The New Sec-Def: The Good And The Bad
Mostly positive reaction, it seems, to the choice of Robert Gates for Secretary of Defense. What negativity there is mostly focuses on question of his role in the Iran-Contra coverup. First, some good, from David Ignatius in the Washington Post:
Robert Gates will bring to the job the attentive style of a listener. He rose at the CIA in the 1980s by making himself indispensable to his boss, William Casey. He was the brightest Soviet analyst in the shop, so Casey soon appointed him deputy director overseeing his fellow analysts. I once waded through Gates’s graduate dissertation for his doctorate in Soviet studies at Georgetown. It was a work of solid, earnest scholarship — good, but not flashy. Rumsfeld might have described it as a long, hard slog. But it illustrates Gates’s best qualities: his intellectual seriousness, his professionalism, his lack of “side,” as the British say of good civil servants.
Gates represents the return of Bush 41 people and ideas to the Bush 43 administration. The elder Bush rescued Gates after he was rejected as CIA director in 1987 because of his role in the Iran-contra scandal, bringing him to the National Security Council staff and then appointing him CIA director in 1991. Gates is not a turfy person — he works well with others — a quality that Rumsfeld often lacked.
The new secretary will bring something else to the table, and it may be a crucial factor in the months ahead. He came back into the Bush administration’s spotlight because of his work as a member of the Iraq Study Group, headed by Bush 41’s secretary of state, James A. Baker III, and former representative Lee Hamilton. Gates embodies the group’s effort to find a bipartisan policy for Iraq. In that sense, he will go to the Pentagon with an invisible mission statement that can be summed up in two words: “exit strategy.” He won’t want to leave Iraq quickly or dangerously, but unlike Rumsfeld, he won’t fight the problem.
A little bad, from Isikoff and Hosenball of Newsweek:
A report produced by Lawrence Walsh, the independent counsel appointed to conduct a criminal investigation of the Iran-contra affair, criticized Gates for possible lack of candor related to what he knew about the Reagan-era scandal. According to the report, Gates consistently testified that he first learned in October 1986 that money from the sales of arms to Iran may have been diverted to anticommunist contra forces in Central America. Other evidence, however, suggested that Gates got a report on the affair from a senior CIA official several months earlier. Walsh eventually decided that there was not enough evidence to warrant the filing of any criminal case against Gates. “In the end, although Gates’s actions suggested an officer who was more interested in shielding his institution from criticism and in shifting the blame to the NSC [National Security Council] than in finding out the truth, there was insufficient evidence to charge Gates with a criminal endeavor to obstruct congressional investigations,” Walsh wrote in his report.
I would have preferred Sam Nunn or even Lieberman, but I’m reasonably happy with the choice. I’m just glad a change was finally made, and I hope it reinvigorates our efforts in Iraq…
The Isikoff & Hosenball paragraph is a smear. The man, Gates, was cleared of any wrongdoing given that he was not even indicted.
My larger concern is this: is he his own man and a man of action? We need a new perspective, a new way, and a passionate advocate to bring success to Iraq. Can Gates be that man?
very curious to see how they play this.
if the dems confirm him, he is as much their guy as he is the gop’s. if they don’t confirm him, we have no secretary of defense. without a secretary of defense, there will be no plan for Iraq, for a ‘lengthy’ period.
too many steves, there seems to be a big difference between having been cleared of an offense and not having sufficient evidence to charge. There is an implication, perhaps?
mtl, I heard Sen Feinstein say this would be a very difficult confirmation – and she was wearing her best stern expression.
It will be fascinating, but I’ll never recover from the loss of my beloved Rummy.
my question for the new sec:
‘can we win in Iraq?’
It’s not his answer that I care for, but the dem response to it.
Well I’m operating on the innocent until proven guilty principle so bringing up charges that were never brought and some vague notion of a “possible lack of candor” lead me to the smear charge.
Of course the ‘innocent ’til proven’ principle is what we expect. However, just think of how the drama queens at one of these hearings love to shape the innuendo. I think Sen. Feinstein frightened me.
As for the ‘can we win’ inquiry, there may be too many Dems with a vested interest in proving we cannot and these inquisitors may be asking for confirmation of a mistaken war and for the most direct route out.
It will indeed be interesting to see how Sen. Levin plays this confirmation, since he was the grand inquisitor during the Iran – Contra hearings, and literally eviscerated this guy.
I don’t think that the Dems will be too rough on Gates. After all, the longer they stall his confirmation, the longer Rumsfeld will be in the Pentagon.
I saw sam nunn the other day…on tv.
He may once have been an impressive figure, but he is too old now. The sec of defense has to come across as a fighter, or he will get steamrolled and ignored.
Lieberman is even now more important in the senate than he could be as secretary. Bush would lose if he lost lieberman as a ‘independent’ voice.