From the Shadows; The Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War

New York: Simon & Schuster [A Touchstone Book], 1997. First Touchstone Edition [Stated]. First Printing [Stated]. Trade paperback. Very good. [2], 604, [2] pages. Illustrations. Notes. Index. Cover has some wear and soiling. Robert Michael Gates (born September 25, 1943) is an American statesman, scholar, intelligence analyst, and university president who served as the 22nd United States Secretary of Defense from 2006 to 2011. Gates began his career serving as an officer in the United States Air Force but was quickly recruited by the CIA. Gates served for 26 years in the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council, and was Director of Central Intelligence under President George H. W. Bush. After leaving the CIA, Gates became president of Texas A&M University. Gates served as a member of the Iraq Study Group, the bipartisan commission co-chaired by James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, that studied the lessons of the Iraq War. Gates was nominated by Republican President George W. Bush as Secretary of Defense after the 2006 election. He was confirmed with bipartisan support. He continued to serve as Secretary of Defense in President Barack Obama's administration. He retired in 2011. Gates was presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, by President Obama. Derived from a Kirkus review: A Director of the CIA from late 1991 through early 1993, Gates sheds considerable light in this memoir on the ways in which the craft of intelligence influenced government policy during the height of the Cold War. Focusing on the undeclared conflict that pitted the US against the USSR and its client states in venues ranging from Afghanistan to Poland, the author offers a notably candid chronological evaluation of what his agency contributed to the last 25 years of America's war against Communism. He also provides telling detail on the homefront hostilities in which CIA officials battled their counterparts at other agencies, justifiably wary lawmakers, and investigative reporters to remain in the good graces of the White House. Gates also explains that detente was the Nixon administration's pragmatic response to the CIA's failure to foresee the Soviet military buildup that began during the late 1960s, producing a singular shift in the global balance of power. Gates settles some scores with out-of-office mandarins. A veteran's genuinely engrossing from-the- inside-out appraisal of an eventful period in the history of the US and the wider world.