Today The Daily Mail reports that a “blockbuster new book” reveals that “Israel intercepted White House phone calls, including x-rated conversations.”
More from The Daily Mail:
[A]s reported in the book, at a meeting held in October 1998 near Wye River, Maryland, Prime Minister Netanyahu pulled Clinton aside and revealed that the Israelis had listened to Clinton Monica’s sex talk, and assured the President that they ‘threw away the tapes’. But the apparent quid pro quo was that Clinton would arrange for the release of Jonathan Pollard who was convicted of spying for Israelis and a cause celeb for the country.
While government officials in either country would not confirm the nature of Israeli eavesdropping, Halper reports there is ample evidence to support Monica’s story. In the end however, not willing to risk the wrath of his national security team, Clinton pulled back on his effort to free the spy.
The author says Clinton also had phone sex with other women while on presidential trips, including one visit to the Seychelles.
I was surprised to see it reported in such a way because we’ve known about this for years. In Bob Tyrrell’s 2007 book, The Clinton Crack-Up: The Boy President’s Life After the White House, he wrote about foreign nations having tapes of Clinton and Monica Lewinsky’s phone sex.
On page 70, he wrote:
What will happen if the tapes of President Clinton’s phone sex with Monica (and probably others) make their way into the public domain, perhaps after being sold or leaked by the foreign intelligence agents who almost certainly have them? The Starr Report states that Lewinsky “spoke on the telephone with the President approximately 50 times, often after 10:00 p.m. and sometimes well after midnight.” It gets worse: “On 10 to 15 occasions, she and the President had phone sex. After phone sex late one night, the President fell asleep, mid-conversation.” But did foreign intelligence eavesdroppers — most likely from France, Israel, and Russia — fall asleep? Intelligence experts know that the aforementioned countries had the capacity to snatch these calls from the airways, which summons another thought. The most controversial recipient of a Clinton pardon, Marc Rich, was close to agents from at least one of these countries, possibly all three.
Tyrrell also acknowledged that it was the Starr Report that first brought to light that Clinton suspected the conversations may be recorded. Under oath, Lewinsky said, “He suspected that a foreign embassy was tapping his telephones, and he proposed cover stories.”
But today The Daily Mail bizarrely reports the following as if it’s just coming to light:
Then, as recounted by Halper from The Monica Files, the President told Monica he had something ‘important’ to discuss.
‘We may have been overheard’, he said, referring, no doubt, to the frequent phone sex exchanges between the President and the White House intern.
Monica said she didn’t know what he was talking about and couldn’t imagine how anyone could overhear them.
Clinton doesn’t really answer her. He only responds, ‘If anybody ever says anything about the calls I’ve made to you, tell them we were just joking.’
When Tyrrell first wrote about it in 2007, it was just as salacious and newsworthy then. In a May 2007 interview, he recounts:
FP: In what ways is Clinton a sociopath? Is Hillary one as well?
Tyrell: Well, neither knows right from wrong. They lie when they don’t have to and tell whoppers when a little white lie would be perfectly adequate. That gets them into trouble. As I report in the book no first couple ever attracted so many prosecutors, cops, criminal lawyers. At one point they had the entire Supreme Court engaged, and the Senate and the United States House of Representatives, the FBI, the Justice Department, who knows, possibly even the CIA and Russian intelligence? You will recall that I report that the “phone sex” between Lewinsky and Clinton were al taped by foreign intelligence agencies and might be released at any point, a particularly dramatic point might be during Hillary’s run for the White House. [Emphasis added]
So, why the surprise over seven years later? Perhaps the media is trying to pretend they didn’t ignore the security risks for so long.
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