Original subtitles

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Now, they've become historical documents in retrospect,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.