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Donald Rumsfeld

June 02, 2023

"Rumsfeld" redirects here. For the professor, see John S. Rumsfeld.

Donald Henry Rumsfeld (July 9, 1932 – June 29, 2021) was an American politician, government official and businessman who served as Secretary of Defense from 1975 to 1977 under president Gerald Ford, and again from 2001 to 2006 under President George W. Bush.[1][2] He was both the youngest and the oldest secretary of defense.[3] Additionally, Rumsfeld was a three-term U.S. Congressman from Illinois (1963–1969), director of the Office of Economic Opportunity (1969–1970), counselor to the president (1969–1973), the U.S. Representative to NATO (1973–1974), and the White House Chief of Staff (1974–1975). Between his terms as secretary of defense, he served as the CEO and chairman of several companies.

Donald Rumsfeld
Official portrait, 2001
13th and 21st United States Secretary of Defense
In office
January 20, 2001 – December 18, 2006
PresidentGeorge W. Bush
Deputy
Preceded byWilliam Cohen
Succeeded byRobert Gates
In office
November 20, 1975 – January 20, 1977
PresidentGerald Ford
DeputyBill Clements
Preceded byJames Schlesinger
Succeeded byHarold Brown
6th White House Chief of Staff
In office
September 21, 1974 – November 20, 1975
PresidentGerald Ford
Preceded byAlexander Haig
Succeeded byDick Cheney
9th United States Ambassador to NATO
In office
February 2, 1973 – September 21, 1974
President
Preceded byDavid Kennedy
Succeeded byDavid Bruce
Director of the Cost of Living Council
In office
October 15, 1971 – February 2, 1973
PresidentRichard Nixon
Preceded byPosition established
Succeeded byPosition abolished
Counselor to the President
In office
December 11, 1970 – October 15, 1971
Serving with Robert Finch
PresidentRichard Nixon
Preceded by
Succeeded byRobert Finch
3rd Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity
In office
May 27, 1969 – December 11, 1970
PresidentRichard Nixon
Preceded byBertrand Harding
Succeeded byFrank Carlucci
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Illinois's 13th district
In office
January 3, 1963 – May 25, 1969
Preceded byMarguerite Church
Succeeded byPhil Crane
Personal details
Born
Donald Henry Rumsfeld

(1932-07-09)July 9, 1932
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
DiedJune 29, 2021(2021-06-29) (aged 88)
Taos, New Mexico, U.S.
Resting placeArlington National Cemetery
Political partyRepublican
Spouse
Joyce Pierson
​
(m. 1954)​
Children3
EducationPrinceton University (AB)
Case Western Reserve University
Georgetown University
Signature
WebsiteLibrary website
Nickname"Rummy"
Military service
BranchUnited States Navy
Years of service
RankCaptain
Donald Rumsfeld's voice
Rumsfeld opens the first Pentagon press conference after the September 11 attacks
Recorded September 11, 2001

Born in Illinois, Rumsfeld attended Princeton University, graduating in 1954 with a degree in political science. After serving in the Navy for three years, he mounted a campaign for Congress in Illinois's 13th Congressional District, winning in 1962 at the age of 30. Rumsfeld accepted an appointment by President Richard Nixon to head the Office of Economic Opportunity in 1969; appointed counsellor by Nixon and entitled to Cabinet-level status, he also headed up the Economic Stabilization Program before being appointed ambassador to NATO. Called back to Washington in August 1974, Rumsfeld was appointed chief of staff by President Ford. Rumsfeld recruited a young one-time staffer of his, Dick Cheney, to succeed him when Ford nominated him to be Secretary of Defense in 1975. When Ford lost the 1976 election, Rumsfeld returned to private business and financial life, and was named president and CEO of the pharmaceutical corporation G. D. Searle & Company. He was later named CEO of General Instrument from 1990 to 1993 and chairman of Gilead Sciences from 1997 to 2001.

Rumsfeld was appointed Secretary of Defense for a second time in January 2001 by President George W. Bush. As Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld played a central role in the invasion of Afghanistan and invasion of Iraq. Before and during the Iraq War, he claimed that Iraq had an active weapons of mass destruction program; no stockpiles were ever found.[4][5] A Pentagon Inspector General report found that Rumsfeld's top policy aide "developed, produced, and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al-Qaeda relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community, to senior decision-makers".[6] Rumsfeld's tenure was controversial for its use of torture and the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal.[7] Rumsfeld gradually lost political support and resigned in late 2006. In his retirement years, he published an autobiography, Known and Unknown: A Memoir, as well as Rumsfeld's Rules: Leadership Lessons in Business, Politics, War, and Life.

Early life and education

 
Rumsfeld's 1954 yearbook portrait from Princeton

Donald Henry Rumsfeld was born at St. Lukes Hospital on July 9, 1932, in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Jeannette Kearsley (née Husted) and George Donald Rumsfeld.[8] His father came from a German family that had emigrated in the 1870s from Weyhe in Lower Saxony,[9][10][11]: 15–16  but young Donald was sometimes ribbed about looking like a "tough Swiss."[11]: 16 and 31  Growing up in Winnetka, Illinois, Rumsfeld became an Eagle Scout in 1949 and is the recipient of both the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award from the Boy Scouts of America[12] and its Silver Buffalo Award in 2006. Living in Winnetka, his family attended a Congregational church.[13] From 1943 to 1945, Rumsfeld lived in Coronado, California, while his father was stationed on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific in World War II.[14] He was a ranger at Philmont Scout Ranch in 1949.[15]

Rumsfeld attended Baker Demonstration School,[16] and later graduated[17] from New Trier High School where he excelled academically as well as in sports. In the band, the young Rumsfeld played drums and also excelled at saxophone. He attended Princeton University on academic and NROTC partial scholarships. He graduated in 1954 with an A.B. in politics after completing a senior thesis titled "The Steel Seizure Case of 1952 and Its Effects on Presidential Powers".[18][19] During his time at Princeton, he was an accomplished amateur wrestler, becoming captain of the varsity wrestling team, and captain of the Lightweight Football team playing defensive back. While at Princeton he was friends with another future Secretary of Defense, Frank Carlucci.[20]

Rumsfeld married Joyce P. Pierson on December 27, 1954. They had three children, six grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. He attended Case Western Reserve University School of Law and the Georgetown University Law Center, but did not take a degree from either institution.[21]

Naval service

 
Rumsfeld (right, standing) as a Navy lieutenant in 1955

Rumsfeld served in the United States Navy from 1954 to 1957, as a naval aviator and flight instructor. His initial training was in the North American SNJ Texan basic trainer after which he transitioned to the T-28 advanced trainer. In 1957, he transferred to the Naval Reserve and continued his naval service in flying and administrative assignments as a drilling reservist. On July 1, 1958, he was assigned to Anti-submarine Squadron 662 at Naval Air Station Anacostia, District of Columbia, as a selective reservist.[22] Rumsfeld was designated aircraft commander of Anti-submarine Squadron 731 on October 1, 1960, at Naval Air Station Grosse Ile, Michigan, where he flew the S2F Tracker.[22] He transferred to the Individual Ready Reserve when he became Secretary of Defense in 1975 and retired with the rank of captain in 1989.[23]

Career in government (1962–1975)

Member of Congress

 
Rumsfeld during his time in Congress

In 1957, during the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration, Rumsfeld served as administrative assistant to David S. Dennison Jr., a Congressman representing the 11th district of Ohio. In 1959, he moved on to become a staff assistant to Congressman Robert P. Griffin of Michigan.[24] Engaging in a two-year stint with an investment banking firm, A. G. Becker & Co., from 1960 to 1962,[25] Rumsfeld then set his sights on becoming a member of Congress.

He was elected to the United States House of Representatives for Illinois's 13th congressional district in 1962, at the age of 30, and was re-elected by large majorities in 1964, 1966, and 1968.[26] While in Congress, he served on the Joint Economic Committee, the Committee on Science and Aeronautics, and the Government Operations Committee, as well as on the Subcommittees on Military and Foreign Operations. He was also a co-founder of the Japanese-American Inter-Parliamentary Council[27] in addition to being a leading cosponsor of the Freedom of Information Act.[28]

In 1965, following the defeat of Barry Goldwater by Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1964 presidential election, which also led to the Republicans losing many seats in the House of Representatives, Rumsfeld proposed new leadership for the Republicans in the House, suggesting that representative Gerald Ford from Michigan's 5th congressional district was the most suited candidate to replace Charles A. Halleck as Republican leader.[29] Rumsfeld, along with other members of the Republican caucus, then urged Ford to run for Republican leader. Ford eventually defeated Halleck and became House Minority Leader in 1965. The group of Republicans that encouraged Ford to run for the Republican leadership became known as the "Young Turks". Rumsfeld later served during Ford's presidency as his chief of staff in 1974, and was chosen by Ford to succeed James Schlesinger as United States Secretary of Defense in 1975.[29]

During Rumsfeld's tenure as member of the U.S. House of Representatives, he voiced concerns about U.S. invovement in the Vietnam War, saying that President Johnson and his national security team were overconfident about how the war was being conducted. On one occasion, Rumsfeld joined with other members of the House and traveled to Vietnam for a fact-finding mission to see for themselves how the war was going. The trip led to Rumsfeld believing that the South Vietnamese government was much too dependent on the United States. Rumsfeld was also unsatisfied when he received a briefing about war planning from the commander of the U.S. troops in Vietnam, General William Westmoreland.[29] The trip led Rumsfeld to cosponsor a resolution to bring the conduct of the war to the House floor for further debate and discussion about U.S. mismanagement of the war. However, under constant pressure from the Johnson administration, the Democrats, who at that time held the majority at the House of Representatives, blocked the resolution from consideration.[29]

As a young Congressman, Rumsfeld attended seminars at the University of Chicago, an experience he credits with introducing him to the idea of an all volunteer military, and to the economist Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics.[30] He later took part in Friedman's PBS series Free to Choose.[31]

During his tenure in the House, Rumsfeld voted in favor of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968,[32][33][34][35] and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.[36][37]

Nixon administration

 
Rumsfeld in 1971 as Director of Cost of Living Council

Rumsfeld resigned from Congress in 1969 – his fourth term – to serve in the Nixon administration in a variety of executive branch positions. Nixon appointed Rumsfeld director of the United States Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), a position with Cabinet rank. Rumsfeld had voted against the creation of OEO when he was in Congress,[38] and, according to his 2011 memoirs, he initially rejected Nixon's offer, citing his own inherent belief that the OEO did more harm than good, and he felt that he was not the right person for the job.[39]: 119–121  After much negotiation, he accepted the OEO appointment with Nixon's "assurances that he would be ... also an assistant to the President, with Cabinet-level status and an office in the White House,"[38] which "sweetened (the OEO position) with status and responsibility".[40] As director, Rumsfeld sought to reorganize the Office to serve what he later described in his 2011 memoir as "a laboratory for experimental programs".[39]: 125  Several beneficial anti-poverty programs were saved by allocating funds to them from other less-successful government programs. During this time, he hired Frank Carlucci[41] and Dick Cheney[42][43] to serve under him.

 
Rumsfeld with his son, Nick, in the Oval Office with President Nixon, 1973

He was the subject of one of writer Jack Anderson's columns, alleging that "anti-poverty czar" Rumsfeld had cut programs to aid the poor while spending thousands to redecorate his office. Rumsfeld dictated a four-page response to Anderson, labeling the accusations as falsehoods, and invited Anderson to tour his office. Despite the tour, Anderson did not retract his claims, and only much later admitted that his column was a mistake.[39]: 125 [44][45]

When he left OEO in December 1970, Nixon named Rumsfeld Counselor to the President, a general advisory position; in this role, he retained Cabinet status.[11]: 75  He was given an office in the West Wing in 1969 and regularly interacted with the Nixon administration hierarchy. He was named director of the Economic Stabilization Program in 1970 as well, and later headed up the Cost of Living Council. In March 1971 Nixon was recorded saying about Rumsfeld "at least Rummy is tough enough" and "He's a ruthless little bastard. You can be sure of that."[46][47][48][49][50]

In February 1973, Rumsfeld left Washington to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Brussels, Belgium. He served as the United States' Permanent Representative to the North Atlantic Council and the Defense Planning Committee, and the Nuclear Planning Group. In this capacity, he represented the United States in wide-ranging military and diplomatic matters, and was asked to help mediate a conflict on behalf of the United States between Cyprus and Turkey.[39]: 157 [51]

Ford administration

 
Chief of Staff Rumsfeld (left) and Deputy-Chief of Staff Dick Cheney (right) meet with President Ford, April 1975.

In August 1974, after Nixon resigned as president in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, Rumsfeld was called back to Washington to serve as the transition chairman for the new president, Gerald Ford. He had been Ford's confidante since their days in the House, before Ford was House minority leader and was one of the members of the "Young Turks" which played a major role in bringing Ford to Republican leadership in the House of Representatives.[16] As the new president became settled in, Ford appointed Rumsfeld White House Chief of Staff, following Ford's appointment of General Alexander Haig to be the new Supreme Allied Commander Europe. Rumsfeld served from 1974 to 1975.[52][16]

Secretary of Defense (1975–1977)

 
Rumsfeld is sworn in as Secretary of Defense in November 1975

In October 1975, Ford reshuffled his cabinet in the Halloween Massacre. Various newspaper and magazine articles at the time identified Rumsfeld as having orchestrated these events.[53] Ford named Rumsfeld to succeed Schlesinger as the 13th U.S. Secretary of Defense and George H. W. Bush to become Director of Central Intelligence. According to Bob Woodward's 2002 book Bush at War, a rivalry developed between the two men and "Bush senior was convinced that Rumsfeld was pushing him out to the CIA to end his political career."[54]

Rumsfeld's confirmation hearing as Secretary of Defense began on November 12, 1975. During the hearing, Rumsfeld was mostly asked about the administration's defense policy on the Cold War. Rumsfeld stated that the Soviet Union was a "clear and present danger," especially following the end of the Vietnam War, which Rumsfeld described as the USSR's chance to build up its domination.[16] On November 17, 1975, Rumsfeld was confirmed as Secretary of Defense by a vote of 97–2.[16] At the age of 43, Rumsfeld become the youngest person to serve as United States Secretary of Defense as of 2023.[55]

 
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and President Ford share a laugh in a Cabinet meeting, 1975.
 
Rumsfeld with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General George S. Brown at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on January 15, 1976

During his tenure as Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld oversaw the transition to an all-volunteer military. He sought to reverse the gradual decline in the defense budget and to build up U.S. strategic and conventional forces, undermining Secretary of State Henry Kissinger at the SALT talks.[56] He asserted, along with Team B (which he helped to set up),[57] that trends in comparative U.S.-Soviet military strength had not favored the United States for 15 to 20 years and that, if continued, they "would have the effect of injecting a fundamental instability in the world".[23] For this reason, he oversaw the development of cruise missiles, the B-1 bomber, and a major naval shipbuilding program.[56]

Rumsfeld, who previously was assigned to the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, emphasized the importance of the next stage of the space program following the successful moon landing in 1969. While serving as Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld organized a joint-cooperation between the Department of Defense and NASA to develop Skylab.[16] Another result of the cooperation was the Space Shuttle program.[16]

During Rumsfeld tenure as Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld also urged President Ford for the need of support and supplies for the Indonesian government in their effort to counter the communist insurgency in East Timor, in the wake of Communist Insurgency following East Timor independence from Portuguese.[58][16] As a result, the Ford Administration agreed to help Indonesian Government under President Soeharto in their counterinsurgency effort to topple the communist back insurgency in East Timor which resulted in Indonesian Invasion of East Timor in December 1975.[58][16]

SALT II Treaty

During his tenure as Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld worked to finish the SALT II Treaty.[16] Rumsfeld, together with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General George S. Brown drafted the treaty.[16] However, an agreement was not made before the 1976 election. SALT II was finished and signed during the Carter administration.[59][16]

In 1977, Rumsfeld was awarded the nation's highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.[1] Kissinger, his bureaucratic adversary, later paid him a different sort of compliment, pronouncing him "a special Washington phenomenon: the skilled full-time politician-bureaucrat in whom ambition, ability, and substance fuse seamlessly".[60]

Rumsfeld's first tenure as Secretary of Defense ended on January 20, 1977. He was succeeded by former Secretary of the Air Force Harold Brown.[16]

Return to the private sector (1977–2000)

Business career

In early 1977 Rumsfeld briefly lectured at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School and Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management. His sights instead turned to business, and from 1977 to 1985 Rumsfeld served as chief executive officer, president, and then chairman of G. D. Searle & Company, a worldwide pharmaceutical company based in Skokie, Illinois. During his tenure at Searle, Rumsfeld led the company's financial turnaround, thereby earning awards as the Outstanding Chief Executive Officer in the Pharmaceutical Industry from the Wall Street Transcript (1980) and Financial World (1981). Journalist Andrew Cockburn of Harper's Magazine claimed that Rumsfeld suppressed news that Searle's key product, aspartame, was shown to have potentially dangerous effects by leveraging old government contacts at the Food and Drug Administration.[61] In 1985, Searle was sold to the Monsanto Company.[62]

Rumsfeld served as chairman and chief executive officer of General Instrument from 1990 to 1993.[63] A leader in broadband transmission, distribution, and access control technologies for cable, satellite, and terrestrial broadcasting applications, the company pioneered the development of the first all-digital high-definition television (HDTV) technology. After taking the company public and returning it to profitability, Rumsfeld returned to private business in late 1993.[64]

From January 1997 until being sworn in as the 21st Secretary of Defense in January 2001, Rumsfeld served as chairman of Gilead Sciences, Inc. Gilead is the developer of Tamiflu (Oseltamivir), which is used in the treatment of bird flu[65] as well as influenza A and influenza B in humans.[66] As a result, Rumsfeld's holdings in the company grew significantly when avian flu became a subject of popular anxiety during his later term as Secretary of Defense. Following standard practice, Rumsfeld recused himself from any decisions involving Gilead, and he directed the Pentagon's general counsel to issue instructions outlining what he could and could not be involved in if there were an avian flu pandemic and the Pentagon had to respond.[67][68]

Part-time public service

 
Rumsfeld with U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Secretary of State George Shultz in the Oval Office, White House on November 3, 1983

During his business career, Rumsfeld continued part-time public service in various posts. In November 1983, Rumsfeld was appointed special envoy to the Middle East by President Ronald Reagan,[69] at a turbulent time in modern Middle Eastern history when Iraq was fighting Iran in the Iran–Iraq War. The United States wished for Iraq to win the conflict, and Rumsfeld was sent to the Middle East to serve as a mediator on behalf of the president.

As President Reagan's Special Envoy to the Middle East, Rumsfeld met with Saddam Hussein during a visit to Baghdad in December 1983, during the Iran–Iraq War.

When Rumsfeld visited Baghdad on December 20, 1983, he met Saddam Hussein at Saddam's palace and engaged a 90-minute discussion with him. They largely agreed on opposing Syria's occupation of Lebanon; preventing Syrian and Iranian expansion; and preventing arms sales to Iran. Rumsfeld suggested that if U.S.-Iraq relations could improve the U.S. might support a new oil pipeline across Jordan, which Iraq had opposed but was now willing to reconsider. Rumsfeld also informed Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz that "Our efforts to assist were inhibited by certain things that made it difficult for us ... citing the use of chemical weapons."[11]: 159–60 

Rumsfeld wrote in his memoir Known and Unknown that his meeting with Hussein "has been the subject of gossip, rumors, and crackpot conspiracy theories for more than a quarter of a century ... Supposedly I had been sent to see Saddam by President Reagan either to negotiate a secret oil deal, to help arm Iraq, or to make Iraq an American client state. The truth is that our encounter was more straightforward and less dramatic."[39]: 6  The Washington Post reported that "Although former U.S. officials agree that Rumsfeld was not one of the architects of the Reagan administration's tilt toward Iraq—he was a private citizen when he was appointed Middle East envoy—the documents show that his visits to Baghdad led to closer U.S.–Iraqi cooperation on a wide variety of fronts."[70]

In addition to taking the position of Middle East envoy, Rumsfeld served as a member of the President's General Advisory Committee on Arms Control (1982–1986); President Reagan's special envoy on the Law of the Sea Treaty (1982–1983); a senior adviser to President Reagan's Panel on Strategic Systems (1983–1984); a member of the Joint Advisory Commission on U.S./Japan Relations (1983–1984); a member of the National Commission on the Public Service (1987–1990); a member of the National Economic Commission (1988–1989); a member of the board of visitors of the National Defense University (1988–1992); a member of the FCC's High Definition Television Advisory Committee (1992–1993); a member of the U.S. Trade Deficit Review Commission (1999–2000); a member of the Council on Foreign Relations; and chairman of the U.S. Commission to Assess National Security Space Management and Organization (2000). Among his most noteworthy positions was chairman of the nine-member Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States from January to July 1998. In its findings, the commission concluded that Iraq, Iran, and North Korea could develop intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities in five to ten years and that U.S. intelligence would have little warning before such systems were deployed.[71]

During the 1980s, Rumsfeld became a member of the National Academy of Public Administration, and was named a member of the boards of trustees of the Gerald R. Ford Foundation, the Eisenhower Exchange Fellowships, the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and the National Park Foundation. He was also a member of the U.S./Russia Business Forum and chairman of the Congressional Leadership's National Security Advisory Group.[72] Rumsfeld was a member of the Project for the New American Century, a think-tank dedicated to maintaining U.S. primacy. In addition, he was asked to serve the U.S. State Department as a foreign policy consultant from 1990 to 1993. Though considered one of the Bush administration's staunchest hard-liners against North Korea, Rumsfeld sat on European engineering giant Asea Brown Boveri's board from 1990 to 2001, a company that sold two light-water nuclear reactors to the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization for installation in North Korea, as part of the 1994 agreed framework reached under President Bill Clinton. Rumsfeld's office said that he did not "recall it being brought before the board at any time" though Fortune magazine reported that "board members were informed about this project".[73][74] The Bush administration repeatedly criticized the 1994 agreement and the former Clinton presidency for its softness towards North Korea, regarding the country as a state sponsor of terrorism, and later designated North Korea as part of the Axis-of-Evil.[75]

Presidential and vice-presidential aspirations

During the 1976 Republican National Convention, Rumsfeld received one vote for Vice President of the United States, although he did not seek the office, and the nomination was easily won by Ford's choice, Senator Bob Dole.[76] During the 1980 Republican National Convention he again received one vote for vice president.[77]

Rumsfeld briefly sought the presidential nomination in 1988, but withdrew from the race before primaries began.[78] During the 1996 election season, he initially formed a presidential exploratory committee, but declined to formally enter the race. He was instead named national chairman for Republican nominee Bob Dole's campaign.[79]

Secretary of Defense (2001–2006)

 
Rumsfeld is administered the oath of office as the 21st Secretary of Defense on January 20, 2001, by Director of Administration and Management David O. Cooke (left), as Joyce Rumsfeld holds the Bible in a ceremony at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

Rumsfeld was named Secretary of Defense soon after President George W. Bush took office in 2001 despite Rumsfeld's past rivalry with the previous President Bush. Bush's first choice, FedEx founder Fred Smith, was unavailable and Vice President-elect Cheney recommended Rumsfeld for the job.[80] Rumsfeld's second tenure as Secretary of Defense cemented him as the most powerful Pentagon chief since Robert McNamara and one of the most influential Cabinet members in the Bush administration.[81] His tenure proved to be a pivotal and rocky one that led the United States military into the 21st century. Following the September 11 attacks, Rumsfeld led the military planning and execution of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent 2003 invasion of Iraq. He pushed hard to send as small a force as soon as possible to both conflicts, a concept codified as the Rumsfeld Doctrine.[82]

Throughout his time as defense secretary, Rumsfeld was noted for his candor and quick wit when giving weekly press conferences or speaking with the press.[83] U.S. News & World Report called him "a straight-talking Midwesterner" who "routinely has the press corps doubled over in fits of laughter".[83] By the same token, his leadership was exposed to much criticism through books covering the Iraq conflict, like Bob Woodward's State of Denial, Thomas E. Ricks' Fiasco, and Seymour Hersh's Chain of Command.[84]

September 11, 2001 attacks

 
"The Pentagon is functioning" was the message Rumsfeld stressed during a press conference in the Pentagon briefing room barely eight hours after terrorists crashed a hijacked commercial jetliner into the Pentagon. Rumsfeld is flanked, left to right, by Secretary of the Army Tom White, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Hugh Shelton, and Senators John Warner (R-VA), and Carl Levin (D-MI), the Ranking Member and Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked commercial airliners and crashed them in coordinated strikes into both towers of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, New York City, and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The fourth plane crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and its target was likely a prominent building in Washington, D.C., most probably either the U.S. Capitol Building or the White House.[85] Within three hours of the start of the first hijacking and two hours after American Airlines Flight 11 struck the World Trade Center, Rumsfeld raised the defense condition signaling of the United States offensive readiness to DEFCON 3, the highest it had been since the Arab–Israeli war in 1973.[86]

Rumsfeld addressed the nation in a press conference at the Pentagon, just eight hours after the attacks and stated, "It's an indication that the United States government is functioning in the face of this terrible act against our country. I should add that the briefing here is taking place in the Pentagon. The Pentagon's functioning. It will be in business tomorrow."[87]

Military decisions in the wake of 9/11

 
Rumsfeld and New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani speak at the site of the World Trade Center attacks in Lower Manhattan on November 14, 2001.

On the afternoon of September 11, Rumsfeld issued rapid orders to his aides to look for evidence of possible Iraqi involvement in regard to what had just occurred, according to notes taken by senior policy official Stephen Cambone. "Best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H." – meaning Saddam Hussein – "at same time. Not only UBL" (Osama bin Laden), Cambone's notes quoted Rumsfeld as saying. "Need to move swiftly – Near term target needs – go massive – sweep it all up. Things related and not."[88][89]

In the first emergency meeting of the National Security Council on the day of the attacks, Rumsfeld asked, "Why shouldn't we go against Iraq, not just al-Qaeda?" with his deputy Paul Wolfowitz adding that Iraq was a "brittle, oppressive regime that might break easily—it was doable," and, according to John Kampfner, "from that moment on, he and Wolfowitz used every available opportunity to press the case."[90] President George W. Bush reacted to Rumsfeld's suggestion, "Wait a minute, I didn't hear a word said about him (Saddam Hussein) being responsible for the attack"[91] and the idea was initially rejected at the behest of Secretary of State Colin Powell, but, according to Kampfner, "Undeterred Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz held secret meetings about opening up a second front—against Saddam. Powell was excluded." In such meetings they created a policy that would later be dubbed the Bush Doctrine, centering on "pre-emption" and the war on Iraq, which the PNAC had advocated in their earlier letters.[92]

Richard A. Clarke, the White House counter-terrorism coordinator at the time, has revealed details of another National Security Council meeting the day after the attacks, during which officials considered the U.S. response. Already, he said, they were certain al-Qa'ida was to blame and there was no hint of Iraqi involvement. "Rumsfeld was saying we needed to bomb Iraq," according to Clarke. Clarke then stated, "We all said, 'No, no, al-Qa'ida is in Afghanistan.'" Clarke also revealed that Rumsfeld complained in the meeting, "there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan and there are lots of good targets in Iraq."[93] Rumsfeld even suggested to attack other countries like Libya and Sudan, arguing that if this was to be a truly "global war on terror" then all state sponsors of terrorism should be dealt with.[94]

Rumsfeld wrote in Known and Unknown, "Much has been written about the Bush administration's focus on Iraq after 9/11. Commentators have suggested that it was strange or obsessive for the President and his advisers to have raised questions about whether Saddam Hussein was somehow behind the attack. I have never understood the controversy. I had no idea if Iraq was or was not involved, but it would have been irresponsible for any administration not to have asked the question."[39]: 347 

A memo written by Rumsfeld dated November 27, 2001, considers an Iraq war. One section of the memo questions "How start?", listing multiple possible justifications for a U.S.-Iraq War.[95][96]

War in Afghanistan

 
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard B. Myers, U.S. Air Force during a press conference at The Pentagon on January 24, 2002

Rumsfeld directed the planning for the War in Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks.[82] On September 21, 2001, USCENTCOM Commander General Tommy Franks, briefed the President on a plan to destroy al Qaeda in Afghanistan and remove the Taliban government. General Franks, also initially proposed to Rumsfeld that the U.S. invade Afghanistan using a conventional force of 60,000 troops, preceded by six months of preparation. Rumsfeld, however feared that a conventional invasion of Afghanistan could bog down as had happened to the Soviets and the British.[97] Rumsfeld rejected Franks's plan, saying "I want men on the ground now!" Franks returned the next day with a plan utilizing U.S. Special Forces.[98][82] Despite air and missile attacks against al Qaeda in Afghanistan, USCENTCOM had no pre-existing plans for conducting ground operations there.[82]

 
Excerpt from Donald Rumsfeld memo dated November 27, 2001[95]
 
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld converses with U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Dr. Zalmay Khalilzad during a visit to Kandahar, Afghanistan, on February 26, 2004, accompanied by Lieutenant General David Barno and Brigadier General Lloyd Austin.
 
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld greeted by U.S. Embassy Charge'd'Affairs Richard B. Norland during a visit to Kabul, Afghanistan

The September 21, 2001 plan emerged after extensive dialogue, but Secretary Rumsfeld also asked for broader plans that looked beyond Afghanistan.[82]

On October 7, 2001, just hours after the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was launched, Rumsfeld addressed the nation in a press conference at the Pentagon stating "While our raids today focus on the Taliban and the foreign terrorists in Afghanistan, our aim remains much broader. Our objective is to defeat those who use terrorism and those who house or support them. The world stands united in this effort".[99]

Rumsfeld also stated "the only way to deal with these terrorist threats is to go at them where they exist. You cannot defend at every place at every time against every conceivable, imaginable, even unimaginable terrorist attack. And the only way to deal with it is to take the battle to where they are and to root them out and to starve them out by seeing that those countries and those organizations and those non-governmental organizations and those individuals that are supporting and harboring and facilitating these networks stop doing it and find that there's a penalty for doing it".[99]

Rumsfeld in another press conference at the Pentagon on October 29, 2001, stated "As the first weeks of this effort proceed, it bears repeating that our goal is not to reduce or simply contain terrorist acts, but our goal is to deal with it comprehensively. And we do not intend to stop until we've rooted out terrorist networks and put them out of business, not just in the case of the Taliban and the Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, but other networks as well. And as I've mentioned, the Al Qaeda network crosses some 40, 50-plus countries."[100]

Rumsfeld announced in November 2001, that he received "authoritative reports" that Al-Qaeda's number three Mohammed Atef, bin Laden's primary military chief and a planner of the September 11 attacks on America, was killed by a U.S. airstrike.[101][102][103] "He was very, very senior," Rumsfeld said. "We obviously have been seeking [him] out."[101]

In a press conference at the Pentagon on November 19, 2001, Rumsfeld described the role of U.S. ground forces in Afghanistan as firstly in the north, American troops are "embedded in Northern Alliance" elements, helping arrange food and medical supplies and pinpointing airstrikes and in the south, commandos and other troops are operating more independently, raiding compounds, monitoring roadblocks and searching vehicles in the hope of developing more information about al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders.[103][101] On December 16, 2001, Rumsfeld visited U.S. troops in Afghanistan at Bagram Air Base.[104]

On March 15, 2002, in another press conference at the Pentagon, Rumsfeld commented on the mission of Operation Anaconda by stating "Operation Anaconda continues in the area south of Gardez in eastern Afghanistan. The fighting is winding down as you know. Coalition forces are for the most part in an exploitation phase, doing the difficult work of searching caves and clearing areas where the battles and fighting has taken place. Our forces are finding weapons, ammunition, some intelligence information. In the top 25 al Qaeda, we know some are dead and we know some may be dead; we know some are captured and there are a larger number that we don't know. And roughly the same proportions with respect to Taliban".[105]

On May 1, 2003, Rumsfeld during a visit to Afghanistan meeting with U.S. troops stationed in Kabul told the press "General Franks and I have been looking at the progress that's being made in this country and have concluded that we are at a point where we clearly have moved from major combat activity to a period of stability and stabilization and reconstruction and activities." "I should underline however, that there are still dangers, there are still pockets of resistance in certain parts of the country and General McNeal and General Franks and their, the cooperation they have with the President Karzai's government and leadership and Marshall Fayheems assistance. We will be continuing as a country to work with the Afghan government and the new Afghan National Army to see that the any areas where there is resistance to this government and to the coalition forces will be dealt with promptly and efficiently."[106]

There was also controversy between the Pentagon and the CIA over who had the authority to fire Hellfire missiles from Predator drones.[107] Even though the drones were not ready for deployment until 2002,[107] Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon have argued that "these quarrels kept the Predator from being used against al Qaeda ... One anonymous individual who was at the center of the action called this episode 'typical' and complained that 'Rumsfeld never missed an opportunity to fail to cooperate. The fact is, the Secretary of Defense is an obstacle. He has helped the terrorists.'[108]

In 2009, three years after Rumsfeld's tenure as Defense secretary ended, the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations led an investigation into the Battle of Tora Bora in December 2001, during the early phase of the U.S-led coalition war in Afghanistan. They concluded that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and General Franks had not committed enough troops during the battle to secure the area around Tora Bora. They believed that Al-Qaeda's number one leader Osama bin Laden had likely been at Tora Bora and his escape prolonged the war in Afghanistan.[109] Rumsfeld and Franks were apparently motivated by fear that a substantial American presence near Tora Bora could incite a rebellion by local Pashtuns, despite the latter's lack of organizational capability at the time and the fierce dissent voiced by many CIA analysts including Charles E. Allen (who warned Franks that "the back door [to Pakistan] was open") and Gary Berntsen (who called for army rangers to "kill this baby in the crib"). Instead of rangers or marines, the U.S. assault on Tora Bora relied on the CIA-backed Afghan militias of Hazrat Ali and Zahir Qadeer, supplemented with B-52 bombardment. The resulting influx of hundreds of al-Qaeda fighters into Pakistan destabilized the country and damaged Pakistan–United States relations.[110] The follow-up Operation Anaconda "witnessed failures of planning and execution, the product of the fractured lines of command," as recounted by Steve Coll.[111] In mid-2002, Rumsfeld announced that "The war is over in Afghanistan," to the disbelief of State Department, CIA, and military officials in the country. As a result, Rumsfeld downplayed the need for an Afghan army of even 70,000 troops, far fewer than the 250,000 envisaged by Karzai.[112]

Iraq War

 
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard B. Myers inspecting the joint services honor guard during the opening ceremonies of the Joint Service Open House at Andrews Air Forces Base, Maryland, May 17, 2002
 
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld accompanied by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard B. Myers and joined by military representatives from 29 countries of the worldwide coalition on the war against terrorism, while speaking to the reporter outside The Pentagon on March 11, 2002
 
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld (left) and the Commander of U.S. Central Command General Tommy Franks listen to a question at the close of a Pentagon press conference on March 5, 2003. Rumsfeld and Franks gave reporters an operational update and fielded questions on the possible conflict in Iraq.

Before and during the Iraq War, Rumsfeld claimed that Iraq had an active weapons of mass destruction program; in particular during his famous phrase "there are known knowns" in a press conference at the Pentagon on February 12, 2002,[113] no stockpiles were ever found.[4][5] Bush administration officials also claimed that there was an operational relationship between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. A Pentagon Inspector General report found that Rumsfeld's top policy aide, Douglas J. Feith, "developed, produced, and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al-Qaeda relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community, to senior decision-makers".[6]

The job of finding WMD and providing justification for the attack fell to the intelligence services, but, according to Kampfner, "Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz believed that, while the established security services had a role, they were too bureaucratic and too traditional in their thinking." As a result, "they set up what came to be known as the 'cabal', a cell of eight or nine analysts in a new Office of Special Plans (OSP) based in the U.S. Defense Department." According to an unnamed Pentagon source quoted by Hersh, the OSP "was created in order to find evidence of what Wolfowitz and his boss, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, believed to be true—that Saddam Hussein had close ties to Al Qaeda, and that Iraq had an enormous arsenal of chemical, biological, and possibly even nuclear weapons that threatened the region and, potentially, the United States".[92]

On January 22, 2003, after the German and French governments voiced opposition to invading Iraq, Rumsfeld labeled these countries as part of "Old Europe", implying that countries that supported the war were part of a newer, modern Europe.[114]

After the war in Afghanistan was launched, Rumsfeld participated in a meeting in regard to the review of the Department of Defense's Contingency Plan in the event of a war with Iraq. The plan, as it was then conceived, contemplated troop levels of up to 500,000, which Rumsfeld felt was far too many. Gordon and Trainor wrote:

As [General] Newbold outlined the plan ... it was clear that Rumsfeld was growing increasingly irritated. For Rumsfeld, the plan required too many troops and supplies and took far too long to execute. It was, Rumsfeld declared, the "product of old thinking and the embodiment of everything that was wrong with the military".[115]

In a press conference at the Pentagon on February 27, 2003, Rumsfeld told reporters after being asked a question that Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki suggested it would take several hundred thousand troops on the ground to secure Iraq and provide stability. Is he wrong?. Rumsfeld replied "the idea that it would take several hundred thousand U.S. forces I think is far from the mark. The reality is that we already have a number of countries that have offered to participate with their forces in stabilization activities, in the event force has to be used."[116]

Rumsfeld addressed the nation in a press conference at the Pentagon on March 20, 2003, just hours after the launch of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, where he announced the first strike of the war to liberate Iraq and that "The days of the Saddam Hussein regime are numbered," and "We continue to feel there is no need for a broader conflict if the Iraqi leaders act to save themselves and act to prevent such a conflict."[117]

Rumsfeld's role in directing the Iraq War included a plan that was the Shock and Awe campaign,[118] which resulted in a lightning invasion with 145,000 soldiers on the ground that took Baghdad in well under a month with very few American casualties.[citation needed] Many government buildings, plus major museums, electrical generation infrastructure, and even oil equipment were looted and vandalized during the transition from the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime to the establishment of the Coalition Provisional Authority. A violent insurrection began shortly after the military operation started.

On March 30, 2003, in an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC's This Week program, Rumsfeld answered a question by Stephanopoulos about finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Rumsfeld stated "We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."[119]

On April 9, 2003, at a press conference at the Pentagon, Rumsfeld addressed reporters during the Fall of Baghdad, and stated "The scenes of free Iraqis celebrating in the streets, riding American tanks, tearing down the statues of Saddam Hussein in the center of Baghdad are breathtaking."[120]

After the Iraq invasion, U.S. troops were criticized for not protecting the historical artifacts and treasures located at the National Museum of Iraq. On April 11, 2003, at a press conference at the Pentagon, when asked at the time why U.S. troops did not actively seek to stop the lawlessness, Rumsfeld replied, "Stuff happens ... and it's untidy and freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that's what's going to happen here."[121] He further commented that, "The images you are seeing on television you are seeing over, and over, and over, and it's the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it 20 times, and you think, "My goodness, were there that many vases?"[121]

On July 24, 2003, at a press conference at the Pentagon, Rumsfeld commented on the release of photographs of the deceased sons of Saddam Hussein, Uday Hussein and Qusay Hussein. "It is not a practice that the United States engages in on a normal basis," Rumsfeld said. "I honestly believe that these two are particularly bad characters and that it's important for the Iraqi people to see them, to know they're gone, to know they're dead, and to know they're not coming back." Rumsfeld also said, "I feel it was the right decision, and I'm glad I made it."[122][123][124]

In October 2003, Rumsfeld approved a secret Pentagon "roadmap" on public relations, calling for "boundaries" between information operations abroad and the news media at home. The Roadmap advances a policy according to which as long as the U.S. government does not intentionally target the American public, it does not matter that psychological operations reach the American public.[125]

On December 14, 2003, Rumsfeld in an interview with journalist Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes after U.S. forces captured Saddam Hussein in Operation Red Dawn, stated, "Here was a man who was photographed hundreds of times shooting off rifles and showing how tough he was, and in fact, he wasn't very tough, he was cowering in a hole in the ground, and had a pistol and didn't use it, and certainly did not put up any fight at all. I think that ... he resulted in the death of an awful lot of Iraqi people, in the last analysis, he seemed not terribly brave."[126]

As Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld was deliberate in crafting the public message from the Department of Defense. People will "rally" to the word "sacrifice", Rumsfeld noted after a meeting. "They are looking for leadership. Sacrifice = Victory." In May 2004, Rumsfeld considered whether to redefine the war on terrorism as a fight against "worldwide insurgency". He advised aides "to test what the results could be" if the war on terrorism were renamed.[127] Rumsfeld also ordered specific public Pentagon attacks on and responses to U.S. newspaper columns that reported the negative aspects of the war.

During Rumsfeld's tenure, he regularly visited U.S. troops stationed in Iraq.[128]

The Australia Broadcasting Corporation reported that though Rumsfeld didn't specify a withdrawal date for troops in Iraq, "He says it would be unrealistic to wait for Iraq to be peaceful before removing U.S. led forces from the country, adding that Iraq had never been peaceful and perfect."[129]

On August 2, 2006, at a press conference at the Pentagon, Rumsfeld commented on the Sectarian violence in Iraq where he stated "there's sectarian violence; people are being killed. Sunnis are killing Shi'a and Shi'a are killing Sunnis. Kurds seem not to be involved. It's unfortunate, and they need a reconciliation process."[130]

On October 26, 2006, at a press conference at the Pentagon after the failure of Operation Together Forward in Iraq, Rumsfeld stated "Would defeat in Iraq be so bad?" Well, the answer is: Yes, it would be. Those who are fighting against the Iraqi government want to seize power so that they can establish a new sanctuary and a base of operations for terrorists and any idea that U.S. military leaders are rigidly refusing to make adjustments in their approaches is just flat wrong. The military is continuing to adapt and to adjust as required. Yes, there are difficulties and problems to be sure."[131]

As a result, Rumsfeld stirred controversy as to whether the forces that did invade Iraq were enough in size.[115] In 2006, Rumsfeld responded to a question by Brit Hume of Fox News as to whether he pressed General Tommy Franks to lower his request for 400,000 troops for the war:

Absolutely not. That's a mythology. This town [Washington, D.C.] is filled with this kind of nonsense. The people who decide the levels of forces on the ground are not the Secretary of Defense or the President. We hear recommendations, but the recommendations are made by the combatant commanders and by members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and there hasn't been a minute in the last six years when we have not had the number of troops that the combatant commanders have requested.[132]

Rumsfeld told Hume that Franks ultimately decided against such a troop level.[133]

Throughout his tenure, Rumsfeld sought to remind the American people of the 9/11 attacks and threats against Americans, noting at one time in a 2006 memo to "[m]ake the American people realize they are surrounded in the world by violent extremists".[134][127] According to a report by The Guardian, Rumsfeld was allegedly including biblical quotes in top secret briefing papers to appeal George W Bush, known for his devout religious beliefs, to invade Iraq as more like "holy war" or "a religious crusade" against Muslims.[135]

In a September 2007 interview with The Daily Telegraph, General Mike Jackson, the head of the British army during the invasion, criticized Rumsfeld's plans for the invasion of Iraq as "intellectually bankrupt", adding that Rumsfeld is "one of those most responsible for the current situation in Iraq", and that he felt that "the US approach to combating global terrorism is 'inadequate' and too focused on military might rather than nation building and diplomacy."[136]

In December 2004, Rumsfeld was heavily criticized for using a signing machine instead of personally signing over 1000 letters of condolence to the families of soldiers killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan. He promised to personally sign all letters in the future.[137]

Prisoner abuse and torture concerns

Further information: Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse
 
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard B. Myers addressing the airmen, Marines and soldiers in the Al-Faw Palace at Camp Victory, Iraq on May 13, 2004
 
Comment from Rumsfeld: "I stand for 8–10 hours a day. Why is standing [by prisoners] limited to 4 hours?"

The Department of Defense's preliminary concerns for holding, housing, and interrogating captured prisoners on the battlefield were raised during the military build-up prior to the Iraq War. Because Saddam Hussein's military forces surrendered when faced with military action, many within the DOD, including Rumsfeld and United States Central Command General Tommy Franks, decided it was in the best interest of all to hand these prisoners over to their respective countries. Additionally, it was determined that maintaining a large holding facility was, at the time, unrealistic. Instead, the use of many facilities such as Abu Ghraib to house prisoners of interest prior to handing them over, and Rumsfeld defended the Bush administration's decision to detain enemy combatants. Because of this, critics, including members of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, held Rumsfeld responsible for the ensuing Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal. Rumsfeld himself said: "These events occurred on my watch as Secretary of Defense. I am accountable for them."[138] He offered his resignation to President Bush in the wake of the scandal, but it was not accepted.[139]

 
Rumsfeld poses with Marines during one of his trips to Camp Fallujah, Iraq, on Christmas Eve 2004

In a memo read by Rumsfeld detailing how Guantanamo Bay detention camp interrogators induced stress in prisoners by forcing them to remain standing in one position for a maximum of four hours, Rumsfeld scrawled a handwritten note on the memo reading: "I stand for 8–10 hours a day. Why is standing [by prisoners] limited to 4 hours? D.R."[140]

Various organizations, such as Human Rights Watch, called for investigations of Rumsfeld regarding his involvement in managing the Iraq War and his support of the Bush administration's policies of "enhanced interrogation techniques", which are widely regarded as torture.[141][142] Scholars have argued that Rumsfeld "might be held criminally responsible if [he] would be prosecuted by the ICC".[143] In 2005 the ACLU and Human Rights First filed a lawsuit against Rumsfeld and other top government officials, "on behalf of eight men who they say were subjected to torture and abuse by U.S. forces under the command of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld".[144] In 2005, a suit was filed against Rumsfeld by several human rights organizations for allegedly violating U.S. and international law that prohibits "torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment".[144] Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel filed suit against the U.S. government and Rumsfeld on similar grounds, alleging that they were tortured and their rights of habeas corpus were violated.[145][146][147][148] In 2007, U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan ruled that Rumsfeld could not "be held personally responsible for actions taken in connection with his government job".[149] The ACLU tried to revive the case in 2011 with no success.[150]

In 2004, German prosecutor Wolfgang Kaleck filed a criminal complaint charging Rumsfeld and 11 other U.S. officials as war criminals who either ordered the torture of prisoners or drafted laws that legitimated its use. The charges based on breaches of the UN Convention against Torture and the German Code of Crimes against International Law.[151]

Resignation

 
Rumsfeld with former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher alongside the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace, 2006

Eight U.S. and other NATO-member retired generals and admirals called for Rumsfeld to resign in early 2006 in what was called the "Generals Revolt", accusing him of "abysmal" military planning and lack of strategic competence.[152][153][154] Commentator Pat Buchanan reported at the time that Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who traveled often to Iraq and supported the war, said the generals "mirror the views of 75 percent of the officers in the field, and probably more".[155] Rumsfeld rebuffed these criticisms, stating, "out of thousands and thousands of admirals and generals, if every time two or three people disagreed we changed the secretary of defense of the United States, it would be like a merry-go-round."[156] Bush defended Rumsfeld throughout and responded by stating that Rumsfeld is "exactly what is needed".[157]

 
Rumsfeld shakes President Bush's hand as he announces his resignation, November 8, 2006.

On November 1, 2006, Bush stated he would stand by Rumsfeld as defense secretary for the length of his term as president.[158] Rumsfeld wrote a resignation letter dated November 6, 2006, and, per the stamp on the letter, Bush saw it on Election Day, November 7, 2006.[159] In the elections, the House and the Senate shifted to Democratic control. After the elections on November 8, 2006, Bush announced Rumsfeld would resign his position as Secretary of Defense. Many Republicans were unhappy with the delay, believing they would have won more votes if voters had known Rumsfeld was resigning.[159]

Bush nominated Robert Gates to succeed Rumsfeld.[160][161][162] On December 15, 2006, a farewell ceremony, with an armed forces full honor review and a 19-gun salute, was held at the Pentagon Mall Terrace in honor of the departing Rumsfeld.[163]

Retirement and later life (2006–2021)

 
Rumsfeld shares a laugh with his successor, Robert Gates, at a ceremony to unveil his official portrait as Secretary of Defense, June 25, 2010.
 
Dedication ceremony of the Pentagon Memorial in 2008
 
Rumsfeld greeting former president George W. Bush in 2019

In the months after his resignation, Rumsfeld toured the New York City publishing houses in preparation for a potential memoir.[164] After receiving what one industry source labeled "big bids",[165] he reached an agreement with the Penguin Group to publish the book under its Sentinel HC imprint.[166] Rumsfeld declined to accept an advance for the publication of his memoir, and said he was donating all proceeds from the work to veterans groups.[167] His book, entitled Known and Unknown: A Memoir, was released on February 8, 2011.[168]

In conjunction with the publication of Known and Unknown, Rumsfeld established "The Rumsfeld Papers", a website with documents "related to the endnotes" of the book and his service during the George W. Bush administration;[169] during the months that followed the book's publication, the website was expanded to include over 4,000 documents from his archive. As of June 2011,[needs update] the topics included his Congressional voting record, the Nixon administration, documents and memos of meetings while he was part of the Ford, Reagan, and George W. Bush administrations, private sector documents, and NATO documents, among other items.[169]

In 2007, Rumsfeld established The Rumsfeld Foundation, which focuses on encouraging public service in the United States and supporting the growth of free political and free economic systems abroad. The educational foundation provides fellowships to talented individuals from the private sector who want to serve for some time in government.[167] Rumsfeld personally financed the foundation.[170] As of January 2014, the foundation had sponsored over 90 fellows from Central Asia, provided over  million in tuition and stipend support for graduate students, awarded over  million in microfinance grants, and donated over  million to charities for veterans' affairs.[clarification needed][171]

Rumsfeld was awarded the "Defender of the Constitution Award" at the 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., on February 10, 2011.

After his retirement from government, Rumsfeld criticized former fellow Cabinet member Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State, in his memoir, asserting that she was basically unfit for office. In 2011, she responded, saying that Rumsfeld "doesn't know what he's talking about. The reader may imagine what can be correct about the conflicted matter."[172]

In February 2011, Rumsfeld endorsed the repeal of the military's "Don't ask, don't tell" policy, saying that allowing gays and lesbians to openly serve "is an idea whose time has come".[173]

In March 2011, Rumsfeld spoke out on the 2011 military intervention in Libya, telling ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper that the Obama administration should "recognize the mission has to determine the coalition. The coalition ought not determine the mission." Rumsfeld also used the word "confusion" six times to describe the United Nations-backed military effort in Libya.[174]

In October 2011, Rumsfeld conducted an interview with Al Jazeera's Washington, D.C., bureau chief Abderrahim Foukara. Foukara asked Rumsfeld whether, in hindsight, the Bush administration had sent enough troops into Iraq to secure the borders of the country, and whether that made the United States culpable in the death of innocent Iraqis. Foukara said people in the Pentagon told Rumsfeld the number of troops sent into Iraq was insufficient. Rumsfeld said, "You keep making assertions which are fundamentally false. No one in the Pentagon said they were not enough." Foukara pressed Rumsfeld repeatedly. Rumsfeld then asked, "Do you want to yell or do you want to have an interview?" Foukara then asked, "Do you think the numbers that you went to Iraq with did absolve you from the responsibility of tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis killed by the Coalition and those criminals that you talked about?" Rumsfeld called the question "pejorative" and said Foukara was "not being respectful" (Foukara disagreed) and was "just talking over, and over, and over again".[175][176]

Rumsfeld was the subject of the 2013 Errol Morris documentary The Unknown Known, the title a reference to his response to a question at a February 2002 press conference. In the film Rumsfeld "discusses his career in Washington D.C. from his days as a congressman in the early 1960s to planning the invasion of Iraq in 2003".[177]

In January 2016, in partnership with the literary and creative agency Javelin, which handled design and development,[178] Rumsfeld released a mobile app game of solitaire called Churchill Solitaire, emulating a variant of the card game as played by Winston Churchill.[179] Rumsfeld and the Churchill family said that profits from the game would be donated to charity.[180][181]

In June 2016, Rumsfeld announced that he would vote for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.[182]

On January 5, 2021, Rumsfeld was one of the ten living former Secretaries of Defense that sent a warning letter in order to warn President Trump not to involve the military in a 2020 presidential election dispute.[183]

Death

On June 29, 2021, Rumsfeld died from multiple myeloma at his home in Taos, New Mexico.[184][185] He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery on August 24, 2021.[186][187]

Electoral history

Main article: Electoral history of Donald Rumsfeld
 
Rumsfeld gives the command at the 2005 Pepsi 400, where he served as the grand marshal.[188]

During the four elections during which he ran to represent Illinois's 13th congressional district, Rumsfeld received shares of the popular vote that ranged from 58% (in 1964) to 76% (in 1966). In 1975 and 2001, Rumsfeld was overwhelmingly confirmed by the U.S. Senate after presidents Gerald Ford and George W. Bush, respectively, appointed him as U.S. Secretary of Defense.

Awards

 
Rumsfeld in the Pentagon auditorium for his final meeting with Pentagon employees, December 8, 2006

Rumsfeld was awarded 11 honorary degrees.[189] Following his years as CEO, president, and later chairman of G. D. Searle & Company, he was recognized as Outstanding CEO in the pharmaceutical industry by The Wall Street Transcript (1980) and Financial World (1981).[190]

Some of his other awards included:

Honours

Ribbon Country Honour Year
  United States Presidential Medal of Freedom 1977[198]
  Japan Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun 2015[199]
  KSA Grand Cordon of the Order of King Abdulaziz 2002
  Poland Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland 2005[200]
  Romania Grand Officer of the Order of the Star of Romania 2004
  Rwanda Medal of the Royal Order of the Lion 2007
  Taiwan Grand Cordon of the Order of Brilliant Star 2011[201]

Legacy and reputation

Secretary of State Henry Kissinger described Rumsfeld as "the most ruthless man" he knew.[202] George Packer of The Atlantic named Rumsfeld "the worst secretary of defense in American history" who "lacked the wisdom to change his mind.”[203] Bradley Graham, a Washington Post reporter and author of the book titled By His Own Rules: The Ambitions, Successes, and Ultimate Failures of Donald Rumsfeld released on June 23, 2009, stated "Rumsfeld left office as one of the most controversial Defense Secretaries since Robert McNamara and widely criticized for his management of the Iraq war and for his difficult relationships with Congress, administration colleagues, and military officers.”[204]  Neoconservative commentator Bill Kristol was also critical of Rumsfeld, stating he "breezily dodged responsibility" for planning mistakes made in the Iraq War, including insufficient troop levels.[205]

Affiliation history

Institutional affiliations

 
Rumsfeld's official portrait in 2001

Government posts, panels, and commissions

Corporate connections and business interests

Education

  • Princeton University: A.B. (1954)

Gallery

Works

  • Rumsfeld, Donald (1998). "Strategic Imperatives in East Asia". Heritage lectures, no. 605. Washington, D.C.: The Heritage Foundation. Speech given March 3, 1998, in Washington, D.C.[206]
  • Rumsfeld, Donald (2011). Known and Unknown: A Memoir. Sentinel. ISBN 978-1-59523-067-6.
  • Rumsfeld, Donald (2013). Rumsfeld's Rules. Broadside Books. ISBN 978-0062272867.
  • Rumsfeld, Donald (2018). When the Center Held: Gerald Ford and the Rescue of the American Presidency. ISBN 978-1501172939.

See also

Citations

  1. ^ a b "Donald H. Rumsfeld – George W. Bush Administration". Office of the Secretary of Defense – Historical Office. from the original on May 29, 2019. Retrieved May 29, 2019.
  2. ^ "Donald H. Rumsfeld – Gerald Ford Administration". Office of the Secretary of Defense – Historical Office. from the original on May 29, 2019. Retrieved May 29, 2019.
  3. ^ Cronk, Terri Moon; Garamone, Jim (June 30, 2021). "Rumsfeld Was Nation's Youngest, Oldest Defense Secretary". United States Department of Defense. from the original on July 2, 2021. Retrieved July 6, 2021.
  4. ^ a b "Truth, War And Consequences: Why War? – In Their Own Words – Who Said What When". Frontline. PBS. from the original on May 28, 2019. Retrieved May 28, 2019.
  5. ^ a b Jackson, Brooks (September 2, 2005). "Anti-war Ad Says Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld & Rice "Lied" About Iraq". FactCheck.org. from the original on July 29, 2020. Retrieved May 28, 2019.
  6. ^ a b Landay, Jonathan S. (February 8, 2007). "Pentagon office produced 'alternative' intelligence on Iraq". McClatchy. from the original on May 21, 2019. Retrieved May 28, 2019.
  7. ^ Shanker, Thom (February 4, 2005). "Rumsfeld Says He Offered to Quit". The New York Times. from the original on June 13, 2018. Retrieved June 28, 2017.
  8. ^ Rumsfeld, Donald (January 11, 1946). "My autobiography" (PDF). (PDF) from the original on January 16, 2017. Retrieved May 29, 2019.
  9. ^ "Donald Rumsfeld | Biography & Facts". Encyclopedia Britannica. from the original on October 18, 2020. Retrieved October 25, 2019.
  10. ^ . Archived from the original on March 16, 2014.
  11. ^ a b c d Bradley Graham (2009). By His Own Rules: The Ambitions, Successes, and Ultimate Failures of Donald Rumsfeld. PublicAffairs. ISBN 978-1-58648-421-7.
  12. ^ Jon C. Halter (September 2006). "Speakers Highlight Scouting's Core Values". Scouting. Vol. 94, no. 4. p. 35. from the original on June 29, 2007.
  13. ^ Nicholas G. Hahn III (August 5, 2013). "Donald Rumsfeld's Golden Rule". Real Clear Religion. from the original on August 6, 2013.
  14. ^ Larson, Mark. "Radio Interview with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on KOGO Radio San Diego with Mark Larson". KOGO. from the original on March 2, 2010. Retrieved May 29, 2019 – via defense.gov.
  15. ^ "Secretary Rumsfeld's Remarks at the White House Conference on Cooperative Conservation". United States Department of Defense. August 29, 2005. from the original on October 2, 2006.
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General and cited sources

External links

Works

  • Official website
  • U.S. Department of Defense: Speeches ( June 9, 2016, at the Wayback Machine)
  • advice on government, business and life, January 29, 2001
  • Donald Rumsfeld's Project Syndicate op/eds
  • Churchill Solitaire, an iOS and Android adaptation of Churchill's variant of Solitaire

Government service

Documentary videos

  • The short film A View from the White House, Part I (1975) is available for free download at the Internet Archive.
  • The short film A View from the White House, Part II (1975) is available for free download at the Internet Archive.
  • The short film A Single Six Year Term for President (1987) is available for free download at the Internet Archive.
  • The short film Money, television, and Politics (1988) is available for free download at the Internet Archive.
  • The short film The Private Lives of Public Servants (1989) is available for free download at the Internet Archive.
  • Rumsfeld's War PBS Frontline, October 2004
  • The Unknown Known – Interview with Rumsfeld by Academy Award-winning documentarian Errol Morris, December 2013
  • Video clip of Rumsfeld (as special U.S. envoy to Middle East) meeting Hussein

Articles profiling Rumsfeld

U.S. House of Representatives
Preceded by Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Illinois's 13th congressional district
1963–1969 		Succeeded by
Political offices
Preceded by
Bertrand Harding
 Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity
1969–1970 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Counselor to the President
1970–1971
Served alongside: Robert Finch 		Succeeded by
Preceded by
Preceded by White House Chief of Staff
1974–1975 		Succeeded by
Preceded by United States Secretary of Defense
1975–1977 		Succeeded by
Preceded by United States Secretary of Defense
2001–2006 		Succeeded by
Diplomatic posts
Preceded by United States Ambassador to NATO
1973–1974 		Succeeded by
June 02, 2023
donald, rumsfeld, rumsfeld, redirects, here, professor, john, rumsfeld, donald, henry, rumsfeld, july, 1932, june, 2021, american, politician, government, official, businessman, served, secretary, defense, from, 1975, 1977, under, president, gerald, ford, agai. Rumsfeld redirects here For the professor see John S Rumsfeld Donald Henry Rumsfeld July 9 1932 June 29 2021 was an American politician government official and businessman who served as Secretary of Defense from 1975 to 1977 under president Gerald Ford and again from 2001 to 2006 under President George W Bush 1 2 He was both the youngest and the oldest secretary of defense 3 Additionally Rumsfeld was a three term U S Congressman from Illinois 1963 1969 director of the Office of Economic Opportunity 1969 1970 counselor to the president 1969 1973 the U S Representative to NATO 1973 1974 and the White House Chief of Staff 1974 1975 Between his terms as secretary of defense he served as the CEO and chairman of several companies Donald RumsfeldOfficial portrait 200113th and 21st United States Secretary of DefenseIn office January 20 2001 December 18 2006PresidentGeorge W BushDeputyPaul WolfowitzGordon EnglandPreceded byWilliam CohenSucceeded byRobert GatesIn office November 20 1975 January 20 1977PresidentGerald FordDeputyBill ClementsPreceded byJames SchlesingerSucceeded byHarold Brown6th White House Chief of StaffIn office September 21 1974 November 20 1975PresidentGerald FordPreceded byAlexander HaigSucceeded byDick Cheney9th United States Ambassador to NATOIn office February 2 1973 September 21 1974PresidentRichard NixonGerald FordPreceded byDavid KennedySucceeded byDavid BruceDirector of the Cost of Living CouncilIn office October 15 1971 February 2 1973PresidentRichard NixonPreceded byPosition establishedSucceeded byPosition abolishedCounselor to the PresidentIn office December 11 1970 October 15 1971Serving with Robert FinchPresidentRichard NixonPreceded byBryce HarlowDaniel Patrick MoynihanSucceeded byRobert Finch3rd Director of the Office of Economic OpportunityIn office May 27 1969 December 11 1970PresidentRichard NixonPreceded byBertrand HardingSucceeded byFrank CarlucciMember of the U S House of Representatives from Illinois s 13th districtIn office January 3 1963 May 25 1969Preceded byMarguerite ChurchSucceeded byPhil CranePersonal detailsBornDonald Henry Rumsfeld 1932 07 09 July 9 1932Chicago Illinois U S DiedJune 29 2021 2021 06 29 aged 88 Taos New Mexico U S Resting placeArlington National CemeteryPolitical partyRepublicanSpouseJoyce Pierson m 1954 wbr Children3EducationPrinceton University AB Case Western Reserve UniversityGeorgetown UniversitySignatureWebsiteLibrary websiteNickname Rummy Military serviceBranchUnited States NavyYears of service1954 1957 active 1957 1975 Reserve 1975 1989 Ready Reserve RankCaptainDonald Rumsfeld s voice source source Rumsfeld opens the first Pentagon press conference after the September 11 attacksRecorded September 11 2001Born in Illinois Rumsfeld attended Princeton University graduating in 1954 with a degree in political science After serving in the Navy for three years he mounted a campaign for Congress in Illinois s 13th Congressional District winning in 1962 at the age of 30 Rumsfeld accepted an appointment by President Richard Nixon to head the Office of Economic Opportunity in 1969 appointed counsellor by Nixon and entitled to Cabinet level status he also headed up the Economic Stabilization Program before being appointed ambassador to NATO Called back to Washington in August 1974 Rumsfeld was appointed chief of staff by President Ford Rumsfeld recruited a young one time staffer of his Dick Cheney to succeed him when Ford nominated him to be Secretary of Defense in 1975 When Ford lost the 1976 election Rumsfeld returned to private business and financial life and was named president and CEO of the pharmaceutical corporation G D Searle amp Company He was later named CEO of General Instrument from 1990 to 1993 and chairman of Gilead Sciences from 1997 to 2001 Rumsfeld was appointed Secretary of Defense for a second time in January 2001 by President George W Bush As Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld played a central role in the invasion of Afghanistan and invasion of Iraq Before and during the Iraq War he claimed that Iraq had an active weapons of mass destruction program no stockpiles were ever found 4 5 A Pentagon Inspector General report found that Rumsfeld s top policy aide developed produced and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al Qaeda relationship which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community to senior decision makers 6 Rumsfeld s tenure was controversial for its use of torture and the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal 7 Rumsfeld gradually lost political support and resigned in late 2006 In his retirement years he published an autobiography Known and Unknown A Memoir as well as Rumsfeld s Rules Leadership Lessons in Business Politics War and Life Contents 1 Early life and education 1 1 Naval service 2 Career in government 1962 1975 2 1 Member of Congress 2 2 Nixon administration 2 3 Ford administration 3 Secretary of Defense 1975 1977 3 1 SALT II Treaty 4 Return to the private sector 1977 2000 4 1 Business career 4 2 Part time public service 4 3 Presidential and vice presidential aspirations 5 Secretary of Defense 2001 2006 5 1 September 11 2001 attacks 5 2 Military decisions in the wake of 9 11 5 3 War in Afghanistan 5 4 Iraq War 5 5 Prisoner abuse and torture concerns 5 6 Resignation 6 Retirement and later life 2006 2021 7 Death 8 Electoral history 9 Awards 10 Honours 11 Legacy and reputation 12 Affiliation history 12 1 Institutional affiliations 12 2 Government posts panels and commissions 12 3 Corporate connections and business interests 12 4 Education 13 Gallery 14 Works 15 See also 16 Citations 17 General and cited sources 18 External linksEarly life and education Edit Rumsfeld s 1954 yearbook portrait from Princeton Donald Henry Rumsfeld was born at St Lukes Hospital on July 9 1932 in Chicago Illinois the son of Jeannette Kearsley nee Husted and George Donald Rumsfeld 8 His father came from a German family that had emigrated in the 1870s from Weyhe in Lower Saxony 9 10 11 15 16 but young Donald was sometimes ribbed about looking like a tough Swiss 11 16 and 31 Growing up in Winnetka Illinois Rumsfeld became an Eagle Scout in 1949 and is the recipient of both the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award from the Boy Scouts of America 12 and its Silver Buffalo Award in 2006 Living in Winnetka his family attended a Congregational church 13 From 1943 to 1945 Rumsfeld lived in Coronado California while his father was stationed on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific in World War II 14 He was a ranger at Philmont Scout Ranch in 1949 15 Rumsfeld attended Baker Demonstration School 16 and later graduated 17 from New Trier High School where he excelled academically as well as in sports In the band the young Rumsfeld played drums and also excelled at saxophone He attended Princeton University on academic and NROTC partial scholarships He graduated in 1954 with an A B in politics after completing a senior thesis titled The Steel Seizure Case of 1952 and Its Effects on Presidential Powers 18 19 During his time at Princeton he was an accomplished amateur wrestler becoming captain of the varsity wrestling team and captain of the Lightweight Football team playing defensive back While at Princeton he was friends with another future Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci 20 Rumsfeld married Joyce P Pierson on December 27 1954 They had three children six grandchildren and one great grandchild He attended Case Western Reserve University School of Law and the Georgetown University Law Center but did not take a degree from either institution 21 Naval service Edit Rumsfeld right standing as a Navy lieutenant in 1955 Rumsfeld served in the United States Navy from 1954 to 1957 as a naval aviator and flight instructor His initial training was in the North American SNJ Texan basic trainer after which he transitioned to the T 28 advanced trainer In 1957 he transferred to the Naval Reserve and continued his naval service in flying and administrative assignments as a drilling reservist On July 1 1958 he was assigned to Anti submarine Squadron 662 at Naval Air Station Anacostia District of Columbia as a selective reservist 22 Rumsfeld was designated aircraft commander of Anti submarine Squadron 731 on October 1 1960 at Naval Air Station Grosse Ile Michigan where he flew the S2F Tracker 22 He transferred to the Individual Ready Reserve when he became Secretary of Defense in 1975 and retired with the rank of captain in 1989 23 Career in government 1962 1975 EditMember of Congress Edit Rumsfeld during his time in Congress In 1957 during the Dwight D Eisenhower administration Rumsfeld served as administrative assistant to David S Dennison Jr a Congressman representing the 11th district of Ohio In 1959 he moved on to become a staff assistant to Congressman Robert P Griffin of Michigan 24 Engaging in a two year stint with an investment banking firm A G Becker amp Co from 1960 to 1962 25 Rumsfeld then set his sights on becoming a member of Congress He was elected to the United States House of Representatives for Illinois s 13th congressional district in 1962 at the age of 30 and was re elected by large majorities in 1964 1966 and 1968 26 While in Congress he served on the Joint Economic Committee the Committee on Science and Aeronautics and the Government Operations Committee as well as on the Subcommittees on Military and Foreign Operations He was also a co founder of the Japanese American Inter Parliamentary Council 27 in addition to being a leading cosponsor of the Freedom of Information Act 28 In 1965 following the defeat of Barry Goldwater by Lyndon B Johnson in the 1964 presidential election which also led to the Republicans losing many seats in the House of Representatives Rumsfeld proposed new leadership for the Republicans in the House suggesting that representative Gerald Ford from Michigan s 5th congressional district was the most suited candidate to replace Charles A Halleck as Republican leader 29 Rumsfeld along with other members of the Republican caucus then urged Ford to run for Republican leader Ford eventually defeated Halleck and became House Minority Leader in 1965 The group of Republicans that encouraged Ford to run for the Republican leadership became known as the Young Turks Rumsfeld later served during Ford s presidency as his chief of staff in 1974 and was chosen by Ford to succeed James Schlesinger as United States Secretary of Defense in 1975 29 During Rumsfeld s tenure as member of the U S House of Representatives he voiced concerns about U S invovement in the Vietnam War saying that President Johnson and his national security team were overconfident about how the war was being conducted On one occasion Rumsfeld joined with other members of the House and traveled to Vietnam for a fact finding mission to see for themselves how the war was going The trip led to Rumsfeld believing that the South Vietnamese government was much too dependent on the United States Rumsfeld was also unsatisfied when he received a briefing about war planning from the commander of the U S troops in Vietnam General William Westmoreland 29 The trip led Rumsfeld to cosponsor a resolution to bring the conduct of the war to the House floor for further debate and discussion about U S mismanagement of the war However under constant pressure from the Johnson administration the Democrats who at that time held the majority at the House of Representatives blocked the resolution from consideration 29 As a young Congressman Rumsfeld attended seminars at the University of Chicago an experience he credits with introducing him to the idea of an all volunteer military and to the economist Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics 30 He later took part in Friedman s PBS series Free to Choose 31 During his tenure in the House Rumsfeld voted in favor of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968 32 33 34 35 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 36 37 Nixon administration Edit Rumsfeld in 1971 as Director of Cost of Living CouncilRumsfeld resigned from Congress in 1969 his fourth term to serve in the Nixon administration in a variety of executive branch positions Nixon appointed Rumsfeld director of the United States Office of Economic Opportunity OEO a position with Cabinet rank Rumsfeld had voted against the creation of OEO when he was in Congress 38 and according to his 2011 memoirs he initially rejected Nixon s offer citing his own inherent belief that the OEO did more harm than good and he felt that he was not the right person for the job 39 119 121 After much negotiation he accepted the OEO appointment with Nixon s assurances that he would be also an assistant to the President with Cabinet level status and an office in the White House 38 which sweetened the OEO position with status and responsibility 40 As director Rumsfeld sought to reorganize the Office to serve what he later described in his 2011 memoir as a laboratory for experimental programs 39 125 Several beneficial anti poverty programs were saved by allocating funds to them from other less successful government programs During this time he hired Frank Carlucci 41 and Dick Cheney 42 43 to serve under him Rumsfeld with his son Nick in the Oval Office with President Nixon 1973 He was the subject of one of writer Jack Anderson s columns alleging that anti poverty czar Rumsfeld had cut programs to aid the poor while spending thousands to redecorate his office Rumsfeld dictated a four page response to Anderson labeling the accusations as falsehoods and invited Anderson to tour his office Despite the tour Anderson did not retract his claims and only much later admitted that his column was a mistake 39 125 44 45 When he left OEO in December 1970 Nixon named Rumsfeld Counselor to the President a general advisory position in this role he retained Cabinet status 11 75 He was given an office in the West Wing in 1969 and regularly interacted with the Nixon administration hierarchy He was named director of the Economic Stabilization Program in 1970 as well and later headed up the Cost of Living Council In March 1971 Nixon was recorded saying about Rumsfeld at least Rummy is tough enough and He s a ruthless little bastard You can be sure of that 46 47 48 49 50 In February 1973 Rumsfeld left Washington to serve as U S Ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization NATO in Brussels Belgium He served as the United States Permanent Representative to the North Atlantic Council and the Defense Planning Committee and the Nuclear Planning Group In this capacity he represented the United States in wide ranging military and diplomatic matters and was asked to help mediate a conflict on behalf of the United States between Cyprus and Turkey 39 157 51 Ford administration Edit Chief of Staff Rumsfeld left and Deputy Chief of Staff Dick Cheney right meet with President Ford April 1975 In August 1974 after Nixon resigned as president in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal Rumsfeld was called back to Washington to serve as the transition chairman for the new president Gerald Ford He had been Ford s confidante since their days in the House before Ford was House minority leader and was one of the members of the Young Turks which played a major role in bringing Ford to Republican leadership in the House of Representatives 16 As the new president became settled in Ford appointed Rumsfeld White House Chief of Staff following Ford s appointment of General Alexander Haig to be the new Supreme Allied Commander Europe Rumsfeld served from 1974 to 1975 52 16 Secretary of Defense 1975 1977 Edit Rumsfeld is sworn in as Secretary of Defense in November 1975 In October 1975 Ford reshuffled his cabinet in the Halloween Massacre Various newspaper and magazine articles at the time identified Rumsfeld as having orchestrated these events 53 Ford named Rumsfeld to succeed Schlesinger as the 13th U S Secretary of Defense and George H W Bush to become Director of Central Intelligence According to Bob Woodward s 2002 book Bush at War a rivalry developed between the two men and Bush senior was convinced that Rumsfeld was pushing him out to the CIA to end his political career 54 Rumsfeld s confirmation hearing as Secretary of Defense began on November 12 1975 During the hearing Rumsfeld was mostly asked about the administration s defense policy on the Cold War Rumsfeld stated that the Soviet Union was a clear and present danger especially following the end of the Vietnam War which Rumsfeld described as the USSR s chance to build up its domination 16 On November 17 1975 Rumsfeld was confirmed as Secretary of Defense by a vote of 97 2 16 At the age of 43 Rumsfeld become the youngest person to serve as United States Secretary of Defense as of 2023 55 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and President Ford share a laugh in a Cabinet meeting 1975 Rumsfeld with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General George S Brown at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on January 15 1976 During his tenure as Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld oversaw the transition to an all volunteer military He sought to reverse the gradual decline in the defense budget and to build up U S strategic and conventional forces undermining Secretary of State Henry Kissinger at the SALT talks 56 He asserted along with Team B which he helped to set up 57 that trends in comparative U S Soviet military strength had not favored the United States for 15 to 20 years and that if continued they would have the effect of injecting a fundamental instability in the world 23 For this reason he oversaw the development of cruise missiles the B 1 bomber and a major naval shipbuilding program 56 Rumsfeld who previously was assigned to the House Committee on Science and Astronautics emphasized the importance of the next stage of the space program following the successful moon landing in 1969 While serving as Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld organized a joint cooperation between the Department of Defense and NASA to develop Skylab 16 Another result of the cooperation was the Space Shuttle program 16 During Rumsfeld tenure as Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld also urged President Ford for the need of support and supplies for the Indonesian government in their effort to counter the communist insurgency in East Timor in the wake of Communist Insurgency following East Timor independence from Portuguese 58 16 As a result the Ford Administration agreed to help Indonesian Government under President Soeharto in their counterinsurgency effort to topple the communist back insurgency in East Timor which resulted in Indonesian Invasion of East Timor in December 1975 58 16 SALT II Treaty Edit During his tenure as Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld worked to finish the SALT II Treaty 16 Rumsfeld together with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General George S Brown drafted the treaty 16 However an agreement was not made before the 1976 election SALT II was finished and signed during the Carter administration 59 16 In 1977 Rumsfeld was awarded the nation s highest civilian award the Presidential Medal of Freedom 1 Kissinger his bureaucratic adversary later paid him a different sort of compliment pronouncing him a special Washington phenomenon the skilled full time politician bureaucrat in whom ambition ability and substance fuse seamlessly 60 Rumsfeld s first tenure as Secretary of Defense ended on January 20 1977 He was succeeded by former Secretary of the Air Force Harold Brown 16 Return to the private sector 1977 2000 EditBusiness career Edit In early 1977 Rumsfeld briefly lectured at Princeton s Woodrow Wilson School and Northwestern s Kellogg School of Management His sights instead turned to business and from 1977 to 1985 Rumsfeld served as chief executive officer president and then chairman of G D Searle amp Company a worldwide pharmaceutical company based in Skokie Illinois During his tenure at Searle Rumsfeld led the company s financial turnaround thereby earning awards as the Outstanding Chief Executive Officer in the Pharmaceutical Industry from the Wall Street Transcript 1980 and Financial World 1981 Journalist Andrew Cockburn of Harper s Magazine claimed that Rumsfeld suppressed news that Searle s key product aspartame was shown to have potentially dangerous effects by leveraging old government contacts at the Food and Drug Administration 61 In 1985 Searle was sold to the Monsanto Company 62 Rumsfeld served as chairman and chief executive officer of General Instrument from 1990 to 1993 63 A leader in broadband transmission distribution and access control technologies for cable satellite and terrestrial broadcasting applications the company pioneered the development of the first all digital high definition television HDTV technology After taking the company public and returning it to profitability Rumsfeld returned to private business in late 1993 64 From January 1997 until being sworn in as the 21st Secretary of Defense in January 2001 Rumsfeld served as chairman of Gilead Sciences Inc Gilead is the developer of Tamiflu Oseltamivir which is used in the treatment of bird flu 65 as well as influenza A and influenza B in humans 66 As a result Rumsfeld s holdings in the company grew significantly when avian flu became a subject of popular anxiety during his later term as Secretary of Defense Following standard practice Rumsfeld recused himself from any decisions involving Gilead and he directed the Pentagon s general counsel to issue instructions outlining what he could and could not be involved in if there were an avian flu pandemic and the Pentagon had to respond 67 68 Part time public service Edit Rumsfeld with U S President Ronald Reagan and Secretary of State George Shultz in the Oval Office White House on November 3 1983 During his business career Rumsfeld continued part time public service in various posts In November 1983 Rumsfeld was appointed special envoy to the Middle East by President Ronald Reagan 69 at a turbulent time in modern Middle Eastern history when Iraq was fighting Iran in the Iran Iraq War The United States wished for Iraq to win the conflict and Rumsfeld was sent to the Middle East to serve as a mediator on behalf of the president source source source source source source As President Reagan s Special Envoy to the Middle East Rumsfeld met with Saddam Hussein during a visit to Baghdad in December 1983 during the Iran Iraq War When Rumsfeld visited Baghdad on December 20 1983 he met Saddam Hussein at Saddam s palace and engaged a 90 minute discussion with him They largely agreed on opposing Syria s occupation of Lebanon preventing Syrian and Iranian expansion and preventing arms sales to Iran Rumsfeld suggested that if U S Iraq relations could improve the U S might support a new oil pipeline across Jordan which Iraq had opposed but was now willing to reconsider Rumsfeld also informed Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz that Our efforts to assist were inhibited by certain things that made it difficult for us citing the use of chemical weapons 11 159 60 Rumsfeld wrote in his memoir Known and Unknown that his meeting with Hussein has been the subject of gossip rumors and crackpot conspiracy theories for more than a quarter of a century Supposedly I had been sent to see Saddam by President Reagan either to negotiate a secret oil deal to help arm Iraq or to make Iraq an American client state The truth is that our encounter was more straightforward and less dramatic 39 6 The Washington Post reported that Although former U S officials agree that Rumsfeld was not one of the architects of the Reagan administration s tilt toward Iraq he was a private citizen when he was appointed Middle East envoy the documents show that his visits to Baghdad led to closer U S Iraqi cooperation on a wide variety of fronts 70 In addition to taking the position of Middle East envoy Rumsfeld served as a member of the President s General Advisory Committee on Arms Control 1982 1986 President Reagan s special envoy on the Law of the Sea Treaty 1982 1983 a senior adviser to President Reagan s Panel on Strategic Systems 1983 1984 a member of the Joint Advisory Commission on U S Japan Relations 1983 1984 a member of the National Commission on the Public Service 1987 1990 a member of the National Economic Commission 1988 1989 a member of the board of visitors of the National Defense University 1988 1992 a member of the FCC s High Definition Television Advisory Committee 1992 1993 a member of the U S Trade Deficit Review Commission 1999 2000 a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and chairman of the U S Commission to Assess National Security Space Management and Organization 2000 Among his most noteworthy positions was chairman of the nine member Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States from January to July 1998 In its findings the commission concluded that Iraq Iran and North Korea could develop intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities in five to ten years and that U S intelligence would have little warning before such systems were deployed 71 During the 1980s Rumsfeld became a member of the National Academy of Public Administration and was named a member of the boards of trustees of the Gerald R Ford Foundation the Eisenhower Exchange Fellowships the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the National Park Foundation He was also a member of the U S Russia Business Forum and chairman of the Congressional Leadership s National Security Advisory Group 72 Rumsfeld was a member of the Project for the New American Century a think tank dedicated to maintaining U S primacy In addition he was asked to serve the U S State Department as a foreign policy consultant from 1990 to 1993 Though considered one of the Bush administration s staunchest hard liners against North Korea Rumsfeld sat on European engineering giant Asea Brown Boveri s board from 1990 to 2001 a company that sold two light water nuclear reactors to the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization for installation in North Korea as part of the 1994 agreed framework reached under President Bill Clinton Rumsfeld s office said that he did not recall it being brought before the board at any time though Fortune magazine reported that board members were informed about this project 73 74 The Bush administration repeatedly criticized the 1994 agreement and the former Clinton presidency for its softness towards North Korea regarding the country as a state sponsor of terrorism and later designated North Korea as part of the Axis of Evil 75 Presidential and vice presidential aspirations Edit During the 1976 Republican National Convention Rumsfeld received one vote for Vice President of the United States although he did not seek the office and the nomination was easily won by Ford s choice Senator Bob Dole 76 During the 1980 Republican National Convention he again received one vote for vice president 77 Rumsfeld briefly sought the presidential nomination in 1988 but withdrew from the race before primaries began 78 During the 1996 election season he initially formed a presidential exploratory committee but declined to formally enter the race He was instead named national chairman for Republican nominee Bob Dole s campaign 79 Secretary of Defense 2001 2006 Edit Rumsfeld is administered the oath of office as the 21st Secretary of Defense on January 20 2001 by Director of Administration and Management David O Cooke left as Joyce Rumsfeld holds the Bible in a ceremony at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building Rumsfeld was named Secretary of Defense soon after President George W Bush took office in 2001 despite Rumsfeld s past rivalry with the previous President Bush Bush s first choice FedEx founder Fred Smith was unavailable and Vice President elect Cheney recommended Rumsfeld for the job 80 Rumsfeld s second tenure as Secretary of Defense cemented him as the most powerful Pentagon chief since Robert McNamara and one of the most influential Cabinet members in the Bush administration 81 His tenure proved to be a pivotal and rocky one that led the United States military into the 21st century Following the September 11 attacks Rumsfeld led the military planning and execution of the U S invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent 2003 invasion of Iraq He pushed hard to send as small a force as soon as possible to both conflicts a concept codified as the Rumsfeld Doctrine 82 Throughout his time as defense secretary Rumsfeld was noted for his candor and quick wit when giving weekly press conferences or speaking with the press 83 U S News amp World Report called him a straight talking Midwesterner who routinely has the press corps doubled over in fits of laughter 83 By the same token his leadership was exposed to much criticism through books covering the Iraq conflict like Bob Woodward s State of Denial Thomas E Ricks Fiasco and Seymour Hersh s Chain of Command 84 September 11 2001 attacks Edit The Pentagon is functioning was the message Rumsfeld stressed during a press conference in the Pentagon briefing room barely eight hours after terrorists crashed a hijacked commercial jetliner into the Pentagon Rumsfeld is flanked left to right by Secretary of the Army Tom White Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Hugh Shelton and Senators John Warner R VA and Carl Levin D MI the Ranking Member and Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee On September 11 2001 al Qaeda terrorists hijacked commercial airliners and crashed them in coordinated strikes into both towers of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan New York City and the Pentagon in Washington D C The fourth plane crashed into a field in Shanksville Pennsylvania and its target was likely a prominent building in Washington D C most probably either the U S Capitol Building or the White House 85 Within three hours of the start of the first hijacking and two hours after American Airlines Flight 11 struck the World Trade Center Rumsfeld raised the defense condition signaling of the United States offensive readiness to DEFCON 3 the highest it had been since the Arab Israeli war in 1973 86 Rumsfeld addressed the nation in a press conference at the Pentagon just eight hours after the attacks and stated It s an indication that the United States government is functioning in the face of this terrible act against our country I should add that the briefing here is taking place in the Pentagon The Pentagon s functioning It will be in business tomorrow 87 Military decisions in the wake of 9 11 Edit Rumsfeld and New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani speak at the site of the World Trade Center attacks in Lower Manhattan on November 14 2001 On the afternoon of September 11 Rumsfeld issued rapid orders to his aides to look for evidence of possible Iraqi involvement in regard to what had just occurred according to notes taken by senior policy official Stephen Cambone Best info fast Judge whether good enough hit S H meaning Saddam Hussein at same time Not only UBL Osama bin Laden Cambone s notes quoted Rumsfeld as saying Need to move swiftly Near term target needs go massive sweep it all up Things related and not 88 89 In the first emergency meeting of the National Security Council on the day of the attacks Rumsfeld asked Why shouldn t we go against Iraq not just al Qaeda with his deputy Paul Wolfowitz adding that Iraq was a brittle oppressive regime that might break easily it was doable and according to John Kampfner from that moment on he and Wolfowitz used every available opportunity to press the case 90 President George W Bush reacted to Rumsfeld s suggestion Wait a minute I didn t hear a word said about him Saddam Hussein being responsible for the attack 91 and the idea was initially rejected at the behest of Secretary of State Colin Powell but according to Kampfner Undeterred Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz held secret meetings about opening up a second front against Saddam Powell was excluded In such meetings they created a policy that would later be dubbed the Bush Doctrine centering on pre emption and the war on Iraq which the PNAC had advocated in their earlier letters 92 Richard A Clarke the White House counter terrorism coordinator at the time has revealed details of another National Security Council meeting the day after the attacks during which officials considered the U S response Already he said they were certain al Qa ida was to blame and there was no hint of Iraqi involvement Rumsfeld was saying we needed to bomb Iraq according to Clarke Clarke then stated We all said No no al Qa ida is in Afghanistan Clarke also revealed that Rumsfeld complained in the meeting there aren t any good targets in Afghanistan and there are lots of good targets in Iraq 93 Rumsfeld even suggested to attack other countries like Libya and Sudan arguing that if this was to be a truly global war on terror then all state sponsors of terrorism should be dealt with 94 Rumsfeld wrote in Known and Unknown Much has been written about the Bush administration s focus on Iraq after 9 11 Commentators have suggested that it was strange or obsessive for the President and his advisers to have raised questions about whether Saddam Hussein was somehow behind the attack I have never understood the controversy I had no idea if Iraq was or was not involved but it would have been irresponsible for any administration not to have asked the question 39 347 A memo written by Rumsfeld dated November 27 2001 considers an Iraq war One section of the memo questions How start listing multiple possible justifications for a U S Iraq War 95 96 War in Afghanistan Edit Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard B Myers U S Air Force during a press conference at The Pentagon on January 24 2002Rumsfeld directed the planning for the War in Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks 82 On September 21 2001 USCENTCOM Commander General Tommy Franks briefed the President on a plan to destroy al Qaeda in Afghanistan and remove the Taliban government General Franks also initially proposed to Rumsfeld that the U S invade Afghanistan using a conventional force of 60 000 troops preceded by six months of preparation Rumsfeld however feared that a conventional invasion of Afghanistan could bog down as had happened to the Soviets and the British 97 Rumsfeld rejected Franks s plan saying I want men on the ground now Franks returned the next day with a plan utilizing U S Special Forces 98 82 Despite air and missile attacks against al Qaeda in Afghanistan USCENTCOM had no pre existing plans for conducting ground operations there 82 Excerpt from Donald Rumsfeld memo dated November 27 2001 95 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld converses with U S Ambassador to Afghanistan Dr Zalmay Khalilzad during a visit to Kandahar Afghanistan on February 26 2004 accompanied by Lieutenant General David Barno and Brigadier General Lloyd Austin Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld greeted by U S Embassy Charge d Affairs Richard B Norland during a visit to Kabul Afghanistan The September 21 2001 plan emerged after extensive dialogue but Secretary Rumsfeld also asked for broader plans that looked beyond Afghanistan 82 On October 7 2001 just hours after the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was launched Rumsfeld addressed the nation in a press conference at the Pentagon stating While our raids today focus on the Taliban and the foreign terrorists in Afghanistan our aim remains much broader Our objective is to defeat those who use terrorism and those who house or support them The world stands united in this effort 99 Rumsfeld also stated the only way to deal with these terrorist threats is to go at them where they exist You cannot defend at every place at every time against every conceivable imaginable even unimaginable terrorist attack And the only way to deal with it is to take the battle to where they are and to root them out and to starve them out by seeing that those countries and those organizations and those non governmental organizations and those individuals that are supporting and harboring and facilitating these networks stop doing it and find that there s a penalty for doing it 99 Rumsfeld in another press conference at the Pentagon on October 29 2001 stated As the first weeks of this effort proceed it bears repeating that our goal is not to reduce or simply contain terrorist acts but our goal is to deal with it comprehensively And we do not intend to stop until we ve rooted out terrorist networks and put them out of business not just in the case of the Taliban and the Al Qaeda in Afghanistan but other networks as well And as I ve mentioned the Al Qaeda network crosses some 40 50 plus countries 100 Rumsfeld announced in November 2001 that he received authoritative reports that Al Qaeda s number three Mohammed Atef bin Laden s primary military chief and a planner of the September 11 attacks on America was killed by a U S airstrike 101 102 103 He was very very senior Rumsfeld said We obviously have been seeking him out 101 In a press conference at the Pentagon on November 19 2001 Rumsfeld described the role of U S ground forces in Afghanistan as firstly in the north American troops are embedded in Northern Alliance elements helping arrange food and medical supplies and pinpointing airstrikes and in the south commandos and other troops are operating more independently raiding compounds monitoring roadblocks and searching vehicles in the hope of developing more information about al Qaeda and Taliban leaders 103 101 On December 16 2001 Rumsfeld visited U S troops in Afghanistan at Bagram Air Base 104 On March 15 2002 in another press conference at the Pentagon Rumsfeld commented on the mission of Operation Anaconda by stating Operation Anaconda continues in the area south of Gardez in eastern Afghanistan The fighting is winding down as you know Coalition forces are for the most part in an exploitation phase doing the difficult work of searching caves and clearing areas where the battles and fighting has taken place Our forces are finding weapons ammunition some intelligence information In the top 25 al Qaeda we know some are dead and we know some may be dead we know some are captured and there are a larger number that we don t know And roughly the same proportions with respect to Taliban 105 On May 1 2003 Rumsfeld during a visit to Afghanistan meeting with U S troops stationed in Kabul told the press General Franks and I have been looking at the progress that s being made in this country and have concluded that we are at a point where we clearly have moved from major combat activity to a period of stability and stabilization and reconstruction and activities I should underline however that there are still dangers there are still pockets of resistance in certain parts of the country and General McNeal and General Franks and their the cooperation they have with the President Karzai s government and leadership and Marshall Fayheems assistance We will be continuing as a country to work with the Afghan government and the new Afghan National Army to see that the any areas where there is resistance to this government and to the coalition forces will be dealt with promptly and efficiently 106 There was also controversy between the Pentagon and the CIA over who had the authority to fire Hellfire missiles from Predator drones 107 Even though the drones were not ready for deployment until 2002 107 Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon have argued that these quarrels kept the Predator from being used against al Qaeda One anonymous individual who was at the center of the action called this episode typical and complained that Rumsfeld never missed an opportunity to fail to cooperate The fact is the Secretary of Defense is an obstacle He has helped the terrorists 108 In 2009 three years after Rumsfeld s tenure as Defense secretary ended the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations led an investigation into the Battle of Tora Bora in December 2001 during the early phase of the U S led coalition war in Afghanistan They concluded that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and General Franks had not committed enough troops during the battle to secure the area around Tora Bora They believed that Al Qaeda s number one leader Osama bin Laden had likely been at Tora Bora and his escape prolonged the war in Afghanistan 109 Rumsfeld and Franks were apparently motivated by fear that a substantial American presence near Tora Bora could incite a rebellion by local Pashtuns despite the latter s lack of organizational capability at the time and the fierce dissent voiced by many CIA analysts including Charles E Allen who warned Franks that the back door to Pakistan was open and Gary Berntsen who called for army rangers to kill this baby in the crib Instead of rangers or marines the U S assault on Tora Bora relied on the CIA backed Afghan militias of Hazrat Ali and Zahir Qadeer supplemented with B 52 bombardment The resulting influx of hundreds of al Qaeda fighters into Pakistan destabilized the country and damaged Pakistan United States relations 110 The follow up Operation Anaconda witnessed failures of planning and execution the product of the fractured lines of command as recounted by Steve Coll 111 In mid 2002 Rumsfeld announced that The war is over in Afghanistan to the disbelief of State Department CIA and military officials in the country As a result Rumsfeld downplayed the need for an Afghan army of even 70 000 troops far fewer than the 250 000 envisaged by Karzai 112 Iraq War Edit Secretary of Defense Donald H Rumsfeld and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard B Myers inspecting the joint services honor guard during the opening ceremonies of the Joint Service Open House at Andrews Air Forces Base Maryland May 17 2002 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld accompanied by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard B Myers and joined by military representatives from 29 countries of the worldwide coalition on the war against terrorism while speaking to the reporter outside The Pentagon on March 11 2002 Secretary of Defense Donald H Rumsfeld left and the Commander of U S Central Command General Tommy Franks listen to a question at the close of a Pentagon press conference on March 5 2003 Rumsfeld and Franks gave reporters an operational update and fielded questions on the possible conflict in Iraq Before and during the Iraq War Rumsfeld claimed that Iraq had an active weapons of mass destruction program in particular during his famous phrase there are known knowns in a press conference at the Pentagon on February 12 2002 113 no stockpiles were ever found 4 5 Bush administration officials also claimed that there was an operational relationship between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein A Pentagon Inspector General report found that Rumsfeld s top policy aide Douglas J Feith developed produced and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al Qaeda relationship which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community to senior decision makers 6 The job of finding WMD and providing justification for the attack fell to the intelligence services but according to Kampfner Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz believed that while the established security services had a role they were too bureaucratic and too traditional in their thinking As a result they set up what came to be known as the cabal a cell of eight or nine analysts in a new Office of Special Plans OSP based in the U S Defense Department According to an unnamed Pentagon source quoted by Hersh the OSP was created in order to find evidence of what Wolfowitz and his boss Defense Secretary Rumsfeld believed to be true that Saddam Hussein had close ties to Al Qaeda and that Iraq had an enormous arsenal of chemical biological and possibly even nuclear weapons that threatened the region and potentially the United States 92 On January 22 2003 after the German and French governments voiced opposition to invading Iraq Rumsfeld labeled these countries as part of Old Europe implying that countries that supported the war were part of a newer modern Europe 114 After the war in Afghanistan was launched Rumsfeld participated in a meeting in regard to the review of the Department of Defense s Contingency Plan in the event of a war with Iraq The plan as it was then conceived contemplated troop levels of up to 500 000 which Rumsfeld felt was far too many Gordon and Trainor wrote As General Newbold outlined the plan it was clear that Rumsfeld was growing increasingly irritated For Rumsfeld the plan required too many troops and supplies and took far too long to execute It was Rumsfeld declared the product of old thinking and the embodiment of everything that was wrong with the military 115 In a press conference at the Pentagon on February 27 2003 Rumsfeld told reporters after being asked a question that Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki suggested it would take several hundred thousand troops on the ground to secure Iraq and provide stability Is he wrong Rumsfeld replied the idea that it would take several hundred thousand U S forces I think is far from the mark The reality is that we already have a number of countries that have offered to participate with their forces in stabilization activities in the event force has to be used 116 Rumsfeld addressed the nation in a press conference at the Pentagon on March 20 2003 just hours after the launch of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq where he announced the first strike of the war to liberate Iraq and that The days of the Saddam Hussein regime are numbered and We continue to feel there is no need for a broader conflict if the Iraqi leaders act to save themselves and act to prevent such a conflict 117 Rumsfeld s role in directing the Iraq War included a plan that was the Shock and Awe campaign 118 which resulted in a lightning invasion with 145 000 soldiers on the ground that took Baghdad in well under a month with very few American casualties citation needed Many government buildings plus major museums electrical generation infrastructure and even oil equipment were looted and vandalized during the transition from the fall of Saddam Hussein s regime to the establishment of the Coalition Provisional Authority A violent insurrection began shortly after the military operation started On March 30 2003 in an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC s This Week program Rumsfeld answered a question by Stephanopoulos about finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq Rumsfeld stated We know where they are They re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east west south and north somewhat 119 On April 9 2003 at a press conference at the Pentagon Rumsfeld addressed reporters during the Fall of Baghdad and stated The scenes of free Iraqis celebrating in the streets riding American tanks tearing down the statues of Saddam Hussein in the center of Baghdad are breathtaking 120 After the Iraq invasion U S troops were criticized for not protecting the historical artifacts and treasures located at the National Museum of Iraq On April 11 2003 at a press conference at the Pentagon when asked at the time why U S troops did not actively seek to stop the lawlessness Rumsfeld replied Stuff happens and it s untidy and freedom s untidy and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things They re also free to live their lives and do wonderful things And that s what s going to happen here 121 He further commented that The images you are seeing on television you are seeing over and over and over and it s the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase and you see it 20 times and you think My goodness were there that many vases 121 On July 24 2003 at a press conference at the Pentagon Rumsfeld commented on the release of photographs of the deceased sons of Saddam Hussein Uday Hussein and Qusay Hussein It is not a practice that the United States engages in on a normal basis Rumsfeld said I honestly believe that these two are particularly bad characters and that it s important for the Iraqi people to see them to know they re gone to know they re dead and to know they re not coming back Rumsfeld also said I feel it was the right decision and I m glad I made it 122 123 124 In October 2003 Rumsfeld approved a secret Pentagon roadmap on public relations calling for boundaries between information operations abroad and the news media at home The Roadmap advances a policy according to which as long as the U S government does not intentionally target the American public it does not matter that psychological operations reach the American public 125 On December 14 2003 Rumsfeld in an interview with journalist Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes after U S forces captured Saddam Hussein in Operation Red Dawn stated Here was a man who was photographed hundreds of times shooting off rifles and showing how tough he was and in fact he wasn t very tough he was cowering in a hole in the ground and had a pistol and didn t use it and certainly did not put up any fight at all I think that he resulted in the death of an awful lot of Iraqi people in the last analysis he seemed not terribly brave 126 As Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld was deliberate in crafting the public message from the Department of Defense People will rally to the word sacrifice Rumsfeld noted after a meeting They are looking for leadership Sacrifice Victory In May 2004 Rumsfeld considered whether to redefine the war on terrorism as a fight against worldwide insurgency He advised aides to test what the results could be if the war on terrorism were renamed 127 Rumsfeld also ordered specific public Pentagon attacks on and responses to U S newspaper columns that reported the negative aspects of the war During Rumsfeld s tenure he regularly visited U S troops stationed in Iraq 128 The Australia Broadcasting Corporation reported that though Rumsfeld didn t specify a withdrawal date for troops in Iraq He says it would be unrealistic to wait for Iraq to be peaceful before removing U S led forces from the country adding that Iraq had never been peaceful and perfect 129 On August 2 2006 at a press conference at the Pentagon Rumsfeld commented on the Sectarian violence in Iraq where he stated there s sectarian violence people are being killed Sunnis are killing Shi a and Shi a are killing Sunnis Kurds seem not to be involved It s unfortunate and they need a reconciliation process 130 On October 26 2006 at a press conference at the Pentagon after the failure of Operation Together Forward in Iraq Rumsfeld stated Would defeat in Iraq be so bad Well the answer is Yes it would be Those who are fighting against the Iraqi government want to seize power so that they can establish a new sanctuary and a base of operations for terrorists and any idea that U S military leaders are rigidly refusing to make adjustments in their approaches is just flat wrong The military is continuing to adapt and to adjust as required Yes there are difficulties and problems to be sure 131 As a result Rumsfeld stirred controversy as to whether the forces that did invade Iraq were enough in size 115 In 2006 Rumsfeld responded to a question by Brit Hume of Fox News as to whether he pressed General Tommy Franks to lower his request for 400 000 troops for the war Absolutely not That s a mythology This town Washington D C is filled with this kind of nonsense The people who decide the levels of forces on the ground are not the Secretary of Defense or the President We hear recommendations but the recommendations are made by the combatant commanders and by members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and there hasn t been a minute in the last six years when we have not had the number of troops that the combatant commanders have requested 132 Rumsfeld told Hume that Franks ultimately decided against such a troop level 133 Throughout his tenure Rumsfeld sought to remind the American people of the 9 11 attacks and threats against Americans noting at one time in a 2006 memo to m ake the American people realize they are surrounded in the world by violent extremists 134 127 According to a report by The Guardian Rumsfeld was allegedly including biblical quotes in top secret briefing papers to appeal George W Bush known for his devout religious beliefs to invade Iraq as more like holy war or a religious crusade against Muslims 135 In a September 2007 interview with The Daily Telegraph General Mike Jackson the head of the British army during the invasion criticized Rumsfeld s plans for the invasion of Iraq as intellectually bankrupt adding that Rumsfeld is one of those most responsible for the current situation in Iraq and that he felt that the US approach to combating global terrorism is inadequate and too focused on military might rather than nation building and diplomacy 136 In December 2004 Rumsfeld was heavily criticized for using a signing machine instead of personally signing over 1000 letters of condolence to the families of soldiers killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan He promised to personally sign all letters in the future 137 Prisoner abuse and torture concerns Edit Further information Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard B Myers addressing the airmen Marines and soldiers in the Al Faw Palace at Camp Victory Iraq on May 13 2004 Comment from Rumsfeld I stand for 8 10 hours a day Why is standing by prisoners limited to 4 hours The Department of Defense s preliminary concerns for holding housing and interrogating captured prisoners on the battlefield were raised during the military build up prior to the Iraq War Because Saddam Hussein s military forces surrendered when faced with military action many within the DOD including Rumsfeld and United States Central Command General Tommy Franks decided it was in the best interest of all to hand these prisoners over to their respective countries Additionally it was determined that maintaining a large holding facility was at the time unrealistic Instead the use of many facilities such as Abu Ghraib to house prisoners of interest prior to handing them over and Rumsfeld defended the Bush administration s decision to detain enemy combatants Because of this critics including members of the U S Senate Armed Services Committee held Rumsfeld responsible for the ensuing Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal Rumsfeld himself said These events occurred on my watch as Secretary of Defense I am accountable for them 138 He offered his resignation to President Bush in the wake of the scandal but it was not accepted 139 Rumsfeld poses with Marines during one of his trips to Camp Fallujah Iraq on Christmas Eve 2004 In a memo read by Rumsfeld detailing how Guantanamo Bay detention camp interrogators induced stress in prisoners by forcing them to remain standing in one position for a maximum of four hours Rumsfeld scrawled a handwritten note on the memo reading I stand for 8 10 hours a day Why is standing by prisoners limited to 4 hours D R 140 Various organizations such as Human Rights Watch called for investigations of Rumsfeld regarding his involvement in managing the Iraq War and his support of the Bush administration s policies of enhanced interrogation techniques which are widely regarded as torture 141 142 Scholars have argued that Rumsfeld might be held criminally responsible if he would be prosecuted by the ICC 143 In 2005 the ACLU and Human Rights First filed a lawsuit against Rumsfeld and other top government officials on behalf of eight men who they say were subjected to torture and abuse by U S forces under the command of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld 144 In 2005 a suit was filed against Rumsfeld by several human rights organizations for allegedly violating U S and international law that prohibits torture and cruel inhuman or degrading punishment 144 Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel filed suit against the U S government and Rumsfeld on similar grounds alleging that they were tortured and their rights of habeas corpus were violated 145 146 147 148 In 2007 U S District Judge Thomas F Hogan ruled that Rumsfeld could not be held personally responsible for actions taken in connection with his government job 149 The ACLU tried to revive the case in 2011 with no success 150 In 2004 German prosecutor Wolfgang Kaleck filed a criminal complaint charging Rumsfeld and 11 other U S officials as war criminals who either ordered the torture of prisoners or drafted laws that legitimated its use The charges based on breaches of the UN Convention against Torture and the German Code of Crimes against International Law 151 Resignation Edit Rumsfeld with former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher alongside the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace 2006 Eight U S and other NATO member retired generals and admirals called for Rumsfeld to resign in early 2006 in what was called the Generals Revolt accusing him of abysmal military planning and lack of strategic competence 152 153 154 Commentator Pat Buchanan reported at the time that Washington Post columnist David Ignatius who traveled often to Iraq and supported the war said the generals mirror the views of 75 percent of the officers in the field and probably more 155 Rumsfeld rebuffed these criticisms stating out of thousands and thousands of admirals and generals if every time two or three people disagreed we changed the secretary of defense of the United States it would be like a merry go round 156 Bush defended Rumsfeld throughout and responded by stating that Rumsfeld is exactly what is needed 157 Rumsfeld shakes President Bush s hand as he announces his resignation November 8 2006 On November 1 2006 Bush stated he would stand by Rumsfeld as defense secretary for the length of his term as president 158 Rumsfeld wrote a resignation letter dated November 6 2006 and per the stamp on the letter Bush saw it on Election Day November 7 2006 159 In the elections the House and the Senate shifted to Democratic control After the elections on November 8 2006 Bush announced Rumsfeld would resign his position as Secretary of Defense Many Republicans were unhappy with the delay believing they would have won more votes if voters had known Rumsfeld was resigning 159 Bush nominated Robert Gates to succeed Rumsfeld 160 161 162 On December 15 2006 a farewell ceremony with an armed forces full honor review and a 19 gun salute was held at the Pentagon Mall Terrace in honor of the departing Rumsfeld 163 Retirement and later life 2006 2021 Edit Rumsfeld shares a laugh with his successor Robert Gates at a ceremony to unveil his official portrait as Secretary of Defense June 25 2010 Dedication ceremony of the Pentagon Memorial in 2008 Rumsfeld greeting former president George W Bush in 2019 In the months after his resignation Rumsfeld toured the New York City publishing houses in preparation for a potential memoir 164 After receiving what one industry source labeled big bids 165 he reached an agreement with the Penguin Group to publish the book under its Sentinel HC imprint 166 Rumsfeld declined to accept an advance for the publication of his memoir and said he was donating all proceeds from the work to veterans groups 167 His book entitled Known and Unknown A Memoir was released on February 8 2011 168 In conjunction with the publication of Known and Unknown Rumsfeld established The Rumsfeld Papers a website with documents related to the endnotes of the book and his service during the George W Bush administration 169 during the months that followed the book s publication the website was expanded to include over 4 000 documents from his archive As of June 2011 needs update the topics included his Congressional voting record the Nixon administration documents and memos of meetings while he was part of the Ford Reagan and George W Bush administrations private sector documents and NATO documents among other items 169 In 2007 Rumsfeld established The Rumsfeld Foundation which focuses on encouraging public service in the United States and supporting the growth of free political and free economic systems abroad The educational foundation provides fellowships to talented individuals from the private sector who want to serve for some time in government 167 Rumsfeld personally financed the foundation 170 As of January 2014 the foundation had sponsored over 90 fellows from Central Asia provided over million in tuition and stipend support for graduate students awarded over million in microfinance grants and donated over million to charities for veterans affairs clarification needed 171 Rumsfeld was awarded the Defender of the Constitution Award at the 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington D C on February 10 2011 After his retirement from government Rumsfeld criticized former fellow Cabinet member Condoleezza Rice Secretary of State in his memoir asserting that she was basically unfit for office In 2011 she responded saying that Rumsfeld doesn t know what he s talking about The reader may imagine what can be correct about the conflicted matter 172 In February 2011 Rumsfeld endorsed the repeal of the military s Don t ask don t tell policy saying that allowing gays and lesbians to openly serve is an idea whose time has come 173 In March 2011 Rumsfeld spoke out on the 2011 military intervention in Libya telling ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper that the Obama administration should recognize the mission has to determine the coalition The coalition ought not determine the mission Rumsfeld also used the word confusion six times to describe the United Nations backed military effort in Libya 174 In October 2011 Rumsfeld conducted an interview with Al Jazeera s Washington D C bureau chief Abderrahim Foukara Foukara asked Rumsfeld whether in hindsight the Bush administration had sent enough troops into Iraq to secure the borders of the country and whether that made the United States culpable in the death of innocent Iraqis Foukara said people in the Pentagon told Rumsfeld the number of troops sent into Iraq was insufficient Rumsfeld said You keep making assertions which are fundamentally false No one in the Pentagon said they were not enough Foukara pressed Rumsfeld repeatedly Rumsfeld then asked Do you want to yell or do you want to have an interview Foukara then asked Do you think the numbers that you went to Iraq with did absolve you from the responsibility of tens maybe hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis killed by the Coalition and those criminals that you talked about Rumsfeld called the question pejorative and said Foukara was not being respectful Foukara disagreed and was just talking over and over and over again 175 176 Rumsfeld was the subject of the 2013 Errol Morris documentary The Unknown Known the title a reference to his response to a question at a February 2002 press conference In the film Rumsfeld discusses his career in Washington D C from his days as a congressman in the early 1960s to planning the invasion of Iraq in 2003 177 In January 2016 in partnership with the literary and creative agency Javelin which handled design and development 178 Rumsfeld released a mobile app game of solitaire called Churchill Solitaire emulating a variant of the card game as played by Winston Churchill 179 Rumsfeld and the Churchill family said that profits from the game would be donated to charity 180 181 In June 2016 Rumsfeld announced that he would vote for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election 182 On January 5 2021 Rumsfeld was one of the ten living former Secretaries of Defense that sent a warning letter in order to warn President Trump not to involve the military in a 2020 presidential election dispute 183 Death EditOn June 29 2021 Rumsfeld died from multiple myeloma at his home in Taos New Mexico 184 185 He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery on August 24 2021 186 187 Electoral history EditMain article Electoral history of Donald Rumsfeld Rumsfeld gives the command at the 2005 Pepsi 400 where he served as the grand marshal 188 During the four elections during which he ran to represent Illinois s 13th congressional district Rumsfeld received shares of the popular vote that ranged from 58 in 1964 to 76 in 1966 In 1975 and 2001 Rumsfeld was overwhelmingly confirmed by the U S Senate after presidents Gerald Ford and George W Bush respectively appointed him as U S Secretary of Defense Awards Edit Rumsfeld in the Pentagon auditorium for his final meeting with Pentagon employees December 8 2006 Rumsfeld was awarded 11 honorary degrees 189 Following his years as CEO president and later chairman of G D Searle amp Company he was recognized as Outstanding CEO in the pharmaceutical industry by The Wall Street Transcript 1980 and Financial World 1981 190 Some of his other awards included All Navy Wrestling Champion 1956 189 Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement 1983 191 George C Marshall Medal by the Association of the U S Army 1984 192 Woodrow Wilson Medal by Princeton University 1985 189 Dwight D Eisenhower Medal 1993 189 Lone Sailor Award by the U S Navy Memorial Foundation 2002 189 Statesmanship Award by the United States Association of Former Members of Congress 2003 189 Ronald Reagan Freedom Award 2003 189 James H Doolittle Award by the Hudson Institute 2003 189 Gerald R Ford Medal presented by President Ford and the Ford Foundation 2004 193 Distinguished Eagle Scout Award by the Boy Scouts of America 1976 194 Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Supporting Actor 2004 for his appearance in Fahrenheit 9 11 195 Union League of Philadelphia Gold Medal for Citizenship 2006 Claremont Institute Statesmanship Award 2007 Victory of Freedom Award from the Richard Nixon Foundation 2010 196 Order of Anthony Wayne from Valley Forge Military Academy National Flag award from Albania s President Bujar Nishani 2013 197 Honours EditRibbon Country Honour Year United States Presidential Medal of Freedom 1977 198 Japan Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun 2015 199 KSA Grand Cordon of the Order of King Abdulaziz 2002 Poland Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland 2005 200 Romania Grand Officer of the Order of the Star of Romania 2004 Rwanda Medal of the Royal Order of the Lion 2007 Taiwan Grand Cordon of the Order of Brilliant Star 2011 201 Legacy and reputation EditSecretary of State Henry Kissinger described Rumsfeld as the most ruthless man he knew 202 George Packer of The Atlantic named Rumsfeld the worst secretary of defense in American history who lacked the wisdom to change his mind 203 Bradley Graham a Washington Post reporter and author of the book titled By His Own Rules The Ambitions Successes and Ultimate Failures of Donald Rumsfeld released on June 23 2009 stated Rumsfeld left office as one of the most controversial Defense Secretaries since Robert McNamara and widely criticized for his management of the Iraq war and for his difficult relationships with Congress administration colleagues and military officers 204 Neoconservative commentator Bill Kristol was also critical of Rumsfeld stating he breezily dodged responsibility for planning mistakes made in the Iraq War including insufficient troop levels 205 Affiliation history EditInstitutional affiliations Edit Rumsfeld s official portrait in 2001 Center for Security Policy longtime associate winner of the CSP s 1998 Keeper of the Flame award 5 Hoover Institution former member board of trustees Project for the New American Century signed PNAC s founding statement of principles as well as two policy letters on Iraq Freedom House former board member RAND Corporation former chairman Committee for the Free World former chairman National Park Foundation former member 189 Eisenhower Exchange Fellowships former chairman 189 Bohemian Club member Alfalfa Club member National Academy of Public Administration member 189 Government posts panels and commissions Edit Secretary of Defense 2001 06 U S Commission to Assess National Security Space Management and Organization chairman 2000 189 U S Trade Deficit Reviews Commission member 1999 2000 189 Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States chairman 1998 189 National Commission on Public Service member 1987 1990 189 National Economic Commission member 1988 1989 189 President Reagan s General Advisory Committee on Arms Control member 1982 1986 189 U S Joint Advisory Commission on U S Japan Relations member 1983 1984 189 Presidential Envoy to the Middle East Reagan administration 1983 1984 189 Presidential Envoy on the Law of the Sea Treaty Reagan administration 1982 1983 189 Secretary of Defense 1975 77 White House Chief of Staff in Ford administration 1974 75 U S Ambassador to NATO 1973 74 U S Congress Representative from Illinois 1962 69 United States Navy Various posts including aviator 1954 57 reserves 1957 1975 retired as a navy captain 1989 Corporate connections and business interests Edit Eastern Air Lines former director The annual reports of Eastern Air Lines disclose that Donald Rumsfeld was a member of Eastern Air Lines board of directors Gilead Sciences Joined Gilead as a director in 1988 chairman 1997 2001 General Instrument chairman and CEO 1990 93 G D Searle amp Company CEO chairman president 1977 1985 Gulfstream Aerospace director Tribune Company director Metricom director Sears director ABB director Kellogg s director 1985 1999 while Carlos Gutierrez ex Cuba 1960 was president CEO and chairman of Kellogg until named Secretary of Commerce under Bush from 2005 RAND Corporation chairman of the board from 1981 to 1986 1995 1996 Amylin Pharmaceuticals director Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General George S Brown at The Pentagon January 15 1976 Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev President Ford and Rumsfeld in Vladivostok Soviet Union November 1974 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld with Chairman of The Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard B Myers and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz testifying before the 9 11 Commission in March 2004 Rumsfeld and Victoria Nuland at the NATO Ukraine consultations in Vilnius Lithuania on October 24 2005 Education Edit Princeton University A B 1954 Gallery Edit Rumsfeld and Cheney with President Ford at The Oval Office White House Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld with President Gerald Ford at the Oval Office White House Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld with Vice President Nelson Rockefeller in 1976 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld with Chairman of The Joint Chiefs of Staff General George S Brown National Security Advisor Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft and C I A Director George H W Bush at The Oval Office White House March 11 1976 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld testifying at Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the Defense Department budget on March 9 1976 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld speaking during a press conference at The Pentagon on October 6 1976 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld during an Interview with WMAL TV reporter Jim Clark at The Pentagon Studio on November 4 1976 Donald Rumsfeld with President Ronald Reagan at The Oval Office in 1983 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld watches as General Richard B Myers was sworn in as the 15th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff October 1 2001 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld with President George W Bush following President Bush s visit to The Pentagon to address military and Department of Defense personnel and sign the Defense Appropriations Bill January 10 2002 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld President George W Bush Chairman of The Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard B Myers and Vice Chairman of The Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace watch troops pass in review at Fort Myer Virginia on October 15 2001 U S Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld with troops at Bagram Air Base December 2001 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard B Myers during the annual Pentagon Town Hall meeting at The Pentagon auditorium Secretary Rumsfeld during a visit to Buenos Aires Argentina U S Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld during a visit to Bagram Air Force Base Rumsfeld with UK Secretary of State for Defence Geoffrey HoonWorks EditRumsfeld Donald 1998 Strategic Imperatives in East Asia Heritage lectures no 605 Washington D C The Heritage Foundation Speech given March 3 1998 in Washington D C 206 Rumsfeld Donald 2011 Known and Unknown A Memoir Sentinel ISBN 978 1 59523 067 6 Rumsfeld Donald 2013 Rumsfeld s Rules Broadside Books ISBN 978 0062272867 Rumsfeld Donald 2018 When the Center Held Gerald Ford and the Rescue of the American Presidency ISBN 978 1501172939 See also Edit United States portal Biography portal Politics portalAgathidium rumsfeldi Early association with liberal activist Allard Lowenstein There are known knowns Rumsfeld Doctrine Known and Unknown A Memoir by Donald Rumsfeld 2011 Citations Edit a b Donald H Rumsfeld George W Bush Administration Office of the Secretary of Defense Historical Office Archived from the original on May 29 2019 Retrieved May 29 2019 Donald H Rumsfeld Gerald Ford Administration Office of the Secretary of Defense Historical Office Archived from the original on May 29 2019 Retrieved May 29 2019 Cronk Terri Moon Garamone Jim June 30 2021 Rumsfeld Was Nation s Youngest Oldest Defense Secretary United States Department of Defense Archived from the original on July 2 2021 Retrieved July 6 2021 a b Truth War And Consequences Why War In Their Own Words Who Said What When Frontline PBS Archived from the original on May 28 2019 Retrieved May 28 2019 a b Jackson Brooks September 2 2005 Anti war Ad Says Bush Cheney Rumsfeld amp Rice Lied About Iraq FactCheck org Archived from the original on July 29 2020 Retrieved May 28 2019 a b Landay Jonathan S February 8 2007 Pentagon office produced alternative intelligence on Iraq McClatchy Archived from the original on May 21 2019 Retrieved May 28 2019 Shanker Thom February 4 2005 Rumsfeld Says He Offered to Quit The New York Times Archived from the original on June 13 2018 Retrieved June 28 2017 Rumsfeld Donald January 11 1946 My autobiography PDF Archived PDF from the original on January 16 2017 Retrieved May 29 2019 Donald Rumsfeld Biography amp Facts Encyclopedia Britannica Archived from the original on October 18 2020 Retrieved October 25 2019 Donald Henry Rumsfeld Archived from the original on March 16 2014 a b c d Bradley Graham 2009 By His Own Rules The Ambitions Successes and Ultimate Failures of Donald Rumsfeld PublicAffairs ISBN 978 1 58648 421 7 Jon C Halter September 2006 Speakers Highlight Scouting s Core Values Scouting Vol 94 no 4 p 35 Archived from the original on June 29 2007 Nicholas G Hahn III August 5 2013 Donald Rumsfeld s Golden Rule Real Clear Religion Archived from the original on August 6 2013 Larson Mark Radio Interview with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on KOGO Radio San Diego with Mark Larson KOGO Archived from the original on March 2 2010 Retrieved May 29 2019 via defense gov Secretary Rumsfeld s Remarks at the White House Conference on Cooperative Conservation United States Department of Defense August 29 2005 Archived from the original on October 2 2006 a b c d e f g h i j k l m Known and Unknown Donald Rumsfeld Author Biography Litlovers com Archived from the original on June 24 2017 Retrieved April 17 2017 Habermehl Kris January 25 2007 Fire Breaks Out at Prestigious High School Archived from the original on April 20 2009 Retrieved June 28 2008 Rumsfeld Donald Henry The Steel Seizure Case of 1952 and Its Effects on Presidential Powers Senior thesis Princeton University Department of Politics Archived from the original on January 27 2021 Retrieved June 30 2021 Princeton University Senior Theses Full Record Donald Henry Rumsfeld Archived from the original on October 13 2007 Shenon Philip December 30 2018 Frank Carlucci The Shrewdly Low Key Defense Secretary Politico Archived from the original on October 31 2020 Retrieved June 30 2021 Carlucci came to Washington and found himself in the company of old friends including former Princeton roommate Donald Rumsfeld Ford s White House chief of staff and later his defense secretary Mills Curt June 30 2021 Donald Rumsfeld Nixon Republican Turned Iraq War Salesman Dead At 88 The American Conservative Archived from the original on July 2 2021 Retrieved July 5 2021 a b Rumsfeld revealed Secretary s Navy career spanned 35 years Air Force Times Archived from the original on July 22 2012 a b DefenseLink s Rumsfeld Biography Archived from the original on July 7 2006 RUMSFELD Donald Henry Biographical Directory of the United States Congress April 22 2007 Archived from the original on April 25 2007 Donald Rumsfeld Associated Press Archived from the original on May 16 2007 Retrieved April 22 2007 Donald Rumsfeld White House Archived from the original on June 1 2008 Retrieved April 22 2007 Donald Rumsfeld White House November 3 1975 Archived from the original on July 15 2007 Retrieved April 22 2007 Freedom of Information Act at 40 National Security Archive July 4 2006 Archived from the original on July 4 2006 a b c d Rumsfeld Donald 2011 Known and unknown a memoir New York Sentinel ISBN 978 1 59523 067 6 OCLC 650210649 Archived from the original on June 30 2021 Retrieved March 2 2021 Secretary of Defense Donald H Rumsfeld speaking at Tribute to Milton Friedman transcript United States Department of Defense Archived from the original on August 24 2006 Free to Choose Tyranny of Control Free to Choose Media Archived from the original on May 6 2013 House February 10 1964 PDF Congressional Record U S Government Printing Office 110 2 2804 2805 Retrieved February 27 2022 House July 2 1964 PDF Congressional Record U S Government Printing Office 110 12 15897 Retrieved February 27 2022 House August 16 1967 PDF Congressional Record U S Government Printing Office 113 17 22778 Retrieved February 27 2022 House April 10 1968 PDF Congressional Record U S Government Printing Office 114 8 9621 Retrieved February 27 2022 House July 9 1965 PDF Congressional Record U S Government Printing Office 111 12 16285 16286 Retrieved February 27 2022 House August 3 1965 PDF Congressional Record U S Government Printing Office 111 14 19201 Retrieved February 27 2022 a b Mann James November 1 2003 Close Up Young Rumsfeld The Atlantic Archived from the original on July 2 2021 Retrieved July 4 2021 Two Republican governors had turned down Nixon s invitations to head the Office of Economic Opportunity an agency established during the Johnson Administration to run new programs aimed at eliminating poverty Nixon offered the job to Rumsfeld who had voted in Congress against many of those programs Before taking the job Rumsfeld bargained hard At a meeting with Nixon in Key Biscayne he won assurances that he would be named not only head of the anti poverty agency but also an assistant to the President with Cabinet level status and an office in the White House a b c d e f Rumsfeld Donald 2011 Known and Unknown A Memoir Sentinel ISBN 978 1 59523 067 6 The Administration The New OEO Fan Time May 2 1969 ISSN 0040 781X Archived from the original on July 5 2021 Retrieved July 4 2021 Rumsfeld had refused an administration post at first but changed his mind when Nixon sweetened the OEO job with status and responsibility Frank Carlucci Carlyle Chairman Who Led Pentagon Dies at 87 Bloomberg com Bloomberg June 4 2018 Archived from the original on June 4 2018 Retrieved June 4 2018 Richard B Cheney 46th Vice President 2001 2009 www senate gov U S Senate Archived from the original on March 19 2021 Retrieved July 4 2021 the inauguration of Richard Nixon as president in 1969 set in motion a chain of events that would propel Cheney from a congressional fellow to White House chief of staff in seven fast years His rapid ascent began when Nixon appointed Rumsfeld to head the Office of Economic Opportunity OEO Cheney sent Rumsfeld an unsolicited memo suggesting ways to handle his confirmation hearings which prompted Rumsfeld to hire him O Gara Geoffrey October 31 2015 Wyoming to the White House Dick Cheney s Life in Politics WyoHistory org The Wyoming State Historical Society Archived from the original on April 11 2021 Retrieved July 4 2021 It was during Rumsfeld s first stint in the executive branch under Nixon that he signed up Cheney as his chief lieutenant This incongruously put two conservative Republicans in charge first of an anti poverty program originated during President Lyndon Johnson s Great Society the OEO and Sullivan Patricia December 18 2005 Investigative Columnist Jack Anderson Dies The Washington Post Archived from the original on November 12 2020 Retrieved July 4 2021 Mr Anderson was considered significantly more accurate than his predecessor although he was not error free He admitted he wrongly charged Donald H Rumsfeld with lavishly decorating his office while cutting expenses on programs of the Office of Economic Opportunity Kurtz Howard February 3 2011 Rumsfeld Book Known and Unknown Excerpts The Daily Beast Archived from the original on July 6 2021 Retrieved July 5 2021 Nixon White House conversation 464 12 Archived from the original on January 24 2009 Andrew Cockburn 2007 Rumsfeld His Rise Fall and Catastrophic Legacy Simon and Schuster p 20 Craig Unger 2007 The Fall of the House of Bush The Untold Story of how a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch Started the Iraq War and Still Imperils America s Future Simon and Schuster p 50 Craig Unger 2008 American Armageddon How the Delusions of the Neoconservatives and the Christian Right Triggered the Descent of America and Still Imperil Our Future Simon and Schuster p 50 Naomi Klein 2007 The Shock Doctrine The Rise of Disaster Capitalism Metropolitan Books Henry Holt Savage Charlie 2007 Takeover The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy ISBN 9780316019613 Archived from the original on July 6 2021 Retrieved July 6 2021 Donald H Rumsfeld Office of the Secretary of Defense Archived from the original on May 29 2019 Retrieved July 2 2021 The Nation Scenario of the Shake Up Time Vol 106 no 20 New York Time November 17 1975 Retrieved July 5 2017 Woodward Bob 2002 Bush at War Simon and Schuster pp 21 22 ISBN 978 0 7432 4461 9 rumsfeld ford bush cia director Rumsfeld Was Nation U S Department of Defense Retrieved March 25 2022 a b Sciolino Elaine Schmitt Eric January 8 2001 Defense Choice Made a Name As an Infighter The New York Times Archived from 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Resume CBS News Archived from the original on January 22 2021 Retrieved July 3 2021 McFadden Robert D June 30 2021 Donald H Rumsfeld Defense Secretary During Iraq War Is Dead at 88 The New York Times Archived from the original on June 30 2021 Retrieved July 5 2021 Donald H Rumsfeld Named Chairman of Gilead Sciences Press release Gilead Sciences January 3 1997 Archived from the original on June 19 2007 Oseltamivir Phosphate Monograph for Professionals The American Society of Health System Pharmacists Archived from the original on May 13 2016 Retrieved January 8 2017 Schmit Julie November 17 2005 Roche Gilead Sciences resolve Tamiflu conflict USA Today Archived from the original on November 4 2012 Retrieved May 1 2010 Schwartz Nelson D October 31 2005 Rumsfeld s growing stake in Tamiflu CNNMoney Archived from the original on March 14 2010 Retrieved May 1 2010 MAJOR NEWS IN SUMMARY TURKISH CYPRIOTS MAKE THE BREAK The New York Times November 20 1983 Archived from the original on May 24 2015 Retrieved July 4 2021 President Reagan sent his new Middle East envoy Donald Rumsfeld to confer with the Turks and prepared to receive President Spyros Kyprianou of Cyprus tomorrow Dobbs Michael December 30 2002 U S Had Key Role in Iraq Buildup The Washington Post Retrieved May 26 2022 Rumsfeld Donald et al July 15 1998 Report of the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States Federation of American Scientists Archived from the original on May 22 2020 Retrieved May 29 2019 Bush Selects Rumsfeld for Another Term as Secretary of Defense Both Men Stress Importance of Missile Defense System www defense aerospace com Archived from the original on January 25 2021 Retrieved July 30 2020 Rummy s North Korea Connection What did Donald Rumsfeld know about ABB s deal to build nuclear reactors there And why won t he talk about it Fortune May 12 2003 p 75 Rumsfeld Was on ABB Board archive globalpolicy org Retrieved November 2 2022 How Rumsfeld Built Pyongyang Its Nukes Rolling Stone October 11 2006 Retrieved November 2 2022 Tally on Vice President The New York Times September 20 1976 p 13 ProQuest 122616318 Retrieved September 11 2022 Milton Raleigh E 1980 Official Report of the Proceedings of the Thirty Second Republican National Convention Republican National Committee pp 492 494 Oreskes Michael November 21 1988 Campaign s Over No It Just Started The New York Times pp B17 Retrieved September 11 2022 AmericaLive November 2 2010 Donald Rumsfeld Biography iReport CNN Archived from the original on May 28 2015 Retrieved April 17 2017 George W Bush 2010 pp 83 84 Moniz Dave December 9 2002 Rumsfeld s abrasive style sparks conflict USA Today Archived from the original on January 27 2012 Retrieved November 17 2011 a b c d e Initial Planning and Execution in Afghanistan and Iraq By Joseph J Collins PDF National Defense University Press Archived PDF from the original on July 4 2020 Retrieved July 4 2020 a b Wright Robert January 20 2002 Rumsfeld s 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2013 Special forces and horses November 1 2006 Archived from the original on February 24 2021 Retrieved February 8 2016 Zimmerman Dwight Jon September 16 2011 21st Century Horse Soldiers Special Operations Forces and Operation Enduring Freedom Archived from the original on February 16 2021 Retrieved September 11 2015 a b Rumsfeld and Myers Briefing on Enduring Freedom United States Department of Defense October 7 2001 Archived from the original on July 4 2020 Retrieved July 4 2020 Text Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld The Washington Post October 29 2001 Archived from the original on November 4 2002 Retrieved July 4 2020 a b c U S Thinks Bomb Killed Bin Laden s Top Aide Orlando Sentinel November 17 2001 Archived from the original on October 22 2020 Retrieved July 4 2020 Text Pentagon Briefing with Secretary Rumsfeld The Washington Post November 19 2001 Archived from the original on December 22 2013 Retrieved July 4 2020 a b DoD News Briefing Secretary Rumsfeld November 19 2001 Archived 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the original on October 17 2007 Rumsfeld to personally sign all condolence letters Stars and Stripes December 17 2004 Archived from the original on October 21 2017 Retrieved October 20 2017 Rumsfeld the best CNN May 9 2004 Archived from the original on May 11 2004 Bush George W 2010 p 88 Diamond John June 23 2004 Rumsfeld OK d harsh treatment USA Today Archived from the original on April 1 2010 Retrieved May 1 2010 Bush Should Face Prosecution Says UN Representative Deutsche Welle January 21 2009 Archived from the original on June 1 2008 Goodman Amy April 25 2005 Getting Away with Torture Human Rights Watch Calls for Accountability into U S Abuse of Detainees Democracy Now Archived from the original on May 29 2019 Retrieved May 29 2019 Smeulers Alette van Niekirk Sander 2009 Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror A case against Donald Rumsfeld PDF Crime Law and Social Change 51 3 4 327 349 doi 10 1007 s10611 008 9160 2 S2CID 145710956 SSRN 2388266 Archived PDF from the original on June 30 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the American Academy of Achievement www achievement org American Academy of Achievement Archived from the original on December 15 2016 Retrieved November 20 2020 3 Marshall Medal Recipients Hold Key Positions Association of the United States Army March 1 2001 Archived from the original on March 16 2014 Biography Donald H Rumsfeld Secretary of Defense Archived from the original on May 15 2006 Retrieved May 29 2019 Wendell Bryan July 2 2021 Donald Rumsfeld Distinguished Eagle Scout and former secretary of defense dies at 88 Bryan on Scouting Archived from the original on July 6 2021 Retrieved July 6 2021 Berry gets worst actress Razzie BBC News February 2 2005 Archived from the original on March 8 2016 Retrieved January 27 2016 Michael Mello Rumsfeld accepts award at Nixon library The Orange County Register Archived from the original on December 10 2010 Presidenti Nishani dekoron zotin Donald Rumsfeld me Dekoraten e Flamurit Kombetar in Albanian Archived from the original on June 24 2013 Retrieved November 11 2013 Helene C Stikkel November 18 2004 People Secretary of Defense United States Department of Defense Archived from the original on November 10 2013 Retrieved February 15 2013 2015 Fall Conferment of Decoration The Honorable Donald Rumsfeld November 16 2015 Postanowienie Prezydenta Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej z dnia 8 lipca 2005 r o nadaniu orderu isap sejm gov pl Archived from the original on June 30 2021 Retrieved June 30 2021 Office of the President ROC Taiwan english president gov tw Archived from the original on October 12 2020 Retrieved June 30 2021 BBC News November 8 2006 Profile Donald Rumsfeld Archived November 18 2018 at the Wayback Machine Packer George July 1 2021 How Rumsfeld Deserves to Be Remembered The Atlantic Retrieved July 6 2021 Graham Bradley June 27 2017 By His Own Rules The Ambitions Successes and Ultimate Failures of Donald Rumsfeld ISBN 9781586486501 Retrieved February 20 2022 The Defense Secretary We Have William Kristol December 15 2004 Strategic imperatives in East Asia Donald Rumsfeld trove nla gov au Trove Archived from the original on July 6 2021 Retrieved July 6 2021 General and cited sources EditBradley Graham 2009 By His Own Rules The Ambitions Successes and Ultimate Failures of Donald Rumsfeld PublicAffairs ISBN 978 1 58648 421 7 Rowan Scarborough 2004 Rumsfeld s War The Untold Story of America s Anti Terrorist Commander Regnery Publishing ISBN 978 0 89526 069 7 Midge Decter Rumsfeld A Personal Portrait Regan Books 2003 ISBN 0 06 056091 6 Jeffrey A Krames 2002 The Rumsfeld Way The Leadership Wisdom of a Battle Hardened Maverick McGraw Hill ISBN 978 0 07 140641 3 Hoehn Andrew R Albert A Robbert Margaret C Harrell 2011 Succession management for senior military positions the Rumsfeld model for Secretary of Defense involvement Santa Monica CA RAND ISBN 978 0 8330 5228 5 Andrew Cockburn 2007 Rumsfeld His Rise Fall and Catastrophic Legacy Scribners ISBN 978 1 4165 3574 4 Dale R Herspring 2008 Rumsfeld s Wars The Arrogance of Power University Press of Kansas ISBN 978 0 7006 1587 2 George W Bush 2010 Decision Points Crown ISBN 978 0 307 59061 9 External links EditDonald Rumsfeld at Wikipedia s sister projects Media from Commons News from Wikinews Quotations from Wikiquote Texts from Wikisource Data from Wikidata Works Official website U S Department of Defense Speeches Archived June 9 2016 at the Wayback Machine Rumsfeld s Rules advice on government business and life January 29 2001 Donald Rumsfeld s Project Syndicate op eds Churchill Solitaire an iOS and Android adaptation of Churchill s variant of SolitaireGovernment service White House Biography Department of Defense Biography United States Congress Donald Rumsfeld id r000508 Biographical Directory of the United States Congress Appearances on C SPAN Donald Rumsfeld collected news and commentary at Al Jazeera English Donald Rumsfeld collected news and commentary at The Guardian Donald Rumsfeld collected news and commentary at The Jerusalem Post Donald H Rumsfeld collected news and commentary at The New York Times Senate Armed Services Committee Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U S Custody United States Senate Committee on Armed Services 2008Documentary videos The short film A View from the White House Part I 1975 is available for free download at the Internet Archive The short film A View from the White House Part II 1975 is available for free download at the Internet Archive The short film A Single Six Year Term for President 1987 is available for free download at the Internet Archive The short film Money television and Politics 1988 is available for free download at the Internet Archive The short film The Private Lives of Public Servants 1989 is available for free download at the Internet Archive Rumsfeld s War PBS Frontline October 2004 The Unknown Known Interview with Rumsfeld by Academy Award winning documentarian Errol Morris December 2013 Video clip of Rumsfeld as special U S envoy to Middle East meeting HusseinArticles profiling Rumsfeld The Life and Times of Donald Rumsfeld PBS Washington Post Rumsfeld s War archives 2001 04 Rumsfeld revealed Vivienne Heines Air Force Times March 3 2003 Close Up Young Rumsfeld James Mann The Atlantic November 2003 The Donald Rumsfeld Library of Quotations BBC Radio 4 Biographer Andrew Cockburn on Rumsfeld at London Frontline Club May 2007 The Don A Look at Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Carol Felsenthal Chicago magazine Lunch with the FT Donald Rumsfeld by Gideon Rachman Financial Times February 11 2011U S House of RepresentativesPreceded byMarguerite Church Member of the U S House of Representativesfrom Illinois s 13th congressional district1963 1969 Succeeded byPhil CranePolitical officesPreceded byBertrand Harding Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity1969 1970 Succeeded byFrank CarlucciPreceded byBryce Harlow Counselor to the President1970 1971 Served alongside Robert Finch Succeeded byRobert FinchPreceded byPat MoynihanPreceded byAlexander Haig White House Chief of Staff1974 1975 Succeeded byDick CheneyPreceded byJames Schlesinger United States Secretary of Defense1975 1977 Succeeded byHarold BrownPreceded byBill Cohen United States Secretary of Defense2001 2006 Succeeded byBob GatesDiplomatic postsPreceded byDavid Kennedy United States Ambassador to NATO1973 1974 Succeeded byDavid Bruce img, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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