on track. The effect was often amazing, but the entire process was, too. Every word, every gesture, every parry and feint and thrust sometimes seemed to have been scripted thousands of years earlier.
One evening, desperate to escape our confinement, Stan Moskowitz and I sneaked off to town to watch a YankeesCleveland Indians game in the American League Championships. We clandestinely "exfiltrated" ourselves off the plantation and went to a nearby hotel, where other CIA folks supporting the negotiations were staying. When we got there, I called Madeleine Albright. "Where are you?" she asked. "You cannot leave! Please come and get me..."
About that time, I received a handwritten note from my son, John Michael, then eleven years old. He"d scrawled on a card, "Hey, Dad, what"s up? How have you been? I know how hard it must be trying to get them to sign a peace treaty. Just pray to G.o.d to help you because he is the only one who knows the answere [sic]. Have a good time. Get them to make peace, and come home soon. Love, John Michael." I remember showing the note to Abu Allah, and he asked me for a copy.
At the negotiations, while others used armored limousines and large security details to get to meetings, Stan Moskowitz decided that he and I should ride Schwinn bikes between "Palestinian-land" and "Israeli-land," as we called the large homes where the delegations were staying. He declared it much more efficient and fun.
During one ride, as the secretary of state"s motorcade blew by us, Stan leaned over and asked, "How much if I can get Madeleine Albright on a bike?" We almost got Arafat to ride one. We were like two kids from Queens and the Bronx on the way to a stickball game, leaving skid marks everywhere as we approached solemn meetings. (Sadly, Stan"s death in the summer of 2006 robbed us of a great intellect and a pa.s.sionate proponent of peace in the Middle East. I miss him still.) While I was in Jerusalem, the Palestinians had reached out to the Israelis with a specific work plan for the city of Ramallah. Now the Israelis expected the Palestinians to work out a detailed plan for the rest of the territories under their control and commit to laying down a specific ninety-day security plan that would operate indefinitely into the future.
At the opening trilateral session, Shlomo Yanai, dedicated to his country and a pragmatic and thoughtful man, stated that it was essential that Israel know this was a work plan and that it was being implemented. More than anything else, Yanai and the Israelis needed something tangible so that the Israelis would have real confidence that steps were being taken. Predictably, perhaps, Mohammed Dahlan expressed what would be a familiar refrain at Wye: that this Israeli requirement was humiliating and unfair. He said that dealing with Israelis was always some kind of a test and that pa.s.sing one exam always led to another.
The opening discussion illuminated the crux of the problem. For the Palestinians, concessions and action plans against the military and civilian infrastructure of Hamas had enormous political implications. The lack of trust, and the possibility of leaks, would potentially cast Dahlan as an Israeli lackey. The high theater for everyone"s benefit on Dahlan"s part was not lost on the Israelis, and in particular Israel Ha.s.soon, who understood Dahlan"s dilemma. Yet not lost on us either was the absolute requirement for the Palestinians to act and ultimately be held accountable for what they did or did not do.
This is where CIA came in. We were the one ent.i.ty both sides could trust. But there had to be a work plan and there had to be measurable time lines for bilateral cooperation to have a chance. Incrementally, though, progress did get made. By Wednesday morning, after nearly five days of head-b.u.t.ting, we finally had a draft agreement nearly in place, and that was when the Israelis decided to play hardball. They put their bags outside, signaling that they were going home. The security draft wasn"t acceptable, they were suggesting. Without that nothing would get done, so why stick around?
Dennis Ross, for one, wasn"t impressed. "Okay, call them on it," he told Madeleine Albright. "Ask them what time they want to leave. We"ll make all the arrangements." Dennis"s belief was that when people put their bags out, they don"t intend to leave. If they did, Netanyahu would be the loser, not the Palestinians-the one who walked away from a historic opportunity for peace.
I wasn"t so sure, so I went in search of Yitzhak Mordechai, the Israeli defense minister, who had arrived at Wye less than a day earlier. Mordechai was a serious man who instinctively distrusted the showmanship of populist politicians. Madeleine Albright had told me to ignore the luggage, but I could barely get into the building without tripping over it, so I called out to some sheepish-looking Israelis standing nearby, "What"s with the bags? You guys going somewhere?" Then I found Mordechai and asked him to take a walk. "Here"s where we are and what we have," I told him, and went on to lay out the security negotiations to date. "Look," he said, "I"ll go talk to them. I will get us to "yes."" And with that, the bags returned to the rooms and we got back to business. Perhaps the Israelis were just doing some sort of scripted, good cop/bad cop routine, but whatever the backdrop, it worked. Mordechai was critical to the final stages of the security negotiations, including some concessions that put us over the top.
At last, on Wednesday, October 21, at a 6:00 P.M. P.M. meeting, a deal was reached. meeting, a deal was reached.
Days of negotiation followed. In the end the Israelis agreed that a thirty-day plan would be developed in the field jointly between Palestinian and Shin Bet officials, that it would be coordinated within seven days with Chief of Staff Mofaz and Director Ayalon, that all Palestinian ent.i.ties would have to adhere to the plan-an important point for the Israelis, as Dahlan could not speak for the West Bank-and that cooperation would be continuous. Finally, CIA agreed to host biweekly trilateral meetings to a.s.sess implementation, enhance communication, and help the two sides overcome obstacles. I then asked Defense Minister Mordechai if the agreement meant that the security file was closed. The defense minister said yes.
The Israelis were taking an enormous risk, betting that the Palestinians would fulfill their obligations. Mordechai had been indispensable in selling the agreement to his political leadership. The Palestinians needed our help in building their security. We agreed to do so. But in return, I said to them, "At the end of the day, only one thing matters-performance. The credibility of the CIA is on the line. There will be no second chances." We all seemed to be on the same page on security issues, but there was one final matter yet to be resolved: Jonathan Pollard.
Jonathan Pollard had been convicted in 1986 on one count of pa.s.sing top-secret material to the Israelis while working as a navy intelligence a.n.a.lyst. He was then (and still is) serving a life sentence at a federal prison in Butner, North Carolina. Many people in the intelligence community believed that Pollard hadn"t been motivated by love of Israel alone. There were indications that he offered to spy for other countries as well. But many Israelis considered Pollard to be a soldier, and this was the Israeli ethos-leave n.o.body on the battlefield. It was understandable on one level, but I was still shocked to hear Pollard"s name arise in the middle of these negotiations. We were there to broker peace, not to pardon people who had sold out their country.
Martin Indyk recalls that Pollard came up at the first meeting President Clinton had with Netanyahu at Wye. I was not at that meeting. After the session, according to Martin, Sandy Berger asked the president whether Bibi had raised the issue of Pollard. The president said yes, and that he had told Bibi he would deal with that at the end.
On Tuesday evening, the president had asked Dennis Ross how important Pollard was to Bibi. Dennis felt that Pollard could be released but that he should be saved for the final negotiations-some months or years ahead. Ross told Clinton he thought he could get this deal without Pollard.
On Thursday, Sandy Berger called a session that included me, Dennis Ross, Madeleine Albright, and some others, and that"s when Sandy dropped what for me was a bombsh.e.l.l. "You need to be aware of the fact that Netanyahu has put Pollard on the table," he said.
"No," I responded. "You"re wrong. Pollard is not on the table." And with that I got up and walked out of the room. Sandy followed me out. "This is ridiculous," I told him. "Pollard has nothing to do with what we are doing here."
"Look," he said, "the president hasn"t agreed to anything, but I promise to give you a shot at the president if the Israelis put this back on the table."
I talked the matter over with Stan Moskowitz, who was just as alarmed as I was about the possibility of the Israelis using our legitimate desire for peace to spring Pollard. Then I stewed over it myself for a few hours until I knew what I had to do. I"d just negotiated the security arrangement. If Pollard were included in the final package, no one at Langley would believe I hadn"t had a hand in that, too. In the margins, the deal would reward a U.S. citizen who spied on his own country, and once word of that got out (and that would take a nanosecond or two), I would be effectively through as CIA director. What"s more, I should be. I would have no moral capital left with my troops. Better to go out on my own, first, especially when I felt so strongly about the issue.
Finally, I called Stephanie, to be certain I was doing the right thing.
"You"re right," she told me after I had explained the situation and told her I was going to resign if the president wouldn"t hold the line. "Stick to your guns."
About midnight that Thursday, Madeleine came up to me and said, "If you"re going to say anything to the president about Pollard, now is the time to say it."
"Why?" I asked, but she just repeated herself.
"If you"ve got something to say, say it now."
Madeleine was absolutely critical here; she knew a terrible deal when she saw one and she knew that releasing Pollard would put me in an impossible position. As soon as Madeleine was gone, I cornered Sandy and told him I needed to see the president alone.
"What do you want to talk with him about?" he asked. Sandy sounded agitated, but that might have been the strain of the summit, not my request. Everyone"s nerves were getting a little raw by then.
"Pollard," I told him.
Within the hour, I was led into a back room where the president was waiting-just the two of us alone. I"d seen Bill Clinton plenty of times by then, in Cabinet meetings-although I attended only those that dealt with national security-at Camp David, during the Peacemakers summit at Sharm el-Sheikh, and other places. We had a good professional relationship, but nothing had prepared me for this. I was flying solo now.
"Mr. President," I began, "I just need to make you aware of something. We"ve done a security agreement here that I think is important. As a result, I think the negotiations may succeed, but if Pollard is released, I will no longer be the Director of Central Intelligence in the morning. This is an issue that has nothing to do with this set of negotiations."
I can be an emotional guy. But I was very calm at this moment, very matter-of-fact. I knew what had to be done. "I"ve worked very hard to restore morale at the agency," I continued. "I think our efforts are paying off, but I also just negotiated this security agreement. Everyone knows that. If a spy is let out as a consequence of these negotiations, I will never be able to lead my building." I went on to say that other people needed to be consulted here-the attorney general, for example-but the bottom line, I said, "is that it"s just the wrong thing to do. I just want you to know that I appreciate the fact that you"ve allowed me to serve and I appreciate the opportunity you"ve given me, but I won"t be your CIA director in the morning."
When I was through, the president thanked me, and I walked out of the room uncertain whether I would still have a job come morning.
The talks meanwhile continued through the night-the president really was indefatigable. My part in the deal-making was officially done, even if my stake in the deal was, at least to me, larger than ever.
At six that morning, Stan and I were sitting in a small room off the main negotiating area with some of the Israeli and Palestinian partic.i.p.ants, including Bibi Netanyahu and Mohammed Dahlan, when the president came walking in with Arafat and led him to Netanyahu so they could shake hands and seal the deal. After a round of congratulations, everyone began filing out of the room.
Stan and I were the last ones remaining when Dahlan turned at the door and said, "There will be one more thing."
No, we told him, it was done. Didn"t he see the handshake?
"You wait," he said. "The Israelis always want one more thing."
That, of course, is exactly what the Israelis say about the Palestinians, but in this instance, Dahlan was correct.
When we walked into the big dayroom next door, Netanyahu was sitting in the corner, in an obvious funk, with Clinton talking to him. Finally, the president came over to us and said, "We have a problem. Netanyahu still wants Pollard."
Dennis Ross would later tell me that he and the president went off to the bathroom to have a private conference after Netanyahu had tossed in the Pollard monkey wrench again. According to Dennis, he asked the president if he had promised Pollard to the Israelis. Clinton said no, but reading between the lines, Dennis believes that the president had all but walked up to that point.
"You don"t have a choice," Dennis remembers telling the president. "If you promised promised Bibi you would release Pollard, then you have to release him. But this agreement is too good for Bibi to give up. Hang tough, and we will get a deal." Bibi you would release Pollard, then you have to release him. But this agreement is too good for Bibi to give up. Hang tough, and we will get a deal."
According to Indyk, the president met with Netanyahu one more time and told him that he would not be able to give him Pollard because the Director of Central Intelligence would resign. Netanyahu said in that case the deal is off. As we would soon learn, the story had already leaked and the Israeli press was reporting that Netanyahu would be bringing Pollard home with him on the plane when he left for Israel. Martin remembers an Israeli journalist calling him and asking if it was true that Pollard was going to be released. No way, Martin said.
Somewhere in this same time frame, Yitzhak Mordechai broke ranks to come over and sit next to me. "You know," he said, "we really must have Pollard."
"Mr. Minister," I answered, "with all due respect, it"s inappropriate. Let"s flip sides here. Put yourself in my position, and I think you"ll see that this is just not something I will ever agree to. If the decision is made over my head, there"s nothing I can do about it, but there is no budge from my position."
I went back to my room after that. Clearly, I had become a more prominent player in these negotiations than I had ever expected. I knew I was right but, still, I felt uncomfortable.
I wasn"t alone for long. I was barely settled in before John Podesta, Clinton"s chief of staff, called. John was not pushing, just delivering a message. "The vice president asked me to phone you," he began. "Do you know how important this agreement is?"
"Yes, I know it"s very important."
"Well, the Israelis won"t sign unless they get Pollard."
"John," I told him, "this agreement is in their interest. They will sign it. Do not give them Pollard." Just so there could be no misunderstanding, I repeated my position. "If you give them Pollard, I"m done, but you don"t have to. They will sign this agreement because it is in their interest. Just hold fast."
I was confident that my position on Pollard was the correct one-but that didn"t stop me from feeling an enormous amount of self-imposed pressure. What if I am the reason this whole peace process collapses? I thought. I took a stroll with Dennis Ross along Wye"s boardwalk and told him that I didn"t think I had any choice other than to adopt the stance I was taking but that I was really worried about becoming a human roadblock to peace. "Don"t worry," Dennis said to me. "In the end we will get the deal."
News of Pollard"s supposed release spread quickly outward from the Israeli media. Before long the White House started getting heat from all kinds of people, including then House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who called the president to oppose Pollard"s release. This cemented the president"s determination not to release Pollard.
I do know that when Stan Moskowitz and I next saw the president, he clearly had made up his mind. Instead of sidestepping the subject, he put his arm around Stan, looked at me, and said, "Why don"t we swap Stan for Pollard?" he joked.
And of course the Israelis did do the deal, just as Dennis and I were convinced they would. This was a game of chicken; Netanyahu and company were holding out to the last minute to see if we would blink. The Palestinians signed on, too. The Wye River Memorandum, as the final agreement became known, was as much in their interests as it was in the Israelis", and for a precious short time, we could congratulate ourselves on a job well done.
I pa.s.sed up the Wye River signing ceremony that Friday afternoon in the East Room of the White House. I didn"t think it was any more appropriate for the Chief Spy to be seen there than it would have been for me to show up for the photo session at the start of the negotiations.
The day after the signing ceremony, Stephanie and I had a private lunch with King Hussein and Queen Noor at the house they kept on River Road in Potomac, not far from my own house but a thousand real-estate zones removed. "I"m really proud of what you did in that negotiation," the king told me. But for me, it was the king who deserved congratulations. His appearance at the negotiations had been heroic, given his failing health. King Hussein died three and a half months later. About a month before the king died, I had flown to see him at the Mayo Clinic. Stephanie had given me some holy oil from the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem with instructions to pa.s.s it on to Queen Noor and let her know that we were praying for a miracle. Before he died, the king went to the effort of sending Stephanie a touching letter of thanks for her gesture.
When I was with King Hussein, I always felt that I was in the presence of wisdom and history, and yet when I met him for the first time, at his own palace, he had come up to the car I arrived in, opened the door himself, and said to me, "Good morning, sir. It"s good to meet you." For a guy from Queens, having a king call him sir made quite an impression. I was forty-two years old then, new to my work, a rookie in the presence of a legend. In the years since, I"ve often wondered what impact his wisdom would have had in helping all of us avert the mess we find ourselves in today.