Appointed secretary of defense two years ago, Robert Gates will continue in the post in an Obama administration during a critical time in the winddown of the war in Iraq and the simultaneous planned escalation in Afghanistan. Unlike his predecessor Donald Rumsfeld, Gates is seen as a non-idelogical secretary who has built and maintained good relations on both sides of the partisan aisle.

A Kansas native, Gates was serving as president of Texas A&M University before returning to government under President George W. Bush.

He was Director of Central Intelligence in the early 1990s after more than a quarter century in intelligence posts, serving under six presidents, including deputy national security adviser to President

George H.W. Bush. In that post he worked directly under Utah native Bren Scowcroft, an 83-year-old retired Air Force General who recently was inducted into the Hinckley Institute of Politics Hall of Fame.

Gates recently ordered a plan prepared for the closure of the controversial detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as Obama promised he would do.