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January 31, 2005

Former CIA boss Gates declines intelligence czar post


Former CIA director Robert M. Gates has turned down an offer to be the new national intelligence director.

Gates, president of Texas A&M University, sent an email to the university community Monday afternoon and announced that he had declined an invitation for the post and had committed to a new contract with A&M. He plans to remain in his academic post through summer 2008, if not longer. He wrote:

On a completely separate matter, there seems to be a growing number of rumors in the media and around campus that I am leaving Texas A&M to become the new Director of National Intelligence ("Intelligence Czar") in Washington, D.C. To put the rumors to rest, I was indeed asked to take the position, wrestled with perhaps the most difficult - and close - decision of my life, and last week declined the position. I was deeply honored to be asked and would have been honored to serve. However, I decided to continue to serve at Texas A&M. In fact, last week I agreed to the Board of Regents‚ request that I remain as President at least through summer 2008.

Gates took over as president of Texas A&M in August 2002, before which he had been interim dean of the George Bush School of Government and Public Service, which is housed at A&M along with the elder Bush's presidential library. Gates was Bush's CIA director from 1991-1993. He had a 27-year career with the agency and served six presidents.

When the A&M board of regents appointed Gates president in August 2002, he was chosen over a second unnamed candidate, widely acknowledged to be former Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, who was an economics professor at A&M before running for Congress. A&M's powerful alumni and athletics organizations strongly endorsed Gramm in the regents' meeting, but a majority vote yielded Gates as the sole finalist for the post.

Gates has proven to be a fastidious organizer in his tenure at A&M, implementing broad and sweeping reorganization moves that have raised the eyebrow of many establishment Aggies. He is widely liked, though, and he is known as a fair and honest broker who is candid about his desire to do what he believes in. Many students, faculty and staff will tell you he is the right man at the right place at the right time.

President Bush certainly could have used a man with leadership qualities like Dr. Gates. Gates' decision to decline the position certainly is a loss for the Bush administration and this nation, just as his departure from A&M would have been a loss to the university community. And I must wonder sometimes: What if Gates had been given as much time at CIA as he's had at A&M? Would he have reorganized and restructured the flailing agency such that we could have avoided the "day of fire"?

I think it's safe to say that if he had taken the new "intelligence czar," we would have seen remarkable and swift action to optimize and streamline American intelligence-gathering efforts.

— Brady Creel | Jan. 31, 2005 | 3:22 PM