'Bull****': Gore and Other Administration Policy Makers Systematically Ignore Evidence of Corruption of Their 'Partners'

'Bull': Gore and Other Administration Policy Makers Systematically Ignore Evidence of Corruption of Their 'Partners'

In 1995, CIA officials dispatched to the White House a secret report based upon the agency's large dossier documenting the corrupt practices of then-Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. Chernomyrdin's private assets accumulated in his official position, according to Russian security sources, ran into the billions of dollars. When the secret report on Chernomyrdin reached Vice President Gore, he refused to accept it. Instead, according to several CIA sources, he sent it back to the agency with the word "BULL" scrawled across it.

It is difficult to imagine a more dangerously intemperate reaction to official corruption in Russia. Yet this was hardly an isolated incident. The administration had ignored repeated earlier warnings of corruption by Chernomyrdin and other senior Russian officials. Several Clinton administration senior officials have stated publicly that, by 1995, they had received a number of reports from the CIA alleging corruption by Chernomyrdin, and that the CIA had submitted many other reports alleging corruption among other senior Russian leaders, including Clinton administration favourite Anatoly Chubais.

Gore's close personal relationship to Viktor Chernomyrdin--and not any superior intelligence that he possessed as Vice President--was obviously decisive in his emotional dismissal of the CIA intelligence report of Chernomyrdin's corruption. (While Gore has publicly denied the "bull" incident, he has also re-stated his harsh criticism of CIA reporting on Chernomyrdin's corruption.) This reflexive dismissal of corruption allegations against Viktor Chernomyrdin was all the more remarkable given contemporaneous Russian and U.S. media reports about Chernomyrdin's alleged corruption and continuing links to the Russian gas conglomerate Gazprom after his entry into government.

At precisely the same time that Gore was receiving reports of Chernomyrdin's corruption, the vice president was effusive in his public comments about Chernomyrdin, stating in June 1995 in Moscow: "Friends have a right to be proud of friends."

In this way, the Clinton administration--and Gore personally--contributed not only to the spread of corruption, but to Russia's failure to overcome it. Since Chernomyrdin served as Prime Minister for five years, it is clear that this embrace of corruption fundamentally compromised Russia's efforts at economic reform.

Vice President Gore has hedged his denial of the "bull" incident, saying, "I don't think" that I "ever wrote a message of that kind." Moreover, while denying writing the word "bull," Gore plainly referred to a specific CIA report, saying "whoever sent that over there [could not have] expected the White House to be impressed with it... it was a very sloppy piece of work."

Other administration officials, defending Gore's position, dismissed the CIA reports of Chernomyrdin's corruption as lacking "conclusive proof." But agency reporting is necessarily based on intelligence sources, often covert. By conveniently demanding a "smoking gun" whenever they sought to suppress uncomfortable facts, Gore and other top Clinton administration officials established a rigged system that rejected "inconvenient" intelligence whenever it suited the preferences of the White House.

CIA officials have described the intelligence information concerning Chernomyrdin that was provided to Gore as "more detailed and conclusive than allegations of bribery and insider dealing that have been made in the Russian media and elsewhere." Yet when asked--as recently as July 2000--whether Chernomyrdin is corrupt, Gore replied: "I have no idea."