Iran-Contra, Robert Gates and the Iran hawks' agenda

[ProSense]

THE NEXT ACT

by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Is a damaged Administration less likely to attack Iran, or more?
Issue of 2006-11-27
Posted 2006-11-20

Snip...

In late 1982, Edward P. Boland, a Democratic representative, introduced the first in a series of “Boland amendments,” which limited the Reagan Administration’s ability to support the Contras, who were working to overthrow Nicaragua’s left-wing Sandinista government. The Boland restrictions led White House officials to orchestrate illegal fund-raising activities for the Contras, including the sale of American weapons, via Israel, to Iran. The result was the Iran-Contra scandal of the mid-eighties. Cheney’s story, according to the source, was his way of saying that, whatever a Democratic Congress might do next year to limit the President’s authority, the Administration would find a way to work around it. (In response to a request for comment, the Vice-President’s office said that it had no record of the discussion.)

Snip...

On November 8th, the day after the Republicans lost both the House and the Senate, Bush announced the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and the nomination of his successor, Robert Gates, a former director of Central Intelligence. The move was widely seen as an acknowledgment that the Administration was paying a political price for the debacle in Iraq. Gates was a member of the Iraq Study Group—headed by former Secretary of State James Baker and Lee Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman—which has been charged with examining new approaches to Iraq, and he has publicly urged for more than a year that the U.S. begin direct talks with Iran. President Bush’s decision to turn to Gates was a sign of the White House’s “desperation,” a former high-level C.I.A. official, who worked with the White House after September 11th, told me. Cheney’s relationship with Rumsfeld was among the closest inside the Administration, and Gates’s nomination was seen by some Republicans as a clear signal that the Vice-President’s influence in the White House could be challenged. The only reason Gates would take the job, after turning down an earlier offer to serve as the new Director of National Intelligence, the former high-level C.I.A. official said, was that “the President’s father, Brent Scowcroft, and James Baker”—former aides of the first President Bush—“piled on, and the President finally had to accept adult supervision.”

Snip...

A retired four-star general who worked closely with the first Bush Administration told me that the Gates nomination means that Scowcroft, Baker, the elder Bush, and his son “are saying that winning the election in 2008 is more important than the individual. The issue for them is how to preserve the Republican agenda. The Old Guard wants to isolate Cheney and give their girl, Condoleezza Rice”—the Secretary of State—“a chance to perform.” The combination of Scowcroft, Baker, and the senior Bush working together is, the general added, “tough enough to take on Cheney. One guy can’t do it.”

Richard Armitage, the Deputy Secretary of State in Bush’s first term, told me that he believed the Democratic election victory, followed by Rumsfeld’s dismissal, meant that the Administration “has backed off,” in terms of the pace of its planning for a military campaign against Iran. Gates and other decision-makers would now have more time to push for a diplomatic solution in Iran and deal with other, arguably more immediate issues. “Iraq is as bad as it looks, and Afghanistan is worse than it looks,” Armitage said. “A year ago, the Taliban were fighting us in units of eight to twelve, and now they’re sometimes in company-size, and even larger.” Bombing Iran and expecting the Iranian public “to rise up” and overthrow the government, as some in the White House believe, Armitage added, “is a fool’s errand.”

“Iraq is the disaster we have to get rid of, and Iran is the disaster we have to avoid,” Joseph Cirincione, the vice-president for national security at the liberal Center for American Progress, said. “Gates will be in favor of talking to Iran and listening to the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but the neoconservatives are still there”—in the White House—“and still believe that chaos would be a small price for getting rid of the threat. The danger is that Gates could be the new Colin Powell—the one who opposes the policy but ends up briefing the Congress and publicly supporting it.”

more...

Kissinger: Iraq military win impossible

By TARIQ PANJA, Associated Press Writer Sun Nov 19, 11:15 AM ET

LONDON - Military victory is no longer possible in Iraq, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said in a television interview broadcast Sunday.

Kissinger presented a bleak vision of Iraq, saying the U.S. government must enter into dialogue with Iraq's regional neighbors — including Iran — if progress is to be made in the region.

"If you mean by 'military victory' an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible," he told the British Broadcasting Corp.

But Kissinger, an architect of the Vietnam war who has advised President Bush about Iraq, warned against a rapid withdrawal of coalition troops, saying it could destabilize Iraq's neighbors and cause a long-lasting conflict.

"A dramatic collapse of Iraq — whatever we think about how the situation was created — would have disastrous consequences for which we would pay for many years and which would bring us back, one way or another, into the region," he said.

Kissinger, whose views have been sought by the Iraqi Study Group, led by former Secretary of State James Baker III, called for an international conference bringing together the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, Iraq's neighbors — including Iran — and regional powers like India and Pakistan to work out a way forward for the region.

"I think we have to redefine the course, but I don't think that the alternative is between military victory, as defined previously, or total withdrawal," he said.

What do we do with Iran?

BY HENRY A. KISSINGER

17 November 2006

IRAN’S nuclear programme and considerable resources enable it to strive for strategic dominance in its region. With the impetus of a radical Shia ideology and the symbolism of defiance of the UN Security Council’s resolution, Iran challenges the established order in the Middle East and perhaps wherever Islamic populations face dominant, non-Islamic majorities.

The appeal for diplomacy to overcome these dangers has so far proved futile. The negotiating forum the world has put in place for the nuclear issue is heading for a deadlock, probably irresolvable, except in a wider geopolitical context. Such a negotiation has not yet found a forum. In any event, divisions among the negotiating partners inhibit a clear sense of direction.

The five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany — known as the Six — have submitted a package of incentives to Teheran to end enrichment of uranium as a key step towards putting an end to the weapons programme. They have threatened sanctions if their proposal is rejected. Iran has insisted on its ‘right’ to proceed with enrichment, triggering an allied debate about the nature of the sanctions to which the Six have committed themselves. Even the minimal sanctions proposed by the E-3 (the European Three — the UK, France, and Germany) have been rejected by Russia.

Reluctant to negotiate directly with a member of the "axis of evil,’’ the United States has not participated in the negotiations, giving its proxy to Javier Solana, the European Union high representative, who negotiates on behalf of the E-3. Recently, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has announced a reversal of policy. The US — and she herself — would participate in the nuclear talks, provided Iran suspends its enrichment programme while talks are taking place. But Teheran has so far shown no interest in negotiating with the United States, either in the multilateral forum or separately.

more...

Iran Hawks Reorganize

Meet the Iran Enterprise Institute. Its name might sound familiar.

By Laura Rozen
Web Exclusive: 11.13.06

Print Friendly | Email Article

Unchastened by the catastrophe of the Iraq war or the setback delivered to the White House and Republicans in the midterm elections in part as a result of it, Iran hawks have organized new efforts to promote U.S. support for regime change in Tehran.

Among the latest efforts is the creation earlier this month of the Iran Enterprise Institute, a privately funded nonprofit drawing not just its name but inspiration and moral support from leading figures associated with the American Enterprise Institute. The Iran Enterprise Institute is directed by a newly arrived Iranian dissident whose cause has recently been championed by AEI fellow and former Pentagon advisor Richard Perle. Amir Abbas Fakhravar, 31, served time in Iran’s notorious Evin prison before arriving in Washington in May, with Perle’s help. Fakhravar, who advocates U.S. intervention to promote secular democracy in Iran, now seeks Washington’s backing to lead an organization that would unite Iranian student dissidents. (I profile Fakhravar in this month’s Mother Jones). Some other Iranian activists and journalists say Fakhravar and his supporters exaggerate his importance as a dissident leader in Iran. "Student circles and journalistic circles don’t recognize him as a student leader,” says Najmeh Bozorgmehr, the Financial Times’ Tehran correspondent who closely followed the 1999 pro-democracy Tehran student uprisings.

Incorporation papers received last week by the Washington, D.C., corporate registration office indicate that among those on the Iran Enterprise Institute's initial board of director are Fakhravar; Bijan Karimi, a professor of engineering at the University of New Haven; and Farzad Farahani, the Los Angeles-based half-brother of the U.S. leader of the exile Iranian political party, the Constitutionalist Party, which is closely tied with Fakhravar.

The Institute was created after a three-day meeting in Washington last month. According to one of the Iranians who participated in the meetings and who asked that his name not be used, among those in attendance were Fakhravar; Reza Pahlavi, son of the ousted shah of Iran; former Reagan era official and AEI scholar Michael Ledeen; a Dallas-based Iranian rug dealer who has funded anti-Tehran dissidents; and several other young Iranian oppositionists. According to sources, the group’s initial funding will come primarily from Iranian exiles. Perle’s office did not immediately respond to an inquiry to his office about the new group.

According to Iranian sources, the shah’s son, Pahlavi, announced at the meeting that the group should right then and there form a new leadership council for the Iran opposition movement, consisting mostly of the younger people present at the meeting rather than the aging cadre of monarchist supporters who have debated how to overthrow the mullahs for 25 years.

The Robert Gates File: Senate's Doubtful Dozen

Washington Dispatch: Kerry, Biden, Levin and 9 other current senators voted against Gates in 1991. Have they changed their minds?

By James Ridgeway with Caroline Dobuzinskis

November 16, 2006

WASHINGTON — In 1991 when Robert Gates underwent confirmation hearings before the Senate Intelligence Committee to be Bush Senior's Director of Central Intelligence, 31 senators voted against him. (The final vote was 64-31, with 5 not voting.) Of those 31, 12 are still in the Senate; Mother Jones asked all of them where they stand today; of the 12, John Kerry was the only one to answer our questions in full.

Snip...

Tom Harkin, D-Iowa: A spokeswoman told Mother Jones: "For now he is reserving judgment and keeping an open mind, but in light of this Administration's track record for politicizing intelligence, and given Gates' background, he is not optimistic this is an ideal choice."

Ted Kennedy, D-Mass (press release): "We thank Secretary Rumsfeld for his service. Clearly now is the time to give our men and women in uniform new leadership and a new policy that is worthy of their enormous sacrifice."

John Kerry, D-Mass., through a spokeswoman, was the only member to fully answer Mother Jones' questions:

Q - What do you think of Robert Gates as the new Secretary of Defense?

A - It was about four years overdue for Don Rumsfeld to go. Where do we go from here? We need honest questions and substantive answers, and I'm going to follow the Gates confirmation hearings very closely to determine his willingness to push and adopt a new strategy in Iraq. Obviously it is encouraging that Robert Gates opposed this war from the beginning, but we need to understand where he thinks the policy needs to go today.

Q - You voted no in 1991, how would you vote today?

A - I had concerns way back then because I'd been so involved in the Iran Contra investigations and the BCCI investigations. I had reservations, and I voted them. He did things as CIA Director that assuaged some of those concerns. That's why I'll follow these hearings closely and with an open mind.

Q - Is this a decision for a lame-duck Congress to make?

A - The question is whether we have a thorough debate and what it reveals. I think people are going to take this confirmation very seriously in light of the kind of mess we've had at DOD the last six years.

[Captain Hilts]

1. Walsh said Gates was clean on Iran-Contra. nt

[Octafish]

8. Walsh said there wasn't evidence to prosecute Gates.

Walsh wrote about it just the other day:

Lies, Cover Ups and Slanted Intelligence

Robert Gates and Iran/Contra

By LAWRENCE E. WALSH
CounterPunch November 8, 2006

The day after Clair George's arraignment, we turned to Robert Gates. The Senate intelligence committee's hearings on his appointment to head the CIA were scheduled to begin within a few days. Craig Gillen and I met the committee's chairman, David Boren, and ranking minority member, Frank Murkowski, and staff counsel in Boren's office. Reiterating what I had already told Boren, we said that two questions had not been answered satisfactorily: Had Gates falsely denied knowledge of Oliver North's Contra-support activities? Had Gates falsely postdated his first knowledge of North's diversion of arms sale proceeds to the Contras?

We then described what our investigation had turned up about Gates. Alan Fiers had told us that he had kept Gates generally informed of his Contra-support activities, through written reports and regular face-to-face presentations, although his oral reports had been guarded because Gates had not always had a note-taker present. The CIA now claimed it could not find the notes of these meetings.

We said that Richard Kerr, the CIA's deputy director for intelligence, had informed Gates in August 1986 of Charles Allen's belief that North had diverted funds from the Iranian arms sales for the benefit of the Contras; Allen himself had told Gates the same thing in early October. Allen had told us that Gates, who had appeared irritated, had told Allen to write a memorandum for CIA director William Casey and had said that he did not want to hear about North. To us and to the congressional committees, Gates had denied having any recollection of either conversation. Whenever questioned, Gates had always claimed that he had first learned of Allen's concern about the diversion on the day after Eugene Hasenfus was shot down. Gates said that he and Allen had then reported this to Casey, who told them that he had just received much the same information from another source.

That day, according to North and Gates, Casey had invited North to lunch in his office, which was next to Gates's office. Gates had joined them, and according to North, had heard Casey tell North to clean up the Ilopango operation. North claimed that he had then begun to destroy records. Gates claimed not to remember the discussion of North's Nicaraguan activities. Although he had heard North mention Swiss accounts, Gates said, he had not understood the reference. He claimed to have been in and out of the room. All he remembered, he said, was that North had told him that the CIA was completely clean regarding the Contra-support operation.

We suggested to the senators that they specifically request the notes of Fiers's reports to Gates. We told them that we did not think we had enough corroborating information to indict Robert Gates, but that his answers to these questions had been unconvincing. We did not believe that he could have forgotten a warning of North's diversion of the arms sale proceeds to the Contras. The mingling of two covert activities that were of intense personal interest to the president was not something the second-highest officer in the CIA would forget. Moreover, Gates had received the same reliable contemporaneous intelligence reports about North's activities that Charles Allen had. The information suggesting that North had overcharged the Iranians would surely have caught the attention of anyone as astute as Gates.

When, after Eugene Hasenfus's aircraft was shot down, Gates and Allen had told Casey about Allen's concern that North had diverted funds to the Contras, how could Gates have forgotten that Allen and Kerr had warned him about the diversion a few weeks earlier?

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/walsh11082006.html

About the nicest thing I can think of saying regarding Gates is he's a Bush Crime Family lickspittle.

[ProSense]

11. Thanks for the article! n/t

[nam78_two]

2. Great post as always PorSense -thanks! K,R and bookmarked/nt

[bloom]

3. Michael Ledeen

His is quite the behind-the-character.

And whatever he's doing - it's not good.

[fooj]

4. I'm glad that Kerry spoke up.

He's part of the history...

[Cocoa]

5. Cheney's anecdote at the beginning is fascinating

he himself draws a comparison between his unethical behavior in his past employment, and the way he conducts business now.

At that point, according to someone familiar with the discussion, Cheney began reminiscing about his job as a lineman, in the early nineteen-sixties, for a power company in Wyoming. Copper wire was expensive, and the linemen were instructed to return all unused pieces three feet or longer. No one wanted to deal with the paperwork that resulted, Cheney said, so he and his colleagues found a solution: putting “shorteners” on the wire—that is, cutting it into short pieces and tossing the leftovers at the end of the workday. If the Democrats won on November 7th, the Vice-President said, that victory would not stop the Administration from pursuing a military option with Iran. The White House would put “shorteners” on any legislative restrictions, Cheney said, and thus stop Congress from getting in its way.

[ProSense]

6. Cutting corners for

nearly five decades---the underlying unethical behavior eventually led to a policy that shortened the lives of tens of thousands of innocent people!

[jazzjunkysue]

7. So, they'll invade Iran one tank at a time, so we won't notice?

Isn't anyone going to stop this insanity?

[Jcrowley]

9. K & R n/t

[Octafish]

10. VIP KRB9

Thanks for a heckuva post, ProSense.

The Bush International Criminal Enterprise may want to defuse the situation in Iran and cool down the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their reason is they have a better way of stealing the oil. And they'll use that to keep the War Machine humming.

Gates, believe it or not, is worse than Rumsfeld. And that's saying something.

[Octafish]

12. Robert Parry: 'Blackmail & Bobby Gates'

Here are the two questions Mr. Gates should answer under oath...

Blackmail & Bobby Gates

by Robert Parry
November 14, 2006 at 16:39:06
http://www.opednews.com


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.

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?

CONTINUED...

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_robert_p_061114_blackmail__26_bobby_ga.htm

Kick this thread to they're all chimpeached.

[ProSense]

13. Has Gates learned his lesson?

Has Gates learned his lesson?

Robert Gates' nomination as defense secretary will give him a chance to prove he knows better than to politicize intelligence.

By Jennifer Glaudemans, JENNIFER GLAUDEMANS is a former CIA analyst and an attorney.
November 21, 2006

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence asked me to testify at the confirmation hearings for Robert M. Gates, who had been nominated to be director of Central Intelligence.

I was asked because I had worked in the CIA's office of Soviet analysis back when Gates was the agency's deputy director for intelligence and chairman of the National Intelligence Council.

More specifically, I was asked to testify because of my knowledge about the creation of a May 1985 special National Intelligence Estimate on Iran that had been used to justify the ill-fated deals known as Iran-Contra.

Snip...

In 1985, during Ronald Reagan's second term as president, the U.S. faced enormous diplomatic and military challenges in the Middle East and in Central America. Reagan and then-CIA Director William J. Casey were known for their aggressive anti-Soviet rhetoric and policies. Gates, as Casey's deputy, shared their ideology.

Iran-Contra was in the planning stages then, a secret scheme in which the Reagan administration was going to sell arms to an enemy country, Iran, and use the proceeds to fund the anti-communist Contras in Nicaragua.

In order to justify these actions, administration officials felt they needed some analytical backing from the intelligence community. Those in my office knew nothing of their plans, of course, but it was the context in which we were asked, in 1985, to contribute to the National Intelligence Estimate on the subject of Iran.

Later, when we received the draft NIE, we were shocked to find that our contribution on Soviet relations with Iran had been completely reversed. Rather than stating that the prospects for improved Soviet-Iranian relations were negligible, the document indicated that Moscow assessed those prospects as quite good. What's more, the national intelligence officer responsible for coordinating the estimate had already sent a personal memo to the White House stating that the race between the U.S. and USSR "for Tehran is on, and whoever gets there first wins all."

Snip...

We protested the conclusions of the NIE, citing evidence such as the Iranian government's repression of the communist Tudeh Party, the expulsion of all Soviet economic advisors and a number of Soviet diplomats who were KGB officers, and a continuing public rhetoric that chastised the "godless" communist regime as the "Second Satan" after the United States.

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