Most importantly, it allowed an incomplete, even false history to be written about the Reagan-Bush-I era, glossing over many of the worst mistakes. The bogus history denied the American people the knowledge needed to assess how relationships had evolved between the United States and Middle East leaders, including Iraq's Saddam Hussein, the Saudi royal family and the Iranian mullahs.
Though the Middle East crises had receded by the time Clinton took office in 1993, the troubles had not gone away and were sure to worsen again. When that time came, the American people would have a sanitized version of how the country got where it was.
Even government officials responsible for Middle East policies would have only a partial history of how these entangling alliances crisscrossed through the deals and betrayals of the prior two decades.
The Democratic retreat from the investigative battles in 1993 would have another profound effect on the future of American politics.
By letting George H.W. Bush leave the White House with his reputation intact and even helping him fend off accusations of serious wrongdoing the Democrats unwittingly cleared the way for a restoration of the Bush political dynasty eight years later.
If investigators had dug out the full truth about alleged secret operations involving George H.W. Bush, the family's reputation would have been badly tarnished, if not destroyed.
Since that reputation served as the foundation for George W. Bush's political career, it's unlikely that he ever would have gained the momentum to propel him to the Republican presidential nomination, let alone to the White House in Election 2000.
Now, eight years later with Barack Obama's victory and with solid Democratic majorities again in the House and Senate the Democrats are back to a spot very similar to where they were at the start of Bill Clinton's presidency.
They have all the power they need to initiate serious investigations into the widespread criminality of George W. Bush's presidency, from torture and other war crimes to war profiteering and other lucrative influence peddling.
But President-elect Obama is receiving nearly the identical advice that greeted Bill Clinton after his election 16 years ago: In the name of bipartisanship, let bygones be bygones.
--The Danger of Keeping Robert Gates, Nov. 13, 2008
Press reports say Barack Obama may retain George W. Bush's Defense Secretary Robert Gates as a gesture to war-time continuity, bipartisanship and respect for the Washington insider community, which has embraced Gates as something of a new Wise Man.
However, if Obama does keep Gates on, the new President will be employing someone who embodies many of the worst elements of U.S. national security policy over the past three decades, including responsibility for what Obama himself has fingered as a chief concern, "politicized intelligence."
During a campaign interview with the Washington Post, Obama said, "I have been troubled by " the politicization of intelligence in this administration." But it was Gates as a senior CIA official in the 1980s who broke the back of the CIA analytical division's commitment to objective intelligence.
In a recent book, Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA, former CIA analyst Melvin A. Goodman identifies Gates as the chief action officer for the Reagan administration's drive to tailor intelligence reporting to White House political desires. A top "Kremlinologist," Goodman describes how Gates reversed a CIA tradition of delivering tough-minded intelligence reports with "the bark on."
That ethos began to erode in 1973 with President Richard Nixon's appointment of James Schlesinger as CIA director and Gerald Ford's choice of George H.W. Bush in 1976 but the principle of objectivity wasn't swept away until 1981 when Ronald Reagan put in his campaign chief, William Casey, as CIA director.
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