Sources in the PMO submit deal to US by which Israeli spy would be freed in exchange for 3 month extension of moratorium, Army Radio reports.

Former US president Bill Clinton said in a recent conversation with a prominent US Jewish leader that when Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu went to the Wye River Plantation talks in 1998 with Yasser Arafat, he thought that he would return to Israel with Jonathan Pollard, according to Israeli diplomatic sources.

According to these sources, this is the first time Clinton has acknowledged that Netanyahu went to the talks thinking he had Pollard’s freedom in hand.

In the end, a deal to release Pollard as part of the agreements with Arafat was scuttled when then-CIA director George Tenet threatened to resign if the deal went through.

The revelation by sources in Jerusalem of a private conversation Clinton had with a Jewish leader regarding an episode that took place more than a decade ago took on increased significance Monday amid reports – or perhaps trial balloons – that one idea being discussed by Defense Minister Ehud Barak in Washington regarding how to deal with the imminent end of the settlement construction moratorium would be that Israel would extend the moratorium if Pollard, who has been in a US prison for 25 years, were released.

Among the US officials Barak was scheduled to meet in Washington on Monday was Dennis Ross, who dealt at some length in his memoir The Missing Peace with how the Pollard issue played out during the Wye talks. In that book Ross, who was the US Middle East envoy at the time, wrote that Clinton considered releasing Pollard to try to ensure that an Israeli-PA deal would be sealed.

In the end, Ross wrote, he himself advised Clinton against going ahead with the release when Netanyahu said he would not sign the Wye deal without Pollard’s release.

“Did you make a commitment to release Pollard?” Ross quoted himself as asking Clinton in the book. “If you did, you have to release him.”

According to Ross, “The president swore he had made no promises; he’s said he would see what he could do, but he had made no promises.