Sign a letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Robert Gates!

Subject: ...Sign on Letter to Armed Services Committee



Please circulate widely.
Deadline for signatures: December 3, 2006.

Sign a letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Robert Gates!
Tell Senators to Oppose Gates for Secretary of Defense!

To sign on to this letter as a group or as an individual, send your name,
organization, city, and state to quest-list@quixote.org. The letter with all
signatures will be sent to Senator John Warner, Chair of the Armed Services
Committee, Senator Carl Levin, ranking Democratic member, and the other members
of the Committee on December 4, 2006.

Gates is an old Cold Warrior involved in most of the illegal and immoral US
government actions in the Reagan and first Bush administrations.

He should not be Secretary of Defense because of his:
1. Involvement in the CIA mining of the Nicaraguan port of Corinto and execution
of Contra war against Nicaragua ruled illegal by the International Court of
Justice at The Hague;

2. Lying to the Senate about knowledge of the illegal activities known as the
Iran/Contra scandal in violation of the Arms Export Control Act and the Boland
Amendment;

3. Providing chemical weapon components to Iraq during Iran/Iraq war; and

4. Tailoring intelligence on the Soviet Union, according to former Secretary of
State George Shultz.

To learn more about the record of Robert Gates, read the November 9th interview
with former CIA agent Melvin Goodman and Journalist Robert Parry on the radio/TV
program "Democracy Now!" http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/09/1444242.
Goodman states that "There was a record of Bob Gates creating intelligence out
of whole cloth and urging Bill Casey to take even more provocative measures than
the CIA and the Reagan administration was proposing toward Central America,
particularly toward Nicaragua."


Melvin Goodman also wrote an opinion piece which appeared in the Baltimore Sun
on November 10 in which he brings out Gates' politicization of intelligence,
especially on the Soviet Union. To read the article go to: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.gates10nov10,0,3393156.story?coll=bal-oped-headlines



Read Scott Shane's articles on Gates' difficulties in his previous confirmation
hearings in the New York Times (you will have to register first, but it is free)
of November 10 at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/10/washington/10gates.html?ex=1164171600&en=0f2afb9c771928a1&ei=5070
and November 18th at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/washington/19gates.html


An excerpt from the autobiography of Lawrence Walsh, independent counsel in the
Iran/Contra investigation from 1986 to 1993, is posted on the web page of
Counterpunch. Go here to read it: http://www.counterpunch.org/walsh11082006.html
Walsh wrote, "We did not believe that he could have forgotten a warning of
North's diversion of the arms sale proceeds to the Contras. The mingling of two
covert activities that were of intense personal interest to the president was
not something the second-highest officer in the CIA would forget."


Deadline for signatures: December 3, 2006.


Here follows the letter to the members of the Senate Armed Services Committee:


December 4, 2006
Senator ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­________________
Armed Services Committee
United States Senate
Washington, DC


Dear Senator_________________:


As individuals and organizations concerned with human rights, we are writing to
urge you to reject President George W. Bush's nomination of Robert Gates as
Secretary of Defense. Mr. Gates has been involved in violations of U.S. and
international law that should make him ineligible to hold this high office,
including (but not limited to):


1. Involvement in the CIA mining of the Nicaraguan port of Corinto and execution
of Contra war against Nicaragua ruled illegal by the International Court of
Justice at The Hague;

2. Lying to the Senate about knowledge of the illegal activities known as the
Iran/Contra scandal in violation of the Arms Export Control Act and the Boland
Amendment;

3. Providing chemical weapon components to Iraq during Iran/Iraq war; and

4. Tailoring intelligence on the Soviet Union, according to former Secretary of
State George Shultz.

Mr. Gates was the second-in-command and right-hand of CIA Director Bill Casey in
the 1980s when the CIA mined Nicaragua's harbors and organized, trained and
supplied the contras trying to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. According
to former CIA analyst Melvin Goodman, who was interviewed on the radio/TV
program "Democracy Now!" on November 9, "There was a record of Bob Gates
creating intelligence out of whole cloth and urging Bill Casey to take even more
provocative measures than the CIA and the Reagan administration was proposing
toward Central America, particularly toward Nicaragua." Goodman went on to say,
"Remember, the CIA was involved in the mining of the harbor in Corinto, which
was clearly an act of war. And Bill Casey never briefed this to the Senate
Intelligence Committee. And, of course, Gates prepared all of Casey's testimony
at this time."

Independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh in his autobiography wrote, "We told them
[the Senators] that we did not think we had enough corroborating information to
indict Robert Gates, but that his answers to these questions had been
unconvincing. We did not believe that he could have forgotten a warning of
North's diversion of the arms sale proceeds to the Contras. The mingling of two
covert activities that were of intense personal interest to the president was
not something the second-highest officer in the CIA would forget."

Evidence indicates that Mr. Gates was part of the Republican efforts to stall
release of the US Embassy hostages held in Iran during the administration of
President Jimmy Carter until after the November 1980 election in order to
prevent the Carter administration from claiming a successful outcome. Goodman
said that the Russian government reported in 1993 to Rep. Lee Hamilton, who was
in charge of the investigation of the so-called "October surprise," that "these
contacts [by the Iranians] with the Republicans had occurred, the Soviets at
that point had intelligence on it, and that Bob Gates was one of the people
involved in it." The hostages were released on the day Ronald Reagan was
inaugurated.

Even more serious are the accusations that Gates was involved in the sale of
weapons to Iraq in the early 1980s including cluster bombs and precursor
chemicals for weapons of mass destruction. Journalist Robert Parry, also
speaking on "Democracy Now!" on Nov. 9, said that these were the chemicals "that
Saddam Hussein allegedly used in his chemical weapons that were deployed against
the Iranians and other targets in Iraq. So, Gates was allegedly involved in all
those kinds of -- that's the very secretive side of US foreign policy that Casey
was overseeing, but Gates was . his man handling some of the details."

We believe that Mr. Gates must be required during his nomination hearing to
answer questions from Senators on all of these topics and we urge you not to
accept incomplete answers or obfuscations. Upon the completion of the hearing,
we urge you to recommend that Robert Gates' nomination to be our nation's next
Secretary of Defense be rejected by the Senate.


Sincerely,

Names of organizations and individuals