Gates, Robert

Early Career

Gates studied history in college and earned a doctorate in Russian and Soviet history from Georgetown University. In 1966, he began what became a 27-year career with the Central Intelligence Agency that was briefly interrupted by service in the U.S. Air Force and a later career on the staff of the National Security Council and as deputy national security advisor to President George H. W. Bush. After an arduous Senate confirmation that revolved around his involvement in Iran Contra, Gates became the first entry-level employee to rise to the level of director of the Central Intelligence Agency under George H. W. Bush in 1991. In the course of his career, Gates also spent 9 years at the National Security Council, where he gained a reputation for consensus building with both political parties. He followed his 1993 retirement from the Central Intelligence Agency with a career in education at Texas A&M University, where he later became president of the institution.

Reinventing the Pentagon

It quickly became obvious that Gates signaled a drastic change in Washington and at the Pentagon. During his nomination hearing, Gates soberly admitted that the United States was not winning the war in Iraq, a stark contrast to the previous administration’s upbeat outlook. Rather than fire any aides on his arrival, Gates set out to repair relationships frayed by what critics called Rumsfeld’s top-down, confrontational style. He set out to fix the friction that existed during the Bush administration between the State and Defense departments and understood that such tensions had troubled many administrations in the past. Furthermore, he proved willing to listen to and work with the new Democratic majority in Congress where his bipartisan appeal was evident through continued support for defense spending despite enormous pressures. He also made strides to meet commanders and soldiers in the field, on their turf, where he listened carefully and adjusted as necessary. He had learned many years earlier that to achieve change in resistant bureaucracies, one must start from the bottom up.

One of the largest tasks Gates needed to address concerned the institutional reorganization necessary to approach the half-decade-old wars with a new perspective. The first change occurred in February 2007, when the Walter Reed Medical Center [Page 570]controversy led Gates to decisively fire army commanders responsible for the poor conditions in the hospital. Later that August, Gates removed air force leadership after controversy surrounding lost nuclear weapons and a failure to provide resources like unmanned aerial vehicle drones in Afghanistan and Iraq. Over the next year, he focused on army leadership and promoted officers, like General David Petraeus, whose innovative counterinsurgency strategies were more relevant to asymmetric warfare faced in Iraq and Afghanistan. Gates chose to empower commanders with bottom-up strategy reform where leaders owned the implementation and results of new tactics. Later, in 2010, Gates joined Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen in condemnation of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (the 1993–2011 U.S. government policy toward gays and lesbians in the military), but he allowed the U.S. Congress to decide on the repeal, while he consulted the different branches of the armed forces about policies for implementation.

...