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President Bush said Wednesday he has chosen Robert Gates to replace Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense.

Gates was director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 1991 to 1993, in the George H. W. Bush administration. He has been president of Texas A&M University since 2002.

Gates joined the CIA in 1966 and spent nearly 27 years as an intelligence professional, serving six presidents, according to his biography on the Texas A&M Web site.

During that period, he spent nearly nine years at the National Security Council, serving four presidents of both political parties, the biography said.

Gates declined an offer to become the first Director of National Intelligence, a position created by the intelligence overhaul bill that Bush signed into law in 2004 in response to the September 11 attacks.

"There seems to be a growing number of rumors in the media and around campus that I am leaving Texas A&M to become the new director of national intelligence ("Intelligence Czar") in Washington, D.C.," Gates wrote in a message posted on the school's Web site February 1, 2005.

"To put the rumors to rest, I was indeed asked to take the position, wrestled with perhaps the most difficult -- and close -- decision of my life, and last week declined the position."

John Negroponte was nominated for the position last year.

In an article that appeared on CNN.com in 2002, Gates wrote about the difficulty of "connecting the dots" of raw intelligence reports.

"While some pre-9/11 items of intelligence today seem like red flags, pulling together incomplete or ambiguous fragments of information into a credible and compelling analysis is more difficult than the Monday-morning quarterbacks would have you think," Gates wrote.

Bush said Wednesday he met with Gates in Crawford, Texas, over the weekend. He said he had planned to nominate him as Secretary of Defense regardless of what happened in Tuesday's midterm election.

Bush said Gates will bring "a fresh perspective" and "great managerial experience" to the position.

"He understands we're in a global war against these terrorists," Bush said. "He understands that defeat is not an option in Iraq."