The president and his lapdogs in the corporate press have gone to great lengths to characterize Robert Gates, Dubya’s choice to replace Don Rumsfeld at the DoD, as a pensive academic, reluctantly leaving his post at A&M University to serve a country in crisis. The administration claims he’ll bring “fresh eyes” to an embattled Pentagon. ABCNews went so far as to call him the “new secretary of defense,” assuming his confirmation even as the president was calling the incoming Speaker of the House, “Congresswoman Pelosi.”
But who is Robert Gates, and will his confirmation be as smooth as the press presumes?
Sadly, in deference to a Democratic obsession to appear bipartisan, the answer to question two is probably yes. But the question of who best to run the Pentagon at a time when our military has spread to every corner of the planet―a military with nearly 800 bases around the world―and a time when the death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan has soared by some estimates to over 600,000 souls, is no less crucial. So, let’s take a closer look.
Robert Gates was well known through the ‘80’s as man with a knack for spinning intelligence. Indeed, it was this knack that fueled his rise at the CIA from career officer to deputy to the presiding director, Bill Casey. According to Melvin Goodman, former CIA and State Department analyst and senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, Gates spun intelligence on everything. From the Soviet Union to the Middle East, from Southwest Asia to Central America, Gates had a reputation for making hard intelligence fit the will of his political masters. And with the Reagan Administration selling weapons to Iran and Iraq and directing an illegal war in Nicaragua, politicized intelligence was a hot commodity.
It was this knack, along with his role in the Iran-Contra fiasco―a role he denied, perjuring himself before the Senate Intelligence Committee―that led the committee to reject his nomination in 1987 as CIA Director by an overwhelming 31 votes, more negative votes than incurred by any CIA Director since the agency’s inception. Even Barry Goldwater voted against him, a bipartisan stance rarely invoked by the pundits who pine for the lost days of Reagan’s bipartisanship.
But the Senate’s rejection wasn’t the end of Bob Gates. Dutiful public servant that he was, he went to work on David Boren―then-Democratic chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee―and Boren’s staff director, George Tenet, the man who would later spin the intelligence that led us to our current debacle in Iraq. Gates promised to run the CIA carefully and told Boren he’d work closely with the Senate Intelligence Committee, vetting covert operations and projects around the world. His guarantees worked. Boren eventually bought into the line and Gates was confirmed in a second nomination.
As Bill Casey’s right hand man, Bob Gates was a busy guy. He wrote the director’s speeches, and supplied him with briefings and testimony. He offered backdated filings to keep Casey out of hot water with the Senate Intelligence Committee, a committee increasingly frustrated with the director’s antics. He was also well versed on the underhanded dealings of the Reagan Administration. He knew they were arming Saddam Hussein. He knew they were arming Saddam’s enemies in Iran through contacts they’d made during the arms-for-hostages swap engineered to topple Jimmy Carter. He knew the proceeds from those sales were being used to fund a war in Nicaragua, a war declared illegal by the American people. But Bob Gates was nothing if not anxious to please.
When he left his post at the CIA to become Deputy National Security Advisor to the White House under George Bush, Sr., he was called on the carpet by James Baker for undermining U.S. policy through his efforts to serve his master at the NSA. In 1991, in recognition of his unwavering loyalty to political expedients, if not the American public, he was nominated to head the CIA where he served for three years. During his nomination hearings he denied ever having met with the Iranians to secure a weapons deal to fund our war in Nicaragua. Yet two years later, in a report by the Russians, commissioned by Lee Hamilton―Bob Gates’ compatriot on the much-touted Iraq Study Group―it was shown that he did have these meetings and did, in fact, play a role in the illegal weapons deals with Iranian operatives.
Will these allegations surface in his confirmation hearings? Will Bob Gates come clean about his involvement in the Iran-Contra scheme? Or will the newly-elected Democratic majority sacrifice our demand for change at the Pentagon on the altar of bipartisanship―a bipartisanship negated by this very nomination?
These questions remain to be answered. But if the Democrats confirm Robert Gates it will set the stage for a continuation of the war in Iraq, notwithstanding their rhetoric on “redeployment” or the findings of the Iraq Study Group. And if that happens, you can bet your last dinar, the tide of the electorate will swell again. The American public didn't vote for bipartisanship at any cost when they cast their ballots on Election Day. They voted for change. That change begins by rejecting this nomination.
Andrea Hackett is an freelance journalist, founder of the Las Vegas Dancers Alliance in Nevada, and editor of the Populist Review. She may be contacted at andreahackett@cox.net
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