"Put more crudely, the 63-year-old (Robert) Gates could become the target of pressure or even blackmail unless some of the troubling questions about his past are answered conclusively, not just cosmetically.that would be problematic. (update: Starroute in the comments wonders whether Gates and/or Boren are gay, and therefore subject to that sort of blackmail)
In the 1980s and 1990s, Gates benefited from half-hearted probes by the U.S. Congress and the Executive Branch into these mysteries. The investigators – some of whom were Gates’s friends – acted as if their goal was more to sweep incriminating evidence under the rug than to expose the facts to public scrutiny.
While giving Gates another pass might work for Official Washington, which always has had a soft spot for the polite mild-mannered Gates, it won’t solve the potential for a problem if other countries have incriminating evidence about him. So, before the U.S. Senate waves Gates’s through – as happened in 1991 when he was confirmed as CIA director – it would make sense to resolve two issues in particular:--Did Gates participate in secret and possibly illegal contacts with Iranian leaders from the 1980 election campaign through the Iran-Contra scandal of 1986?Gates has denied allegations linking him to these operations, but evidence that has emerged since 1991 has buttressed claims about Gates’s involvement. Other new documents, such as papers recovered from Iraqi government files after the U.S. invasion in 2003, also could shed light on the mysteries.
--Did Gates oversee a clandestine pipeline of weapons and other military equipment to Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq starting in 1982?
[]
As difficult as it might be for Congress to run down some of these Iran-Iraq leads before voting on Gates’s nomination to replace Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary, the risks to the United States would be much greater if hard evidence surfaces later showing that Gates did participate in these dubious schemes.
It could even be worse if U.S. adversaries are in a position to hold undisclosed evidence of Gates’s guilt over the Defense Secretary’s head."
* david corn:
"At the breakfast meeting with journalists, (harry) Reid also said:* The Senate intelligence committee will finish its so-called Phase II inquiry, which is supposed to evaluate how the Bush administration used the prewar intelligence to garner public support for the invasion of Iraq. A year ago, Reid closed down the Senate to protest the Republican delay in producing this report. "That will be completed now," he said. "It may not help us in the future, but it will give us the historical background of what got us into the war." He added, "We're going to get the answers to that out....We have been jerked around....And we're not going to take it anymore.""
4 comments:
Seeing the words "Gates" and "blackmail" in the same caption reminded me of stuff I was running into recently when trying to find out more about those 1987 and 1991 hearings. First something from 1991 that showed up via Google Groups but was originally from the Washington Post:
An important factor in Gates' smooth sailing is apparently what is described as a "close relationship" with the Senate committee's head, David Boren (D-OK), who intervened on Gates' behalf during the 1987 Iran-contra investigation, at one point causing Senate lawyers to be "outraged." [WP 9/15/91]
David Boren -- the guy who was having breakfast with George Tenet on the morning of 9/11 -- shows up in many questionable contexts and seems to have deep, deep CIA ties. But what particularly struck me when I checked him out was the many accounts like this one:
David Boren left the Senate abruptly in 1994, which was a surprising move for the man who had moved in the upper levels of political power for decades and who had voiced Presidential ambitions. What may have precipitated this move was the issue of Boren’s homosexuality, which had been rumored throughout his career and might have become an issue in Boren’s reelection campaign. Boren’s former Oxford roommate, W. Scott Thompson, had published a book in 1994, The Price of Achievement, detailing Boren’s homosexuality. This issue had been brought to the forefront before, including the time that Boren had to fly back to Oklahoma from D.C. to swear on a Holy Bible that he was not gay, as demonstrated on the front page of the Daily Oklahoman.
What is ominous about Boren’s deceptiveness about his sexual orientation is that his proclivity may have put him into a compromising situation, a position in which leverage could be applied to him for the purposes of control and cooperation. Al Martin’s The Conspirators alleges that David Boren was the “victim” of a homosexual blackmail ring run by the CIA, in which compromising pictures of Boren and a seventeen year-old boy were obtained during a trade mission trip in 1984. For a man with political ambitions who depended on the votes of the buckle of the Bible Belt, Boren was totally under the power of the intelligence community from that day forward.
Well, Al Martin is far from the most reliable source -- but other accounts suggest the same thing, though with fewer specifics. And the Boren story is only one of many I've seen involving CIA blackmail in the late 70's/early 80's, some homosexual and others involving hookers and kinky situations, so I'm inclined to believe it.
The questions that inevitably come to mind are (1) what was the nature of that "close relationship" between Gates and Boren and (2) is Parry hinting at something more acutely blackmailable about Gates than merely the old stories of the October Surprise, Iraqgate, and Iran-Contra?
Inquiring minds want to know.
thnx strroute. post updated.
parry's article did have an unusual undertone - yuo may be onto something that parry is alluding to the Boren thing...
thnx «—U®Anu§—» - fp'd
Thanks kindly, Luke. David Boren was a Rhodes scholar and has been extremely well thought of all his life, a true voice of reason; so, this business with Gates is really puzzling. I never heard anyone say they knew someone who could absolutely testify that Boren or his wife were homosexuals, but the consensus is that both are and we couldn't be happier about it.
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