Iraqgate Scandal
Gates also was implicated in a secret operation to funnel military assistance to Iraq in the 1980s, as the Reagan administration played off Iran and Iraq battling each other in the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq War.
Middle Eastern witnesses alleged that Gates worked on the secret Iraqi initiative, which included Saddam Hussein's procurement of cluster bombs and precursor chemicals used to produce chemical weapons for the war against Iran.
Gates denied all the Iran-Iraq accusations in 1991, and Boren's Senate Intelligence Committee never pressed too hard to check them out.
However, four years later in early January 1995 Howard Teicher, one of Reagan's National Security Council officials, added more details about Gates's alleged role in the Iraq shipments.
In a sworn affidavit submitted in a Florida criminal case, Teicher stated that the covert arming of Iraq dated back to spring 1982 when Iran had gained the upper hand in the war, leading President Reagan to authorize a U.S. tilt toward Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
The effort to arm the Iraqis was "spearheaded" by CIA Director Casey and involved his deputy Gates, according to Teicher's affidavit.
"The CIA, including both CIA Director Casey and Deputy Director Gates, knew of, approved of, and assisted in the sale of non-U.S. origin military weapons, ammunition and vehicles to Iraq," Teicher wrote.
Ironically, this same pro-Iraq initiative involved Donald Rumsfeld, whom Gates replaced as Defense Secretary in 2006. In the 1980s, Rumsfeld was Reagan's special emissary to the Middle East. An infamous photograph from 1983 shows a smiling Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein.
Teicher described Gates's role as far more substantive than Rumsfeld's. "Under CIA Director Casey and Deputy Director Gates, the CIA authorized, approved and assisted [Chilean arms dealer Carlos] Cardoen in the manufacture and sale of cluster bombs and other munitions to Iraq," Teicher wrote.
However, like the Russian report, the Teicher affidavit was never seriously examined or explained.
After Teicher submitted it to a federal court in Miami, the affidavit was classified a state secret and Teicher's credibility was attacked by Clinton administration prosecutors who saw Teicher's account as disruptive to their prosecution of a private company, Teledyne Industries, and one of its salesmen, Ed Johnson.
Gates benefited, too, from Official Washington's boredom with and even hostility toward Reagan-Bush-41-era scandals.
Instead, the polite and personable Gates continued to enjoy influential protectors on both sides of the aisle, from Republicans around George H.W. Bush to Democrats like David Boren and Lee Hamilton.
Plus, some of Gates's CIA protà ©gà ©s, such as former Deputy Director John McLaughlin, were liked by Democrats as well as Republicans. (McLaughlin was a member of Obama's intelligence advisory group during Campaign 2008.)
A Comeback
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