Gatesgate

National Review, June 10, 1991

PRESIDENT BUSH has named Robert Gates, currently his deputy for National Security Affairs, to be his new Director of Central Intelligence. While the nominee is expected to be confirmed in the end, opponents are expected to raise a substantial fuss about Gates's involvement (when he was William Casey's deputy director at CIA) in the Iran-Contra affair.

Of senior policy-making figures in the Bush Administration, Gates has the most sober and cold-eyed vision of the Soviet Union. In October 1989, he attempted to give a speech outlining a skeptical vision of the Gorbachev reform program; his draft argued that the profound systemic inadequacies of the Soviet economy and political structure made it highly unlikely that Gorbachev's half-measures would succeed. Secretary of State Baker saw the text and blocked its delivery. (Gates's text circulated thereafter in samizdat, like a, Solzhenitsyn essay before glasnost.) Needless to say, Gates's analysis has been borne out. The Administration, having suffered liberal criticism for the first ten months of its term for its slowness to embrace Gorbachev, went ahead and did so just as the rest of the country was beginning to feel a massive disillusionment with the Great Man's performance.

While the Administration has, ever since then, found it difficult to break away from its seeming commitment to Gorbachev's personal fortunes, Gates has been a consistent voice of caution in the inner councils. He did not change his gloomy assessment of Soviet reforms, reiterating it as recently as May 7 in a speech in Vancouver. He has been pushing the Administration to reach out to others in the USSR whose claims to be forces of reform were beginning to outshine Gorbachev's-in particular the leaders of the Republics, including Boris Yeltsin. No wonder Gorbachev dislikes Gates intensely.

The CIA faces many challenges (see page 31). It will undergo wrenching budget cuts and the need to redefine its role in the post-cold-war world. It will confront congressional schemes to reorganize it and even (if Senator Moynihan is to be taken seriously) to abolish it. The Noriega trial will be a source of embarrassment. A new book on James Angleton, heavily influenced by his detractors, will be a source of another kind of pressure. A strong hand and clear vision will be needed to meet such challenges.

Barring the unlikely discovery of some smoking gun, Gates's "role" in the Iran-Contra business seems of negligible importance. There is nothing substantial in the accusations currently made against him: that he knew more of Mr. Casey's doings than he has let on, or that he should have been quicker to find out, or to blow the whistle, etc. His was a peripheral, if not trivial, involvement.

The die-hards desperate to keep Iran-Contra alive-and those who reject Gates's illusion-free view of the Soviet crisis-should not be permitted to block this badly needed appointment.