Boren Announces Support for Gates

WASHINGTON--The Democratic chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee said yesterday he will support Robert Gates to head the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), predicting Gates will be confirmed by the full Senate.

"I believe ultimately he will be the next DCI [director of central intelligence] and that he will be confirmed," David Boren (D-Okla.), said at a news conference on the eve of a committee vote on the nomination.

But another member of Boren's committee, Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.), said Gates was too entwined with the abuses of the 1980s, when his mentor William Casey headed the agency, to restore CIA credibility.

"We need someone who will look anew at the world, without the blinders of the past," Bradley said in a statement in which he declared his opposition.

Bradley said he hoped that debate over the nomination in the full Senate would focus on the future need for "a new leader who has no association in any way with the abuses" of the Reagan administration.

Hours after Boren made his announcement, Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) said in a statement issued by his office last night he would also vote for Gates.

He said the nominee's "own intelligence, his many years of experience in intelligence work and what I trust he has learned in the course of two rough, tough confirmation processes qualifies him extremely well."

Two other Democrats, Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio and Ernest Hollings of South Carolina, are expected to oppose Gates in the committee vote.

Three other Democrats remain publicly undecided, and Boren and the seven committee Republicans promise at least a bare majority favorable vote.

Testimony during three weeks of hearings focused on allegations that Gates knew more than he has admitted about the Iran-Contra scandal, and that he slanted intelligence reports to fit the administration's hard-line anti-Soviet bias.

Boren has had favorable things to say about Gates since the deputy national security adviser was nominated in May. He even took the highly unusual step of being a witness before his own panel to testify about Gates's support for Congress's watchdog role over the spy agency.

But he had maintained throughout that he had not made up his mind how he would vote. Yesterday, he announced he would vote for Gates when the committee meets today, and said he planned to lobby colleagues to get the nomination passed through on the Senate floor.

Boren said he based his decision in part on the need for a veteran intelligence professional who can quickly make the changes needed to put the spy agency on a post-Cold War footing.

"This is no time for on-the-job training," he said.

He repeated Gates's pledge to resign rather than mislead Congress or acquiesce in something improper, calling it "the strongest and clearest pledge ever made by any nominee."