Blackmail & Bobby Gates

[donsu]

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/111406.html


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One risk of putting career intelligence officer Robert Gates in charge of the Defense Department is that he has a secret – and controversial – history that might open him to pressure from foreign operatives, including some living in countries of U.S. military interest, such as Iran and Iraq.
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Put more crudely, the 63-year-old Gates could become the target of pressure or even blackmail unless some of the troubling questions about his past are answered conclusively, not just cosmetically.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Gates benefited from half-hearted probes by the U.S. Congress and the Executive Branch into these mysteries. The investigators – some of whom were Gates’s friends – acted as if their goal was more to sweep incriminating evidence under the rug than to expose the facts to public scrutiny.

While giving Gates another pass might work for Official Washington, which always has had a soft spot for the polite mild-mannered Gates, it won’t solve the potential for a problem if other countries have incriminating evidence about him. So, before the U.S. Senate waves Gates’s through – as happened in 1991 when he was confirmed as CIA director – it would make sense to resolve two issues in particular:

--Did Gates participate in secret and possibly illegal contacts with Iranian leaders from the 1980 election campaign through the Iran-Contra scandal of 1986?

--Did Gates oversee a clandestine pipeline of weapons and other military equipment to Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq starting in 1982?

-snip-
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yes indeedy

let's keep Gates home, confined to his kitchen chair

[texpatriot2004]

1. Gates is not the right person for the job, obviously nm

[acmavm]

2. Old Billy Bob Clinton's been covering for Poopy for a long time:

<snip>

In 1995, however, Teicher’s affidavit embarrassed President Bill Clinton’s Justice Department, which had just tried to dispose of the so-called Iraqgate scandal with a report that found no evidence to support allegations that the Reagan-Bush administration had illegally armed Saddam Hussein.

Clinton’s Justice Department apparently wanted to clear the decks of these complicated historical scandals from the Reagan-Bush years. Clinton found those old controversies a distraction from his goal of focusing on the nation’s domestic needs.

The Clinton administration’s debunking report about Iraqgate had been so determined to see no evil that the Clinton lawyers didn’t even object to the discovery that the CIA had been hiding evidence from them.

“In the course of our work, we learned of ‘sensitive compartments’ of information not normally retrievable and of specialized offices that previously were unknown to the CIA personnel who were assisting us,” wrote John M. Hogan, counselor to Attorney General Janet Reno.

<snip>

With the unveiling of Teicher’s affidavit, the Clinton prosecutors exploded. Not only did Teicher’s affidavit complicate their prosecution of Teledyne, it made Clinton’s Justice Department look foolish for having failed to check out the CIA’s “sensitive compartments.” The lawyers lashed out at Teicher.

First, the Clinton administration classified Teicher’s affidavit a secret. Then, when he pointed toward relevant records in the files of Ronald Reagan’s White House, the Clinton lawyers insisted that they could find nothing to support Teicher's claims. Next, they threatened Teicher with prosecution for revealing state secrets.


<snip>

[blm]

5. Anyone still doubting that Clinton still leads the COVERUP wing of the Democratic party?

Democrats, the Truth Still Matters!
By Robert Parry
(First Posted May 11, 2006)

Editor's Note: With the Democratic victories in the House and Senate, there is finally the opportunity to demand answers from the Bush administration about important questions, ranging from Dick Cheney's secret energy policies to George W. Bush's Iraq War deceptions. But the Democrats are sure to be tempted to put the goal of "bipartisanship" ahead of the imperative for truth.

Democrats, being Democrats, always want to put governance, such as enacting legislation and building coalitions, ahead of oversight, which often involves confrontation and hard feelings. Democrats have a difficult time understanding why facts about past events matter when there are problems in the present and challenges in the future.

Given that proclivity, we are re-posting a story from last May that examined why President Bill Clinton and the last Democratic congressional majority (in 1993-94) shied away from a fight over key historical scandals from the Reagan-Bush-I years -- and the high price the Democrats paid for that decision:

My book, Secrecy & Privilege, opens with a scene in spring 1994 when a guest at a White House social event asks Bill Clinton why his administration didn’t pursue unresolved scandals from the Reagan-Bush era, such as the Iraqgate secret support for Saddam Hussein’s government and clandestine arms shipments to Iran.

Clinton responds to the questions from the guest, documentary filmmaker Stuart Sender, by saying, in effect, that those historical questions had to take a back seat to Clinton’s domestic agenda and his desire for greater bipartisanship with the Republicans.

Clinton “didn’t feel that it was a good idea to pursue these investigations because he was going to have to work with these people,” Sender told me in an interview. “He was going to try to work with these guys, compromise, build working relationships.”

Clinton’s relatively low regard for the value of truth and accountability is relevant again today because other centrist Democrats are urging their party to give George W. Bush’s administration a similar pass if the Democrats win one or both houses of Congress.

Reporting about a booklet issued by the Progressive Policy Institute, a think tank of the Democratic Leadership Council, the Washington Post wrote, “these centrist Democrats … warned against calls to launch investigations into past administration decisions if Democrats gain control of the House or Senate in the November elections.”

These Democrats also called on the party to reject its “non-interventionist left” wing, which opposed the Iraq War and which wants Bush held accountable for the deceptions that surrounded it.

“Many of us are disturbed by the calls for investigations or even impeachment as the defining vision for our party for what we would do if we get back into office,” said pollster Jeremy Rosner, calling such an approach backward-looking.

Yet, before Democrats endorse the DLC’s don’t-look-back advice, they might want to examine the consequences of Clinton’s decision in 1993-94 to help the Republicans sweep the Reagan-Bush scandals under the rug. Most of what Clinton hoped for – bipartisanship and support for his domestic policies – never materialized.

‘Politicized’ CIA

After winning Election 1992, Clinton also rebuffed appeals from members of the U.S. intelligence community to reverse the Reagan-Bush “politicization” of the CIA’s analytical division by rebuilding the ethos of objective analysis even when it goes against a President’s desires.

Instead, in another accommodating gesture, Clinton gave the CIA director’s job to right-wing Democrat, James Woolsey, who had close ties to the Reagan-Bush administration and especially to its neoconservatives.

One senior Democrat told me Clinton picked Woolsey as a reward to the neocon-leaning editors of the New Republic for backing Clinton in Election 1992.

“I told that the New Republic hadn’t brought them enough votes to win a single precinct,” the senior Democrat said. “But they kept saying that they owed this to the editors of the New Republic.”

During his tenure at the CIA, Woolsey did next to nothing to address the CIA’s “politicization” issue, intelligence analysts said. Woolsey also never gained Clinton’s confidence and – after several CIA scandals – was out of the job by January 1995.

At the time of that White House chat with Stuart Sender, Clinton thought that his see-no-evil approach toward the Reagan-Bush era would give him an edge in fulfilling his campaign promise to “focus like a laser beam” on the economy.

He was taking on other major domestic challenges, too, like cutting the federal deficit and pushing a national health insurance plan developed by First Lady Hillary Clinton.

So for Clinton, learning the truth about controversial deals between the Reagan-Bush crowd and the autocratic governments of Iraq and Iran just wasn’t on the White House radar screen. Clinton also wanted to grant President George H.W. Bush a gracious exit.

“I wanted the country to be more united, not more divided,” Clinton explained in his 2004 memoir, My Life. “President Bush had given decades of service to our country, and I thought we should allow him to retire in peace, leaving the (Iran-Contra) matter between him and his conscience.”

Unexpected Results

Clinton’s generosity to George H.W. Bush and the Republicans, of course, didn’t turn out as he had hoped. Instead of bipartisanship and reciprocity, he was confronted with eight years of unrelenting GOP hostility, attacks on both his programs and his personal reputation.

Later, as tensions grew in the Middle East, the American people and even U.S. policymakers were flying partially blind, denied anything close to the full truth about the history of clandestine relationships between the Reagan-Bush team and hostile nations in the Middle East.

Clinton’s failure to expose that real history also led indirectly to the restoration of Bush Family control of the White House in 2001. Despite George W. Bush’s inexperience as a national leader, he drew support from many Americans who remembered his father’s presidency fondly.

If the full story of George H.W. Bush’s role in secret deals with Iraq and Iran had ever been made public, the Bush Family’s reputation would have been damaged to such a degree that George W. Bush’s candidacy would not have been conceivable.

Not only did Clinton inadvertently clear the way for the Bush restoration, but the Right’s political ascendancy wiped away much of the Clinton legacy, including a balanced federal budget and progress on income inequality. A poorly informed American public also was easily misled on what to do about U.S. relations with Iraq and Iran.

In retrospect, Clinton’s tolerance of Reagan-Bush cover-ups was a lose-lose-lose – the public was denied information it needed to understand dangerous complexities in the Middle East, George W. Bush built his presidential ambitions on the nation’s fuzzy memories of his dad, and Republicans got to enact a conservative agenda.

Clinton’s approach also reflected a lack of appreciation for the importance of truth in a democratic Republic. If the American people are expected to do their part in making sure democracy works, they need to be given at least a chance of being an informed electorate.

Yet, Clinton – and now some pro-Iraq War Democrats – view truth as an expendable trade-off when measured against political tactics or government policies. In reality, accurate information about important events is the lifeblood of democracy.

Though sometimes the truth can hurt, Clinton and the Democrats should understand that covering up the truth can hurt even more. As Clinton’s folly with the Reagan-Bush scandals should have taught, the Democrats may hurt themselves worst of all when helping the Republicans cover up the truth.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, C

[shance]

3. Buh buh but Harry Reid says we need to approve Gates so we can be

rid of Rumsfeld?

To go from bad to worse makes sense doesn't it?

[phoebe]

4. agreed..the neocons usually have a back-up plan - who else is

waiting behind Gates when he has to fall on his sword? It will be a man who is just as "reliable" as Gates. We know Bushco. are willing to push the envelope as far as they can and have no qualms about putting another one of their men into position. The Dems look to be only too happy to oblige if their behavior regarding Gates is any clue.

Sibel Edmonds has written a biting 2 part article about foreign agents, lobbyists and Carlyle Group's virtual ownership of the military-industrial complex. IMHO these are the most relevant issues facing this country today - who is selling out the American people, who is profiting and how to put an end to it.