NEW CIA NOMINEE CONSIDERED - WHITE HOUSE NOW SHYING FROM GATES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000503940005-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 11, 2012
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: March 2, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000503940005-9
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE I
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
2 March 1987
New CIA nominee considered
White House now
shying from Gates
" By John N. Maclean
and Christoghg,C Dre,w_
v
Chicago Tribune
WASHINGTON-The White
House is seeking a possible re-
placement for Robert Gates as
its nominee to head the CIA, ac-
cording to congressional sources,
and Senate Republican Leader
Bob Dole on Sunday recom-
mended Gen. Brent Scowcroft
for the job.
Scowcroft, former national se-
curity adviser under President
Gerald Ford and who served on
the presidential review board
that investigated the U.S.-Iran
arms affair, could not be reached
for comment.
Dole [R., Kan.] and other Re-
publican leaders told President
Reagan Friday that Gates' nomi-
nation was in trouble, even
though Gates was not directly
implicated in the Tower Board's
report, sources said. Dole and
the others told Reagan that the
report made the CIA look bad,
and that rubbed off on Gates,
43, a career CIA man who was
deputy to former CIA director
Wililliam~Case~.
nu a congressional source said
Sunday that as a result, "there is
an active move to look at other
folks" on the part of the White
House. But the administration
has not yet withdrawn Gates'
Robert Gates
nomination.
Dole said Scowcroft would
make a good candidate for the
CIA post, which Howard Baker,
who was named W\ hite House
chief of staff after the Tower re-
port was released Thursday, had
turned down this sear.
Dole was asked on N RC- V V's
"Meet The Press" %%hether he
thought Gates' nomination
should be withdrawn.
"I know it's been discussed at
the White House," Dole said,
explaining that he told Reagan
last week that Gates' nomination
"could be in some difficulty if
there was a demand" for a quick
vote.
"I would guess that there would
be some judgment made on this
early this week" at the White
House, Dole said.
The Senate Intelligence Commit-
tee will meet Wednesday to con-
sider Gates' confirmation. and to
set a timetable for voting. Sen.
David Boren [D., Okla.], chairman
of the committee, has said he
wants an early vote to avoid a lack
of leadership at the CIA.
Sen. Sam Nunn [D., Ga.], a
member of the committee, said
over the weekend that Gates had a
"51 to 49" percent chance of
being turned down by the commit-
tee.
Sen. Bill adlev ID., N.J.], an-
ot er mem er of the committee
and one of the lawmakers who was
highly critical of Gates during two
days of public confirmation
hearings last month, was especially
concerned by a Tower Board find-
ing that the CIA had "tailored its
intelligence assessment on Iran to
fit the needs of policy makers at
the White House." Bradley and
others want to ask Gates more
questions about that assessment.
Gates came under considerable
fire from Bradley and others for
failing to investigate when he first
heard speculation about a diver-
sion of profits to the Nicaraguan
rebels stemming from the U.S. sale
of weapons to Iran. Gates defend-
ed himself by saying the CIA was
under orders to stay as far away as
P
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000503940005-9
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000503940005-9
G_
possible from any private funding
of the rebels, known as contras, in
order to avoid even the appear-
ance of violating a congressional
ban on assistance to the guerrillas.
A source close to the Intelli-
gence Committee said Gates
doesn't come out "looking all that
badly" in the Tower Board report.
But he said he thought the agency
as a whole came off "not that
well." He said the investigators
found "a level of involvement" by
the CIA in National Security
Council aide Oliver North's pri-
vate contra-aid efforts that "is
maybe greater than we might have
known."
The Tower Board reported that
Gates supplied North, a marine
lieutenant colonel, with intelli-
pence on the Soviet threat to Iran,
information that North passed on
to Iranian intermediary Manucher
Ghorbanifar in Paris in March,
1986.
This apparently is a reference to
the CIA assessment, prepared
while Gates was directly responsi-
ble for intelligence analysis, that
the Tower Board found was pre-
pared in conjunction with the
NSC staff.
The report also quoted a memo
from former national security ad-
viser John Poindexter to North in
mid-summer of 1986 that men-
tioned Gates. In response to
North's suggestion that Poindexter
pressure the CIA to use North's
network of former military and in-
telligence officials after $100 mil-
lion in new congressional aid
began last October, Poindexter
wrote: "I did tell Gates that I
thought the private effort should
be phased out."
Then Poindexter said: "Please
talk to Casey about this. I agree
with you."
This reference could be
somewhat damaging to Gates in
that it suggests he knew in some
detail about the private aid net-
work that North had established.
On the other hand, the CIA was
allowed at this time to provide in-
telligence to the contras.
The report strongly criticized
Casey for apparently having "ac-
quiesced in" North's "exercise of
direct operational control over the
Iranian operation."
The board said: "There is no
evidence, however, that director
Casey explained this risk to the
President or made clear to the
President that Lt. Col. North,
rather than the CIA, was running
the operation. . . . Indeed, director
Casey should have gone further
and pressed for operational re-
sponsibility to be transferred to
the CIA."
The board also said Casey, who
resigned last month after under-
going brain cancer surgery in De-
cember, should have been more
skeptical of Israeli intentions and
of Ghorbanifar's credibility and
should have "taken the lead in
keeping the question of congres-
sional notification alive."
The richest detail of the Tower
report dealt with Ghorbanifar's
failure of a polygraph test and
Casey's decision to nevertheless
keep relying on him.
The report quoted from a memo
by retired CIA official George
Cave reporting that GhorrT2 ifff
vested at a Washington hotel
on Jan. 11, 1986. It showed that
the examiner found evidence of
deception in Ghorbanifar's
answers to 13 of 15 relevant
questions. The memo indicated
that the truthfulness of his re-
sponses to the other two questions
was inconclusive.
Among the answers that ap-
peared to be deceptive were Ghor-
banifar's denials that he was trying
to deceive the CIA about his
Iranian contacts' influence over Is-
lamic Jihad, a pro-Iranian Shute
Moslem group that is holding
some of the American hostages in
Lebanon.
. Cave said the polygraph examin-
er concluded that Ghorbanifar
"was indeed a fabricator of evi-
dence." Cave noted that lie-detec-
tor tests taken by Ghorbanifar in
March and June, 1984, "had pro-
duced the same conclusion."
Despite all of this, the report
said, the White House decided to
keep using Ghorbanifar as an in-
termediary, with Casey concurring
in the decision.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000503940005-9