Mr. Gates… and his ties to Bin Laden
As mentioned in this 1998 story, it was the exagerated analysis of intelligence provided by Robert Gates that led us to arm Afghanistan fighters (thus creating Osama Bin Laden and Al Queda) so that they coud combat the Soviet Union.
The CIA, ever mindful of the need to justify its “mission,” had conclusive evidence by the mid-1980s of the deepening crisis of infrastructure within the Soviet Union. The CIA, as its deputy director Robert Gates acknowledged under congressional questioning in 1992, had decided to keep that evidence from President Reagan and his top advisors and instead continued to grossly exaggerate Soviet military and technological capabilities in its annual “Soviet Military Power” report right up to 1990.
Given that context, a decision was made to provide America’s potential enemies with the arms, money - and most importantly - the knowledge of how to run a war of attrition violent and well-organized enough to humble a superpower.
Late in the 80’s, the guy who lied about the strength of the Soviet Union and helped create Al Queda was deeply involved in the Iran Contra scandal:
Gates was investigated during the late 1980s and 1990s by independent counsel Lawrence Walsh over whether Gates had told the truth about the Iran-contra affair, which occurred during his tenure as deputy to Ronald Reagan’s CIA director, William Casey. Questions about Gates’s knowledge of secret arms sales to Iran—and the diversion of proceeds to support the Nicaraguan contras—caused Gates to withdraw his nomination to succeed Casey as CIA director in 1987.
Ray McGovern, a CIA analyst from 1963 to 1990, is on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. According to him:
Gates is the one most responsible for institutionalizing the politicization of intelligence analysis by setting the example and promoting malleable managers more interested in career advancement than the ethos of speaking truth to power.
So now the Bush Administration has decided that the best replacement for Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld is a man who is a known liar, and whose legacy is the politicization of intelligence. As if the US has not suffered enough but such politicization of intelligence which led us into the Iraq war - now we have the guy who refined the process.
That decision is going to come home to roost.
Interestingly, the ties to the Bin Laden family run deep. On September 11, 2001, George HW Bush and the Carlyle Group were meeting in Washington. What was “41″ doing that fateful morning?
On 11 September, while Al-Qaeda’s planes slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the Carlyle Group hosted a conference at a Washington hotel. Among the guests of honour was a valued investor: Shafig bin Laden, brother to Osama.