That is one man who has his shit together and knows precisely whichBush reluctantly acquiesced and reboarded Air Force One, which shortly after 1:30 P.M. zoomed into the western
sky, this time for Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. Offutt is home to the Strategic Command, which controls the
United States's nuclear weapons, and the base has a facility to protect the president. He could also meet with his
National Security Council over a secure video link.
From the plane, Bush reached his secretary of defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld.
"Wow, it was an American airliner that hit the Pentagon," the president said in some wonderment. "It's a day of
national tragedy, and we'll clean up the mess and then the ball will be in your court and Dick Myers's court."
Air Force General Richard B. Myers, the tall, gentlemanly vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was slated to
move up to become chairman, the top U.S. military position, in three weeks.
Rumsfeld, a small-framed, almost boyish, former Navy fighter pilot who did not look his 69 years, had been
expecting, even counting on, the order from the president putting the ball squarely in his court.
Earlier in the year, when Rumsfeld was in discussions about becoming Bush's secretary of defense, he had had a
talk with the president-elect, a little test of sorts. He told Bush that during the eight years of Clinton, the natural
pattern when challenged or attacked had been a "reflexive pullback" - caution, safety plays, even squeamishness.
The Clinton weapon of choice was the standoff cruise missile. Rumsfeld left no doubt in Bush's mind that when that
moment came, as it surely would, that the United States was threatened, he, as secretary of defense, would be
coming to the president to unleash the military. The president could expect a forward-leaning action plan.
Bush had replied, unambiguously in Rumsfeld's estimation, that that was precisely what he wanted. Rumsfeld
believed they had a clear, common understanding.
...
RUMSFELD HAD BEEN one of the brightest Republican stars in the 1960s and 1970s - a JFK from the GOP -
handsome, intense, well educated with an intellectual bent, witty with an infectious smile. Many in the party,
including Rumsfeld himself, thought he might be headed for the presidency. But he never gained traction as a pop-
ular or national political figure, in part because of the brusque way he often treated people, especially subordinates.
In addition, he made a political enemy of one of the party's rising stars, George H.W. Bush, who did make it to the
presidency.
Rumsfeld's ascent to the inner circle of power is a story of intrigue, drive and luck. In 1962, at the age of 30,
Rumsfeld was elected to his first of four terms in Congress representing the district of Chicago's North Shore
suburbs where he had grown up. He resigned from Congress in 1969 to become director of the Office of Economic
Opportunity, the anti-poverty organization that was a cabinet level post in the Nixon administration but not a flashy,
high-visibility position.
By 1973-74 he was in Brussels, serving as U.S. ambassador to NATO, dodging the Watergate bullet. According to
Nixon's memoirs, in July 1974, "Don Rumsfeld called from Brussels, offering to resign as Ambassador to NATO
and return to help work against impeachment among his former colleagues." Nixon resigned the next month and
Rumsfeld was asked to chair the presidential transition team of his former House colleague Gerald Ford.
Ford asked Rumsfeld to become White House chief of staff, but Rumsfeld wanted to stay at NATO. Rumsfeld
agreed when Ford promised to streamline the staff and give Rumsfeld full authority.
After a year in the White House, Ford told him he planned to fire Defense Secretary James Schlesinger. Rumsfeld
would move to Defense. CIA Director William Colby was going to be replaced by George Bush senior, then the U.S.
representative in China. Rumsfeld privately called the China post "a crappy, irrelevant job." He was opposed to the
new assignments for both Bush and himself. He told Ford that moving the two would put them on ice for Ford's up-
coming presidential campaign. They were, he said, the only two who could give effective political speeches in the
coming election year, 1976. But Rumsfeld saluted and took Defense.
Bush senior was convinced that Rumsfeld-was secretly pushing him out to the CIA to end his political career. It
seemed inconceivable at the time that the head of spying and dirty tricks abroad could ever become president.
President Ford then elevated Rumsfeld's deputy, Dick Cheney, to be White House chief of staff. At the time, over
concerns about politicizing the CIA, the Senate was refusing to confirm Bush senior as director unless Ford
pledged not to select him as his vice presidential running mate for the coming election. Rumsfeld told Ford and
Cheney that the president should not cave in to the Senate. When Ford and Bush eventually made the pledge to
the Senate anyway, Rumsfeld blamed Cheney in part, telling him in so many words, You've screwed up on the first
thing you've done.
Over the next year, 1976, there emerged a subtle rivalry between Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and CIA Director
In their years in the House, Rumsfeld had found Bush to be a lightweight who was interested in friendships, public
relations and public opinion polls more than substantive policy. In his view, Bush senior avoided controversy and
sweat, except in the House gym. He went so far as to tell some that Bush had some of what Rumsfeld called the
"Rockefeller syndrome" - available, wanting to serve, but not having clear goals. In Rumsfeld's world, having no
larger purpose was almost a high crime.
Rumsfeld believed that Bush was a weak CIA director who seriously underestimated the Soviet Union's military
advances and was manipulated by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Rumsfeld went on to hold government appointments in the Reagan administration as Middle East envoy and in the
Clinton administration as head of a commission to assess the ballistic missile threat to the U.S., but none in the
administration of Bush senior.
Instead of being on a track to run for the presidency, Rumsfeld was now the secretary of defense for a second time,
serving his longtime rival's son. In some respects, Rumsfeld was a walking example of what the novelist Wallace
Stegner calls "resilience under disappointment," the persistence of drive, hard work and even stubbornness when
ambition has not been fully realized.
In his first eight months back in the Pentagon, Rumsfeld struck two major themes. First, the military was hidebound
and outdated, still equipped, trained and organized to fight old enemies, mainly the Soviet Union. He undertook
what he called "transformation," to remake the force, and as he said somewhat presciently at his confirmation
hearings, to "develop capabilities to defend against missiles, terrorism and new threats against our space assets
and information systems."
Rumsfeld's second theme was surprise. He routinely handed out or recommended a book called Pearl Harbor:
Warning and Decision by Roberta Wohlstetter. Rumsfeld particularly recommended the foreword, written by
Thomas Schelling, who argued that Pearl Harbor was an ordinary blunder, the type government specializes in.
"There is a tendency in our planning to confuse the unfamiliar with the improbable.. .. The danger is in a poverty of
expectations, a routine obsession with a few dangers that may be familiar rather than likely."
Rumsfeld's transformation plans met with something just short of organized resistance bordering on insubordination
among a significant part of the senior uniformed officers. One four-star officer who worked with him said Rumsfeld
was "an egomaniac cleverly disguised... a hip shooter who gives the impression he is not." Another said if anyone
disagreed with Rumsfeld it was risky because the result might be an "ass chewing from him." The officer said, "I'd
go up there [to Rumsfeld's office on the third floor] and when I disagreed with him I'd tell him I disagreed.
Sometimes he was nice about it, sometimes he wasn't nice about it."
On occasion Rumsfeld bounced ranking generals out of his office, telling one, "Come back and brief when you
know what you're talking about." Woe to the briefer who presented only a proposed solution. "Wait, let's back up,"
Rumsfeld would often say. I can read the answer. What I want to know is how you got there - the premise, the
starting point, the full reasoning.
This baffled the senior military. It was humbling and off-putting too at times. Rumsfeld confronted them with tough
questions that seemed excessive. What is it you know about this subject? What don't you know? What do you think
about it? What do you think I ought to ask you about it? That's the only way I'm going to learn anything, he
explained, adding, And for sure it's the only way that you are going to learn anything!
He seemed too confident in himself and too distrustful of his subordinates in the military. Working with a close-knit
group, mostly civilians, he was a mystery to many in the building, especially the members of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, the uniformed heads of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps.
Rumsfeld didn't like muddling along. He didn't like imprecision. He redid or had suggestions on most memos. He
hated loose language. One memo had an obvious typographic error - "not" coming out as "ton" - and he asked,
What does this "ton" mean? Why is "ton" in this sentence? What does it mean?
"Cambone!" was a familiar refrain when Rumsfeld wanted information or action. A 6-foot-3 defense intellectual who
had worked on the space and missile defense commissions that Rumsfeld had headed, Steve Cambone was the
dark, nonsunny, nonoptimistic side of Rumsfeld who had forebodings about something bad happening. He was
civilian special assistant to the secretary, and he largely defined the relationships between Rumsfeld and the rest of
the Pentagon. Cambone was the means by which, at least initially, Rumsfeld had extended his grasp around the
throats of the military brass.
Army General Henry B. "Hugh" Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff since October 1997, grew
despondent at times under the new civilian leadership, reporting to colleagues a real rupture with Rumsfeld. At one
point Rumsfeld suggested that Shelton ought to give his military advice to the president through him. Shelton had to
point out that the law made him the "principal military adviser" to the president, and he believed his advice should
be given directly.
If Rumsfeld rubbed the chiefs and the brass raw at times, many had respect for his intelligence. One senior general
said, "I admire the man greatly even though I don't necessarily like him.... He's got a weakness in wanting to have
his hands around everything. Okay?"
AWARE OF THE attacks on the World Trade Center, Rumsfeld had been proceeding with his daily intelligence
briefing in his office when the third hijacked plane struck the western face of the Pentagon. He felt the building
shudder and darted to the window, but from his vantage it was unclear what had happened. He went outside and
followed the rising cloud of smoke to the crash site, helping with the rescue effort before a security agent urged him
to get out of the area.
"I'm going inside," Rumsfeld said, and hurried to the National Military Command Center, the large, heavily staffed
Pentagon war room. It was filled with smoke, so he and his team went up to an isolated communications network
room called "Cables" where the air was better.
General Myers urged Rumsfeld to leave. "The smoke is getting pretty bad," he said. "We've got a lot of support
people here. It's actually worse for them than it is for us right here." The others would not leave as long as
Rumsfeld was there. "We ought to think about moving."
Okay, Rumsfeld said, but kept on working.
The military, which seemed to have contingency plans for the most inconceivable scenarios, had no plans for
Afghanistan, the sanctuary of bin Laden and his network. There was nothing on the shelf that could be pulled down
to provide at least an outline. This was not a surprise for the secretary of defense. Now he turned to Myers with a
message: When I've asked to see various plans, I've not been happy with what I've seen. They are neither
imaginative nor creative. Clearly the plans are old and have been on the shelf for too long. I've just not been happy.
We've got a long way to go. You need to know that.
"I understand, sir," Myers replied.
RUMSFELD FINALLY LEFT the war room and went to his office suite and set himself to working the problem.
"This is the defining moment," he told his top aides - Cambone, his military assistant, his general counsel and his
spokesperson. The president is going to come back into town, he said, and I need to be ready to talk to him when
he arrives. What are the things the president needs to think about? Rumsfeld asked. What does the president need
to address?
He started jotting down ideas. He wanted thoughts from everyone, short concepts, statements of the problems. Get
this old paper, this report, this memo, he said. Speak up. What did they have before them?
For Cambone, it was distill, distill, distill - digest, digest, digest.
Victoria A. "Torie" Clarke, assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, thought Rumsfeld was like a Vegas
blackjack dealer, sitting in his massive office sorting through the paper, almost by instinct, setting out three stacks
of memos, papers and notes: 1. This is what we know. 2. This is what we're dealing with right now. 3. This is what
we've got to deal with next - tomorrow and into the long-term future.
How do we crystallize the problem for the president? Rumsfeld asked. He deemed it part of his responsibility to
think on the president's behalf. We have to have the right thoughts, complete thoughts. Because, he said, the first
full meeting of the National Security Council was going to be terribly important in setting the stage for how they
moved forward. Paper kept flying from stack to stack, and the piles got smaller and smaller. He threw some of
these notes and paper in the Burn Bag for classified trash. Clarke fished some out to recirculate.
After several hours, Rumsfeld had it all down on a single sheet of paper - nice, neat, no misspellings, no loose
language - to take that night for a meeting at the White House with the president.
.....
The members of the war cabinet had lots of questions, none more than Rumsfeld. On his single sheet of paper, he
had the questions he thought the president and the rest of them needed to address and eventually answer: Who
are the targets? How much evidence do we need before going after al Qaeda? How soon do we act?
The sooner they acted, Rumsfeld said, the more public support they would have if there's collateral damage. He
was being careful. Since the military had no plan and no forces in the immediate area, he wanted to keep
expectations low. He dropped a bomb, telling them that some major strikes could take up to 60 days to put
together.
The notion of waiting 60 days for something major - until November 11 perhaps - just hung in the room.
Rumsfeld had more questions. Powell thought they were a clever disguise, a way to argue rhetorically and avoid
taking a position. Rumsfeld wanted others to answer his queries. It was a remarkable technique, Powell thought.
Still, the questions were good, and Rumsfeld went on. Are there targets that are off-limits? Do we include the
American allies in any military strikes? Last, the secretary of defense said, we have to set declaratory policy,
announce to the world what we're doing.
questions to ask, even if he chafes the brass the wrong way. That book is
very informative, and everyone should at least try to get a copy from their
local library...
