NYT : Obama Plans to Retain Gates at Defense Department

Obama Plans to Retain Gates at Defense Department

By PETER BAKER and THOM SHANKER | November 25, 2008

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama has decided to keep Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in his post, a show of bipartisan continuity in a time of war that will be the first time a Pentagon chief has been carried over from a president of a different party, Democrats close to the transition said Tuesday.

Mr. Obama’s advisers were nearing a formal agreement with Mr. Gates to stay on for perhaps a year, the Democrats said, and they expected to announce the decision as early as next week, along with other choices for the national security team. The two sides have been working out details on how Mr. Gates would wield authority in a new administration.

The move will give the new president a defense secretary with support on both sides of the aisle in Congress, as well as experience with foreign leaders around the world and respect among the senior military officer corps. But two years after President Bush picked him to lead the armed forces, Mr. Gates will now have to pivot from serving the commander in chief who started the Iraq war to serving one who has promised to end it.

In deciding to ask Mr. Gates to stay, Mr. Obama put aside concerns that he would send a jarring signal after a political campaign in which he made opposition to the war his signature issue in the early days. Some Democrats who have advised his campaign quietly complained that he was undercutting his own message and risked alienating war critics who formed his initial base of support, especially after tapping his primary rival, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, for secretary of state.

But advisers argued that Mr. Gates was a practical public servant who was also interested in drawing down troops in Iraq when conditions allow.

“From our point of view, it looks pretty damn good because of continuity and stability,” said an Obama adviser, who insisted on anonymity to discuss confidential deliberations. “And I don’t think there are any ideological problems.”

Associates said Mr. Gates was torn between a desire to retire to a home in Washington State and a sense of duty as the military faces the daunting challenges of reducing forces in Iraq and increasing them in Afghanistan.

As Mr. Obama moved closer to assembling his national security team Tuesday, he lost a top candidate for director of the Central Intelligence Agency. John O. Brennan, an agency veteran who was widely seen as the front-runner, withdrew from consideration amid concerns that he was linked to controversial intelligence programs authorized by Mr. Bush.

In a letter to Mr. Obama, Mr. Brennan said he did not want those concerns to be a “distraction” for the incoming administration. At the same time, he vigorously defended his record and called himself a “strong opponent” of the harsh interrogation methods the agency used in recent years, including waterboarding, the practice of making a suspect experience the sensation of drowning.

The developments came as Mr. Obama prepared to begin unveiling his national security team after the long Thanksgiving weekend. Besides formally announcing his nomination of Mrs. Clinton as secretary of state, Mr. Obama was expected to appoint Gen. James L. Jones, a retired Marine commandant and NATO supreme commander, as his national security adviser.

Other front-runners have emerged in recent days, including Adm. Dennis Blair, retired from the Navy, for director of national intelligence; Susan E. Rice, a former assistant secretary of state, for ambassador to the United Nations; James B. Steinberg, a former deputy national security adviser, for deputy secretary of state; and Thomas E. Donilon, a former chief of staff at the State Department, for deputy national security adviser.

The team is shaping up as one of experience more than change, figures with long résumés but at times conflicting backgrounds. Nothing reflects that more than keeping a Republican-appointed defense secretary. Although Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Gerald R. Ford made no change at the top of the Pentagon when they took office, no president has kept a defense secretary from a predecessor in another party, Donald Ritchie, a Senate historian, said.

Mr. Gates, who served as C.I.A. director under the first President Bush, would not have to be reconfirmed by the Senate. The prospect of retaining him generated praise from the military establishment and Capitol Hill, where he is viewed as a pragmatist who turned the Pentagon around after the tumultuous tenure of Donald H. Rumsfeld.

But it also stirred a debate inside Mr. Obama’s circles, where some advisers worried that the decision to turn to a Republican appointee — something President Bill Clinton did in naming William S. Cohen to the defense post in 1997 — would reinforce the notion that Democrats could not manage the military. “It makes them look like they’re too wimpy to be trusted to run the building,” said one adviser who asked not to be named.

Keeping Mr. Gates after a polarizing campaign on the war also seemed incongruous to some. “I really can’t begin to understand from a political point of view how Barack Obama, a person who got the nomination because he ran against the Iraq war, can keep around the guy who’s been in charge of it for the last two years,” said Loren B. Thompson, head of the Lexington Institute, a research organization.

Mr. Gates talked with Mr. Obama’s team about how to make the arrangement work. One adviser familiar with the discussions said the final issue was the choice of senior Pentagon personnel and whether a small circle of Gates advisers would remain.

Obama advisers have talked about Richard J. Danzig, a former Navy secretary, as a possible deputy and heir apparent to Mr. Gates, but some acknowledged that the prospect could raise concerns. If Mr. Danzig is sitting down the hall from the secretary’s office and seen as Mr. Obama’s real choice, some said, then his presence could undercut Mr. Gates’s authority.

But Mr. Gates has shown an ability to manage the Pentagon even with a small inner circle. When he took over from Mr. Rumsfeld after the 2006 midterm elections, Mr. Gates did not bring a single new aide. And the senior military officer corps will remain unchanged at the start of the administration, including Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Admiral Mullen made an unannounced trip to Chicago on Friday for a 45-minute meeting with Mr. Obama on a wide range of national security issues, Pentagon officials said. Before going, Admiral Mullen received approval from both Mr. Gates and Mr. Bush, the officials said.

The decision by Mr. Brennan to pull out of consideration for a senior intelligence job surprised specialists and lawmakers, some of whom questioned whether he had been forced by Mr. Obama’s team to withdraw. Mr. Obama’s office denied pushing Mr. Brennan aside.

The episode underscored how the C.I.A.’s secret detention program remained an incendiary issue. Mr. Brennan, who will continue to work on Mr. Obama’s transition team, was a senior adviser during the campaign and said an Obama administration would ban coercive interrogation.

Yet a group of psychologists posted a letter on the Internet last weekend calling for Mr. Obama to pass over Mr. Brennan, quoting a 2006 interview in which he seemed to defend C.I.A. operations after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Stephanie Cutter, an Obama spokeswoman, said, “John Brennan has served our nation with honor and is a man of talent and integrity,” adding that Mr. Obama “is grateful for John’s continuing assistance as a valuable member of our transition team.”

Jeff Zeleny and Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting.