Gates, who currently is president of Texas A&M University, came under intense fire during confirmation hearings in the early 1990's for being unaware of the explosive situation in Iraq in the 1980's, and the demise of the Soviet republic.

Gates joined the CIA in 1966, and spent eight years there as an analyst before moving over to the National Security Council in 1974. He returned to the CIA in 1980, and a year later was appointed by Ronald Reagan to serve as deputy director for intelligence. Five years later, he was named deputy director for the agency, the number two post in the agency. In 1989, he was appointed deputy director of the National Security Council and in 1991, when the first Bush administration was in office, he was named director of the spy shop.

During contentious Senate confirmation hearings in October 1991 - that are bound to come up again - Gates's role in cooking intelligence information during the Iran-contra scandal was revealed. It was during those hearings that senators found out about a December 2, 1986, 10-page classified memo written by Thomas Barksdale, the CIA analyst for Iran. That memo claimed that covert arms sales to the country demonstrated "a perversion of the intelligence process" that is staggering in its proportions.

The Barksdale memo was used by Gates's detractors to prove he played an active role in slanting intelligence information during his tenure at the agency under Reagan. Eerily reminiscent of the way CIA analysts were treated by Vice President Dick Cheney during the run-up to the Iraq war three years ago, when agents were forced to provide the Bush administration with intelligence showing Iraq being a nuclear threat, Barksdale said he and other Iran analysts "were never consulted or asked to provide an intelligence input to the covert actions and secret contacts that have occurred."

Barksdale added that Gates was the pipeline for providing "exclusive reports to the White House" intelligence that was "at odds with the overwhelming bulk of intelligence reporting, both from U.S. sources and foreign intelligence services."

In testimony before the Senate on October 1, 1991, Harold P. Ford, former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, described an aspect of Gates's personality that mirrors many of the top officials in the Bush administration today.

"Bob Gates has often depended too much on his own individual analytic judgments and has ignored or scorned the views of others whose assessments did not accord with his own. This would be okay if he were uniquely all-seeing. He has not been ...," Ford said.

At the hearing, other CIA analysts said Gates forced them to twist intelligence to exaggerate the threat posed by the former Soviet Union. Analysts alleged a report approved by Gates overstated Soviet influence in Iran that specifically led the late President Ronald Reagan into making policy decisions that turned into the Iran-contra scandal.

Jennifer Glaudemans, a former CIA analyst, said at the 1991 Gates confirmation hearings that she and her colleagues at the CIA believed "Mr Gates and his influence have led to a prostitution of (Soviet) analysis."

Melvin Goodman, Glaudemans former boss at the CIA, also said that under Gates, the CIA was "trying to provide the intelligence analysis ... that would support the operational decision to sell arms to Iran."

Gates testified at his confirmation hearing in October 1991 that he was aware the United States was selling arms to Iran in exchange for hostages. But he denied that he had any knowledge that Oliver North, the former National Security aide, was diverting money from arms sales to Iran to secretly aid the Nicaraguan contras.

But White House memos released at the time showed that North and John Poindexter, the national security adviser at the time, engaged in classified briefings with Gates on numerous occasions about Iran-contra. Poindexter testified that he discussed the situation with Gates, but Gates said at his Senate confirmation hearings he had "no recollection" about those conversations.

Alan Fiers, a former CIA officer who served as an agency liaison along with North and met weekly with Gates, testified at Gates's confirmation hearings that he discussed specific details of the covert operation with Gates.

"Bob Gates understood the universe, understood the structure, understood that there was an operational - that there was a support operation being run out of the White House," and "that Ollie North was the quarterback," Fiers said at Gate's confirmation hearing in 1991. "I had no reason to think he had great detail, but I do think there was a baseline knowledge there."

If confirmed, Gates would arguably be overseeing a war that removed a dictator he personally helped to prop up. Tom Harkin, a senator from Iowa, described Gates's role in intelligence sharing operations with Iraq during a time when the United States helped arm Saddam Hussein in Iraq's war against Iran.

"I also have doubts and questions about Mr. Gates's role in the secret intelligence sharing operation with Iraq," Harkin said during Gates's confirmation hearings on November 7, 1991. "Robert Gates served as assistant to the director of the CIA in 1981 and as deputy director for intelligence from 1982 to 1986. In that capacity, he helped develop options in dealing with the Iran-Iraq war, which eventually evolved into a secret intelligence liaison relationship with Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Gates was in charge of the directorate that prepared the intelligence information that was passed on to Iraq. He testified that he was also an active participant in the operation during 1986. The secret intelligence sharing operation with Iraq was not only a highly questionable and possibly illegal operation, but also may have jeopardized American lives and our national interests. The photo reconnaissance, highly sensitive electronic eavesdropping, and narrative texts provided to Saddam may not only have helped him in Iraq's war against Iran, but also in the recent gulf war."

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Jason Leopold is a former Los Angeles bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswire. He has written over 2,000 stories on the California energy crisis and received the Dow Jones Journalist of the Year Award in 2001 for his coverage on the issue as well as a Project Censored award in 2004. Leopold also reported extensively on Enron's downfall and was the first journalist to land an interview with former Enron president Jeffrey Skilling following Enron's bankruptcy filing in December 2001. Leopold has appeared on CNBC and National Public Radio as an expert on energy policy and has also been the keynote speaker at more than two dozen energy industry conferences around the country.

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Robert Gates

From: http://www.georgebushfoundation.org/bush/html/EndowedLectures

/BioRobertsGatesNew.htm

* * * * *

Robert M. Gates served as Director of Central Intelligence from 6 November 1991 until 20 January 1993. In this position, he headed all foreign intelligence agencies of the United Sates and directed the Central Intelligence Agency. Dr. Gates is the only career officer in CIA’s history to rise from entry-level employee to Director and the only intelligence analyst to become Director.

Dr. Gates served as Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser at The White House from 20 January 1989 until 6 November 1991.

Dr. Gates joined the Central Intelligence Agency in 1966 and spent nearly 27 years as an intelligence professional, serving six presidents. During that period, he spent nearly nine years at the National Security Council, The White House, serving four presidents of both political parties. From 1982-1986, Dr. Gates served as CIA’s Deputy Director for Intelligence, heading one of the largest research and analysis organizations in the world. President Reagan appointed Dr. Gates Deputy Director of Central Intelligence in 1986 and he served in this capacity until appointed Deputy National Security Adviser by President Bush in 1989.

Dr. Gates has been awarded the National Security Medal, the Presidential Citizens Medal, has twice received the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, and has three times received CIA’s highest award, the Distinguished Intelligence Medal. In 1978, he received the Arthur H. Fleming Award, presented each year to the ten outstanding young men and women in Federal Service. In 1998, his alma mater, the College of William and Mary in Virginia, conferred upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters.

Dr. Gates is the author of From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War, published in 1996. Dr. Gates is a member of the board of trustees of The Fidelity Funds, and a member of the board of directors of TRW, Inc. and NACCO Industries. He also serves as senior adviser to several major international firms, and is a trustee of the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory in Boston and of the Forum for International Policy, a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to promoting vigorous American international leadership. He lectures frequently in the United States and abroad, has published numerous articles on government and foreign policy, and is a frequent contributor to the op-ed page of The New York Times.

Dr. Gates has longstanding, unique ties with American universities. In 1986, when head of CIA’s analytical directorate, he developed a cooperative program between CIA and The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University to develop case studies on the role of intelligence in American government decision-making, drawing heavily on newly declassified information and interviews of current and former government officials. Dozens of these case studies have been completed by the Kennedy School and now are available to scholars. Dr. Gates was also instrumental in securing CIA and Department of Defense funding during the 1980s to strengthen Soviet and Russian studies nationwide, in response to a request from the consortium of ten universities led by Harvard. The funds were administered by the consortium and used primarily to help encourage graduate students to remain in the field of Russian studies by financing university-designed research. As head of CIA’s analytical directorate, and then as deputy director and director of CIA, Dr. Gates directed the declassification of many CIA historical records for use by scholars. As one result of his efforts, most United States intelligence estimates on the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War have now been declassified and are available for research.

Subsequent to his retirement from government in 1993, Dr. Gates has served as an evaluator of student theses for the International Studies Program of the University of Washington and has lectured at a number of universities, including Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Vanderbilt, Indiana, Louisiana State, Oklahoma, the College of William and Mary, Georgetown, and others. He is a member of the Board of Visitors of the University of Oklahoma International Programs Center and a trustee of the College of William and Mary Endowment Fund.

Dr. Gates is a member of the national executive board of the Boy Scouts of America and president of the National Eagle Scout Association.

A native of Kansas, Dr. Gates received his BA degree from the College of William and Mary, his Master’s degree in history from Indiana University, and his Doctorate in Russian and Soviet History from Georgetown University.

Dr. Gates is married, and has two adult children.

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The Secret World of Robert Gates

by Robert Parry

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/110906A.shtml

Robert Gates, George W. Bush's choice to replace Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary, is a trusted figure within the Bush Family's inner circle, but there are lingering questions about whether Gates is a trustworthy public official.

The 63-year-old Gates has long faced accusations of collaborating with Islamic extremists in Iran, arming Saddam Hussein's dictatorship in Iraq, and politicizing U.S. intelligence to conform with the desires of policymakers - three key areas that relate to his future job.

Gates skated past some of these controversies during his 1991 confirmation hearings to be CIA director - and the current Bush administration is seeking to slip Gates through the congressional approval process again, this time by pressing for a quick confirmation by the end of the year, before the new Democratic-controlled Senate is seated.

If Bush's timetable is met, there will be no time for a serious investigation into Gates's past.

Fifteen years ago, Gates got a similar pass when leading Democrats agreed to put "bipartisanship" ahead of careful oversight when Gates was nominated for the CIA job by President George H.W. Bush.

In 1991, despite doubts about Gates's honesty over Iran-Contra and other scandals, the career intelligence officer brushed aside accusations that he played secret roles in arming both sides of the Iran-Iraq War. Since then, however, documents have surfaced that raise new questions about Gates's sweeping denials.

For instance, the Russian government sent an intelligence report to a House investigative task force in early 1993 stating that Gates participated in secret contacts with Iranian officials in 1980 to delay release of 52 U.S. hostages then held in Iran, a move to benefit the presidential campaign of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

"R[obert] Gates, at that time a staffer of the National Security Council in the administration of Jimmy Carter, and former CIA Director George Bush also took part" in a meeting in Paris in October 1980, according to the Russian report, which meshed with information from witnesses who have alleged Gates's involvement in the Iranian gambit.

Once in office, the Reagan administration did permit weapons to flow to Iran via Israel. One of the planes carrying an arms shipment was shot down over the Soviet Union on July 18, 1981, after straying off course, but the incident drew little attention at the time.

The arms flow continued, on and off, until 1986 when the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal broke. [For details, see Robert Parry's Secrecy & Privilege. For text of the Russian report, click here. To view the actual U.S. embassy cable that includes the Russian report, click here.]

Iraqgate Scandal

Gates also was implicated in a secret operation to funnel military assistance to Iraq in the 1980s, as the Reagan administration played off the two countries battling each other in the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq War.

Middle Eastern witnesses alleged that Gates worked on the secret Iraqi initiative, which included Saddam Hussein's procurement of cluster bombs and chemicals used to produce chemical weapons for the war against Iran.

Gates denied those Iran-Iraq accusations in 1991 and the Senate Intelligence Committee - then headed by Gates's personal friend, Sen. David Boren, D-Oklahoma - failed to fully check out the claims before recommending Gates for confirmation.

However, four years later - in early January 1995 - Howard Teicher, one of Reagan's National Security Council officials, added more details about Gates's alleged role in the Iraq shipments.

In a sworn affidavit submitted in a Florida criminal case, Teicher stated that the covert arming of Iraq dated back to spring 1982 when Iran had gained the upper hand in the war, leading President Reagan to authorize a U.S. tilt toward Saddam Hussein.

The effort to arm the Iraqis was "spearheaded" by CIA Director William Casey and involved his deputy, Robert Gates, according to Teicher's affidavit. "The CIA, including both CIA Director Casey and Deputy Director Gates, knew of, approved of, and assisted in the sale of non-U.S. origin military weapons, ammunition and vehicles to Iraq," Teicher wrote.

Ironically, that same pro-Iraq initiative involved Donald Rumsfeld, then Reagan's special emissary to the Middle East. An infamous photograph from 1983 shows a smiling Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein.

Teicher described Gates's role as far more substantive than Rumsfeld's. "Under CIA Director [William] Casey and Deputy Director Gates, the CIA authorized, approved and assisted [Chilean arms dealer Carlos] Cardoen in the manufacture and sale of cluster bombs and other munitions to Iraq," Teicher wrote.

Like the Russian report, the Teicher affidavit has never been never seriously examined. After Teicher submitted it to a federal court in Miami, the affidavit was classified and then attacked by Clinton administration prosecutors. They saw Teicher's account as disruptive to their prosecution of a private company, Teledyne Industries, and one of its salesmen, Ed Johnson.

But the questions about Gates's participation in dubious schemes involving hotspots such as Iran and Iraq are relevant again today because they reflect on Gates's judgment, his honesty and his relationship with two countries at the top of U.S. military concerns.

About 140,000 U.S. troops are now bogged down in Iraq, 3 ½ years after President George W. Bush ordered an invasion to remove Saddam Hussein from power and eliminate his supposed WMD stockpiles. One reason the United States knew that Hussein once had those stockpiles was because the Reagan administration helped him procure the material needed for the WMD production in the 1980s.

The United States also is facing down Iran's Islamic government over its nuclear ambitions. Though Bush has so far emphasized diplomatic pressure on Iran, he has pointedly left open the possibility of a military option.

Political Intelligence

Beyond the secret schemes to aid Iran and Iraq in the 1980s, Gates also stands accused of playing a central role in politicizing the CIA intelligence product, tailoring it to fit the interests of his political superiors, a legacy that some Gates critics say contributed to the botched CIA's analysis of Iraqi WMD in 2002.

Before Gates's rapid rise through the CIA's ranks in the 1980s, the CIA's tradition was to zealously protect the objectivity and scholarship of the intelligence. However, during the Reagan administration, that ethos collapsed.

At Gates's confirmation hearings in 1991, former CIA analysts, including renowned Kremlinologist Mel Goodman, took the extraordinary step of coming out of the shadows to accuse Gates of politicizing the intelligence while he was chief of the analytical division and then deputy director.

The former intelligence officers said the ambitious Gates pressured the CIA's analytical division to exaggerate the Soviet menace to fit the ideological perspective of the Reagan administration. Analysts who took a more nuanced view of Soviet power and Moscow's behavior in the world faced pressure and career reprisals.

In 1981, Carolyn McGiffert Ekedahl of the CIA's Soviet office was the unfortunate analyst who was handed the assignment to prepare an analysis on the Soviet Union's alleged support and direction of international terrorism.

Contrary to the desired White House take on Soviet-backed terrorism, Ekedahl said the consensus of the intelligence community was that the Soviets discouraged acts of terrorism by groups getting support from Moscow for practical, not moral, reasons.

"We agreed that the Soviets consistently stated, publicly and privately, that they considered international terrorist activities counterproductive and advised groups they supported not to use such tactics," Ekedahl said. "We had hard evidence to support this conclusion."

But Gates took the analysts to task, accusing them of trying to "stick our finger in the policy maker's eye," Ekedahl testified

Ekedahl said Gates, dissatisfied with the terrorism assessment, joined in rewriting the draft "to suggest greater Soviet support for terrorism and the text was altered by pulling up from the annex reports that overstated Soviet involvement."

In his memoirs, From the Shadows, Gates denied politicizing the CIA's intelligence product, though acknowledging that he was aware of Casey's hostile reaction to the analysts' disagreement with right-wing theories about Soviet-directed terrorism.

Soon, the hammer fell on the analysts who had prepared the Soviet-terrorism report. Ekedahl said many analysts were "replaced by people new to the subject who insisted on language emphasizing Soviet control of international terrorist activities."

A donnybrook ensued inside the U.S. intelligence community. Some senior officials responsible for analysis pushed back against Casey's dictates, warning that acts of politicization would undermine the integrity of the process and risk policy disasters in the future.

Working with Gates, Casey also undertook a series of institutional changes that gave him fuller control of the analytical process. Casey required that drafts needed clearance from his office before they could go out to other intelligence agencies.

Casey appointed Gates to be director of the Directorate of Intelligence [DI] and consolidated Gates's control over analysis by also making him chairman of the National Intelligence Council, another key analytical body.

"Casey and Gates used various management tactics to get the line of intelligence they desired and to suppress unwanted intelligence," Ekedahl said.

Career Reprisals

With Gates using top-down management techniques, CIA analysts sensitive to their career paths intuitively grasped that they could rarely go wrong by backing the "company line" and presenting the worst-case scenario about Soviet capabilities and intentions, Ekedahl and other CIA analysts said.

Largely outside public view, the CIA's proud Soviet analytical office underwent a purge of its most senior people. "Nearly every senior analyst on Soviet foreign policy eventually left the Office of Soviet Analysis," Goodman said.

Gates made clear he intended to shake up the DI's culture, demanding greater responsiveness to the needs of the White House and other policymakers.

In a speech to the DI's analysts and managers on Jan. 7, 1982, Gates berated the division for producing shoddy analysis that administration officials didn't find helpful.

Gates unveiled an 11-point management plan to whip the DI into shape. His plan included rotating division chiefs through one-year stints in policy agencies and requiring CIA analysts to "refresh their substantive knowledge and broaden their perspective" by taking courses at Washington-area think tanks and universities.

Gates declared that a new Production Evaluation Staff would aggressively review their analytical products and serve as his "junkyard dog."

Gates's message was that the DI, which had long operated as an "ivory tower" for academically oriented analysts committed to an ethos of objectivity, would take on more of a corporate culture with a product designed to fit the needs of those up the ladder both inside and outside the CIA.

"It was a kind of chilling speech," recalled Peter Dickson, an analyst who concentrated on proliferation issues. "One of the things he wanted to do, he was going to shake up the DI. He was going to read every paper that came out. What that did was that everybody between the analyst and him had to get involved in the paper to a greater extent because their careers were going to be at stake."

A chief Casey-Gates tactic for exerting tighter control over the analysis was to express concern about "the editorial process," Dickson said.

"You can jerk people around in the editorial process and hide behind your editorial mandate to intimidate people," Dickson said.

Gates soon was salting the analytical division with his allies, a group of managers who became known as the "Gates clones." Some of those who rose with Gates were David Cohen, David Carey, George Kolt, Jim Lynch, Winston Wiley, John Gannon and John McLaughlin.

Though Dickson's area of expertise - nuclear proliferation - was on the fringes of the Reagan-Bush primary concerns, it ended up getting him into trouble anyway. In 1983, he clashed with his superiors over his conclusion that the Soviet Union was more committed to controlling proliferation of nuclear weapons than the administration wanted to hear.

When Dickson stood by his evidence, he soon found himself facing accusations about his psychological fitness and other pressures that eventually caused him to leave the CIA.

Dickson also was among the analysts who raised alarms about Pakistan's development of nuclear weapons, another sore point because the Reagan-Bush administration wanted Pakistan's assistance in funneling weapons to Islamic fundamentalists fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan.

One of the effects from the exaggerated intelligence about Soviet power and intentions was to make other potential risks - such as allowing development of a nuclear bomb in the Islamic world or training Islamic fundamentalists in techniques of sabotage - paled in comparison.

While worst-case scenarios were in order for the Soviet Union and other communist enemies, best-case scenarios were the order of the day for Reagan-Bush allies, including Osama bin Laden and other Arab extremists rushing to Afghanistan to wage a holy war against European invaders, in this case, the Russians.

As for the Pakistani drive to get a nuclear bomb, the Reagan-Bush administration turned to word games to avoid triggering anti-proliferation penalties that otherwise would be imposed on Pakistan.

"There was a distinction made to say that the possession of the device is not the same as developing it," Dickson told me. "They got into the argument that they don't quite possess it yet because they haven't turned the last screw into the warhead."

Finally, the intelligence on the Pakistan Bomb grew too strong to continue denying the reality. But the delay in confronting Pakistan ultimately allowed the Muslim government in Islamabad to produce nuclear weapons. Pakistani scientists also shared their know-how with "rogue" states, such as North Korea and Libya.

"The politicization that took place during the Casey-Gates era is directly responsible for the CIA's loss of its ethical compass and the erosion of its credibility," Goodman told the Senate Intelligence Committee in 1991. "The fact that the CIA missed the most important historical development in its history - the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the Soviet Union itself - is due in large measure to the culture and process that Gates established in his directorate."

Confirmation Battle

To push through Gates's nomination to be CIA director in 1991, the elder George Bush lined up solid Republican backing for Gates and enough accommodating Democrats - particularly Sen. Boren, the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman.

In his memoirs, Gates credited his friend, Boren, for clearing away any obstacles. "David took it as a personal challenge to get me confirmed," Gates wrote.

Part of running interference for Gates included rejecting the testimony of witnesses who implicated Gates in scandals beginning with the alleged back-channel negotiations with Iran in 1980 through the arming of Iraq's Saddam Hussein in the mid-1980s.

Boren's Intelligence Committee brushed aside two witnesses connecting Gates to the alleged schemes, former Israeli intelligence official Ari Ben-Menashe and Iranian businessman Richard Babayan. Both offered detailed accounts about Gates's alleged connections to the schemes.

Ben-Menashe, who worked for Israeli military intelligence from 1977-87, first fingered Gates as an operative in the secret Iraq arms pipeline in August 1990 during an interview that I conducted with him for PBS Frontline.

At the time, Ben-Menashe was in jail in New York on charges of trying to sell cargo planes to Iran (charges which were later dismissed). When the interview took place, Gates was in a relatively obscure position, as deputy national security adviser to President George H.W. Bush and not yet a candidate for the top CIA job.

In that interview and later under oath to Congress, Ben-Menashe said Gates joined in meetings between Republicans and senior Iranians in October 1980. Ben-Menashe said he also arranged Gates's personal help in bringing a suitcase full of cash into Miami in early 1981 to pay off some of the participants in the hostage gambit.

Ben-Menashe also placed Gates in a 1986 meeting with Chilean arms manufacturer Cardoen, who allegedly was supplying cluster bombs and chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein's army. Babayan, an Iranian exile working with Iraq, also connected Gates to the Iraqi supply lines and to Cardoen.

Gates has steadfastly denied involvement in either the Iran-hostage caper or the Iraqgate arms deals.

"I was accused on television and in the print media by people I had never spoken to or met of selling weapons to Iraq, or walking through Miami airport with suitcases full of cash, of being with Bush in Paris in October 1980 to meet with Iranians, and on and on," Gates wrote in his memoirs. "The allegations of meetings with me around the world were easily disproved for the committee by my travel records, calendars, and countless witnesses."

But none of Gates's supposedly supportive evidence was ever made public by either the Senate Intelligence Committee or the later inquiries into either the Iran hostage initiative or Iraqgate.

Not one of Gates's "countless witnesses" who could vouch for Gates's whereabouts was identified. Though Boren pledged publicly to have his investigators question Babayan, they never did.

Perhaps most galling for those of us who tried to assess Ben-Menashe's credibility was the Intelligence Committee's failure to test Ben-Menashe's claim that he met with Gates in Paramus, New Jersey, on the afternoon of April 20, 1989.

The date was pinned down by the fact that Ben-Menashe had been under Customs surveillance in the morning. So it was a perfect test for whether Ben-Menashe - or Gates - was lying.

When I first asked about this claim, congressional investigators told me that Gates had a perfect alibi for that day. They said Gates had been with Senator Boren at a speech in Oklahoma. But when we checked that out, we discovered that Gates's Oklahoma speech had been on April 19, a day earlier. Gates also had not been with Boren and had returned to Washington by that evening.

So where was Gates the next day? Could he have taken a quick trip to northern New Jersey? Since senior White House national security advisers keep detailed notes on their daily meetings, it should have been easy for Boren's investigators to interview someone who could vouch for Gates's whereabouts on the afternoon of April 20.

But the committee chose not to nail down an alibi for Gates. The committee said further investigation wasn't needed because Gates denied going to New Jersey and his personal calendar made no reference to the trip.

But the investigators couldn't tell me where Gates was that afternoon or with whom he may have met. Essentially, the alibi came down to Gates's word.

Ironically, Boren's key aide who helped limit the investigation of Gates was George Tenet, whose behind-the-scenes maneuvering on Gates's behalf won the personal appreciation of the senior George Bush. Tenet later became President Bill Clinton's last CIA director and was kept on in 2001 by the younger George Bush partly on his father's advice.

Now, as the Bush Family grapples with the disaster in Iraq, it is turning to an even more trusted hand to run the Defense Department. The appointment of Robert Gates suggests that the Bush Family is circling the wagons to save the embattled presidency of George W. Bush.

To determine whether Gates can be counted on to do what's in the interest of the larger American public is another question altogether.

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Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

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Senator Tom Harkin | Robert Gates Not Right for CIA in 1991

t r u t h o u t | Report

Thursday 09 November 2006

Editor's Note: Yesterday, President George W. Bush announced the appointment of Robert Gates as US Secretary of Defense to replace Donald H. Rumsfeld. The following is a Senate floor statement by Senator Tom Harkin, made during the 1991 confirmation hearings to nominate Robert Gates as Director of the CIA. - cw/TO

Gates Nomination (Senate - November 07, 1991)

Mr. Harkin [Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa)]:

Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the nomination of Robert Gates to be Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Mr. President, at the outset of the confirmation hearings, I had serious reservations about the nominee. The confirmation hearings only raised more questions and greater doubts. Questions and doubts about Mr. Gates' past activities, managerial style, judgment, lapses in memory and analytical abilities. Questions and doubts about his role in the Iran-Contra Affair and in providing military intelligence to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war; and questions and doubts about whether he will be able to remove the ideological blinders reflected in his writings and speeches or whether Mr. Gates is so rooted in the past, that he will not be able to lead the Agency into the post-cold war era. Because of these concerns, I have concluded that Mr. Gates is not the right person for the important job of overseeing our intelligence operations in this New World.

Mr. President, Robert Gates is a career Soviet analyst and former Deputy Director of the CIA who was wrong about what CIA analyst Harold Ford described as 'the central analytic target of the past few years: the probable fortunes of the USSR and the Soviet European bloc.' And I believe that the committee report points out one possible reason why the CIA failed to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union. According to testimony, Mr. Gates was busy pursuing hypotheses and making unsubstantiated arguments attempting to show Soviet expansion in the Third World, instead of looking for or paying attention to facts that pointed in the opposite direction. Why? Why, as Mentor Moynihan has pointed out, was the CIA able to tell Presidents everything about the Soviet Union except the fact that it was falling apart?

Mr. Gates was also wrong about the Soviet threat to Iran in 1985. The 1985 Special National Intelligence Estimate on Iran stressed possible Soviet inroads into Iran. Gates admits that the analysis was an anomaly. It was a clear departure from previous analyses and almost immediately proven wrong by subsequent events. Gates was involved in preparing that analysis. According to Hal Ford, whose testimony the nominee never refuted, Gates leaned heavily on the Iran Estimate, in effect, 'insisting on his own views and discouraging dissent.' What was the result? The 1985 estimate was skewed and contributed to the biggest foreign policy debacle of the Reagan administration, the sale of arms to Iran.

Mr. President, Graham Fuller, the CIA's National Intelligence Officer for the Near East, suggested that the 1985 SNIE estimate was based on intuition in the absence of hard evidence. I agree there is nothing wrong with preparing worse case scenarios or using 'intuition' as opposed to hard evidence in the preparation of analysis, provided it is made clear to policymakers that the finished analysis is based on intuition and not hard evidence. It is the job of the CIA to sort out fact from fiction, not convert one into the other.

Mr. President, I also have doubts and questions about Mr. Gates' role in the secret intelligence sharing operation with Iraq. Robert Gates served as assistant to the Director of the CIA in 1981 and as Deputy Director for Intelligence for 1982 to 1986. In that capacity he helped develop options in dealing with the Iran-Iraq war, which eventually involved into a secret intelligence liaison relationship with Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Gates was in charge of the directorate that prepared the intelligence information that was passed on to Iraq. He testified that he was also an active participant in the operation during 1986. The secret intelligence sharing operation with Iraq was not only a highly questionable and possibly illegal operation, but also may have jeopardized American lives and our national interests. The photo reconnaissance, highly sensitive electronic eavesdropping and narrative texts provided to Saddam, may not only have helped him in Iraq's war against Iran but also in the recent gulf war. Saddam Hussein may have discovered the value of underground land lines as opposed to radio communications after he was give our intelligence information. That made it more difficult for the allied coalition to get quick and accurate intelligence during the gulf war.

Further, after the Persian Gulf war, our intelligence community was surprised at the extent of Iraq's nuclear program. One reason Saddam may have hidden his nuclear program so effectively from detection was because of his knowledge of our satellite photos. What also concerns me about that operation is that we spend millions of dollars keeping secrets from the Soviets and then we give it to Saddam who sells them to the Soviets. In short, the coddling of Saddam was a mistake of the first order.

Mr. President, I've stated a very simple case for rejecting the nomination of Robert Gates to be Director of the CIA. The fact that he was wrong on major issues which in some instances led to foreign policy debacles. I haven't addressed concerns about the allegations of his politicization of intelligence analysis, his apparently poor managerial style or still unanswered questions about his role in the Iran-Contra affair. Regarding the Iran-Contra affair, I should mention that I was quite disturbed to hear testimony that portrayed Robert Gates as someone concerned about Agency's role and not sufficiently concerned about pursuing possible illegal Government activities. In his opening statement before the Intelligence Committee, Mr. Gates said that he should have taken more seriously 'the possibility of impropriety or possible wrongdoing in the Government and pursued this possibility more aggressively.' I agree.

I should also mention, Mr. President, that aside from Mr. Gates' poor judgment in not pursuing the possibility of Government wrongdoing more aggressively, I still find it incredible that the Deputy Director of CIA was not aware of that major covert operation. How could such a high ranking official not know about the CIA's efforts to support the Contras? Did he purposely avoid trying to find out what was happening? The testimony seemed to indicate he did. Gates' selective lapses in recall about the affair by a man with a photographic memory raises serious doubts.

The US Congress and the American people depend on accurate and reliable intelligence information. Our expenditures on defense and other areas are often decided on the basis of that information. We cannot afford to waste billion of dollars in the future. After reviewing the record, I do not believe that the Central Intelligence Agency under the directorship of Robert Gates will provide the clear intelligence assessments necessary for Congress to make decisions to deal with the future threats confronting our nation.

Mr. President, I do not believe that Robert Gates is the right person to lead the CIA at this time. The cold war is over and it's time for some of the old warriors to rest. Now we must take a fresh new look at the world, think new thoughts and reassess the future role of the intelligence community. I urge my colleagues to vote against Robert Gates.