<\/p>\n
By Neal Travis
\nNew York Post<\/p>\n
ISRAEL blackmailed President Clinton with phone-tapped tapes of his steamy sex talks with Monica Lewinsky, a blockbuster new book charges.<\/p>\n
The price Clinton paid for the silence of the Mossad spy agency was calling off an FBI hunt for a top-level Israeli mole allegedly installed at the White House.<\/p>\n
The allegation appears in \u201cGideon\u2019s Spies \u2013 The Secret History of the Mossad,\u201d written by respected author Gordon Thomas and due out next week.<\/p>\n
Asked for comment, White House spokesman P.J. Crowley replied, \u201cThe only thing I can possibly say is we\u2019ll skip the book and wait for the movie.\u201d<\/p>\n
Israel has denied conducting spying operations in the United States.<\/p>\n
But hints about the Mossad connection to Sexgate surfaced in evidence given to independent counsel Kenneth Starr last year.<\/p>\n
Lewinsky testified under oath that after a session of heavy petting and oral sex in the White House, Clinton told her that a foreign embassy was tapping the two phone lines in her D.C. apartment.<\/p>\n
She said Clinton advised her that if she was questioned about their phone-sex sessions she should claim that they knew their calls were being bugged \u2013 and were joking to make the phone-tappers look silly.<\/p>\n
Starr did not pursue the matter, as far as the public record shows, and Lewinsky apparently accepted Clinton\u2019s story without asking for details.<\/p>\n
But author Thomas says Danny Yatom, Mossad inspector general, succeeded in tapping Lewinsky\u2019s phone and amassed some 30 hours of sexually explicit conversations between the president and Lewinsky.<\/p>\n
Thomas says Tel Aviv used the tapes to stop the probe of an operative code-named \u201cMEGA,\u201d who was, and could still be, deep within the White House.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo far as anyone knows, the Israeli agent MEGA \u2013 a much more important spy than the imprisoned CIA traitor Jonathan Pollard, and probably his controller \u2013 is still in place at the White House,\u201d Thomas said last night from London.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a flurry of high-profile counterintelligence activity which lasted as long as the bioleverage\u201d \u2013 that is, blackmail \u2013 \u201ctook to work.\u201d<\/p>\n
His book \u2013 which coincidentally is published by St. Martin\u2019s Press, like Andrew Morton\u2019s \u201cMonica\u2019s Story\u201d \u2013 claims the decision to use the Lewinsky tapes reaches high levels in Israel.<\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s Committee for Central Intelligence, meeting in emergency session, decided to play dirty by exploiting Monica\u2019s steamy chats as a way of protecting their White House \u201casset,\u201d Thomas said.<\/p>\n
\u201cFBI counterintelligence, which had also been taping Monica\u2019s calls, got the message and decided to go back off,\u201d the Welsh-born author claims.<\/p>\n
Verifying Thomas\u2019 account is difficult because spy agencies almost never comment on their activities or anything anyone writes about them.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been reported that the Justice Department and FBI launched an investigation last year for a suspected mole, code-named \u201cMEGA,\u201d based on undisclosed evidence that an Israeli spy had penetrated the White House.<\/p>\n
Israel heatedly denied a mole existed, saying it had ended such spying with the arrest of Pollard more than a decade ago.<\/p>\n
Officials in Jerusalem said MEGA was the code name for a U.S.-Israeli intelligence sharing arrangement to fight terrorism.<\/p>\n
In any event, nothing has been heard of the U.S. pursuit of MEGA in a year.<\/p>\n
The alleged Mossad connection adds a new dimension to Sexgate \u2013 and could even support Hillary Clinton\u2019s charge that a \u201cvast, right-wing conspiracy\u201d was out to destroy her husband\u2019s presidency.<\/p>\n
Asked about that, Thomas replied: \u201cThat\u2019s not for me to say.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can only report the facts as I found them. What you make of the facts is up to you. What Monica makes of them is up to her.\u201d<\/p>\n