Influence Alley

Bob Gates is back. Kind of. Robert Gates, former defense secretary and CIA director, is joining the consulting firm of former Bush administration teammates Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley, to form RiceHadleyGates, according to the Associated Press. The firm is based in California and Washington, D.C.

Gates has made just a few public appearances in Washington since a grandiose retirement send-off from the Pentagon last June. When Gates traveled outside the Beltway he loved any opportunity to joke that Washington was the last place he wanted to be. But the life long public servant also extolled public service as a virtue, whether speaking to young troops in Iraq or his beloved Boy Scouts back home. When I asked his mentor, Brent Scowcroft, former national security advisor, last year if he believed Gates would really stay away from Washington in retirement, the old friend barked, "That's crap, he loves it."