QUESTIONS ON ROBERT GATES' NOMINATION AS CIA DIRECTOR

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-01448R000401800001-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 22, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: August 27, 1991
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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RADIO
NREPORTS
PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF
The Real Story
August 27, 1991 8:00 P.M.
Washington, D.C.
Questions on Robert Gates' Nomination as CIA Director
CASSANDRA CLAYTON: First tonight, special correspondent
Charlie Rose concludes his series on the Central Intelligence
Agency with a report on the man President Bush wants to run the
CIA.
Charlie.
CHARLIE ROSE: Thanks, Cassandra.
Yesterday we talked about the controversies swirling
around the Central Intelligence Agency and how the Agency must
adapt to a changing world. Before that can happen, it needs a
new Director. The man nominated by President Bush is Robert
Gates, a career CIA man. He is now number two with the National
Security Council under Brent Scowcroft. Before that assignment,
he was number two at the CIA under Bill Casey.
And that's where the problem comes for Robert Gates:
What did he know and when did he know it? And what are the CIA
officials now under investigation telling prosecutor Lawrence
Walsh? Those answers could not only taint the CIA, but also
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derail the nomination of Robert Gates to be the Director.
If Gates is confirmed as Director of Central Intelli-
gence, he would be, like former Directors Allen Dulles, Richard
Helms and William Colby, another insider at the top. He would he
different from them in that he comes to the job not as an
operations man but as an analyst.
WILLIAM COLBY: The concept of Central Intelligence was
to set up a center to which all the information, all kinds of
information -- secret, open, everything, technological -- could
be brought, so that it could be analyzed and thought about,. and
that this was the real heart and soul of Central Intelligence.
But in fact, the analysts weren't organized correctly for the lat
40-odd years and they didn't play a major role in the policy
considerations in Washington, and their role was usurped by the
operators, such as Dulles, Helms, myself, Casey.
ROSE: You all came out of an operations background.
COLBY: We all came out of the operations side of
things, not the analytical side.
ROSE: There is some opposition to Gates from former and
current CIA officials from the operations side of the Agency.
One former high official who supports Gates is George Carver.
GEORGE CARVER: Now, Bob is the first insider who has
come up through a different career calling. There's bound to be
a little bit of grumbling in the works among the operators about
"Gee, he's not really clubable. He's not one of us."
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ROSE: Did Robert Gates mislead the Intelligence
Committee when he testified that he was outside the loop, kept
from knowing about the diversion by Bill Casey and others?
SENATOR OENNIS DECONCINI: I am very concerned about his
inability to convince me, perhaps the committee, that he didn't
know these things and why he testified in the way he did before
the Iran-Contra and before the Intelligence Committee, and now
that he has forgotten so much. This is very difficult for me to
accept. And I hope that he can succeed in convincing me other-
wise. But maybe he can. He's had a lot of time to prepare now.
COLEY: I think the objection to him lies more among the
congressmen that are dissatisfied as to how he handled himself on
the Iran-Contra problem, and with O11ie North and that sort of
thing. On that, I think that to date nothing has been said that
puts him in an unfavorable light.
THOMAS POLGAR [farmer Iran-Contra Committee investiga-
tor]: I'm opposed to the Gates nomination because of the
information obtained and the impressions garnered during the
Iran-Contra investigation in 1987.
ROSE: Do you believe Gates misled Congress?
POLGAR: Yes. I think Gates misled Congress on more
than one occasion.
JOHN CANHAM-CLYNE [Author, "In These Times"]: It
appears very much from the record that he participated in a
cover-up of U.S. involvement in the Hawk missile shipment, at
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least, before the Congress of the United States. And that's a
crime punishable by five years imprisonment.
ROSE: The question gathered new momentum when Alan
Fiers, former Chief of the Central American Task Force, pled
guilty to withholding information from Congress, and is now
cooperating with Iran-Contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh.
CRAIG GILLEN [Associated Independent Council]: For the
first time, a senior CIA official has publicly admitted in a
courtroom that he knew of the diversion of funds as early as the
spring of 1986 and throughout the summer of 1986. And for the
first time, a CIA -- a senior CIA official has acknowledged that
he informed two of his superiors by late summer of 1986 that the
United States was selling arms to Iran and proceeds were being
diverted to the Contras.
SENATOR DECONCINI: Perhaps Mr. Gates knew, or should
have known, seeing that Mr. Fiers worked for the man right under
Mr. Gates when Mr. Gates was the deputy chief.
CARVER: Anybody who makes that charge out of sincere
conviction, in the very making of it betrays an almost total
ignorance of how the CIA actually works.
VINCENT CANNISTRARO [former CIA operative]: I don't
think Alan adds very much to the question of Bob Gates. Because
although the charge has been made that Gates was in the chain of
command, as Deputy Director, and Alan Fiers reported to his boss,
who was Clair George, presumably Clair George reported to Bob
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Gates on that question, I don't believe so. 1 was Alan Fiers'
predecessor as Chief of the Central American Task Force, and I
reported to my boss, the Chief of Latin America Division, to the
Deputy Director of Operations, and directly to the Director of
Central Intelligence, not to John McMahon, who was Bob Gates'
predecessor.
ROSE: Others say if he didn't learn from the chain of
command, he might have known something and looked the other way.
CANNISTRARO: I can't tell you that he should have
known. But he should have known that Ollie North was engaged in
a lot of independent operations. A lot of people shared that
kind of knowledge. I shared that knowledge.
ROSE: Your office was right next to him.
CANNISTRARO: My office was right next to him. I
understood that Ollie was sustaining the Contras and that
sustenance had to do with more than just money, but it had to do
with military equipment. I knew that. It was not my account. I
was not supposed to know that, but I knew it. I assume a lot of
other people who were close to it would have know, as well.
COLBY: It was a project from which CIA was specifically
prohibited. And the natural reaction of the officers in that
circumstance would be to stay as far away from it as possible.
ROSE: What we don't know now is what Alan Fiers and
others are telling ~~rosecutor Walsh and who else in the CIA may
be under investigation.
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CANNISTRARO: If you assume that Bob Gates knew, had
guilty knowledge and concealed that knowledge in his testimony
before the Senate in 1987. I don't make that assumption. I do
make thf~ assumption, however, that there could be more indict-
ments involving former CIA personnel or present CIA personnel.
And that could widen the circle of people at the Agency who may
have had something to do with Iran-Contra, or at least perjured
themselves about their knowledge of Iran-Contra. That can spread
the scandal. There's no question about that.
ROSE: And so that's where we leave the story now, with
a question of other indictments coming forward, perhaps because
an insider's cooperating with the CIA [sic].
How far did the cover-up go? Will it bring down Robert
Gates? Will more come out from BCCI about the CIA connection?
Were there other undisclosed covert activities? One man who may
have known the answers to these questions died in May 1987,
former Director of Central intelligence William Casey. So we may
never know the answers to some of these questions.
Cassandra?
CLAYTON: Now, Charlie, do you think, having talked
to all these people, that Robert Gates is a good choice to lead
the CIA, with the New World Order?
ROSE: He has these things going for him, it should be
said: One, very bright, a strong presence, and the respect of
the President of the United States, and has worked closely with
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the President. So those qualities make the answer yes. Some
people worry that because he had these kinds of clouds over him,
that maybe that someone else should be rewarded with the job.
But he's certainly got the qualifications to do the job.
CLAYTON: If he is turned down for the nomination, who's
likely to be named?
ROSE: Don't know. One possibility is Brent Scowcroft.
The President would take the National Security Adviser and send
him over to CIA. Some say that wouldn't happen because that
would be kind of a step down for Scowcroft, who meets now and has
such a principal role in fvreiyn affairs.
CLAYTON: With so many scandals that the CIA is being
tied to, are we likely to see a lot of heads roll within the
urganization?
ROSE: The interesting thing is that this thing could
mushroom. We don't know what's going to come out of the BCCT
investigation. Richard Kerr, the Deputy Director of the CIA,
said there was absolutely nothing illegal about putting those
funds in the BCCI banks. But you've got an insider testifying
and cooperating with Lawrence Walsh and he may implicate other
people, and that may spread and you may have some deals and
people may begin talking and you may have a mushrooming scandal.
CLAYTON: Okay. Thanks a lot, Charlie Rose.
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