How MOSSAD could still
topple or 'influence' Hillary
MID-EAST REALITIES - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 27 September 2003:
There is a considerable history in recent times of covert Mossad assassination, kidnapping, and blackmailing. Most of the stories remain still deeply hidden and unknown. A few leak out over time or by accident....and sometimes by design. The details of course, as with the American CIA, are always obscured with intense secrecy, mucho disinformation, multiple cut-outs, and various 'plausible deniability' strategies and schemes. In fact, being so much smaller and working by Israeli standards, Mossad operations are probably far harder to penetrate and then to find out about than the CIA's.
Remember how in the 1980s super-spy Jonathan Pollard was unmasked right in the heart of the most highly classified American military intelligence - the Israelis at first trying hard to deny it all, then to minimize Pollard's significance, then to claim it was all a mistaken 'roque' operation. But now we know in this particular case that Pollard was a Jewish American who was a top level Israeli spy controlled by the most senior Mossad operatives reporting all the way up to the office of the Israeli Prime Minister.
Just why on his last day as President Bill Clinton mysteriously pardoned super-rich super-fugitive Marc Rich is still not fully known. But that Bill owed much in his Presidentcy to 'dually-loyal' American Jews known for their own close ties to Israel, that much is known even if only rarely talked about in public. After all, Clinton rewarded 'the lobby' immediately upon his election in many ways beyond the 'Kosher Kitchen' pledge. Most of all Clinton rushed through the citizenship papers of Martin Indyk - himself known for his extensive intelligence connections before he was brought to the US to head up the new Israeli/Jewish lobby think-tank in Washington - first putting him in charge of Middle East affairs in the White House before making him Assistant Secretary of State for the region and then Ambassador to Israel. And Dennis Ross, Clinton's Ambassador in Charge of the Middle East 'peace negotiations...guess what, now 'out of power' heading up that same Israeli/Jewish lobby think-tank while Indyk has moved on to head up another new one funded by American Zionists coordinating with Israel at the Brookings Institution.
The reality of secret pay-offs and bribes, carefully co-ordinated with the enticement of rewards and threats of penalties, is very much a part of modern-day affairs in Washington, especially on matters relating to and affecting Israel. The American capital is in fact seeded with those who can rightly be said to be 'dually-loyal' American Jews - one group closely associated with Labor another with the Likud wing of the Israeli-Zionist establishment - and at the highest levels of government, media and finance. No American politician on the national level has been able to successfully go up against 'the lobby'. The few who have tried were made examples - the names Fulbright and Percy, both once Chairmen of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, stand out and everyone in power in Washington remembers...or is told.
Remember as well that it was as a favor to some of his American Jews friends in California who had helped propel him to the Oval Office that Monica Lewinsky became an intern in the White House. And many in Washington believe the rumors that the Mossad bugged the once secret late night sex talk between Clinton in the White House and Monica on her unsecured home phone at Watergate. And if true, who knows what other things the Israelis had over the American President as he pushed and pushed the Palestinians, and so many others, to do what the Israelis wanted them to do during his years in office
Now Irish author Gordon Thomas, himself well-known for his extensive intelligence connections over the years in the UK and Israel, provides much more detail into the Clintons, fugitive billionaire Marc Rich, and the Mossad. Thomas' connections with sources and operatives in and around Mossad from the past is quite on the record. He is the author in fact of a book the Mossad cooperated in his writing - Gideon's Spies : The Secret History of the Mossad.
PRESIDENT CLINTON’S CLOSE FRIEND, BILLIONAIRE AND FUGITIVE FROM JUSTICE, WAS A TOP MOSSAD SOURCE – AND COULD WRECK PLANS BY HILARY CLINTON TO RUN FOR THE PRESIDENCY
by Gordon Thomas
Billionaire fugitive Marc Rich, a close personal friend of President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hilary, was one of the most important high-level contacts Mossad had in the United States.
The revelations published here for the first time, could be a serious blow for Hilary Clinton’s plans to run for the Presidency.
Today Rich, a Belgium-born Jew who has taken Spanish nationality, lives in Switzerland under heavy armed guard protection. There is no extradition treaty with the United States to enable him to be questioned by the FBI about his until now secret connection to Mossad.
In January, 2000, his last day in office, President Clinton pardoned Rich, a secretive commodities trader indicted in 1983 on charges of evading almost $50 million tax and illegally buying oil from Iran during the Tehran hostage crisis in 1979.
The question that will inevitably dog Hilary Clinton, if she runs for the Presidency, will be how much did she and her husband even suspect about Rich’s Israeli intelligence links.
An MI6 file covering the Clinton years in the White House reveals that Rich is also suspected of knowing the real identity of a top Mossad informer in the Clinton Administration.
The informer is still only known as “Mega”. The name was first discovered on February, 1997, by the National Security Agency, NSA. It provided the FBI with an intercept of a late-night telephone conversation from the Israeli Embassy in Washington.
It was between a Mossad intelligence officer, still identified only as “Dov” and his superior in Tel Aviv. He was later named as Mossad director-general, Danny Yatom.
“Dov” had asked for guidance as to whether he “should go to Mega” for a copy of a letter written by Warren Christopher, then Secretary of State, to PLO chairman, Yasser Arafat.
Yatom instructed Dov, according to a transcript of the intercept, “this is not something we use Mega for”.
The MI6 file indicates that Mega had been in place towards the end of the first Bush Administration.
It also describes how Rich had acted as a “conduit” for the powerful Jewish lobby in the United States to counter FBI demands that the hunt for Mega should be pursued as vigorously as the FBI dealt with spies from other countries.
The then MI6 head of station at the British Embassy sent a memo to London stating that “dinner guests at the White House dining table – who include Hollywood stars, attorneys, editors and senior members of the Anti-Defamation League – lose no opportunity to remind Clinton of the damage he could face in this matter. They argue the hunt is not properly grounded and that Israel has already explained to DOS (Department of State) the use of Mega”.
Mossad sayanim – the Hebrew name for “helpers” – in the US media had already planted stories that Mega was an incorrect hearing of the Mossad slang for the CIA, Elga.
“Further, Mega is supposedly a well known word in USIC (US intelligence community). It is said to be a joint code for shared intelligence with Mossad”, the MI6 memo stated.
President Clinton’s only comment on pardoning Marc Rich came after he left office.
“It was terrible politics. It wasn’t worth the damage to my reputation”, he told Newsweek magazine.
There has been widespread speculation among opponents of the Clintons that Marc Rich “bought” the pardon with political donations and gifts that his former wife, Denise Rich, gave the president and other democrats.
But in a hint of Rich’s important connections to Mossad, Clinton has admitted that he granted the pardon “partly because the Justice Department did not oppose a pardon and because I had received a request from the government of Israel”.
"Marc Rich played a key part in supporting the apartheid regime in South Africa, and the economic rape of post-Soviet Russia.
His former wife, the Manhattan socialite, pleaded his cause by throwing money at the Clintons..."
That request came in a personal handwritten note from another old friend of Bill Clinton, Israel’s former prime minister, Ehud Barak.
The MI6 file reveals that the pardon was stitched into the Camp David peace agreement by another plea-bargainer, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Clinton was convinced there were “strong mitigating circumstances for a pardon”.
Rich and his first wife, Denise, fled to Switzerland in 1983 – just before US prosecutors brought charges against him of tax evasion and trading with the outlawed regime in Iran.
The couple divorced a decade later and Denise, 59, now lives in a magnificent Fifth Avenue duplex overlooking Central Park.
Rich, 69, has remarried and lives in similar splendour in the exclusive town of Zug in Switzerland. He still deals in commodities. His company, Marc Rich & Co Investment, has recently been taken over by the Russian Alfa Group for a reported $3 billion.
Rich’s secret work for Israel included organising Israeli passports for members of the Russian Mafia. So far thirty known members of various Mafia groups are currently travelling on Israeli passports.
The FBI were also investigating Rich’s connections to various money-laundering operations involving mid-European banks and those in Canada and the United States.
Rich’s prime use for Mossad was as someone who moved in the highest financial circles in Europe, the Middle East and South America.
It is those links the FBI and other teams of US investigators were examining to see if they link to the large sums of money Rich paid to the Clintons and other Democrats before the pardon was granted.
At the time, US Federal prosecutor Mary Jo White launched a criminal investigation into Rich’s financial links with Clinton and his wife.
White obtained copies of Clinton’s White House phone logs and those of Air Force One, the Presidential aircraft. The logs covered all calls the President and Mrs Clinton made to Rich. There was also a complete record of all his calls to them.
All official calls are monitored by the US communications team that accompany the President and his wife on all visits. The calls were described at the time as “a key element in our investigation” by one of White’s aides.
Clinton himself received from Rich, just before leaving office, a cheque for $450,000 to help him set up his Presidential Library Fund. Rich also sent $1.1 million last year to the Democratic Party to help Al Gore fight for the Presidency.
Until now, all the financial links to Rich’s past have not been pursued. But it is the Mossad connection which could prove to be a “smoking gun” for Hilary Clinton, should she enter the Presidential race – either next year or in 2008.
Shortly before he was kidnapped by Hezbollah in October, 2000, Mossad agent Hanan Tannenbaum visited Rich in his Swiss home.
Tannenbaum had been sent by former Mossad director, Danny Yatom, to discuss what Tel Aviv sources later admitted were “intelligence matters of the highest order”. At the time, Yatom was personal security adviser to prime minister Ehud Barak.
Hezbollah somehow spirited Tannenbaum out of Europe to their base in the Beka’a Valley. His fate remains unknown.
In January, 2000, shortly before the Rich pardon was granted, the Senate Judiciary Committee received documents that showed Marc Rich played a crucial role in helping the Bank of Credit and Commercial International (BCCI) arrange for Abu Nidal to receive “hundreds of millions of US dollars for illegal arms transactions in an effort to persuade its wealthy Middle East backers that the bank was staunchly pro-Arab”.
A sworn affidavit by Ghassan Quassem, for 17 years a senior officer with BCCI, states: “British weapons secretly destined for Abu Nidal were financed through BCCI offices and shipped under export documents that Marc Rich knew to be phoney. My role at the bank was to handle the Nidal account. I later became a spy for the CIA and MI6”.
With the coming election years promising to be a knuckle-duster fight, there is a real possibility that the closest Jewish friend the Clintons had may once more step back into a spotlight he has never welcomed. Nor them.
Rich was one of 140 pardons Clinton granted for what was a rogues gallery. The clutch of shady characters included a heroin dealer.
But it was the odious figure of Marc Rich who has left a permanent stain on Clinton’s presidency – and raised questions now.
Marc Rich played a key part in supporting the apartheid regime in South Africa, and the economic rape of post-Soviet Russia.
His former wife, the Manhattan socialite, pleaded his cause by throwing money at the Clintons – even giving Bill a saxophone.
A hint of Clinton’s feelings for Rich is contained in a book proposal he has entered into with Knoph, the New York publisher, for $10 million.
In an outline for a chapter headed “How A Man Gets What He Really Wants”, Clinton writes: “Sometimes people who seem to have very little in common can discover what they have in common”.
"The American capital is in fact seeded with those who can rightly be said to be 'dually-loyal' American Jews - one group closely associated with Labor another with the Likud wing of the Israeli-Zionist establishment - and at the highest levels of government, media and finance."
Was he referring to Rich?
Certainly the billionaire is not quite as rich as he was two years ago. In March, 2001, British Customs officers at Gatwick airport seized $1.9 million of Rich’s money.
The money was seized under UK laws designed to “prevent the movement of money from suspected drug trafficking”.
Last week in Zug, Rich refused to answer questions about his intelligence links – or his connections to Saddam Hussein and the remaining members of the “axis of evil”, North Korea and Iran.
Having renounced his American citizenship, he now travels on Spanish and Israeli passports. He has dual nationality with both countries. Until recently, he also held a Bolivian passport.
The power for a President to grant a pardon stems from the Constitution. This states that the President “may grant reprieves and pardons for offences against the United States.
A President can issue a pardon for “any Federal crime for any reason and no reason – before or after conviction”.
The Clinton pardon stopped the prosecution in their tracks. Post-pardon Rich is free to return to the United States without fear of prosecution – except possibly in the case of compromised national security.
There is no precedent for that – and Rich is unlikely to provide one.
But his links to Mossad remain a ticking time bomb for Hilary Clinton.
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