Gordon Thomas - Gideon's Spies

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.