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 number two, a position in which - so more than one CIA officer later testified - he was an intercom's squawk away from Casey's intricate and often criminal operations. The best known of these was the Iran-Contra shuttle, which used cash from overbilling arms sales to Iran to supply weaponry to the Nicaraguan contras.
When George Bush chose Gates as CIA chief in 1991, Democratic senators arrived at his confirmation hearings heavily armed with witnesses prepared to testify that Gates was deeply implicated in the scandal that had been under prolonged investigation by Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh.
In his memoir Firewall, Walsh says flatly that he disbelieved Gates's testimony, asserting that somehow, despite his being Casey's second in command, the Iran-contra conspiracy – the top item on the Agency's agenda – had passed him by.
Dented by detailed testimony, Gates nonetheless survived and was duly confirmed as CIA Director, in which position he ran an Agency still preaching about the |
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Bush Sr loathed Rumsfeld, so the rise of Gates confirms the ascendancy of the old gang
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Soviet threat until the very hour of the Evil Empire's collapse.
In the run-up to the recent elections, Gates was back in harness as a member of the Iraq Study Group, along with former Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton and James Baker. Their mission as 'wise men' was designed to give Dubya political cover, so he could sidestep embarrassing questions about the disaster in Iraq by invoking the Group's impending recommendations.
Bush Sr loathed Rumsfeld, so the rise of Gates confirms the ascendancy of the old Bush gang. What the plan will be to salvage America's catastrophic war in Iraq has yet to be divulged. But the minute you start to read stories about Baker's faltering judgement, you can be sure Gates's expert eye has seen the writing on the wall and this unsavoury survivor is exercising his usual agility in stepping clear of the rubble. 
FIRST POSTED NOVEMBER 10, 2006
 What Rumsfeld's departure means for Iraq
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