Skeptics dog CIA choice

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Jan 6, 1997 | by Susan Crabtree

The presidents selection of National Security Adviser Anthony Lake to direct the CIA has provoked criticism from Republicans who worry that Clinton has nominated a careful sycophant instead of the tough-minded reformer needed to run the agency in the wake of the Cold War.

John Deutch, the outgoing director, may have headed the agency during a wave of missteps and embarrassments, but he was regarded as having an independent spirit that Republicans both appreciated and respected. Appearing on CNN, Republican Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico called the nomination an "in-house coup" against Deutch and said Lake would face "tough sailing" in confirmation hearings.

Some of the concern about Lake centers on his mild-mannered, low-key academic style and lack of agency experience, especially considering that Clinton's first CIA director, James Woolsey, was elbowed out after reports that Clinton was disgruntled because Woolsey was more loyal to the agency than to the administration.

Lawrence Eagleburger, who ran the State Department under George Bush, has criticized the entire slate of second-term national-security appointments for lack of foreign-policy vision. He says the CIA is in dire straits and that he's unsure that "Tony Lake is strong enough" to provide the necessary bullwork for reform.

Woolsey joined CNN commentators in expressing concern about Lakes ability to meet CIA challenges - specifically, to make the transition from presidents confidante to sounding board for the views of profesionals in the intelligence community. "Being director of central intelligence is a skunk-at-the-garden-party job. You're always telling people things they don't want to hear - sometimes that their policies aren't working," Woolsey says, adding that he thinks it would be difficult for Lake to remain objective.

At a December hearing, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania says he has reservations about Lake because of the way the White House handled the Iranian arms sales to Bosnia. The administration gave a tacit green light to the arms shipments through Croatia and into Bosnia in April 1994 that violated a U.N. embargo. According to a report released just after the election, Lake and Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott played leading roles in crafting the U.S. policy to look the other way - a breach of long-standing U.S. policy to isolate Iran. Specter says he may oppose Lakes confirmation if the current national security adviser fails to recant and admit that he fumbled when he withheld this information from Congress.

The conservative Center for Strategic Policy, headed by former Reagan national-security specialist Frank Gaffney Jr., issued a brief expressing dismay at Lakes denial on Meet the Press that there was conclusive evidence that Alger Hiss was a Soviet spy, a matter firmly put to rest by the Venona intercepts. The Gaffney report also criticized Lake's blase comments upon learning that CIA employee Harold Nicholson was a mole spying for Russia. Gaffney said, "The Russians can only be pleased that the U.S. national security adviser seems so relaxed with regard to Kremlin efforts to run hostile intelligence operations in the United States."

Roger Robinson, who served the National Security Council under Reagan and now helps direct the Center for Security Policy, says he was particularly troubled by the Hiss statement. "This kind of misguided pandering to the liberal establishment is of concern," he says. "Perhaps, for example, he finds the evidence against Ethel and Julius Rosenberg equally inconclusive," Robinson worries about what he calls "fuzzy thinking" because it is taking place against a backdrop of "arguably more robust Russian espionage activities" in the United States, both military and industrial, than even during the Soviet era.

For many Republicans, distrust of Lake goes back to 1970, when he resigned as an aide to Richard Nixon's secretary of state to protest the U.S. military interdiction of Communist supply routes through Cambodia during the Vietnam War. But international policy analyst Joshua Moravchik, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, says, "There is a fair amount of evidence that his views have evolved and changed, and therefore people shouldn't be too hung up on them."

Lake continued his Washington career in the State Department planning office under President Carter. During the Reagan years, he taught at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, only to be plucked from academia by Clinton to become national security adviser.

"I think the president sees a more pliable partner" in Lake, says Robinson. "A go-along-to-get-along" sort. If Lake accepts the challenges to realign the CIA, Robinson says he worries that it will be reform a la Sen. Frank Church - maybe not as draconian, but a style that emphasizes greater disclosure rather than cultivation of a stronger human-intelligence capability of the type the United States will require with 20 countries acquiring ballistic-weapons systems before the dawn of the 21st century.