The Robert Gates File

"The Iran-Contra Scandal, 1991 Confirmation Hearings, and Excerpts from new book Safe for Democracy"

"A career intelligence officer, Robert M. Gates has emphasized the number of presidents he served and the long sweep of history he witnessed. The sixty-three year old Gates indeed worked under every U.S. president from Richard M. Nixon to George Herbert Walker Bush, and has now been nominated by the second President Bush as secretary of defense. His resume includes some key periods in contemporary history, serving in a White House role as Deputy National Security Adviser during the first Gulf War, leading the U.S. intelligence community in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union, being implicated in the Iran-Contra affair, taking an active role in directing CIA intelligence analysis during the Reagan administration, fulfilling assignment as a staff aide to National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski during the Carter administration, working on U.S. national intelligence estimates on the Soviet Union, and playing a peripheral role in nuclear arms limitation talks during their early years. Gates holds a PhD from Georgetown University, graduated from the University of Indiana, and was born and raised in Wichita, Kansas. His only direct military experience was as a young officer in the United States Air Force, where he worked primarily as an intelligence analyst, including for the Minuteman ICBM missile wing stationed at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri." Source: National Security Archives.

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