Revisiting Iran-Contra: The Nomination of Robert Gates By Ivan Eland Price of Liberty

November 13, 2006

Most of official Washington has long believed that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld needed to be sacked. Unfortunately it took a major Republican loss at the polls to finally prompt George W. Bush to cut loose a key player from his inner circle.

The removal of Rumsfeld signals that Bush is listening to the voters and elected officials. However, the nomination of Robert Gates—a Bush family crony and former Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) under his father’s administration—to replace Rumsfeld will only create new problems for the president.

President Ronald Reagan had to withdraw Gates’ nomination for DCI in 1987 because of Gates’ involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal. By 1991, after the heat had died down on the whole affair, President George H.W. Bush re-nominated Gates for the post, and he was confirmed.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the Iran-Contra affair was worse for the republic than the Watergate scandal. The Nixon administration’s illegal spying and dirty tricks on political opponents and misuse of law enforcement and intelligence agencies were bad. But the Reagan administration’s evasion of a congressional ban on assisting the Nicaraguan Contras (the Boland Amendment) was a knife in the heart of the greatest power the Congress has under the checks and balances of the Constitution—the power of the purse. Illegal activities get more media and law enforcement attention than unconstitutional actions, but the unconstitutional ones are, by far, the most harmful to the country.

Although Gates was never indicted for the Iran-Contra affair, he was severely criticized for his actions by Judge Lawrence E. Walsh, the Republican Independent Counsel who investigated the Iran-Contra affair. In his report on the scandal, Walsh said that contrary to Gates’ sworn testimony before a grand jury and at a confirmation hearing, “evidence proves” that then-Deputy Director of Central Intelligence Gates knew about the unconstitutional diversion of profits from Iran-bound arms sales to the Contras sooner than he let on.

Lying to a grand jury and Congress is illegal. Furthermore, it is difficult to believe that the number two man at the CIA didn’t know all along about CIA’s efforts to support the Contras and malfeasance by government officials in a high-priority covert operation.

Walsh also concluded that the CIA continued to support Oliver North’s diversion of funds to the Contras without investigating or telling his bosses at the National Security Council. Finally, Walsh concluded that Gates participated in two briefings of congressional investigators which helped lull them into falsely believing the CIA was not involved in facilitating private flights to resupply the Contras.

Gates’ role in ignoring Congress’s specific ban on assisting the Contras—one of the most dangerous threats to constitutional government in American history—should not be dismissed as merely “old news.” Apparently, the media and the Democrats are so relieved about getting rid of Rumsfeld that they appear to be doing just that. In a November 9, 2006 article, the Washington Post touted Gates’ extensive government experience, brilliance, bipartisanship, and pragmatic, consensus-building management style, but included only one sentence in Gates’ biography about his role in the Iran-Contra affair. The newspaper also cites praise for Gates from retired Senator Sam Nunn, the former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, whose questions led to the withdrawal of the first Gates CIA nomination in 1987. The Post quoted Nunn as complimenting Gates’ “ability to work closely with Congress on a bipartisan basis,” and noted that he “has a well-deserved reputation on both sides of the aisle for competency and integrity.”

Integrity in the nation’s capital apparently includes looking the other way when unconstitutional acts are being committed—even when those actions threaten the balance of power between government branches and the decentralized system of governance which makes America unique.

Unfortunately, memories are short in Washington, and most transgressions, no matter how bad, fade over time and eventually are forgiven. Even outsiders such as the BBC have already reported that Gates “is widely respected among both Democrats and Republicans in the Congress, and his appointment is expected to be swiftly ratified by the Senate.”

As Congress passes into Democrat hands, it should make a renewed commitment to honesty and integrity in government, and reassert its power against an excessively dominant executive branch. The Senate should reject the Gates nomination.

Alvaro Vargas Llosa is director of The Center on Global Prosperity at The Independent Institute. He is a native of Peru and received his B.S.C. in international history from the London School of Economics. He is widely published and has lectured on world economic and political issues including at the Mont Pelerin Society, Naumann Foundation (Germany), FAES Foundation (Spain), Brazilian Institute of Business Studies, Fundación Libertad (Argentina), CEDICE Foundation (Venezuela), Florida International University, and the Ecuadorian Chamber of Commerce. He is the author of the Independent Institute books The Che Guevara Myth and Liberty for Latin America.

Ivan Eland is Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute and Assistant Editor of The Independent Review. Dr. Eland is a graduate of Iowa State University and received an M.B.A. in applied economics and Ph.D. in national security policy from George Washington University. He has been Director of Defense Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office, Evaluator-in-Charge (national security and intelligence) for the U.S. General Accounting Office, and Investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Full Biography and Recent Publications

Pierre Lemieux is an economist and co-director of the Economics and Liberty Research Group at the Université du Québec en Outaouais and a Research Fellow at The Independent Institute in Oakland, California.

Alexander Tabarrok is research director at The Independent Institute, associate professor of economics at George Mason University, editor of the Independent Institute books, Entrepreneurial Economics, The Voluntary City (with D. Beito and P. Gordon), and Changing the Guard: Private Prisons and the Control of Crime.

Robert Higgs is Senior Fellow in Political Economy at The Independent Institute, author of Against Leviathan and Crisis and Leviathan, and editor of the scholarly quarterly journal, The Independent Review. Click here for a bio on Dr. Higgs, the noted economist and historian.

William Marina is Research Fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif., and Professor Emeritus of History at Florida Atlantic University.

David T. Beito is a Research Fellow at The Independent Institute, Associate Professor of History at the University of Alabama, and co-editor of the book, The Voluntary City: Choice, Community and Civil Society.

William Marina and David T. Beito belong to "Liberty and Power," a group blog at the History News Network.

For further articles and studies, see the Center on Peace & Liberty and OnPower.org.

Nicolas Heidorn is a public policy intern at The Independent Institute in Oakland, California.

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