Information Bank Abstracts NEW YORK TIMES January 7, 1969, Tuesday SECTION: Page 1, Column 6 LENGTH: 212 words JOURNAL-CODE: NYT ABSTRACT: Atty Gen R Clark warns of 'tragic results' if enforcement of Fed pub school desegregation guidelines is eased, int; predicts statistics for '68-69 school yr will show 20% of Negro students in South attend integrated schools compared with 1% in '63; links gains to guidelines which were criticized by Pres-elect Richard M Nixon during '68 campaign; Clark warns Nixon Adm on creating 'a tradition of surreptition by law enforcement' if it begins use of wiretapping and other electronic eavesdropping devices; says he did not conf with Pres Johnson before seeking indictment of Spock group (Spock, M Ferber, Rev Coffin and M Goodman); they were convicted, '68, of counseling, aiding and abetting young men to evade draft; Clark indicates no bitterness at having been singled out for attack by R M Nixon during Pres campaign; voices no regrets at policies that made him vulnerable to charge of being soft on crime; stresses need to do what is right and keep a sense of balance in law enforcement; concedes vast upsurge in mergers has been 'greatest frustration' in antitrust enforcement; says new laws should be passed to control conglomerate activity; disappointed in results of new rule permitting local US attys to bring price-fixing cases on their own initiative; SBD
THE GATES HEARINGS;Starkly Different Gates Portraits Emerge as Secrets are Laid Bare The New York Times October 2, 1991, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final
The New York Times
October 2, 1991, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final
NAME: Robert M. Gates
SECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column 1; National Desk
LENGTH: 2247 words
HEADLINE: THE GATES HEARINGS;
Starkly Different Gates Portraits Emerge as Secrets are Laid Bare
BYLINE: By ELAINE SCIOLINO, Special to The New York Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Oct. 1
BODY:As the
Central Intelligence Agency's top analyst, Robert M. Gates operated as both a skeptical taskmaster who demanded tightly reasoned appraisals of world events and an arrogant supervisor who bluntly rejected judgments contrary to his personal views, according to documents and testimony presented during his confirmation hearings today .
The different faces of Mr. Gates were portrayed in more than two dozen previously classified documents that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence made public as it addressed whether Mr. Gates distorted intelligence reports so they would conform to the political beliefs of his superiors.
And in appearances before the committee today, witnesses for and against the nomination of Mr. Gates as Director of Central Intelligence revealed a secret world of internal intrigue and brutal infighting in which intelligence analyses were debated, revised and in some cases reversed before presentation to the President. [Excerpts from testimony appear on pages A16 and A17, and excerpts from the documents appear on page A18.]
Three witnesses testified that Mr. Gates slanted intelligence analysis as a senior agency official in the 1980's, while two others defended him. The hearings entered their third week today and may run into next week so the Senators can absorb the flood of new information provided today and cross-examine the witnesses and Mr. Gates, who was not present today.
Although the
Central Intelligence Agency's involvement in the covert world of coups, assassination plots and spy operations has periodically come under public scrutiny, never before in the agency's 44-year history has the bare-knuckles atmosphere of its analytical side been so exposed to view, senior officials of the agency said.
Mr. Gates's detractors assert that the slanting of intelligence was largely confined to issues involving the Soviet Union, Soviet expansionism and
C.I.A. covert operations.
The documents made public today provide a look at only a small part of Mr. Gates's career over two decades at the agency, all of that work dealing with Soviet affairs, Mr. Gates's specialty. But the public testimony was more sweeping.
Dramatic and Reflective
The most dramatic testimony came from Melvin A. Goodman, a former division chief in Soviet affairs. He accused Mr. Gates of imposing his political judgments on intelligence analyses without any evidence to back his views, of suppressing his analysts' conclusions, of corrupting the agency's stringent analytical process and of misusing personnel -- "judge shopping the courthouse," Mr. Goodman called it -- until the desired analysis was produced.
But the more reflective testimony of another witness, Harold Ford, although less explosive than Mr. Goodman's, could carry more weight with the committee. Mr. Ford, a 30-year veteran of the agency who has extensively written and lectured on ethics in public policy, described his personal agony before deciding that out of loyalty to the agency, he could not support the nominee. Adding to the difficulty of his choice, Mr. Ford is a
C.I.A. contract employee who would report to Mr. Gates, if he is confirmed.
In his closed testimony to the Committee last week, Mr. Ford said the effect of previous testimony, depositions and his conversations with his former colleagues had persuaded him to "tear up" his original testimony.
'It Will Be a Mistake'
"I have some very difficult things to say, but I feel I must say them," said the retired senior analyst. "In brief, my message is that I think Robert Gates should not be confirmed as Director of Central Intelligence."
Mr. Ford, who is decribed by both former and current
C.I.A. officials as a first-rate analyst with high standards of integrity, acknowledged that his decision to come forward was made more painful by the fact that his own career flourished under Mr. Gates.
Mr. Ford explained the difficulty of determining when analysis is slanted or tailored to support stated policy, saying that some of the accusations against Mr. Gates reflected genuine differences of opinion, complaints by disgruntled officials and Mr. Gates's commitment to sharpen the analytical product.
But, he added, "Other of Bob Gates's pressures have gone beyond professional bounds and clearly constitute a skewing of intelligence." Mr. Ford said Mr. Gates's "photographic memory," made it difficult to believe that he did not remember many of the details of the Iran-contra affair. He questioned Mr. Gates's reliance on his own analytical judgments which, he said, "has ignored or scorned the views of others whose assessments did not accord with his own."
Mr. Ford said Mr. Gates might have been forgiven for that, wrong as it was, if his views had not also been wrong. In particular, he said, the nominee's analysis of the fortunes of the Soviet Union and of Eastern Europe were incorrect.
Finally, Mr. Ford asserted that the nominee lacked "integrity of judgment," the ability to stand one's ground with the President and others when their views might differ.
He, like Mr. Goodman, also raised questions about the nominee's honesty in some of his testimony before Congress.
A Much Different View
Graham Fuller, a senior analyst at the Rand Corporation and a former national intelligence officer who also worked for Mr. Gates, offered a radically different view.
Mr. Fuller said that because William J. Casey, the Director of Central Intelligence from 1981 to 1986 -- and to a lesser extent Mr. Gates himself -- held such pessimistic vies of the Soviet Union, analysts in the Soviet division slanted intelligence the other way. The division, he said, "seemed inclined towards, yes, a highly benign vision of Soviet intentions and goals as related to the third world," and "seemed to bend over backwards to compensate" for the hard-line convictions of the men at the top.
The former career foreign service officer accused Mr. Goodman of "serious distortions," adding, "In all frankness, I do not readily recognize the Bob Gates described in his testimony."
Two Impressions
Like today's testimony, the documents made public today give two impressions of the nominee. On the one hand they show a manager who wanted to promote his hard-line vision of Soviet expansionism around the world, while on the other Mr. Gates is shown as a supervisor who simply wanted to make the analytical product more relevant to policymakers.
For example, in a Feb. 2, 1982, memorandum evaluating another draft of an estimate on Soviet aims in the third world Mr. Gates questioned the conclusion that Moscow would find fewer opportunities in the third world in the 1980's.
"I think this overlooks the creativity of the Soviet approach in the last seven or eight years, the fact that they are creating new opportunities through different approaches and that they are much better than we in exploiting problem areas that offer benefit more for the trouble they give to the West than for the advantages they provide to the East." Mr. Gates wrote. "These points are not brought out at all."
"In short," he added, "I see a lot more trouble for us in the third world in the years ahead because it's easier to make trouble than it is solve it."
Detached, and Relentless, Critic
At the same time, Mr. Gates is also seen to have operated as an intellectually detached, and relentless, critic of intelligence reports produced by his subordinates, often sharply questioning unstated assumptions and unproven assertions without necessarily dictating what the conclusions should be.
In a Nov. 30, 1986, critique of a draft estimate on Soviet policy toward the Middle East written by Fritz Ermarth, then the national intellgience Officer for the Soviet Union, for example, Mr. Gates wrote, "While the estimate in one place or another touches on a number of important issues, it is so long and unfocused that the policymaker simply would not get anything out of it."
In an Oct. 17, 1984, memo, he criticized a paper assessing Soviet options in Afghanistan as "superficial and unpersuasive," and he advised the head of the Soviet analysis section at the agency to "get our fingers down into the dirt and get some information on which we can base our speculation."
In his testimony today Mr. Goodman criticized Mr. Gates's management, describing his former superior as nothing more than a "filter" for Mr. Casey's rigid, hard-line views. Mr. Gates, Mr. Goodman asserted, was someone who "pandered to Casey's agenda."
Mr. Goodman also asserted that Mr. Gates reassigned an official directly involved in the covert program to sell arms to Iran, putting him in the office that was supposed to offer dispassionate analyses of intelligence relating to the program, in violation of the agency's rule that separates the covert operators from the armchair analysts. As a result, he said, "Even the President of the United States was given misleading analysis and uncoordianted views."
Mr. Goodman, the only witness to testify under subpoena, relied heavily on the declassified documents released by the committee in making his accusations.
In Defense of Nominee
Mr. Gates has steadfastly defended himself against charges that he slanted intelligence and is expected to do so again when he makes a second appearance before the committee, probably later this week.
His most eloquent defense of the principle of the integrity of analysis is found in a 1987 article in Foreign Affairs, in which he stated, "To attempt to slant intelligence would not only transgress the single deepest ethical and cultural principle of the
C.I.A., it would also be foolish -- it would presuppose a single point of view in an administration and would ignore the reality of Congressional readership."
Lawrence Gershwin, the national intelligence officer for strategic programs, supported Mr. Gates's assertion that he had been objective.
"What I have heard described by Mr. Goodman about politicization of intelligence by Bob Gates and William Casey in Soviet and third world issues, the Soviet political and foreign policy areas and the like, does not in any way resemble my experience in military analysis," the senior analyst said. He described both men as "extremely fair in encouraging different points of view, and the analytic process worked very well."
On Wednesday, the committee will hear from Douglas J. MacEachin, the chief of the agency's arms control intelligence staff, whose closed-door testimony last week also strongly supported the nominee. Jennifer L. Glaudemans, a former Soviet analyst from 1983 to 1989, is expected to repeat her closed-door testimony in which she described a "culture of fear and cynicism" that was fostered by Mr. Gates.
Rethinking Positions
Today's assertions, largely previewed in a closed-door session last Wednesday, has sent a jolt through the committee. Previously, it had seemed inclined to confirm the nominee, probably by a large margin. Although there is no indication that the issue of Mr. Gates's character and judgment has changed any votes, on the Republican side at least, the public airing of what has clearly been a long, bitter debate inside the agency on the slanting of intelligence has led many senators to say they are rethinking their positions.
"The charge that the agency was not carrying out its basic function -- to make factual analysis independent of policy -- is the ultimate accusation," said Senator Sam Nunn, Democrat of Georgia. "It's like accusing the Department of Defense of not being able to fight a war."
Mr. Nunn has not said whether he will vote for or against the nominee. His decision could influence others as well.
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a New York Democrat who was once former vice-chairman of the committee and who has been sharply criticial of the agency's analysis of the Soviet Union, put it more bluntly: "Now it turns out that they may have deliberately slanted the analysis, and that is a sin against the Holy Ghost." Unless today's allegations are disproved, he said, he will vote against Mr. Gates.
On the other hand, a number of the Republicans say their opinions have not changed. "The charges have clearly put up a caution sign in front of us," said John H. Chafee of Rhode Island. But he added, "I think that when we are finished all the questioning of the witnesses, Gates will be confirmed."
Personal Stakes Seen
Senator Frank H. Murkowski, the Alaska Republican who is the committee's vice-chairman, was even stronger in his support of the nominee, saying that to a large extent, he felt the obligation to "carry the ball" for the Administration and confirm Mr. Gates.
Except for Mr. Ford, each of the other witnesses has a personal stake either in seeing Mr. Gates confirmed or rejected. Mr. Goodman, who was once a close personal friend of Mr. Gates, has said that the nominee forced him out of the Soviet division. Ms. Glaudemans, who called her memories of the agency "too nauseating," resigned because of what she charged was "a very sick atmosphere" under Mr. Casey and Mr. Gates.
Mr. Fuller, the author of the two "think pieces" and the draft of the "estimate" on Iran that became the basis for a formal directive that urged the United States to sell arms to Iran, was also defending his own reputation as he spoke for Mr. Gates.
Mr. Gershwin and Mr. MacEachin, both senior analysts, will presumably work for Mr. Gates if he is confirmed.
GRAPHIC: Photos: Harold Ford and Jennifer L. Glaudemans waiting to testify yesterday on the nomination of Robert M. Gates as Director of Central Intelligence. Mr. Ford, a 30-year
C.I.A. veteran, opposed confirmation. (Andrea Mohin for The New York Times) (pg. A1); Graham Fuller, standing, talking with Douglas MacEachin, center, and Lawrence Gershwin during a break in their testimony at the Gates hearing. (Paul Hosefros/The New York Times) (pg.A17)
LOAD-DATE: October 2, 1991 SBD