At The Center Of The Storm Part 3

A few months after Wye, the New York Times New York Times came out with a story that all but quoted my conversation with the president at Wye, including my promise that I would resign if Pollard walked. I was in the middle of one of Washington's great dining experiences, at L'Auberge Chez Francois, in Great Falls, Virginia, hosting a raucous dinner with a bunch of visiting Australian intelligence officials, when someone called from Langley to say that the White House wanted me to deny the came out with a story that all but quoted my conversation with the president at Wye, including my promise that I would resign if Pollard walked. I was in the middle of one of Washington's great dining experiences, at L'Auberge Chez Francois, in Great Falls, Virginia, hosting a raucous dinner with a bunch of visiting Australian intelligence officials, when someone called from Langley to say that the White House wanted me to deny the Times Times story. "No," I remember saying. I told my spokesman, Bill Harlow, to simply say, "No comment." story. "No," I remember saying. I told my spokesman, Bill Harlow, to simply say, "No comment."

Was this the peace to end all peace? Hardly. It was only a beginning, but the Palestinians were ready to act in a way they had not acted before. As a result of security cooperation, the instances of terrorism from 1996 to 1999 plummeted. The two parties deserve the lion's share of the credit, but CIA officers were critical to building and opening lines of communication. And the United States was diplomatically engaged as well. As Stan Moskowitz had said, CIA was nurturing trust with the Palestinians. Our diplomats were pushing Arafat, and he trusted us because they were also pushing the Israelis. Counterterrorism worked because security and diplomacy were joined at the hip. What CIA's role provided to our government was a basis to help intervene in the coming years, to give the political process the oxygen it needed to keep breathing.

CHAPTER 5

Beyond Wye

Between the close of the Wye summit in October 1998 and the end of September 2000, no terrorist attacks occurred inside Green Line Israel-an interlude in the violence that seems almost impossible to conceive of today. Then, on September 28, 2000, Ariel Sharon, the leader of Israel's opposition Likud Party, visited the Temple Mount in Old Jerusalem, home to the remains of ancient Jewish temples, as well as the Dome of the Rock and the al Aqsa mosques, and maybe the most contentious piece of real estate known to man.

Sharon's announced purpose was to look into complaints by Israeli archaeologists that Muslims were vandalizing the site, but he arrived flanked by a thousand Israeli soldiers and policemen, on the day after an Israeli army sergeant had been killed in a terrorist attack. About a day later, the Second Intifada began, and the peace process was effectively in shambles. Over the next half decade, roughly 950 Israelis would be killed, more than half of those in Israel proper and many in gruesome suicide bombings. Through the end of 2005, some 3,200 Palestinians would die.

It wasn't for want of trying that the Middle East peace process collapsed. I partic.i.p.ated in three more major pushes for peace in the Middle East during the Clinton administration: the epic Camp David summit that got under way on July 11, 2000, and ran virtually nonstop for two weeks; the follow-up meeting in Paris that began October 4, 2000, less than a week after peace was shattered yet again by the outbreak of the Second Intifada; and the October 1617 summit at Sharm el-Sheikh, co-chaired by Clinton and Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.

The security arrangement we had hammered out at Wye River was always the foundation for these meetings and helped both sides to understand what reciprocal security really meant. The Palestinians and the Israelis created joint operation centers and began training people who could help enforce the peace and ensure compliance with the agreements. All the while, we were working to increase the Palestinians' operational capabilities to give them more credibility in the eyes of the Israelis so they could take action against terrorists in their midst. And for a critical two years what we had put together at Wye, and the work we had done to implement it, actually worked, perhaps not by the letter of the agreement but at least in spirit.

At CIA, we had taken on a public role with which many of us inside the building and many on Capitol Hill and elsewhere were distinctly uncomfortable. At a personal level, we all had poured vast amounts of energy into the challenge. Sitting in a room with Palestinians and Israelis isn't like sitting in a room with corporate department heads or even divorce lawyers. For starters, I knew, absolutely knew, that for the first three or four hours, we initially would have to listen to exactly what we had heard at previous meetings-a litany of grievances. That was the given, and we had no choice but to take it, knowing that at any moment maybe 40 percent of what we were hearing simply wasn't true. It was also a given that somewhere in the middle of the session there would be a family argument so heated that we feared that both parties were going to come to blows. That's just the way things were. The Israelis and Palestinians yell and scream at each other. There's nothing in the least Anglo-Saxon that happens in these negotiations.

I was on standby for the July 2000 Camp David summit. The security issues were not uppermost in the discussions at first. The talks had moved on to other issues and involved new players, at least on the Israeli side. Netanyahu was gone, replaced by Barak. Arafat, though, was still in charge on the Palestinian side and, as ever, was difficult, if not impossible to move. The princ.i.p.als involved had almost no leverage where he was concerned. Madeleine Albright had a love-hate relationship with the chairman that, by then, was more on the "hate" than the "love" side of the line. President Clinton might have moved him, but Arafat confounded even Clinton's best efforts. was on standby for the July 2000 Camp David summit. The security issues were not uppermost in the discussions at first. The talks had moved on to other issues and involved new players, at least on the Israeli side. Netanyahu was gone, replaced by Barak. Arafat, though, was still in charge on the Palestinian side and, as ever, was difficult, if not impossible to move. The princ.i.p.als involved had almost no leverage where he was concerned. Madeleine Albright had a love-hate relationship with the chairman that, by then, was more on the "hate" than the "love" side of the line. President Clinton might have moved him, but Arafat confounded even Clinton's best efforts.

On the surface, it was stunning just how much the Israelis were prepared to sacrifice in the name of reaching some sort of lasting accord and hard to understand why Arafat could say no. Yet CIA's a.s.sessment in advance of the summit was that while Barak was coming to Camp David to conclude a framework agreement for a permanent settlement, Arafat had no such intention. Arafat believed that he had a firm commitment from Barak to turn over three Arab villages near Jerusalem. When by mid-May it became clear that he was not going to get the villages anytime soon, Arafat concluded that he could not trust Barak to deliver on his promises. Barak's argument that his tenuous situation at home required him to preserve his political capital for the final-status talks rather than spend it on a series of interim steps did not hold water with Arafat. The chairman had come to the summit because he did not want to insult President Clinton. But without a return of villages and Israeli flexibility, he would wait out the current effort.

Ten days into the talks my standby status changed. A worried Madeleine Albright called and asked if I would come up to Camp David on the afternoon of July 22 to try to persuade Arafat to negotiate on the basis of Barak's plan. Geoff O'Connell, who was Stan Moskowitz's successor, and I huddled with a despairing Albright and the peace team in her cabin. She told us that the negotiations had more or less collapsed after that famous photograph of Barak and Arafat urging each other to go first as they entered the president's cabin. In fact, neither Arafat nor Barak had met with each other since. Albright asked me to visit the chairman and try to persuade him to come back to the table.

I went to Arafat's cabin and told him that the Israelis would never again extend an olive branch like this. I reminded him of how much the president had done to move the peace process forward. "Now," I said, "you have to come back to the table." I asked him directly if he was willing to negotiate. If not, it was time for everyone to go home. To my surprise, the chairman immediately agreed, saying that he was ready to consider anything the president put before him. The whole conversation lasted about fifteen minutes, and we were shortly back at Albright's cabin.

Obviously expecting the worst, the secretary was stunned but energized by the news. She ordered us back to Arafat's cabin and had the State Department's top Arabic interpreter, Gemal Helal, accompany us to ensure there was no communication problem. Back we went, and Arafat again pledged to negotiate, but this time with an important caveat: he could never compromise Jerusalem's status. He went on at considerable length about the Armenian community, its desire to be part of a Palestinian state, and the need to bring an Armenian representative to Camp David immediately to partic.i.p.ate in the talks. In retrospect, he was laying down a marker that would allow him to say no.

The rest of the day was spent shuttling between the Palestinians and the Israelis. We felt we were close to a deal on most of the security issues. Albright hosted a dinner that evening and invited both Arafat and Barak. To our surprise, Barak refused to attend. We later learned that he had retreated to his cabin shortly after the first day of the talks and had not come out since, except for solitary walks.

After a few hours' sleep, we returned to Camp David and took part in a long round of bilateral and multilateral security discussions. The president was expected back at Camp David around 3:30 P.M. P.M. Albright ordered us all to meet and pull together what we would tell him. Shortly before the meeting, we got together with Mohammed Dahlan and Shlomo Yanai, who had been hammering out the details of a security agreement. There were six issues: early warning, air s.p.a.ce, emergency deployment, demilitarization, counterterrorism, and the Jordan Valley. Both Dahlan and Yanai told us that their discussions were going well, and they outlined their proposed solutions. While there were some minor differences, they were confident that they could resolve them before meeting with the president. I relayed that back to Albright, and she gave the president a very encouraging report after he arrived. Albright ordered us all to meet and pull together what we would tell him. Shortly before the meeting, we got together with Mohammed Dahlan and Shlomo Yanai, who had been hammering out the details of a security agreement. There were six issues: early warning, air s.p.a.ce, emergency deployment, demilitarization, counterterrorism, and the Jordan Valley. Both Dahlan and Yanai told us that their discussions were going well, and they outlined their proposed solutions. While there were some minor differences, they were confident that they could resolve them before meeting with the president. I relayed that back to Albright, and she gave the president a very encouraging report after he arrived.

The president convened the negotiating session and, to my surprise, remained in the chair leading the effort until the meeting ended in the middle of the night. He began by telling the group, "We have a lot to do. Let's go through the agenda as quickly as possible. Where there is agreement, we will move on and concentrate on where there is disagreement. Everyone should operate on the basis of two a.s.sumptions:

-No one is bound by anything they say without a comprehensive agreement.-Let's a.s.sume that we can ultimately reach a deal on who controls what territory."

Shlomo Yanai opened the discussion by reviewing Israel's need for early warning sites on Palestinian territory from which they could detect border intrusions. Yanai outlined a proposal for setting up three early warning sites. Yanai's proposal closely matched what he and Dahlan had told us was acceptable earlier in the afternoon. Clearly antic.i.p.ating a positive Palestinian response, Yanai turned the floor over to Dahlan.

Dahlan opened by complaining that all the agenda items were Israeli. He told us that the Palestinians had their own requests. They would not raise them now, but he rea.s.sured us that he thought the Israelis were capable of meeting them. Dahlan then stated, "We said we understood understood the Israeli need for early warning sites. We did not say that we the Israeli need for early warning sites. We did not say that we agreed agreed with them." Uh, oh, I thought, something had happened in the three or four hours since our meeting with Yanai and Dahlan. with them." Uh, oh, I thought, something had happened in the three or four hours since our meeting with Yanai and Dahlan.

The rest of the session followed that script. Yanai would propose a solution, and Dahlan would object. The president did a magnificent job trying to bridge gaps and come up with creative ideas to resolve differences. When we broke to get some sleep, I thought we were close to an agreement. Again, I made the long drive to Washington, but shortly after getting to bed, I was summoned back to Camp David. By the time I arrived, the talks had collapsed. Eventually the parties went home empty-handed.

In October 2000 the various parties reconvened in Paris. By then the Intifada, the Palestinian uprising, was a week old, and we were trying to come up with something dramatic to stem the violence. Madeleine shocked me by turning my way early in the meeting and saying, "You take this over." Reluctantly, I did. I mentally ran through my talking points, and in fairly short order we came up with ten steps that needed to be taken-ten steps that both sides agreed on, a big breakthrough. While Dennis Ross went off to summarize the ten steps and get them on paper, Arafat left to visit French president Jacques Chirac, and everything started to go wrong again.

With Chirac, the Palestinian chairman seized on the most controversial of the ten points-an investigation into the causes of the Intifada. In our meeting, both sides had accepted an American-led tribunal, with input from the European Union, but Arafat pressed Chirac for an international court, a show trial with a stacked jury that Israel would never agree to. Chirac backed Arafat, and we were at stalemate yet again.

Barak didn't even bother to appear a little over a week later at Sharm el-Sheikh for the summit hosted by Clinton and Mubarak. Egypt occupies a unique position in the Middle East. The Saudis make the same claim, for cogent reasons, but Cairo, not Riyadh or Medina or Mecca, is the intellectual capital of Islam. Egypt is a nation of some seventy-five million people, three times the population of Saudi Arabia, with a gross domestic product four times the size of Syria. That alone would make it important, but like Saudi Arabia, it also sits at a crossroads of international terrorism. The Muslim Brotherhood was born in Egypt; Anwar Sadat was a.s.sa.s.sinated there. Egypt, allied with other Arab countries, has fought four wars against Israel, in 1948, in 1967, in 19681970, and again in 1973. It's still the country that Palestinians most look to, however forlornly, as their protector.

Umar Suleiman has been head of the Egyptian intelligence service for many years. A general as well as an intelligence chief, Umar is tall and regal looking, a very powerful man, very deliberate in his speech. He's also tough and engaging. In a world filled with shadows, he is straight up and down. Umar has also done as much behind the scenes as anyone else I can think of to try to bring peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis. That was true when the United States was still engaged in the process. It's even more so now that we are long gone from it. When n.o.body was trying to go see Hamas, when n.o.body was talking to the Palestinians, when n.o.body was talking to the Israelis, when n.o.body was pushing forward with innovative ideas to try to get people talking to each other, Umar was on the ground taking risks.

I didn't know Hosni Mubarak as well, but he has been one of our most reliable partners in fighting terrorism and in trying to bring peace to the Middle East. Ours wasn't a peer-to-peer relationship. He was a very important historical figure. He had been president of Egypt since 1981, following Sadat's murder. He barely escaped a.s.sa.s.sination himself in 1995, while in Ethiopia; four years later, he escaped death again when he was nicked by an a.s.sailant's knife. He has a tremendous amount of wisdom, but although a serious man, he also had a lighter side. The October 2000 summit at Sharm el-Sheikh was an example. Umar Suleiman and I had spent the entire day locked in a room with the Palestinians and the Israelis trying to strike a security bargain. When we were through, I went off to brief Ya.s.ser Arafat on the details, while Mubarak drowsily took a seat in the corner of the room. Arafat had a way in these circ.u.mstances of looking at me as if I were speaking in an incomprehensible foreign language. This was typical of him; he was buying time to think things through. But on this occasion, the situation was not business as usual. From the corner of my eye, I saw Hosni Mubarak, the president of Egypt, host of the conference, and the closest thing Palestine had to a guarantor, looking at me and Arafat and twirling his finger beside his head, the universal symbol for "This guy you're talking to is nuts!" I went on with the briefing-I am a trained professional, after all-but it wasn't easy, especially when Mubarak dissolved into quiet laughter over his little gag.

Trust with Arafat was always problematic. Particularly in the last year of the Clinton administration, he saw how desperately the American president wanted peace-for humanitarian and strategic reasons, and to establish a legacy. Arafat always wanted one more thing, and one more thing was never enough because what he really wanted was for the peace process to be ever-active and eternally unresolved. Keeping the process going gave Arafat leverage. Walking up to the edge of agreeing and then backing away made him a central player on the world stage. It stamped him as legitimate. His own people would see him splashed all over CNN. And he loved having CIA right in the middle of negotiations. In the Middle East, CIA is a powerful talisman. He got what he could from us, and from that point on gave little back.

When the Bush administration came to power, they did not hold Arafat in high regard. The Clinton team had made him a central part of the peace process. Yet Arafat could never get the deal done. Therefore-and it was a view I supported-there would be no more letting him in the front door. No more conveying the image of him as a global player. No more reward for behavior that led us nowhere.

As the administrations changed, my role, and that of CIA, in the negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis changed, too. The Bush administration also had a more traditional, and perhaps more appropriate, view regarding CIA's involvement. They clearly weren't comfortable with the Agency's filling the semi-diplomatic function we had taken on over the last few years. They wanted to bring it under their own roof. I did, however, make one last effort at the administration's behest. In early June 2001, I flew out to Amman, Cairo, and Tel Aviv. I don't think the Bush people expected much to come out of my trip-to them, it was more like a duty call-but after a week of intense negotiations and constant shuttling from capital to capital, we managed to produce what became known as the Tenet Security Work Plan, a very clear, very straightforward timetable that laid out the steps both sides had agreed to take to strengthen the security framework.

And that, too, like so much else, was never implemented. Dennis Ross was gone by then. There was no attempt to replace him with someone else whose job was to think about this issue day and night, and thus there was very little push on the political side. Colin Powell had flown out in late June to try to get something moving politically, but despite his best efforts he was unable to succeed. Once more, we had edged up to a workable cease-fire, and once more, it had withered and died before it could ever take root. In the absence of a political process, this was inevitable. Soon afterward, I made a determination that there was no role for us to play anymore. As I always saw it, our part in the process was to be an honest broker, but after June 2001, there was nothing left to broker honestly. Better to retreat, protect our inst.i.tution, liaison with both the Israelis and the Palestinians, report accurately and honestly to all sides what was happening on the ground-the cla.s.sic work of an intelligence agency-and step back out of the light.

Or so we thought. During the spring of 2002, CIA found itself in the middle of one other highly public crisis. On April 2, some two hundred Palestinians, about fifty armed, broke into the Church of the Nativity, one of the holiest places in all of Christendom, while fleeing an Israeli Defense Force incursion into Bethlehem. The site is administered by a coalition of clerics from the Armenian, Roman Catholic, and Greek Orthodox churches and is built over what Christians believe to be Christ's birthplace. Barricading themselves in the Church, the Palestinians presented a terrible dilemma to the Israelis in what would turn out to be a very lengthy standoff. Many of the clergymen who worked at the site remained inside as "voluntary hostages," hoping that their presence might deter bloodshed.

Early on, the Israelis called on CIA's senior man in the region, Geoff O'Connell, and asked him to intercede with the Palestinians to help end the standoff. What made the situation especially dicey was that some Palestinian officials would have dearly loved for the Israelis to overreact, damage the holy site, perhaps kill the monks along with the terrorists, and stir up international outrage.

Geoff contacted a senior Palestinian official. Within a couple days they came up with a plan. The Israelis had given Geoff their bottom-line negotiating position-a handful of the most wanted men holed up in the church would either have to go on trial or be immediately exiled from Israeli-or Palestinian-controlled territory. With difficulty, Geoff got the Palestinians to agree to the exile arrangement. Then the Israeli side had a change of heart. Shin Bet officials apologetically told O'Connell that they were unable to complete a deal that they had previously proposed. To make matters worse, the Israelis asked CIA to back off and let European negotiators try to bring the situation to closure. Back off we did.

Over the ensuing several weeks Israeli snipers killed or wounded not only several Palestinians but also church workers who were mistaken for terrorists. The Israelis also cut off food entering the site. Before long, conditions inside were rapidly deteriorating.

After three weeks of getting nowhere, the Israelis came back to Geoff and said, "Look, we really need you to get involved again. We can't let this drag on much longer."

So Geoff reengaged with the senior Palestinian official while CIA officers entered the church and made direct contact with some of the Palestinians taking refuge there. Although Geoff briefed the Europeans at every step along the way, they were still unhappy that we were once again involved, supplanting their efforts. The Europeans had been dealing with the families of the men under siege in the church, failing to recognize that the real decision making was not with them but with Ya.s.ser Arafat and the Palestinian National Authority.

After much back-and-forth, O'Connell struck a deal once again. It looked like a happy ending. The Israelis started taking down the barricades around the church, but then it was Arafat's turn to renege. This situation exemplified the difficulties involved in bringing peace to the Middle East. Finally Arafat agreed to most of the elements of the deal, but there was still one sticking point: the weapons the Palestinians had taken into the church with them.

The Israelis quite naturally didn't want the Palestinians to leave heavily armed, just as they had arrived. But Arafat insisted that the Israelis could not have the weapons. Our theory was that he didn't want Israeli forensics to later show that these same weapons had been used in terrorist attacks. That would have handed Israel a PR victory.

Once again, O'Connell came to the rescue with an idea. "We'll throw the weapons in the sea!" he announced. For a while everyone thought that was a splendid solution. But once again the deal came undone. The Israelis wanted the weapons thrown in the Mediterranean, and the Palestinians wanted them thrown in the Dead Sea, closer to their territory. You can't make this stuff up.

Finally, O'Connell came up with plan B, or maybe it was plan C-the United States would take control of the weapons and hold them in perpetuity. All the negotiators present agreed, but it was up to their seniors to bless the concept. Geoff called me and had me track down Arafat. I reached the chairman in Egypt and congratulated him on the deal.

"Deal? What deal? I know nothing of a deal," he bl.u.s.tered, in typical fashion. In the end we convinced all sides that this was as good an arrangement as they were going to get, and after thirty-eight days, control of the Church of the Nativity was returned to its rightful owners.

I only wish our broader involvement in the peace process had met with similar success. Yet, however much I regret the outcome, I wouldn't have foregone the process itself. In all our dealings with the Israelis and Palestinians, we negotiated in good faith. When Israel asked us to back off, we backed off. When the Palestinians needed their hand held, we held it. Ultimately, I told both sides, the United States can't want peace in their region more than they do.

Once you got involved in the peace process, it was difficult not to be totally consumed by it. We had very deep bonds with the Israelis, who were like us in so many ways. The relationships that we developed with their intelligence professionals were deep and meaningful ones. They became personal. Dany Yatom, Efraim Halevy, and Avi Dichter would become lifelong friends. These were people I could rely on. These were people we could talk to. We had common motives and concerns.

At the same time, it was hard not to develop affection for the Palestinians. I understood that they wanted to put themselves in a better place. Politics and historical animosities were not things that the security talks alone were going to overcome. But my view was that if there was some way we could improve the lives of these long-suffering people, we should try it. Yes, it was an emotional environment. But there was enormous talent and potential on both sides. There was great possibility. It was never a matter of being pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian. I was proboth sides.

It is clear that both parties bear ultimate responsibility for the success or failure of the process. We cannot tell the Israeli prime minister what his security needs are. We cannot tell the Palestinian prime minister what his security needs are. But the United States, during this period and on this issue, occupied a special role. And that worked, not only to security and moral benefit but also to the benefit of the world at large.

Although our strategy was focused first and foremost on the Israelis and Palestinians, there were other dividends. It gave us greater legitimacy in the Arab world because we showed dignity and respect in dealing with the Palestinian people. It allowed us to show the Arab street that we cared about an issue that the Islamists and the terrorists used as a mobilizing grievance. Because we were seen as fair, doors opened for us. Not just with intelligence chiefs throughout the region, but also with heads of state, so that when we really needed their help, they would be there for us. That time was coming soon. Almost always, that last impenetrable barrier to peace had the same name: Arafat.

CHAPTER 6

Arafat

The one constant in the Middle East during my time in office was Ya.s.ser Arafat. From his first appearance on the cover of Time Time magazine in 1968 through his final years confined by the Israelis to his headquarters in Ramallah, until his death in December 2004 in Paris, Arafat was the face-for good and bad-of the Palestinian struggle. magazine in 1968 through his final years confined by the Israelis to his headquarters in Ramallah, until his death in December 2004 in Paris, Arafat was the face-for good and bad-of the Palestinian struggle.

His own security chiefs knew his limitations. Often they recognized the need for change; they understood there was no accountability built into the system. But it was clear to me that they would never break ranks with the Old Man, as we often urged.

Arafat was a hero of the revolution, the leader of his people. The one hard and unavoidable fact was that the peace process could not succeed without him, and he did not want it to succeed in any way acceptable to Israel or the United States. There were many times in the negotiating room that we all hoped he would disappear. Yet the moment he was out the door, we seemed to talk about no one else.

The Israelis knew Arafat. They knew him better than anyone else in the world, and the debate would always be: Who is he? Does he have a strategy? I was having a long discussion about this one night with Shlomo Yanai, then head of military planning for the Israeli Defense Forces. Shlomo is an old tanker; he'd been badly burned in one of the battles. A strategic thinker, he is someone whom I came to rely on for his integrity and forthrightness.

After much back-and-forth, he finally said, "Answer the following question: Is Arafat Moses or is he Ben Gurion?" Then he answered himself: "He's Moses. He will never do the deal. He will never sign an agreement. He will never compromise his position because he wants to take his people to the Promised Land. The Promised Land for Arafat is Jerusalem, and he will never concede." It was as insightful an a.n.a.lysis of Ya.s.ser Arafat as I'd ever heard.

Though the United States had long ago established relations with Arafat, it would be misleading to characterize them as friendly. After all, it was Arafat's organization that was involved in many terrorist acts in the 1970s and 1980s. Although he shared a n.o.bel Peace Prize in 1994 with Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, Arafat turned his back six years later on the best peace offer Palestine might get in our lifetime. There were times the man drove me nuts, and times when I wanted to hug him. He was far and away the most complicated person with whom I ever dealt. I never knew which Arafat was going to show up, but I always knew that whichever one did, there would always be a story to tell afterward.

One of the first times I met him was at a dinner at the Greek Orthodox archbishop's residence in Bethlehem. I was still the deputy DCI then, but I sat next to Arafat, underneath a painting of the Last Supper, in a room packed with guns. I remember looking at that painting, looking at my plate, contemplating all the religious tension that already colored everything in Bethlehem, and thinking, It's over. I'm done for. This might be my last supper, too.

The Palestinian on my right was someone I had never met before. Halfway through the meal, I turned to him and said, "So, what did you do before this?"

"I was in an Israeli prison for seventeen years," he answered.

"Why did you go to prison?" I asked.

"I blew up an Israeli school bus," he replied in a matter-of-fact manner.

This is going to be different, I recall thinking. You're not in Kansas anymore.

Arafat was very solicitous of me during the meal and even took food off his plate and moved it to mine, saying he was worried I didn't have enough to eat. After dinner I happened to mention that I was Greek Orthodox, and with that news Arafat warmed up even more. Apparently he had some affinity for the Greeks.

All of a sudden Arafat started rolling out gifts, insisting on photos, the whole grand host thing. In the years to come, he would get angry with me, or we would go at each other, but it never became personal between us and that moment of connection never faded. I would walk into Arafat's headquarters and there would be forty or fifty people all talking at the same time, yelling, laughing, telling lies to each other because they didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings by telling the whole truth, and I would think to myself, This is just like the Greeks I knew growing up in Queens.

The truth is, I love the Israelis-their pa.s.sion for life, what they've done to stand up for themselves, and what they've done in establishing their state-but I bonded with the Palestinians as well. And Ya.s.ser Arafat was part of that. I couldn't keep myself from liking him. "Friend" is always an odd word when you hold a job like DCI. Maybe "marriage of convenience" is more accurate, but that doesn't fully capture how I felt about Ya.s.ser Arafat, either.

There were all the eccentricities, the unpredictability, the constant theater. To truly set Arafat off, all you had to do was say the word "Kuwaitis," and he would be gone. "Ah, the Kuwaitis, they can go to h.e.l.l," he would say, "but not with my money!" I never knew what they had done to offend him; maybe he had an account frozen in some Kuwaiti bank. But he was never going to forgive or forget.

We used to have a pool among ourselves whenever we went to see Arafat over how long it would take him to say, "I'm still suffering," a constant refrain with him. We'd each pick a time and put our money down. Since I was generally leading the conversation from our side, I would keep a close eye on my watch and then, at just the right moment, ask him, "Oh, Chairman Arafat, how are you?" The answer: he was still suffering, always.

I remember the time the Israelis sent some low-level emissary along, someone we had never heard of. Arafat took one look at him, pulled himself up in high dudgeon, and shouted, "Can you believe they sent this boy coffee boy coffee to see to see me me?" We guessed he meant "coffee boy."

There was also the time we were at the U.S. amba.s.sador's residence in Paris-in October 2000, at another conference negotiating a peace that we would never achieve-when Boogie Ya'alon, the chief of general staff for the Israelis, called Arafat rais rais, which means "president." In front of Madeleine Albright and the delegations from all sides, Arafat went into a sudden rage. "You will call me General General Arafat! I was the greatest general in the Egyptian army!" I didn't even know he was in the Egyptian army, much less a general or a great one. But I wasn't about to correct him. Arafat! I was the greatest general in the Egyptian army!" I didn't even know he was in the Egyptian army, much less a general or a great one. But I wasn't about to correct him.

Initially, the Bush administration wanted me to stay out of the peace process business and leave things in the hands of the diplomats. That was fine with me. But on June 1, 2001, there was a horrendous terrorist attack on a Tel Aviv disco called the Dolphinarium. Twenty-one young Israelis, mostly Russian immigrants, were killed by a suicide bomber. The carnage shocked the Israelis, and it appeared that the already ugly atmosphere in the region was about to get even uglier.

So, a few days later, I was dispatched to the area to see what could be done to revive peace efforts, trying to construct a workable security agreement that might allow the political process to go forward.

We were in the Israeli cabinet room, right outside Ariel Sharon's office, putting the final touches on a possible pact, when the Israelis began demanding a side agreement, some sort of cover they could hide behind if things went sour or, more likely, could leak to the press to sabotage the whole process.

"No sides," I told them.

"No deal," they said.

Over eight days, we shuttled between the two sides and put together what our team believed to be a fair proposal, resurrecting and enhancing old ideas and generating new ones that would have required tough actions against their own people.

The pact, called a "work plan," was a detailed list of specific steps that would lead to resumed security cooperation, enforce strict compliance to a cease-fire, suppress terrorism, and redeploy the Israeli Defense Forces to positions they had held eight months earlier. Among other things, it called for an immediate halt to hostilities, the arrest of terrorists by the Palestinians, an easing of travel restrictions imposed by the Israelis, and a pullback of Israeli troops. Eventually, after a cooling-off interval, the plan envisioned implementation of peacemaking suggestions laid out in April 2001 by the Mitch.e.l.l Commission, a five-member fact-finding body led by former senator George Mitch.e.l.l that looked into the causes of and possible solutions to the Intifada.

By the evening of June 11, our work was done and we convened one last trilateral meeting to make a final appeal for acceptance. I said, "Frankly, we are out of time. More innocent Palestinian and Israeli civilians continue to die. Israeli children who died last week were not soldiers carrying weapons. The three Palestinian women who died yesterday were not engaged in terror or violence. Courage and risk to stop all violence against your respective peoples must start tonight. There must be a return to normal life for the Israeli and Palestinian people. All these things can happen. They must happen. They will happen if you live up to your obligations in the work plan we have presented. But these words must be followed by actions that are embodied in the paper I have presented. The Palestinians must apprehend terrorists and provide transparency into their actions. The Israelis must not attack innocent Palestinian civilians. But in truth, I cannot feel this more than you. And Geoff O'Connell cannot preside over meetings that only result in words. I will not let him do this. We want to help you. Allow us to do that tonight by responding affirmatively so that we can begin tomorrow."

The next morning, the Israelis said yes. Then began the long wait for an answer from Arafat.

I traveled to Jerusalem, where I saw Arafat's princ.i.p.al advisors-Saeb Erakat, Mohammed Dahlan, Jabril Rajoub, and some others-around noon, told them the Israelis had agreed to the terms we had all been hashing over, and gave them until four o'clock to sign on as well. When my deadline pa.s.sed with no response, I told my people at our hotel in Tel Aviv to tell the airplane crew to get ready and then to put our luggage out on the street. I had learned something from Bibi at Wye.

Then I called the Palestinians to say I was going home-no harm, no foul, but I wasn't hanging around to see what would happen. I was in the hotel dining room, preparing to leave, when I got a call from my friend Saad Khair, Jordan's intelligence chief, saying that if I went back to see Arafat, he'd give me the deal. Umar Suleiman followed that with another call; Mubarak also wanted me to go see Arafat. Jabril Rajoub chimed in as well: "Come back. The old man will sign."

So I went back up the hill to Ramallah.

Israeli security and military officials provided an escort from our hotel, but as always, they had to drop us off several hundred yards from Arafat's door, a no-man's-land of sorts that separates Israel from the Palestinian Authority. For that trip, my party and I climbed into our armored vehicles, with my security detail in the front and back cars and us in the middle. Going to see Arafat was often eventful. On a similar trip two days earlier, just as we entered Palestinian territory, we pulled around a curve and found a pickup truck blocking the road with its hood up and two Palestinians standing alongside. The setting was a textbook scenario for an ambush or a.s.sa.s.sination. What's more, two Israeli settlers had been killed in the area earlier that day when they inadvertently wandered into the wrong zone.

As my staff shouted at the Palestinian truckers and they shouted back, I wondered if we were going to be added to the day's death toll. After about thirty seconds of this, our Suburbans blasted over rocks that lined the side of the road and careened into Arafat's compound. Thankfully, this trip was less eventful.

When we arrrived, Arafat wasn't at the door to greet me as he usually was-a bad sign. The expression on his face when I got inside augured even worse: the same look my mother used to give me when she was really, really angry.

Arafat continued glowering for a while, and then said, "I have to have a side agreement with you about this agreement."

"No," I told him. "Sharon wanted one, too, and I told him he couldn't have one. I'm going to treat both sides equally. Besides," I said, "you are going to leak it to the press and ruin the deal."

When I was through, he looked at me, smiled, and said, "That's right." Almost immediately he said, "Okay, no side agreement. But I want to write you a letter."

"Mr. Chairman," I answered, "I think the cease-fire agreement you have is important and fair-but, I cannot want it more than you do. If you do not want to take the deal as is, I will go home. And I do not want a letter!"

Arafat continued to insist on a letter. After spending five minutes going round and round over it, Geoff O'Connell said, "If the chairman wants to write you a letter, he can write you a letter. After all, he is the president of the Palestinian people."

Of course, Geoff was right. At that moment, it looked like Arafat wanted to kiss him. I wanted to throttle him. I knew we had just guaranteed several hours more of painful dithering.

There were just three Americans in the room: Geoff, John Brennan, one of my most senior advisors, and me. Arafat had only two aides with him, and they began discussing what might go into the letter. With each draft paragraph, Arafat would retreat to the next room, where he had twenty or thirty advisors sitting. I heard lots of shouting.