About Robert Gates
Born: 1943 in Wichita, Kan.
Education: B.A., College of William and Mary, 1965; M.A.,
Indiana University, 1966; Ph.D., Georgetown University, 1974
1966-1974: Intelligence analyst, CIA
1974-1979: National Security Council staff
1979-1993: CIA career; rose through the ranks to become its director
2002-2006: President of Texas A&M University
2006: Appointed defense secretary in 2006 by President George W. Bush following the departure of Donald Rumsfeld.
Rushing to curb political fallout, the White House pushed back Wednesday against harsh criticism in a new book by former Defense Secretary Robert Gates that questions President Barack Obama’s war leadership and rips into Vice President Joe Biden.
The tell-all memoir from Gates has created a splash in Washington, casting a negative light on Obama’s national security operations by detailing a high level of discord among the small team that made key decisions about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
For two key participants — Biden and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — the accusations could color how the two potential 2016 presidential candidates are viewed by voters.
Initially caught off guard by the book’s accusations, Obama’s aides walked a fine line between publicly rebuking his former defense chief and allowing Gates’ claims to go unchallenged. Still, the White House hurried to Biden’s defense and said the president disagrees with Gates’ characterization.
White House spokesman Jay Carney disputed several of Gates’ points individually but said Obama appreciated Gates’ service. He said those who have the privilege to serve at high levels make their own decisions about whether and when to divulge details of private conversations after they leave government.
“I’ll leave it to other folks to decide,” Carney said.
In the book, “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary of War,” Gates accuses Obama of having little resolve for his own strategy in Afghanistan and of presiding over a national security team in which military leaders were treated with suspicion and career staffers brushed aside as decisions were centralized among a small cadre of White House advisers.
But Gates reserves his most sweeping indictment for Biden. Despite praising Biden’s integrity and personal sense of loyalty, Gates asserts that the vice president “has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
The White House moved quickly to dispel that notion, issuing a statement calling Biden a “leading statesmen of his time” and echoing the sentiment before television cameras.
“I don’t think anybody who has covered us or knows the president and the vice president, knows how this White House functions, has any doubt about the president’s faith in Vice President Biden as an adviser and counselor,” Carney said.
Gates’ contempt for Biden’s role in wartime decisions is evident throughout the nearly 600-page memoir, during which Gates accuses the vice president of seeding doubt in Obama’s mind about his Afghanistan policy and “subjecting Obama to Chinese water torture” with daily comments about how the military can’t be trusted.
Clinton, in contrast to Biden, is described in almost uniformly flattering terms — “smart, idealistic but pragmatic, tough-minded, indefatigable, funny, a very valuable colleague,” Gates writes.
One anecdote could potentially cause problems for Clinton should she run again in 2016. Gates describes a meeting during which Clinton and Obama both acknowledged their opposition to the Iraq war surge in 2007 was driven by the politics of the Democratic primary, in which Obama and Clinton were running against each other.
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