Some in Agency Oppose Gates as CIA Chief

A new current of opposition has emerged to the nomination of Robert M. Gates as head of the CIA--this time within the intelligence community itself--adding to the obstacles he already faces in a bitter confirmation battle.

The dissenters include active CIA officers whose unorthodox overtures to members of Congress have caused the Senate Intelligence Committee to open new inquiries into their allegations.

Although Gates’ supporters have dismissed the criticisms as sniping by old rivals and disgruntled subordinates, they acknowledge that the complaints could be damaging in the highly charged atmosphere surrounding the nomination.

The complaints, which come on top of questions about Gates’ conduct in the Iran-Contra scandal, contend that the then-CIA administrator acted during the 1980s to slant analysts’ intelligence reports on the Soviet Union to support his conservative views on the severity of the Soviet threat.

They suggest also that Gates, as deputy director of the agency from 1986 to 1989, unduly “politicized” that office through speeches and articles that served as a conservative call to arms over the dangers of Soviet expansionism.

Because the CIA is expected to maintain a standard of rigorous objectivity in assessing intelligence information, the allegations have provoked concern in the Intelligence Committee, which, staff members said, has been approached recently by a number of current and former agency officials.

“They’ve come out of the trenches screaming,” one congressional backer of Gates said.

The official stressed that he believes questions about Gates’ role in Iran-Contra continue to pose the greatest threat to his confirmation. But, with another front opened in the battle, he said that “every little piece hurts.” A senior Administration official acknowledged, “There is a lot of bad blood out there.”

The allegations are being made at a vulnerable time for a nomination sentenced to at least six more weeks of limbo before the Intelligence Committee begins confirmation hearings on Sept. 16. Gates’ allies said that the new rumblings from within the intelligence agency were chiefly responsible for angry outbursts from President Bush, who denounced what he called “rumors and innuendo” about his nominee.

A CIA spokesman said that current and former employees are free to voice their opinions to members of Congress. But the highly unusual spectacle of fiercely secretive intelligence officers making unsolicited overtures to members of Congress has taken some of Gates’ supporters aback.

“To my mind, if you are a serving officer, it runs pretty close to insubordination to go running up there to the Hill,” said George Carver, a former senior CIA official and an advocate for his former colleague.

Congressional staff members aware of the new approaches from within the intelligence agency said that there is no indication the contacts are part of any organized campaign. Instead, they said, the series of telephone calls and even direct visits to Capitol Hill by serving CIA officials appear to reflect the breadth of a dissent that has become emboldened in recent weeks as Gates’ nomination has run into trouble.

In addition to the charges that Gates slanted intelligence, a separate theme of criticism from within the intelligence community contends that the nominee, who spent his CIA career as an analyst and has no experience in covert operations, will give unacceptably short shrift to the business of human spying.

Sources said that these complaints have come principally from within the ranks of the CIA’s operations directorate and its recent retirees. And, the sources said, the complaints reflect a deep schism within the agency that has caused intelligence analysts and operatives to view one another with mistrust.

For that reason, those who support the nomination have sought to portray this opposition as the vindictive byproduct of professional jealousies and personal animosities; and even critics of Gates acknowledge that its impact is likely to be minimal.

Supporters of the nominee concede that allegations that Gates may have slanted some intelligence analyses he was charged with overseeing represent the more important challenge to his prospects for confirmation by the Senate.

“We are looking at all of the allegations, but those are the ones we are taking most seriously because they go to the heart of the nature of the intelligence institution,” a senior Intelligence Committee source said.

What makes these charges potentially more damning, another source said, is that they are made not by operatives but by veteran Soviet analysts from within the intelligence directorate that Gates supervised. These analysts contend that Gates “told them to write a certain way, especially on the Soviet Union,” a senior Administration official conceded.

Most of the allegations received by the committee remain confidential. But Senate aides confirm that they are examining a number of intelligence assessments as well as speeches given by Gates when he was deputy director that suggest that he may have unacceptably “politicized” his office.

One speech in particular, delivered by Gates to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council in November, 1986, has provoked concern because of the way it appeared to draw on intelligence information “to campaign for the President’s Strategic Defense Initiative,” a committee source said. Another speech delivered the same day to the Commonwealth Club of California was described by committee sources as an ideologically charged, conservative call to arms to oppose Soviet expansionism in the Third World.

More seriously, the committee is also examining Gates’ role in formulating what one source said are “embellished, if not exaggerated, estimates of Iran’s vulnerability to Soviet influence” given to the committee in secret testimony in 1987.

“Gates’ use of his office for policy purposes is documented and broader than what has been brought to light so far,” the source added.

Gates, a respected expert on the Soviet Union, has never made a secret of his conservative views about the Soviets, and even his fiercest critics suggest his ideology should not have any bearing on his suitability to head the CIA.

But persuasive evidence that he allowed those views to color intelligence assessments that other government agencies count on to be strictly objective would cause alarm among supporters.

“The director of the CIA is supposed to be the President’s Bad News Bear. That’s really his most important function,” one former CIA officer said. “His job is to tell the President what he needs to hear, not necessarily what he wants to hear, and, for that, the intelligence briefings must not be skewed by ideology or personal bias.”

Gates’ defenders acknowledge that the nominee was a stern taskmaster who challenged subordinates’ assessments and often acted in a brusque fashion as he sharpened what he regarded as overly cautious intelligence analyses.

But the supporters dispute any suggestion that Gates made changes to please his political masters. They noted that Gates’ undisguised skepticism about the Soviet Union brought him into conflict with both Secretaries of State George P. Shultz and James A. Baker III.

“How do you square that with someone who is supposedly consumed with ambition?” asked retired Adm. Bobby Ray Inman, a former deputy director of the CIA and one of Gates’ most vocal defenders.

But, with senators already uneasy about the inconclusiveness of evidence that Gates had no early knowledge of the Iran-Contra affair, some said, the emergence of the new opposition could weaken his supporters’ resolve.