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Comments Upon
'The Cheney-Gates Cabal' By Ray McGovern
- From: JJR
Subject: The Baker-Gates Cabal?
Date: 11-11-2005
Again, I want to thank Ray for granting permission to reprint this article. It was an important piece. The most important point, for me, was the following passage:
An Intelligence 'Fixer'
Those of us who had a front-row seat to watch Gates’ handling of substantive intelligence can hardly forget the manner in which he cooked it to the recipe of whomever he reported to. A protégé of William Casey, President Ronald Reagan’s CIA director, Gates learned well from his mentor.
Bill Casey, Bob Gates, George Tenet: an unbroken string of either weak or politically motivated DCIs who severed up garbage intelligence assessments meant to curry favor with their political masters at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Might we take that historical timeline backward? The term of William Colby as DCI was one that hugely alarmed Presidential imperialists such as Nixon / Kissenger, et al. Colby was a non-political professional intelligence officer. He became DCI in 1973 and was suspected by the Nixon White House of leaking information to the press during the Watergate Investigation. That charge has never been substantiated. However, Colby did cooperate with Congressional investigations over the past misdeeds with its CIA's Directorate of Operations.
DCI James R. Schlesinger had commissioned reports on past CIA crimes; the reports, known as "The Family Jewels", were kept close to the Agency's chest until Seymour Hersh broke the news in an article, in the New York Times, that the CIA had assassinated foreign leaders, and had kept files on some seven thousand American citizens involved in the peace movement (Operation CHAOS). Congress investigated the CIA in the Senate via the Church committee, named after its chairman, Frank Church (D-Idaho), and in the House of Representatives via the Pike committee, named after its chairman Otis Pike (D-N.Y.); and these investigations provoked further politically embarrassing disclosures. Around Christmas of 1974–5, Congress struck another blow for governmental oversight when they blocked covert military intervention in the civil war in Angola. Link.
It was DCI Colby who turned over "The Family Jewels" to Congress. For this, President Gerald Ford replaced Colby with George H.W. Bush, a politician with no intelligence experience who could be trusted to stick to the agenda set by the White House. I find it funny that CIA headquarters in Langley is named after the first political DCI.
I agree with Ray's conclusion that Bob Gates is highly unlikely to be an agent for change in US foreign policy. He is a man who does what he is told. But who is Gates' master? I propose it is a Bush but not the current president. It was George H.W. Bush who pushed Gates' career along at CIA (Reagan was a figure-head during his nominal presidency). Gates is currently Dean of the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. That school is named after H.W. Bush, not junior. Gates served on the Iraq Study Group populated by old hands from the H.W. Bush administration.
My take on the situation is this: H.W. Bush has gotten to his son to break the hold the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal had over him. The father and his advisors were never a fan of the Iraq War and wish for as graceful of a retreat as can be engineered. Rumsfeld has been thrown under the bus to take blame for the failure. Can Cheney be for behind? One commentator has gone so far as to suggest:
According to Washington insiders, there are moves afoot to dump Vice President Dick Cheney and replace him with either John McCain or Rudolph Giuliani prior to the 2008 presidential election. Whoever succeeds Cheney will be able to campaign for the presidency with the perks that come with being an incumbent Vice President.
Since the increasingly-besieged Cheney has signaled he has no intention of voluntarily stepping down, the strategy by the Bush camp may be to force him out by presenting evidence before Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald that it was Cheney who was responsible for the compromise of CIA non-proliferation covert officer Valerie Plame Wilson and her Brewster Jennings & Associates cover firm. Link.
It seems far fetched but one point from the Fitzgerald investigation puzzles me (well, many do, but only one that relates to this topic): why has Fitzgerald not formally closed his investigation and turned all his focus to the trial of Libby? In almost all cases, conspiracy investigations work from the bottom up--Libby to Rove to ????. Libby was indicted. Rove was supposedly cleared. If the investigation is still open, who above Rove is the subject of said investigation? The only name connected to the investigation who fits this description is the Vice President of the United States.
Addendum 1: Father knows best. 'W' finally listening?, USAToday, Friday, November 10, 2006.
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