Robert Gates

Secretary of Defence, United States

(BBC; US Department of Defence)

Robert Gates was sworn in as the 22nd US Secretary of Defence on December 18th, 2006, forty days after President George W. Bush announced Donald Rumsfeld's resignation from the post.

Gates was born on September 25th, 1943, in Wichita, Kansas. He received a BA in European history from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, and a master's in history from Indiana University. He also holds a PhD in Russian and Soviet history from Georgetown University.

Gates has spent nearly 27 years of his life working as an intelligence professional, including at the CIA and the National Security Council. He joined the CIA in 1966 to eventually become the only career officer in the agency's history to have risen all the way up from entry-level employee to director, a post he served in from 1991 until 1993. He was appointed to the job after nearly three years of service at the White House as former President George Bush Sr.'s assistant and deputy national security advisor. Prior to that, he served as CIA deputy director from 1986 until 1989.

After he left the CIA in 1993, Gates worked as an academic and lecturer at numerous universities, including Harvard, Yale and Johns Hopkins, as well as at his alma mater, the College of William and Mary, which in 1998 conferred upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters.

From 1999 to 2001, Gates served as interim dean of the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M, the seventh largest university in the United States. In August 2002, he became the 22nd president of Texas A&M and has been credited for the university's significant progress in implementing its plan to become one of the top 10 public universities by the year 2020. During his tenure, Gates encouraged the addition of 440 new faculty positions and a $300m campus construction programme, and saw dramatic increases in minority enrolment.

Gates has also served on the Board of Directors and Executive Committee of the American Council on Education, the Board of Directors of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, and the National Executive Board of the Boy Scouts of America.

At the time of his nomination as secretary of defence, Gates was a member of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, headed by Bush Sr.'s secretary of state, James A. Baker III, which issued a report in early December 2006, recommending major changes to US policy in Iraq.

Gates has been awarded the National Security Medal, the Presidential Citizens Medal, has twice received the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, and has three times received the CIA's highest award, the Distinguished Intelligence Medal.

Gates is married and has two children.