When Robert Gates was tapped by Ronald Reagan to head the CIA in 1987, his role in Iran-contra crimes was already so filthy and so blatant that he was forced to drop out of contention under questioning. In so doing, Gates was defending his new master, George H.W. Bush, who at that time was preparing a presidential bid in 1988. The elder Bush was the czar of all Reagan-Bush covert operations, including Iran-contra, and Robert Gates fell on his sword to avoid revelations which would have doomed the candidacy of the elder Bush.
The payback for Robert Gates came in June 1991, when he was nominated once again to be head of the CIA, this time by George H.W. Bush. Sam Nunn and some others posed embarrassing questions, but this time the cover-up of Gates’ Iran-contra role was supervised by Sen. David Boren, and the Democrats, intimated by the H.W Bush’s apparent victory in the first Gulf war, rolled over.
If Gates was too dirty to even get to a vote in committee in 1987, how can he be acceptable today? If Democratic Senators like Levin and Biden opposed Gates in 1991, how can they find him acceptable for a much more important post at a time of far greater crisis?
Robert Gates’ record is marked by a glaring lack of competent and independent judgment, and he has shown himself to be a stooge that serves powerful masters. The first was Reagan’s CIA Director William Casey, the kingpin of Iran-contra. The second was George H.W. Bush, who took over that role from Casey. Gates appears as a Bush family retainer, as when he was tapped by the family in 1999 to become Dean of the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. Far from being the autonomous figure of integrity required to end America’s involvement in Bush’s Iraq disaster, Gates is a secret government toady.
Over the past eight years, the Bush regime has become infamous for fixing the facts and the intelligence to suit a pre-determined policy of aggression and adventurism. As Pentagon chief, Gates would control the majority of the US intelligence budget. His track record promises nothing but more faked intelligence. In September 1991, Time Magazine cited widespread reports that Gates "cooked the books" while he was at the CIA to support the political demands of the Reagan and Bush regimes. A New York Times editorial of November 4, 1991 concluded that "charges that Mr. Gates slanted intelligence assessments, leaving Congress in the dark and more amenable to administration policy, stand unrefuted." George Shultz reports in his memoirs that he "felt that Gates was giving me an idealized picture of what was an altogether different reality," and complained to Gates on January 5, 1987, "I don’t have any confidence in the intelligence community I feel you try to manipulate me. So you have a very dissatisfied customer. If this were a business, I’d find myself another supplier."
In the final report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters, Lawrence Walsh left little doubt that he believed Gates had given perjured testimony during that investigation. But Walsh concluded that the matters involved were so complicated that it would be very difficult to prove them before a jury. For this reason and for no other, Gates did not face criminal charges for perjury.
Most damning of all is the fact that Gates was one of the founders of al Qaeda, the CIA’s Arab Legion which was assembled to attack the Soviets in Afghanistan. Gates is thus part of the infrastructure that produced the patsies of 9/11.
According to Gates’s memoir "From the Shadows," the big expansion of the US covert operation in Afghanistan began in 1984. During this year, "the size of the CIA’s covert program to help the Mujaheddin increased several times over," reaching a level of about $500 million in US and Saudi payments funneled through the Zia regime in Pakistan. As Gates recalled, "it was during this period [1985] that we began to learn of a significant increase in the number of Arab nationals from other countries who had traveled to Afghanistan to fight in the Holy War against the Soviets. They came from Syria, Iraq, Algeria, and elsewhere, and most fought with the Islamic fundamentalist Muj groups, particularly that headed by Abdul Resaul Sayyaf. We examined ways to increase their participation, perhaps in the form of some sort of ‘international brigade,’ but nothing came of it. Years later, these fundamentalist fighters trained by the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan would begin to show up around the world, from the Middle East to New York City, still fighting their Holy War only now including the United States among their enemies. Our mission was to push the Soviets out of Afghanistan. We expected a post-Soviet Afghanistan to be ugly, but never considered that it would become a haven for terrorists operating worldwide." (Gates 349) But the international brigade Gates talked about was in fact created as the group now known as al Qaeda.
Such a candidate must not be approved, and even the Senate’s willingness to hold hearings for so compromised a figure amounts to an obscene farce.
In this past presidential election, Democrats campaigned against the rubber-stamp Republican Congress. Our message to these same Democrats now is that they better not dare to rubber stamp the Gates nomination. Democratic presidential candidates in the Senate must be reminded if they fail to filibuster Gates, our aroused anti-war base of the Democratic Party will demand accountability on the campaign trail.
We do not want bi-partisan sellouts, but rather a real opposition to the Bush regime and its crimes.