It's "spooky" man - Obama keeps spy as Defense Secretary

[David Guyatt]

Another awful Obama cabinet choice.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/deadline...-democrats

Obama puts faith in Bush's defence secretary
He may have promised change but Barack Obama has chosen to retain Robert Gates

Robert Gates, US defence secretary, speaks during a promotion ceremony at the Pentagon on Friday. Photograph: Susan Walsh/AP

It may have been the economic crisis that delivered the election to Barack Obama but his consistent opposition to the war in Iraq was also a key plank in his campaign – first to be the Democratic nominee, and then for president.

So it might therefore be surprising that he has retained the services of a Bush appointee, Robert Gates, as defence secretary. What's more, Gates has publicly disagreed with Obama's commitment to a 16-month timetable for withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq.

The Washington Post says the appointment "would probably disappoint some on the left of the Democratic party, who would prefer a clear and sharp break with Bush-era policies".

Politico.com agrees "it could lead to criticism from his party's left wing that the lineup is more hawkish and less revolutionary than his supporters expected".

But it adds:

"The appointment has substantial advantages for Obama, who now can keep his pledge of drawing down troops in Iraq with the aid of an architect of the Bush administration's successful troop 'surge' strategy."

It is further evidence of Obama's commitment to bipartisanship. While Gates may be a Bush appointee, he does not have a Republican background and is one of the more respected members of the outgoing administration. He is credited with helping to revive the defence department after the highly controversial stewardship of Donald Rumsfeld, and with bringing about the improved situation in Iraq.

US News and World Report recently dubbed him one of America's best leaders, lauding his emphasis "of moving beyond simple brute force" - unusual for a military man.

CNN says the pros of appointing Gates include ensuring continuity and demonstrating Obama's self-confidence. It believes it could lead to policy conflicts: over the speed of the Iraq withdrawal and the space defence project, for example, and importantly could delay much-promised "change".

Is Obama simply being pragmatic in employing someone from the Bush administration with a shared affinity for "soft power"? Or is he rowing back - in the critical area of defence - from his message of change?

***

Gates official Bio:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/government/gates-bio.html

Robert M. Gates
Secretary of Defense
http://www.defenselink.mil
Dr. Robert M. Gates was sworn in on December 18, 2006, as the 22nd Secretary of Defense. Before entering his present post, Secretary Gates was the President of Texas A&M University, the nation’s seventh largest university. Prior to assuming the presidency of Texas A&M on August 1, 2002, he served as Interim Dean of the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M from 1999 to 2001.

Secretary Gates served as Director of Central Intelligence from 1991 until 1993. He is the only career officer in CIA’s history to rise from entry-level employee to Director. Secretary Gates served as Deputy Director of Central Intelligence from 1986 until 1989 and as Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser at the White House from January 20, 1989, until November 6, 1991, for President George H.W. Bush.

Secretary Gates joined the Central Intelligence Agency in 1966 and spent nearly 27 years as an intelligence professional, serving six presidents. During that period, he spent nearly nine years at the National Security Council, The White House, serving four presidents of both political parties.

Secretary Gates has been awarded the National Security Medal, the Presidential Citizens Medal, has twice received the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, and has three times received CIA’s highest award, the Distinguished Intelligence Medal.

He is the author of the memoir, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insiders Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War, published in 1996.

Until becoming Secretary of Defense, Dr. Gates served as Chairman of the Independent Trustees of The Fidelity Funds, the nation's largest mutual fund company, and on the board of directors of NACCO Industries, Inc., Brinker International, Inc. and Parker Drilling Company, Inc.

Dr. Gates has also served on the Board of Directors and Executive Committee of the American Council on Education, the Board of Directors of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, and the National Executive Board of the Boy Scouts of America. He has also been President of the National Eagle Scout Association.

A native of Kansas, Secretary Gates received his bachelor’s degree from the College of William and Mary, his master’s degree in history from Indiana University, and his doctorate in Russian and Soviet history from Georgetown University. Dr. Gates is 63, and he and his wife Becky have two adult children.

[David Guyatt]

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/112508.html

Obama, Ask the Kremlin about Gates

By Robert Parry
November 25, 2008
Nearly 16 years ago, during the last transition from a President Bush to a Democrat, Moscow made an extraordinary gesture to Washington: The Kremlin supplied a summary of its intelligence information about secret U.S.-Iranian contacts in the 1980s.

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The report was from a national security committee of the Russian Duma to Rep. Lee Hamilton, who had requested what might be in Moscow’s files as part of a task force investigation into whether the Reagan-Bush campaign in 1980 had interfered with President Jimmy Carter’s bid to free 52 American hostages then held in Iran.

The Russian report arrived late, via the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, showing up on Jan. 11, 1993, but the contents were stunning. The Russians reported that their intelligence revealed that long-rumored meetings between Republicans and Iranians in Europe during Campaign 1980 had indeed occurred.

But this information went against what Hamilton and other members of the task force had decided to conclude, that there had been no such contacts. Hamilton had already rebuffed advice from his chief counsel, Lawrence Barcella, that the investigation be extended a few months because of other late-arriving evidence of Republican guilt.

Instead, Hamilton had ordered the probe wrapped up with a conclusion of Republican innocence. The Russian report just represented another complication, especially since the task force’s debunking report had already gone to the printers and was set for release two days later, on Jan. 13, 1993.

So, the Russian report – like much of the other incriminating evidence – was kept secret, unceremoniously stuck into a cardboard box and filed away in a make-shift Capitol Hill storage room.

Barcella told me later that he envisioned this evidence undergoing the fate of the crated Ark in “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” lifted into a vast government warehouse in the closing scene. The Russian report, however, ended up in a less grand place, an abandoned Ladies Room off the Rayburn House Office Building's parking garage, where I discovered it in late 1994.

But the reason I'm mentioning this document now is that one of the Americans implicated by the Russian report was Robert Gates, who in 1980 was a junior CIA official, who had served on Carter’s National Security Council staff before returning to the CIA as executive assistant to CIA Director Stansfield Turner.

As translated by the U.S. Embassy, the Russian report stated, “R[obert] Gates, at that time a staffer of the National Security Council in the administration of Jimmy Carter, and former CIA Director George [H.W.] Bush also took part” in a meeting with Iranians in Paris in October 1980.

[For details on the October Surprise case, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege. For the text of the Russian report, click here. To view the actual U.S. embassy cable that includes the Russian report, click here.]

The Clinton Transition

When the Russian report arrived in Washington in early 1993, Gates was George H.W. Bush’s last CIA director, on his way out with the arrival of Bill Clinton’s team. Then, after years as president of Texas A&M, Gates reemerged onto the national stage when President George W. Bush named him Defense Secretary in late 2006.

Now, according to press reports, President-elect Barack Obama intends to keep Gates on as a gesture of bipartisanship and continuity.

Before that happens, however, Obama might want to finish the investigation that Lee Hamilton swept under the rug 16 years ago, at least ask the Kremlin what exactly its evidence is about Gates’s role in the Republican-Iranian contacts in 1980, the controversy known as the “October Surprise” case.

Gates has denied any role in the secret Republican-Iranian talks, and it is possible that the Russian intelligence isn’t any good. But with the Kremlin now signaling that it hopes for improved relations with the incoming Obama administration, Russian authorities might be willing to share whatever evidence they have.

Over the years, I have tried to get a fuller explanation of the Russian report without much success.

Indirectly, well-informed Russians assured me that the report to Hamilton was based on their own intelligence data and that the information was considered reliable, not simply picked up from press articles. These Russians also expressed shock at how their extraordinary sharing of intelligence information with a longtime enemy was so cavalierly disregarded in 1993.

However, my direct appeals to the Russian report’s authors were rebuffed. So it’s impossible for me to know how well-founded the Gates allegation is.

What is clear is that after Ronald Reagan took office and sent his campaign chief William Casey over to run the CIA in 1981, Gates’s career took off. Casey, who also was implicated in the October Surprise controversy, elevated Gates to be the assistant director for intelligence analysis and then to be deputy CIA director.

Later, Gates was linked to both the Iran-Contra scandal, which involved the trading of arms for hostages with Iran, and the Iraqgate controversy, the clandestine military support given to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein during his eight-year war with Iran.

The Iran-Contra connection cost Gates his first shot to become CIA director in 1987, but President George H.W. Bush gave him another chance in 1991. Gates was helped by friends on the Democratic side of the aisle, most notably Sen. David Boren, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, and Boren’s chief of staff, George Tenet.

In 1992-93, CIA Director Gates got another helping hand from Lee Hamilton regarding the October Surprise scandal, which Hamilton swept under a very lumpy rug. The Russian report was just the last of the bumps.

During Campaign 2008, Gates got lucky again when Boren and Hamilton emerged as senior foreign policy advisers to Obama. They are now reportedly part of the transition contingent urging the President-elect to retain their old friend as Pentagon chief.

According to news reports, Gates’s reappointment is expected after Thanksgiving. Before then, however, the Obama foreign policy transition team might want to ask what information exists in Moscow’s intelligence files.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.

[Steve McDonagh]

Hi,

Personally I think this was a smart move and just shows you how potentially irreversible the economy problem really is.

If I was taking the job of President, I would be looking at ways to minimize other disruptions from the get go. The last thing he needs is self made defense related problems hitting him between the eyes whilst he’s trying to sort the economy problem out. Needless to say if that happened it would not only be politically but potentially economically suicidal; either way it would cause him to lose any good will currently afforded him.

He’s a smart man, give him time.

Thanks - Steve

[David Guyatt]

Hi,

Personally I think this was a smart move and just shows you how potentially irreversible the economy problem really is.

If I was taking the job of President, I would be looking at ways to minimize other disruptions from the get go. The last thing he needs is self made defense related problems hitting him between the eyes whilst he’s trying to sort the economy problem out. Needless to say if that happened it would not only be politically but potentially economically suicidal; either way it would cause him to lose any good will currently afforded him.

He’s a smart man, give him time.

Thanks - Steve

However, if you were taking the job of President, hopefully you would have the courage and convictions to choose a bold new team uncontaminated by past illegalities and guilty of feather-bedding previous corrupt Administrations.

That is unless you were simply hired as a cute face with a nice warm voice and smiling eyes who's job specification was selling the same elite wallet-snatching activity to Americans that has been sold to them for decades past - albeit with different glittery gift paper wrapped around it.

What will happen as the years roll by, I'm afraid to say, will be be the slow and utter destruction of a nations enthusiasm that ushered Obama into office. This is spelled "b-e-t-r-a-y-a-l".

But there's no need to be alarmed.

It happens every time a new president is voted into office.

One day (but not anytime soon sadly) people will will awaken from their rock-a-bye slumber and see reality as it is - not as they want it to be.

[Dawn Meredith]

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/112508.html

Obama, Ask the Kremlin about Gates

By Robert Parry
November 25, 2008
Nearly 16 years ago, during the last transition from a President Bush to a Democrat, Moscow made an extraordinary gesture to Washington: The Kremlin supplied a summary of its intelligence information about secret U.S.-Iranian contacts in the 1980s.

Share this article
Bookmark
Digg
Email
Printer friendly

The report was from a national security committee of the Russian Duma to Rep. Lee Hamilton, who had requested what might be in Moscow’s files as part of a task force investigation into whether the Reagan-Bush campaign in 1980 had interfered with President Jimmy Carter’s bid to free 52 American hostages then held in Iran.

The Russian report arrived late, via the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, showing up on Jan. 11, 1993, but the contents were stunning. The Russians reported that their intelligence revealed that long-rumored meetings between Republicans and Iranians in Europe during Campaign 1980 had indeed occurred.

But this information went against what Hamilton and other members of the task force had decided to conclude, that there had been no such contacts. Hamilton had already rebuffed advice from his chief counsel, Lawrence Barcella, that the investigation be extended a few months because of other late-arriving evidence of Republican guilt.

Instead, Hamilton had ordered the probe wrapped up with a conclusion of Republican innocence. The Russian report just represented another complication, especially since the task force’s debunking report had already gone to the printers and was set for release two days later, on Jan. 13, 1993.

So, the Russian report – like much of the other incriminating evidence – was kept secret, unceremoniously stuck into a cardboard box and filed away in a make-shift Capitol Hill storage room.

Barcella told me later that he envisioned this evidence undergoing the fate of the crated Ark in “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” lifted into a vast government warehouse in the closing scene. The Russian report, however, ended up in a less grand place, an abandoned Ladies Room off the Rayburn House Office Building's parking garage, where I discovered it in late 1994.

But the reason I'm mentioning this document now is that one of the Americans implicated by the Russian report was Robert Gates, who in 1980 was a junior CIA official, who had served on Carter’s National Security Council staff before returning to the CIA as executive assistant to CIA Director Stansfield Turner.

As translated by the U.S. Embassy, the Russian report stated, “R[obert] Gates, at that time a staffer of the National Security Council in the administration of Jimmy Carter, and former CIA Director George [H.W.] Bush also took part” in a meeting with Iranians in Paris in October 1980.

[For details on the October Surprise case, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege. For the text of the Russian report, click here. To view the actual U.S. embassy cable that includes the Russian report, click here.]

The Clinton Transition

When the Russian report arrived in Washington in early 1993, Gates was George H.W. Bush’s last CIA director, on his way out with the arrival of Bill Clinton’s team. Then, after years as president of Texas A&M, Gates reemerged onto the national stage when President George W. Bush named him Defense Secretary in late 2006.

Now, according to press reports, President-elect Barack Obama intends to keep Gates on as a gesture of bipartisanship and continuity.

Before that happens, however, Obama might want to finish the investigation that Lee Hamilton swept under the rug 16 years ago, at least ask the Kremlin what exactly its evidence is about Gates’s role in the Republican-Iranian contacts in 1980, the controversy known as the “October Surprise” case.

Gates has denied any role in the secret Republican-Iranian talks, and it is possible that the Russian intelligence isn’t any good. But with the Kremlin now signaling that it hopes for improved relations with the incoming Obama administration, Russian authorities might be willing to share whatever evidence they have.

Over the years, I have tried to get a fuller explanation of the Russian report without much success.

Indirectly, well-informed Russians assured me that the report to Hamilton was based on their own intelligence data and that the information was considered reliable, not simply picked up from press articles. These Russians also expressed shock at how their extraordinary sharing of intelligence information with a longtime enemy was so cavalierly disregarded in 1993.

However, my direct appeals to the Russian report’s authors were rebuffed. So it’s impossible for me to know how well-founded the Gates allegation is.

What is clear is that after Ronald Reagan took office and sent his campaign chief William Casey over to run the CIA in 1981, Gates’s career took off. Casey, who also was implicated in the October Surprise controversy, elevated Gates to be the assistant director for intelligence analysis and then to be deputy CIA director.

Later, Gates was linked to both the Iran-Contra scandal, which involved the trading of arms for hostages with Iran, and the Iraqgate controversy, the clandestine military support given to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein during his eight-year war with Iran.

The Iran-Contra connection cost Gates his first shot to become CIA director in 1987, but President George H.W. Bush gave him another chance in 1991. Gates was helped by friends on the Democratic side of the aisle, most notably Sen. David Boren, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, and Boren’s chief of staff, George Tenet.

In 1992-93, CIA Director Gates got another helping hand from Lee Hamilton regarding the October Surprise scandal, which Hamilton swept under a very lumpy rug. The Russian report was just the last of the bumps.

During Campaign 2008, Gates got lucky again when Boren and Hamilton emerged as senior foreign policy advisers to Obama. They are now reportedly part of the transition contingent urging the President-elect to retain their old friend as Pentagon chief.

According to news reports, Gates’s reappointment is expected after Thanksgiving. Before then, however, the Obama foreign policy transition team might want to ask what information exists in Moscow’s intelligence files.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.

Obama should have a chat with Jimmy Carter. (re October Surprise) This is MOST distressing news. I was very alarmed when I heard he was keeping Gates and now after reading this stuff....shit Obama has some serious research to do. Or else he's not really picking his team but his handlers are.
Dawn

[David Guyatt]

More like he is being told who his team will be by his sponsors I would say Dawn.

And it's the same people behind Obama's election as they were behind Jimmy Carter's appointment to office -- the Trilats, the sassy sisters of the ever so slightly right of Atilla-the-Hun, the Bilderberg Group - of which the below speculative essay about their founding monster, er Chairman, the late SS spy and dashing royal Princey, Bernhard of the Netherlands.

Here.