Robert Michael Gates, president of Texas A&M University, as well as former Director of Central Intelligence, is currently a nominee for the office of United States Secretary of Defense.? Gates served for 26 years in the CIA and the National Security Council.? If selected, Gates will replace Donald Rumsfeld, who resigned yesterday.

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Under President George H.W. Bush, he served as Director of Central Intelligence. After leaving the CIA, he wrote his memoirs,^[1] became president of Texas A&M University, and was a member of several corporate boards. Gates served as a member of the bipartisan commission headed by James A. Baker III, the Iraq Study Group, that has studied the Iraq campaign.In the wake of the 2006 midterm election result, President George W. Bush announced his nomination of Gates to succeed the resigning Donald Rumsfeld as U.S. Secretary of Defense on November 8, 2006.^[2][3] Gates has stated in a letter to students that he will continue as President of Texas A&M until completion of the confirmation process.^[4] Gates will now face confirmation first in the Senate Armed Services Committee, and if approved, by a majority vote in the Senate.

Biography

While at Indiana University, Gates was recruited to join the Central Intelligence Agency. However, the CIA offered no exemption from the draft during the Vietnam War. Before joining the CIA full-time as an intelligence analyst, he spent two years in the Air Force. During one posting, at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, he delivered intelligence briefings to ICBM missile crews. [5]

Gates left the CIA in 1974 to serve on the National Security Council staff but returned to the CIA in late 1979. He was named the Director of the DCI/DDCI Executive Staff in 1981, Deputy Director for Intelligence in 1982, and Deputy Director of Central Intelligence from April 18, 1986, to March 20, 1989. He was nominated to become the Director of Central Intelligence in early 1987, but withdrew the nomination after it became clear the Senate would reject it due to controversy^[6] about his role in the Iran-Contra affair. Senate members later questioned the nomination for the additional reason that Gates allegedly passed intelligence to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war.^[7]

Gates was Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs from March until August of 1989, and was Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser from August 1989 until November 1991.

He was nominated (for the second time) for the position of Director of Central Intelligence by President Bush on May 14, 1991, confirmed by the Senate on November 5, and sworn in on November 6, becoming the only career officer in the CIA’s history (as of 2005) to rise from entry-level employee to Director. Deputy Directors during his tenure were Richard J. Kerr (from November 6, 1991, until March 2, 1992) and Adm. William O. Studeman (from April 9, 1992, through the remainder of Dr. Gates? tenure). He served until 1993.

During his 26-year career as an intelligence professional, he spent almost nine years on the National Security Council, serving four Presidents of both major political parties.

In 1996, his memoirs were published under the title From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War.

Gates has been highly decorated for his service: he was the recipient of the National Security Medal and the Presidential Citizens Medal, was twice awarded the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, and three times received the Distinguished Intelligence Medal.

Gates consistently testified that he first heard on October 1, 1986, from Charles E. Allen, the national intelligence officer who was closest to the Iran initiative, that proceeds from the Iran arms sales may have been diverted to support the Contras. Other evidence proves, however, that Gates received a report on the diversion during the summer of 1986 from DDI Richard Kerr.[8] The issue was whether Independent Counsel could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Gates was deliberately not telling the truth when he later claimed not to have remembered any reference to the diversion before meeting with Allen in October.

Grand Jury secrecy rules hampered Independent Counsel’s response. Nevertheless, in order to answer questions about Gates’ prior testimony, Independent Counsel accelerated his investigation of Gates in the summer of 1991. This investigation was substantially completed by September 3, 1991, at which time Independent Counsel determined that Gates’ Iran-Contra activities and testimony did not warrant prosecution.

Independent Counsel made this decision subject to developments that could have warranted reopening his inquiry, including testimony by Clair E. George, the CIA’s former deputy director for operations. At the time Independent Counsel reached this decision, the possibility remained that George could have provided information warranting reconsideration of Gates’s status in the investigation. George refused to cooperate with Independent Counsel and was indicted on September 19, 1991. George subpoenaed Gates to testify as a defense witness at George’s first trial in the summer of 1992, but Gates was never called.

After retiring from the CIA in 1993 Gates worked as an academic and lecturer. He evaluated student theses for the International Studies Program of the University of Washington. He lectured at Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Vanderbilt, Georgetown, Indiana, Louisiana State, Oklahoma, and the College of William and Mary. Gates served as a member of the Board of Visitors of the University of Oklahoma International Programs Center and a trustee of the endowment fund for the College of William and Mary, his alma mater which in 1998 conferred upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters. He is the author of From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War, published in 1996. He has published numerous articles on government and foreign policy and is a frequent contributor to the op-ed page of The New York Times.[9]

Gates became the 22nd President of Texas A&M University on August 1, 2002 following a tenure as Interim Dean of the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M from 1999 to 2001. He has served as a member of the board of trustees of Fidelity Investments, and on the board of directors of NACCO Industries, Inc., Brinker International, Inc. and Parker Drilling Company, Inc. He also served as President of the National Eagle Scout Association during the mid-2000s.

In January, 2004, Gates co-chaired a Council on Foreign Relations task force on U.S. relations towards Iran. Among the task force’s primary findings is a recommendation to directly engage Iran on a diplomatic level regarding Iranian nuclear technology, with key points including a negotiated position that would allow Iran to develop it’s nuclear program in exchange for a commitment from Iran to use the program only for peaceful means. ^[10]

Gates committed to remain as President of Texas A&M University through the summer of 2007; President George W. Bush offered the position of United States Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to John Negroponte, who accepted.[11]

Gates said in a 2005 discussion with the university’s Academy for Future International Leaders that he had tentatively decided to accept the DNI position out of a sense of duty and had written an email that would be sent to students during the press conference to announce his decision, explaining that he was leaving to serve the U.S. once again. Gates, however, took the weekend to consider what his final decision should be, and ultimately decided that he was unwilling to return to Washington, D.C. in any capacity simply because he “had nothing to look forward to in D.C. and plenty to look forward to at A&M.”

• National Security Medal
• Presidential Citizens Medal
• National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal (twice)
• Distinguished Intelligence Medal (three separate times)

Other awards

• Eagle Scout
• Distinguished Eagle Scout Award

1. ^ Robert Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War, Simon & Schuster; Reprint edition (May 7, 1997).
2. ^ “Bush replaces Rumsfeld to get ‘fresh perspective’“, CNN.com, November 8, 2006. Retrieved on 2006-11-08.
3. ^ Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Jim Rutenberg. “Rumsfeld Resigns as Defense Secretary After Big Election Gains for Democrats”, New York Times, November 8, 2006. Retrieved on 2006-11-08.
4. ^ To the Aggie Family, Gates’ first announcement, and acknowledgment to being nominated for Secretary of Defense
5. ^ “Who Won the Cold War?” Thomas Powers, New York Review of Books, Vol. 43, no. 11 June 20, 1996
6. ^ Although he “was close to many figures who played significant roles in the Iran/contra affair and was in a position to have known of their activities. The evidence developed by Independent Counsel did not warrant indictment….” Final report of the independent counsel for Iran/Contra matters
7. ^ Gates nomination, Senate Proceedings, 1991..
8. ^ GlobalSecurity.org. Iran-Contra Report, Chapter 16.
9. ^ Texas A&M Press Release, July 1999. http://newsarchives.tamu.edu/stories/99/073099-8.html
10. ^ http://www.cfr.org/publication/7194/iran.html
11. ^ “Bush names Negroponte intelligence chief”, CNN.com, February 18, 2005. Retrieved on 2006-11-08.

• Robert M. Gates: From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War. Simon & Schuster 1997, ISBN 0684834979
• Author Unknown. “Biography, Dr. Robert M. Gates, President, Texas A&M University,” Texas A&M University. (2003)
• Center for the Study of Intelligence. “Robert Michael Gates,” Directors & Deputy Directors of Central Intelligence. (2004)
• Material on Gates, from The Literature of Intelligence: A Bibliography of Materials, with Essays, Reviews, and Comments, by J. Ransom Clark
• Brett Nauman. “Gates passes on intelligence czar post,” The Bryan-College Station Eagle. (February 1, 2005)

• Robert Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War, Simon & Schuster; Reprint edition (May 7, 1997).
• Robert Gates, US Intelligence and the End of the Cold War, 1999, CIA
• Robert Gates, Frontline The Gulf War: An Oral History: Interview with Robert Gates, Deputy National Security Advisor, 2001, PBS.org
• Writings and Speeches

The preceeding information was reposted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Gates