Obama’s Defense Secretary Covertly Funneled Weapons Through Pakistani Intel to Afghan Rebels

By Jeremy Scahill

As Obama ratchets up the US occupation of Afghanistan, it certainly warrants some reflection on who he has around him and what their public records look like when it comes to war and other military action, as well as regards Afghanistan itself. I will continue on this theme in the weeks and months ahead (and have been on it for some time), but there is a profile of Obama (and Bush’s) Defense Secretary Robert Gates in today’s NY Times that is worth looking at. Gates of course served as Bush Sr.’s  deputy national security adviser and director of central intelligence. As The Times put it, “Mr. Obama said he had ‘enormous sympathy’ for the foreign policy of Mr. Bush, particularly his handling of the 1991 Persian Gulf war and the fall of the Berlin Wall.”

There are no major surprises in the piece, but some important reminders of who Gates is, particularly regarding US history in Afghanistan right up to Obama’s escalation.

Here are a few nuggets:

—”[A]s the No. 2 at the C.I.A. in the late 1980s, Mr. Gates helped funnel covert Reagan administration aid and weapons through Pakistan’s spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, to the Islamic fundamentalists who ousted the Russians from Afghanistan.”

—Gates “has become pivotal to the administration’s overhaul of policy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, called Afpak at the White House, which Mr. Obama announced last week. Some of those same fundamentalists are now enemies of the United States trying to overthrow the government in Kabul, a disastrous consequence that produced the problem the Obama administration confronts today. At the same time, American officials say a wing of the ISI is providing money and military aid to the Taliban.”

—According to The Times, “Mr. Gates does know jihad from both sides.”

—“Bob has enormous influence because of his experience,” said Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, who first worked with Mr. Gates when both were in the Carter administration. “We talk about Pakistan, and he can say, ‘You know, when I was at the C.I.A., I worked directly with the ISI in this way.’ He has the greatest continuity of experience in Afpak of any official. And he has seen the good, the bad and the ugly up close.”

—“Friends say they expect that Mr. Gates, 65, will stay on as Mr. Obama’s defense secretary beyond a single year, his expected tenure when Mr. Obama appointed him.”

Full Story here.