"Let me put up this next memo." "You want me to read this?" "Yes, please." ""February 4, 2004." "Subject:" "What you know." "There are known knowns." "There are known unknowns." "There are unknown unknowns." "But there are also unknown knowns." "That is to say, things that you think you know that it turns out you did not."" "I wonder if in the future public figures will write as many memos as I did." "I doubt it." "I must have gotten in the habit of dictating things that were important." "Not a diary." "Not a journal." "They're almost all working documents." "Now, they've become historical documents in retrospect, but at the time, they all had a purpose." "In the later years of my using the dictaphone, why, they were called snowflakes, because they were on white paper." "What would you say the total number of memos might be?" "They said I dictated 20,000 just in the last six years at the Pentagon." "There have to be millions." ""July 27, 2001."" "A memo to Condoleezza Rice concerning Iraq." ""We have discussed Iraq on a number of occasions." "The discussions have been inconclusive." "Sanctions are being limited in a way that cannot weaken Saddam Hussein." "We can publicly acknowledge that the sanctions don't work over extended periods and stop the pretense of having a policy that is keeping Saddam 'in the box' when we know he has crawled a good distance out of the box." "Within a few years, the U.S. will undoubtedly have to confront a Saddam armed with nuclear weapons." "If Saddam's regime were oustered, we would have a much-improved position in the region and elsewhere."" "Why the obsession with Iraq and Saddam?" "Well, you love that word, "obsession."" "I can see the glow in your face when you say it." "Well, I'm an obsessive person." "Are you?" "I'm not." "I'm-- I'm cool." "I'm measured." "If you look at the range of my memos, there might be 1/10 of 1% about Iraq." "The reason I was concerned about Iraq is 'cause four-star generals would come to me and say," ""Mr. secretary, we have a problem." "Our orders are to fly over the northern part of Iraq and the Southern part of Iraq on a daily basis, with the Brits, and we are getting shot at." "At some moment-- could be tomorrow, could be next month, could be next year-- one of our planes is gonna be shot down and our pilots and crews are gonna be killed or they're gonna be captured."" "The question will be," ""what in the world were we flying those flights for?" "What was the cost-benefit ratio?" "What was our country gaining?"" "So you sit down and you say," ""I think I'm gonna see if I can get the president's attention." "Remind him that our planes are being shot at, remind him that we don't have a fresh policy for Iraq, and remind him that we've got a whole range of options."" "Not an obsession." "A very measured, nuanced approach," "I think." "In my confirmation hearing when I was nominated to be secretary of defense, the best question I was asked was," ""what do you worry about when you go to bed at night?"" "And my answer was, in effect," ""intelligence." "The danger that we can be surprised because of a failure of imagining what might happen in the world."" "There are known knowns, the things we know we know." "There are known unknowns, the things we know we don't know." "There are also that third category of unknown unknowns, the things we don't know we don't know." "And you can only know more about those things by imagining what they might be." "Pearl harbor was a failure of imagination." "We didn't know we didn't know that they could do what they did the way they did it." "We had people working on breaking codes." "We had people thinking through," ""what are the kinds of things they might do?"" "And lo and behold, the carriers were able to, on a Sunday morning, get very close to Hawaii, launch their planes, and impose enormous destruction." "Was it failure of imagination or failure to look at the intelligence that was available?" "They had thought through a great many more obvious possibilities." "People were chasing the wrong rabbit." "That one possibility was not something that they had imagined was likely." ""July 23, 2001." "Subject:" "'Pearl harbor post-mortem.' in some future hearing," "I am going to say that I do not want to be sitting before this panel in a modern-day version of a pearl harbor post-mortem:" "Who didn't do what, when, where, and why." "None of us would want to have to be back here going through that agony."" "A month or so before September 11, 2001, it would be wrong to think that someone who wrote it-- namely me, was prescient." "I wasn't." "I simply had read enough history that I worried." "American 11, climb, maintain flight level 350." "American 11, climb, maintain flight level 350." "American 11, Boston." "The American on the frequency, how do you hear me?" "American 11, if you hear Boston center re-contact Boston center on 127.82." "That's American 11, 127.82." "My military assistant, admiral Ed Giambastiani, came in and said," ""a plane has hit the world trade center."" "It was assumed to be an accident." "And I went into my office from the conference room, and admiral Giambastiani said, "another plane has hit the other world trade center tower."" "And of course, at that point, it wasn't an accident;" "It was an attack." "Within minutes, I felt the Pentagon shake." "That's how our day began on September 11th." "They had hit the center of economic power in New York, and they then had hit the center of military power at the Pentagon." "You need to find out what had happened." "What was it?" "I got up and went down the hall, and-- on my floor, until the smoke was so bad" "I had to get outside." "Then I went downstairs and outside and around the corner, and here were pieces of that American airlines airplane just spread all over the apron, all over the grass." "Flames and smoke, people being brought out of the building who were injured and burned and wounded." "The first responders really hadn't arrived yet." "There were very few people there." "How do you think that they got away with 9/11?" "It seems amazing in retrospect." "Everything seems amazing in retrospect." "Pearl harbor seems amazing in retrospect." "It's a failure of imagination." "It's not as though you aren't aware of possibilities, but you tend to favor some possibilities more than others." "And it's enormously important to have priorities." "What are you gonna worry about?" "What is it you want to do?" "What are you gonna be prepared for?" "And you have to pick and choose." "Well, to the extent you pick and choose and you're wrong the penalty can be enormous." ""September 30, 2001."" "Memorandum." "Title: "Strategic thoughts."" ""The U.S. strategic theme should be aiding local peoples to rid themselves of terrorists and to free themselves of regimes that support terrorism." "The regimes of such states should see that it will be fatal to host terrorists who attack the United States." "The United States government should envision a goal along these lines." "New regimes in Afghanistan and another key state or two that supports terrorism." "Syria out of Lebanon." "Dismantlement or destruction of weapons of mass destruction capabilities." "If the war does not significantly change the world's political map, the U.S. will not achieve its aim."" "On my orders, the United States military has begun strikes against Al-Qaeda terrorist training camps and military installations of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan." "In relatively short order, a matter of weeks," "Kabul was occupied, the Taliban was defeated and run out of the country in large measure, and a lot of Al-Qaeda were killed." "Osama Bin Laden escaped into Pakistan eventually." "The target of the largest manhunt in history still eludes capture." "Cave by cave, for any sign of Osama Bin Laden, dead or alive." "The high probability that Osama Bin Laden is still alive." "With Afghanistan's porous borders, it's possible Bin Laden has already slipped out of the country." "Osama gets away, and a confusion sets in." "People began to think that Saddam was connected with Al-Qaeda and with 9/11." "Oh, I don't think so." "It was very clear that the direct planning for 9/11 was done by Osama Bin Laden's people," "Al-Qaeda, and in Afghanistan." "I don't think the American people were confused about that." "In 2003, in a Washington Post poll, 69% said they believe it is likely the Iraqi leader was personally involved in the attacks carried out by Al-Qaeda." "I don't remember anyone in the bush administration saying anything like that, nor do I recall anyone believing that." "Mr. secretary, today in a broadcast interview was" "Saddam Hussein said, "there is only one truth." "Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction whatsoever."" "And he went on to say," ""I would like to tell you directly we have no relationship with Al-Qaeda."" "And Abraham Lincoln was short." "Would you care to respond directly to what Saddam Hussein has said today?" "I-- how does one respond to that?" "It's just a continuous pattern." "This is a case of the local liar coming up again and people repeating what he said and forgetting to say that he never-- almost never-- rarely tells the truth." "There are two sides to the coin." "One is," ""belief in the inevitability of conflict can become one of its main causes."" "That is a truth." "The other side of the coin, which is also true, is," ""if you wish for peace, prepare for war."" "But if both were true, well, you can use that to justify anything." "There's a similar thing in Rumsfeld's rules where I say," ""all generalizations are false, including this one."" "There it is." "The president did harden his stand towards-- the United States is on the road to war." "Administration officials say the effort to pressure Iraq has moved into a final phase." "All the military pieces should be in place to go to war with Iraq." "On January 11, 2003, the vice president's office called and requested that I come over to meet with him and the Saudi ambassador, prince Bandar." "It was unusual." "I mean, I" "I wasn't often in the vice president's office." "We sat down." "Dick proceeded to tell Bandar that the president was going to invade Iraq and change the regime in Iraq." "That was the first time that I'd heard anything that sounded truly definitive." "What was the Saudi ambassador's reaction to this?" "He wanted reassurance that when it was all over," "Saddam Hussein would be gone." "They needed to know that the president was serious." "That is why, I'm sure, the vice president said it the way he said it." "Is it at all strange that you would hear about it in this way?" "No." "No, I don't think so." "If the purpose of the war is to get rid of Saddam Hussein, why can't they just assassinate him?" "Why do you have to invade his country?" "Who's "they?"" "Us." "You said, "they."" "You didn't say, "we."" "Well, "we."" "I will rephrase it." "Why do we have to do that?" "We don't assassinate leaders of other countries." "Well, Dora Farms, we were doing our best." "That was an act of war." "The beginning of the war, even before it started," "George tenet came to see me in my office at the Pentagon." "He said, "we think we know where Saddam Hussein is."" "I said, "terrific," and I called the White House and said to the president, "we're coming over."" "We met in his office." "George tenet would go from the oval office in to a side office and talk to the people in the central intelligence agency who were talking to the agents on the ground in Iraq." "The word came back that somebody had identified Saddam Hussein as being at Dora Farms." "George tenet was convinced that his people on the ground were giving him the straight dope." "They were certain he was there." "We'd put on alert aircraft." "The aircraft took off and went to that location." "The president went around the room asking," ""should we do this or not?"" "Everyone in the room, as I recall, agreed it was sufficiently solid intelligence, sufficient to do it." "We just were so hopeful that by killing Saddam Hussein, we could end the need for a war, that in fact, by that act, you would change the regime." "The planes went in, and they struck the farm killed some people." "They came out with a stretcher with a body." "People there on the ground asserted that it was Saddam Hussein." "They think they killed him." "And it turned out, it was not." "What a wonderful thing it would have been if he could have been killed." "The war would have been avoided." "It's possible." "May not have been, but it's possible." "You wonder why they didn't respond to all the efforts that were made to avoid that war." "How could they be that mixed up in what the inevitable next steps would be?" "Why they wouldn't sit down and have an agonizing reappraisal, and it come to some logical conclusion?" "I was elected to congress." "I was 30 years old." "It was during the Vietnam war and the civil rights era." "There were big issues before us." "I would come back sometimes knowing I didn't know if I voted right, that there are arguments here and there were arguments there." ""Ugh, I hope I voted the right way." "Why did I do what I did?"" "And I'd sit down and dictate that." "After almost every vote, every amendment," "I would go back with my little dictaphone." "I would dictate a note and say," ""here was the vote." "The ayes were this." "The nays were that." "Here were the amendments, and here's what I did and why I did it."" "And then when I went in the executive branch," "I would want to clarify my own thinking, so I would try to put it down on paper and edit it, and I'd go through three, four, five drafts, getting it the way I really wanted it." "I would do it for communications to my staff." "I wanted them to know what I was thinking." "Did you imagine that they would produce this vast archive?" "Oh, it never crossed my mind." "I never knew what I was gonna do next." "The only thing I've ever volunteered for in my life-- one was to go in the Navy, and the other was to run for congress." "The other was to get married." "You look at being married to the same woman all those decades-- when you're 20, 21, 22, what did you know?" "Both of us were young and unformed." "How in the world can you be that lucky?" "How did you propose?" "Imperfectly." "I was getting ready to leave for Pensacola." "About 10:00 in the morning, I said to my folks," ""I'll be back." "I'm gonna go down and see Joyce."" "I asked her to marry me." "I didn't get down on my knees." "I didn't do anything fancy." "I didn't want to get married, but I sure as heck didn't want her to marry anyone else." "And I was correct." "It was a good decision." "It just hadn't been part of my plan." "Director of the office of economic opportunity was Rumsfeld's first job for Richard Nixon." "Later, when O.E.O. Seemed headed for extinction," "Mr. Nixon named him director of the cost of living council." "After friction developed between Rumsfeld and H.R. Haldeman," "Rumsfeld requested a change and was sent to Brussels as the U.S. ambassador to the north Atlantic treaty organization." "He got out just in time and survived Watergate with reputation intact." "A person who works that hard to become president had to believe that everything he did or thought would be useful to preserve." "He puts in place these recording devices, like other presidents had, and then he'd go about being himself, and sometimes he'd let his hair down and say things in ways that he might not have said" "had he remembered that each second of the day that it was being recorded." "All of us say things we shouldn't say, that on reflection, we wish we hadn't said." "I expect he just felt that on balance, everything was worth preserving because he was an historic figure." "Did presidents after Nixon make recordings in the White House?" "The only president I was close enough to to answer that question about was Gerald R. Ford, and I can assure you he did not." "My guess is that people tend not to fall in exactly the same potholes that their predecessors do." "More often than not, they make original mistakes." "We all do." "But I assume the presidency under extraordinary..." "Gerald Ford had announced, when he first took office, that he was not gonna have a chief of staff." "He was going to be the anti-Nixon, the anti-Haldeman, the anti-Ehrlichman." "He had said he was gonna have a coordinator or something like that." "And that's when I told him he'd have to find somebody else, because it wasn't gonna work, and I didn't want to be a party to it." "After a while, he agreed that I was right." "At the time, there were a number of people still being looked at by what was then called," ""the special prosecutor."" "This is really an extraordinary moment." "The White House is filled with lawyers and investigators." "That's exactly right." "It was September 29, 1974, in the morning that I dictated this memo on the subject of the safe in the chief of staff's office." ""I arrived at approximately 5:00 P.M." "I wanted to clean out the place so that I could move in, and I wanted to make sure that there was nothing in the place that I didn't want there, such as recording equipment, telephone bugs, and the like." "At approximately 5:15 P.M., bill Walker commented that there was a safe in the cupboard."" "This says, "to the left of the fireplace."" "If you're standing in the fireplace, it was to the left." "Actually, it was to the right if you faced the fireplace." "So here's a safe, and it's locked." "And I thought, "oh, my goodness." "I wonder what's in that safe?"" "I said to Dick Cheney, my assistant who was helping me," ""look, why don't we get the secret service, get 'em down here with people who can move the safe and open it or do whatever they have to do."" "And what happened to the safe in the end?" "The end for me was when I got it out of my office under a proper chain of evidence." "♪ I'm dreaming ♪" "♪ of a white Christmas ♪" "♪ just like the ones ♪" "♪ I used to know ♪" "♪ where the treetops glisten ♪" "♪ and children listen ♪" "They put the word out," ""stay tuned to armed forces radio." "When you hear it said that the temperature is rising to 105 degrees and you hear, 'I'm dreaming of a white Christmas,' you'll know the evacuation is ordered."" "The north Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces moved into Saigon directly towards the U.S. facilities." "The scenes of the helicopter lifting people off of the roof of the building were really heartbreaking, because you had really wonderful people who'd worked with our forces and knew that their circumstance when the Vietcong and north Vietnamese" "took over that country would be difficult, that they'd be killed or put in jail." "They kept lifting more and more out, and more kept coming." "They ended up landing so many helicopters on the carrier that they started shoving helicopters off so that they could get more helicopters on." "Were you with the president when all of this was going down?" "Yes, I was in the oval office with secretary Kissinger and the president and other close aides to the president." "It was a day anyone involved will never forget." "The inevitable ugly ending of an unsuccessful effort." "Do you think that there's a lesson to be taken from this?" "Well, one would hope that most things that happen in life prove to be lessons." "Some things work out." "Some things don't." "That didn't." "If that's a lesson-- yes, it's a lesson." "President Gerald Ford had given a talk to a labor group." "He went out the back, and we went into a freight elevator." "The doors went open, we walked out, and the top door came back down, and it hit Gerald Ford right across the forehead." "And he ended up with a cut about an inch and a half wide." "Of course, at that moment, Chevy chase and these people were talking about Ford bumping his head or stumbling." "So we went up in the room and the doctor started putting powder on it to see if he could calm it down so it didn't look like a neon sign." "It came time to leave." "He waved and shook hands." "Got out to the street corner..." "A shot rang out." "Sara Jane Moore was across the street, fired a bullet." "It went by his head, by the secret service guy's head, by my head." "A matter of inches from both of us." "We got in the car, pushed him down on the floor, and..." "Secret service man on top, I'm on top." "The car races out of the city not knowing what might be next." "Finally you hear this muffled thing from president Ford, and he says," ""come on, you guys." "Get off." "You're heavy."" "And so we sat up, went to the airplane, and left." "I used to tease him and say" "I hoped he appreciated fully how I handled his departure from the hotel in San Francisco." "No one ever noticed that he had the neon sign on his forehead." ""Mr. President, I care a great deal about you as a person and about your success." "I care deeply about the country and believe it is vitally important that you be re-elected." "The morale is low in the White House because of the organizational approach you have tolerated." "The job you need done cannot be done unless major changes take place."" "Dick Cheney and I both attached our resignations to the memo." "There wasn't anything in the memo" "I hadn't talked to him about four, five, six times." "I decided that putting it down in one place, deciding to resign, causing him to register how strongly we felt about it." "He ended up separating the positions of secretary of state and national security advisor, which Henry had held both of them." "And he made several other changes." "Put George Herbert Walker bush in the central intelligence agency." "He wanted to make a change at the Pentagon, asked me to become secretary of defense, then my deputy, Dick Cheney, to become chief of staff." "Of course, this becomes known as the Halloween massacre." "Oh." "I guess it is." "You know, a narrative gets built out there over a period of time." "Big personalities going at each other." "In fact, it's perfectly understandable." "They represent different institutions, and they have different perspectives." "But it gets written up in the media as though it's jealousies and personalities and that type of thing as opposed to different perspectives." "When Shakespeare wrote history, it was all character defects, jealousies, misunderstandings, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera." "In Shakespeare, it's the motivating force of history." "Maybe Shakespeare got it wrong." "Well, you know, it was a different time." "He was dealing with different issues." "Maybe he had it right." "Maybe it just was different later." "Nelson Rockefeller has taken himself out of consideration as a vice presidential candidate on president Ford's ticket next year." "Rockefeller has little choice in the matter." "Rumsfeld's calculated plan to pave his own way as a running mate for president Ford." "Donald Rumsfeld has been mentioned for months as a possible vice presidential running mate with president Ford." "...in congress think his new job as defense secretary is a means of putting Rumsfeld in the running for the vice presidency." "Donald Rumsfeld takes over the Pentagon but also keeps most of his personal influence with president Ford." "...the shake-up took place." "The consensus is that Rumsfeld again emerged the winner." "Rumsfeld's conservative influence at the White House will be carried on by 34-year-old Richard Cheney, who said in his office this afternoon, he'll be running things just like don did." "In November 1975..." "I became the youngest secretary of defense in history." "It's important, I suppose, to go back and set the background for this occasion." "Henry Kissinger had the job of fostering Detentes, a lessening of tension with the Soviet Union." "The more talk there was about Detentes and the more these negotiations went on and the more people sat around clinking champagne glasses with great big smiles, and the world saw all of that, the congress and the American people" "would not be in favor of increasing defense investment." "It was really fundamental differences of approach." "Weakness, historically, tends to prove to be provocative and create instabilities in wars and conflicts." "Strength on our part will contribute to peace and stability in the world." "I'm not saying with certainty that the Russians are coming." "I'm saying the trends are here." "I'm not saying the Russians are 10 feet tall." "I'm saying they used to be 5'3"." "They're now 5'9 1/2", and they're growing, and we're not." "To be brand-new in the department of defense with a presidential campaign going on, my task was to meet with members of the United States congress." "Small, intimate setting where I could take a classified briefing and show them the overhead photographs that were highly classified, that were top secret, let them see for themselves what the Soviet Union was doing." "I would get 6 or 8 or 10 of them and bring them down to the Roosevelt room, which is right across from the oval office in the west wing of the White House." "Not in the Pentagon;" "In the White House." "In the White House, absolutely." "If you have a meeting in the White House in the Roosevelt room, and the president stops by and says hello to 'em, it is much more memorable for them." "I had a major fraction of all the United States senators and all the members of the congress come in to those meetings, you know, night after night after night." "When you would show these photographs to people from satellites or from a u-2, people were amazed by them." "In addition, we prepared a unclassified series of charts." "One was on U.S./U.S.S.R. Military manpower." "Another one had U.S. and Soviet military investment..." "Intercontinental ballistic missile developments..." "Changes in strategic force levels..." "Warheads, megatonnage, estimated production rates." "No one statistic was determinative." "What was important is, what were the trend lines?" "Did it come as a surprise that Carter beat Ford in 1976?" "He started out way behind." "If it had gone on another week or two, he might very well have won." "The republican national convention begins here tomorrow, and most of the players are in place." "Everybody's playing the vice presidential guessing game." "One big question remains." "Who will be Reagan's vice presidential choice?" "The Republicans are floating some of the rumors in an effort to keep-- the list includes former ambassador George Bush, who gave Reagan his toughest primary battle, or the defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld." "The questions about Rumsfeld are whether his ties to republican big business are too close and whether he's too ambitious to fit in playing second fiddle to Reagan." "There is the picture of Donald Rumsfeld as Machiavelli, and that you managed" "George H.W. Bush into the CIA as a way of destroying his presidential ambitions." "It's utter nonsense." "He had to know the truth." "And why he would promote that idea-- he must have believed it for some reason." "I suppose it's kind of more fun for somebody to be able to say they were pushed, rather than they tripped." "Reagan was up a floor above." "I was with my wife, Joyce." "I had a man glued at my hip, ready to tell me if governor Reagan called and wanted me to be vice president." "The press was filled with this excitement about the possibility of president Reagan selecting Gerald R. Ford." "I was stunned at the thought." "It's like sticking four hands on the steering wheel." "You're gonna end up putting the truck in the ditch." "My phone rang." "It was governor Reagan." "He said, "don," "I want you to know that I've decided to have" "George Bush be my vice presidential nominee."" "I said, "fantastic." "I am so relieved that you decided not to have Gerald Ford."" "He said, "oh, no, don." "Jerry and I decided together that it wouldn't be a good idea."" "It seems to me that if that decision had gone a slightly different way, you would have been vice president and future president of the United States." "That's possible." "I was living in Illinois and was chief executive officer of a pharmaceutical company," "G.D. Searle and co." "In a barracks in Beirut, a truck loaded with explosives came racing through the gate, under the building." "Killed 241 Americans." "Shortly after, the secretary of state," "George Shultz, called and said that they wanted me to serve as special envoy for president Reagan to the Middle East." "...with our new representative." "So, don, good luck, and our hearts are with you." "Mr. President" "I began traveling in the region." "I would send cables back trying to report back on my observations." "I entitled one of them, back in November of 1983," ""the swamp."" ""I suspect we ought to lighten our hand in the Middle East." "We should move the framework away from the current situation where everyone is telling us everything is our fault and angry with us to a basis where they are seeking our help." "In the future, we should never use U.S. troops as a peacekeeping force." "We're too big a target." "Let the Fijians or New Zealanders do that." "And keep reminding ourselves that it is easier to get into something than it is to get out of it." "I promise you, you will never hear out of my mouth the phrase, 'the U.S. seeks a just and lasting peace in the Middle East.'" "there is little that is just, and the only things I've seen that are lasting are conflict, blackmail, and killing."" "We arrived at night, as I recall." "The building where Saddam Hussein had his office had sandbags all around it because Baghdad is so close to the Iranian border." "And they were at war with Iran, and they were being shelled from time to time." "We went into this building, got in an elevator, went up, got out of the elevator, and the three or four people I was with were walking along." "All of a sudden, an Iraqi cut me off and took me down a corridor, a dark corridor." "Oh, yeah, I don't know, 20 paces, 30 paces." "And then into a room." "And I was alone in the room, and I looked up, and here is this man in fatigues with a pistol on his hip." "And it turned out to be Tariq Aziz, the deputy prime minister and foreign minister." "It was hours that we were in there talking alone." "It looked like it had leather walls, padded walls, maybe Naugahyde or something." "We would have a meeting with Saddam Hussein the next morning, and the time was set." "And we went in, and there he was." "A brutal dictator in his military fatigues with his pistol at his hip." "It was just a preliminary step, and it became almost iconic my shaking hands with this brutal dictator who later became known as "the butcher of Baghdad."" "He postured constantly and was presenting himself as the great leader, which dictators apparently do." "They foster that, and have schoolkids praise them, make sure that their image is everywhere, whether in a photograph or a statue, and cause people to bow and kowtow." "And, you know, if you see your picture everywhere long enough, and if you see enough statues, pretty soon you might even begin to believe that." "He almost became a caricature of himself, by my standards, as an outsider not prone to worship idols." "He was living his image of himself, which was pretend." "There are those who suggest today that the United States is in decline, that, in fact, we should allow someone else to contribute to the stability in the world." "I happen to disagree with that, and I think that we need to provide leadership, and I think that leadership can make an enormous difference in what the world's gonna look like in the 1990s and the year 2000." "If you read the newspapers or watch television today, and you look at the polls, first they rank Gorbachev as the reason that these changes are occurring, and second, they gave Reagan some credit, which is ridiculous." "The credit belongs to Truman and Adenauer and to steadfastness over a period of 40 years." "The credit goes to the investments of billions of dollars over a long, sustained period of time by people who were carped at and criticized and said, "oh, my goodness, you're warmongers."" "It went to the concept of peace through strength." "And we need to understand how we got to where we are, because going forward, we're gonna have to make a judgment as to what role our country ought to play, and a passive role would be terribly dangerous." "But who do we want to lead-- provide leadership in the world?" "Somebody else?" "We're here today to swear in don Rumsfeld as secretary of defense and welcome him back to the public service." "We were colleagues in government for nearly six years, and here, quite simply, is a man who's been an executive, a statesman, and a human being of the first order." "I assume that Dick Cheney brought you into the bush administration." "I would assume that's the case." "I don't think George W. Bush's father recommended it." "Obviously, George W. Bush was his own man, made his own decisions." ""Subject:" "Chain of command."" "A memo to Condoleezza Rice." ""Because I've failed to get you and the N.S.C. Staff to stop giving tasks to combatant commanders and the joint staff," "I've drafted the attached memorandum." "I'd hoped it would not be necessary for me to do it this way, but since your last memo stated that we should work it out from our end," "I'm forced to do so." "You are making a mistake." "You're not in the chain of command." "Since you cannot seem to accept that fact, my only choices are to go to the president and ask him to tell you to stop or to tell anyone in the department of defense not to respond to you or the national security council staff." "I've decided to take the latter course." "If it fails, I'll have to go to the president." "One way or other, it will stop, while I am secretary of defense." "Thanks."" "Waging a high-profile war has thrust Donald Rumsfeld into the public eye." "Two months into the war against terror" "Rumsfeld, who has become the voice of the war." "80% public approval." "Give and take with the Pentagon press corps is now must-see television." "Greetings." "Good morning." "Good afternoon." "You know, something's neither good nor bad but thinking makes it so, I suppose." "Yes, you may ask that..." "But will I answer that?" "No." "I do not want the record to show that I even bothered to deny it, however." "So I've decided that I'm not gonna go asking for an unclassified piece of paper." "I don't need it." "You need it." "So you get told things every day that don't happen." "It doesn't seem to bother people." "But I'm working my way over to figuring out how I won't answer that." "We'll make this the last question." "Last question." "Mr. secretary, could I just ask one thing about Gitmo?" "Oh, no, no, I love that ending." "I'm--uh-- if you think I'm gonna mess that one up, you're wrong." "The U.S. and its Afghan allies clearly have the momentum in the battle for Tora Bora." "Secretary Rumsfeld admitted it is unclear when this fight will end." "The number of prisoners is climbing." "Two weeks ago, secretary Rumsfeld dismissed the idea of detaining large numbers of captured fighters." "Well, this week, he reversed himself, saying a large number would likely be taken into custody." ""January 19, 2002."" "The subject:" ""Status of Taliban and Al-Qaeda."" ""The United States has determined that Al-Qaeda and Taliban individuals under the control of the department of defense, are not entitled to prisoner of war status for purposes of the Geneva conventions of 1949."" "Don't you think that the decision on Geneva caused so much trouble?" "Oh, my goodness, it would have been so much easier if you could treat people, all of them, the same as prisoners of war." "Then you wouldn't have to interrogate anybody." "You could just house them someplace." "Now, would that have been a responsible thing for the president to do?" "No." "The president needed to know what was gonna happen next." "Every day, the intelligence reports said," ""this is a risk." "This is a risk." "Watch out for this." "Something could happen there."" "It was the responsibility of the president to try to prevent a future attack." "Tell you what I'm gonna do." "I am gonna stay here and answer as many detainee questions as need to be answered." "I don't know that I'll know the answers to all the questions, but I-- if I don't, we'll find them, because it seems to me it's time to tap down some of this hyperbole that we're finding." "Mr. secretary-- Mr. secretary" " Mr. secretary" " Mr. secretary." "Is John Walker being treated the same way" " as the other detainees?" " Yes." "Shackled, hooded in the transfer-- oh, my goodness." "Now, look." "Is he being treated like the other detainees, shackled, hooded, and what have you?" "Oh, well, let me say this about that." "When people are moved, they are restrained." "That is true in prisons across the globe." "Will any single prisoner be treated humanely?" "You bet." "When they are being moved from place to place, will they be restrained in a way so that they are less likely to be able to kill an American soldier?" "You bet." "Is it inhumane to do that?" "No." "Would it be stupid to do anything else?" "Yes." "Mr. secretary" "what about all these so-called "torture memos?"" "Well, there were, what, one or two or three." "I don't know the number, but there were not" ""all" of these so-called memos." "They were mischaracterized as torture memos, and they came, not out of the bush administration per se, but they came out of the U.S. department of justice, blessed by the Attorney General, the senior legal official of the United States of America," "having been nominated by a president and confirmed by the United States senate overwhelmingly." "Little different cast I just put on it than the one you did." "I'll chalk that one up." "Was the reaction unfair?" "Well, I've never read them." " Really?" " No." "I'm not a lawyer." "What would I know?" "I've never seen so much misinformation communicated about a place than was the case about Guantanamo bay, Cuba." "This prison was exceedingly well-run, yet the impression that's left is that it was a terrible place, and people were tortured, and people were abused." "Prisons aren't pretty places, but that prison is probably as well-run as any prison on the face of the earth." "If you go and ask somebody in a big audience," ""how many people do you think were waterboarded at Guantanamo?"" "And people stick their hands up, and someone will say," ""well, hundreds."" "The answer is, "nobody."" "Zero were waterboarded at Guantanamo." "The military never waterboarded anybody in an interrogation." "The CIA waterboarded, as I understand it, three people." "But it wasn't at Guantanamo, and it wasn't done by the United States department of defense." "Al Qahtani was never waterboarded?" "No." "Now, were there some things done that shouldn't have been done at Guantanamo?" "You bet." "When someone looked like they were a very high-value detainee, the department of defense didn't deal with them." "The central intelligence agency did, and properly so." "In the case of Qahtani, he was a high-value detainee, and for some reason, he wasn't transferred." "Someone junior in the chain of command decided that he was probably the 20th hijacker." "General hill wrote a memo." ""There are three categories of interrogation techniques that we would like you to consider for approval."" "How unusual were these techniques?" "Oh, they ran the gamut." "One of the techniques recommended was waterboarding, which I rejected." "Others would be, "yelling at the detainee, techniques of deception, where you'd use multiple interrogator-- interviewer may identify himself as a citizen of a foreign-- with a reputation for harsh treatment-- category II techniques" "stress positions, like standing, for a maximum of four hours." "Falsified documents or reports-- the use of isolation facility for up to 30 days." "Deprivation of light and auditory stimuli." "Hood placed over his head during transportation and questioning." "20 hour interrogations." "Removal of all comfort items, including religious items." "Removal of clothing." "Forced grooming, shaving of facial hair." "Detainee individual phobias, such fear of dogs, to induce stress." "Category III techniques." "Use of non-- physical contact such as grabbing and light pushing."" "I think that's all." "Good grief, that's a pile of stuff." "Jim Haynes, the general counsel, sent it to me with a cover memo." ""I recommend that you approve most of the things in category I, if not all, most of the things in category II, if not all, and one or two or three of the things in category III." "But disapprove the others."" "I remember one of the things required that he'd stand for three or four, five, six hours." "When I approved it, I wrote down that, you know," "I stand for eight or ten hours a day." "I forget what I said, but something like that." "Needless to say, I did not intend that my memo would then be sent back down the chain of command." "In the case of Qahtani, some of the things that were done to him were not approved." "And the interrogation plan involving the duration and the combination of the techniques was not proper." "Up came a concern expressed to the general counsel." ""We hear some of these things are being done to this fellow that aren't approved or aren't proper in the interrogation plan."" "And he came in and told me, and I immediately rescinded that memo." "Some weeks later, we reissued the enhanced interrogation techniques." "There was criticism from some of the military people in the chain that by suspending them for a period of weeks, we were putting at risk the American people." "How do you know when you're going too far?" "You can't know with certainty." "All the easy decisions are made down below." "When you say, "how can you know?"" "The answer is, "you can't."" "Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could see around corners, have our imaginations anticipate every conceivable thing that could happen and then, from that full array and spectrum, pick out the ones that will happen?" "Is there any evidence to indicate that Iraq has attempted to or is willing to supply terrorists with weapons of mass destruction?" "As we know, there are known knowns." "There are things we know we know." "We also know there are known unknowns." "That is to say, we know there's some things we do not know." "But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know." "We just want to know, are you aware of any evidence, because that would increase our level of belief from faith to something that would be..." " Yeah..." " Based on evidence." ""Subject:" "To discuss with P.,"" "meaning the president of the United States." ""The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."" "When you say, "the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence," what you're saying is that there is an absence of evidence about something, but you ought not to say that therefore that is proof" "that something doesn't exist." "It's an easy thing to go from the first part of that in the wrong direction and say," ""well, the absence of evidence means it isn't there."" "If an inspection team goes in now and finds nothing because perhaps Iraq is very good at hiding it or perhaps they have nothing-- but you all are of the belief that they have it-- if they find nothing, does it make your job more difficult" "in trying to assemble an international coalition to disarm him by other means?" "Goodness gracious, that is kind of like looking down the road for every conceivable pothole you can find and then driving into it." "I just don't-- I don't get up in the morning and ask myself that." "The-- we know they have weapons of mass destruction." "We know they have active programs." "There isn't any debate about it." "It was thought to be the best intelligence available." "How do you describe it when it turns out to be not accurate?" "Do you describe that as a failure of intelligence?" "I suppose some can, not unfairly, suggest that." "Saddam Hussein may have been fearful that he would be discovered as having those weapons, removed them or destroyed them, but not wanted to tell anybody that he'd done so." "He may have destroyed them, unwilling to admit it, fearful of being seen as weak." "Wouldn't it be strange if he had destroyed his W.M.D." "And got invaded anyway?" "Of course, I'm not suggesting that that's the case." "I honestly do not know what the case is." "All I know is that the intelligence community persuaded the president and secretary Powell." "He spent days preparing himself to make his presentation to the united nations." "And he spent years trying to explain why he had done it." "It's a short sentence." "The reason he presented it was 'cause he believed it." ""October 15, 2001." "Subject:" "Definition." "Please give me a good definition for terrorism and some elaboration as to what it is and what it isn't."" ""December 28, 2001." "Subject:" "Adopting common terminology." "I suggest we use the following terms." "'Afghan Taliban':" "Afghan officials and fighters of the former regime."" ""October 31, 2002." "Subject:" "Definition of victory." "Where is that definition of victory?"" ""January 6, 2003." "Subject:" "Terminology." "I want to make a list of things" "I've done at the Pentagon, like getting rid of words." "National missile defense, requirements, readiness-- ready for what?"" ""October 1, 2003." "Subject:" "Please get me the Oxford dictionary definition of 'several' and type it up for me." "Thanks."" ""May 14, 2004." "Definition." "Please give me the dictionary definition of 'scapegoat.' thanks."" "And where did this term "shock and awe" come from?" "I don't know." "Apparently, general Franks read it." "He used it." "It became part of a press discussion." "But the idea of shock and awe?" "I've told you all I know about that phrase." "I picked up a newspaper today, and I couldn't believe it." "I read eight headlines that talked about chaos, violence, unrest." "And it just was, "Henny Penny, the sky is falling."" "I've never seen anything like it." "And here is a country that's being liberated." "Here are people who are going from being repressed and held under the thumb of a vicious dictator, and they're free, and all this newspaper could do, with 8 or 10 headlines-- they showed a man bleeding," "a civilian who they claimed we had shot." "One thing after another, it's just unbelievable how people can take that away from what is happening in that country." "Stuff happens." "But in terms of what's going on in that country, it is a fundamental misunderstanding to see those images over and over and over again of some boy walking out with a vase, and saying, "oh, my goodness." "You didn't have a plan."" "That's nonsense." "They know what they're doing, and they're doing a terrific job." "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 gonna happen here." "Mr. secretary" "this was another violent day in the streets of Baghdad." "One of Washington's nightmares came true today." "The bush administration is admitting it wasn't fully prepared for the huge task of governing post-war Iraq." "Now troops patrol these streets knowing that to many, they are not liberators, but occupiers." "It's a situation the Pentagon admits it failed to anticipate." "The Pentagon is scoffing at suggestions that an organized guerrilla resistance is forming." ""July 23, 2003."" "To general John Abizaid." ""Subject:" "Definitions." "Attached are the definitions of 'guerilla warfare,' 'insurgency,' and 'unconventional warfare.'" "they came from the Pentagon dictionary." "Thanks."" "It seemed to me that there are ways you can talk about what the enemy's doing that help the enemy unintentionally and ways you can talk about what the enemy's doing that harm the enemy, that make his task less legitimate," "more difficult." "What you're seeing is" "Rumsfeld floundering around, trying to figure out, what do all those words mean?" "What do other people think they mean?" "What are the best ones to use that will benefit the United States of America?" "One of you suggested I go to the dictionary." "I didn't ask this question." "Yes, but he would have." "I have since gone to the dictionary, and I have looked up several things, one of which I can't immediately recapture, but one was "guerrilla war."" "Another was "insurgency."" "Another was "unconventional war."" "Pardon me?" ""Quagmire"?" "No, that's someone else's business." "Quagmire's the-- I don't do quagmires." "As I looked at the dictionary," "I'm not uncomfortable with "unconventional,"" "because it is not an army, and it is not a Navy, and it is not an air force." "But even there, the dictionary-- the Pentagon dictionary" "I haven't looked in a regular dictionary." "The Pentagon dictionary does not even land that one perfectly on what's taking place." "The bush administration has been on a stepped-up P.R. Campaign to stop the erosion of support at home for the dangerous mission in Iraq." "Today, an unprecedented series of bombings left a trail of death and devastation." "The concern that Iraq's reconstruction is, in fact, falling well short of expectations." "Today in Fallujah, Iraqi guerrillas used a roadside bomb to bring an American patrol to" "Briggs accused the Rumsfeld team of being under-prepared for post-war conditions on the ground and unwilling to share decision-making with other government agencies." "Acknowledgement that long-simmering tensions over Iraq and its aftermath, particularly between the departments of state and defense, have now reached full boil." "October of 2003." "I became worried that we were having trouble measuring progress, and I wrote a memo called "global war on terror."" ""Are we winning or losing the global war on terror?" "Is D.O.D. Changing fast enough to deal with the new 21st-century security environment?" "Are the changes we have and are making too modest and incremental?" "My impression is that we have not yet made truly bold moves, although we have made many sensible, logical moves in the right direction."" ""But are they enough," I asked." ""Today we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror." "Are we killing or deterring more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting and deploying against us?" "It's pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog."" "It was Christmastime." "I can recall going up to the secure phone closet." "It's in the second floor of our house, not too far from my bedroom." "What was in there was a noise system that sounded like an ocean wave." "They had scooped up some people, low-level people, who might have some reason to know where he might be." "He'd been moving around the country every day, sleeping a different place, moving around in taxicabs." "Also moving around were some body doubles, people who looked exactly like Saddam Hussein, indeed, had the same distinguishing marks on their bodies." "Some low-level individual said that he believed he knew where Saddam Hussein was." "They inspected this farm out in the middle of nowhere." "There was a trapdoor." "They opened this up." "Lo and behold, here was this bedraggled, bearded man down in that hole." "Saddam Hussein clearly concluded it was all a bluff." "The United States was a paper tiger." "They weren't gonna do anything." "The first Gulf war left him feeling that no one was gonna bother him." "He was the person who prevailed." "He obviously felt that he was a survivor." "And he was, for a while." "Someone said, "do you want to go see Saddam Hussein,"" "after he was captured." "And I said, "no."" "I said, "I would like to talk to Tariq Aziz."" "It's a complicated situation for me." "As the number two man, simultaneously deputy prime minister and foreign minister for Saddam Hussein, and you meet with him, you come away with that he is a perfectly rational, logical individual." "I've spent hours and hours with him." "You wonder what goes on in a mind like that." "I would love to talk to Tariq Aziz and figure out what in the world they were thinking." "What else might the United States have done to reach out to them and get them to behave rationally." "On February 6, 2003, to Jim Haynes." ""Subject:" "Detainees." "I am concerned that the detainee issues we were wrestling with have not been resolved." "And as far as I can see it has just dropped into a black pit." "We have to get it figured out." "Thanks."" ""January 10, 2003." "Subject:" "Detainees." "I have simply got to know when you folks are going to be prepared to brief the White House on detainees." "In fact, I don't think I'll even do it that way." "Instead, let me just say, you should be prepared to brief the White House..."" ""Subject:" "The N.S.C."" ""Or the principals committee on detainees, including the most recent issue that has been raised, no later than next Tuesday."" ""January 14." "I want to get briefed on the Iraqi detainees fast." "I'm really worried about it." "Thanks."" "When the pictures came, it had an impact that was well beyond anything that I'd experienced." "Why do you think the pictures did it?" "What it showed was people engaging in acts of abuse that were disgusting and revolting." "There were pictures showing that prison guards in the midnight shift were doing things to prisoners that didn't kill them, that didn't create injuries that were permanent, but they were engaging in sadistic things, and there was nudity involved." "I knew that it would create a advantage for the terrorists, for Al-Qaeda and for the people in the insurgency, who were out recruiting." "They could show that the Americans were treating people badly." "It worked against everything we were trying to do." "I walked in and said to the president," ""I'm the senior person, and I believe in accountability." "Here's my resignation."" "It was in my handwriting." "I didn't want to dictate it or have it typed up by somebody." "I felt a very strong sense that something terrible had happened on my watch." "He said, "don, I recognize how you feel about this, but that's not gonna solve the problem."" "I testified before the house, testified before the senate, tried to figure out how everything happened." "When a ship runs aground, the captain of the ship's generally relieved." "You don't relieve your presidents, and I couldn't find anyone that I thought it would be fair and responsible to pin the tail on." "So I sat down and wrote a second letter of resignation, and I still believe to this day that I was correct and it would have been better, better for the administration and the department of defense and better for me," "if the department could have started fresh with someone else in the leadership position." "So you wish it had been accepted?" "Yes." "There's a claim that the interrogation rules used in Guantanamo migrated to Iraq, where they led to incredible abuse." "The evidence is to the contrary." "There were 12 investigations that looked at these issues, some by civilians, distinguished people like Dr. Harold brown and Dr. James Schlesinger, former secretaries of defense, others by military officials." "To suggest that the procedures from Guantanamo migrated over to Iraq is to suggest that the procedures in Guantanamo would have encouraged the kind of unbelievably bad, illegal, improper behavior that took place at Abu Ghraib, and there's nothing that would have permitted" "anything like that." "Anyone who reads the investigative reports knows that's not the case." "This is from the Schlesinger report." ""Changes in D.O.D. Interrogation policies between December 2, 2002, and April 16, 2003, were an element contributing to uncertainties in the field as to which techniques were authorized." "Although specifically limited by the secretary of defense to Guantanamo, and requiring his personal approval, given in only two cases, the augmented techniques for Guantanamo migrated to Afghanistan and Iraq where they were neither limited nor safeguarded."" "Mm-hmm." "Yeah, I think that's a fair assessment." "Mm-hmm." "Are you saying stuff just happens?" "Well, we know that in every war there are things that evolve that hadn't been planned for or fully anticipated and that things occur which shouldn't occur." "Wouldn't it have been better not to go there at all?" "Well, I guess time will tell." "Barack Obama opposed most of the structures that president George W. Bush put in place:" "Guantanamo bay, the concept of indefinite detention, the patriot act, military commissions." "Here we are, years later, and they're all still there." "I think that kind of has to validate, to some extent, the decisions that were made by president George W. Bush." "We went to Bethesda and Walter Reed a great many times." "The strength that you felt from the families and the people wounded was just absolutely an inspiration." "It was an intensive care unit." "The doctor said, "this guy's not gonna make it."" "We walked in, met the man, talked to him, talked to the family." "I don't know what the word is." "But the family-- the wife said," ""I know he'll make it."" "I think it was probably two, three, four weeks later" "I went back, and sure as heck, the doctor said he made it." "Unbelievable." "So we're a very fortunate country, and the good lord willing, we won't have to be engaged in wars, but I'm afraid, human nature being what it is, that we'll have to continue to ask young men and women" "to come and serve our country, and their lives will be at risk." "When you're in a position like secretary of defense, do you feel that you actually are in control of history or that history is controlling you?" "Oh, neither." "Obviously, you don't control history, and you are failing if history controls you." "Are you surprised when you go back and read these memos?" "Oh, my goodness, yes." "I can't believe some of the things I wrote." "I don't know where all those words came from." ""February 4, 2004." "Subject:" "What you know." "There are knowns knowns." "There are known unknowns." "There are unknown unknowns." "But there are also unknown knowns." "That is to say, things that you think you know that it turns out you did not."" "If you take those words and try to connect them in each way that is possible..." "There was at least one more combination that wasn't there:" "The unknown knowns." "Things that you possibly may know that you don't know you know." "But the memo doesn't say that." "It says we know less, not more, than we think we do." "Is that right?" "I reversed it?" "Put it up again." "Let me see." ""There are also unknown knowns." "That is to say, things that you think you know that it turns out you did not."" "Yeah, I think that memo is backwards." "I think that it's closer to what I said here than that." "Unknown knowns." "I think you're probably, Errol, chasing the wrong rabbit here." "As ubiquitous as those suicide bombers have become in Iraq, far more people are now being killed by executions than by those bombings." "Another 40 bodies today dumped on the streets of Baghdad, tortured." "But with an especially deadly October and Iraq tipping toward chaos-- the U.S. is on the brink of failure in Iraq." "A parade of generals called Rumsfeld's war strategy flawed." "The democrats are in;" "Donald Rumsfeld is out." "Firing secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld and replacing him with a veteran of his father's administration." "Mr. President, thank you for your kind words." "The great respect that I have for your leadership in this little-understood, unfamiliar war, the first war of the 21st century." "It is not well known." "It was not well understood." "It is complex for people to comprehend." "And I know with certainty that, over time, the contributions you've made will be recorded by history." "Thank you." "Mr. secretary." "This way." ""December 15, 2006." "To:" "Pentagon personnel." "From:" "Donald Rumsfeld." "Subject: 'Snowflakes-- the blizzard is over.'" "over the past six years, thousands of these memos have fallen, sometimes in blizzards, and sometimes in cold and lonely isolation." "Yet, as surprising as this may seem to those who may have been buried in the deluge, there are many people in the department who have never received a snowflake." "This snowflake is especially for them." "Its message is, perhaps typically, to the point." "Thank you." "The blizzard is over."" "One last question." "Why are you doing this?" "Why are you talking to me?" "That is a vicious question." "I'll be darned if I know."