Within hours of the Boston Marathon bombings, Robert Gates’ name was taken off the marquee at the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center. The former CIA director under president George H. Bush and former Secretary of Defense under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama was to speak in Redondo Tuesday evening to Distinguished Speaker Series subscribers. Series organizers were concerned that Gates’ name on the marquee might attract copy cat assailants. Redondo police went on heightened alert and Army security hovered backstage throughout Gates’ talk.
Gates began his talk by noting that he usually warms up his audience with insider Washington jokes.
“But in light of the tragic events in Boston, the usual D.C. jokes don’t seem appropriate,” he said.
Instead of the jokes, Gates asked for a moment of silence for Boston’s killed and injured.
Then, he spoke for over an hour without a single direct reference to the bombings. Even during his lengthy responses to questions from the audience, which were submitted in writing, the bombings were not mentioned.
Nonetheless, the Boston Marathon bombings framed the evening.
“How many Americans thought on September 12, 2001 that we’d go another 10 years without a successful attack on America? My guess is no one believed we could do that. We do connect the dots better now than before, despite the need to overcome huge bureaucratic and legal hurdles.
“But we can no more eliminate terrorism altogether than we can crime. Even if we turned into a police state, we could not prevent every act of terrorism. Look at the police states around the world. You’ll see they face terrorists’ problems, as well.”
Our goal, he said, is “to get to the point where dealing with threats is not a way of life, but a problem to be managed.”
The challenge, he said, is “to protect both our citizens and our citizen’s civil liberties.”
Among the civil liberties Gates spoke about is the public’s right to know what its government is doing.
“How do we balance what we tell the public about threats without giving too much information to the terrorists?” he asked.
The trend, he said, with apparent regret, weighs on the side of disclosing too much.
“The American Ship of State is the only ship that leaks from the top,” he quipped.
Gates told of a pledge taken in the “situation room” following the assassination of Osama bin Laden.
“At the end of the raid, I said to everyone, ‘We used techniques today that we use every day in Afghanistan. We need to keep the operation details secret.’ We went around the room, like you’d do in fifth grade, and did the oath thing. Within five hours, the details were leaked.
“The Pentagon wrote the book on leaking, but in the first hours after bin Laden, the leaks came from the White House and CIA. We (the Defense Department) got into the act later,” he said.
“We do have a serious discipline problem within government, but my thought is it is misdirected to go after the press. No journalist will hang up the phone when someone calls to say I have a great story. I want to go after the person who violates the trust placed in him or her.’
A member of the audience asked Gates his opinion on how Hollywood portrays of CIA covert operations.
“Until last year, no film has come close to an accurate portrayal. But last year’s Argo is an accurate film. I was in the office of the Director of the CIA watching the planning. I was the CIA Executive Assistant and I knew Tony Mendez [the CIA operative whose book the film is based on]. One of the things I liked most about the film is it gave credit to the Canadians for their help,” Gates said
Gates was less enthusiastic about Zero Dark 30, the film about the raid on bin Laden’s compound.
“In some ways the film underestimates the difficulty of the decision the President faced. In the film, the strong willed woman, [a composite of the operatives], tells the President she is 95 percent certain of bin Laden’s location.
“The reality is there was not one single piece of hard evidence that he was in the compound. All the evidence was circumstantial. We had a group of analysts in the room who did a brilliant analysis in connecting the dots. But when we pressed them, their range of confidence was from 40 to 80 percent.
“The president said, ‘Then it’s a crap shoot. It’s 50-50.’ Which made his decision to go ahead all the more impressive.”
Despite the pressures of serving as Secretary of Defense while the country was engaged in two wars, a sea change in the Middle East and an economic crisis at home, Gates said there were some light moments.
“Following the raid on bin Laden’s compound, there was a Photoshopped picture of President Obama, Vice President Biden, Secretary of State Clinton and myself sitting around a table.
“Obama, of course, was Superman, Biden was Spider Man, Clinton was Wonder Woman and for some reason, I was the Green Lantern.
“We all laughed about it. But after the laughter, it occurred to me to say, ‘We absolutely cannot release photos of the dead bin Laden. This Photoshop is funny. But imagine what a Photoshopped image of the dead bin Laden might result in. It could incite the Muslim world, endangering Americans in the Middle East and our troops in Afghanistan.
“None of those photos leaked,” he said.
Prior to his talk, Gates spoke backstage to members of the Mira Costa High School Model United Nations team. One of the students asked Gates how the U.S. should respond to the Syrian civil war.
Gates repeated his response to the Distinguished Speakers audience.
“I’ll begin by explaining my opposition to U.S. intervention in Libya. My view was that it was not in the U.S.’s vital interest. In the situation room, my position was ‘Can I just finish the two wars I’m already in?’ Wars look easy at the front end. But you never know what it will look like in the middle and end.
“The belief in Washington for every war we’ve fought since World War I has been that the war would be short. And we’ve been wrong every time except the first Gulf War.
“In my final few months as Secretary of Defense, I began losing my self-discipline. I was testifying before a Congressional committee when a senator kept pressing me to support a no fly zone over Libya. I explained that what he was proposing was an act of war because the first step in a no fly zone would be to destroy Libya’s air defenses. You will have just started a war, and maybe it will end there, but you don’t know that, I said.”
“My thinking was if Libya is a big problem for the Middle East, let them solve it. I felt that way about the Balkans. It was a European problem so they should deal with it.
“Otherwise, how do we draw the line that separates us from being the police for the world?
“Syria is a fight to the death. The Shiite minority repressed the Sunni majority for decades. As a result, the Shiites believe they will all be killed if they are pushed from power, and they may be.
“So, where do we intervene, with whom, and how? There are 100 opposition groups in Syria, including some al Qaeda.
“The president has done it about right, going through regional powers, including the Turks. I am absolutely opposed to the use of U.S. military forces in Syria. We don’t want to start another war there, with us in the lead.’
“As Secretary of Defense, I oversaw two costly wars that began with swift regime changes. We all know what came after that.
“The tectonic plates in the Middle East are shattered. There’s not much as outsiders that we can do. History is not encouraging.
“Over the past 250 years, of all the national revolutions – the American, French, Russian, Chinese – only one turned out well in the first decades. That was ours.
“The only way we can be on the right side of history is to support political freedom, support governments that serve their people, and support a capitalist economy,” Gates said. ER
