Instead Clinton and other Democrats joined in sweeping the Republican scandals under the rug, hoping that they might gain some reciprocity of bipartisanship. As Clinton wrote in his 2004 memoir, My Life:
George W. Bush's gift to the American Republic may be that he has discredited a host of right-wing theories and practices--"trickle-down economics"; "self-regulating markets"; "tough-guy" foreign policy; the "imperial presidency"; and the notion that "government is the problem."
“I wanted the country to be more united, not more divided, even if that split would be to my political advantage,” Clinton wrote. “Finally, President Bush had given decades of service to our country, and I thought we should allow him to retire in peace, leaving the matter between him and his conscience.” [See Bill Clinton, My Life, p. 457]
In some cases, Clinton and the Democrats went beyond simply ignoring lumps in the rug; they joined in falsifying the history and intimidating whistleblowers.
The context of this Clinton-Iraqgate cover-up came during a criminal trial of Teledyne, a company that sold explosives to a Chilean arms manufacturer, Carlos Cardoen, who then supplied Hussein with cluster bombs in the 1980s. Another defendant in the case was a hapless Teledyne salesman, named Ed Johnson, who earned a modest salary of about $30,000.
By the mid-1990s, the “official” take on Iraqgate was that the scandal about secret U.S. military assistance to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was a “conspiracy theory” and that Reagan-Bush-I officials, including Vice President Bush, had been unfairly accused of facilitating shipments of weapons and WMD-related materiel to Iraq.
A Feckless Report
Solidifying this notion of a “conspiracy theory,” Clinton's Justice Department issued a report on Jan. 15, 1995, stating that it had found no "evidence that U.S. agencies or officials illegally armed Iraq" in the 1980s. The report, however, contained a curious admission that the CIA had withheld relevant data from the investigators.
"In the course of our work, we learned of 'sensitive compartments' of information not normally retrievable and of specialized offices that previously were unknown to the CIA personnel who were assisting us," wrote John M. Hogan, counselor to Attorney General Janet Reno.
Then, without further skepticism, Hogan added, "I do not believe this uncertainty severely undermined our investigation."
But two weeks after Hogan's odd findings, Howard Teicher, a former National Security Council official under President Reagan, came forward with a startling affidavit in the Teledyne case.
Teicher asserted that the secret arming of Iraq had been ordered by Reagan in June 1982 as part of a National Security Decision Directive. Under the order, CIA Director William Casey and his then-deputy, Robert Gates, "authorized, approved and assisted" delivery of cluster bombs to Iraq through Cardoen.
“In the Spring of 1982, Iraq teetered on the brink of losing its war with Iran,” Teicher wrote. “The Iranians discovered a gap in the Iraqi defenses along the Iran-Iraq border between Baghdad to the north and Basra to the south.
“Iran positioned a massive invasion force directly across from the gap in the Iraqi defenses. An Iranian breakthrough at the spot would have cutoff Baghdad from Basra and would have resulted in Iraq’s defeat. … In June 1982, President Reagan decided that the United States could not afford to allow Iraq to lose the war to Iran.”
Teicher wrote that he helped draft a secret national security decision directive that Reagan signed to authorize covert U.S. assistance to Hussein’s military. "The NSDD, including even its identifying number, is classified,” Teicher wrote.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
2
2
