Hearing takes a toll on Lake nomination

By Frank Gaffney Jr.
Washington Times, 18 March 1997

After three days of Senate hearings
on Anthony Lake’s nomination to be the
next director of central intelligence
(DCI), a variation on the old adage
“familiarity breeds contempt”
seems at work: Senators’ increasing
familiarity with Tony Lake’s contempt for
Congress is breeding opposition to his
controversial candidacy — including, it
would appear, among some expected to
support it.

Take, for example, Mr. Lake’s
contention, in response to repeated
questioning about his knowledge of the
Chinese government’s efforts to penetrate
and influence U.S. elections, that he was
out of the loop. Each passing day brings
new indications that he had to have
worked very hard to remain ignorant of
this facet of China’s larger, ominous
agenda vis-a-vis the United States — to
the point of not returning a phone call
on the matter from Attorney General Janet
Reno.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, chairman of the
Senate’s Judiciary Committee and a member
of its Intelligence Committee that must
pass on the Lake nomination, had said at
the outset of the hearings that he hoped
to be able to support the president’s
choice for DCI. That prospect seemed much
less likely after Mr. Hatch used his
appearance on CBS’ “Face the
Nation” last Sunday to observe that
Chinese influence-buying was well-known
within the Clinton administration a year
before the issue was briefed to two NSC
staffers in June 1996.

Mr. Lake averred that he was also
unaware of the idea of turning a premier
Navy base in Long Beach over to the
Chinese merchant marine (COSCO), despite
the president’s personal intervention on
behalf of this initiative not once but
twice over the past two years. The
Clinton pre-election obsession with
California doubtless contributed to the
administration’s enthusiasm for the
COSCO-Long Beach development.
Unfortunately, it would appear that its
interest in currying favor with China and
its money-men like White House
coffee-clatcher Wang Jun did, as well.

Concerns about the palpable
subordination of U.S. national interests
to such considerations may have
contributed to the request last week by
California’s Barbara Boxer and Diane
Feinstein for a long-overdue security
review of this idea. Interestingly, they
are two of the legislators the FBI
believes were targets for Beijing’s
illegal influence operations and two
Democratic senators who would be expected
to support the Lake nomination.

Even the New York Times felt
constrained to editorialize last Friday
that, “As disclosures accumulate,
the impression grows that the National
Security Council staff, if nothing else,
was asleep on the job as fund-raising and
foreign policy became dangerously
intermingled in the White House. That
does not recommend Mr. Lake for the tough
managerial responsibilities that would
face him at the CIA.”

If Tony Lake’s troubling stewardship
of the China portfolio is causing even
prospective supporters to express
misgivings, his testimony on a number of
other scores should finish off this
abysmal nomination:

• Mr. Lake assured
  senators that the mantra endlessly
  repeated by him and other administration
  officials — to the effect that there are
  no Russian missiles pointed at the United
  States (Mr. Clinton alone has made this
  statement at least 130 times in recent
  months) — is both substantively accurate
  and not intended to encourage unwarranted
  complacency. Under cross-examination,
  however, he confirmed that the United
  States has no way of knowing whether
  Russian missiles are currently targeted
  at America’s children or not. He also had
  to admit that even if they are not at
  this moment, they could be, literally, in
  the next. Conclusion: The Clinton party
  line is wrong and insidiously misleading.
• Senators heard Mr.
  Lake insist that the need to inform
  Congress about the administration’s
  fateful decision to give Iran a
  “green-light” never occurred to
  him, to Deputy Secretary of State Strobe
  Talbott or to any of the other
  participating policy-makers. Those
  familiar with the workings of the
  executive branch appreciate that no
  decision of any consequence — let alone
  one of such intense interest to the
  Congress — is taken without considering
  the nature and timing of its presentation
  on Capitol Hill. Since the Defense
  Department and even the CIA were also
  kept in the dark, the Lake-brokered
  “no instructions” decision
  amounted to a covert action, taken with
  as little regard for its pernicious
  long-term implications as for the
  “need-to-know” of other parts
  of the U.S. government.
• Mr. Lake testified
  that “there are no foreign troops in
  Bosnia.” U.S. intelligence is very
  aware though that lots of Iranian and
  other Islamic radicals — generically
  known as mujahideen — are still operating
  in those parts of Bosnia controlled by
  the Muslim government. At least some of
  them appear to pose a threat to American
  personnel there. Only when challenged did
  Mr. Lake dismissively acknowledge that
  some “muj” remain in Bosnia. He
  has yet to address the larger point,
  however, namely that their continuing
  presence is but one of many reasons why
  there is no real “peace” in the
  Balkans, only a temporary absence of
  hostilities.
• Bosnia is not the
  only place where Mr. Lake has implausibly
  suggested that U.S. intelligence supports
  the administration’s claims of foreign
  policy “successes.” Notably,
  Mr. Lake insisted that Saddam Hussein has
  been kept in his box — even though Saddam
  was recently rewarded for rolling up the
  CIA’s principal operation in Northern
  Iraq with renewed, if temporarily
  limited, access to the world oil market.
  And Mr. Lake asserts that functioning
  democracy has been restored to Haiti even
  though evidence of an incipient political
  meltdown is mounting daily.

Such statements have two things in
common: Most obviously, they suggest that
Tony Lake has a dangerously low regard
for the intelligence of his Senate
interlocutors. And second, they confirm
suspicions that Mr. Lake is prone to the
politicization of U.S. intelligence.
Either one of these tendencies should be
sufficient to sink a DCI-designate’s
chances; in combination, they will surely
prove to be showstoppers for this
nomination. After all, what senator would
believe that, if confirmed, Mr. Lake will
be forthcoming and candid with Congress
about evidence that casts Clinton
policies in an unfavorable light, when he
has had such difficulty doing so in the
course of his confirmation hearings?

Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is the
director of the Center for Security
Policy and a columnist for The Washington
Times.