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Defense Secretary Gates To Leave Pentagon Next Year

08/16/10-by Bridgette P. LaVictoire
For those who follow politics, it is not surprising that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is planning to retire sometime after 1 January 2011. In large part, Gates was kept on for the two years between the 2008 and 2010 elections. It is expected that Deputy Secretary of Defense William J. Lynn III will take the role of Secretary. Lynn has been Deputy Secretary since being nominated by President Barack Obama in February 2009.

According to Gates “I think that it would be a mistake to wait until January 2012. This is not the kind of job you want to fill in the spring of an election year.” Indeed, it may be difficult to find people who would be willing to fill that role in that year with the looming possibility of Obama being defeated. Gates also stated “If I stay until January 2011. I will have been in the job longer than all but four of my predecessors…” Those who have served longer include Reagan’s Defense Secretary Caspar Willard Weinberger, George W. Bush’s first Defense Secretary Donald Henry Rumsfeld, Jimmy Carter’s Defense Secretary Harold Brown, and Kennedy and Johnson’s Secretary of Defense Robert Strange McNamara. Rumsfeld also served as Gerald Ford’s Secretary of Defense. The first Secretary of Defense was James Vincent Forrestal under President Truman. Prior to that, the department was known as the Department of War.

This move is not surprising. Secretary Gates will turn sixty-seven in September.

His departure may come after the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has occurred.

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