Gates: The New York Times "mischaracterized my memo"...

Politico/ here

"Responding to a report in the New York Times, Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Sunday said the sources who had described his January classified memo on U.S. Iran strategy had "mischaracterizeed its purpose and content."

"The New York Times sources who revealed my January memo to the National Security Advisor mischaracterized its purpose and content," Gates said in a statement Sunday.

"With the Administration's pivot to a pressure track on Iran earlier this year, the memo identified next steps in our defense planning process where further interagency discussion and policy decisions would be needed in the months and weeks ahead," Gates said. "The memo was not intended as a 'wake up call' or received as such by the President's national security team," he continued. "Rather, it presented a number of questions and proposals intended to contribute to an orderly and timely decision making process."

The defense secretary's statement responded to a report in Sunday's New York Times that said he had written a three-page classified memo in January to National Security Advisor Jim Jones saying that the U.S. did not have a good long-term strategy for dealing with Iran's nuclear program.

The leak of the existence of the three month old memo came after State Department, intelligence and Defense Department officials testified in open and closed sessions to the Senate Armed Services Committee last week on U.S. Iran strategy. ........John McCain (R-Ariz.), told Fox News Sunday that he did not need a secret Pentagon memo to tell him the Obama administration did not have a "coherent policy on Iran," McCain said. "That's pretty obvious."

Gates disputed such criticism...."