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Page 5 of 5 JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Bob Parry, the investigations that you did in the ’80s at least led to congressional investigations into some of these issues. Given what happened now with this election, do you have any hope that the new congress will take a deeper look into some of these issues surrounding Bob Gates and the intelligence failures and spinning of the Bush administration?  ROBERT PARRY: Well, as a journalist, I always hope that information will come out somehow, but it does appear that the strategy that the Bush White House is following is to release -- first of all, release this information the day after the election, in a sense give in to one of the chief Democratic demands -- that is, the ouster of Rumsfeld -- and then say that there must be quick action on Bob Gates's nomination. I think yesterday there was an announcement by the Armed Services Committee, the chairman and the ranking Democrat, that they would move expeditiously on the Gates nomination and push it through before the end of the year -- that is, in the lame-duck session of the Congress, the Republican-controlled congress. So there doesn’t seem to be much eagerness to sort of go back and sort of confront Bob Gates with the questions that Mel has raised about his involvement with the politicization of intelligence, which is a key issue obviously in Iraq war, and his involvement or lack thereof with secret arms deals with the Iranians and the Iraqis, two of the countries that the Defense Department is most interested in at this point. So, but whether those questions will even be asked is a question here, that apparently the idea is to sort of just sort of have the Democrats show their bipartisanship again by not asking tough questions of Bob Gates. And this is very similar to what happened in 1991, when Senator Boren backed away from the gates, from pressing on the Gates nomination for the CIA director. And it goes back, really, to what Lee Hamilton was doing in the 1980s. I do have to disagree a bit with Mel in that I never found Hamilton to be a junkyard dog in his investigations. When we did our first stories about Oliver North in ’85 and ’86 at the Associated Press, they finally -- those stories finally went to Lee Hamilton at the Intelligence Committee. He arranged a meeting with Oliver North, which involved Dick Cheney, who was on the Intelligence Committee at the time, and Henry Hyde and some other members, and they essentially asked Ollie if these stories were true, and he said they weren’t. And that was pretty much the end of the investigation at that point. And it was only because a plane was shot down, one of Ollie’s planes was shot down, in October of 1986 that the Nicaraguan side of the story started spilling out. AMY GOODMAN: That was the downing of Eugene Hasenfus's plane? ROBERT PARRY: Correct. Eugene Hasenfus survived the crash and began talking about what was actually going on. And that sort of put Hamilton back on the spot. When the Iran-Contra scandal sort of broke open in November of ’86, he was made head of the investigation. But again, he led it in a way that was not designed to find the truth. It was designed to sort of reach a political solution, which was not to have impeachment of Ronald Reagan, not to have it go too far, not to damage the CIA. It wasn’t to find the facts, as much as it was to sort of reach a consensus that enough people could agree on. And we’ve seen that repeatedly with Hamilton. We saw it in the October Surprise investigation, which he headed in 1992, which, when at the end of that investigation so much evidence was pouring in, in late 1992, about this 1980 matter that the chief counsel, Larry Barcella, went to Hamilton and said, “We need another three months, another few months to review all this new incriminating evidence about the Republicans.” And Hamilton said “No,” that “we’re not going to continue this. We’re wrapping it up.” AMY GOODMAN: And just to be clear, you're talking about 1980, this allegation that somehow the Reagan forces, before Ronald Reagan became president, worked to stop the hostages from being released under Carter, what would have been the October Surprise, and have them released on Inauguration Day, when President Reagan was being sworn in, that allegation, and this possibility, though many have discounted it, of a meeting that was held in Paris in October, where US officials, perhaps like Vice President George H.W. Bush, met with Iranian officials. ROBERT PARRY: Right. And there’s actually a great deal of evidence that has built up to support that. But again, the idea was, of that investigation, was to avoid having the kind of political crisis, the crisis of confidence, that might occur if the American people began to see their government as it was actually functioning, not as some people in Washington would like them to see it, which is as a more fair, a more decent operation. So, Hamilton has always been the guy who sort of steps in and sort of smoothes things over, tries not to have too many rough edges, and moves on. So that’s been his record and, of course, now he’s working on the Iraq Study Group. But he’s never been the fellow who actually goes to find the truth and lets the facts stand where they may. He has never been that guy. AMY GOODMAN: We have to break. Bob Parry is our guest, author of the new book called Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq. He does consortiumnews.com. Mel Goodman, also our guest, former CIA and State Department analyst, who has co-authored the book, Bush League Diplomacy, and spoke out against Bob Gates when he was nominated to be director of Central Intelligence. And when we come back, we’re going to ask the question: would Donald Rumsfeld stepping down leave him open to prosecution? We’ll also be joined by the president for the Center for Constitutional Rights, Michael Ratner. Stay with us. Recommend this article...
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