The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.13           March 31, 1997 
 
 
Clinton's CIA Nominee Retreats Under Fire  

BY NAOMI CRAINE
Anthony Lake withdrew from nomination to head the Central Intelligence Agency March 17, saying that extensive Senate confirmation hearings were "hurting the CIA and NSC [National Security Council] staff in ways I can no longer tolerate." This came in the midst of an unfolding scandal over Democratic Party fund-raising at the White House and charges that Beijing sought to buy influence in the 1996 U.S. elections.

Hearings on Lake's nomination were sharply partisan, reflecting the desire of major sections of the ruling class to prevent liberals like Lake from heading essential repressive institutions such as the CIA.

It's not that Lake didn't have good credentials to run the agency. He was the national security advisor in President William Clinton's first administration. As such, he served as one of the architects of U.S. foreign policy over the last four years. He was one of the main advocates of sending U.S. troops into Haiti in 1994, and has played a central role in Washington's involvement in Yugoslavia. One of the things Lake got roasted for in the Senate hearings was not informing Congress that while Washington was formally pushing an arms embargo on all of Yugoslavia, the Clinton administration backed arms sales by Tehran to Muslim forces in Bosnia. Later, when Washington's "let it bleed" policy had run its course, Lake was involved in drawing up the "peace accord" in Dayton, Ohio, for NATO troops to occupy and partition Bosnia.

Last November, when Washington was probing possible military intervention in eastern Zaire, Lake ordered CIA flights over the area, supposedly to learn where thousands of refugees from Rwanda had gone.

Lake's career got off the ground in Vietnam, where he was stationed with the U.S. State Department at the beginning of Washington's buildup of the war in Indochina in 1962. By 1970 he had advanced to the position of aide to Richard Nixon's national security advisor, Henry Kissinger. He resigned that post, stating disagreement with the U.S. invasion of Cambodia, but later explained that he thought Washington couldn't win the war. Lake again served in the State Department under James Carter's administration in the late 1970s.

In his bid for the post of Director of Central Intelligence - responsible for overseeing not only the CIA but 12 other spy agencies as well - Lake came under fire from the right for being "too liberal." Among other complaints were his resignation during the Nixon administration and a statement Lake made on television that he was not absolutely certain Alger Hiss was a Soviet spy. Hiss was a U.S. official jailed on perjury charges during the McCarthy witch hunts for denying accusations of spying for Moscow.

Another complaint voiced in the right-wing press was that Lake might be hesitant to use covert action, a charge the nominee vehemently denied.

Concerns over these issues are serious ones for the wealthy rulers in the United States, since they are now, and will more and more, use military might around the world as the keystone for advancing U.S. imperialist interests. How best to do this, and who best to carry it out, is what the Lake nomination debate was all about.

Accusations over `Chinese money'
Lake's nomination also got caught up in the scandals over campaign financing that continue to swirl about the White House. The latest round of charges, which have a decidedly jingoistic tone to them, involve supposed efforts by the Chinese government and Asian businessmen to influence elections in the United States through campaign contributions.

In mid-March the FBI asserted that Beijing tried to funnel money to Democratic Party candidates in the 1996 congressional elections. The FBI told this to several legislators in June 1996, and said it also warned two officials of the White House National Security Council, which was under Lake's direction. Clinton says he and his staff, including Lake, were never informed. In a public standoff, officials from the White House and the Justice Department accused each other of lying about when the Clinton administration had been informed of the matter.

These allegations came out as part of a broader hue and cry over fund-raising at the White House by Clinton, vice president Albert Gore, and their staff, which is supposed to be illegal. Of the many people who apparently gave big money to have coffee or stay overnight at the president's abode, news reports have particularly played up those campaign contributors and fund-raisers who had ties to China and Indonesia. A typical example appeared on the editorial page of the New York Times March 16. There Steven Weisman speculated that as more facts come out, "The warnings delivered to Attorney General Janet Reno and the National Security Council about Chinese efforts to influence the American election will look like understatements."

A related charge that Lake was grilled on in the Senate hearings revolved around Roger Tamraz, an oil financier who the CIA said had been "helpful in a number of ways" and who is also under indictment in Lebanon on embezzlement charges. Tamraz, who contributed $177,000 to the Democrats over the last two years, was invited to the White House at least four times in 1996 despite cautions by NSC staffers, after asking the CIA to put in a good word for him. Lake said he knew nothing about the affair. CIA officials announced March 17 they were launching an internal investigation.

On top of this there were other, more routine charges of improper conduct by Lake, such as his conflict of interests in holding stock in energy companies that could be affected by decisions he made as national security advisor.

As the president looks for a new nominee to head Washington's spy operations, he must face the fact that the CIA "has been battered during the Clinton Administration by one disaster after another," an article in the March 19 New York Times noted. These include public reports on the cop agency's nefarious operations training the militaries in Guatemala and Honduras to torture opposition forces, the collapse of some of its covert operations against the government of Iraq, the conviction of two CIA agents for selling information to Moscow, and the fact that U.S. agents have recently been caught carrying out economic espionage in France, Germany, Italy, and India.

Push for NATO expansion advances
Meanwhile, Clinton is gearing up for his trip to Helsinki, Finland, to meet with Russian president Boris Yeltsin and push ahead with Washington's campaign to expand NATO into central and eastern Europe. This move, strongly opposed by Moscow, is part of war preparations by Washington and its allies against the workers state in Russia.

Earlier this month, Clinton appointed Jeremy Rosner to a new post as head of the administration's public campaign for NATO expansion. Rosner was previously an analyst for the Carnegie Foundation, a big-business foreign policy think- tank. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and other State Department officials are now planning to address a series of "town meetings" across the country leading up to the July NATO summit that will take up expansion of the imperialist military alliance.  
 
 
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