Panel May OK Gates for CIA by Big Majority

As his first week of confirmation hearings drew to a close, Robert M. Gates looked increasingly assured of becoming the next director of central intelligence, despite some lingering questions about his knowledge of Iran-Contra.

Although a number of allegations against him have yet to be examined by the Senate Intelligence Committee, supporters predicted after Friday’s testimony that Gates will be approved by an overwhelming majority when the committee votes--probably late next week--on recommending his confirmation to the full Senate.

“Our unofficial count at the moment is 13-2,” said a Republican consultant retained by the White House to help with Gates’ nomination. “It’s gone extremely well . . . better than we had expected,” he added.

Although most of the committee’s eight Democrats say they are still undecided, the only senators who are considered likely to vote against Gates now are Democrats Howard M. Metzenbaum of Ohio and Bill Bradley of New Jersey.

Metzenbaum tried early in the week to challenge the credibility of Gates’ near-zero recall of key meetings, conversations and memorandums that critics say should have alerted him to at least the broad outlines of the Iran-Contra scandal months before he says he learned of them.

But, by the end of the week, Gates’ critics seemed to have all but given up on Iran-Contra, letting former CIA Deputy Director Bobby Inman glide through his appearance before the committee Friday with only friendly questioning by the Administration’s supporters.

“Nothing more is likely to come out on Iran-Contra and, even if it did, this committee has already made up its mind. It is going to vote for Robert Gates,” said Thomas Polgar, a retired CIA official who opposes Gates’ nomination.

Inman was responsible for “spotting” Gates at the agency and facilitating his rapid rise up the CIA ladder. He appeared before the committee to rebut Polgar’s contention, in testimony the day before, that as deputy director of the CIA in 1986 Gates had to have known details of the Iran-Contra affair before they became public in November of that year.

Inman testified that former CIA Director William J. Casey ran the agency in a tightly “compartmented” way. He said it was not only possible but “very probable” that Gates had been kept unaware of the illegal diversion of profits from the sale of arms to Iran to the rebels in Nicaragua.

“We will never know what motivated Bill Casey . . . but it is entirely possible that he made a conscious decision to keep Bob Gates out of areas that would be troublesome in order to protect his future career,” Inman said.

Inman, who served as Casey’s deputy in 1981-82, said he too was “compartmented out” of some sensitive operations because Casey “wanted to run the covert side of the agency himself.”

Inman was the latest in a parade of former and current senior CIA officials summoned by the committee in an effort to answer some of the questions about the Iran-Contra affair that forced Gates to withdraw the first time he was nominated to head the agency in 1987.

What has emerged from the testimony thus far, however, has neither exonerated Gates nor convicted him.

Gates, a veteran of many appearances before the committee, has succeeded in defusing, if not completely dispelling, many of the doubts about his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal through a surprising strategy. He has disarmed his critics by agreeing with them.

One of the criticisms Democrats leveled at Gates was that, if he did not know about the diversion, he should have. As deputy director, he was simply too close to others in the CIA who knew about it to remain ignorant, unless he deliberately shut his eyes, several Democrats argued. “You were the see-no-evil, hear-no-evil deputy,” Metzenbaum told him.

In his first day of testimony, Gates blunted that criticism by accepting it. He should have known more, he conceded. He should have become more suspicious, pressed harder for answers and not been so willing to accept the lies which, he said, he now realizes Casey may have told him.

The following day, when critics took the CIA to task for other intelligence failures over the last decade, Gates readily agreed with them again. The CIA had made a number of mistakes--especially with regard to its intelligence assessments of events in the Soviet Union and the status of Iraq’s nuclear weapons program--but it has learned from them, Gates insisted.

The self-effacing way in which Gates parried challenges to the credibility of his claim to have been ignorant of the Iran-Contra scandal constrasted sharply with the stainless steel composure he maintained in the face of questions about what he did know.

Over two days, Metzenbaum challenged Gates with testimony by other CIA officials who recall mentioning aspects of the fund diversion to Gates. Over and over, Gates replied he could not recall the details of a particular conversation or remember the contents of a key memo.

Although this inability to remember did not seem to jibe with the portrait of a thorough and methodical person that friends have painted of Gates, Metzenbaum was unable to puncture his defense.

Coupled with the lack of proof, this double defense--humility on the one hand and calm on the other--has succeeded in “turning” several members of the committee, one Gates critic conceded.

Before the hearings, several senators indicated that they would vote for Gates only if he could allay their doubts about his role in Iran-Contra. But the Administration’s strategy, scripted in daily meetings at the White House, has shifted the burden back on the critics to show that Gates is not telling the truth.

“We’re not really worried about Metzenbaum any more,” one Republican source close to the committee said. “We don’t think they (the Democrats) have anything to get him with on Iran-Contra.”

One critic Republicans are more concerned about, however, is Bradley. For several days, Bradley has been suggesting that Gates may have been involved in illegal activities undertaken by the CIA as part of a secret U.S. plan to help Iraq win its eight-year war with Iran.

Because his allegations involve still-classified information, Bradley has been unable to question Gates in open session. But the committee will consider the allegations behind closed doors on Wednesday.

One source said some Republicans “are starting to get real worried about what Bradley has.” However, another senior Republican familiar with some of the details said that, although the information is “extremely sensitive,” he doubts it will hurt Gates.

“My bet,” he said, “is that Bob Gates will survive both the open and the closed hearings and finally be confirmed as director of the CIA.”