Gates Corrupted CIA Intelligence, Ex-Officials Say

In riveting and often passionate testimony, two former CIA officials told a Senate panel Tuesday that Robert M. Gates actively and systematically “corrupted” the integrity of intelligence analysis at the CIA and created a culture of fear so pervasive that subordinates censored themselves to avoid being pegged as communist sympathizers.

With almost equal zeal, supporters called Gates an inspired supervisor who challenged subordinates to think in innovative ways by forcing them to defend “comfortable assumptions” about the Soviet Union and its covert aims in the Third World.

As the Senate Intelligence Committee opened its third week of hearings on his nomination as director of central intelligence, these dramatically different portraits were painted of the man President Bush has chosen to lead the U.S. intelligence community.

Indeed, so sharply conflicting were the views of the four witnesses who appeared before the committee that what emerged was less a clear picture of Gates than a rare, revealing glimpse into the bitter rivalries that characterized the most secretive agency in the U.S. government during the years that Gates and his boss, the late William J. Casey, directed it.

“Everybody’s talking about the confusion that the KGB finds itself in these days, but the CIA has been in turmoil for years,” one committee source said.

Although the testimony offered a disquieting view of the agency, it was unclear whether it will seriously damage Gates’ chances of confirmation.

“I think some Democrats have been quite badly shaken but I don’t think they’ve made up their minds or changed their views,” Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) said.

But Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.) went further: “He’s in trouble. Even if he is confirmed, he’s going to have a hard time managing” an agency so sharply divided over his nomination.

The latest testimony--along with CIA memorandums and other documents released Tuesday--constituted the most damaging evidence yet to emerge about Gates and his role in the Iran-Contra scandal and other intelligence fiascoes that befell the agency before he left it in 1989 to become deputy national security adviser at the White House.

The intelligence committee heard the testimony in secret last Wednesday but considered it so serious that members unanimously agreed to prolong the confirmation hearings so that it could be repeated publicly in sanitized form.

Noting that other potential witnesses have since come forward, Committee Chairman David L. Boren (D-Okla.) said the hearings might be extended again to give at least two of them a chance to testify before Gates returns for final questioning. But Boren said he still hopes to conclude the hearings this week.

In his testimony, Melvin A. Goodman, a senior Soviet analyst who left the agency in 1989 after 25 years because of disagreements with Gates, cited several instances in which he said that Gates--in “pandering” to Casey’s ideological agenda--”corrupted” the intelligence process by slanting or rewriting intelligence assessments about the Soviet Union or by killing other assessments that contradicted his own views.

Goodman charged that Gates:

--Pressured analysts into writing a report suggesting that the KGB was behind the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in 1981, despite the fact that the CIA had “very good evidence that the Soviets were not involved.”

--Ignored the dissent provoked in the agency by a May, 1985, intelligence estimate on Iran, which exaggerated political instability in the country and its vulnerability to Soviet influence.

--Suppressed intelligence that contradicted his ideological bias by killing two estimates, one in 1982 and the other in 1985, that concluded that Soviet military aid to the Third World was declining.

One of Goodman’s most startling accusations dealt with a secret channel set up at the CIA, with Casey’s apparent consent in May, 1986, to inform the White House that moderates in Tehran, Iran, were willing to help free American hostages in Lebanon in return for weapons to use against Iraq.

In prepared testimony last week, Goodman said the reports were fabricated by the CIA to encourage the sale of arms to Iran in line with Casey’s notion that the United States had to head off Soviet influence there. “The President of the United States was the victim of CIA disinformation,” Goodman said.

In oral testimony Tuesday, Goodman softened the allegation by conceding that it was possible that the reports sent to the White House, although incorrect, might not have been written with the intent to deceive President Ronald Reagan. He also said he did not know whether Gates was aware of the secret channel at the time.

However, Goodman said, when “a brave analyst” learned of the deception and raised the matter with Gates, the deputy director at first did nothing, then later characterized the analyst as “a whiner” who was complaining “because he is out of the loop.”

Taking sharp issue with one of Goodman’s allegations, Middle East national intelligence officer Graham Fuller, author of the 1985 Iran estimate, said Gates never pressured or even hinted that Fuller should slant his assessments a certain way or follow “an unspoken line.” Fuller said that Goodman’s account of the genesis of the Iran estimate contained “serious distortions” and that Fuller took a more alarmist line on Soviet intentions toward Iran on the basis of his own experience as a Middle East and Soviet specialist who had served in posts in the Third World.

Another witness, Larry Gershwin, the CIA’s national intelligence officer for strategic programs, also spoke strongly in favor of Gates, said that he never encountered an instance in which Gates the nominee slanted intelligence.

But in written testimony made available Tuesday, former CIA analyst Jennifer Glaudemans said that “the climate of fear” was so strong at the agency that Gates did not need to intimidate analysts, who she said often censored themselves to avoid “being labeled a Soviet apologist.” She is scheduled to appear before the committee today.