George Tenet, former CIA director, on the Palestinian cause in his memoirs

- What did Mr. "George Tenet," former Director of the American intelligence agency CIA, write in his memoirs about the Israeli-Palestinian talks, and the late Yasser Arafat (Abu Ammar), in the period from 1997 until 2004...in several parts..

- "The best hopes and the worst fears in the world are invested in this relatively small patch of land." George Tenet said this in his description of the conflict and peace in Palestine...from the book "At The Center of the Storm...The Years of My CIA Service" by Mr. George Tenet...who served as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency CIA for seven years from 1997 until 2004. The book was printed in 2007....during the administrations of two American presidents, President Clinton and President George W. Bush, he wrote his memoirs for that period, and witnessed important events that shook the United States and the world. In this article I have selected a summarized portion of those memoirs relating to the Palestinian-Israeli talks at Wye Plantation, Sharm El-Sheikh and Camp David...and the Palestinian delegation at Wye and Camp David was led by the late President Yasser Arafat...

- He wrote in the "fourth chapter" of his memoirs, under the title "Fighting the Battle for Peace"..where he quoted a phrase regarding the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 by an Israeli who opposed the peace process, saying: less than two years after Rabin shared the Nobel Peace Prize with his foreign minister Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat..., and George Tenet says that "the Israelis were used to Palestinians rejoicing on rooftop tops whenever a catastrophe occurred on the other side of the border, but not this time — he meant the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin — for Rabin’s killing released a surge of genuine feelings among Palestinians, and with it began a complete change in the Israeli perception of their neighbors" — according to what Mr. Tenet wrote-!

· Tenet also wrote in his memoirs about the suicide bombings in 2-1996 (George Tenet was Deputy Director of the CIA at that time), and Tenet says that the violence — in Tenet’s description — which was obvious to us at the CIA, had surprised Arafat, and he responded with unexpected speed, and his men raided several centers and Islamic organizations believed to be providing Hamas with financial and other support.. — according to George Tenet’s account —.. A high-level U.S. delegation went to the Middle East to meet with leaders there in order to restart the negotiations, headed by President Bill Clinton and the then-Director of the CIA John Deutsch...to save the peace process...and to provide inputs and ideas to the negotiations...and George Tenet says that the CIA, as an intelligence agency, cannot have its staff act as mediators or arbitrators between the two parties, but they execute policy...not make it..!!

· George Tenet quotes a Palestinian negotiator as saying one day after an exhausting session: "We know that you have a close, strategic relationship with the Israelis; we will not be able to create one like it with you, but all we ask of you is to be fair"..!(in March 1996..when the U.S. delegation was headed by George Tenet — Deputy Director of the CIA — at the Summit of Peace Makers in Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt)..

· Dennis Ross, the chief U.S. negotiator in Sharm El-Sheikh, stressed one point: that the peace process is not possible without security..!. That assertion was made in front of the late Yasser Arafat, and Ross later recounted what was said between him and the late Yasser Arafat, confirming and directing his words to Yasser Arafat: "The peace process will end unless you do something on the security issue, and you cannot fake it; it must be real"! — according to George Tenet’s memoirs —.. This was after the suicide bombings inside Israel that we referred to earlier — in 1996.

· George Tenet wrote about the Wye River peace talks..which convened in the United States in October 1998, which he describes as "the second leg" of the ongoing peace process, as George Tenet called it...about two years after the gathering of peace makers in Sharm El-Sheikh...and George Tenet was Director of the CIA at that time (from 31-7-1997 until 31-7-2004)...

· Before the Wye meeting, Dennis Ross, the chief American negotiator, tried to meet with Muhammad Dahlan, the security official in Gaza at that time, where Ross confirmed to Dahlan after their meeting the necessity for the Palestinians to be prepared to make concessions to the Israelis on the political front!!.. that the Palestinians must reassure the Israelis in an unprecedented way..! And Ross presented Dahlan with a list of those concessions, but Dahlan’s expected response was: no...we cannot agree to that, of course, so Dennis said, "That’s fine, we can change the text, but not the substance.." Dahlan agreed to that...and Netanyahu had become Prime Minister in the spring of 1996, succeeding Shimon Peres...

· George Tenet traveled to the Middle East at the request of the White House, days before the Wye summit, to help the Palestinians develop a specific security plan to bring with them to the Wye summit...and he found himself — George Tenet — days before the Wye summit, gathered in the American Consulate in Jerusalem in the Sensitive Information Room..with Muhammad Dahlan, Jibril Rajoub and Amin al-Hindi, some of whom speak Hebrew fluently, and George Tenet spoke, wondering that it is difficult to imagine where official talking points end and their personal agendas begin, though I am used to politicians who have self-importance and agendas, and I had woven warm personal relations with all of them, perhaps due to my Greek antecedents...but I am used to people who speak emotionally, with much hand-waving and raised voices.., and Dahlan in particular tended to deliver rhetorical speeches about the real and intended humiliations that had befallen his people, and of course he always had a purpose behind that..! — according to George Tenet’s description-

4-5 hours of intense talks did not succeed in convincing them (i.e., the Palestinians) to budge from their position. They had no intention of revealing their cards in advance or even of sitting at the table.

· Netanyahu and Arafat chaired their delegations — October 1998 — and the late King Hussein and his wife Queen Noor traveled from the Mayo Clinic Hospital where he was being treated for cancer, and the King delivered an emotional speech urging both sides to listen to one another and to be ready to make concessions for the greater goal of achieving peace in the region. George Tenet says in his memoirs, admiring the personality of the late King Hussein bin Talal, that "I always felt when I was with King Hussein that I was in the presence of the wisdom of history"!!.

· Muhammad Dahlan expressed what became familiar at Wye "that this Israeli demand is humiliating and unfair," and said that dealing with the Israelis is like a constant test, and passing one exam leads to another.! The Israelis wanted something more tangible than anything else, to be sure that steps had been taken.. such as concessions and action plans against Hamas’s military infrastructure. And we received a draft agreement, but the Israelis decided to take a hard line; they put their suitcases outside, to indicate that they were returning to their country, which suggests that the security draft was unacceptable, and without that nothing could be done, so why should we remain? was their sentiment... Dennis Ross knew them; he believed that when they put out their suitcases, they did not intend to leave.. and if they intended to leave, the losers would not be the Palestinians but Netanyahu, who missed a historic opportunity for peace.

· On 21-10-1998, an agreement was reached, but Netanyahu opened the file of Jonathan Pollard, the Israeli spy who was convicted in 1986 to life imprisonment for providing highly classified material to the Israelis when he worked as an analyst in U.S. Naval intelligence, and Netanyahu tied reaching an agreement to the release of Pollard, which created serious confusion, especially for the CIA director — George Tenet — but no one would believe that I — George Tenet — had a hand in that.. and in the footnotes, the agreement rewards an American citizen who spied on his country, so George Tenet, Director of the CIA, opposed it and threatened to resign at that time..

· "Yasser Arafat liked the presence of the CIA in the middle of the negotiations; the CIA was a powerful talisman in the Middle East... He would take from us what he could, and then give back only a little.""..(according to George Tenet, Director of the CIA at that time, about the late Yasser Arafat)!!!

· Arafat always wanted something extra, and that extra was not enough, of course, because what he really wanted was that the peace process remain always active,...." according to George Tenet, Director of the CIA at the time)

· Chapter Five

· After Wye

-       Between the end of the Wye summit in 10-1998 and the end of September 2000, no terrorist attacks occurred inside the Green Line according to George Tenet’s description, but on 28-9-2000, Ariel Sharon, leader of the opposition Likud party, visited the Al-Aqsa Mosque (which he calls in his memoirs the Temple Mount) in the Old City of Jerusalem, surrounded by a thousand Israeli soldiers; after a sergeant in the Israeli army was killed the day after the visit, the Second Intifada began and brought chaos to the peace process.

·       George Tenet participated in three other Middle East peace pushes during the Clinton administration: the Camp David epic on 11-7, in which he participated for two continuous weeks, the follow-up meeting in Paris that began on 4-10-2000 a week after the outbreak, a second peace effort, and on 16-17/10 in Sharm el-Sheikh, which Clinton and Hosni Mubarak co-chaired.

·       At the Camp David summit in 7-2000, Netanyahu left and was replaced by Barak..Yasser Arafat headed the Palestinian side and was difficult to move, if not impossible as usual, and the key officials participating had almost no influence when he was involved.!!..Madeleine Albright’s relationship with Arafat swung between love and hate, and at that time the hatred side prevailed over the love side.. President Clinton could have moved him, but Arafat resisted even his best efforts.!!

·       On the surface it was astonishing how much sacrifice the Israelis were willing to make in the name of reaching some sort of permanent agreement.. It is hard to understand the reasons for Arafat’s refusal..!

·       A CIA assessment prior to the summit showed that Barak came to Camp David to conclude a framework agreement for a permanent solution, but Arafat did not... Arafat believed he had obtained a firm commitment from Barak to hand over three Arab villages near Jerusalem, and when it became clear to Arafat in mid-May that he would not receive the villages anytime soon, he concluded that he could not trust Barak to implement his promises. Barak’s argument was his delicate domestic position, which required him to preserve his political capital for final-status talks rather than dissipate it on a series of interim steps that did not seem logical to Arafat.!

·       Thus Arafat came to the summit because he did not want to insult President Clinton; without the return of the villages and without Israeli flexibility, he would bide his time until the current effort ended.. After 10 days of talks, the waiting posture I had adopted changed, when Albright, the U.S. Secretary of State at the time, asked me to come to Camp David on the afternoon of 22-7 to try to persuade Arafat to negotiate on the basis of Barak’s plan.

·       She told George Tenet that the talks had somewhat collapsed after that famous picture of Barak and Arafat urging each other to enter the president’s quarters first, and in fact Arafat and Barak had not met together since then.. Albright asked me — George Tenet — to visit the President of the Palestinian National Authority, to try to persuade him to return to the negotiations.

·       I went to Arafat’s headquarters and told him that the Israelis would not extend an olive branch again in that manner, reminded him of the effort the president had made to push the peace process forward, and said: you must return now to the negotiating table. I asked him directly if he was willing to negotiate; if he was not, then the time would come for everyone to go home.. How surprised I was when Arafat agreed immediately, saying he was prepared to consider anything the president presented to him.. The discussion lasted a quarter of an hour... Albright was astonished because she had expected the worst, but the news invigorated her; she asked us to return to Arafat’s headquarters, and requested that the chief translator at the State Department, Jamal Hilal, accompany us to ensure there would be no communication problem. We returned and Arafat again pledged to negotiate, but this time with an important caveat: "He could never compromise on the status of Jerusalem," and he spoke at length about the Armenian community and its desire to be part of the Palestinian state, and the need to bring an Armenian representative to participate in the talks. In retrospective view, he was setting the marker that would allow him to say no.!! It should be noted that Barak refused to attend a dinner Albright hosted to which Arafat was also invited, which surprised us...

·       I met Mohammed Dahlan and Shlomo Yanai, and they were working on the details of a security agreement; there were six issues: early warning, airspace, deployment in emergencies, disarmament, counterterrorism, the Jordan Valley...

·       We told Dahlan and Yanai that their talks were progressing well and that their proposed solutions were comprehensive. In a meeting chaired by Clinton, Shlomo Yanai opened the discussion by reviewing Israel’s need for early warning sites on Palestinian territory from which any border violation could be detected. Yanai summarized a proposal to establish three early warning sites.. Dahlan complained that every agenda item was Israeli. He told us that the Palestinians had their demands and would not raise them now, but reassured us that he believed the Israelis could meet them, and later Dahlan said... "We said we understand the Israeli need for early warning sites, and we did not say that we agree.. to them."!!

·       In October 2000 the various parties met again in Paris; by then the Second Intifada had been going on for a week, and we were trying to reach something that might stop the violence. Then Madeleine Albright told George Tenet, "Take over the matter." I accepted reluctantly, and within a short time we reached a program of 10 steps that must be taken and that both parties approved, and while Dennis Ross, the chief U.S. negotiator, summarized the ten steps and put them on paper, Arafat left to visit Jacques Chirac, then the French president, and everything began to veer off course again.

·       The Palestinian president discussed with Chirac the most contentious of the ten points, namely the investigation into the causes of the Intifada!

·       In our meeting the parties agreed to an arbitration committee chaired by an American, with European participation, but Arafat pressed Chirac for an international court, which would look like show trials and which Israel would not accept, and Chirac supported Arafat, and we were back to square one..

·       Barak did not bother to come to Sharm el-Sheikh a week later to attend the Clinton–Mubarak summit. The October summit in Sharm el-Sheikh was an example of that: I and Omar Suleiman spent the entire day confined in a room with Palestinians and Israelis to reach a security deal, and when we finished I went to brief Yasser Arafat on the details, while Mubarak sat on a chair in a corner of the room.. In such circumstances Arafat had a way of looking at me as if I were speaking a foreign, incomprehensible language.. and that was characteristic of him; he was buying time to think things over.!!

·       But on this occasion it was not as usual; I saw from the corner of my eye Hosni Mubarak looking at me and at Arafat, rubbing his finger near his head, which is the common signal meaning that the person you are talking to is crazy.. I continued the briefing, I am a professional trained after all, but it was not comfortable, especially when Mubarak quietly surrendered to laughter.. after he performed his comical gesture..

·       Trust in Arafat was always a vexing problem, especially in the last year of the Clinton administration, for he knew how eager the American president was to reach peace for humanitarian and strategic reasons, and to leave a legacy..!

·       Arafat always wanted something extra, and that extra thing was not, of course, sufficient, because what he really wanted was for the peace process to remain active forever without reaching a settlement; the continuation of the process gave Arafat influence.. Reaching the brink of an agreement and then pulling back made him a central player on the world stage and conferred legitimacy on him, and his people would see him on CNN news, and he liked the CIA being in the midst of the negotiations, for the CIA was a strong talisman in the Middle East... He took from us what he could and then gave back only a little.. (according to the words of George Tenet, director of the CIA at the time).

·       When the Bush administration came to power, it did not show much interest in Arafat.. Clinton’s team had made him a central part of the peace process; nonetheless, Arafat had been unable to conclude an agreement.. Therefore, and that was a view I supported, he would not be allowed to enter by the front door.

·       With the change of administration, George Tenet’s role — director of the CIA — and the role of the Central Intelligence Agency as a whole in Israeli–Palestinian negotiations changed.. The Bush administration was uncomfortable with the Agency’s quasi-diplomatic function and wanted to confine the matter to the White House.

·       But I made one last effort in early 6-2001, going to Amman, Cairo and Tel Aviv, and after a week of negotiations we reached what was called the "Tenet Plan" for security, which was a very clear and straightforward timeline laying out the steps the two sides agreed to take to strengthen the security framework.. The action plan was not implemented, and Dennis Ross left his position..

·       Colin Powell, the U.S. Secretary of State at the time, went to the Middle East in June 2001 in an attempt to move things politically.. but he was not successful despite the efforts he made in the absence of the peace process.

· On 2 April 2002, 200 Palestinians, including 50 armed Palestinians, sought refuge in the Church of the Nativity, fleeing an Israeli army invasion in the city of Bethlehem. When the Palestinians fortified themselves in the church, they posed a thorny dilemma for the Israelis, and the matter turned into an intractable impasse. The clergymen remained (volunteer hostages), hoping that their presence would prevent bloodshed. The Israelis asked the CIA official in the region, Geoff O'Conk, to mediate with the Palestinian National Authority to end the impasse. George Tenet expected that some Palestinians wished the Israeli response to be excessive, so they would desecrate the holy site and perhaps kill some monks along with the terrorists, which would provoke international anger...—according to George Tenet's conception—!! Grove contacted a senior Palestinian official, and within two days they reached a plan: the Israelis wanted a handful of the wanted men holed up in the church to be brought to trial, or to be exiled from the territories controlled by the Israelis or the Palestinians. Geoff, with difficulty, managed to get the Palestinians to agree to the exile arrangements, then the Israeli position changed. Then negotiations failed. After 3 weeks of no progress, the Israelis returned to Geoff and said, "We really need your intervention again; we cannot allow the situation to drag on any longer." Geoff renewed contact with the senior Palestinian official, while some CIA men entered the church and made direct contact with some of the Palestinians who had taken refuge in the church. Although Geoff informed the Europeans of every step he took, they were not pleased with our involvement and with stepping in for them. The Europeans were dealing with the siege of the men trapped in the church without realizing that the real decision was not theirs but with Yasser Arafat...and the Palestinian National Authority..

· However, Arafat agreed to most elements of the agreement, but the point about the weapons that the Palestinians had taken into the church remained. The Israelis would not agree...but Arafat insisted on not handing the weapons over to the Israelis. Then someone came up with an idea: "We will throw the weapons into the sea," but the Israelis wanted them thrown into the Mediterranean, while the Palestinians wanted them in the Dead Sea near their territory. Then O'Conk returned with a second plan: the United States would take the weapons and keep them forever.

· Everyone agreed except Arafat. We were able to contact Arafat's office in Egypt and informed him of the agreement... He replied to me in astonishment at the agreement!! "What agreement!!..I don't know anything about any agreement!!" he said in his customary manner... Then the agreement was reached...after 38 days...life was restored to the church.

· In all our dealings with the Israelis and the Palestinians, we negotiated in good faith, and when the Israelis asked us to step back we stepped back...and when the Palestinians needed someone to hold their hand...we held it.

· Although our strategy was focused first and foremost on the Israelis and the Palestinians, there were other benefits: we gained greater legitimacy in the Arab world because we showed dignity and respect in dealing with the Palestinian people, and that allowed us to show the Arab street that we cared about a cause used by Islamists and terrorists to stir feelings of grievance...and it opened doors because we were fair..!! This did not apply only to heads of intelligence across the region, but extended to heads of state as well...so that they stood by us when we needed their help...Truly...and that time was approaching, for most of the time: the principal obstacle to peace bore the same name: Arafat " !! – (according to George Tenet's words in his memoirs..)

·       Chapter Six

·       Arafat

· Arafat was the only constant figure in the Middle East during my tenure: from his first appearance on the cover of Time magazine in 1968, and through the years in which the Israelis besieged him at his headquarters in Ramallah until his death in December 2004, Arafat was the face of the Palestinian struggle in good times and bad.

· The heads of the security services who worked for him knew his limits, and they often acknowledged the need for change, and they were aware that there was no accountability within the system, but it was clear that they would mostly not break ranks with the old man, as we urged them, in most cases.

· Arafat was the hero of the revolution, and the people were the only solid, unavoidable reality...The peace process would not succeed without him, and he did not want it to succeed by any method acceptable to Israel or the United States. How many times in the negotiation room did we all wish he would disappear, yet the moment he stepped out the door he alone became the subject of conversation..!!

· The Israelis knew Arafat; they knew him better than anyone else in the world. I asked Shlomo Niahi, head of the Military Planning Directorate in the Israeli Army, about Arafat. He said: answer the following question: Is Arafat Moses or Ben-Gurion?..then he answered himself that he is Moses..that he never completes an agreement, and he would never sign an agreement at all, he would not risk his position, because he wanted to lead his people to the promised land, and the promised land for Arafat is Jerusalem..and he would never concede at all...It was one of the most insightful analyses I heard about Arafat...

· Although Arafat shared the Nobel Prize with Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, he turned his back after six years on the best offer Palestine had received in our lifetime...There were times this man drove me mad, and times I wanted to embrace him..He was the most complex person I dealt with, indisputably..(according to George Tenet).!

· Of course I did not know which Arafat would appear, but I knew there would always be a story to tell afterward regardless of which persona he presented..!! One of the first times I met Arafat, when I was Deputy Director of the CIA, at the residence of the Greek Orthodox Archbishop in Bethlehem, Arafat was very attentive to me during dinner, even taking food from his plate and putting it on mine, saying he was worried I had not eaten enough. After dinner, when I mentioned I was Orthodox, Arafat grew warmer at the news; it seemed he bore some affection for Greeks. Suddenly Arafat began presenting gifts, insisting on taking photographs, and performing all the duties of a host. I would enter Arafat's headquarters and there might be forty to fifty people talking at the same time, shouting and laughing..

· To tell the truth, I love the Israelis, their love of life, but I also formed an intimate connection with the Palestinians; Yasser Arafat was part of that.

· I could not help admiring him...The word (friend) is always strange when one holds an office like Director of the CIA, and perhaps (marriage of convenience) is a more accurate expression...but that does not entirely capture what I felt toward Yasser Arafat..

· There was all the strangeness of his manner, unpredictability, and perpetual theater; when we planned to meet Arafat we used to bet among ourselves how long it would be before he said, "I am still suffering," a refrain he always repeated...

· I recall one day the Israelis sent a low-level envoy, someone we had never heard of before; Arafat gave him one look then rose, furious, and shouted, "Can you believe they sent this café boy."—meaning...the café boy..!!

· And there, we were at the residence of the American ambassador in Paris in October 2000, at another conference to negotiate a peace that would not be realized.. When Uzi Eyalon, Chief of the General Staff of the Israeli Army, addressed Arafat in Arabic as "President Arafat," Arafat suddenly became enraged in front of Madeleine Albright and the delegations on both sides, "Call me General Arafat"—I was the senior general in the Egyptian army, and I did not know he had been in the Egyptian army, and I was not inclined to correct his remark..

· On 1-6-2001, there was a suicide attack on a nightclub in Tel Aviv, and I was dispatched to make an agreement (an action plan), a detailed list of specified steps that would lead to the resumption of security cooperation and strengthening strict adherence to the ceasefire...

· I went to Jerusalem, met Arafat's principal advisers, Saeb Erekat, Muhammad Dahlan, Jibril Rajoub and others, at noon, and informed them that the Israelis had agreed to the terms we had reviewed together, and we gave them until four o'clock to sign them as well, and when the deadline passed with no response I told my men at the hotel where we were staying in Tel Aviv to ask the flight crew to be ready; then I put my suitcases in the street... Then I called the Palestinians to say I was returning to my home, no insult, no breach. I was in the hotel dining room preparing to depart when I received a call from the head of Jordanian intelligence...Saad Khair...saying that if I returned to meet Arafat I would get the agreement, and I received calls from Omar Suleiman and President Mubarak...that I should meet Arafat...and Jibril Rajoub also called saying, "Return to the old man; he will sign."

· So I returned to Ramallah. When we arrived, Arafat was not at the door to greet me as usual, which boded ill, and the expression on his face when I entered foretold the worst. Arafat remained sullen for a while then said, "I need to get a side agreement from you regarding this agreement." I told him: No... Sharon wanted that and I told him you cannot... he looked at me and smiled and said that is true... and immediately added, "Okay, no side agreement," but "I want to write you a letter..."

· I answered him: Mr. President, I believe the cease-fire agreement you got is important and fair, but I cannot want it more than you... so write if you do not want to take the agreement as is... I will go to my country and I do not want a letter...

· Arafat persisted in insisting on the letter; after he spent five minutes circling the subject, he said Geoff O'Connell... if the President of the Palestinian Authority wants to write a letter, and ultimately the President of the Palestinian people... Arafat seemed to want him to accept it... and I wanted to strangle him... for I knew we had implicitly added several more hours of painful hesitation..!!

· There were three Americans in the room and Arafat and two of his aides, and they began to look at what could be included in the letter. With each draft paragraph written, Arafat would withdraw to the adjacent room, where twenty or thirty advisers sat, and I heard a lot of shouting..

· I asked John Brennan, who speaks Arabic, what was going on; he told me: Not good. While Arafat's team were shouting, I picked up the phone and briefed Biznez, the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, and a senior lawyer who helps ensure that what I agree to is not inconsistent with U.S. policy or other arrangements in which we are a party.. We negotiated three paragraphs in this way, I thought we were done, and after completing the last paragraph of the letter, Arafat came in and said: I want something else... I refused; he closed the bazaar...

· Around two o'clock in the morning, we were apparently finished.. Arafat sent the three-paragraph letter to be typed, and left me alone in his office, with John.. At that time, my back hurt a lot, so I lay down on the floor; then Arafat came in and showed me and said, I do that when my back hurts too, and he lay down beside me, and began talking with his nose about 2 cm from mine..

· Finally, the printed letter appeared, placed in an envelope, on the door; I did not trust the stamp from Arafat, and I motioned to one of his aides to open the letter and read it. We found it identical, except for a misspelling of my name; Arafat wanted to rewrite the letter and shouted at his staff because of the mistake, عزيزي الحبيب المدير تنت : My dear beloved Director Tenet "

· This was the last thing I wanted to take with me to Washington... I was the last senior American official to meet Arafat alive in Ramallah in 2002; he was unkempt at that time, isolated from his people, effectively imprisoned within his leadership, besieged by Israeli tanks, yet he still bore the title of Palestinian leader... So I visited him... to urge him to reform his security apparatus, to place it under a single chain of command, and to appoint a responsible minister.. He did not welcome me at the door again... this time he did not dare, this time he was more depressed, and the occasion more sorrowful,

· I could not avoid the feeling that all of that (the tanks and sandbags) was a great waste; there is a lot of talent among Palestinians and much similarity between them and the Israelis, and at a very particular moment... everyone in the Palestinian, Israeli and American governments trusted the CIA on security matters, so perhaps we could have provided effective assistance,

·      It passed, and the window closed, and sadly we were doing our work without concern, and I was certain that Arafat knew that... He was never able to lead his people to the promised land.. rather he could not get out the front door.. and in reality.. he was neither Moses nor Ben-Gurion.. (according to George Tenet).!!

·      11-9-2020