Robert Gates: New Defense Secretary & Old Bush Family Friend

By Kenneth J. Theisen, 11/9/06

Robert Gates, the nominee to replace Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense, is widely respected in ruling circles and is an old friend of the Bush family.  This should immediately give pause to any who harbor illusions that the “fresh perspective” offered by the Bush regime will include a withdrawal from the Iraq war.  Let there be no doubt, the regime is still committed to victory in Iraq.  Winning the war will be Gate’s task.

Just who is Robert Gates? Aside from a couple years spent in
the U.S. Air Force where, among other duties, he provided intelligence
briefings to ICBM missile crews, he spent most of his life working for
the CIA, including as the CIA Director from 1991 to 1993 under George
H.W. Bush. His most recent job was as the President of Texas A&M
University, the home of the first Bush’s Presidential library. But he
was not just an academic.  He is a current member of the high-level
Iraq Study Group (ISG) chaired by another Bush family friend, James
Baker. (Yes, the same Baker that helped steal the 2000 election.) 

The
ISG is reviewing U.S. policy in Iraq and is widely expected to
recommend changes in that policy in the near future.  What those
changes are is still unclear, but they are expected to include more
diplomacy with regional powers, closer cooperation with allies, the
offering of possible incentives to insurgent groups, and perhaps more
troops and more equipment for U.S. troops. They may also include some
redeployment of U.S. forces within the Middle East.

Gates has a
difficult job.  He will need to implement a transition in Iraq policy
without exposing the fact that the present policy is an unmitigated
failure for the Bush regime. And he is still expected to win the war.

Two
year ago, Gates co-chaired another Task Force on Iran which created a
report, “IRAN: TIME FOR A NEW APPROACH.”  The report was critical of
the Bush regime’s failure to engage in talks with Iran over it nuclear
programs and also its inability to get Iran’s cooperation in
stabilizing the region, including cooperation from Iran in Iraq.  Gates
may now have ideas of a forging a diplomatic approach to Iran to get
help in the Iraq war particularly with the Shia community.  Iran has
close ties to the Shia community in Iraq and has funded several of the
Shia Iraqi leaders.

Gates was first nominated as CIA director in
1987 by Ronald Reagan. But his nomination was withdrawn because he was
implicated in the Iran Contra Scandal.  This 1986 scandal involved
selling weapons to Iran and then using the profits to support the
Contra rebels in Nicaragua.  Both actions violated the law.  Several
Reagan officials were convicted in this scandal, but Gates was not
among them as most witnesses refused to testify and the Independent
Counsel did not think it could bring charges without such testimony.

Gates
had lapses of memory when he testified and claimed he knew nothing
about the arms sales or money transfers.  (How this lack of knowledge
makes him a candidate for the head of intelligence is curious.)  One
witness, senior CIA analyst Charles Allen testified that he wrote a
memo on September 9, 1986 on the arms sales to Iran, a copy of which
went to Mr. Gates.  He also claims to have talked to Mr. Gates
regarding shipments of arms to Iran.  Mr. Gates was unable to recall
the conversation or receiving the memo.

But the official report
of the Independent Counsel on the Iran Contra scandal is revealing.  It
states, “Robert M. Gates was the Central Intelligence Agency’s deputy
director for intelligence (DDI) from 1982 to 1986.  He was confirmed as
the CIA’s deputy director of central intelligence (DDCI) in April of
1986 and became acting director of central intelligence in December of
that same year.  Owing to his senior status in the CIA, Gates was close
to many figures who played significant roles in the Iran/Contra affair
and was in a position to have known of their activities.”
He was
also alleged to have passed U.S. intelligence to Iraq and helping the
Iraqi military get weapons during the Iran-Iraq War.  During the war,
the Reagan administration provided crucial intelligence to Saddam
Hussein so that Iraq would not be defeated by Iran.  Hundreds of
thousands of Iraqis and Iranians died in this war.  The U.S. helped
both sides in a strategy of letting them “bleed each other dry.”

In
an affidavit by former Reagan administration official Howard Teicher
that was filed in connection with a criminal trial in Miami in 1995
Teicher revealed the covert U.S.-Iraq relationship.  Teicher, a member
of Reagan’s National Security Council staff, declared, “In June 1982,
President Reagan decided that the United States could not afford to
allow Iraq to lose the war to Iran.”  Teicher said he helped draft a
secret national security decision directive that Reagan signed to
authorize covert U.S. assistance to Saddam Hussein’s military.  “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.

Robert
Gates’ loyalty was finally rewarded when he got the CIA Director job in
1991.  He also served as Deputy Head of the National Security Council
(NSC) under Brent Snowcroft, who has been highly critical of the Bush
regime’s Iraq policy since before the war.  He spent a total of nine
years on the NSC under 4 presidents.  After 9/11 George W. Bush asked
Gates to be the first Director of National Intelligence, but Gates
declined.

Gates has also repeatedly been charged with “cooking
intelligence” to please his superiors. At the time of his 1991
nomination as CIA Director, former senior Soviet analyst and CIA
Division Chief, Mel Goodman, testified on how Gates had shaped
intelligence analysis to satisfy his masters and advance his career.
Goodman was joined at once by other CIA analysts who put their own
careers at risk by testifying against Gates’ nomination. 31 Senators
found the evidence against Gates so persuasive that they voted “No”
when the nomination came to the Senate floor.

Given his extensive
service to his masters, it is clear that no matter what “fresh
perspective” and new ideas Gates brings to the job as Defense
Secretary, we can be assured that he was not brought in to halt the war
crimes of the Bush regime by pulling the U.S. out of Iraq or the Middle
East.  This war is unjust and no new strategy will change that.  Not
once has anyone in the Bush regime claimed that this “fresh
perspective” will end the torture and imprisonment of Iraqis, halt the
bombing and killing of civilians, or stop the other daily atrocities
committed each day in Iraq by the U.S.  Perhaps Gates will bring in
more allies to be partners in these war crimes but his duty is to
reverse the losing strategy in Iraq and forge a victory for the Bush
regime.  The people of the world have no interest in this and only by
driving the entire regime from power can the war crimes in the Middle
East be stopped.