The main question that needs answering is why did George W. Bush nominate Robert Gates as his Defense Secretary? He must have known that this decision would resurrect the two scandals in his father’s career: October Surprise and Iran-Contra.
George H. W. Bush came very close to being exposed as playing vital roles in both these highly secret operations (see Lawrence E. Walsh’s report on Iran-Contra). Fellow conspirators remained quiet because of promises made by Bush. These were kept when Bush became president. Bush appointed Robert Gates, as Director of the CIA (this enabled him to destroy any remaining documents held by the agency). Fellow conspirators, Richard L. Armitage and Donald P. Gregg, were given positions in his government. Those involved in the cover-up also received posts. Brent Scowcroft became his chief national security adviser and John Tower became Secretary of Defence. When the Senate refused to confirm Tower, Bush gave the job to another involved in the cover-up, Richard Cheney.
Bush therefore faced the possibility that Tower, who had headed the Tower Commission into Iran-Contra, would reveal what he knew. John Heinz, who chaired a three-man presidential review board that probed the Iran-Contra affair, was also a problem. However, on 4th April, 1991, Heinz died when his Piper Aerostar PA60 came down after colliding with a helicopter in Montgomery County. The following day, Tower was killed in a plane crash new New Brunswick, Georgia. According to the New York Times the “failure of a severely worn part in the plane’s propeller control unit caused the aircraft to spin out of control.”
By this time Bush had already pardoned fellow conspirators, Casper Weinberger, Robert McFarlane, Duane R. Clarridge, Clair E. George, Elliott Abrams and Alan D. Fiers, Jr., who had all been charged with offences related to the Iran-Contra scandal.
George W. Bush has therefore brought all these events out in the open by nominating Robert Gates. As Carl Levin, the Democratic senator for Michigan who voted against Gates when he was nominated to head the CIA in 1991, said yesterday “old issues concerning the politicisation of intelligence were relevant and deserved a new airing”.
Democratic senator, Dianne Feinstein of California, also promised yesterday to ask Robert Gates some difficult questions when Gates appeared before the Senate’s armed services committee. Let us hope that documents about October Surprise and Iran-Contra, that have been discovered by investigative journalists like Robert Parry, are passed to people like Levin and Feinstein.
Bush must have known this would happen. It has been suggested that GWB still has hang-ups about the success of his father. True, he only served one-term, but he managed to get out of office with his reputation still in tack. This is unlikely to be the case with GWB. I know it is all very Freudian, but is GWB trying to destroy the reputation of GHWB?
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