Reply #11: Ray McGovern: The Cheney-Gates Cabal [View All]

[reprehensor]

There is so much shit on this jackass it's unreal.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/11/09/the_cheneygates_cabal.php


The Cheney-Gates Cabal
Ray McGovern
November 09, 2006


Those of us who had a front-row seat to watch Gates’ handling of substantive intelligence can hardly forget the manner in which he cooked it to the recipe of whomever he reported to. A protégé of William Casey, President Ronald Reagan’s CIA director, Gates learned well from his mentor. In 1995, Gates told The Washington Post ’s Walter Pincus that he watched Casey on “issue after issue sit in meetings and present intelligence framed in terms of the policy he wanted pursued.” Gates followed suit, cooking the analysis to justify policies favored by Casey and the White House. And the cooking was consequential.

I was amused to read this morning in David Ignatius’ column in The Washington Post that Gates “was the brightest Soviet analyst in the shop, so Casey soon appointed him deputy director overseeing his fellow analysts.” He wasn’t; and Casey had something other than expertise in mind. Talk to anyone who was there at the time—except the sycophants Gates co-opted to do his bidding—and they will explain that Gates’ meteoric career had most to do with his uncanny ability to see a Russian under every rock turned over by Casey. Those of Gates’ subordinates willing to see two Russians became branch chiefs; three won you a division. I exaggerate only a little.

To Casey, the Communists could never change; and Gorbachev was simply cleverer than his predecessors. With his earlier training in our branch, and with his doctorate in Soviet affairs, Gates clearly knew better. Yet he carried Casey’s water, and stifled all dissent. One result was that the CIA as an institution missed the implosion of the Soviet Union—no small oversight. Another result was a complete loss of confidence in CIA analysis on the part of then-Secretary of State George Shultz and others who smelled the cooking. In July 1987, in the wake of the Iran-Contra affair, he told Congress: “I had come to have grave doubts about the objectivity and reliability of some of the intelligence I was getting.”