Robert Gates

US Secretary of Defense since 2006. Director of Central Intelligence from 1991 to 1993.

Pollard case

Robert Gates, who became deputy C.I.A. director in April, 1986, told me that Casey had never indicated to him that he had specific information about the Pollard material arriving in Moscow. "The notion that the Russians may have gotten some of the stuff has always been a viewpoint," Gates said, but not through the bartering of emigres. "The only view I heard expressed was that it was through intelligence operations" -- the K.G.B.]

Realist faction leader

Jim Lobe has argued that Gates is the leader of a realist faction in the Bush administration, rivalling the neoconservatives.

The realist resurgence can also be traced to the rise of specific individuals, who took the place of their discredited predecessors in posts between the beginning of Bush's second term and the end of 2006 when the most important realist of all – Defense Secretary Robert Gates – replaced Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon.

With Gates heading Washington's most-powerful foreign-policy bureaucracy, the return to realism, which was already underway – albeit tentatively – as early as 2004, accelerated sharply. By the end of 2007, the administration's top hawk, Vice President Dick Cheney, looks more isolated than ever.

Affiliations

• Central Intelligence Agency
• Department of Defense