Toughie, Smoothy, Striver, Spy: BOB GATES

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Friends remember him as a child who demonstrated a need and a knack for pleasing his elders back in Wichita, where his father sold wholesale auto parts. Young Bob was bright, well-organized and punctual. He read voraciously and loved to run and hike. When he went off to the College of William and Mary in Virginia, he first enrolled in pre-medicine, then gravitated toward history. "I started with American history," Gates says, "and moved east." He studied Western Europe as an undergrad, Eastern Europe for his master's degree and Russian history and language for his doctorate. Gates worked part time in Williamsburg as a school-bus driver with the eccentric habit of teaching his riders words and phrases in German and Russian. At Indiana University, he worked as a dorm counselor, as did his wife-to-be Becky, whom he met when they chaperoned a hayride.

At the CIA, Gates scrambled rapidly up the career ladder, starting as a junior analyst who struggled to write coherent reports after poring over mountains of information from a wide range of secret and public sources. He quickly drew praise for cogent analysis and crisp writing -- traits still evident in his scholarly articles and speeches.

A big break for Gates came in 1974, when he was assigned to work at the White House on the National Security Council. His boss, then as now, was an Air Force general named Brent Scowcroft. Over the next 17 years, Gates deftly hopscotched back and forth from the White House to CIA, winning kudos from Democrats and Republicans alike.

Some detractors describe Gates as a "chameleon" who, like Magnus Pym, the sociopathic protagonist of John le Carre's The Perfect Spy, finds it easy to match his coloration to whomever he needs to please. And while his friends disagree, they add wryly that it's better to have Gates as an employee than as a boss.

He strives to deliver what his superiors want, and rides his subordinates until he gets it. He first made his name as head of the CIA's analysts, insisting that reports be made less cautiously academic and more relevant to policymakers, addressing their concerns bluntly, concisely and accurately. He demanded each analyst's "best estimate" on difficult questions, and tracked such judgments on scorecards that influenced promotions. Some analysts considered Gates a little Napoleon. But Congressman Dave McCurdy, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, says he witnessed a "remarkable" improvement in the quality of CIA reports prepared under Gates.

Gates also takes pride in having helped to establish a day-care center for employees' children, complete with jungle gyms and little CIA T shirts. He delighted in imagining what KGB analysts would conclude from their satellite photos of the facility: perhaps that the CIA was training midgets for some covert mission.