Epstein Secrets

pit for diplomatic energy rather than as a priority. If Obama is reelected, he will have no Middle East hands to whom he can turn. Mideast advisor Dennis Ross has left; Jeffrey Feltman, assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, departed for a post at the United Nations; and Deputy Secretary of S

that the president has been qualified for the power of life and death by his reading. Perhaps he once taught the texts and their arguments; but the Oval Office is not a seminar room. This raises an interesting scruple about the relation of ideas to power. It is that the relation should never be unmediated

ly with the President, something I know sometimes frustrated other senior US negotiators like Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Mideast envoy Dennis Ross. This was not out of any disrespect for them. It was because the decisions on which negotiations would succeed or fail would have to be made at the t

Clinton on November 9. I was due to follow him three days later. I met Clinton and Dennis Ross over dinner in a little kitchen area attached to the Oval Office, and both seemed surprisingly upbeat. The President said he’d told Arafat the broad points that would be in the new American negotiating paper. It wa

ly with the President, something I know sometimes frustrated other senior US negotiators like Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Mideast envoy Dennis Ross. This was not out of any disrespect for them. It was because the decisions on which negotiations would succeed or fail would have to be made at the t

e Clinton on November 9. I was due to follow him three days later. I met Clinton and Dennis Ross over dinner in a little kitchen area attached to the Oval Office, and both seemed surprisingly upbeat. The President said he'd told Arafat the broad points that would be in the new American negotiating paper. It wa