On the wall of his office, retired General James Clapper keeps a photograph, taken nearly twenty years before. On one side is then-CIA chief Robert Gates, his head covered with gray hair instead of today's white. On the other is Clapper, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, dressed in his Air Force blues. At the time, both of them seemed to be at the end of their Washington careers. "I had no clue we'd ever come back to government together," Clapper says.

But then, in December of 2006, when Gates was recruited to take over the Pentagon, he in turn recruited Clapper to become his undersecretary for intelligence. Clapper found it hard to say no. But, just to make sure, Gates called Clapper's wife. After Clapper took the job, his nephew, a major in the 82nd Airborne, came by the Pentagon to visit. Gates gave him a personal tour of the place.

The Director of National Intelligence is seen by many as a useless job, since it has no say over the vast majority of intelligence spending, which in controlled by the Defense Department. It'll be interesting to see if that changes, now that Clapper has been nominated as the DNI, and his old pal Gates is running the Pentagon.

[Photo: DoD]