Great, same circus, different clowns. This guy is going to be no different than Rumsfeld. And he has the added advantage of being heavily mired in Iran-Contra.
Speaking of which, when does Rummy get his medal?
From Newsweek:
Congressional records and transcripts extensively document the debate over Gates's credentials and record in the Bush and Reagan administrations. In one case, Democrats accused Gates of helping to push an allegedly contentious report about the Soviet Union's influence in Iran....
A report produced by Lawrence Walsh, the independent counsel appointed to conduct a criminal investigation of the Iran-contra affair, criticized Gates for possible lack of candor related to what he knew about the Reagan-era scandal. According to the report, Gates consistently testified that he first learned in October 1986 that money from the sales of arms to Iran may have been diverted to anticommunist contra forces in Central America. Other evidence, however, suggested that Gates got a report on the affair from a senior CIA official several months earlier. Walsh eventually decided that there was not enough evidence to warrant the filing of any criminal case against Gates. "In the end, although Gates's actions suggested an officer who was more interested in shielding his institution from criticism and in shifting the blame to the NSC [National Security Council] than in finding out the truth, there was insufficient evidence to charge Gates with a criminal endeavor to obstruct congressional investigations," Walsh wrote in his report.
