"Involvement in the Iran-Contra Scandal

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. The evidence developed by Independent Counsel did not warrant indictment of Gates for his Iran/contra activities or his responses to official inquiries.

Gates was an early subject of Independent Counsel's investigation, but the investigation of Gates intensified in the spring of 1991 as part of a larger inquiry into the Iran/contra activities of CIA officials. This investigation received an additional impetus in May 1991, when President Bush nominated Gates to be director of central intelligence (DCI). The chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) requested in a letter to the Independent Counsel on May 15, 1991, any information that would “significantly bear on the fitness” of Gates for the CIA post.

Gates consistently testified that he first heard on October 1, 1986, from the national intelligence officer who was closest to the Iran initiative, Charles E. Allen, that proceeds from the Iran arms sales may have been diverted to support the contras.2 Other evidence proves, however, that Gates received a report on the diversion during the summer of 1986 from DDI Richard Kerr. The issue was whether Independent Counsel could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Gates was deliberately not telling the truth when he later claimed not to have remembered any reference to the diversion before meeting with Allen in October."

Oh Goodie, someone who understands the middle east.

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Originally posted by Michelle:

Okay, not overly mature or insightful, but what the heck.

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Originally posted by aka Mycroft:
And so ends the career of the worst American Defense Secretary in history.

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Getting rid of Rumsfeld is a way that Bush can look like he's bending to pressure without actually changing much by way of strategy or tactics in Iraq or elsewhere. Democrats will pat themselves on the back and claim they've scored a victory because they don't actually have much by way of an alternative to Bush's strategy or tactics in Iraq.

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Originally posted by West Coast Greeny:
I think this has been the worst 24 hours for neocons in a long time. Maybe the US is moving back towards it's slightly less interventionalist self?

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Are we happy? Heavens to Betsy yes!

Are we going to celebrate? Yes, because people who are free of Rummy can do all sorts of wild, wonderful things!

Do we still have lots of work to do! Darn right!

Now we have to fight against the Gates we have, not the Rummy we no longer have.

[ 08 November 2006: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

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Ex-CIA head Robert Gates has been tapped as Rummy's successor. Ironic as Rumsfeld ignored the CIA's intelligence concerning Iraq.

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Yep. He ignored the CIA just before the 9-11 attacks too. So he's obviously somewhere between brutally opportunistic and shockingly incompetent.

I think he chose to quit today after the US Army hinted last week he should go (you can only imagine just how rotten he must be if even the military can't stand him). But the ultimate reason is now that the Democrats will soon be in control of both the Congress and the Senate, he likely realizes he'll eventually get fired.

Poor Rummy!

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Former detainees ask Germany to indict Rumsfeld
By Jeff St.Onge
Bloomberg News

Article Last Updated:11/10/2006 03:56:23 PM MST

A group of former detainees in the U.S. war on terror will ask German prosecutors next week to indict former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top Bush administration officials for torture and other war crimes, a lawyer for the group said today.

Eleven Iraqis who were held at Abu Ghraib prison and other U.S.-run facilities in Iraq and a Saudi detainee at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will file a criminal complaint on Nov. 14, said Michael Rattner of the Center for Constitutionals Rights.

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Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, who commanded military police units at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, will take part in a news conference when the suit is filed next week, Rattner said.

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[ 10 November 2006: Message edited by: siren ]

There's some detailed information there about Gates' involvement in weapons deals with Iran, Iraq and the Contras, including these allegations, which Parry says need further investigation:

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ROBERT PARRY: Yes, back in the -- starting about 1982, President Reagan became concerned that the Iranians, who were secretly getting help from the United States via Israel, had gained the upper hand in the war. And so, there was this effort, as the period went on, to give some more help to Saddam Hussein to keep that war sort of at a more even keel. And one of the guys involved, according to the Teicher affidavit and other witnesses, was Bob Gates. But he’s always denied involvement there. So both the facts of the history are important, as well as his honesty. Did he lie to Congress when he denied being involved in these matters?

AMY GOODMAN: Just on this issue, because it’s so key, I mean, the allegation that Gates personally approved the sale of cluster bombs to Saddam in the 1980s, before the war crimes that he was just convicted of.

ROBERT PARRY: Right. And some of these allegations also go to chemicals, the precursor chemicals that Saddam Hussein allegedly used in his chemical weapons that were deployed against the Iranians and other targets in Iraq. So, Gates was allegedly involved in all those kinds of -- that’s the very secretive side of US foreign policy that Casey was overseeing, but Gates was sort of his man handling some of the details.

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...there is a rather delicious irony in the fact that here is a nation that went to war with politicized intelligence, and now it’s naming as a CIA director [back in 1991] someone who was the most important practitioner of politicized intelligence in the history of the CIA. So, as Yogi Berra would have said, “This is deja-vu all over again.”

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[ 11 November 2006: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

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I know, I know. By getting rid of Rummy and hiring Gates, Bush supposedly was signaling openness to working with the Democrats, to rethinking the Iraq policy, and all the rest of it. Indeed, turning off his combative, frat boy, I'm-gonna-smash-your-face-in persona, he turned on, once again, his good-old-boy, I'm-really-a-good-guy, I'm-all-charm persona. The latter persona has worked before, in 2000 and 2004 -- would it be too cynical to say it has fooled people before? -- so maybe it would work again. And George, of course, is now suddenly desperate to make it look as if he is the reasonable one and to make the Democrats look like the hard guys, the bad guys, if the Executive and the Congress do not work together effectively in the next two years. (There is 2008 to think about, after all.) As well, Bush clearly would like to ward off the possibility of impeachment proceedings directed at him and Cheney, and what better way to do that than to present oneself as a reasonable guy, a good guy, not the jerk he has been for the last few years.

Meanwhile, the Democrats, to make themselves look good, are falling for this or at least playing along with it.

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WASHINGTON -- In 1984, Robert Gates, then the No. 2 CIA official, advocated U.S. air strikes against Nicaragua's pro-Cuban government to reverse what he described as an ineffective U.S. strategy to deal with communist advances in Central America, previously classified documents say.

Gates, President Bush's nominee to be defense secretary, said the United States could no longer justify what he described as "halfhearted" attempts to contain Nicaragua's Sandinista government, according to documents released Friday by the National Security Archive, a private research group.

In a memo dated Dec. 14, 1984, to CIA Director William Casey, Gates said his proposed air strikes would be designed "to destroy a considerable portion of Nicaragua's military buildup" and be focused on tanks and helicopters.

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