Robert Gates faces a couple of key questions about his past which reflect directly on his fitness or lack thereof to be Secretary of Defense.
In an article on Gates for the Council on Foreign Relations, Robert Gates and a 'Fresh Perspective' 11/09/06, Robert McMahon provides a number of current links on Gates and reports:
Gary G. Sick, a former National Security Council expert on Iran who applauds Gates’ choice to lead the Pentagon, says Gates was aware of the arms deals to Iran aimed at helping the Contras. "He made it clear that he was aware of it, though there was some dispute about when he learned about it," Sick tells CFR.org’s Bernard Gwertzman. Gates rose through the ranks of the CIA as a Soviet analyst but has been criticized as being incapable of speaking "truth to power" during the Reagan administration and having exaggerated some of the threats (NYT) posed by the Soviet Union at the time.
The one attribute beyond doubt is Gates' willingness to give his political superiors what they want. What is there to be loyal about? Is it possible that the appointment was driven by a desire to keep the lid on the evidence in the Pentagon as the Democrats hold hearings on the war in Iraq, detainee treatment at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, and the global war on terrorism? Questions such as these will arise during the confirmation hearings, but other questions will be asked then as well.
Gates will be asked how he will treat the reports he receives from the intelligence community. His past record isn't reassuring. According to his co-workers at the CIA during the Reagan administration, who testified at Gates' confirmation hearings as director of the CIA in the first Bush administration, Gates ignored evidence developed by analysts and American agents that contradicted the view of his boss, Director William J. Casey, about the gravity of the threat posed by the Soviet Union. Other CIA colleagues charged that Gates supported the White House policy of selling weapons to Iran to fund the Contras, a CIA-supported anti-communist guerrilla operation in Nicaragua, despite a congressional ban on U.S. aid to the rebels. Gates denied the charges, but doubts lingered and will emerge again during his confirmation hearings.
Haley also reminds that Bush and the Republicans are probably hoping that the Democrats will confirm Gates with little controversy as a gesture of national unity. Not that Bush and the Republicans have cared a flying fig about national unity when it comes to attacking Democrats.
It would be a big mistake for the Democrats to let Gates' nomination sail through without tough examination. They also need to use the confirmation hearings to raise issues about the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War and the illegal warranless spying program of which Gates would be in charge as SecDef.
Gates did display a pragmatic side in the 2004 report he co-authored with Iraq War critic Zbigniew Brzezinski, Iran: Time for a New Approach. But that's no guarantee that he will insist on such pragmatic approaches as SecDef, especially given his willingness to tailor intelligence to suit the preconceptions of his bosses of the moment.
He is regarded as a consensus-builder who will be more attuned to the advice of generals than outgoing Defense chief Donald H. Rumsfeld has been. Yet when asked in 1996 about the mind-set of military commanders, Gates said that "the biggest doves in Washington wear uniforms" and tend to exaggerate the hazards of exercising America's military might. ...
In 1994, he wrote in a newspaper opinion piece that the "carrot-without-the-stick strategy" America had used on North Korea had failed. Unless Pyongyang heeded warnings not to reprocess nuclear material — a possible step toward building a bomb — Gates said, America should warn North Korea's neighbors and proceed with "destroying the reprocessing plant."
Senate confirmation hearings will probably also focus on Gates' apparent disagreement with many of the changes made to the U.S. intelligence community after Sept. 11. Gates was offered the position of director of national intelligence by the Bush White House, but turned it down because he didn't think the position should have been created. The post was later filled by John D. Negroponte.
Earlier this year, Gates wrote in a newspaper opinion piece: "More than a few CIA veterans — including me — are unhappy about the dominance of the Defense Department in the intelligence arena and the decline in the CIA's central role."
Such shifts were set in motion by Rumsfeld and Negroponte. Lawmakers are probably curious whether Gates, if placed in charge of the Pentagon, would seek to undo any of those changes.
Miller and Barnes are expecting the Democrats to roll over and play dead on this nomination, which would be a big mistake. They quote Rhode Island Democratic Senator Jack Reed saying, ""I consider him a pragmatist," said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), an influential member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "I think he is someone much closer to [former national security advisor] Brent Scowcroft than he is to Rumsfeld or [Vice President Dick] Cheney. I have found him to be open."
Fine, Jack. If he's so open let him answer lots of question about the Iraq War, the Afghanistant war, the NSA warrantless spying program, his own involvement with Iran-Contra, his history of tailoring intelligence to suit the politics of the moment, his notions about military strikes on North Korea and Iran, and his opinions on the practice of tortures like mock execution by partial drowning ("waterboarding") that have become standard practice for the US under the Bush administration.
Robert Gates faces a couple of key questions about his past which reflect directly on his fitness or lack thereof to be Secretary of Defense. 
