MB Civic

McGovern ..

Without doubt, it was surprising when Gates inserted the following comment into a speech last Friday at West Point: “But in my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General [Douglas] MacArthur so delicately put it.” However, those of us who have known Gates for many years, including some of us old colleagues from his CIA days, couldn’t help but wonder what he was up to .. I would venture to suggest that the timing of Gates’s conversion can be pinned on a typically windsock reaction to recent polling on Afghanistan .. I base this assessment, in part, on having observed Gates very closely in the early 1970s when I headed the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch at CIA and had supervisory responsibilities for Gates. Within months of his arrival as a new analyst, his overweening careerist ambitions became all too obvious to his analyst colleagues as well as to me, and became a disruptive influence on the whole branch. I felt it necessary to record this on his first Efficiency Report and to counsel him about his behavior. However, he didn’t change

fascinating stuff – mab .. read more