Date: November 8, 2006 11:36:12 PM PST
Subject: Gates & Iran-Contra: Cooked Intel, Lies and Coverups
--
----- Original message -----
To: undisclosed-recipients@, @
Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2006 23:49:29 -0600 (CST)
Subject: [NYTr] Gates & Iran-Contra: Cooked Intel, Lies and Coverups
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
Counterpunch - Nov 8, 2006
Robert Gates and Iran/Contra
Lies, Cover Ups and Slanted Intelligence
By LAWRENCE E. WALSH
The day after Clair George's arraignment, we turned to Robert Gates. The
Senate intelligence committee's hearings on his appointment to head the
CIA
were scheduled to begin within a few days. Craig Gillen and I met the
committee's chairman, David Boren, and ranking minority member, Frank
Murkowski, and staff counsel in Boren's office. Reiterating what I had
already told Boren, we said that two questions had not been answered
satisfactorily: Had Gates falsely denied knowledge of Oliver North's
Contra-support activities? Had Gates falsely postdated his first
knowledge
of North's diversion of arms sale proceeds to the Contras?
We then described what our investigation had turned up about Gates. Alan
Fiers had told us that he had kept Gates generally informed of his
Contra-support activities, through written reports and regular
face-to-face
presentations, although his oral reports had been guarded because Gates
had
not always had a note-taker present. The CIA now claimed it could not
find
the notes of these meetings.
We said that Richard Kerr, the CIA's deputy director for intelligence,
had
informed Gates in August 1986 of Charles Allen's belief that North had
diverted funds from the Iranian arms sales for the benefit of the
Contras;
Allen himself had told Gates the same thing in early October. Allen had
told us that Gates, who had appeared irritated, had told Allen to write
a
memorandum for CIA director William Casey and had said that he did not
want
to hear about North. To us and to the congressional committees, Gates
had
denied having any recollection of either conversation. Whenever
questioned,
Gates had always claimed that he had first learned of Allen's concern
about
the diversion on the day after Eugene Hasenfus was shot down. Gates said
that he and Allen had then reported this to Casey, who told them that he
had just received much the same information from another source.
That day, according to North and Gates, Casey had invited North to lunch
in
his office, which was next to Gates's office. Gates had joined them, and
according to North, had heard Casey tell North to clean up the Ilopango
operation. North claimed that he had then begun to destroy records.
Gates
claimed not to remember the discussion of North's Nicaraguan activities.
Although he had heard North mention Swiss accounts, Gates said, he had
not
understood the reference. He claimed to have been in and out of the
room.
All he remembered, he said, was that North had told him that the CIA was
completely clean regarding the Contra-support operation.
We suggested to the senators that they specifically request the notes of
Fiers's reports to Gates. We told them that we did not think we had
enough
corroborating information to indict Robert Gates, but that his answers
to
these questions had been unconvincing. We did not believe that he could
have forgotten a warning of North's diversion of the arms sale proceeds
to
the Contras. The mingling of two covert activities that were of intense
personal interest to the president was not something the second-highest
officer in the CIA would forget. Moreover, Gates had received the same
reliable contemporaneous intelligence reports about North's activities
that
Charles Allen had. The information suggesting that North had overcharged
the Iranians would surely have caught the attention of anyone as astute
as
Gates.
When, after Eugene Hasenfus's aircraft was shot down, Gates and Allen
had
told Casey about Allen's concern that North had diverted funds to the
Contras, how could Gates have forgotten that Allen and Kerr had warned
him
about the diversion a few weeks earlier?
The Senate intelligence committee's hearings on George H.W. Bush's
nomination of Robert Gates to head the CIA began on Monday September 16,
1991. The hearings were televised. Gates, who had already answered
extensive interrogatories from the committees, was the first witness. In
substance, he denied recalling the details of Iran/Contra. He said that
he
wished he had been more skeptical and that he had asked more questions.
Thirty-three times he denied recollection of the facts.
As I watched some of the broadcasts, I was impressed by the strength of
the
committee's members and by their identification with and sympathy for
the
national security community. The powerful committee had several
respected
members, including former secretary of the Navy John Warner and Sam
Nunn,
both of whom were also on the armed services committee, and Warren
Rudman,
who had been the ranking Republican on the Senate select committee on
Iran/Contra.
Only Democrats Howard M. Metzenbaum of Ohio and Bill Bradley of New
Jersey
pursued the Iran/Contra connection. I got the impression that most of
the
senators did not want to hold Iran/Contra against Gates. As associates
of
the national security fraternity, they might object to venal conduct,
but
they did not want to rake up the issue of an old non-disclosure. They
obviously respected Gates's ability and his stature as Bush's deputy
national security advisor; the president was clearly nominating someone
he
personally knew and trusted.
Senator Rudman openly disparaged the discussion of Iran/Contra: "I might
say parenthetically that I hope someday I will never have to talk about
this subject again. But I guess it just keeps coming up. It's almost
like a
typhus epidemic in that anybody within five miles of the germ either
died,
is infected, or is barely able to survive, so I guess we're back in that
mode again."
The committee singled out William Casey as the culprit in Iran/Contra
and
suggested that Gates had been largely bypassed in matters related to it.
As
Senator Murkowski (R-AK) put it: "What's coming out is a better
understanding of the management style of Casey, and the
compartmentalization. There are numerous instances where senior CIA
officials were bypassed on projects that were worked by the director and
his designees solely."
Senator John Chaffee (R-RI) said that Casey had not run a typical
bureaucracy: "Bill Casey ran the outfit in a manner that jump-charged
the
command Chains of command in diagrams didn't fit with Bill Casey."
This view was contradicted by Thomas Polgar, a decorated former CIA
officer
and later a Senate committee staff member. Polgar testified that Gates
had
been Casey's creation and had not been "compartmentalized" out of
sensitive
information.
Fiers testified that Gates was an exceptionally gifted operator and that
his meteoric rise had aroused jealousy among some older colleagues.
Fiers
said that Gates was very smart, very capable, although "sort of on the
make." According to Fiers, Gates had understood "the universe" of the
Contra-supply operation-that it had been run out of the White House,
with
North as the quarterback-but had not been given extensive detail.
Charles Allen told the committee of his efforts to warn Gates about the
diversion of the arms sale proceeds to the Contras. After testifying
that
Gates had appeared irritated, Allen said, "My personal fears were that
somehow this initiative had gotten off the track, and that it might have
gone even higher to the Oval Office."
Richard Kerr, who was now the deputy director of the CIA under William
Webster, confirmed Allen's story. In addition to relaying the
information
to Gates, he had told another CIA officer of Allen's concern. As I
watched
the hearings, I felt certain that Gates would not have brushed off these
alarming reports if he had not already known about the diversion. He
simply
had not wanted to be told by a new witness.
I also disbelieved Gates's testimony about President Reagan's December
5,
1985, retroactive finding purporting to authorize the CIA's facilitation
of
the November 1985 Hawk missile shipment to recover the Iranian hostages.
In
the high-level meetings at the CIA a few days after the Hawk shipment,
Casey's deputy John McMahon had announced that Reagan had signed the
finding. But Gates told the committee that he had forgotten about the
finding by November 1986, when he supervised the preparation of Casey's
testimony for his appearances before the House and Senate intelligence
committees. The CIA's then former general counsel, David Doherty,
however,
told the senators that he had handed Gates a draft of the finding only a
day or so before Casey gave his misleading testimony.
The testimony of Charles Allen minimized the likelihood that Gates's
failure to remember the president's finding had been accidental. During
the
preparation of Casey's testimony, said Allen, an agency lawyer had shown
him a draft finding. Allen had promptly telephoned North. "In an abrupt
manner," said Allen, North had "told me emphatically that the finding
did
not exist and that I was mistaken." Allen had then spoken to George. "I
recall with great clarity Mr. Clair George informing me in a blunt and
verbally abusive manner that the finding did not exist and that I should
'shut up talking about it.'"
Much of the later testimony in the month-long hearings shifted away from
Iran-Contra to the question of whether Gates had slanted intelligence
reports to accommodate the political views of Casey or others. At the
end
of the hearings, Gates was given an opportunity to respond. He directed
most of his response to the issue of slanted intelligence reports. By
the
time the committee voted, eleven to four, to approve Gates's
appointment,
the testimony regarding Iran/Contra was no longer fresh. The next day,
Herblock's cartoon in the Washington Post showed the CIA headquarters
with
a big banner proclaiming, "Now Under Old Management."
[Lawrence E. Walsh was the independent counsel in the Iran/Contra
investigation from 1986 to 1993. This article is excerpted from his
book,
Firewall: the Iran/Contra Conspiracy and Cover-Up.]
*
================================================================
.NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems
. Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us .
================================================================
