WASHINGTON -- What Robert Gates once called "inconceivable to me" -- his remaining defense secretary beyond Inauguration Day -- is looking a bit more conceivable to the rest of Washington.
The 65-year-old former spymaster has turned publicly mum on the circumstances under which he would stay -- even briefly -- in his role at the U.S. Department of Defense after President-elect Barack Obama takes office. But one of the leading scenarios for a wartime transition at the Pentagon has Gates holding the fort.
If Gates is staying on, the announcement could come soon.
A national security spokeswoman for Obama, Brooke Anderson, said Thursday that she had no comment on Gates or on whether the president-elect has held discussions with any candidate for Gates' job.
The apparent logic in keeping Gates for an extended transition is that it would allow time for a secretary-in-waiting, who might come aboard in January as Gates' deputy, to assemble a team of senior defense policy officials before the top boss departs.
It also would reflect a widely held view among Republicans, as well as Democrats, that Gates has the experience, demeanor and policy priorities to manage U.S. defense under a president of either political party.
One of the strongest indications of Obama's interest in possibly keeping Gates came in early October, when Richard Danzig, a senior national security adviser to the Obama campaign and a possible selection to succeed Gates, told reporters that Gates has proved himself an effective Pentagon chief.
Gates has run the department since December 2006, after he reluctantly gave up his post as president of Texas A&M University to replace Donald H. Rumsfeld at a point when the Iraq war seemed to be failing.
Thus far, Obama has informally selected Washington lawyer Eric Holder as attorney general and former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle as health and human services secretary. The plans could be sidetracked by unexpected glitches in the final vetting process, officials note.
Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., seems more likely than ever to be Obama's secretary of state. Clinton is deciding whether to take that post as America's top diplomat, her associates said.
Democrats also said that several people remain in the running for treasury secretary, including Timothy Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; Lawrence Summers, former treasury secretary and one-time Harvard University president, and former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker.
Officials said Laura D'Andrea Tyson, the former chair of White House Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton, is in the running for the secretary of commerce.
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