From Rummy to Gates

By R. Emmett Tyrrell who has know Gates for 20 years.

I have known Mr. Gates for almost two decades and I can tell you whose guy Mr. Gates was originally. It must have been sometime in 1985 when my friend, Director of Central Intelligence Bill Casey, had me to lunch at his office and introduced me to someone he thought very highly of, a protege of his, Bob Gates. Bill always had proteges, but Mr. Gates was one of his favorites. Bill recognized that Mr. Gates was intelligent, principled, and understood the Soviet Union. In fact, Mr. Gates had done graduate work in the same department as I had, Indiana University's Department of History, under a distinguished Soviet specialist who became a mentor to me and to the American Spectator's Editorial Director Wladyslaw Pleszczynski.

From that point on, I watched Mr. Gates with especial interest and dined with him from time to time. Anyone who thinks Mr. Gates lacks grit or an independent mind is mistaken. He was clear-headed on the Soviets and will be clear-headed on the Islamofascists.