Paying The Penalty For Silence
Just how long is "forever"?
I ask because this President Bush has hired a man who was pardoned, by Bush the elder, for Iran-Contra. In case you've forgotten -- or weren't alive then! -- "Iran-Contra" is shorthand for a scandal in the Reagan Administration. The US sold arms to Iran in exchange for the release of hostages by Hezbollah, all the while using proceeds from the arms sale to fund Contra militants in Nicaragua.
Elliott Abrams pleaded guilty in October 1991, to two misdemeanor charges of withholding information from Congress about secret government efforts to support the Nicaraguan contra rebels during a ban on such aid. He was sentenced in November 1991 to two years probation and 100 hours community service. President Bush pardoned him, along with five others, on 24 December 1992.
In his first term, the second President Bush appointed Abrams as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director on the National Security Council for Near East and North African Affairs. In his second term, Bush appointed Abrams Deputy National Security Advisor for Global Democracy Strategy -- right up the alley of someone involved with Iran in the 80s, don't you think?
So in this case, "forever" was about 10 years.
Similarities With Iran-Contra
There are similarities between Iran-Contra and PlameGate:
[T]he Iran operations were carried out with the knowledge of [the President and Vice President]...
[L]arge volumes of highly relevant, contemporaneously created documents were systematically and willfully withheld from investigators by several Reagan Administration officials; and
[F]ollowing the revelation of these operations in October and November 1986, Reagan Administration officials deliberately deceived the Congress and the public about the level and extent of official knowledge of and support for these operations...
Much of the early phase of the continuing investigation focused on contradictions between the prior sworn testimony of Reagan Administration officials and contemporaneously created documents...
[F]alse testimony was given to, and highly relevant documents were withheld from, the Congressional and criminal Iran/contra investigations, despite representations of cooperation by the Reagan and Bush Administrations;
Each of these points describes PlameGate as well -- although the players have changed. Or have they?
Other Similarities With Reagan
There are other former Reagan officials with links to Iran-Contra who are employed by the Bush White House.
- Charles Allen, Assistant Secretary for Information Analysis at the Department of Homeland Security under Bush the Younger; CIA National Intelligence Ffficer for Counterterrorism under Reagan; Assistant Director of Central Intelligence [ADCI] for Collection under Bush the Elder and Clinton.
- Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense under Bush the Younger; Deputy Director of Central Intelligence and Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs under Reagan; and Director of Central Intelligence under Bush the Elder. Reagan had nominated him for CIA chief but he withdrew because of controversy surrounding Iran-Contra.
- John Negroponte, Ambassador to the United Nations, Ambassador to Iraq and Director of National Intelligence under Bush the Younger; ambassador to Honduras under Reagan where he sent "dozens of cables in which the Ambassador sought to undermine regional peace efforts such as the Contadora initiative that ultimately won Costa Rican president Oscar Arias a Nobel Prize, as well as multiple reports of meetings and conversations with Honduran military officers who were instrumental in providing logistical support and infrastructure for CIA covert operations in support of the contras against Nicaragua."
- John Poindexter, Director of the DARPA Information Awareness Office (IAO) under Bush the Younger; National Security Advisor under Reagan. Poindexter was convicted of multiple felonies relating to Iran-Contra; the convictions were overturned in 1991 because prosecution evidence might have been tainted Poindexter's Congressional testimony.
- Otto Reich, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs under Bush the Younger; Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean in the State Department and Ambassador to Venezuela for Reagan.
So what price is paid for taking the fall?
These six are not the only people implicated or convicted in Iran-Contra for whom Iran-Contra was merely a small pothole for their career. For example, Oliver North is on the talk-show circuit and employed by Fox News Channel.
Where will Libby be in 10 years? Will he have faded to obscurity ... or will he be rewarded with a return to public life by whomever is the next Republican President?