Gates Condemns Leaks on U.S. Afghan Policy and Ft. Hood

Gates Condemns Leaks on U.S. Afghan Policy and Ft. Hood
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: November 12, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/13/us/politics/13gates.html?hpw


OSHKOSH, Wis. — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is normally a mild-mannered man, at least in public, but he unleashed a torrent on Thursday about leaks during the investigation of the Foot Hood shootings and during President Obama’s deliberations on sending more American troops to Afghanistan.

First, on the president’s meetings on Afghanistan: “I have been appalled by the amount of leaking that has been going on in this process,” Mr. Gates told reporters on his plane en route to a Wisconsin factory that is churning out thousands of armored trucks for use by American troops in Afghanistan. He added that he thought “a lot of different places are leaking” and that he was “confident that the Department of Defense is one of them.”

Then he made a threat: “And frankly if I found out with high confidence anybody who was leaking in the Department of Defense, who that was, that would probably be a career ender.”

The defense secretary moved on to the investigation of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who was charged in the deaths of 13 people on Nov. 5 at Fort Hood, Tex., and what Mr. Gates called “unconscionable” leaks from “everybody out there with their own little piece of the action.”

Then he concluded, “Everybody ought to just shut up.”

Mr. Gates was in Wisconsin to visit the Oshkosh Corporation, which is making 6,600 trucks to help protect troops from improvised explosive devices, which account for the vast majority of American and NATO casualties in Afghanistan.

The trucks are a second generation of the mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles, or MRAPs, used in Iraq, and are called MRAP All-Terrain Vehicles, or M-ATVs. They are manufactured specifically for the rough terrain of the Hindu Kush and can tear up 30-degree inclines, as Mr. Gates observed during a demonstration at the plant.

On Thursday, Mr. Gates also announced the creation of a Pentagon task force to try to unify disparate parts of the sprawling Defense Department into a single unit focused on countering the threat of the explosive devices in Afghanistan.

As for the Oshkosh trucks, he hinted that there soon could be more in production.

“Obviously, if the president makes the decision to increase the number of troops in Afghanistan,” Mr. Gates said, “we would look at this in terms of whether we needed to buy more.”