Rumsfeld to Step Down as Defense Secretary

Just got this news alert from the Washington Post:

Rumsfeld to Step Down as Defense Secretary
Bush Taps Former CIA Director Robert Gates as Successor

By William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 8, 2006; 1:32 PM



President Bush today announced he is replacing Donald H. Rumsfeld as secretary of defense, saying a "fresh perspective" is needed at the Pentagon to deal with the war in Iraq.

In a White House news conference a day after midterm elections delivered the House of Representatives, and possibly the Senate, to Democratic Party control , Bush said he has chosen former CIA director Robert Gates to succeed Rumsfeld.

"Now after a series of thoughtful conversations, Secretary Rumsfeld and I agreed that the time is right for new leadership at the Pentagon," Bush said.

The announcement came a week after Bush had said Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney would be staying in their jobs after the elections. Earlier, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the House minority leader who is slated to become the first woman speaker of the House when the 110th Congress convenes in January, urged Bush to work with Democrats "in a bipartisan way" to find a way out of the war in Iraq, among other issues. And she called on him to "change the civilian leadership of the Pentagon" as a signal of "a change of direction on the part of the president" and of "openness to fresh ideas" on Iraq.

Rumsfeld, 74, was in his second tour of duty as defense chief. He first held the job a generation ago, when he was appointed by President Ford.

Gates, currently president of Texas A&M University, was a 26-year career intelligence operative with close ties to the Bush family.

He joined the Central Intelligence Agency in 1966 after a brief stint in the Air Force, rising through the ranks to eventually run the agency in the early 1990s, the last years of President George H. W. Bush's term in office. He was deputy national security adviser from 1989 to 1991 for President Bush and deputy CIA director from 1986 until 1989, according to his biography on the Texas A&M Web site.

A Kansas native with a doctorate in Russian studies, he served on the staff of the National Security Office in the 1970s during a break in his CIA career. The current President Bush had approached him before about returning to government, asking him to become the new director of national intelligence -- a job he declined and which eventually went to John Negroponte.