The man expected to take over from Donald Rumsfeld as US defence secretary is the latest Bush family friend to be recruited by the White House.
Robert Gates served as CIA director under the president's father George HW Bush and once ran the George Bush School of Government in Texas.
Despite the close connections he has not been tarnished by any direct involvement in formulating the unpopular policy in Iraq which did for Rumsfeld's career.
He has however been involved in a commission on the war headed by former secretary of state James Baker due to be published next month.
The Iraq Study Group, tasked with coming up with a new strategy in the country, is expected to recommend a dramatic change of course.
Gates has been described as a pragmatist opposed to the aggressive neo-conservative foreign policy advocated by the likes of Rumsfeld. Now 63, he ran the CIA from 1991 to 1993, during the first Gulf war.
He joins Baker, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Armitage in the list of those who went on to serve the current president after working for his father when he was in office.
Originally from Wichita, Kansas, Gates joined the CIA in 1966, making his name as an analyst specialising in the Soviet Union.
He rose through the ranks and served as a presidential adviser on national security before becoming head of the agency.
But in 1987, while deputy director, questions were raised about his knowledge of the Iran-Contra scandal, in which members of the Reagan administration helped sell arms to Iran to fund right-wing paramilitaries in Nicaragua.
