Did Benjamin Netanyahu Blackmail Bill Clinton Over the Monica Lewinsky Sex Tapes?
It sure looks that way
Watch a segment covering this story on Breaking Points.
In a scandal that has been largely lost to contemporary memory, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was alleged to have blackmailed then-President Bill Clinton by revealing to him that Israel had collected tapes of phone sex calls between the 42nd president and White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
Clinton met with Netanyahu in the Oval Office in February 1997. Subsequently, according to testimony Lewinsky gave to the special counsel’s office, Clinton’s secretary Bettie Currie reached out to Lewinsky to invite her to an Oval Office meeting, telling her Clinton “had something important to tell her.”
It would turn out to be their final sexual encounter, but Clinton also used the opportunity to tell her that “a foreign embassy” had tapped his phone and recorded their conversation, Lewinsky said. Clinton did not specify which embassy, though the meeting with Lewinsky came the month after his meeting with Netanyahu.
The special prosecutor’s report was far more concerned with Lewinsky’s claim of the sexual encounter that day, because it contradicted Clinton’s claim that they had had only one encounter that year, than with the claim a foreign government was spying on the president and letting him know about it. The prosecutor was also interested in Clinton’s response, namely that he proposed cover stories the two could employ if confronted with the tapes. Clinton suggested the pair say that they knew they were under surveillance and the phone sex was a “put on” for whoever was listening. (A flimsy idea, but, being guilty, the man didn’t have much to work with.)
In April, Netanyahu and Clinton met again for a “private visit.” On a Saturday in May 1997, Clinton again had Currie invite Lewinsky to the White House. During that visit, he broke up with her, Lewinsky testified.
The next fall, Clinton hosted Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for a summit at Wye River, Maryland. Toward the end of the summit, at 7 a.m. after a long night of final negotiations and handshakes, Netanyahu approached Clinton privately to demand the release of convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, long a cause célèbre of the Israeli far right, according to reporting from the New York Times. Netanyahu brought up the sex tapes in the context of the Pollard demand, Washington Examiner editor Daniel Harper wrote in his book “Clinton Inc: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine.” “Not wanting to directly threaten the powerful American president, a crucial Israeli ally, Clinton was told that the Israeli government had thrown the tapes away. But the very mention of them was enough to constitute a form of blackmail,” Halper reported.
The talks almost broke down as CIA chief George Tenet told Clinton he would resign on the spot if Clinton agreed to the terms. Instead, Clinton agreed to “review” Pollard’s case. He did not release him. Pollard was eventually released in 2015 under the Obama administration. On the last day of his first term, Trump pardoned Pollard’s handler. Back in Israel, Pollard is an outspoken supporter of extremist National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and has called for the full ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
My guess: Yep