Роберт Гейтс - Duty - Memoirs of a Secretary at War

Thanks are due to my able assistant, Keith Hensley, for all his help in the final stages of preparing this book. Without his technical expertise, I would have been lost. I want also to express my gratitude to Bill and Vicky Yarcho and Chris and Wendy Belanger, close friends in the Northwest who helped us so much during my years as secretary.

Finally, neither this book nor the experience it recounts would have been possible without my wife, Becky, whose patience and understanding as I was writing were surpassed only by her patience and understanding through my tenure as secretary of defense and forty-seven years of marriage.

Illustration Credits

All photographs are courtesy of the Department of Defense, taken by Cherie Cullen, D. Myles Cullen, Jerry Morrison, and R. D. Ward, except the following.

Robert Gates swearing in with President Bush, Mrs. Gates, and Vice President Cheney; Bush and Gates eating breakfast; Queen Elizabeth, Bush, Gates, and spouses in the Blue Room of White House; Gates, Bush, Bolten, Hadley, and Cheney in the Oval Office; Bush and Gates in the Oval Office: photos by Eric Draper, courtesy of the George W. Bush Presidential Library. Bush, Gates, and Mullen seated in a crowd: photo by Chris Greenberg, courtesy of the George W. Bush Presidential Library.

President Obama and Gates walking down a colonnade; Obama, Gates, and Cartwright seated in the Oval Office; Obama, Bush Sr., and Gates seated together; Obama, Gates, and Mullen seated on sofas; Obama, Gates, Mullen, and Biden looking at a computer screen; Obama handing Gates a wooden plaque: photos by Pete Souza, courtesy of the Obama White House.

Putin and Gates: © AP Photo/Frank Augstein

Editorial cartoon of Gates sitting in front of the Congress: TOLES © 2009 The Washington Post. Reprinted with permission of UNIVERSAL UCLICK. All rights reserved.

Editorial cartoon of Gates standing in front of tanks: AUTH © 2009 The Philadelphia Inquirer. Reprinted with permission of UNIVERSAL UCLICK. All rights reserved.

A Note About the Author

Robert M. Gates served as secretary of defense from 2006 to 2011. He also served as an officer in the United States Air Force, and worked for the Central Intelligence Agency before being appointed director of the agency by President George H. W. Bush. He was a member of the National Security Council staff in four administrations and served eight presidents of both political parties. Additionally, Gates has a continuing distinguished record in the private sector and in academia, including currently serving as chancellor of the College of William and Mary. He holds a Ph.D. in Russian and Soviet history from Georgetown University.

For more information, please visit www.aaknopf.com

The journey begins: my wife, Becky, holds the Bible as I am sworn in as secretary of defense on December 18, 2006.

My first visit to Iraq as secretary on December 19, the day after I began my job. General Pete Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is to the right of the officer gesticulating.

Breakfast with President George W. Bush in the White House family dining room. He ate healthy cereal and fruit. I did not.

With Russian president Vladimir Putin at the Munich Security Conference in February 2007. This is his happy face. (I think I made him nervous.)

Just another dinner with fellow government workers, visitors, and spouses.

Pace and I share a rare light moment before a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. (Note the antiwar protester in pink in the background.) I came to despise such sessions.

Meeting in Baghdad with Iraqi prime minister Nouri Al-Maliki, on the right; in the center is Sadi Othman, an interpreter and adviser to General David Petraeus. Chosen because he was weak, Maliki would become too strong and not particularly interested in reconciling the opposing factions in Iraq.

Comforting the mother of a grievously wounded soldier at the U.S. military hospital at Landstuhl, Germany. Her son would recover.

On a helicopter with Petraeus in Iraq. Our partnership in two wars would last four and a half years.

President Bush meets with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in their conference room (the Tank). From the end of the table, moving clockwise from me: Steve Hadley (National Security Adviser), General George Casey (Army), General Buzz Moseley (Air Force), General Jim “Hoss” Cartwright (vice chairman), General Pace (chairman), and Admiral Mike Mullen (Navy). Not visible is General Jim Conway (Marine Corps).

With President Bush at Al Asad Air Base in Iraq, for a meeting with the Iraqi Presidential Council. From left, Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi (Shia), Prime Minister Maliki (mostly hidden), President Jalal Talabani (Kurd), and Vice President Tariq Al-Hashimi (Sunni). There was no love lost among them.

Aboard a C-17 cargo plane converted into a hospital plane. Such was the skill of the doctors and nurses on board that I heard of only one patient who died en route home.

I present Marine First Lieutenant Dan Moran his Navy Commendation Medal with V for valor at a Texas A&M home football game as 85,000 fans cheer him. I had handed him his diploma in 2003 when I was president of the university—a job I loved—and next saw him in the burn unit at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio.

With Marines during basic training. I visited all of the services’ basic training facilities to see new recruits preparing to go to war.

Visiting the plant in Charleston, South Carolina, where skilled and dedicated workers complete the assembly and equipping of mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles (MRAPs). They knew they were saving lives.

Watching an MRAP being loaded for airlift to Iraq.

Enlisting new recruits in my hometown of Wichita, Kansas. They volunteered to serve knowing they would go to war.

At Kansas State University in late 2007, I called for more money for the long-underfunded State Department and U.S. development programs abroad. Coming from the secretary of defense, the speech made a big splash.

Becky and I arrive at Pacific Command in Hawaii, my arm in a sling. I had never broken a bone or had surgery before I was secretary of defense. I managed to do both within two years after taking the job.

With President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania, in 2008. It was the only time I saw him sit patiently through hours of boring speeches. He lasted longer than most of his colleagues.

Lieutenant General Pete Chiarelli was one of my closest confidants. A tireless advocate for the troops, he was always exceptionally candid with me.

The dedication and opening of the Pentagon 9/11 Memorial. To my left, the president, former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, Admiral Mullen, and Jim Laychak (president of the Pentagon Memorial Fund).

I was the only secretary of defense to take an entire motorcade to a Burger King. Geoff Morrell, left, and Ryan McCarthy of my office enjoy my lack of discipline.

President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and I are joined in the Oval Office by White House chief of staff Josh Bolten, at far left, and National Security Adviser Steve Hadley. It really wasn’t four against one. Well, sometimes it was.

In Baghdad in September 2008, for the change of command from Petraeus to General Ray Odierno. I can’t remember the reason for the levity, but there wasn’t much of it in Iraq.

Holding an informal press conference at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan in September 2008. Twenty years earlier, as the deputy director of the CIA, I had been providing weapons to the Afghan resistance to attack Soviet aircraft at that base.

A birthday present from Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England. I was uncertain about the symbolism: did he think I needed the costume for my many battles?