Abstract

Beltway Bandits

This article focuses on several news on various issues. Robert Gates's nomination as director of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was marked by a hard-to-process mass of details. But among that documentary evidence there is, as Julie Cohen of Pacifica Radio has pointed out, strong proof that Gates lied to Congress at least once. Gates told the Senate Intelligence Committee that in November 1986, while he was preparing testimony for CIA chief William Casey about the just-emerging Iran/contrascandal, he did not realize that a presidential finding had been prepared a year earlier to authorize, after the fact, the CIA's role in a 1985 arms shipment to Iran. Influence equals money. That formula was religiously followed by the Bank of Credit and Commerce International signed up Clark Clifford and Robert Altman. It courted Jimmy Carter, his former aide Andrew Young and others.