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...agent of change within his own empire and not within the broader national-security construct. That is the risk Obama ran. He covered his flank but didn't get change," says a Defense policy adviser. White House staffers are no doubt uneasy about their dependency on this old Cold War hawk - as adaptable as he may be - which probably explains why none of them wanted to speak for this profile...
...wield military force. But in the last years of a long public career, that makes him the face of a war in Afghanistan that is going badly and getting worse. "Gates has too much experience in D.C. not to get out when he's on top," says an old friend and admirer. But has he waited too long this time? (See photos of Obama accepting the Nobel Peace Prize...
Like his fellow Cold War survivor the Doomsday Plane, Gates has come to embody power, control and an astonishing longevity. Just 5 ft. 8 in., with small hands and feet, the demure 66-year-old Kansan has outlasted seven Presidents as well as most of his fellow bureaucrats and policymakers. He's the only entry-level CIA analyst to rise to the top job, director of central intelligence. And he's the only Secretary of Defense ever to be asked to stay on in a rival party's Administration. He has thrived through a combination of endurance, pragmatism and bureaucratic...
...influence within the Administration, he'd stress that he serves at the pleasure of the Commander in Chief. But that too is a mark of his craft. "I have never seen anyone more effectively maneuver in the Executive Branch of the Federal Government than Bob Gates," says his old friend David Boren, the former head of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee who is now advising the White House on intelligence. "He knows just when to give his advice, to whom to give it, and he's extremely good at forming alliances with other people in the government to advance...
...ushered Gates through a hangar outfitted as NATO's new cyber-command-and-control center. One of his staff whispered, "An enormous well-oiled machine for eatin' bad guys." In another hangar, Gates got a glimpse of the fledgling Afghan air force and stepped into the cockpit of an old Russian Mi-17 attack helicopter. "Don't you love the irony of Gates in the pilot's seat of an Mi-17 that he was getting Stingers to shoot down?" said his spokesman Geoff Morrell...