WASHINGTON — Of all the presidents he worked for, Defense Secretary Gates is particularly supportive of one — but it isn’t, as might be expected, President Reagan, the President George H.W. Bush, or even President Ford.

Rather, in his memoirs, the new Pentagon chief leaps repeatedly to the defense of President Carter, the sole Democrat for whom he worked, who was often seen as weak on the Soviet Union and taken by surprise when it invaded Afghanistan in December 1979.

Mr. Gates’s 1996 book, “From the Shadows,” is now being combed for insights into the new defense secretary’s thinking, how he might run the Pentagon, and what he’s had to say about his past bosses.

When it comes to Mr. Carter, it isn’t that Mr. Gates, a career Sovietologist who rose to become CIA director, is a closet dove. Rather, he thinks Mr. Carter was far tougher on Moscow than is generally recognized.

“I believe the Soviets saw a very different Jimmy Carter than did most Americans by 1980, different and more hostile and threatening,” Mr. Gates writes. In both conventional weaponry and in the nuclear arena, he argues, Mr. Carter would “provide a strong foundation for Ronald Reagan to build upon.” By contrast, Mr. Gates describes the first president for whom he worked, President Nixon, as “by far the most liberal” of the group. (Mr. Gates also shows a bit of dovish ankle, writing that before leaving the CIA to work in the Nixon White House, he marched in a May 1970 anti-war demonstration.)