At Last, Lake Will Get His Day : Clinton withstands Senate efforts to derail his CIA nomination

The too-long delayed hearings on the nomination of Anthony Lake to be director of central intelligence are finally scheduled for next week, giving President Clinton’s former national security advisor the chance to deal publicly with concerns raised by those on the Senate Intelligence Committee and elsewhere who disapprove of some of his foreign policy views. Barring major surprises, the committee is expected to send Lake’s nomination to the floor for confirmation.

The decision by committee chairman Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) represents a retreat from last week’s ultimatum that unless senators were shown Lake’s full FBI file, action on the nominee would be further held up. An FBI file typically includes unevaluated allegations and gossip. The material typically drawn from those files and turned over to Congress is far more factual. The demand for the unexpurgated dossier, with its implied hint that something in Lake’s record might be covered up, was a transparent effort to embarrass Lake and the White House. Its real aim was to find a pretext for further stalling the hearings so that Clinton might be forced to withdraw the nomination. To his credit, the president stood by his nominee.

That’s not to say that Lake is the ideal candidate for the top intelligence job. If confirmed, he would be in the unusual position of assessing and passing on to policymakers intelligence dealing with--and perhaps contradicting--advice on policies that he helped shape. Moreover, the quality of some of that advice, including tacit U.S. approval of Iranian arms shipments to Bosnian Muslims, remains highly questionable.

Nonetheless, Lake’s fitness is something for the full Senate to decide, not just the chairman of the Intelligence Committee. And the Senate can play its role only after comprehensive and fair hearings are finally allowed to take place.