Gee, John Kerry has a 'history' with this new DefSec

[TayTay]

Senator Asks Delay on CIA Nominee
American Banker, Vol. 156, Issue. 136, p 14 (07-17-1991)
By Bill Atkinson

WASHINGTON

Citing allegations of improprieties by Bank of Credit and Commerce International, Sen. John Kerry is urging postponement of confirmation hearings on Robert Gates, the President's choice to head the Central Intelligence Agency.

The Massachusetts Democrat said Mr. Gates must first answer questions from Mr. Kerry's Foreign Relations subcommittee on terrorism, narcotics, and international operations about agency links to the Luxembourg-based banking empire.

BCCI operations were seized this month by regulators in eight countries after they found evidence of massive fraud. There have been allegations that the CIA interfered with efforts to close the institution.

Mr. Kerry said Senate investigators learned that in 1988 Mr. Gates, then deputy director of the CIA, provided a memorandum on BCCI to William von Raab, former commissioner of the U.S. Customs Service. Mr. von Raab, who was conducting a money-laundering investigation, has complained that the information was "pabulum." Two months ago, Mr. Kerry attempted to obtain the same memorandum, but the CIA demurred, saying the document didn't exist.

"To date, we still do not have any answers," Mr. Kerry said. "There are significant questions which the CIA should answer before we proceed further with the Gates nomination."

[TayTay]

1. Wow, bill Safire knew that back in the early '90s.

Essay; B.C.C.I.: Justice Delayed
New York Times, Late Edition - Final, Sec. A, p 21 (07-25-1991)
By WILLIAM SAFIRE

The Underworld Bank scandal is oozing out all over.

Conceived in Karachi, financed in Abu Dhabi, the conspiracy reached into the world's Western capitals and perhaps the U.N. under the protection of high-paid lobbyists and naive spooks. The B.C.C.I. scandal involves the laundering of drug money, the illicit financing of terrorism and of arms to Iraq, the easy purchase of respectability and the corruption of the world banking system.

For more than a decade, the biggest banking swindle in history worked beautifully. Between $5 billion and $15 billion was bilked from governments and individual depositors to be put to the most evil of purposes -- while lawmen and regulators slept.

Now the fight among investigators is coming out into the open. Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, who gave impetus to long-contained probes, told a Senate subcommittee headed by Senator John Kerry that he is getting no cooperation from the Thornburgh Justice Department.

Justice's Criminal Division chief, Robert Mueller, tells me he will have a hatchet-burying session with the independent-minded D.A. next week, and vehemently denies having told British intelligence to stop cooperating with the Manhattan grand jury.

And what about the revelation last week by the New York Times reporter Jeff Gerth that the C.I.A. was using B.C.C.I. for payoffs abroad, which may have been used by the swindlers as a cover? "At no time have we received a request from the intelligence community," insists Mr. Mueller, "to alter or suspend or in any way change the course of our investigation."

He may not know everything that is going on around him; one of the threats to Robert Gates's nomination to head the C.I.A. is the question of what use he made of B.C.C.I. in the 80's; the agency is now preparing a report for Senate Intelligence.

When asked in 1981 by the Federal Reserve Board for the background of a key investor in B.C.C.I., the C.I.A. neglected to note that he was the chief of Saudi intelligence -- later code-named "Tumbleweed" -- a relevant fact of which the Agency could hardly have been ignorant. When asked about this dereliction, the top Fed enforcement officer, William Taylor, chirped: "Some people like that become President."

Interlocking banking directorates cry out for examination, as between B.C.C.I. and B.A.I.I., the Luxembourg-shrouded Banque Arabe et Internationale d'Investissement. (Maybe we should close our embassy in Luxembourg.)

I suspect a connection, too, between the B.C.C.I. conspiracy and Atlanta's Bank Lavoro scandal, in which $3 billion in hot cash was run past our befuddled Fed. Of that, $600 million in "grain guarantees" was in effect snatched from the U.S. taxpayer and most likely used to finance nuclear arms and rockets for Saddam Hussein. Justice's Mueller and his overwhelmed Fraud Section chief, Larry Ergenson, think my suspicion is misplaced; we'll see.

A question investigators have been too timid to ask: Why did dirty-money sources give $8 million to Jimmy Carter's clean-air philanthropy? The former President, transported royally on B.C.C.I. aircraft, arranged for his friends to hire a former British Prime Minister as a lobbyist. What else did Mr. Carter do in the third world to lend respectability to these con men? Why didn't his C.I.A. briefers warn him?

Congressional oversight, excluding Senator Kerry, has been myopic. Joe Biden, chairman of Senate Judiciary, pleads preoccupation with crime bills and confirmations, but says: "Justice is beginning to awaken to the scope of this. If Justice doesn't move, we'll move on Justice."

Where are the media? Regardie's magazine took the lead with the news that a mysterious group controlled the Washington bank headed by Clark Clifford. Time magazine devotes a cover to the scandal this week, following its excellent April 1 reporting, and The Wall Street Journal's coverage is must reading for scandalmongers. The networks have found the biggest heist in history all too complicated and un-visual; months from now, "60 Minutes" may come on the field to shoot the wounded.

But this is more than a good story. As we flip over this huge flat rock of corruption, we will see who scurries around with the pernicious profits of arms, drugs and fraud.

[whometense]

3. Isn't that quote just

so Biden???

Joe Biden, chairman of Senate Judiciary, pleads preoccupation with crime bills and confirmations, but says: "Justice is beginning to awaken to the scope of this. If Justice doesn't move, we'll move on Justice."

WTF? Some things (and some people) never change.

[TayTay]

2. BCCI, the ooze that keeps on oozing

CIA PROBES LINKS TO BANK SCANDAL GATES 1988 REPORT CITED
Capital Times, SECOND, Sec. Nation/World, p 1C (07-26-1991)
By Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Robert Gates, whose nomination to head the CIA has run into trouble with Congress, wrote a report three years ago saying the Bank of Credit and Commerce International was involved in illegal activities.

The CIA has declined to say whether Gates shared his knowledge with U.S. law enforcement agencies. But agency director William Webster has ordered a review of the CIA's past contacts with BCCI, which is at the center of a massive worldwide scandal involving fraud and drug profit laundering.

The CIA and other branches of the U.S. government appear to have used the international bank extensively in the 1980s.

Law enforcement and congressional officials said BCCI was used by the CIA to transfer money to U.S.-backed guerrillas in Nicaragua and Afghanistan. The bank was also used by former White House aide Oliver North to set up accounts for covert operations, officials say.

BCCI, with its branches worldwide and strict privacy laws, was used by Saudi millionaire arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi to deposit money into North's Enterprise - the name by which his covert slush fund was known, said former Senate Iran-Contra counsel Arthur Liman. Enterprise money was then funneled to the Contras to circumvent a congressional ban on aiding the guerrillas.

Congressional investigators say one of the CIA's major contacts with BCCI was through Kamal Adham, a former Saudi intelligence director who became active in the bank after it became a repository for Saudi and other Arab oil profits.

In a May 14 letter to Webster, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., asked for a detailed explanation of why the CIA used BCCI, how much money it moved through the bank and with whom it dealt at the bank.

CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said Thursday that the internal agency review ''is not based on any evidence of wrongdoing.'' He said its purpose was to examine ''the records so that a comprehensive report can be shared with our congressional oversight committees.''

The former commissioner of U.S. Customs, William Von Rabb, said Gates once referred to BCCI as ''the Bank of Crooks and Criminals.''

Von Raab said that in 1988 he had asked Gates, who was deputy CIA director, for information about the bank, which was about to be indicted in Florida for laundering $14 million in drug profits, and received a report five to six pages long with a description of BCCI's origins, owners and activities.

Von Raab said Gates described how BCCI was set up by a Pakistani banker in 1972 to handle money generated by the oil price boom in the Arab world.

When oil prices fell, the bank changed its orientation, he quoted Gates as writing.

''It converted to an all-purpose bank, but particularly illicit purposes,'' Von Raab quoted Gates as saying in his report.

Gates also named some of the bank's Arab owners, who preferred that their names be kept anonymous, Von Raab said.

Von Raab said Gates did not discuss any CIA involvement with the bank.

The London Guardian, in Thursday's editions,said Kuwait had deposited $60 million in BCCI for the Abu Nidal terrorist group. The Guardian quoted what it said was a confidential French secret service document, dated February 1988, that said the Kuwaiti Embassy in London paid funds into Abu Nidal's account in 1987.

The Guardian said that ''although there was no formal proof, it seemed certain that (Kuwait and other Persian) Gulf states made forced contributions ... to be spared terrorist attacks.''

[Mass]

4. Nice pedigree. Obviously, they should at least ask hard question.

However, their past behaviour as well as a statement of Carl Levin saying he wanted to do that during the lame-duck session make me think that there will be no fight, in the name of conciliation.

I hope I am wrong, but if it is voted during the lame duck session, they do not have the votes to stop it, and probably not enough for a filibuster.

[Inuca]

6. You typed...

... the answer to one my questions below as I was typing my question :-)

[Inuca]

5. Some questions

Can they push the nomination before January? And do you think that his sins justify an attempt to block the nomination? Somehow I don't think this would be the right way to start, but I know too little about Gates, and would be interested in your thoughts on this.

[TayTay]

7. He is better than Rummy

He will go through. But know what this guy is, who he is really loyal to and that the Bush Family is coming out to take care of their own.

This guy is a master at hiding things. They's why they want him. He makes problems go away.

[Inuca]

8. "better than Rummy"

Not too high a standard to achieve :-). I am sure about his loyalties, and I keep wondering how much arm twisting may have gone on behind the scenes to achieve this result. Also wondering why * did not announec this earlier, his comment about keeping Rummy for another 2 years was a very nice little present.

[SouthernBelle82]

9. Why is this surprising?

Everyone with Bush has some type of tie to BCCI. I'm just glad Kerry brought this up.

[blm]

10. Can you post in GD, or would you like me to?

.

[whometense]

11. Digby has a post up

about this guy: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_11_01_digbysblog_archive.html#116309064304083891

Meet The New Guy

by digby

...same as the old guy.

It's great that Rummy's gone and all, but if anyone really thinks Robert Gates is going to bring fresh thinking to the Iraq or is the type of old hand who will speak truth to the codpiece, they are sadly mistaken. Gates is one of the original bad guys:

...When he heard today about Gates's nomination, “I nearly choked on my sandwich,” said Mel Goodman, a former Soviet analyst at the CIA who testified against Gates’s nomination to be CIA director in 1991. “This is not a guy who’s ever been accused of speaking truth to power. If you’re looking for somebody who’s going to change Iraq policy, he’s hardly the guy to do it. The only policy he’s going to consider is what is acceptable to the White House.”

During his 1991 testimony, Goodman testified that Gates, as deputy CIA director, consistently politicized intelligence-community reports about Iran, Nicaragua and Afghanistan in order to cater to the hard-line anti-Soviet policies of the Reagan White House. Gates’s role as deputy CIA director “was to corrupt the process and the ethics of intelligence on all of these issues.” When Goodman protested his actions, Gates “went off like a Roman candle,” Goodman said today. “It was the same kind of manufacturing of intelligence” in the run-up to the Iraq war, Goodman said.

Congressional records and transcripts extensively document the debate over Gates's credentials and record in the Bush and Reagan administrations. In one case, Democrats accused Gates of helping to push an allegedly contentious report about the Soviet Union's influence in Iran...

...Sound familiar? Bush Junior's administration didn't invent this stuff. They just took it further than anybody else.

The reason Gates took the job is simply loyalty to the Bush family in their time of need. I doubt they could get anyone else to do it. He's a seat warmer until Bush can fly out of town in the dead of night in January 2009 and leave this mess in the hands of his successor. Expect no changes.

[whometense]

12. More on Gates from TAPPED

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/11/post_2009.html#014463

VIEW ON GATES FROM INSIDE THE CIA. I just talked with someone we'll call a former senior intelligence official about the end of Rummy and the era of Bob Gates at the Pentagon. He's not very keen. Asked about Gates's rocky relationship with Dick Cheney, the ex-official comments, "That's for sure, with Cheney. Each time you think Bush realizes that Cheney doesn't give him the best advice, he just takes it. It's hard to see anyone defeating Cheney for Bush's mind."

So what does that mean for changing course? Not going to happen. "The hope what's going to happen with Congress -- gridlock, and that's not such a bad thing. You know, when you're in a hole, stop digging."

Also, what's it mean that Gates was accused of cooking intelligence in the 1980s? "Well," the source laughs, "that's what they're looking for, and so they've found the perfect guy."

--Spencer Ackerman

Tom Oliphant said something very similar today on Franken's show.

[whometense]

13. And then there's the inimitable Pierce

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/11/post_2007.html#014465

GATES AND THE UNDEAD. Sometimes, I bore the youngsters with tales of the Iran-Contra scandal, and I scare them with stories of how the Undead -- Abrams, Negroponte, etc. -- from that festival of criminality still walk the earth. Because its crimes went largely unpunished, it's in Iran-Contra where we clearly see not only the embryonic stages of the rogue authoritarian Executive, but also the very worst ways of dealing with it. The investigations of Iran-Contra -- whether it was the toothless Tower Commission or the feckless congressional probe that bungled the job so badly that it provided even Ollie North a loophole to dive through -- were an abject failure of the Great Men Of The Beltway theory of dealing with serious constitutional problems, a/k/a the Lee Hamilton Is McGyver Proposition. Hamilton helped make sure that Iran-Contra didn't too badly discombobulate the status quo, and now he's working on the problem of what to do in Iraq. I am not reassured.

Anyway, the scandal had its deepest roots in the crazy-assed schemes of the late William Casey, who sent the CIA haring off after bee feces on the grounds that it actually was a secret Soviet chemical agent being dropped on Afghanistan. Robert Gates, brought off the bench of Bush family retainers today -- and not for the first time, either -- to save Junior from Donald Rumsfeld, was Casey's button-man within the agency. This might be something of a problem.

Let's see: Hyping foreign threats to meet domestic political goals. Bludgeoning the analysts into giving the Pentagon the massaged intel that it wants. There's certainly no danger of that happening again. This sounds like a swell hire.

--Charles P. Pierce

[zann725]

14. That's one of the things I find MOST endearing about JK...his "history" investigating

most of the current Admin's thugs and nominees.

How his very presence remains a constant reminder of all he "knows"...but has not yet completed.

A thorn still in their side...