Robert Gates wrong in virtually all his dire predictions

* Debka:

"Leonid Nevzlin, former CEO of the oil giant and current chairman of the Diaspora Museum in Tel Aviv, says the former Russian spy came to Israel with classified documents on Yukos which may be damaging to Russian leaders. Nevzliln estimates that Litvinenko’s death was connected with this information, which he has handed to London police investigators of the murder.

DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources add that the Russian ex-spy is believed to have been a double agent, who sold trade secrets to different parties in and outside Russia, among them some of the Russian oligarchs living in exile in the West. Livinenko served as a colonel in a Russian Federal Security Services unit which investigated and carried out special operations against businessmen. "

* Toronto Sun reviews Lance's new book.

* parry:

But the Nicaragua-bombing memo alone should give the senators pause. One could readily imagine Gates playing into George W. Bush’s predilections on Iraq by presenting similar dichotomies between doing the wise but “politically unacceptable” thing by escalating the violence or “putting our heads in the sand” to negotiate some cowardly compromise.

What’s less clear is whether Gates actually believed his hard-line rhetoric in 1984 or was just parroting what he thought his boss wanted to hear.
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So, is Gates a closet ideologue who shares his real views only with like-minded individuals like Casey or is he a skilled apple-polisher who curries favor with those above him by leaving them little presents like the Nicaragua-bombing memo for Casey.

Another striking aspect of the Nicaragua memo is that it proves what many Gates critics have alleged over the years – that he tossed aside the principles of objective analysis to position himself as a political/policy advocate.

Gates did that in the 1984 memo even while serving as the official responsible for protecting the integrity of the intelligence product. But Gates not only crossed the red line against entering the world of policy recommendations, he turned out to be wrong in virtually all his dire predictions.