Gates was in the CIA for 26 years. Who would have known if not the CIA (and yes...I know the Company is left leaning).
The network that put Obama into the White House were working under mom and apple pie facades of their own creation in the training programs and organizations and charitable foundations and think tanks of the opinion-making professions. They tried to remain under the radar - that was the point of working from within on goals and objectives, papered over with phrases like “social justice.” They might very well have succeeded in eluding a Gates. Their goals were and are long term. See the memoir of Whittaker Chambers, Witness, published in the early 1950s.