Daily Kos
Thursday, November 9, 2006

Robert Gates, you have some explaining to do.

Were you or were you not among the group of Bush I associates who met with representatives of the Iranian Mullahs in 1980 in order to make sure that Americans kept hostage weren't released until after Jimmy Carter was defeated?

bink's diary :: ::
What's the deal with you and the Iranians, Mr. Gates?

What are your connections to the Mullahs?

Who did you know over there?

Who do you know over there?

This stinks.

I'm talking about this:

With little more than a month to go before the U.S. election, Republicans and Iranian representatives continued to meet in Washington. Indeed, one of the first public references to secret Republican-Iranian contacts was to a meeting at the L'Enfant Plaza Hotel supposedly in late September or early October.

Three Republicans - Allen, Silberman and Robert McFarlane, an aide to Sen. John Tower - have acknowledged a session with an Iranian emissary at the hotel. But none of them claimed to remember the person's name, his nationality or his position - not even McFarlane who purportedly arranged the meeting.

In early October, Israeli intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe said he learned from superiors in Israel that Carter's hostage negotiations had fallen through because of Republican opposition, according to his memoirs, Profits of War.

The Republicans wanted the Iranians to release the hostages only after the Nov. 4 election, Ben-Menashe wrote, with the final details to be arranged in Paris between a delegation of Republicans, led by George H.W. Bush, and a delegation of Iranians, led by cleric Mehdi Karrubi.

Also present, Ben-Menashe wrote, would be about a half dozen Israeli representatives, including David Kimche, and several CIA officials, including Donald Gregg and Robert Gates, an ambitious young man who was considered close to Bush. At the time, Gates was serving as an executive assistant to CIA Director Stansfield Turner.

In retrospect, some of Carter's negotiators felt they should have been much more attentive to the possibility of Republican sabotage. "Looking back, the Carter administration appears to have been far too trusting and particularly blind to the intrigue swirling around it," said former NSC official Gary Sick.

You sabotaged efforts by our government to free U.S. hostages in Iran, didn't you?

Do you really think that you can come aboard in such a sensitive position as Defense Secretary after such perfidy?

Answer me.

What was your role in the October Surprise?