Nov. 9, 2006 -- President Bush’s pick to replace Donald H. Rumsfeld with former CIA Director Robert Gates is an odd one, considering it’s almost certain to revive festering questions about the Bush administration’s handling of pre-war intelligence on Iraq.
But he’s long been a major player in Republican national security circles, first as a Russian specialist on President Gerald Ford’s White House National Security Council in 1974, then eventually at the CIA, where he held a handful of senior positions before being tapped to be its chief by the first President Bush, in 1991.
And it wasn’t the first time he’d been nominated for the post -- or his first dose of trouble in the spotlight.
In early 1987, his role in the so-called Iran-Contra affair, a secret White House operation to sell weapons to radical Islamic Iran in exchange for the release of U.S. hostages -- and cash for CIA-backed rebels in Nicaragua -- came under scrutiny.
Gates withdrew his nomination in the face of sure rejection.
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