An Open Letter to Carl Levin: No Free Pass to Gates
By Ray McGovern
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Saturday 11 November 2006
Dear Senator Levin:
The humiliation you felt was palpable when, as the ranking Democrat on the
Armed Services Committee, you were unceremoniously diddled by Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld and his deputies Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, chief architects
of the fiasco in Iraq. They all but thumbed their noses at you, and you often
complained about their "lack of candor." In two short months, you
will chair Armed Services and will no longer have to tolerate such behavior.
Indeed, you can start practicing now by not letting the nomination of Robert
Gates be a "slam dunk."
One need not be politically astute to see that the White House is again using
its cat's paw Senator, patrician gentleman from Virginia John Warner, who now
chairs the committee, to force through the nomination of Gates this year, while
the lame-duck Republicans still hold the majority. That, of course, is par for
the course. What is far more disturbing is press reporting that you intend to
acquiesce in that maneuver. You don't have to do that any more.
I am having a hard time believing that you would give Gates a pass, since I
have so much admired your courage in the past. But I fear that the many recent
years in minority exile may have dulled your edge and that you have gotten too
used to unsavory compromises. I have in mind the deal you worked out with South
Carolina Republican senator Lindsay Graham curtailing some of the rights of
"detainees." Not to mention your sudden cave-in, in the aftermath
of 9/11, on funding for the National Missile Defense program, which you earlier
recognized as obscenely expensive, of unproven reliability, and of dubious utility
given the changing nature of the threats to our security.
A lot is riding on whether you step up to the plate on the Gates nomination.
Your decision will be one of the earliest tangible signs of whether the November
7 election has injected some spine into Democrats - whether they still have
it in them to act like winners. You have had a running dispute with the Bush
administration over the way its representatives have misrepresented so much
on Iraq in testimony before your committee. If you bow to Republican pressure
to allow the Gates nomination to sail through without a thorough investigation
of his record, you will be giving a fresh nihil obstat to the practice of no-fault
dissembling before Congress.
In 1991, you joined 30 other senators in voting against Gates's confirmation
as CIA director because Gates was a good deal less than candid about his role
in Iran-Contra and unconvincing in his denials that he had politicized intelligence.
A few days ago you said that you wanted to give Gates a "fair and fresh
look; a lot of time has passed."
Fair enough. If you want to know what has happened in the interim, you can
start with the fresh, documentary evidence adduced in award-winning investigative
reporter Robert Parry's recent article, "The Secret World of Robert Gates". Parry's article contains unique
and highly damaging information on Gates's role in the original "October
Surprise" - the unconscionable but successful Republican effort to prevent
the release of the 52 American hostages imprisoned for 14 months in the US embassy
in Tehran until Ronald Reagan had won the election in 1980. Parry also provides
fresh detail on Gates's involvement in the illegal sale of weapons, including
cluster bombs, to Iraq in the early eighties.
Another excellent source on Gates's involvement in the secret arming of Saddam
Hussein (yes, the same Saddam) and the Iran-Contra scandal is Amy Goodman's
interview of Parry and former CIA analyst Mel Goodman on Democracy Now, November
9th.
As you suspected when you voted against his nomination in 1991, Gates knew
about many of Oliver North's illegal activities but, under oath, he just couldn't
remember. Gates has been able to escape close scrutiny of his own involvement
in extralegal and illegal activities largely because there are far too few journalists
with the enterprise, talent, and courage of Robert Parry.
All the above-mentioned escapades are enough to derail Gates's nomination,
but the corruption of intelligence should be given priority attention, given
the huge role this played in 2002 in deceiving Congress into voting for an unnecessary
war. The record shows that Gates is the archetypal intelligence fixer, employing
all the tricks of that dishonorable trade - including memory loss, when caught.
Indeed, it was the malleable managers who prospered at CIA during Gates's tenure
there who caved in to White House pressure to "lean forward" on the
issue of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Those commenting on the Gates nomination so far seem largely unaware of this
history. The exception is Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ), who worked in the State
Department's intelligence bureau and now sits on the House Intelligence Committee.
Pointing out Gates's reputation for putting pressure on analysts to shape their
conclusions to fit administration policies, Holt called the nomination "deeply
troubling" and stressed that the confirmation hearings "should be
thorough and probing." Good advice.
The question, Senator Levin, boils down to whether you will stand up and say,
"Never Again." Even before you formally become chair of the committee,
you have the power to require a serious vetting of Gates's past behavior and
to make "Never Again" stick.
I am reminded that, at a hearing on his first (abortive) nomination to be CIA
director in 1987, Gates kept denying that he had tailored intelligence to please
his superiors; at one point he added, curiously, "Sycophants can only rise
to a certain level." Whether that was an unintentionally prophetic observation
now depends largely on you and your newly empowered, but apparently not yet
emboldened, fellow Democrats.
Yours truly,
Ray McGovern
Steering Group
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
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Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical
Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. He was a CIA analyst from the administration
of John F. Kennedy to that of George H.W. Bush.
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