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Subject: Robert Gates and Iran/Contra - Lies, Cover Ups and Slanted Intelligence
Date: 9 Nov 2006 06:34:18 -0600
From: "Tim

November 8, 2006
Counter Punch
www.counterpunch.org

Lies, Cover Ups and Slanted Intelligence

Robert Gates and Iran/Contra

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.

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http://www.counterpunch.org/walsh11082006.html

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