Latest Robert M. Gates Quotes from Interviews

• I didn't think this whole business with Director James Comey was handled well. So there are sort of day-to-day aspects of the operation that I think are really troublesome. And I know that there are a lot of people in the country who have lots of issues with decisions that Donald Trump has making on the domestic side.

  Robert M. Gates

  País, Pensamiento, Gente

  Fuente: www.cbsnews.com

• It's clear the relationship between China and North Korea has hardly ever been worse. Kim Jong-un has never been to Beijing in his leadership. The Chinese press are saying some amazingly negative things about the north, and about Kim Jong-un. So - so they are weighing in, and they are bringing greater pressure. Whether it will be enough I think remains to be seen.

  Robert M. Gates

  Thinking, Chinese, Negative

  Fuente: www.cbsnews.com

• My one concern is that Hu Jintao may overestimate how much power China has in Pyongyang. They have - they do have influence, and they do have companies, and they do have economic relationships that could make life much more difficult in the north. Their balancing act is, "How much worse can we make it in the north without creating that which scares us more than anything, which is a collapse in the north." And then what happens to all those nuclear weapons. So they're going to work very hard to avoid that.

  Robert M. Gates

  Scare, Influence, Economic

  Fuente: www.cbsnews.com

• I think Donald Trump has gotten China's attention to a degree that his predecessors have not that this is a very serious matter for the United States.

  Robert M. Gates

  Thinking, Attention, Serious

  Fuente: www.cbsnews.com

• My last visit to China as secretary, January of 2011, I told President Hu Jintao, just like this, "President of the United States wanted me to tell you that we now consider North Korea a direct threat to the United States." And it had no effect whatsoever.

  Robert M. Gates

  President, January, Threat

  Fuente: www.cbsnews.com

• I think that - that the disruptive nature, the tough talk on North Korea, the military deployments, sending the missile defense system to South Korea, I think these are all good things to have done.

  Robert M. Gates

  Military, Thinking, Deployment

  Fuente: www.cbsnews.com

• It's a very broad and not very well-disguised effort of Russians to create questions about the legitimacy of these Western elections. And, I think, this is very K.G.B.

  Robert M. Gates

  Thinking, Effort, Election

  Fuente: www.cbsnews.com

• I think that Vladimir Putin is certainly getting a lot of publicity for what the Russians are doing. And I'm not sure that's unwelcome to him. I think this is a guy who saw the U.S. basically come out against him in his reelection campaign in 2012. He saw the U.S. being behind all of the color revolutions in Eastern Europe and in Georgia and Ukraine and so on. So his view is the West has been interfering in his politics for years.

  Robert M. Gates

  Thinking, Guy, Revolution

  Fuente: www.cbsnews.com

• I think that Vladimir Putin has decided, in a very strategic way, to turn the tables and do everything in his power to, as we've described Russian elections as illegitimate, to try and communicate to the rest of the world that Western elections are illegitimate. And it's not just us, we know that now. It's Germany, it's France, it's a number of other countries.

  Robert M. Gates

  Country, Thinking, Trying

  Fuente: www.cbsnews.com

• I think in the policies that have been followed since the president Donald Trump came into office, there really hasn't been any slack cut for the Russians. And I think one of the things that has surprised people has been that the relationship between the United States and Russia has in fact deteriorated since the election.

  Robert M. Gates

  Corte, Pensamiento, Gente

  Fuente: www.cbsnews.com

• I don't know General Michael Flynn well, but it's hard for me to believe anybody would allow themselves to be blackmailed by the Russians because they didn't tell the full story or didn't tell the truth to the vice president of the United States who works 50 feet down the hall.

  Robert M. Gates

  Believe, President, Telling The Truth

  Fuente: www.cbsnews.com

• Soviet foreign ministers would come in to see the president all the time, routinely. Jimmy Carter stopped that after the invasion of Afghanistan. Ronald Reagan resumed it in 1984, I think. And so the fact of a meeting like that I think is not that big a deal.

  Robert M. Gates

  Thinking, President, Afghanistan

  Fuente: www.cbsnews.com

• I think it's kind of a stretch. You know, it's one thing if somebody working for the U.S. government has sold secrets to the other side, it's another if they have something in their personal life that they're hiding for which they could be blackmailed. Having evidence that they didn't tell the truth to somebody in the same building where they work, maybe it's just the old intel guy, is - it's a problem.

  Robert M. Gates

  Thinking, Guy, Secret

  Fuente: www.cbsnews.com

• On the foreign policy side, there's the risk of being too spontaneous and too disruptive where you end up doing more harm than damage. And figuring out that balance is where having strong people around you matters.

  Robert M. Gates

  Strong, People, Risk

  Fuente: www.cbsnews.com

• I think when it comes to the issues, I'd advise him to stick to the script. But, I mean, Donald Trump is going to have some very tough conversations and he's going to be talking about some very tough and complicated issues in all of the places that he visits.I think anytime a president does things that are humanizing, I think it's - it's good.

  Robert M. Gates

  Mean, Thinking, President

  Fuente: www.cbsnews.com

• I think, on the foreign policy side, that there is a need for disruption. We've had three administrations follow a pretty consistent policy toward North Korea, and it really hasn't gotten us anywhere.

  Robert M. Gates

  Thinking, Foreign Policy, Consistent

  Fuente: www.cbsnews.com

• In government, I'm a strong believer in the need for reform of government agencies and departments. They - they have gotten fat and sloppy, and they're not user friendly. They are inefficient. They cost too much.

  Robert M. Gates

  Strong, Friendly, Believer

  Fuente: www.cbsnews.com

• I think in the context of senior government positions, I think an anecdote of what I told President-Elect Barack Obama when we had our first meeting. And I said, "You don't know me. Can you trust me? Why do you think you can trust me?" and so on. But at the end, I said, "You can count on me to be loyal to you. I will not leak. I will keep my disagreements with you private. And if I cannot be loyal, I'll leave." Loyalty means doing what you think is in the best interest of that person as well as the country.

  Robert M. Gates

  Senior, Loyalty, Country

  Fuente: www.cbsnews.com

• Often, loyalty means telling people things they don't want to hear. It's not being sycophantic, it's not telling them how wonderful they are every day. It's being willing to tell them the days they're not wonderful.

  Robert M. Gates

  Loyalty, Mean, People

  Fuente: www.cbsnews.com

• If possible, to be in a position to announce who is going to step in as the interim immediately. And if possible, to announce who you're going to nominate to replace that person. For that to be somebody of impeccable integrity and reputation disarms a lot of the worst criticism that it's some kind of a power play. It's a professional approach to replacing a senior official, which is always going to get a lot of attention.

  Robert M. Gates

  Senior, Integrity, Criticism

  Fuente: www.cbsnews.com

• I fired a lot of senior people myself and I think the key, when you feel compelled to remove a senior official, is essentially to have all your ducks in a row at the beginning. Have everybody understand what the rationale was.

  Robert M. Gates

  Senior, Thinking, People

  Fuente: www.cbsnews.com

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