Robert Gates Plans To Retire In 2011

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he intends to leave his post at the Pentagon next year during an interview with Foreign Policy magazine:

Gates, who turns 67 in September, says he wants to leave the job and retire, this time for good, sometime in 2011. "I think that it would be a mistake to wait until January 2012," he said. It might be hard to find a good person to take the job so late, with just one year to go in the president's current term. And, he added, "This is not the kind of job you want to fill in the spring of an election year."

He pointed out that he's the 22nd U.S. defense secretary since the position was created in 1947. "If I stay until January 2011," he said, "I will have been in the job longer than all but four of my predecessors...

Bryan Whitman, spokesman for the Pentagon, suggested that the expression from Gates captured in the article "accurately reflect the secretary's thoughts."