Robert Gates - and locking us up forever.

Bob Gates & Locking You Up Forever

By Robert Parry

12/01/06 "Consortium News" -- -- As the next Defense Secretary, Robert M. Gates will be in charge of a new star-chamber legal system that can lock up indefinitely “unlawful enemy combatants” and “any person” accused of aiding them. Yet, despite these extraordinary new powers, his confirmation is being treated more like a coronation than a time for tough questions.

Not since 2003 when Secretary of State Colin Powell wowed Official Washington with his United Nations speech on Iraq’s WMD has there been such an awed consensus about any public figure as there has been for former CIA Director Gates, who is almost universally praised for his intelligence, experience and down-to-earth style.

But there are serious unresolved questions about Gates’s past that the American people might want resolved before he is entrusted with the awesome new powers that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 puts in the hands of the Defense Secretary.

In 1991, for reasons mostly of political expediency and personal friendship, Gates’s last confirmation process for CIA director never got to the bottom of allegations linking Gates to some of the most serious national security scandals of the 1980s, including illegal involvement in arms deals with Iran and Iraq.

In his memoir, From the Shadows, Gates revealed why the inquiries were cut short when he thanked his friend, Sen. David Boren, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, for shepherding him through the confirmation process.

more at:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15...

The link you pasted got cut off, here's the actual one:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15790.htm

I didn't realize that Ray McGovern was Gates's former boss. I sincerely hope that he will be participating in these hearings.