Excerpts from Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA
(Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2006)
By John Prados
Pages 572-574:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB208/index.htm
AN UNCOMFORTABLE INTERREGNUM followed Bill Casey's collapse
[on December 15,1986]. With Casey in and out of the
hospital, Robert M. Gates served as acting DCI. On February
2, 1987, Casey resigned. The White House faced the sudden
need to find a new director of central intelligence. Years
before, at the outset of Ronald Reagan's presidency, Gates
had told colleagues he wanted the top job. Now he came close
to getting it. So close. The day Casey resigned, President
Reagan nominated Gates as DCI in his own right. Perhaps the
Reagan White House, beset by Iran-Contra, had not the energy
or vision to seek out a new candidate for DCI. Or possibly
Reagan saw Gates as a loyalist. Perhaps the call was for a
professional but not someone with roots in the clandestine
service. Gates fit that bill too. In any event, for a time
it looked like Bob Gates would be moving into the director's
office.
The Senate would have to approve the Gates nomination, but
the White House had clearly felt out the ground there. In
the 1986 off-year elections the Democrats regained control
of Congress, making Oklahoma Senator David L. Boren chairman
of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Boren and a
number of others reacted positively to the Gates nomination.
Even Vermont's Pat Leahy saw the Gates appointment as a wise
move. Opinion held that Gates would be asked tough questions
on Iran-Contra but then confirmed.
Bob Gates put his best foot forward. There could be no
denying his background as a superbly qualified intelligence
officer. He had done that work for the air force and the
CIA, beginning with Soviet nuclear weapons. He had seen
diplomacy on the U.S. delegation to arms control talks.
Gates had crafted the NIEs as an assistant national
intelligence officer, as national intelligence officer, and
later as ex officio chairman of the National Intelligence
Council. He had done management as an assistant to a CIA
director, an executive staff director, and as deputy
director. Gates had headed one of the agency's tribes as
deputy director for intelligence. He knew the White House,
serving there under Jimmy Carter. As DDCI he had gotten a
taste of covert operations and the clandestine service. In
twenty-one years, in other words, Robert Gates had acquired
wide agency experience. He had made some enemies, in
particular as he handled intelligence reporting during the
Reagan years, but in 1987 those people did not contest his
nomination, which seemed unstoppable.
Except for Iran-Contra. Gates gave that his best shot too.
Not coincidentally it became known that when he took over as
acting director, Gates had recorded a classified video
affirming that the CIA would act only under legal
authorities and would never again do anything like the Iran
arms shipments without a proper presidential finding. When
hearings opened on February 17 [1987], Gates quickly made it
known that he felt Iran-Contra had broken all the rules. He
would resign if ordered to do something like that. Gates
regretted not following up on the scattered indications of
illegality he had perceived, But the nominee's assurances
foundered on the rocks of the Iran-Contra investigations. A
number of questions had yet to be answered then, including
whether Gates had helped mislead Congress, the extent of his
participation in concocting false chronologies, his role in
efforts to have the CIA take over the Secord "Enterprise,"
when Gates learned of the diversion of funds to the contras,
and what he had done once he knew it.
The more questions, the more Bob Gates's chances disappeared
into the maw of assorted illegalities. Had Gates known of
violations o the Arms Export Control Act? Had he known of
the "retrospective" finding? What had he done? Again and
again. At this point Congress created a joint committee to
investigate Iran-Contra, and it did not expect answers for
months. Then, on February 22, the public learned that in
1985 Gates had sent the White House a memorandum from one of
his national intelligence officers advocating the
improvement of relations with Iran through arms sales, a
view at variance with existing estimates. Two days later the
Joint committee asked that Gates s nomination be put on
hold. Senator Boren posed the alternatives of a vote or a
withdrawal of the nomination while senior congressional
leaders warned the White House that a fight over Gates would
concentrate yet more attention on Iran Contra. Reagan who
had just released a presidential commission report in an
effort to put the scandal behind him did not care to hear
that.
Robert Gates decided to withdraw. The next day the
administration took back the nomination. Gates issued a
statement defending his actions during the Iran-Contra
affair denying he had covered up evidence or suppressed
improprieties. Eventually the joint committee cleared Gates
of illegal actions, and the Iran Contra special prosecutor
affirmed that conclusion, but there had been failings. Gates
cites mitigating circumstances in his memoirs, where he
writes:
I would go over those points in my mind a thousand times in
the months and years to come, but the criticisms still hit
home. A thousand times I would go over the "might-have-beens"
if I had raised more hell than I did with Casey about
nonnotification of Congress, if I had demanded that the NSC
get out of covert action, if I had insisted that CIA not
play by NSC rules, if I had been more aggressive with the DO
in my first months as DDCI, if I had gone to the Attorney
General.
It became Robert Gates's misfortune to be swept up in a web
of illegality so immense it brought dangers of the
impeachment of a president, which made Gates small fry
indeed and virtually overnight neutered Ronald Reagan.
In withdrawing the Gates nomination, President Reagan
simultaneously announced his appointment of William B.
Webster to lead the agency. Webster liked to be called
"Judge"-he had been a jurist on the federal bench,
eventually on the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. Where CIA
denizens begrudged Stansfield Turner his preferred title of
admiral, no one held back with Judge Webster. Dedication to
the law and to his native St. Louis, at least as deep as
Turner's to the navy, had seen Webster through law school at
Washington University, then a decade as a St. Louis
attorney, another as a U.S. district attorney, and then the
bench. In 1978 President Carter named Webster to head the
FBI, the post he held when Reagan asked him to move to
Langley. Three days shy of his fifty-third birthday, Judge
Webster came with stellar reviews-squeaky clean, exactly
what Reagan then needed. The Senate intelligence committee
approved his nomination in early May, and the full Senate
consented to it shortly thereafter. Judge Webster was sworn
in immediately.
Bob Gates felt the weight of Iran-Contra lifted from his
shoulders, only to hear from his brother that their father
had just died. As Gates dealt with personal tragedy, Webster
established himself at Langley. Again like Admiral Turner,
Judge Webster brought in a coterie as his inner circle-this
time of former FBI aides. That move scarcely endeared
Webster to CIA staff, though he took some of the sting away
by announcing Gates would remain DDCI.
The new CIA director had a background in government and even
in the security field, where his 'time at the FBI had
included notable investigations of corruption among
congressmen, the Korean CIA, and, of course, Iran-Contra. In
Webster's last months at the FBI the Bureau had looked into
Southern Air Transport, the agency's quasi-proprietary. But
Webster's knowledge of intelligence, mostly peripheral,
resulted from participation in the National Foreign
Intelligence Board, the DCI's committee of the directors of
all the U.S. intelligence agencies. His background in
foreign affairs, even thinner, did not help in the corridors
at Langley.
Webster's tenure has received mixed reviews. Melissa Boyle
Mahle, an officer with the DO's Near East Division, saw the
Judge as isolating himself, managing rather than leading
CIA, passing Olympian judgments, treating the agency as
something dirty or infectious. "He did not lead the troops,
or ever really try to get to know them," she writes. The
chief of station in Brussels, Richard Holm, felt Webster
never really fit in but nevertheless had been a good choice,
and Holm was sorry when he left. Floyd Paseman, by 1987 a
branch chief in the East Asia Division soon elevated to the
management staff, believes Webster "did a terrific job of
restoring the CIA's image." Dewey Clarridge asserts that
Webster "didn't have the stomach for bold moves of any
sort." Robert Gates acknowledges the criticisms but calls
Webster a "godsend" to the CIA, observing that none of the
complaints "amounted to a hill of beans compared to what he
brought to CIA that May: leadership, the respect of
Congress, and a sterling character."
Pages 582-585:
Judge Webster may have been the most prominent casualty of
the Gulf War. During the long interregnum between Saddam
Hussein's invasion of Kuwait and the beginning of the
coalition military campaign came a period of diplomacy and
economic sanctions. In Capitol Hill debates and the struggle
for public opinion, Webster was called upon to render
opinions on the effectiveness of sanctions, Iraqi intent,
and the balance of forces. Others seized on Webster's words
as ammunition. This did not please Bush. Never that
comfortable at Langley, Judge Webster decided he had had
enough. He let a few weeks go by after the Gulf triumph,
then stepped down. The DO shed few tears.
The White House announced the resignation on May 8, 1991.
Appearing briefly with Webster, President Bush said he had
yet to think of a successor but praised Robert Gates. That
same day Bush summoned Gates to his cabin aboard Air Force
One and asked if the former spook would accept the CIA
nomination. Gates immediately agreed. He expected a painful
confirmation process, and he got one. Iran-Contra
investigations continued, and Bob Gates would not be
definitively cleared until the special prosecutor's final
report, still two years in the future. When Alan Fiers
pleaded guilty in July 1991, Gates feared that Fiers would
implicate him in some way. "The lowest point in my life came
the day before the plea bargain was announced," Gates
recalls. Acutely conscious of the fact that civil servants
rarely rise to head their departments, Gates realized it had
been a generation since Bill Colby had been confirmed. Gates
had been close to some quite controversial people, from
Kissinger to Casey. Then the summer of 1991 brought the
final collapse of the Soviet Union, kicking off the debate
as to whether the CIA had failed to predict it. Of course
Gates had had a dominant role in CIA analysis of Russia for
years. But this time, unlike 1987, Gates resolved to proceed
with the confirmation process no matter what.
Charges that Robert Gates had politicized intelligence took
center stage when confirmation hearings opened in September
[1991]. At first an extended examination of the nominee was
not planned. Marvin C. Ott, deputy director of the SSCI
staff at the time, recalls that the predisposition to let
Gates sail through created a staff presumption that there
was nothing to look into. Committee staff and members were
flummoxed by the appearance of a succession of analysts who
gave chapter and verse on many Gates interventions in
intelligence analysis. Reports on Afghanistan and Nicaragua
were among those cited. Evidence emerged that current
employees, reluctant to criticize openly, also saw Gates as
an interventionist. Far from pro forma nomination hearings,
those on Gates morphed into a major CIA inquiry.
The nominee presented a preemptive defense, attempting to
disarm critics with examples of how he had simply tried to
push analysts to back up their assertions, picturing some
alleged interventions as his effort to tease out better
reporting. Then a number of former analysts went before the
committee to dispute that rendering, most notably Mel
Goodman, who had been a colleague for years; Jennifer L.
Glaudemans, a former Soviet analyst; and Harold P. Ford, one
of the CIA's grand old men. Alan Fiers appeared as part of
the committee's fairly extensive coverage of Iran-Contra,
but his testimony did Gates no harm. Others supported the
nomination. Gates himself returned for "something fairly
dramatic," a round of follow-up testimony refuting critics.
The hearings became the most extensive examination of U.S.
intelligence since the Church and Pike investigations. Work
at Langley ground to a halt as CIA officers watched every
minute on television, much like Americans riveted by the 0.
J. Simpson murder trial.
The intelligence committee wrestled with its quandary.
President Bush intervened, invoking party discipline to
ensure that members backed the nominee. Ott believes Gates
appealed to the White House for this measure. Committee
chairman David Boren staged his own covert operation, acting
impartially in the camera's eye while laboring in secret to
build support for the nominee. Boren agreed to one of the
most extensive committee reports on a nomination ever, in
which his committee attempted to reconcile Gates's testimony
with the charges against him. In Ott's view, this episode
became the first time in a decade where partisanship reigned
on the SSCI. Finally the committee approved Bush's
appointee. Gates was confirmed early in November.
For all the drama of the hearings, the sequel did not live
up to the fears of opponents. Director Gates strove to
preserve flexibility as Langley marched into the post-Cold
War era. He showed a healthy appreciation for the need to
change, forming a whole range of task forces, fourteen in
all, each to recommend changes in some aspect of CIA
activity. A group on openness figured among them, advising
that a swath of records be made public. In 1992 Gates spoke
before a conference of diplomatic historians and promised
that the agency would open up, even in regard to covert
operations. As an earnest of its intentions, the CIA
declassified large portions of the body of NIEs on the
Soviet Union and that December sponsored a conference
reflecting on the period. Stansfield Turner gave the keynote
address.
One of the Gates study groups considered politicization.
Although its instructions were drawn so narrowly it could
conclude there had been none, Gates gathered a large
contingent of officers in The Bubble in March 1992 to
ventilate the issue. Directly confronting the matter that
had clouded his confirmation, Gates squared the circle by
acknowledging that whether or not there had been
politicization in the past, it was a danger to be guarded
against. The director declared his determination to find
better ways to prevent policy driven analysis.
Another task force focused on covert action. Among the
novelties there, a delegation of senior clandestine services
officers met with scholars at the Institute of Policy
Studies, a leftist think tank, to solicit their views on
directions the agency might take. They did not flinch when
told the DCI ought to abolish the Directorate for
Operations. Of course no such advice made its way into the
final report, but DDO Thomas Twetten was placed on notice
that the old days were gone. Twetten, one of the anointed,
who thought nothing of rejecting a Freedom of Information
Act request for Mongoose documents whose substance was
already in the Church Committee report, was forced to
retrench. The directorate consolidated operations in several
African countries closing a number of stations-a move that
soon came back to haunt the agency.
A national center to target human intelligence assets flowed
from Gates's concern for mor
