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 circumstances, 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 reported on March 10 that “the American delegation was headed by deputy CIA director George Tenet.” In the 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 Yasser 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 competitors 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 prone 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 Hassoon.
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 Yasser 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 Gi
land, a superb intelligence officer. Israel Hassoon 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, assistant 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 assemblage 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 Saturday 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 principals 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 balls 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 prone to long tirades. That’s where the Shin Bet representative, Israel Hassoon, came in so handy. When Dahlan was just about to go round the bend, Hassoon—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 Hassoon 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 Yankees–Cleveland 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 God 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 passionate 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 dow
n 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 passing 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 Hassoon, 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 entity 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-butting, 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.
At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA Page 8