Summary

In Chapter 7, Gates discusses a number of issues that plagued him as Secretary of Defense. The first involved problems with the Air Force, including an incident in which actual nuclear weapons rather than mock training rounds were loaded and delivered to a base in Louisiana, followed by a labeling error that caused four ICBM warheads to be delivered to Taiwan. As concerns mounted, Gates fired several high level people. Other Air Force-related issues included the effort to select the contractor to build a new tanker aircraft. Bidding irregularities and other complex problems eventually prompted Gates to delay the process until after the next administration took over in 2009, never dreaming that it would come back to him when he stayed on as secretary. Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where uniformed Americans who die overseas are initially flown, became the...