A CIA Insider's Take on Gates
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/120506J.shtml
By Ray McGovern
The Miami Herald
Monday 04 December 2006

The lame-duck Republican-led Senate Armed Services Committee
seems determined to force through confirmation of Robert Gates to
replace Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense. The hurry is
synthetic - and totally unnecessary. I know, I know - everyone but
Barney the dog wants Rumsfeld out of the Pentagon tout suite.
According to a Pentagon spokesman, however, Gates has
commitments that would preclude his taking the reins at the
Pentagon until January. So, senators, relax already. Let Rumsfeld
spend December at one of his houses in Taos, while you do your
homework. There is no exaggerating the importance of the Gates
candidacy. Even Democrats on the committee are saying Gates
is a shoo-in barring an unexpected disclosure. But the likelihood
of such a disclosure seems nil, with Gates the sole witness at his
hearing Tuesday. Still, Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., who was an analyst
in the State Department's intelligence bureau and now sits on the
House Intelligence Committee, has called Gates' nomination "deeply
troubling" and appealed for hearings that are "thorough and probing."
Gates has primarily two things going for him, which hardly suffice to
justify confirmation: * The Anyone-But-Rumsfeld syndrome, which
has understandable appeal. Just how much appeal was brought home
to me last week, when a former colleague who worked closely with
Gates during Iran-Contra said, "Despite my misgivings, I would support
Satan himself in preference to Rumsfeld." * The Not-Enough-Evidence-
To-Indict bromide offered reluctantly by Lawrence Walsh, the
independent counsel who led the investigation of the Iran-Contra
affair. Walsh was frustrated by Gates' remarkable inability to recall
explosive information that his subordinates swore under oath they
had told him "about Oliver North's illegal activities," for example.
(Gates' supporters still brag about his "eidetic [institutional]
memory.")
Walsh wrote: "The statements of Gates often seemed scripted
and less than candid. Nevertheless ... a jury could find the evidence
left a reasonable doubt that Gates either obstructed official inquiries
or that his two demonstrably incorrect statements were deliberate
lies." Not exactly a ringing endorsement. The Armed Services
Committee's ranking member, Carl Levin, D-Mich., who voted against
Gates' nomination in 1991 to be director of the CIA, said he wanted
to give Gates a "fresh look; a lot of time has passed." Well, highly
damaging evidence has come to light since 1991, implicating Gates
in some of the most serious national-security scandals of the 1980s.
Veteran investigative reporter Robert Parry, for one, has been
providing chapter and verse on Consortiumnews.com. For example,
in January 1995, Howard Teicher, who served on President Reagan's
National Security Council staff, submitted a sworn affidavit detailing
the activities of Gates and his then-boss, CIA Director William Casey,
in secretly providing arms to Iraq. This violated the Arms Export
Control
Act in two ways: ignoring the requirement to notify Congress; and pro
viding arms to a state designated as a sponsor of terrorism. It gets
worse. To grease the skids for this dubious adventure, Gates ordered
his more malleable subordinates at the CIA to cook up intelligence
reports to provide some comfort to Reagan in acquiescing to these
activities. A National Intelligence Estimate of May 1985 predicted
Soviet
inroads in Iran if the United States did not reach out to "moderates"
within the Iranian leadership. In addition, Gates' analysts were
pressed
to publish several reports beginning in late 1985 - as HAWK
anti-aircraft
missiles wended their way to Tehran - that Iranian-sponsored terrorism
had "dropped off substantially." There was no persuasive evidence to
support that judgment. As part of my official duties at the time, I
took
steps to make Gates aware of this a month before he wrote in articles
in the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs magazine and our professional
journal Studies in Intelligence that, "No CIA publication asserted
these
things." I then tried in vain to get him to correct the record. Hold
the
Nomination Since this episode casts serious doubt on Gates' veracity,
I felt a responsibility to bring it to the attention of the senators
weighing
Gates' nomination to become CIA director in 1991. On Oct. 7, 1991, I
swore in an affidavit laying out the facts and gave it to the Senate
Intelligence
Committee. I heard nothing. It is difficult to believe that senators
have
become so used to being diddled by administration officials and
nominees
that they shy away from looking seriously into such matters. After the
brutal
nomination hearings in 1991, then-Sen. Tom Daschle addressed the
$64,000 question - "Whether Gates might continue to trim the truth" -
and
insisted: "We cannot afford to take that chance." Nor should we take
that
chance now. As Iraq goes down the drain, and "the crazies" accelerate
their campaign to bomb Iran, what is more important than a defense
secretary from whom Congress can expect truthful testimony? Hold the
Gates nomination over to January.

Ray McGovern was a CIA analyst from 1963 to 1990 and Robert Gates'
branch chief in the early 1970s. McGovern now serves on the Steering
Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). -------

Dump Robert Gates for defence secretary