Robert Gates: The soldiers' secretary

It is not at all unusual to hear the Pentagon being criticized for its bloat, bureaucracy and spending binges. But what is surprising about the latest criticism is that it doesn't come from an outsider with an anti-military agenda: It comes from the secretary of defense himself.

Robert Gates has an impressive resume with more than 30 years of government service and he has just announced he is leaving next month.

At the Pentagon, the defense secretary is called "Sec Def." The title he might prefer is the Soldiers' Secretary, because he says his top priority is the men and women in uniform - a priority, he says, that is often neglected by the Pentagon bureaucracy.

Sec. Gates' presidential word association
Outgoing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates plays a revealing game of word association about the eight presidents he has served under.

But first we wanted to learn more about the Special Forces raid that killed Osama bin Laden and what was going through the secretary's mind as he watched it unfold with the president in the White House Situation Room.

Special Report: The killing of Osama bin Laden

"It was a perfect fusion of intelligence collection, intelligence analysis, and military operations," Sec. Gates told Katie Couric.

Asked if he was a nervous wreck while the operation was being carried out, Gates acknowledged, "Yes."

"What were you thinking as you watched this unfold in the Situation Room with all those other people like the president and vice president and secretary of state?" Couric asked.

"Well, I think like the rest, I was just transfixed. And, of course, my heart went to my mouth when the helicopter landed in the courtyard, 'cause I knew that wasn't part of the plan. But these guys were just amazing," Gates recalled.

Extra: U.S.-Pakistan relations
Extra: Inside the Situation Room
Extra: A "gutsy" call

After the mission, Gates went to meet personally with the SEAL team. "I joked with 'em a little bit. I said, 'You guys have spent the last several days being debriefed, would you like to debrief me on what happened in Washington, while we were all watching you all?' And we had some good laughs over that. But obviously, an amazing, amazing group of people," he said.

"You are the ultimate soldier secretary. And I can't imagine the pride you must have felt meeting these young men," Couric remarked.

"It was awesome," Gates remembered.

But while he had confidence in the SEALs before the mission, Gates told us he was very nervous about the intelligence on the mission. "I was very concerned, frankly. I had real reservations about the intelligence. My worry was the level of uncertainty about whether bin Laden was even in the compound. There wasn't any direct evidence that he was there. It was all circumstantial. But it was the best information that we had since probably 2001," he explained.

"And did you feel you had to strike while the iron was hot, if you will?" Couric asked.

"I think everybody agreed that we needed to act and act pretty promptly," he replied.

Especially, Gates says, President Obama - the eighth commander in chief he has served.

"I worked for a lot of these guys. And this is one of the most courageous calls, decisions that I think I've ever seen a president make. For all of the concerns that I've just been talking about. The uncertainty of the intelligence. The consequences of it going bad. The risk to the lives of the Americans involved. It was a very gutsy call," Gates said.

"You could see it in his face, in that photograph. What was it like being near him in that room?" Couric asked.

"Let's just say there wasn't a lot of conversation. By anybody in the room," Gates said.

Produced by Tom AndersonGates says the death of bin Laden could end up being be a "game changer" in the war in Afghanistan, partly because the al Qaeda leader won't be around to obstruct a possible deal with the Taliban.

"If we keep the military pressure on and continue to hold what we seized over the last year and expand the security envelope, a change in the relationship between al Qaeda and the Taliban could, in fact, this fall or winter, create the circumstances where a reconciliation process could go forward," Gates explained.

"What would you say to the majority of Americans who say, 'Now, we've got Bin Laden, now it's time for the troops to come home'?" Couric asked.

"I would say that we are getting the upper hand. We have over the last 18 months put in place, for the first time, the resources necessary to ensure that this threat does not rebuild, does not reemerge once we're gone. I think we could be in a position by the end of this year, where we have turned the corner in Afghanistan," Gates said.

"And more troops could come home?" Couric asked.

"And more troops could come home," Gates agreed.

"You don't see the troop withdrawal, though, being accelerated this summer because of bin Laden's death?" Couric asked.

"I think it's premature. I think we just don't know. It's only been a week. And people are already drawing historical conclusions. I think that's a little quick," Gates said.

In his own history of more than 30 years of government service, Robert Gates has developed a reputation of being diplomatic but direct in his relationships with both foreign leaders and presidents.

We talked about that on a flight from Riyadh to Baghdad inside the "Silver Bullet" - Gates' airborne office, which is an Airstream trailer strapped to the floor of one of his C-17 military planes.

We asked about the meeting he had just had in Saudi Arabia with King Abdullah.

"I don't pull any punches and neither does he. And it goes back to the very first time I ever met him. And I said, 'You know, I'm an old CIA guy. I'm not a diplomat so I'm just gonna tell you what I think and you tell me what you think. And maybe that's a better way to go forward,'" Gates said.

Asked if the king liked that, Gates said, "Yeah, absolutely."

Gates started in the CIA as an analyst in the 1960s, and he worked his way up the intelligence ladder in the Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations. He has spent years studying highly classified and frequently disturbing information.

"What scares you the most? What worries you?" Couric asked.

"I think what I and most of us would say, it would be a terrorist with a weapon of mass destruction," Gates said.

"In this country?" Couric asked.

"Yes," he replied.

"Or anywhere in the world?" Couric asked.

"Well, anywhere, but especially in this country," Gates said.

Asked how likely that is, Gates said, "For years, we've received intelligence that they're trying to acquire a weapon of mass destruction. So far, they've been singularly unsuccessful, as far as we know. But it is the one thing that could be a huge challenge."

Gates surprised the Senate at his confirmation hearing in 2006 when he said that the U.S. was not winning the war in Iraq after President George W. Bush nominated him to be defense secretary.

But five years later, as we talked at the U.S. military headquarters in Baghdad, across from one of Saddam Hussein's old palaces, Gates told us the U.S. military surge - the much debated and criticized deployment of 30,000 additional troops to Iraq - turned the situation around.

"I think, had we left here with our tail between our legs and with chaos, it would have been very bad for our army and for our military," he explained.

But Gates warns it could all fall apart after the scheduled American withdrawal at the end of the year. And as he took one of his last helicopter rides over Baghdad, he urged the U.S. Congress to fund State Department programs in Iraq after the U.S. military leaves.

"My worry is that we'll be pennywise and pound foolish. That we will have spent hundreds of billions, maybe a trillion dollars here, over 4,000 lives, 30,000 wounded. We're on the two-yard line and I'd hate to see us not get across the goal line. And, it's the State Department that's gonna take us across the goal line," he told Couric.

After the Bush presidency, President Obama asked Robert Gates to stay on to manage the war in Afghanistan. He became the first defense secretary to serve under presidents from both parties.

Asked if it's the hardest job he has ever had, Gates said, "Absolutely. We have been at war in two places every single day I've been secretary of defense. And I've been secretary of defense longer than World War II lasted, longer than the Civil War lasted, so it's been tough."

"When you look back on these two major wars that you have had the responsibility to oversee, what sticks in your craw? What do you regret?" Couric asked.

"I think the hardest thing for me to deal with is leading a department that is organized to plan for war but not to fight a war. And so everything that I've wanted to do to try and help the men and women in the field, I've had to do outside the normal Pentagon bureaucracy. And I've had to be directly involved on a week-to-week basis to make sure that it got done. That's been very frustrating," Gates explained.

Case in point are the Humvees that roadside bombs turned into death traps for U.S. troops. In Iraq, they were eventually replaced by life-saving, million-dollar, armored vehicles called MRAPs.

"My attitude was, 'If you're in a war, and kids' lives are at stake, you're all in. You do whatever's necessary to protect 'em and help 'em accomplish their mission. And, if you got this stuff left over at the end, then so be it,'" he told Couric.

"You also have left over a lotta living kids," he added.

Gates eventually spent $40 billion to buy new MRAPs - vehicles he says ended up preventing thousands of American deaths and injuries. He also battled the Pentagon bureaucracy over what's called the "golden hour" - the time it takes to get a wounded soldier from the battlefield to a hospital.

"The medical bureaucrats told me that in Afghanistan, two hours was okay. And, I said, 'I beg your pardon?' Actually, I didn't say that, but...something a little stronger. I said, 'You know, if I'm a soldier, and I've been shot, I wanna have the same expectation that I did when I was deployed in Iraq, that I'm gonna be picked up in an hour.' So now the average rescue time in Afghanistan is about 40 minutes," Gates explained.

Gates has used the same tell-it-like-it-is style in his office at the Pentagon, where he works flanked by portraits of his two-favorite, no-nonsense generals: Dwight Eisenhower and George C. Marshall.

"You've ruffled a few feathers here at the Pentagon during your tenure," Couric pointed out.

"Well, I've ruffled a few feathers at all the institutions I've led. But I think that's part of leadership. One of my favorite little sayings is to avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing," Gates replied.

He has cancelled tens of billions of dollars' worth of expensive weapons programs, and infuriated the Air Force when he stopped production of its cherished F-22 Raptor.

"There was a lot of fat here at the Pentagon, in your estimation?" Couric asked.

"Well, I think it is self evident in the respect that the budget of the Pentagon almost doubled during the last decade. But our capabilities didn't particularly expand. A lot of that money went into infrastructure and overhead. And frankly, I think a culture that had an open checkbook. And so, that's what we had to change," Gates said.

The secretary also says the Pentagon is stuck in a 20th century time warp, just like the aging 747 he flew to and from the Middle East. It can be refueled in mid-air and has a shield to protect its electronics from a nuclear attack - a product of Cold War thinking, just like Pentagon war planning according to Gates.

He went to West Point this year and said it's time to change.

"In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined, as General MacArthur so delicately put it," Gates said.

"Things go wrong. And things don't develop as you anticipate. And young men and women die. And so, I think I wrote in my book a long time ago that the dirty little secret in Washington was that the biggest doves wore uniforms. That those who were the most skeptical of military action were the military. And now I understand better what I wrote, because I feel the same way. I'm much more cautious now, because I see the consequences. And I also see the unpredictability," he added.

Gates keeps a daily tally of the men and women who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan and on every trip, he always makes time to visit with the troops.

"My highest priority in the nearly four and a half years I've had this job is to get you what you need to complete your mission and come home safely," he told a group of soldiers.

"I've said kinda all along that I think of them as my own sons and daughters," Gates told Couric. "It's because I send 'em. I'm the guy that signs the piece of paper that sends 'em here. I'm the guy that signs the condolence letters, I'm the guy that visits them in the hospitals. They just, it's very emotional for me. They are the best."

Asked what he says in those letters, Gates told Couric, "I swore I would never let any of them become a statistic for me. So with each condolence letter that I write, I get a packet of hometown news accounts of that individual as well as a picture. And I get to read what their coaches and their parents and their brothers and their sisters say about 'em. So I feel like I know them. In some ways, it makes the job harder. But I want the parents or the wives or spouses to know that I care about every single one of 'em."