URL: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1111-22.htm
Published on Saturday, November 11, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
Robert Gates-Gate by Ray McGovern
Full disclosure: I am in Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's debt for TV notoriety on May 4, when my impromptu questioning of him elicited denials easily shown to be false. I have known Robert Gates, whom the president has picked to succeed Rumsfeld, for 36 years, starting when Gates was a journeyman analyst in CIA's Soviet Foreign Policy branch which I headed.
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Those of us who had front-row seat to watch Gates' handling of substantive intelligence cannot overlook the manner in which he cooked it to the recipe of whomever he reported to. A protégé of William Casey, President Ronald Reagan's CIA Director, Gates learned well from his mentor. In 1995, Gates told the Washington Post's Walter Pincus that he watched Casey on "issue after issue sit in meetings and present intelligence framed in terms of the policy he wanted pursued." Gates followed suit, cooking the analysis to justify policies favored by Casey and the White House.
The cooking was consequential. Among other things, it facilitated not only illegal capers like Iran-Contra but also budget-breaking military spending against an exaggerated Soviet threat that, in reality, had long since passed its peak.
I was amused to read in David Ignatius' Washington Post column this week that Gates "was the brightest Soviet analyst in the [CIA] shop, so Casey soon appointed him deputy director overseeing his fellow analysts." He wasn't; and Casey had something other than expertise in mind. Talk to anyone who was there at the time (except the sycophants Gates co-opted) and they will explain that Gates' meteoric career had mostly to do with his uncanny ability to see a Russian under every rock turned over by Casey. Those of Gates' subordinates willing to see two Russians became branch chiefs; three won you a division. I exaggerate only a little.
To Casey, the Communists could never change; and Gorbachev was simply cleverer than his predecessors. With his earlier training in our Soviet Foreign Policy branch (and a doctorate in Soviet affairs no less), Gates knew better. Yet he carried Casey's water, and stifled all dissent. One consequence was that the CIA as an institution missed the implosion of the Soviet Union--no small matter. Another was a complete loss of confidence in CIA analysis on the part of then-Secretary of State George Shultz and others who smelled the cooking. In July 1987 in the wake of the Iran-Contra affair, Shultz told Congress: "I had come to have grave doubts about the objectivity and reliability of some of the intelligence I was getting."
Iran-Contra
And well he might. In the fall of 1985, for example, there was an abrupt departure from CIA's analytical line that Iran was supporting terrorism. On November 22, 1985 the agency reported that Iranian-sponsored terrorism had dropped off substantially in 1985, but no evidence was adduced to support that key judgment. Oddly, a few months later CIA's analysis reverted back to the pre-November 1985 line, with no further mention of any drop-off in Iranian support for terrorism.
It could be more than coincidental that the US illegally shipped Hawk missiles to Iran in late November 1985. When questions were raised later about this zigzag in intelligence, Stephen Engelberg of the New York Times quoted senior CIA official Clair George saying this was "an example of a desperate attempt to try to sort of prove something was happening to make the policy [arms to Iran for hostages] look good, and it wasn't."
Also in 1985 Gates commissioned and warped a National Intelligence Estimate suggesting that Soviet influence in Iran could soon grow and pose a danger to US interests. This provided additional "justification" for the illegal arms-for-hostages deal with Iran.
More serious still was Gates' denial of awareness of Oliver North's illegal activities in support of the Contra attacks in Nicaragua, despite the fact that senior CIA officials testified that they had informed Gates that North had diverted funds from the Iranian arms sales for the benefit of the Contras. The independent counsel for the Iran-Contra investigation (1986-93), Lawrence Walsh, later wrote in frustration that, despite Gates' highly touted memory, he "denied recollection of facts thirty-three times."
In 1991, when President George H. W. Bush nominated Robert Gates for the post of Director of Central Intelligence, there was a virtual insurrection among CIA analysts who had suffered under his penchant for cooking intelligence. The stakes for integrity of analysis were so high that many still employed at the agency summoned the courage to testify against the nomination. But the fix was in, thanks to then-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, David Boren and his staff director, George Tenet. The issue was considered so important and the damaging evidence so abundant, however, that thirty-one Senators voted against Gates when the committee forwarded his nomination. Never before or since has a CIA director nominee received nearly as many nays.
A highly respected former CIA station chief, Tom Polgar, offered the following at the 1991 Gates nomination hearings:
"His proposed appointment as director also raises moral issues. What kind of signal does his re-nomination send to the troops? Live long enough, your sins will be forgotten? Serve faithfully the boss of the moment, never mind integrity? Feel free to mislead the Senate--Senators forget easily? Keep your mouth shut--if the Special Counsel does not get you, promotion will come your way?"
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Rest at: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1111-22.htm
Michael