MADELEINE BRAND, host:
This is DAY TO DAY. I'm Madeleine Brand.
ALEX CHADWICK, host:
I'm Alex Chadwick.
The man designated to run the defense department and the American presence in Iraq, Robert Gates, has been a top intelligence officer, presidential adviser and director of the CIA. We visited the newsroom of the Washington Post today to speak with Walter Pincus who's covered intelligence and followed Mr. Gates for many years.
Mr. WALTER PINCUS (The Washington Post): He came out of the analytic side of the agency, specializing in the Soviet Union. But, he also spent a good deal of time in the White House as the CIA person there under a series of administrations and was in the National Security Council, so he is really known in, at least in my mind, as an imminent bureaucrat, knows how bureaucratic policy works within the national security field.
CHADWICK: President Reagan first nominated Mr. Gates for the CIA director job in 1987, but at that point Mr. Gates withdrew his name because of problems over the Iran-contra probe. The swapping arms for hostages' scandal. What was Robert Gates' role in that?
Mr. PINCUS: Well it's the one real setback in his ever-upward motion career. He was deputy director of CIA at the time of Iran Contra, working very closely with then director Bill Casey. And Casey was originator of this secret plot that was finally exposed. But when Casey died, Ronald Reagan tried to put Gates in to replace him and he soon became, if he was number two at the agency, did he know about Iran-contra and the question was asked, and he said he didn't.
And by the time the hearings - in front of the intelligence committee took place, Sam Nunn brought out the fact that if he were number two at the agency and said he didn't know anything, either he wasn't telling the total truth or he shouldn't be director because he wasn't aware of what was going on.
CHADWICK: Mr. Nunn was a senator from Georgia at that time and prominent in those hearings.
Mr. PINCUS: He was prominent in part because he was chairman of the armed services committee. The irony of today, not irony, but a sense of where about Gates' moved to. Is that senator Nunn yesterday came out in favor of the Gates appointment.
CHADWICK: There are many, many favorable comments in your story today. People saying that this is a conciliator: this is someone who knows how to get groups to work together. But I want to note, there is one note of caution from a former CIA analyst who now is a member of congress, he's a New Jersey Democrat. He calls this nomination deeply troubling. Why is that? And is there a kind of reservoir of reservation within the intelligence community?
Mr. PINCUS: Well, this is Representative Rush Holt, who did work at the agency and remembers back in the period of the Casey time when Bob Gates was running analysis as deputy director for intelligence. And at that time, Bob Gates was accused of caving in literally and allowing intelligence in different areas to be reshaped to fit the predilections of Mr. Casey.
The people who know him in recent times say that hearing had a huge effect on him. And people forget that emotion when somebody goes through a bad hearing, they think that they shake it off. Gates is not the kind of person to shake it off. And people like Senator Nunn or even speaking of Burzynski (ph) who is a firm opponent of the Iraq war, had served with Gates recently in a mission in Iran came out in favor of him. Called Bob Gates the best appointment President Bush has made and the theory is that Gates learned from that.
CHADWICK: Walter Pincus covers intelligence for the Washington Post. Walter thanks for joining us on DAY TO DAY.
Mr. PINCUS: You're welcome.
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