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Dennis Ross

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2019-11-25

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2019-11-25

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1. “There'll be a political, there'll be an investigation that is designed to harm your political opponents. Never seen it before. Never seen anything like it before, which is not to say presence in Secretary of State, don't think about the political well-being of administrations. Of course they do. But I don't care. In every administration I was a part of, and they were Republican Democrat where the orientation on policy might be quite different, but there were boundaries within which the policy was pursued. And, you know, I can just, I think about today. What would John McCain be saying? You I think we know what he would be saying. This is simply something that crosses the line and is unacceptable. That's just not what you do. It's a perversion of our own political process, and basically it's a perversion of how you conduct foreign policy.”

   2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “Just how wrong it was. I mean, just at a fundamental level, how wrong it was. You're withholding military assistance to those who are resisting direct Russian and indirect Russian efforts at destabilization and aggressions within Ukraine and trying to dictate to Ukraine what its future is going to be. And you are withholding it so that”

   2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “To basically do their job. And if they thought, if they had problems with what was being suggested, what I always found was a readiness to raise the problems. If they got overruled, they got overruled. So be it. But then they would go ahead and they would do what they were told. But you had a sense that these were people who had a kind of selfless commitment and even a kind of nobility to what their role was, what their purpose was, and why they were there. I mean,”

   2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “Yeah, no, I think If you undo alliances, you're not going to have them when you need them. If you basically gut the diplomatic corps, who are you going to call on to do these things? I mean, the fact is, you know, it's nice to be able to have people who are, and it should be, every administration bings in those who represent in some ways the political orientation of the administration. But they marry them with the ongoing structure, whether it's in the Pentagon or it's in the State Department, or it's in the intelligence community. All of these, you know, I will tell you over the years, I mean, having worked in five different administrations having been a political appointing for four, two Republican and two Democrat, one of the things I was always struck by was the capacity of the intelligence community or the foreign service”

   2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “That. But here, when you are getting rid of the infrastructure that allows you to shape policies, not to mention just shape, but implement them, you're weaken yourself. Who pays the price for that? We do because you'll end up having dysfunctional policies. You'll end up having policies that blow up in your face.”

   2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “Look, they represent the infrastructure of American diplomacy. They represent memory. They represent continuity. You know, I always used to get dealing with others internationally. These are people who've been in their position for 30, 40 years. And with the U.S., you have an administration every four and eight years. Well, the glue is basically the foreign service, the civil service, the people who serve irrespective of administration, and they don't tailor their approach to the politics of the moment. In many ways, almost uniquely apolitical. And it's not just the military that way. I used to see it in the foreign service as well. And in fact, sometimes I would even say they went overboard in that regard because I would say, look, secretaries of state are also political people.”

   2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “Expertise and history on the subject to bring in people who don't have any of that. I would say, by the way, Jason Greenblatt didn't have a background, but he threw himself into studying it. And he did it with a kind of sincerity and genuineness. There it has a kind of, you know, someone who's making that effort, that has a kind of credibility.”

   2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “Know it's not new for presidents and secretary of state to bring in Non career people. I was a non-career person. I was a political appointee. What you saw historically, though, is when you had people who were brought in from the outside, there were people who had”

   2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “Absolutely Why not at the same time if you're going to cut UNRWA to zero, why not give the 364 million dollars? Why not say, okay, we're going to pay the teachers, the Palestinian teachers in Gaza? We're going to pay for the food programs there. We're going to do some investments in terms of like solar energy there because they have real problem generating. Electricity and with solar panels, especially an area that has sun most of the time.”

   2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “So that's what UNRWA became. Now, in many ways, it has perpetuated the refugee problem. Instead of thinking about how you could take those camps and sort of rebuild them, move people out of the camps, that wasn't done. But since.”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “Going back to the original 1948 war, you ended up having about 750,000 Palestinians who were who left. Part of the historical debate is were they forced out? Did they simply go, or did they do what most people do in a war, which is get out of the way of a war? In any case, they weren't allowed to come back. And so they went into camps. And you had the UN system then created a refugee relief agency to deal with them.”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “Projects that were Israeli, Palestinian, cooperative projects which should be a model. You want that to be a sign of this is what succeeds. They cut off all the money for that. When they cut off UNRWA, I didn't have a problem with cutting off Unreal, although I did. You can't just do cold turkey. That's it. It's all gone. When they provide a lot of, they pay all the teachers in Gaza. They provide food programs in Gaza. They provide some, aside from the teachers, some work basis in Gaza. I mean, I would have thought if you didn't like UNRWA and you can make a case that it perpetuates the refugee problem”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “I think they may have a state there, but it may be hard to sell as a state given what they're likely to be. I think they may surprise people in terms of what they would provide in Jerusalem, but I also think it's probably still likely to fall short. But even if it was at the content, it surprises and exceeds, if you haven't prepared the ground by having Arab leaders see it, if you haven't given them a chance to make a few changes in it just so there's even a small degree of ownership. If you haven't worked with them word for word on what they'll say in response to it, you haven't laid the basis for it to give yourself more of a chance of success. And what you were talking about, a lot of the symbolism has been geared exclusively to Israeli symbols and zero to Palestinians. They won't commit to a state which would at least give the Palestinian public a sense, all right, there's a political horizon at least. They cut off all assistance to the Palestinians, including even assistance to joint projects.”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “But they could put themselves in a position where they can say it's up to the Palestinians to decide, but this is a serious basis for talks. For that, you have to have a Palestinian state in it, and you have to have a capital for that state in some significant part of Arab East Jerusalem.”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “As one of the average out to me You know, on the one hand, they have wanted, I think they're serious about trying to put together a plan that. At least they regard as having some chance of changing the reality in the region. They haven't shown it to anybody. I don't know the details. You know, I can glean certain things from the kind of questions that they ask me. My concern is the content will probably fall short of what it would need to be even to put Arab leaders in a position where they could say it was serious. For it to be Arab leaders to say it's serious, they were never going to say the Palestinians should accept it because they won't put themselves in a position where the Palestinians could say you're betraying the national cause.”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “That's right. And so, because he says all the settlements will stay. And again, in the blocks, that's one thing. Outside the blocks, it's something else. But Gantz will not go along with annexations And gans and the people around them are sensitive to this argument of not becoming one state for two people He hasn't put a lot of attention on it, but from time to time he sort of signaled that. In any case, if there's no annexation.”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “Yes, for several reasons. One is it also gives the Palestinians an excuse to be more open to having talks. Not that I think talks are going to lead anywhere quickly, but just like when you have vacuums that we talked about earlier get filled by the worst forces, well, when there's no political, there's no process of trying to promote peace, well, that's a vacuum too. And it feeds a disbelief and it feeds the weight of the rejectionists. So I think it creates a potential to have some resumption of a diplomatic process, number one. Number two, there'd be no annexation. That's really the death knell.”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “So he won't have to resign. And so I think my bet is, although I wouldn't bet a huge amount of money on it, because look, the fact is maybe Bibi wants a third election because it means that the status quo, he remains the prime minister and a caretaker government until that election takes place. I don't think his party wants a third election because they realize they'll be blamed if there's a third election. The public does not want it, which is why in the end I think you're going to end up with a national. Do you think if Gans...”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “The blue white party. That's right. Yeah. That's right BB is likely to be indicted by the Attorney General the first week of December. So let's say they did a deal. He's likely to be Prime Minister for seven to ten days. That's why I think that's a scenario that's most likely going to take place. He retains the title, but he doesn't have the function any longer. But he wants the title because the only minister in the government who doesn't have to resign if indicted is the prime minister.”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “And you have a proposal from the president, Rivlin, of Israel, that there should be a rotational arrangement where Netanyahu would be the first prime minister, Gantz would be the second prime minister, but Netanyahu would be incapacitated if he was indicted. If you look at the timetable right now, Gantz's mandate runs out near the end of November. The Attorney General is going to.”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “So it's easy to sort of focus on all of that, at the same time look at the Palestinians who seem dysfunctional. They're divided between Hamas and Fatah in the West Bank and Gaza. They tend to focus on symbols not on substance and so forth. So it's easy to sort of say, look, there's nothing to be done or what's wrong with maintaining where we are. And the answer is, well, what's wrong with it is because you're going to lose who you are if you do it. That's why you have to separate. When Israelis are asked the question, do you support separation from the Palestinians, 70% will say yes? Now, that hasn't been the issue that's been voted on, but I do think if Gantz comes in.”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “About him. Look, you use the right word faith. There is a loss of faith on both sides. And faith is not something that you simply restore. You have to work at reestablishing a sense of possibility. But what you're putting your finger on is, on the Israeli side, first they look at a region and look what they see, a half a million dead in Syria. Iran embedding itself trying to have a land quarter, trying to put precision guided capabilities on over 100,000 rockets that Hezbollah has, ISIS in the Sinai, Hamas with rockets out of Gaza. And ironically, no small part, perhaps because of Bibi, you have Iran now walking away incrementally from the JCPOA, which means that Israel is also going to have to plan a nuclear agreement. Right.”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “You build And these you make tactical decisions now to add to the settlers outside the blocks, these will have long term strategic consequences. But it's a hard political decision because the settler movement in Israel has real political weight. So this book, we did this book to show let's look at four leaders who made big decisions, who weren't afraid to make it.”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “Is that you will have by default that as an outcome if Israel keeps building outside the settlement blocks? Now the blocks of those areas, 87% of all the Israelis who moved into the West Bank live in the area that's about 5% of the territory closest to the major Israeli urban centers. They move there not for ideological reasons but for quality of life reasons. So we came up with the concept of settlement blocks actually before we went to Camp David in the year 2000 and the idea was, all right, we're going to absorb the vast majority of Israeli settlers. And then in these areas, we'll become part of Israel and there'll be a territorial swap to compensate the Palestinians. So if you build in the blocks, that's consistent with the two-state outcome.”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “But it needs to be light unto the nations. And so if you lose Israel as a Jewish democracy because you have one state for two people, then that's the end of the Zionist dream, the Zionist mission You lose your values, you lose your character, you lose your identity. And the problem is the premise of this book, and then the concluding chapter goes and explains it in detail.”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “Right, exactly. The statement of independence when Israel declares itself. An elemental part of this is Israel needs to be not just a refuge for the Jews. There is a need for that.”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “And the point is, if you want a prescription for an endless conflict, then try to force two national identities into this one state. It's a mistake from that standpoint. From the standpoint of the Jewish national movement, from the standpoint of Zionism, it's the end of the Zionist mission and ethic. Because what that was about was Jewish democracy. And you look at someone like Ben Grian, actually all four of these leaders in different ways, but Ben-Gurion in particular, you look at the foundation.”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

28. “Two different reasons, I would say one, that relates to Israel but not in a way we do in the book. One is that if you look in the Middle East, every place where you have a state that has more than one identity, national, sectarian, or tribal, that's state's at war with itself. I mean, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, if you want to take... Two national movements competing for the same space, which is the Jewish national movement, the Palestinian National Movement, are competing for the same space. These are two separate national identities. Put them together in one state and you will have one will feel the need to dominate the other. Interestingly enough, I once had a member of Fatah come to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and make that case publicly. This was during in the early 2000s.”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “We will not get 100% of what we want on Jerusalem, refugees, security, and borders. They had to legitimize the idea of compromise publicly. Now, Barack would have grudgingly done it, and my guess is Arafat would not have. And had we known that, we would have then said, okay, look, we're not going to go for an end of conflict agreement. We're going to go to expand the space of Palestinian independence and autonomy. We're going to build the institutions on the Palestinian side. We'll do more on people-to-people. We'll do what it takes.”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

30. “Yeah, we have in August, in July of 2000, we go to Camp David and we come on December 22nd with the Clinton parameters, which I help to shape, which we're actually more forward-leaning towards the Palestinians than what was offered at Camp David. But I felt that it occurred to me only when we were at Camp David that we shouldn't have gone unless we had a commitment from each side that we could have orchestrated, where each side would have come out meaning Barack and Arafat would have come out and publicly acknowledged.”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

31. “And I said, I'm going to take a vacation. He goes, gee, it must be nice to have a vacation. So I said, you know, you could use one. And he says, I haven't had one since 1962 for an afternoon. I said, well, you could really use one. And then he says to me and get the picture. It's just the two of us. There's no one to impress. I've been living with him, literally. And then he says to me, How can I take a vacation for my people? Now, there's no one else there. This struggle was who he was. It was basically his identity. And when we said end the conflict, it meant he had to end his identity. He could do limited deals because that didn't threaten that. That was the problem. And one of the things I say that I feel that I should have understood before we went to Camp David better”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

32. “Yeah, I think one of the things about ARFAT is that ARFAT never foreclosed an option. And the problem that we had was that we were trying to end the conflict. So the three words that he couldn't accept were end the conflict because end the conflict meant end the grievance and the claims and the struggle. And the struggle defined him. I tell a story which kind of captures this. At the end of doing the Hebron dealers, there were two different 23-day shuttles literally around the clock. So when we finished it, the day after we finished, I went down to see him and we were alone, just the two of us eating together. And I said, look, I'm leaving and I'm going to go take a vacation. First he said, can't you stay? And I said, no, I'm actually leaving.”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

33. “Hebron now. But at the time, I was trying to get him to close on the interim agreement. I was worried that if we didn't get it done before the Jewish holidays, we might not get it done. So I'm on the phone with him. And at a certain point, I think it's fair to say I was raising my voice. And when I hang up my, and subsequently, I had my mother get on the phone with him. At this point, she said, who are you talking to? I said, Arafat. And she goes, you talk to him that way?”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

34. “Yeah, a good Jewish mother. But actually, part of that was this was we're trying to close on what was the interim agreement, which was the most important of all the Oslo agreements was that one because it creates the Palestinian Authority in all the cities of the West Bank except Hebron, but establishes a principle of that, which I'd end up later on negotiating.”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

35. “And unfortunately, that side of the argument, in my mind, lost out. And I think it lost out because there was a perception, look, you're different. You don't have to do what everybody else has done. But it didn't take account of the fact that you're reaching out to Muslims. You need to show before you have a relationship with Israelis, you need to show you get their concerns. You get the goods.”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

36. “It would have. Look at during the transition, Tom Donlin asked me to write a paper on, all right, where should the president give his speech to the Muslim world? And I actually made the case in here, do it Cairo not, don't go to Jakarta. Our problem is not with the Muslims in Asia. Our problem is in the Middle East. But I said, if you do that, you have to go to Israel because otherwise the Israeli public is going to fear this is coming at their expense.”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

37. “In a sense, both I think both ended up creating that impression, even if it didn't fit the actual. I'll tell you one thing I wonder about.”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

38. “I help to preside over the drafting process of it. And all of what I call the important grace notes he took out. And I explained to him, look, you can't be asking Israelis to do something that's seen as hard for them unless you're also showing you get Israel's predicament. You understand what they face in the region. And so you have to show the kind of connection, even the emotional connection there so that they understand, look, this isn't the case of just trying to satisfy the Arabs at Israel's expense.”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

39. “Produce In a sense, look, what was true of both administrations was while they were good on security, they weren't always good in terms of framing what they were doing and why they were doing it in a way that reached out to the Jewish community that in a sense this gets back to Baker's case. Baker gave a very tough speech to APEC early in the administration, a very tough speech.”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

40. “The Zionism is racism resolution at the UN revoked. He agrees with Shamir on the issue of having Soviet Jews actually Have to go to Israel from Vienna before they would go anyplace else, which was huge in terms of having the majority of Soviet Jewry who were leaving at that time end up in Israel. So, in addition to the fact that the For the first time ever, we deploy 700 American forces to deploy the Patriots at the beginning of the Gulf War. Now there's a reason we don't want the Israelis, we want to provide defense for them, we don't want them reacting against the Iraqi Scuds. But Israel has never before accepted American forces on the ground, and they had to because they didn't have patriot missiles, they had to be there to operate it. And this was not something that suggested a kind of hesitancy to be associated with Israel.”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

41. “A, yeah, you're asking two things one is, was there that perception? The answer is yes, and was that perception correct? And the answer to the former is absolutely it existed. The answer to the second it is in my mind it's quite, I actually did this in my last book, there's a lot of similarity between the perception of George HW Bush and Barack Obama as it relates to Israel. Both were prepared to be critical of Israel in public. The interesting reality is each in terms of their approach to Israeli security were profoundly good. But that public dissidence is what sort of created the impression. And in a lot of ways it really blinded people to, okay, but look at the things, the practical things that they're actually doing. In Bush's case, Bush is the one who defeats Iraq, which takes away the most serious regional threat the Israelis face. Bush is the one who produces recognition of Israel from 44 countries that hadn't done it before. Bush is the one who presides over getting”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

42. “He was, and I'll tell you, you may or may not recall this, but He was hunkered down in his office in the White House, and it became a story. And so very late in the campaign, then he went out to be on the hustings with President Bush. And I recall there's this kind of iconic photograph of him sitting alone looking for Lorne that somebody took out on the campaign. And it was really, I think, representative of.”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

43. “It was very hard on him at the time. I remember it was, you know, he was doing this for his friend, but I think part of it was he deserved to have an identity as a great statesman. The truth is he was other than Kishner. He and Kisner are probably the two most extraordinary secretaries of state in the post-World War II, end of the 20th century era. And for him, he knew the label of being kind of this political guru was what he had been, one he'd always carried. And he wanted to be seen for what he legitimately felt that he was.”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

44. “He said to me at one point, you know, now I have to determine do we have balloons or confetti coming from the skies that rallies before I was dealing with the biggest issues there are in the world stage.”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

45. “It was a very good gig, except for one thing under Baker, I had the responsibility to conceptualize and then to implement. And here I had an office right down the hall. I actually kept the office that I had, but I was kind of a solitary actor. So I could write these memos, I could go to him, and I have to say, he was extraordinary with me. I mean, he gave me terrific access. But every time I'd walk into a room, you know, the first couple months of the administration would be like, oh, you know, the fifth column's here. Because when Baker had gone to the White House in August of 1992, I was one of four people he took with him. I mean, at the time, I said to him, well, I understand that you have to go, but why do I have to go?”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

46. “And they said, look, we would like you to help with Middle East stuff, but because you played a role before and everything, we'd like you to, you know, to To advise across the board with everything, you'll travel with him when he goes to the Middle East, but we'd like you to, on the Russia stuff, we want you to help out. And anything that you feel you want to send a memo on, you do it.”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

47. “Yes, and it broke the taboo on direct talks between Arabs and Israelis. That was its significance. So I was asked about 10 days before the end of the transition period if I would stay for three to six months and be a special advisor to Warren Christopher.”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

48. “Well, it's not one that I expected, you know, because it's true I was sort of seen as a foreign policy professional. I mean, and that was an era when you could be a political appointee for a Republican and a Democrat, which seems like ancient history now. I think what happened was I had been, it wasn't just the Soviet work that I'd done, and now Russia was replacing it, but it was also, I was seen as a key player working with Baker to put together the Madrid conference. On the Middle East.”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

49. “Defense Secretary, then we should point out. He would travel with Baker, he was part of the team. I mean, there was a team concept that drove how decisions were made and then how they were implemented. Baker was clearly first among equals. He had a unique relationship with Bush. Very close. Close close friends. When Baker's first wife had died, it was the Bushes who really took care of him. He's a guy who has four kids at the time. So they almost had a relationship like brothers. And so Baker had a kind of first among equal status, but it also, but he never abused it either. And we understood that we had the kind of leading responsibility for conceptualizing and implementing, but we still had to get approval from the White House before we did it. And he was very careful to operate that way.”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

50. “They work very closely together. They could have disagreements, but the President Bush was not someone who was reluctant to decide and he would decide. But below their level, we had kind of our own circle. We would thrash things out. Almost everybody who was at the second tier had had a relationship with each other. I recall with Bob Blackwell and Condy Rice on the NSC, Bob Zellek, who was a counselor at the time and I was the head of policy planning. Would go over and we'd write the talking points for meetings with Gorbachev. I mean, is that kind of a coherence, but not just a coherence and ability to work together didn't mean you didn't have differences and debates we did. Cheney was frequently took a much harder line on arms control issues, and yet Steve Hadley, who was his assistant secretary.”

    2019-11-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 357 – Amb. Dennis Ross · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source