A latest Wikileaks disclosure involves Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and purported White House interest in Greece accepting a debt deal by creditors days after a controversial referendum in July 2015 generated a solid “no” to a previous deal on the table.
Wikileaks claims the White House tried to recruit former US president Bill Clinton to persuade Tsipras. As a result, the Tsipras side on Thursday afternoon issued a hurried clarification. The latter noted that Tsipras spoke with Clinton only before the referendum, but then with US President Barack Obama himself.
The reaction, circulated by the ubiquitous “government circles” in Athens, lieu of a formal statement, came hours before Tsipras was due to open a closely watched congress of his ruling SYRIZA party and amid a series of recent opinion polls showing support for his government and his popularity collapsing.
The disclosure says that John Podesta, a close Clinton ally who is now Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, called Bill Clinton’s office to ask him if he would press Tsipras to accept the debt deal.
Podesta’s message, according to Wikileaks, reads:
“…I’m on a train and hard to talk by phone. White House asked me whether WJC had enough of a relationship with PM Tsipras to call him and counsel him to make a deal. Can you ask him whether that’s in the realm of possibility. If yes, I can talk to him after I’m off the train and explain their thinking and what they are hoping to accomplish. Thanks.
“WJC” is William Jefferson Clinton.
Wikileaks then claims the reply from Clinton’s office was:
“He says yes, but he’d need a lot more info than he has now. His immediate question is – are we pushing Merkle (sic) too? What time will you be available to talk? They have Charlotte, so just need to be able to give a heads up.
The wikileaks report came on the same day that excerpts of a book on Francois Hollande stated that Tsipras asked Russian President Vladimir Putin for help in order to print a Greek national currency, during the height of the “Grexit” scares in 2015.
As with the Clinton issue, government sources quickly denied the report.
The book claims that Putin told Hollande that Tsipras had asked for Russia’s help to print drachmas because the country now lacked such printing presses.
