Bush Nominates Security Adviser Gates as CIA Chief : Intelligence: The appointee failed to win Senate confirmation for the post in 1987. The President says he has ‘no qualms’ about reopening the Iran-Contra affair.

WASHINGTON — President Bush on Tuesday chose Robert M. Gates, his deputy national security adviser, to be the next director of Central Intelligence, praising him as “a man of honor” and brushing aside questions about Gates’ ties to the Iran-Contra scandal.

For Gates, the nomination to head the Central Intelligence Agency marks a second chance to achieve a long-sought goal, after his failure to win Senate confirmation in 1987 when questions about the Iran-Contra affair forced him to ask that the nomination be withdrawn.

Gates, 47, would be the first career analyst to hold the job, which Bush himself held in 1976 and which has generally gone to political associates of the President. He would replace William H. Webster, whose resignation was announced a week ago.

As a longtime skeptic about reform efforts in the Soviet Union, Gates is expected to push for continued emphasis on tracking developments there--even as the agency comes under increasing pressure to expand its horizons and shift from its longstanding focus on the Soviet Union to cover a broader swath of the world and such additional topics as international economics.

Gates also has made clear that he would strongly oppose efforts being pushed by some in Congress to reorganize the nation’s intelligence structure, taking away much of the authority of the CIA director. In addition to taking charge of the daily operation of the CIA, the director supervises the overall U.S. intelligence community, which includes the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, responsible for global electronic eavesdropping.

First, however, Gates must surmount the questions about Iran-Contra that scuttled his nomination to head the CIA four years ago.

Bush insisted in a press conference that he has “no qualms” about reopening the issue, even at the risk that a new look at the Iran-Contra affair could raise questions about his own role, and could also draw him into a tough, and possibly embarrassing, political fight with the Senate.

Even Bush’s supporters on the Senate Intelligence Committee predicted that the nomination hearings will revive discussion of the nearly forgotten scandal of the Ronald Reagan Administration.

In the Iran-Contra affair, in 1985 and 1986, the United States sold weapons to Iran to encourage Tehran to use its influence on behalf of Americans held hostage in Lebanon. The money from the arms sales was then used to support the anti-Sandinista rebels, known as Contras, fighting in Nicaragua.

The President long ago acknowledged that he supported Reagan’s decision to sell arms to Iran. But he insists it was not an arms-for-hostage deal, and has denied any knowledge that funds from the sale were being diverted to the Nicaraguan rebels, for whom support was banned at the time.

Renewed interest in Bush’s role in Iran-Contra already had been stirred by news that a grand jury is investigating evidence brought by independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh against Donald Gregg, a former CIA official who served as Bush’s vice presidential national security adviser. Gregg is currently U.S. ambassador to South Korea.

During Gates’ original confirmation hearings in February, 1987, members of the Senate committee criticized him for doing nothing when he first learned in October, 1986, about the diversion of funds from the Iran arms sales to support the Contras. In his own defense, he said that he regarded the information he received at that point as “extraordinarily flimsy.”

Gates also admitted he had participated in a White House meeting on Nov. 20, 1986--a few days after the Iran arms sales came to light--when top Administration officials drafted false congressional testimony about the scandal. But he insisted that the testimony was “a fair statement of what we knew at the time.”

Since then, Walsh and congressional investigators have uncovered evidence that Gates was told about the diversion by his deputy, Richard Kerr, in August, 1986. The Senate committee is certain to question him about the discrepancy between his testimony and that of Kerr.

Nevertheless, Senate committee members do not appear to be ready to turn down the Gates nomination, as they did four years ago. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who was Gates’ harshest critic during the earlier hearings, said he will approach the matter with an open mind.

“I believe Iran-Contra has been investigated enough . . . we’re not going to learn anything new,” Specter told reporters Tuesday. “I believe the critical question is what kind of CIA Director Bob Gates will be and what kind of access Congress will have (to CIA information).”

Even Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), who strongly opposed Gregg’s nomination as ambassador to South Korea, said he would look favorably on Gates. Although the evidence against Gregg was “very strong,” he said, “Gates’ role seems to have been much more ambiguous.”

Cranston and two other members of the Intelligence Committee--Sens. John Glenn (D-Ohio) and Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.)--have recently been under investigation themselves. All three were targets of an Ethics Committee probe into the “Keating Five” scandal.

Before the President announced his decision, his most senior aides--Gates’ boss Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser, and White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu--consulted with key senators, among them Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman David L. Boren (D-Okla.) and Frank H. Murkowski (R-Alaska), the vice chairman.

Bush said he was “very, very pleased” with the results, and a White House aide reported: “They’ve both been thumbs up on it.”

“This matter has been investigated over and over again, this Iran-Contra has been going on for years,” Bush said. “And if I were worried about opening up Iran-Contra, you might suggest I wouldn’t send that name forward. But this man has my full trust. He’s honest. He’s a man of total integrity.”

However, one key Republican senator, Warren B. Rudman of New Hampshire, has called for careful review of Gates’ testimony on the Iran-Contra affair before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Dec. 4, 1986.

“There were serious questions about whether he was entirely candid with the committee about what he knew,” Rudman said, although he added: “I don’t think anything in the record indicates Gates was a participant in the events leading up to Iran-Contra.”

Staff writers Jack Nelson and David Lauter contributed to this story.