Robert M. Gates

I

Introduction

Robert M. Gates, born in 1943, American government official and university administrator, who in 2006 was nominated by United States president George W. Bush for the position of secretary of defense. Gates replaced Donald Rumsfeld, who resigned from the post in November 2006 after the Republican Party lost control of both houses of Congress in midterm elections. The Republican defeat was seen as a referendum on the increasingly unpopular U.S.-Iraq War; Rumsfeld had been the architect of U.S. strategy for that war.

Gates faced a difficult divide in his new position. While the president vowed to win the war in Iraq, many congressional Democrats were calling instead for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from what appeared to be a steadily worsening situation. Gates had been publicly critical of U.S. policy in Iraq and, as a member of a bipartisan panel, had spent months assessing the situation in Iraq and discussing new strategies. This independent panel, the Iraq Study Group, was cochaired by former secretary of state (and Bush family friend) James A. Baker.

II

Early Career

Robert Michael Gates was born in Wichita, Kansas, and earned a B.A. degree from the College of William and Mary in 1965, an M.A. degree in history from Indiana University in 1966, and a Ph.D. degree in Russian and Soviet history from Georgetown University in 1974. He has spent most of his working life in the intelligence service.

Gates joined the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1966, but before starting his job as an intelligence analyst he spent two years in the U.S. Air Force. From 1974 to 1979 he left the CIA to serve in the White House on the staff of the National Security Council, an agency that advises the president on intelligence and security matters. After returning to the CIA in 1979, he rose within a few years to become deputy national security adviser and deputy director of central intelligence. Following lengthy confirmation hearings, Gates became CIA director in 1991 under the first President Bush (see George H. W. Bush).

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During Gates’s rise to the top, he was implicated in the Iran-Contra Affair and was investigated by the office of independent counsel. Iran-Contra involved the secret sale of arms to Iran, by the administration of U.S. president Ronald Reagan, in violation of U.S. laws. The funds were used to illegally support Central American guerrillas trying to overthrow the leftist government of Nicaragua. Although Gates was never charged with a crime, the special prosecutor considered his testimony less than candid.

Gates left the government in 1993 following the inauguration of President Bill Clinton, who did not ask him to stay on as CIA director, and afterward worked as a consultant for private businesses. His memoir—From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (1996)—traced the role of intelligence in the fall of Soviet Communism. With Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser under President Jimmy Carter, Gates produced Iran: Time for a New Approach, a report from an independent task force that criticized the U.S. policy of isolating Iran.

III

From the CIA to the Defense Department

In 1999 Gates was named interim dean of the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. In 2002 he became president of Texas A&M. In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks of 2001, Congress in 2004 passed legislation creating, among other intelligence reforms, a cabinet-level director of national intelligence, responsible for overseeing the activities of 15 U.S. intelligence agencies. Although Bush offered the job to Gates, he turned it down. Two years later Gates accepted Bush’s nomination for defense secretary. He was easily confirmed by the U.S. Senate in December 2006.

In his new post, Gates faced mounting opposition to the war in Iraq, including calls from national lawmakers for a planned withdrawal of troops. Against that backdrop, in early 2007 there were dramatic published reports suggesting that the nation’s veterans were facing substandard and negligent care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. As the revelations dominated headlines, Gates toured the facility and then deemed the situation “unacceptable.” He ordered reviews of the growing scandal, and subsequently various military officials, including the Secretary of the Army, either resigned or retired.

Also, weeks into his tenure as defense secretary, reports emerged that Gates had advocated the closure of the controversial detention facility used to house suspected terrorists at Guantánamo Bay. The reports suggested that Gates had taken a different stance on the facility than his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, but that various administration officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, opposed the closure.

In another departure with previous and current Bush administration officials, Gates said that the United States should remain open to the possibility of high-level talks with Iran. Gates had advocated this position even before assuming his role as defense secretary, and it was one of the recommendations made by the Iraq Study Group. Not long after taking office, however, Gates noted that it was too soon to begin talks with Iran because the United States lacked “leverage” in any negotiations.

In January 2007 President Bush called for an additional 20,000 troops to be sent to Iraq to handle the deteriorating situation there, especially in the capital, Baghdād. Gates defended the increase, saying “failure in Iraq is not an option.” In March Gates warned Congress against any slowdown in funding for the war in Iraq, saying it would most likely have the biggest effect on troops poised to replace those already there. Gates’s comments came against a building confrontation between the president and the Democratic-controlled Congress over resolutions calling for definite deadlines for troop withdrawals from Iraq.

IV

Defending the ‘Surge’ in Iraq

Like other Bush appointees named to replace former advisors and Cabinet members, Gates was seen by some as a figure who could repair bridges for the administration to members of Congress and foreign leaders. Some said his style was more conducive to political diplomacy than that of Rumsfeld. However, as Bush refused to set a timeline for troop withdrawals, and also set in motion the so-called “troop surge,” Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice were faced with having to convince officials in the United States and abroad that the troop increase was vital to global security.

In September 2007 Gates appeared before a sometimes hostile Senate Appropriations Committee and said that the United States would need to have a certain number of troops as a “long-term presence” in Iraq. He failed to define what he meant by long-term and did not enumerate the exact number of Americans he envisioned being in Iraq. At that meeting, Gates also pressed for additional funding for the war in Iraq.

Gates took an active role in increasingly complex relations between the United States and Russia through 2007 and into 2008. He traveled to Europe to talk to various foreign leaders about the prospects for a U.S. missile defense system, a proposal that Russia appeared to perceive with some alarm. With Rice, he held several meetings with Russian leaders, including President Vladimir Putin. In March 2008 Rice and Gates again went to Moscow to negotiate with Putin and review U.S. plans for its missile defense system, economic agreements, and welling tensions around the world. Gates’s work was considered vital for any meetings between Bush and Russian leaders through the end of the Bush administration.

Into 2008 it was assumed that Gates would take a leading role in pushing for the retention of American forces in Iraq. Some observers speculated that Gates would spend his remaining months in office making a case that U.S. troops should stay in Iraq well into the tenure of any new occupant of the Oval Office. In March Gates accepted the resignation of Admiral William Fallon, overall commander of U.S. forces in Iraq. Fallon was known to oppose a military attack on Iran, and upon his resignation, some observers claimed that his departure signaled a U.S. decision to attack Iran for alleged meddling in Iraq. Gates called the claim “ridiculous.”