Gates Has History of Manipulating Intelligence

[Henk Elegeert]

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http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/110806R.shtml

"
Gates Has History of Manipulating Intelligence
     By Jason Leopold
     t r u t h o u t | Report

     Wednesday 08 November 2006

     Robert Gates, the former director of the CIA
during the presidency of George H.W. Bush who was
tapped Tuesday by the president to replace Donald
Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense, is part of Texas's
good ol' boy network. He may be best known for
playing a role in arming Iraq's former dictator
Saddam Hussein with American-made weapons in the
country's war against Iran in the 1980s.

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



     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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