- The nomination of Robert Gates to be Secretary of Defense
must be rejected. Gates is deeply implicated in three decades of crimes
by the intelligence community. There is no reason to think he intends to
begin the necessary rapid departure of US forces from Iraq. His nomination
by Bush can only be read as a deliberate provocation directed against the
new Democratic Congress. Will the Democrats fight back, or will they capitulate?
The American people are watching the Democratic Senators carefully, and
they are appalled by the self-congratulatory and clubby narcissism of the
Senate at a time when US forces are facing encirclement and decimation
in Iraq and Afghanistan. . Senators must not only vote against Gates; they
must stop the confirmation process with a filibuster. A look at Gates'
sordid record shows why.
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- Robert Gates was an integral part of the gun-running,
drug-running, and death squad murders lumped under the heading of the Iran-Contra
scandal. Gates started in Iran-contra as a stooge of William Casey, and
continued under Bush the elder.
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- When Gates was nominated by Reagan to be head of the
CIA in 1987, his role in Iran-contra crimes was already so filthy and so
blatant that he was forced to drop out of contention under questioning.
In doing this, Gates was seeking to defend his new master, George H.W.
Bush, who at that time was preparing a presidential bid for 1988. The elder
Bush was the czar of all Reagan-Bush covert operations, including Iran-contra.
Gates fell on his sword to avoid revelations which would have doomed the
candidacy of Bush the elder. Payback for Gates came in June 1991, when
he was nominated once again to be head of the CIA, this time by Bush the
elder. Sam Nunn and some others posed embarrassing questions, but this
time the cover-up of Gates' Iran-contra role was supervised by Sen. David
Boren of the Bush Skull & Bones clique. The Democrats, intimated by
the elder Bush's apparent victory in the first Gulf war, rolled over. If
Gates was too dirty to even get to a vote in committee in 1987, how can
he be acceptable today? If Democratic Senators like Levin and Biden opposed
Gates in 1991, how can they find him acceptable for a much more important
post at a time of far greater crisis?
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- Gates' resume is marked by a total absence of independent
and competent judgment. His pedigree is rather that of a stooge who serves
powerful masters. The first was Reagan's CIA Director William Casey, the
kingpin of Iran-contra. The second was George H.W. Bush, who took over
that role from Casey. Gates appears as a Bush family retainer, as when
he was tapped by the family in 1999 to become Dean of the George
Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M
University. Gates is a secret government toady, not the autonomous figure
of integrity required to terminate US involvement in Bush's catstrophic
Iraq adventure.
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- The Bush regime has become infamous for fixing the facts
and the intelligence to suit the pre-determined policy of aggression and
adventurism. As Pentagon chief, Gates would control the majority of the
US intelligence budget. His track record promises nothing but more faked
intelligence. In September 1991, Time Magazine cited widespread reports
that Gates "cooked the books" while he was at the CIA to support
the political demands of the Reagan and Bush regimes. A New York Times
editorial of November 4, 1991 concluded that "charges that Mr. Gates
slanted intelligence assessments, leaving Congress in the dark and more
amenable to administration policy, stand unrefuted." George Shultz
reports in his memoirs that he "felt that Gates was giving me an idealized
picture of what was an altogether different reality," and complained
to Gates on January 5, 1987, "I don't have any confidence in the intelligence
community I feel you try to manipulate me. So you have a very dissatisfied
customer. If this were a business, I'd find myself another supplier."
The Senate would be well advised to find itself another supplier today.
Will Gates resist the new attacks on Iran, Syria. North Korea, demanded
by Cheney and the neocons? His assurances in this regard are worthless.
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- In the final report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra
Matters, Lawrence Walsh left little doubt that he believed Gates had given
perjured testimony during that investigation. But Walsh concluded that
the matters involved were so complicated that it would be very difficult
to prove them before a jury. For this reason and for no other, Gates did
not face criminal charges for perjury.
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- Most damning of all is the fact that Gates was one of
the founders of al Qaeda, the CIA's Arab Legion which was assembled to
attack the Soviets in Afghanistan. Gates is thus part of the infrastructure
that produced the patsies of 9/11:
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- According to former CIA Director Robert Gates's memoir
From the Shadows, the big expansion of the US covert operation in Afghanistan
began in 1984. During this year, "the size of the CIA's covert program
to help the Mujaheddin increased several times over," reaching a level
of about $500 million in US and Saudi payments funneled through the Zia
regime in Pakistan. As Gates recalled, "it was during this period
[1985] that we began to learn of a significant increase in the number of
Arab nationals from other countries who had traveled to Afghanistan to
fight in the Holy War against the Soviets. They came from Syria, Iraq,
Algeria, and elsewhere, and most fought with the Islamic fundamentalist
Muj groups, particularly that headed by Abdul Resaul Sayyaf. We examined
ways to increase their participation, perhaps in the form of some sort
of 'international brigade,' but nothing came of it. Years later, these
fundamentalist fighters trained by the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan would
begin to show up around the world, from the Middle East to New York City,
still fighting their Holy War only now including the United States
among their enemies. Our mission was to push the Soviets out of Afghanistan.
We expected a post-Soviet Afghanistan to be ugly, but never considered
that it would become a haven for terrorists operating worldwide."
(Gates 349) But the international brigade Gates talked about was in fact
created as the group now known as al Qaeda. (Tarpley, 9/11 Synthetic
Terror, pp.139-140 )
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- This is the same al Qaeda which provided the troupe of
patsies, psychotics, and double agents (bin Laden, Atta, Moussaoui, etc.)
which were used to pin the 9/11 attacks on Arabs and Moslems instead
of the US bankers' rogue network which actually carried out 9/11 for geopolitical
reasons. Gates is up to his ears in the terror apparatus of this rogue
network, the September criminals who created 9/11.
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- There can be no question of approving such a candidate.
Even the Senate's willingness to hold hearings for so compromised a figure
amounts to an obscene farce. In the recent election, Democrats campaigned
against the rubber-stamp Republican Congress. These same Democrats dare
not rubber stamp the Gates nomination now. In particular, Democratic presidential
candidates in the Senate are reminded that if they fail to filibuster Gates,
the aroused anti-war base of the Democratic Party will demand accountability
on the campaign trail. We do not want bi-partisan sellouts, but rather
a real opposition to the Bush regime and its crimes. Above all, we want
9/11 truth as the essential precondition for restoring lawful government.
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- Webster G. Tarpley
- Washington DC
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