According to whistleblower site Wikileaks, former US President Bill Clinton was ‘recruited’ by Hillary Clinton’s campaign head John Podesta to convince Greek PM Alexis Tsipras to sign on to the third bailout program in 2015. The new revelations were brought to light after Wikileaks published a large batch Podesta’s e-mails. The e-mails show that Podesta had mediated in order to sway Bill Clinton to advise Tsipras tp accept the third memorandum. It is not clear in the leaked e-mails whether the meeting between Tsipras and Clinton actually took place. According to Wikileaks, a few days after the Greek voters had rejected a series of tough austerity measures in the July 5 referendum in Greece, John Podesta, then White House Chief of Staff, possibly on the order of President Barack Obama, contacted Bill Clinton asking him to put pressure o Tsipras to accept the deal offered by the EU. The excerpt from the e-mail reads as follows:
“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.”
Clinton replied he would speak to Tsipras: “He says yes, but he’d need a lot more info than he has now. His immediate question is – are we pushing Merkle too? What time will you be available to talk? They have Charlotte, so just need to be able to give a heads up”. Sources in the Greek government have indirectly confirmed the Wikileaks revelations without providing an further details on the content of talks between Clinton and Tsipras. They add, however, that Tsipras had talkem with the former US President before the referendum. “Tsipras only spoke to President Obama after the referendum”, the same sources claim.