Bush Picks CIA’s Gates for No. 2 NSC Job, Risking More Iran-Contra Controversy

In one of his few surprise personnel choices thus far, President-elect George Bush on Wednesday named Robert M. Gates, deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency and a specialist on Soviet affairs, to be his deputy national security adviser.

Gates, considered a solid and straight-forward intelligence analyst--although ambitious and sometimes arrogant, in the view of critics--is understood to be the personal choice of retired Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, the widely respected authority on security issues who is to be Bush’s national security adviser and Gates’ boss on the National Security Council.

Scowcroft has known Gates for about 15 years and reportedly sought him for the job not only because of his experience in dealing with the intelligence community but because of his expertise in Soviet affairs. The Soviet Union is expected to be a front-burner subject throughout the Bush presidency.

Controversy Likely

Gates’ selection is likely to be tinged with controversy, however. He was selected two years ago by President Reagan to become director of the CIA amid the Iran-Contra scandal but had to withdraw his name from nomination after some senators threatened to hold up his confirmation indefinitely because, they charged, he had helped mislead Congress.

The appointment could also revive complaints that Bush, who has kept the Reagan Administration’s Iran-Contra debacle from soiling him, is rewarding persons who were marginally involved in the affair. There remains no evidence that Bush or Gates had a greater role in the scandal than has been acknowledged, however.

Gates, who looks younger than his 45 years, recently was involved in an “inside-the-Beltway” flap with Secretary of State George P. Shultz over a relatively hard-line speech that the CIA official delivered here last month. In it, Gates was more critical of Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev and dubious about his prospects for success than Shultz believes is warranted by facts or appropriate for a CIA official to voice publicly.

Shultz personally “read out” Gates on the phone immediately afterward, according to several State Department officials, on the grounds that Gates had made a foreign policy statement without advance clearance. CIA Director William H. Webster, absent at the time, defended Gates on his return, but Shultz then took his complaint to both Reagan and Bush. If Bush agreed, it clearly did not affect his willingness to appoint Gates to the new job.

Gave Speech Earlier

Gates argued that he had delivered similar speeches earlier, all of them cleared, to audiences outside Washington that went unnoticed by the press and the State Department. But it is a measure of Gates’ reputation that his critics saw the speech as his “resume”--emphasizing conservative credentials--for a job in the Bush Administration.

Gates was born in Wichita, Kan., and was graduated from William and Mary College in Virginia before joining the CIA in 1966. He received a doctorate in Soviet and Russian history from Georgetown University in 1974. In the same year, he was assigned to the National Security Council staff in the Administration of Gerald R. Ford when Scowcroft was serving as national security adviser.

Bush, who served as CIA director in 1975-76, also knew Gates, who stayed on as an aide to Zbigniew Brzezinski in the Jimmy Carter White House until 1979. Then he returned to the CIA to work for Director Stansfield Turner as a top Soviet analyst. In 1982, under William J. Casey, he became deputy director for intelligence, the top analytical job of the agency. He became Casey’s deputy a year later, and in 1986 he was nominated to be director after Casey became terminally ill with a brain tumor.

‘Extraordinarily Bright’

Associates from his White House days regard Gates as highly competent and straight-forward. Retired Adm. Bobby Inman, who preceded Gates as deputy director of the CIA and was something of his mentor, said that Gates “is an extraordinarily bright, capable public servant and one of the country’s premier students of the Soviet Union.”

Over the years, Gates has served many bosses who were diverse in both personalities and ideology. One senior official who praised him as an innovative “activist” also called him an “artful dodger.”

Scrutiny Inevitable

The scrutiny of Bush appointments for connection to Iran-Contra events was inevitable because the depth of the President-elect’s own knowledge of the scandal never has been fully disclosed, either in the congressional hearings or in the report of the presidential commission appointed by Reagan to review the events.

Former Sen. John Tower, who headed the commission, is defense secretary-designate. Scowcroft, a widely respected expert on security and defense issues, was another commission member. (The third was former Sen. Edmund S. Muskie, a Democrat.)

Another Bush appointee is Thomas R. Pickering, a career Foreign Service officer who was ambassador to El Salvador and Israel when Iran-Contra developments were occurring in both countries; he will become the chief U.S. representative to the United Nations.

Gates has acknowledged that he should have been “more aggressive” and “argued harder” in opposing the arms-for-hostage trade but contended that he had only a “peripheral role” in the events. No contradictory evidence has appeared.

His new post will not require confirmation by the Senate, although his present job is subject to Senate approval.

Successor a Career Officer

Gates’ successor at the CIA will be a career officer, Richard Kerr, which came as a minor surprise. Kerr is currently a deputy CIA director who has briefed Bush regularly.

There had been speculation that James Lilley, a former CIA official now serving as U.S. ambassador to South Korea and a former Bush associate, was the front-runner for that job and likely successor to Webster, who some officials expect to retire to a judgeship in about a year.

Kerr, as a career officer, is not necessarily in line for the top job, which still leaves the door open for Lilley eventually to become CIA chief, according to officials. On the other hand, Lilley is also a candidate to become assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs.