CIA Nominee Faces Charges He Slanted Data

Robert M. Gates, President Bush’s nominee to head the CIA, faces new accusations that he slanted an agency assessment of a 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II to suggest it was masterminded by the Soviet KGB, informed sources said.

The sources said the evidence shows that Gates, then a senior CIA official, disregarded several contrary opinions by agency analysts and instead portrayed as the “consensus” of the intelligence community the conclusion that the assassination attempt was KGB-inspired.

Gates’ allies concede that the allegations--contained in CIA documents being reviewed by the Senate Intelligence Committee--could significantly embarrass the Administration and may prove to be the most threatening new issue against Gates when his confirmation hearings begin Monday.

Sources said that Gates also may face questions about his role in compiling sensitive intelligence data for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein during that country’s eight-year war with Iran.

The United States provided some intelligence to Iraq--initially only about Iranian military operations--after Washington and Baghdad resumed relations in 1984. But little is known publicly about how much intelligence could be provided to Iraq under U.S. policy at the time. Gates’ role in dealing with intelligence for Iraq is a question that some committee members are likely to address.

Sources close to Gates said he is prepared to rebut these new allegations. “He’s prepared to deal with those questions,” one Gates supporter said.

The new accusations, which center on questions of integrity and professional judgment, go to the heart of the controversy over the Bush nominee: Is Gates, with his hard-line views about the Soviet Union and strong opinions on policy issues, the right man to head the CIA as the Administration and Congress begin the first head-to-toe redesign of the government’s intelligence apparatus since 1947?

A central question in the upcoming hearings is expected to be whether Gates’ record shows him to have such an appetite for taking part in policy-making that he cannot be counted upon to provide objective intelligence assessments in a neutral and impartial fashion.

Sources say that Gates’ critics on the panel plan to use the papal assassination incident to suggest that Gates, who has been serving as Bush’s deputy national security adviser, cannot resist the temptation to slant intelligence in order to serve a wider agenda.

When CIA officials who disagreed with Gates about the 1981 affair complained that their views had been ignored, Gates was “less than diligent” in seeking to correct the record, one source sympathetic to the nominee acknowledged.

Sources said that the charge involving the papal assassination attempt and his involvement in providing Hussein with intelligence information are two of 13 separate allegations of intelligence-slanting by Gates that are being reviewed by committee staffers in an exhaustive examination of the nominee.

The sources said that the committee found sufficient evidence to question Gates about at least two of the charges--the one relating to CIA assessments of the papal assassination attempt and another concerning his role in warning about the danger of Soviet influence in Iran.

The Bush Administration, meanwhile, sought to keep a low profile over the new allegations. Asked about the charges, an Administration official said: “I’m not going to comment on whether or not he’s going to be vulnerable on particular questions.”

But the official insisted that “the politicization of intelligence issues is simply a bum rap,” adding that “there are honest differences of opinion that go on between good minds in this building.”

The close congressional scrutiny comes amid increasing concerns that the most important task for the next CIA director will be to design a new mission for the agency in a world where economic competition and nuclear proliferation have eclipsed a historic preoccupation with the Soviet military threat.

“This is really the opening round in the national debate over what form U.S. intelligence should take,” said Sen. David L. Boren (D-Okla.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“The CIA, as we have known it in the past, is out of date given all the changes in the world,” Boren said. “And so it is vitally important that the next director be a man of real vision.”

Whether Gates has the vision to meet that challenge is expected to be a primary concern of the committee when it opens confirmation hearings to explore Gates’ record in the handling of intelligence, the Iran-Contra affair and possibly the provision of intelligence to Iraq.

The witnesses, expected to include past and present members of the CIA, will speak to both sides of that question, testifying in both open and closed sessions. “We have people coming to both praise Bob Gates and to bury him,” a committee source said.

With the many paths of inquiry converging on the question of whether Gates would be a trustworthy CIA chief, the nominee’s allies say that perhaps the most important task for the nominee will be to convey a sense of integrity.

“How he presents himself in the hearings those first two days will determine how he’s considered by the committee,” said retired Adm. Bobby Ray Inman, a former deputy director of central intelligence who has been a supporter of Gates.

Gates was said by friends to have left town for a weekend of backpacking with his son in an effort to relax in advance of the hearings.

Gates is expected to be challenged aggressively by senators who remember that he was already forced once, in 1987, to withdraw from consideration for the top CIA post when his confirmation hearings did not go well.

Questions expected to be asked most frequently revolve around his role in the Iran-Contra affair while he served as deputy director of the agency in the mid-1980s.

Although his former boss and subordinates have since been implicated in the scandal, Gates has steadfastly claimed that he knew next to nothing about two key issues of that era--the illegal sale of arms to Iran and the provision of aid to the Nicaraguan Contras.

Sources said an intensive investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee staff has uncovered little fresh evidence suggesting untoward involvement about Gates, so the questions about intelligence-slanting and ties with Iraq may prove to be the biggest new hurdles he faces.

The accusations about Gates’ role in providing intelligence to Iraq are said to be potentially the most troublesome because they could expose controversial new details about secret ties between U.S. administrations and Hussein’s regime.

As part of a tilt toward Iraq during that country’s war against Iran, the United States provided Hussein with detailed and extensive intelligence about Iranian deployments and capabilities as late as 1990.

According to sources familiar with those activities, Gates, as the CIA’s deputy director for intelligence for much of that period, played a key role because he oversaw the process by which the data for Iraq was assembled.

One source said the revelation could pose problems for the nominee because it would show his close ties to Iraq not long before the United States went to war against that regime. But even those who are critical of the nominee acknowledged that the secret policy was authorized by the President with the knowledge of the two congressional intelligence committees, and said there was no evidence that Gates did anything more than follow orders.

In addition, Gates’ supporters argue, disclosure of the full details of the U.S.-Iraq relationship now could anger Iran and prove damaging to prospects for the release of U.S. hostages in the Middle East.

For these reasons, they said, it is uncertain whether the subject would even be raised.

By contrast, Boren confirmed last week that the panel intends to question Gates during a scheduled closed session this Friday about the CIA assessment of the papal assassination attempt. But no sources would provide further details or even the date of the report, noting that it remains classified and could damage U.S.-Soviet relations.

There has been speculation since the 1981 shooting of the Pope in Rome that the KGB was behind the assassination attempt. Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turk convicted of the shooting, said at his trial that the Bulgarian secret service was behind the plot. But his claim has never been substantiated, and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev earlier this year denied that the KGB was involved.

Whatever ultimately emerges about the KGB role, critics of Gates say what was most damning about his role in the preparation of the secret CIA report was that he sought to pass off as undisputed a position that in fact had been challenged by other respected CIA analysts.

Sources also said that Gates will be questioned on a separate accusation that, as the agency’s deputy director for intelligence, he acted inappropriately in issuing a CIA assessment that overstated the possibility of Soviet influence on Iran.

The May, 1985, memo was used by the Administration to help justify secret arms sales to Iran in the belief that such sales would offset Iran’s “tilt” toward the Soviets.

In disputing charges about Gates’ alleged bias, the nominee’s supporters on the committee argue that his unquestioned expertise as an analyst of Soviet and other foreign affairs will serve the agency well in a time of rapid global change.

Sen. Frank H. Murkowski of Alaska, the ranking Republican on the committee, noted that Gates’ critical views of the Soviet Union caused him to be one of the first Soviet experts to warn of the danger of a hard-line coup attempt against Gorbachev. “Bob Gates was right,” he said.

Other Gates’ allies contend that his background as an intelligence analyst rather than an undercover operative make him a perfect choice for an agency seeking to shift away from covert, Cold War operations to analyses of political, social and economic trends.

And, in what may emerge as a politically powerful endorsement, Bush called attention Friday in a brief television address to Gates’ role as his lieutenant, saying he “stood by my side every step of the way” in the war against Iraq.

Yet some of Gates’ longtime colleagues--including those in the intelligence community--have warned in recent private conversations that the nominee may find it difficult to make a transition from the White House to CIA headquarters across the Potomac.

Even from that neutral new helm, they have said, Gates is bound to seek out a policy role.

In the face of Gates’ expected denials, that question--along with those about whether Gates has a Cold War bias, has slanted intelligence estimates and knew more about the Iran-Contra affair than he has admitted--will be one that committee members will have to judge for themselves.

“It’s going to come down to whether you believe Bob Gates is telling the truth,” one Administration official said.

Times Washington Bureau Chief Jack Nelson contributed to this story.