When Gates was appointed CIA director by President George H.W. Bush in 1991, there was an unprecedented revolt by former CIA colleagues who described Gates’s role in the 1980s as the Reagan administration’s henchman for destroying the CIA’s analytical division’s commitment to objectivity, the so-called “politicization” of intelligence reporting.
In Oct. 1, 1991, testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Harold P. Ford, former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, described an aspect of Gates's personality that mirrors many of the top officials in the Bush administration today.
“Bob Gates has often depended too much on his own individual analytic judgments and has ignored or scorned the views of others whose assessments did not accord with his own. This would be okay if he were uniquely all-seeing. He has not been," Ford said.
At the hearing, other CIA analysts said Gates forced them to twist intelligence to exaggerate the threat posed by the Soviet Union, thus justifying the Reagan administration’s policy decisions.
Jennifer Glaudemans, a former CIA analyst, said she and her colleagues at the CIA believed "Mr. Gates and his influence have led to a prostitution of [Soviet] analysis."
The Iran-Contra Mess
Analysts also alleged that a report approved by Gates overstated Soviet influence in Iran, paving the way for President Ronald Reagan’s actions in the Iran-Contra scandal.
During the hearings, senators learned about a Dec. 2, 1986, 10-page classified memo written by Thomas Barksdale, the CIA analyst for Iran. The memo claimed that covert arms sales to the country demonstrated "a perversion of the intelligence process" that is staggering in its proportions.
Barksdale said he and other Iran analysts "were never consulted or asked to provide an intelligence input to the covert actions and secret contacts that have occurred."
Barksdale added that Gates was the pipeline for providing "exclusive reports to the White House," intelligence that was "at odds with the overwhelming bulk of intelligence reporting, both from U.S. sources and foreign intelligence services."
At the 1991 hearings, Melvin Goodman, who had been one of the CIA’s top Soviet analysts, said that under Gates, the CIA was "trying to provide the intelligence analysis ... that would support the operational decision to sell arms to Iran."
Gates’s critics note how eerily reminiscent Gates’s behavior in the 1980s was to the way that Vice President Dick Cheney treated CIA analysts during the run-up to the Iraq War six years ago when they faced pressure to hype the threat from Iraq.
At his October 1991 confirmation hearings, Gates testified that he was aware the United States was selling arms to Iran in exchange for hostages. But he denied knowing that Oliver North, a National Security Council aide inside Reagan’s White House, was diverting money from Iranian arms sales to secretly fund the Nicaraguan contra rebels.
White House memos released at the time showed that North and National Security Adviser John Poindexter engaged in classified briefings with Gates on numerous occasions about Iran-Contra-related operations.
Poindexter said he discussed the situation with Gates, but Gates said he had "no recollection" about those conversations.
Alan Fiers, who headed the CIA’s Central America task force in the mid-1980s, testified at Gates's confirmation hearings that he had filled Gates in about the extraordinary covert operation supporting the contras.
“Bob Gates understood the universe, understood the structure, understood that there was an operational - that there was a support operation being run out of the White House," and "that Ollie North was the quarterback," Fiers said. "I had no reason to think he had great detail, but I do think there was a baseline knowledge there."
Helping Saddam
Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, also raised questions about Gates's role in helping Saddam Hussein’s Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s.
"I also have doubts and questions about Mr. Gates's role in the secret intelligence sharing operation with Iraq," Harkin said. "Robert Gates … helped develop options in dealing with the Iran-Iraq War, which eventually evolved into a secret intelligence liaison relationship with Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
“Gates was in charge of the directorate that prepared the intelligence information that was passed on to Iraq. He testified that he was also an active participant in the operation during 1986.
“The secret intelligence sharing operation with Iraq was not only a highly questionable and possibly illegal operation, but also may have jeopardized American lives and our national interests. The photo reconnaissance, highly sensitive electronic eavesdropping, and narrative texts provided to Saddam may not only have helped him in Iraq's war against Iran, but also in the recent Gulf War."
Despite the concerns about Gates’s role in politicizing U.S. intelligence and engaging in questionable operations, he was confirmed as CIA director with the help of his friend, Sen. David Boren, D-Oklahoma, who was then chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and is now another Obama adviser.
“David took it as a personal challenge to get me confirmed,” Gates wrote in his memoir, From the Shadows.
When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, Gates had hoped that his tenure at the CIA would be extended, but it wasn’t. Gates went into a period of political exile from Washington, eventually landing a job as president of Texas A&M with the help of former President George H.W. Bush.
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