Gates says he’ll leave Pentagon in 2011 - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Gates says he’ll leave Pentagon in 2011

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he plans to retire next year.

“I think that it would be a mistake to wait until January 2012,” Gates, 67, told Foreign Policy magazine, according to the article that appeared on the magazine’s website Monday.

“I think that by next year I’ll be in a position where — you know, we’re going to know whether the strategy is working in Afghanistan,” Gates said. “We’ll have completed the surge. We’ll have done the assessment in December. And it seems like somewhere there in 2011 is a logical opportunity to hand off.”

Appointed by President George W. Bush in 2006, Gates’ retirement has been the subject of widespread speculation since he agreed to stay at the Pentagon helm under President Obama. In 2008, Gates signaled that he would stay on an additional year, but had showed no indication he would step down until now.

On Aug. 9, Gates unveiled a series of sweeping budget cuts aimed at reducing the Defense Department’s bureaucratic overhead. That plan includes closing U.S. Joint Forces Command, cutting senior military and defense civilian positions, and reducing the use of contractors across the force.

Gates said politics affects his thoughts in wanting to retire next year. “This is not the kind of job you want to fill in the spring of an election year,” he said.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said Gates’ remarks did not constitute an official announcement.

“He’s not about to walk out the door,” Whitman said Monday.

Gates, 67, has served seven presidents over his 40-year government career, most of it in the CIA. He served as Deputy National Security Adviser and later Director of Central Intelligence under the first President Bush. He also served as an Air Force officer from 1967 to 1969.

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