The Unknown Known Page #5

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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.

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