Robert M. Gates-scummier

From the New York Times, Nov. 4, 1991

Mr. Gates' Past, The C.I.A.'s Future

When the Senate votes tomorrow on the nomination of Robert Gates, it will be judging more than his fitness to lead the Central Intelligence Agency out of the past. It will be judging its own fitness to oversee intelligence.

The confirmation hearings did little to dispel doubts that Mr. Gates misled Congress during the Iran-contra scandal. They reinforced suspicions that he tailored intelligence estimates to please his superiors. And they raised questions about his role during the Iran-Iraq war.

Even so, the Senate Intelligence Committee chose to give Mr. Gates the benefit of the doubt, voting 11 to 4 in favor of confirmation. That vote sends and unfortunate message: Instead of overseeing intelligence, the Committee chose to look the other way. Now it's up to the Senate to confront Mr. Gates's past and say he's not fit to lead the C.I.A. into the future.

The Iran-contra question is simple. Did Mr. Gates know about the illegal diversion of proceeds from arms sales to Iran to the Nicaraguan contras? In 1985 and again in 1987, he told Congress he knew nothing about it. He clings to his story--despite evidence that he was warned about it in some detail by subordinates.

Charges that Mr. Gates slanted intelligence assessments, leaving Congress in the dark and more amenable to Administration policy, stand unrefuted. He now acknowledges suppressing dissent to a 1985 intelligence estimate justifying the covert sale of arms to Iran.

Then, when he was accused of `killing' estimates that showed waning Soviet activity in the third world, he obliquely acknowledged that he `may have found a specific paper inadequate.'

Further, Mr. Gates distributed an assessment making the case for Soviet complicity in the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II and endorsed it, enthusiastically, as `the C.I.A.'s first comprehensive examination' of the issue. A C.I.A. post-mortem found that `no one at the working level other than the two primary authors of the paper * * * agreed with [its] thrust.'

The hearings left another question dangling: did Mr. Gates play a role in suspected intelligence-sharing and arms transfers with Iraq? The C.I.A., the committee concludes, shared vital intelligence with Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war and failed to report it to Congressional intelligence committees, as required by law.

A related question, let unanswered and still troubling to some senators, was whether the C.I.A., which is supposed to monitor suspicious arms deals, looked the other way while U.S. companies unlawfully armed Iraq as well as Iran.

All three reservations about Mr. Gates--his denying knowledge of Iran-contra, slanting intelligence and winking at reporting requirements--suggest that he is a man used to doing business the old way. Yet a new era requires new ways. The Senate would mortgage the C.I.A.'s future to its past and deny Congress's constitutional role of oversight if it confirmed Mr. Gates as C.I.A. director.