Within
a Month!
The Bringing Down of Bobby Ray Inman
by
Murray
N. Rothbard
by Murray N. Rothbard
DIGG THIS
This originally appeared in the March 1994 issue of The
Rothbard-Rockwell Report.
On December
16, President Clinton named retired Admiral Bobby Ray Inman to fill
the post of secretary of defense. To say that the nominee was universally
hailed would be a masterpiece of understatement. To pundits, media
people, politicians, and leading "well-informed sources" inside
the Beltway, Bobby Ray Inman could walk on water. He was the perfect
choice to bring order and prestige to Clinton's troubled and screwed-up
foreign and military policies. Bobby Ray was brilliant, sober, knowledgeable,
the Insiders' Insider, Mr. Intelligence. When Bobby Ray retired
from many years of public service in Washington in the early 1980s,
and returned to Texas, the reporters at Austin put on an affectionate
show in his behalf, singing, to the tune of "Jesus Christ, Superstar":
"Bobby Ray, Superstar/Are you the messiah that they say you are?"
Clearly, Washington greeted his return on December 16 with the fervent
answer. Yes!
Moreover, Inman
had come highly recommended. The main person pushing for his appointment
within the administration was Clinton's First Friend in the Trilateralist
Establishment, Rhodes Scholar and Oxford roomie Strobe Talbott,
now deputy secretary of state, and secretary of state-in-waiting.
Inman's coronation seemed secure.
And yet, in
just three weeks from that date, on January 16, Bobby Ray Inman,
reeling from bitter attacks by New York Times columnist Bill
Safire, attacks seconded by a couple of other media people, decided
to withdraw from the fray. He waited a couple of weeks to tell the
president, until Clinton's mother's funeral and his Russian trip
were out of the way, and then Inman went out in a blaze of fury,
in a remarkable televised press conference on January 18, less than
a week before his Senate confirmation hearings were slated to begin.
The
almost monolithic response by the media was the most instructive
and revealing aspect of the Inman Affair. Almost exclusively, the
media focused on speculations of the supposedly odd psychological
state of mind of Admiral Inman. How could Inman retreat just because
Bill Safire and a couple of other columnists were criticizing him?
How could he possibly conjure up a "conspiracy" between Safire and
Senator Dole to attack him and besmirch his character? Inman talked
about "sources" but he couldn't prove his charges, could
he? Inman was denounced as remarkably "thin-skinned," his behavior
in charging conspiracy treated as "weird" and "bizarre," and the
general reaction echoed that of Senator Dole: that someone harboring
"fantasies" of this sort was not really equipped to be the captain
at the helm of America's defenses. In the psychobabble beloved by
the media, it was noted (which Inman had never denied) that Inman
was always reluctant about taking the job, and that therefore these
fantasies and this thin skin were really excuses for Inman's not
taking the position.
Amidst all
the stress on Bobby Ray's supposedly fragile psyche, it was overlooked
that very little space was devoted to the content of the charges
that Safire and the others were leveling against Bobby Ray; and
virtually no space to Bobby Ray's explanation of the hostility
that Safire and the others had long harbored against him, and which
led to their anti-Inman campaign.
The media accounts
all stress that no Senators were opposing the Inman nomination;
but the Senate staffers were preparing detailed and thorough "scrutiny"
of Inman's affairs. The media all imply that Inman was "paranoid"
and engaging in fantasies. But if Bobby Ray, formerly Deputy Director
of the CIA and head of the National Security Agency, is not equipped
to distinguish between "paranoia" and genuine conspiracies, who
is? Surely, "Mr. Intelligence" is better equipped for this task
than reporters for the New York Times or the Wall Street
Journal.
So let's stop
the juvenile psychoanalyzing of Bobby Ray and cut to the content.
The charges about to surface against Inman in the hearings included
possible financial and even criminal peccadilloes in the private
sector, centering around two companies. One was Inman's role as
a member of the board of International Signal and Control, a firm
found by a federal district judge to be a criminal enterprise engaged
in illegal arms dealing, money laundering, and business fraud on
a massive scale. The other firm was Tracor, Inc., an Austin, Texas
military contractor of which Bobby Ray was chief executive, but
not before Inman received nearly $1 million in executive compensation.
Then, of course, there was Inman's Nannygate, in which he hastily
paid $6,000 in back Social Security taxes for an aged part-time
housekeeper only after he had been nominated for secretary
of defense.
Furthermore,
Bill Safire was not above ridiculing Inman's name in his widely
influential column. Brushing aside the knowledge that a name like
"Bobby Ray" is common in Texas and throughout the South, Safire
ridiculed such a name for a grown man.
There was also
a particularly ugly side to the media campaign against Inman. One
of the points dredged up against Inman was that, while a high official
in intelligence in 1980, he had acted to keep a gay in the National
Security Agency from being fired from his post. Part of the anti-Inman
tactic was a vicious whispering campaign to the effect that Inman
himself, though married, is a secret gay. Before he dropped out,
Inman told friends that no less than four reporters had called him
up to ask him if he is gay.
Is it any wonder
that Inman, who had left Washington because he hated the chronic
back-stabbing, decided to Hell with it, and that, in fury, he decided
to strike back at his tormentors instead of giving the usual bromides
about "personal reasons" for withdrawal and making a quick exit
from the scene?
It is fascinating,
by the way, that so many of the Liberal media, always quick to attack
"homophobia" and to proclaim that they are pro-gayer than thou,
should not be above vicious gay-bashing against political figures
they dislike. (The last time they pulled this stunt was against
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, after he won the Russian election, but of
course the U.S. media are still a bit less powerful in Moscow than
they are in Washington, D.C.)
Saluting "The
Withdrawal of Admiral Inman," the New York Times (Jan. 20)
crowed that "there was no politician or commentator so contrarian
as to believe his [Inman's] improbable parting charge of a conspiracy"
between Senator Dole and William Safire. Hey, not so fast, fella!
You forgot to check with us at Triple R. Why not believe
it? Stranger things have happened in Washington, and in recent weeks
many neocons (e.g., at the Wall Street Journal) have been
making noises about shifting their allegiance for 1996 from Jack
Kemp to none other than Senator Dole, who of course is eagerly seeking
media support. And Bill Safire is a powerful leader of the neocon
forces. And, as we said above, who in the U.S. is in a position
to know more about political conspiracies than Admiral Inman?
This is not
to say that Inman's conspiracy charge is proven. What we need to
find out the truth is an all out, tough congressional investigation,
armed with subpoena power, to get to the bottom of the entire mess.
None of the principals or their henchmen should be spared. Big Media
has become an excessively powerful and malignant force in American
political life; and it is high time that its machinations are exposed
to public view.
The most fascinating,
but oddly enough the least reported, aspect of the Inman Affair,
is the source of the implacable hostility that Safire and his allies
have borne for many years toward Bobby Ray Inman. Inman revealed
the source in his famous January 18 press conference, but he failed
to bring out the background. The source: In early 1981, Israel suddenly
bombed Iraq's nuclear reactor. Puzzled, Inman, then deputy head
of the CIA, realized that Israel could only have known where the
nuclear reactor was located by having gotten access to U.S. satellite
photographs. But Israel's access was supposed to be limited
to photographs of direct threats to Israel, which would not include
Baghdad. On looking into the matter, furthermore, Inman found that
Israel was habitually obtaining unwarranted access to photographs
of regions even farther removed, including Libya and Pakistan. In
the absence of Reagan's head of the CIA, Bill Casey, Inman ordered
Israel's access to U.S. satellite photographs limited to 250 miles
of its border. When Casey returned from a South Pacific trip, his
favorite journalist and former campaign manager, Bill Safire, urged
Casey to reverse the decision, a pressure that coincided with complaints
from Israeli Defense Minister General Ariel Sharon, who had rushed
to Washington to try to change the new policy.
Secretary of
Defense Cap Weinberger, however held firm, supported Inman, and
overruled Casey, and from then on Safire pursued a vendetta against
Bobby Ray Inman.
This
incident must be understood against its structural background: the
CIA had long consisted of two clashing factions: the hard-line hawks,
fanatical Cold Warriors, pro-Zionists and close to Israel's spy
agency Mossad; and the moderates, close to the Establishment and
the Rockefeller World Empire. The hard-liners and Mossadniks were
big in the Operations department, and included Ops chief James Jesus
Angleton, and Bill Buckley's CIA mentor and buddy E. Howard Hunt;
they were headed by William J. Casey. The moderates were strong
in the Intelligence department, and included William Colby and Admiral
Inman.
Cut to the
present, and the conspiracy charge by Inman against Safire and Company
begins to make sense. For one point rarely mentioned in the media
accounts is that Inman, in his press conference, did not only mention
Safire and Senator Dole. He also mentioned, as part of the campaign
against him, not only the editors of the New York Times,
but three other media powers: New York Times columnist Anthony
Lewis, Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman, and Washington
Post cartoonist Herblock (Herbert Block). On the face of it,
a concerted campaign by these people against Inman would seem implausible;
after all, Safire is a neocon, whereas the New York Times,
Tony Lewis, Ellen Goodman, and Herblock are all notorious left-liberals.
What could they all possibly have in common?
The answer
is that they all have one important thing in common, one tie that
binds. They are all ardent Zionists, and the source of the hostility
to Inman at not being sufficiently pro-Israel now makes sense in
underpinning the vendetta when Inman reluctantly agreed to Clinton's
and Talbott's importuning to return in triumph to Washington.
In a fuller
perspective, then, Admiral Bobby Ray Inman does not seem to be a
paranoid nut after all. On the contrary, no one can blame him for
saving himself and fleeing back to the warmer milieu of Austin,
Texas. It is no wonder that Bobby Ray feels more "comfortable" in
Austin than in Washington, to use one of his favorite words. But
it would have been far healthier for America, and for Americans'
knowledge of the political forces at work in this country, if Bobby
Ray had stood fast, and had forced a knock-down drag-out confrontation,
in the course of which much of the truth might have come to the
surface. As it is, it is inevitable that Safire & Company will be
accorded near-legendary political influence from now on. In a town
that worships Power, Bill Safire has now virtually attained the
status of a Rajah.
Murray
N. Rothbard (19261995) was the author of Man,
Economy, and State, Conceived
in Liberty, What
Has Government Done to Our Money, For
a New Liberty, The
Case Against the Fed, and many
other books and articles. He was
also the editor with Lew Rockwell of The
Rothbard-Rockwell Report, and academic vice president of
the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
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