Fighting the Gates nomination

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern calls the Republicans' approach correctly in this open letter to incoming Democratic Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin: An Open Letter to Carl Levin: No Free Pass to Gates Truthout.org 11/11/06.  The Republicans are trying to ram through the Gates nomination during the "lame duck" Congressional session to minimize any static about the Iraq War, torture, the NSA's illegal warrantless spying and Gates' particular qualifications for the job.

In addition to the issues of Gates having willing turned a blind eye to illegal CIA activities in the secret war against Nicaragua and of his willingness to politicize intelligence reporting, McGovern also argues that Gates was involved in Republican dirty dealings over the Iranian hostages in 1980 and in illegal weapons sales to Saddam's Iraq back in the days when Saddam was our friend.

McGovern challenges Levin on his recent willingness to knuckle under to the Republicans to a degree that in some cases has been downright shameful:

I am having a hard time believing that you would give Gates a pass, since I have so much admired your courage in the past. But I fear that the many recent years in minority exile may have dulled your edge and that you have gotten too used to unsavory compromises. I have in mind the deal you worked out with South Carolina Republican senator Lindsay Graham curtailing some of the rights of "detainees." Not to mention your sudden cave-in, in the aftermath of 9/11, on funding for the National Missile Defense program, which you earlier recognized as obscenely expensive, of unproven reliability, and of dubious utility given the changing nature of the threats to our security.

A lot is riding on whether you step up to the plate on the Gates nomination. Your decision will be one of the earliest tangible signs of whether the November 7 election has injected some spine into Democrats - whether they still have it in them to act like winners.

Whether the Republicans roll the Democrats on the Gates nomination will have a significant role in setting the stage for later fights.  The new Congress won't be seated until January.  But the post-election fight for the Constituion has already begun.

McGovern stresses that the main issue about Gates' qualifications should be the politicization of intelligence:

All the above-mentioned escapades are enough to derail Gates's nomination, but the corruption of intelligence should be given priority attention, given the huge role this played in 2002 in deceiving Congress into voting for an unnecessary war. The record shows that Gates is the archetypal intelligence fixer, employing all the tricks of that dishonorable trade - including memory loss, when caught. Indeed, it was the malleable managers who prospered at CIA during Gates's tenure there who caved in to White House pressure to "lean forward" on the issue of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

The 1980 incident was the original "October surprise" in which Republicans used various intelligence connections to signal the revolutionary regime in Teheran that they would get far better treatment from a Reagan administration if they delayed realeasing the American hostages they were holding until after the election.

Gary Sick wrote about the largely circumstantial evidence for this operation in his 1991 book, October Surprise: America's Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan.  The idea had previously been floated by the eccentric Barbara Honegger in a 1989 book, but Sick's far more substantial argument prompted at least a desultory investigation by Congress.  Although it was barely more than a formality, not at all a serious investigation.  Kevin Phillips also discussed the incident in his 2004 American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush.

The evidence for the 1980 October surprise is still largely circumstantial but deserves more attention from historians and the Establishment press than it has received.

David Neiwert wrote in History that matters Orcinus blog 01/20/06:

If these accounts prove accurate, the Reagan team's behavior in this instance constituted treason, by any definition of the term. As Mark suggests, the Reagan folk directly undermined government negotiations to free the hostages. If George H.W. Bush was a direct participant in this, it casts an even darker shadow on not only his presidency but his subsequentactions regarding Iran-Contra and Iraq, actions for which we continue to confront the consequences.

The issue, really, is one of history - and we're talking about the kind of history that directly informs our current situation. Although these events occurred 24 years ago, there's nothing particularly stale about this - as Mark himself rather clearly points out. The principals may indeed have said their piece, but sadly, the public is spectacularly unaware of this. The point is to put our current events in a clear and factual context that erases the mythology favored by Republican propagandists, who would have us get all misty-eyed over the wonders of the Reagan administration's moral clarity and farsighted vision.

After all, we are currently in a political environment in America in which it is a commonplace to characterize liberals as traitors and to suggest that they have behaved treasonously in our response to "the war on terror." What the October Surprise scenario makes clear is that not only are the Republicans now running the government the principal traitors here, but their entire approach to dealing with terrorists is a poisonous cauldron of deceit, both at home and abroad. And, as Mark suggests, it reveals the real hollowness of the neoconservative rhetoric about promoting democracy, when what we actually have done is shore up authoritarianism at every turn.

See also Neiwert's post Kevin Phillips and the October Surprise 01/18/04.