Defenselink: July 6 and 7, 2006 / Part I

SEC. RUMSFELD: You know, I asked Jean Renuart, my incoming senior military assistant, and he was with Franks this whole time. And Bill Luti was the guy here --

MR. WOODWARD: With Feith and Wolfowitz, right.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Yeah. And my memory is not perfect, and I don't want to say something that's inaccurate. And I have asked them to feel free to intervene. And my interest is in getting it right and having you get it right.


Rumsfeld: Yeah. And my memory is not perfect, and I don't want to say something that's inaccurate.

MR. WOODWARD: Mine, too. Mine, too.

SEC. RUMSFELD: … and having you get it right. So I said, gee, why don't you two -- they are at different ends of the rubber band.


Woodward: Mine, too. Mine, too.

MR. WOODWARD: And I may be able to follow up with them on a couple of things.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Sure. Absolutely.

MR. WOODWARD: If I can be cleared to do that, that would be great. Because I want to begin with a couple of months ago in a public briefing down there, you said Woodward's book is not the Bible.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Well, I think I --

MR. WOODWARD: You did, you did.

SEC. RUMSFELD: I said you guys are not writing history. (Laughs.) And I said basically, by God --

MR. WOODWARD: Woodward's book is not the Bible.

SEC. RUMSFELD: That's right.

MR. WOODWARD: And I wanted to start off by saying --

SEC. RUMSFELD: You want it to be.

MR. WOODWARD: No, no. I want to say no one knows that better than me.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Okay. (Laughter.)

MR. WOODWARD: Because if every conversation with you is a bit of a wrestling match, I want you to know you're starting on top. (Laughter.) Is that fair?

SEC. RUMSFELD: You also know that I'm not the kind of guy who's going to say bad things about my colleagues. I just don't do it.

MR. WOODWARD: This is such a serious history and a most serious issue --

SEC. RUMSFELD: Exactly.

MR. WOODWARD: -- that the country is dealing with. And you know, one thing -- just one quick thing not on the list but someone told me about the other day, which I found fascinating. When the person that gave that speech on the Lincoln with the "Mission Accomplished" on the back, somebody told me that the White House speechwriters had used MacArthur's surrender speech on the Missouri as a model. And they literally had in that speech "the guns are silent," and you edited it out.

SEC. RUMSFELD: I took "mission accomplished" out. I was in Baghdad, and I was given a draft of that thing to look at. And I just died, and I said my God, it's too conclusive. And I fixed it and sent it back..

MR. WOODWARD: were you on the trip?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I was. And we got it back and they fixed the speech, but not the sign.

MR. WOODWARD: That's right. But it had "the guns are silent," and someone said you line-edited it out and said the guns are not silent.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Yeah, that's for darn sure.

MR. WOODWARD: Is that --

SEC. RUMSFELD: Yeah. No, there's no question but that I was well aware that things were still happening there. I was there.

MR. WOODWARD: The beginning is this question of what was the model for Iraq, because I think it was Bill Luti who was giving briefings here about kind of an occupation -- not necessarily MacArthur style, but it looked like that. And then other people were talking about a quick handover in one of these meetings. You say --

SEC. RUMSFELD: I tilted to the latter, to the quicker handover, and the president did.

MR. WOODWARD: -- that you were looking for Iraq's Karzai, is that correct?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I don't remember that. Clearly, you needed somebody who people could recognize as providing leadership in the country. And I always felt that foreign troops are an anomaly in a country, that eventually they're unnatural and not welcomed really. I think I used the characterization of a broken bone. If you don't set it, everything grows around the brake and you end up with that abnormality. And I used the phrase of it's like teaching a youngster how to ride a bicycle. You run behind them with your hand in the seat. And at some point you've got to take some fingers off, and then you've got to let go, and they might fall. You help pick them up and put them back on it. But otherwise, if you don't take your hand off, you're going to end up with a 40-year-old who can't ride a bike.

MR. WOODWARD: Okay. (Inaudible.)

SEC. RUMSFELD: Yeah, I mean, I said that.

MR. WOODWARD: When did you start saying that?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Oh, early. I mean --

MR. WOODWARD: In '03?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Oh, I'm sure, yeah. There's also the concept of declining consent and the like. And there's the -- John Abizaid and I and the president talked on many occasions about this, and we used this construct that there is a natural tension between having too many and too few. Too few and the political and economic environment can't go forward. Too many and you have two risks: one, you feed the insurgency and create opposition, engender opposition; and second, you create a dependency. Our folks are so good at what they do, and if there's a ditch to be dug they're going to dig the ditch. And we can't allow that to happen. We've simply got to manage that, and it's an art not a science. And therefore, I tend to want to go, and so does the president, with the person on the ground -- in this case, General Casey -- and he's got to be the artist. You can't do it from 7,000 miles away.

MR. WOODWARD: In '03, though, if I go through the record, talk to people like Garner and go through records, talk to people in the White House, it seemed --

SEC. RUMSFELD: Garner had that model, too.

MR. WOODWARD: Pardon?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Jay Garner --

MR. WOODWARD: Yes, yes --

SEC. RUMSFELD: -- had that model, too.

MR. WOODWARD: Yes, exactly. Exactly. He was let's set up an interim governing council, let's, you know -- I mean, he briefed the president on we're going to use 200,000 to 300,000 Iraqi troops for border patrol and security and so forth.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Is that right? Well, I don't know that.

MR. WOODWARD: And --

SEC. RUMSFELD: Do you want me every time you say something that I don't know to tell you?

MR. WOODWARD: Absolutely.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Okay. I don't know that.

MR. WOODWARD: My question really is -- what did you envision in the spring of '03 happening? Because, of course, Bremer comes in with a very different model.

SEC. RUMSFELD: He did? I was more in the Jay Garner mode. And Jerry Bremer, of course, is a presidential envoy and, as such, he reported to the president and to Condi at the NSC staff.

MR. WOODWARD: You picked him.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Yes. We all agreed on him that he was the guy. I think I've forgotten where his name came from. I’m not sure -- but it might have been George Schultz who recommended him. In any event, he had a good background, was a capable guy, understood a lot of the pieces at the Department of State. And of course, he put together a team that was basically Department of State. He built the back office here and did the support for us. I talked to him only rarely, and he had an approach that was different that Jay Garner's, no question.

MR. WOODWARD: Did you -- as I look at it, there's that conflict that kind of never gets resolved maybe until 2004. So it's kind of going along, Garner has unhappiness during this period.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Good man -- Jay Garner is a terrific guy.

MR. WOODWARD: I've gone through at great length with him this whole thing from his notes and so forth, and he was going to be home for his Fourth of July cookout in '03 with basically this problem solved. And he felt kind of --

SEC. RUMSFELD: He had an experience, lived it during -

MR. WOODWARD: Supplanted by Bremer?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Yeah. He had an experience with the Kurds in '90, I guess, and he was on a track towards that.

MR. WOODWARD: Now, NSPD 24, which set up Garner's office, made you the lead agency.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Right.

MR. WOODWARD: Why did you want the lead on this?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Well, I don't know that I did want it. [Portion deleted by ground-rule] But we had the troops, and we needed a unity of command. We needed to have everything coming through one place, particularly when we were the ones -- we are the ones with the principal force levels and costs and responsibility. So we looked at the whole thing, and we had had difficulty in Afghanistan with, for example, the police situation. The State Department has the money from the Congress for that, the Germans had responsibility for it, and yet they're a big part of the security forces. So what do you do? If we've got the security responsibility, how will we manage that? And the answer was it didn't get done well early on and as fast as it might have. And therefore, we decided -- we'd start working in the interagency to figure out how we could solve that. We had the same problems with the police in Afghanistan, which is why this year, 2006, is the year of the police instead of 2003.

MR. WOODWARD: And maybe should have been, is that true?

SEC. RUMSFELD: You bet. And it is a very complicated thing because of the subcommittees in Congress, the committee's jurisdictions, the bureaucracies in the departments. And in any event, I guess last -- when did we start working the police in Iraq?

LT GEN RENUART: In Iraq?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Yeah.

LT GEN RENUART: You sent Eikenberry out. You selected him in November and December. I think he went out in June.

SEC. RUMSFELD: No, that was an assessment. I did three assessments. I'm talking about when did DOD get the responsibility for the police.

LT GEN RENUART: In October.

SEC. RUMSFELD: In October of last year --

LT GEN RENUART: Yes, essentially that's right.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Just recently.

MR. WOODWARD: You sent Gary Luck out there in the beginning?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Well, I sent -- first I sent Eikenberry.

MR. WOODWARD: Right.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Then I sent Luck. Now I sent somebody else, and now this Austin is in there.

MR. WOODWARD: Okay.

SEC. RUMSFELD: I've had an assessment team go in about every six months or so to take a fresh eye on things. What's it look like?

MR. WHITMAN : Slocombe.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Who?

MR. WHITMAN : Slocombe.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Slocombe was the security person out there with Bremer, yeah.

MR. WOODWARD: For Garner --

SEC. RUMSFELD: No.

MR. WOODWARD: For Bremer.

SEC. RUMSFELD: For Bremer.

MR. WOODWARD: You're absolutely right, Bremer.

SEC. RUMSFELD: But he was not on an assessment team. No, we sent three assessment teams to look at how you do this, and how are we doing, are the numbers still right, has the situation changed? What can we learn from what we've done? How can we make it better? And we've done that not just in security forces, but I had sent out budgets and other subjects I've sent out assessment teams.

MR. WOODWARD: So it would be right, as I've interviewed these people for Garner and Bremer, in particular, to feel some confusion about what the model is. Is that --

SEC. RUMSFELD: Well, I think they each had their own model and they differed.

MR. WOODWARD: I see, but did you -- because you were in charge, you -- particularly Garner was reporting to you in this? And Bremer actually reported ot you initially?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Bremer actually was --

MR. WOODWARD: Reported to you initially --

SEC. RUMSFELD: Technically, but not really. He didn't call home much. In other words, he was out there in a tough environment, making a lot of decisions, calling audibles, and it's a difficult job.

MR. WOODWARD: And he felt he was the President’s man.

SEC. RUMSFELD: You bet, and he was. It wasn't a matter of feeling it; he was. And he had a staff that he put together that was basically from the State Department, and they worked well together, and they did a hell of a good job. It's a difficult job, and they accomplished a heck of a lot in a relatively short period of time.

MR. WOODWARD: One of the things -- and this is John Abizaid who said this to Garner early, before the war, a few months before the war -- January '03 -- we've got to provide an opportunity for the Iraqi army to emerge with some honor.

MR. WOODWARD: Did you agree with that?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Sure.

MR. WOODWARD: Was that a message that was sent?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I mean, I talked to Abizaid all the time, and he felt that way about the military; he felt that way about the Sunnis that they were losing control of the country, and constantly was looking to see that decisions being made in the CPA reflected what he believed to be, and I agreed with, a recognition of the fact that the goal was to have everyone feeling that the country is fair and representative of them. And because of the significant loss on the part of the Sunnis in terms of their role in that country, he was constantly looking to me to try to see that the political side of the house in Iraq reflected that.

You were --

LT GEN RENUART: Yes sir, I think in fact this comment was pretty consistent with General Abizaid's view - as his deputy -- and his recommendations to General Franks as well as his coming on, that you had to provide for the Iraqi regular army because they were the folks least dependent upon Saddam or more likely to be representative, that they would be a force that you would be capable of using and reintegrating very quickly back into the Iraqi security.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Also the thing with the army was (off mike) hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands of Shi'ite conscripts, and 15(,000) or 17,000 Sunni generals. I'm overstating for emphasis.

MR. WOODWARD: And colonels.

SEC. RUMSFELD: And colonels. It was a different army. And the other problem was that it disbanded itself in large measure.

MR. WOODWARD: But yes and no. I mean, as you know, the current Iraqi army has all these officers back. All the NCOs and officers in the Iraqi army served in Saddam's army.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Certainly a lot did.

MR. WOODWARD: As best I can tell, virtually all. And so the question becomes -- again, looking at the chronology of this -- is that the goal is give them honor. And then there's this disbanding of the army there. Actually, at Garner's feet begging to be brought back. They were sending Garner lists and so forth. I've got the lists and they felt kicked in the face. And the question was how did that happen?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Yeah. I don't know. Do you know?

LT GEN RENUART: This is when Bremer -- the first two CPA orders that he wanted to issue, CPA order one and two -- de-Ba'athification and dissolution of the entities -- were -- I think he said this in his book. He wanted to make a statement that there was an authority in Iraq, he was the authority, and these were the two ways he was going to establish that authority. But if you read both of those orders -- have you read them?

MR. WOODWARD: Oh, yes.

LT GEN RENUART : Very carefully -- they're not as draconian, especially on de-Ba'athification, that some people have made them out to be. And on the army, there was a, I believe -- and I have to go back and check it -- and Gene (sp), you might be able to correct me -- but I believe it was allowed to come back colonel and below without question, if I remember correctly.

MR. WOODWARD: I mean, the whole army was just disbanded completely -- I mean, I've read the order and --

LT GEN RENUART: But in building the new Iraqi army, there were provisions, I believe, in disestablishment to bring them back.

MR. WOODWARD: Later on.

LT GEN RENUART:: Right, right.

MR. WOODWARD: Later on, which is what happened.

The question -- again, when I've looked at the White House on this -- there was no interagency process on this critical decision. And Bremer says it was, essentially, Wolfowitz and Feith who gave him that order, as you know, because you've read Bremer's book.

MR. WOODWARD: Where did it come from?

LT GEN RENUART: (Laughs.) No, I haven't read Bremer's book.

MR. WOODWARD: What?

LT GEN RENUART: I haven't read Bremer's book.

MR. WOODWARD: Yeah, I have.

SEC. RUMSFELD: I'd be surprised if that were the case.

MR. WOODWARD: Yes, sir, that's what he says.

SEC. RUMSFELD: I didn't say he didn't say it. I'm not surprised at that. I say I would -- that's just -- it would be a surprise to me if Wolfowitz and Feith gave him those orders. I just don't know that.

MR. WOODWARD: He carried those orders back, and there's some indication from e-mails and so forth that were drafted here in the Pentagon. Isn't that true?

MR. LUTI: Well, contrary to convention wisdom, there was an interagency process. It was discussed at length in the interagency.

MR. WOODWARD: At what level?

MR. LUTI : At the working level, at the PCC level, we call it, which is, you know, assistant secretary and deputy assistant secretary.

MR. WOODWARD: Never got to deputies or principals, best I can see.

MR. Luti: That I don't know, either, okay. But there was a lot of work going on in this area and a lot of communication going back and forth in the interagency. So it would be inaccurate to say that it wasn't discussed in the interagency.

MR. WOODWARD: Well, not at the principal or NSC level.

Mr. Secretary, did you know that this was going to happen?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I can't say I did. I simply don't recall it, and I don't recall an NSC meeting on the subject, but that doesn't mean there wasn't one. That's just my best recollection today.

MR. WOODWARD: And do you remember there was an NSC meeting -- it's very specific, but I have notes -- the 28th, '03, when Garner said specifically we're going to use between 200,000 and 300,000 of the Iraqi army.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Don't remember that one. Again, that doesn't mean it isn't correct, but I --

MR. WOODWARD: I understand. I understand.

SEC. RUMSFELD: I've not gone back and studied --

MR. WOODWARD: No reason that you should have.

SEC. RUMSFELD: I haven’t gone back through the papers. I've got other things to do.

MR. WOODWARD: Garner quotes you as saying at one point the Iraqis are going to spend their money rebuilding the country, that we're not putting money in. This is at this point --

SEC. RUMSFELD: Early on.

MR. WOODWARD: -- early on. Yes, sir.

SEC. RUMSFELD: It became clear to me that -- fairly early, I think -- that the Iraqi infrastructure had been neglected for decades. I went over and looked at an electric power plant. It was being held together with chewing gum and bobby pins and bailing wire. I looked at myself and said, my lord, it took 30 years to get here; it's going to take 30 years to get out of here to get that -- not us out -- for them to get back to looking like Kuwait or Jordan or Saudi Arabia or Turkey or their neighbors. And I said oh, my goodness, that's going to be their job over a long period of time because it just takes that long. And they have -- they've got wealth. They've got water, they've got oil, they've got industrious people. They clearly are going to be the ones that are going to have to be there.

MR. WOODWARD: But there was a point where we put in lots of money -- $21 billion. When did it become apparent to you that we're going to have to pay some of these?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I don't know when that became apparent to me, but I know the government had an interagency process and they decided they wanted to help out. And so they went to the Congress with a proposal. I thought it was for $18 billion.

MR. LUTI : Nineteen point four (billion dollars).

MR. WOODWARD: And then there was $2 billion they added on.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Yeah, but I can remember saying in the interagency process and on the Hill that the likelihood of the Congress passing annual reconstruction funds to rectify 30 years of neglect while he was building palaces is unlikely. As a broken down ex-politician, I could smell that.

MR. WOODWARD: Before Bremer was picked, there's a memo you faxed over to the president recommending that Wolfowitz be -- that they consider Paul Wolfowitz.

SEC. RUMSFELD: I don't know that that's true. I do know that Paul came to me and said he'd like to be considered. And I can remember Paul saying orally -- not in a memo, but orally -- maybe in a memo --

MR. WOODWARD: I have a copy --

SEC. RUMSFELD: Oh, good. Then you know better than I do -- that the president might want to consider Paul. He asked me to do that and I did it.

MR. WOODWARD: And why was it decided not him but Bremer?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I don't know why it was decided that way. The president made the decision. He probably looked at a lot of different people.

MR. WOODWARD: They say in the White House -- I didn't talk to the president yet -- that you made the decision on Bremer.

SEC. RUMSFELD: I simply supported the -- recommended him and supported him. And he was well known to Colin Powell, he was well known to Condi, and everyone. A series of names were looked at, a number of people were looked at, and that clearly was something that everyone agreed was an appropriate recommendation.

MR. WOODWARD: Do you remember -- this is June of '03 -- I'm sorry to be so long on this -- when Garner had left, he had been replaced by Bremer. He came back here and you gave him a medal. And he says and he has notes telling you that three tragic mistakes had been made in the postwar period: de-Ba'athification so deep, disbanding the military, and Bremer's decision to let an interim government group that Garner had set up go home.

Do you recall any of that?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Vaguely. I remember having a very good discussion with him. I felt that he had not been properly recognized for what he'd done. So we had him come back and had a visit and did give him a medal and expressed my appreciation to him. I think he's a fine retired officer and a very talented guy who cares a lot about Iraq.

MR. WOODWARD: Then you and he went and met with the president after that, and it was kind of lots of old stories. And I've asked Garner about this, and I said did you not tell the president that you told Secretary Rumsfeld that three tragic mistakes had been made? And he said he did not. He felt he had reported to you. And we had a long, very interesting discussion about the obligation of somebody to make sure the guy at the top knows --

SEC. RUMSFELD: I think the president knew that there were big disagreements over de-Ba'athification and big disagreements over the military. I mean, those are not -- don't you feel that way?

MR. WOODWARD : At that point, in June?

SEC. RUMSFELD: June of '03.

MR. WOODWARD : Yes, sir. I don't think so. I thought there was nothing. It was kind of --

SEC. RUMSFELD: I mean the first thing that struck me about the military when Jerry Bremer and Walt Slocombe got there was the issue of -- saying he was going to organize the military only for external defense. And it just seemed to me that the problem was not external defense at that moment; it was internal, and I can remember a discussion on that point.

MR. WHITMAN: Surely, some of that in June, July '03 was also taking place actually in the news media, too. If you go back and look at the articles that were written there was debate and there were varying opinions about that --

MR. WOODWARD: Right, but not much. I've looked at it thoroughly. It surfaced much later, obviously, and it's an issue now. I just wonder whether -- I find it striking -- I pressed Jay Garner on this. I said how can you tell the secretary that three tragic mistakes had been made -- not just errors, but tragic mistakes -- and then go meet with the president and not tell him? And he said well, he reported to you, he stuck to the chain of command. He assumed you would tell the president that Jay Garner thinks --

SEC. RUMSFELD: There's no question that the president was aware of those issues.

MR. LUTI: And if I may, certainly more on the governance issue, because we had a big change on the issue of sovereignty that came up, and that was Jay's third point.

MR. WOODWARD: Yeah, but that was three or four months later.

MR. LUTI : It was in September and October when the discussions began, and then in late October the decision was made.

MR. WOODWARD: Right, right.

MR. LUTI: So his third point was taken right to the top.

MR. WOODWARD: When did sovereignty pass?

MR. LUTI : June 28th -- we decided on July 1st, and it happened --

SEC. RUMSFELD: I can remember all the pressure to delay it. The president said not a chance.

MR. LUTI: That's why they brought Jerry back to talk about the --

SEC. RUMSFELD: Not a chance.

MR. WOODWARD: Not a chance of what?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Delaying sovereignty -- (off mike) -- sovereignty.

MR. WOODWARD: Very anxious to get it. Give it to the Iraqis.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Damn right.

MR. WOODWARD: This is the theme of the Iraqi "face," give it to them.

SEC. RUMSFELD: It's their country, yeah. More accurately, it would be give it back.

MR. WOODWARD: Did you ever say that to Jerry Bremer, it's their country? Because he's running around -- this is public -- we are sovereign, we are the occupiers, you are occupied. I mean, he is just -- pardon me -- sticking it in their face that we have got our wheel on your neck.

SEC. RUMSFELD: My whole approach has been, as I've said here, that it is their country. They're going to have to run it. We're going to have to take our hands off the bicycle seat, and we have to try to do it in a way that we find a great balance so that they can pull up their socks, grab their country, make a go of it, and we will not create a dependency and we will not feed the insurgency. And John Abizaid and I have been very much in agreement with it and the president was.

MR. WOODWARD: And the president, most recently, though -- hasn't he become -- at least from his public comments -- I think he's made it much clearer since the Maliki government has been set up. Is that fair?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Well, I mean, he -- I think if you asked him, he would probably say that what I just said was correct, that the numerous discussions with Abizaid and Rumsfeld and him, on that subject-- (inaudible) -- that we found -- I can't say what he was thinking, but I certainly didn't find him disagreeing with Abizaid on it.

MR. WOODWARD: This General "Spider" Marks, who was the chief intelligence officer from McKiernan, had doubts about WMD intelligence before the war, like you.

Did you ever -- did that information ever get to you that there's a two-star general out there who has doubts about WMD?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Do you know who he is?

LT GEN RENUART: He was General Dave McKiernan's chief of intelligence.

SEC. RUMSFELD: But he was not Tommy Franks'?

LT GEN RENUART: No, he was not. He worked down at the land component level. He was a one-star at the time for the Army.

MR. WOODWARD: He was a two.

LT GEN RENUART: I guess he was a two-star. He had been recently promoted to a two-star when he went public.

SEC. RUMSFELD: No. I mean, we dealt with the combatant commanders' people. I may have met him --

MR. WOODWARD: Can you give me, for the record here, some idea of your feelings about whether WMD would be there or not?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Sure. I don't know how much is colored by what's happened, to be honest. I just don't. I'll tell you I was very worried about it, and I developed confidence over time, and conviction, as I think everyone did. And I particularly -- (inaudible) -- after I knew that Colin Powell was spending day after day on the subject with George Tenet and with the intel people and with his intel people and with Condi Rice over at his house drafting his U.N. speech. And I was not into the intel piece of it, but I worry about intelligence. I have to. I was worried about it in a micro sense because -- it wasn't so micro, but in a DOD sense -- because our military people were worried about it. They saw the same intelligence. And every morning, they're getting up and putting on their chemical suits -- not for the hell of it; because they were worried about having their troops killed by chemical weapons. None of us ever believed they had nuclear weapons, although we did have knowledge that in the earlier Gulf War they had -- the United States intelligence community had considerably underestimated the pace at which their nuclear program had progressed. But the only real worry we had was chemical -- it's very high on the list -- and a question about biological.

Now, the fact that these people -- 100-plus thousand -- put those chemical suits on every day as they were going north tells you that the --

MR. WOODWARD: They're believers.



SEC. RUMSFELD: You bet. You bet.

MR. WOODWARD: My wife, Elsa, whom you've met --

SEC. RUMSFELD: I've met her, yeah --



MR. WOODWARD: -- believes that if you'd been made CIA director instead of secretary of Defense in the Bush administration, you would have picked the hole and discovered that maybe WMD was not there.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Well, I don't know. Tell her thank you very much. I'm not sure I'm as smart as that. I mean, you've got an awful lot of intelligent people working on that problem and doing their best, and they came out where they came out.

MR. WOODWARD: Do you -- there's a November 11th NSC meeting -- 2003, again. This is when the CIA comes in and says there's an insurgency out there. And you were quoted in the notes telling the CIA briefer, "I may disagree with you," and the president did not think it had reached the point where there was an insurgency. And the CIA was very actively pushing there's an insurgency out there.

Do you remember your thinking in that period?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I don't. I can't put it in time and place. I do remember the phrase "insurgency," the phrase "guerrilla war" and the al Qaeda terrorist activity. And I don't know which month all this was. But I watched that thing evolve and change, and I watched the military people -- I finally got a military dictionary and started looking up what those words mean and what they conjure up. And I raised a question in a public briefing on the subject.

MR. WOODWARD: I remember that.

SEC. RUMSFELD: And I said gee, you know, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I guess, and people have different ways of characterizing it, and I didn't have conviction.

MR. WOODWARD: When did you get it, sir, that there was an insurgency, because clearly there is?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I didn't have conviction that I was the one who ought to use -- set the phrase as to what we would call it at any given time; let me put it that way. It has been, for a long time, characterized by a mixture of things, multiple problems.

MR. WOODWARD: I understand.

SEC. RUMSFELD: And it has evolved over time. It's not been static, it's been dynamic.

MR. WOODWARD: And so did -- I mean, there was just a hesitation on your part that --

SEC. RUMSFELD: I did not think it would be useful if I called it one thing and Abizaid called it something else, for example.

MR. WOODWARD: And this issue of who was the enemy in Iraq -- I understand there's still briefings that the intel people give on that.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Sure -- a lot of people.

MR. WOODWARD: And somebody told me that in fact the mystery has deepened.

SEC. RUMSFELD: It has. It's gotten more complex. When General Casey was back here last time, if I'm not mistaken, he briefed the NSC and the president -- certainly me -- and characterized that issue as having become more complex.

MR. WOODWARD: So we know less?

SEC. RUMSFELD: No, no, we know more. They're getting so much more intelligence now. And they're looking -- they're seeing schisms and gaps and seams between elements, and they're finding people who are doing things for money as opposed to love or conviction. But it is just a fact that the world is round, it's not flat. It's evolved and changing.

MR. WOODWARD: And the number of attacks are going up actually.

SEC. RUMSFELD: That's probably true. It is also probably true that our data's better, and we're categorizing more things as attacks. A random round can be an attack and -- all the way up to killing 50 people some place. So you've got a whole fruit bowl of different things -- a banana and an apple and an orange.

MR. WOODWARD: But somebody said up to 900 attacks within one week last month.

SEC. RUMSFELD: I can't validate that. I'd have to go back and look.

MR. WOODWARD: I mean, that's unexploded IEDs, that's counted as an attack; detonated IEDs, close engagements, standoff attacks and attacks on Iraqi authorities.

SEC. RUMSFELD: What do you suppose how many things of those character occur in countries that aren't at war in a given week?

MR. WOODWARD: I've heard you --

SEC. RUMSFELD: Detroit, Chicago, anywhere. I mean, you look at the number of homicides and rapes and armed robberies and attacks and shootings, and goodness knows -- (inaudible) --



[Passage deleted mutual consent and ground-rule]

MR. WOODWARD: You stayed on as secretary of Defense in the second term, obviously, and there were lots of people close to the president who were recommending that he needed a whole new national security team. And I want to be specific with you. Rice, Hadley, Card and Powell all told him you need an entire new national security team. He moved some people around and you stayed.

What is your understanding of how that happened? And help me with --

SEC. RUMSFELD: No --

MR. WOODWARD: What happened?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I did not get engaged with those people in recommending to the president that he ought to hire somebody else. I did, obviously, let him know that I was available to do something else in my life.

MR. WOODWARD: You did?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Sure. And I think if we remember the term ended. It's a fresh start - we all look around. I remember telling him and I think Andy Card there's no one around here -- certainly there are no indispensable people in this business. He ought to do what sets him on the right path. But what specifically they did I don't know.

MR. WOODWARD: When did the president ask you to stay?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I don't know that he did. I don't recall that he asked me to stay.

MR. WOODWARD: But you indicated you would go or stay depending on his wish.

SEC. RUMSFELD: I let that be well known.

MR. WOODWARD: And a number of people have said the president talked to Cheney about it, and Cheney said you can't change the secretary of Defense in the middle of the war.

SEC. RUMSFELD: I don't know that. And I also don't know if that's true.

MR. WOODWARD: It's happened.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Sure.

MR. WOODWARD: But I think in the 24-hour-seven world that you live, you do that. There's no way you can say it's not some sort of judgment.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Interesting. I don't know. I mean, I --

MR. WOODWARD: Did you want to stay?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I'm here. I really wanted and do want what's best for the country and what the president feels is appropriate. He's got a tough job, and he's got to do it his way.

MR. WOODWARD: But there was never a moment, a meeting where he said I want you to stay?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I don't recall that there was. I'm quite confident there was never a moment when he said I want you to leave. (Laughter.)

MR. WOODWARD: Fair enough.

SEC. RUMSFELD: I'd remember that. But I don't remember the other.

MR. WOODWARD: But there was a moment when you said I'll stay or leave if you want.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Yeah, I mean I can remember saying that to Andy Card. I can remember saying that to the vice president. I can remember saying something like that to the president, but I don't remember precisely what. I just don't want to get in the habit of resigning every 15 minutes and having them feel they have to beg you to stay. I submitted my resignation in writing twice since I've been here.

MR. WOODWARD: In writing you actually submitted a letter.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Yes.

MR. WOODWARD: What did the president say to you when you --

SEC. RUMSFELD: He handed the first one back and said no. And the second one, he handed back, and I handed it back to him, and I said you ought to keep this.

MR. WOODWARD: And?

SEC. RUMSFELD: And he said no, he did not want me to go. He said it publicly. So, I mean, I don't know why --

MR. WOODWARD: How much time was it between the two letters?

SEC. RUMSFELD: - there’s a fixation on this. I don't know.

MR. WOODWARD: Was it weeks or something like that? Was there a reason, or just "I hereby resign"?

SEC. RUMSFELD: No. One was a relatively short letter and the other was a relatively longer letter.

MR. WOODWARD: A longer letter saying?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Oh, I don't know.

MR. WOODWARD: It would help for the history of this --

SEC. RUMSFELD: Your book is not the history of this. (Laughter.) I've told you that.

MR. RUMSFELD: You admit it! (Laughter.)

MR. RUMSFELD: It's not the Bible.

MR. WOODWARD: It's not the Bible; I agree. But it's history -- or between journalism and history. Listen, I totally agree. No one is -- I wake up in the middle of the night thinking I don't know anything about this, like Rumsfeld's letter to the president -- it was long.

SEC. RUMSFELD: What else?

MR. WOODWARD: Okay. We've done the bicycle seat thing, which I think is a very important theme in all of this. And it's -- because, as you know, somebody like Steve Hadley kind of has the view -- I'm sure you've heard this -- that Iraq is an abused child, that we need to help it along, we need to keep our hand on the bicycle seat.

Hadley said after the first term to colleagues that the foreign policy of the administration deserved a B-minus for the way it was formulated and a D-minus for implementation. Do you agree?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Oh, gosh, I'm not going to be judgmental.

MR. WOODWARD: Do you grade it at all?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I'm not going to grade it.

MR. WOODWARD: Why?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Well, I don't know that I would -- I'm more interested in precision and accuracy and fairness than to allow me to try to, off the top of my head, characterize policy in that broad, macro sense. I just don't know that that's useful or if I'm the right person to be doing it or if this is the right time to be doing it.

MR. WOODWARD: About 18 months ago, Secretary Rice sent a team to Iraq. And they --

SEC. RUMSFELD: If I were going to do it, I might flip those without using the numbers, the letters. But I think there's been execution in a lot of things that has been very good.

MR. WOODWARD: The formulation is maybe the weakness?

SEC. RUMSFELD: No, I just -- I just don't -- I'd rather not do it. I don't think I'm in a position to do it. I haven't thought it through carefully

MR. WOODWARD: It's interesting. You've told Hadley -- or he's reported to others that the interagency process is broken, a number of times --

SEC. RUMSFELD: I think it is that in the 21st century, in the Information Age, we're still functioning with an interagency process and a governmental structure that is in the Industrial Age in the last century. And it would be like if the DOD tried to function today without Goldwater-Nichols, where each service goes off to fight -- the Navy war and the Army war and the Air Force war, and that's -- that doesn't work in this environment. And it is not -- my comment about the interagency being broken is not in any way meant at characterizing the people who are in it or even the structure that they control. It's a reflection of the fact that the government structure is a leftover from an earlier era. And it is something that I think all of us feel on occasion.

MR. WOODWARD: Have you told the president this?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Sure.

MR. WOODWARD: What does he say?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I don't say what he says.

MR. WOODWARD: But that would be something worth fixing, wouldn't it?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Indeed.

MR. WOODWARD: And it almost kind of should go at the top of the list of let's fix.

SEC. RUMSFELD: You might want to give him the memo I did -- the speech I gave at the Truman Library where I talked about the fact that Truman was at the juncture of the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War. And he fashioned a number of institutions that were appropriate for the period coming forward, and successive presidents have used those institutions. This president is at the end of the Cold War and at the juncture of the global war on terror and the types of problems he's facing and the Information Age. And he's trying to fight a war in a set of new realities as to how people communicate with each other and function electronically. And it's a vastly different task, much more complex today. The time pressures are very much greater.

MR. WOODWARD: Eighteen months ago -- February '05 -- Rice sent out a team to evaluate the situation in Iraq, and they came back and said Iraq at that time was a failed state.

Do you think in February '05, was that a --

SEC. RUMSFELD: I don't know that I ever saw that, did you --

MR. WOODWARD: No. It was internal State report. Does that reflect what you would have seen 18 months ago? Is this a failed state?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Well, clearly, if you don't invest in your infrastructure for decades, and if you run a repressive regime that discourages and penalizes entrepreneurial activity and innovation and creativity and assuming responsibility, you end up with a group of people who will either do exactly what they're told -- and that just doesn’t make any sense -- or they cheat and lie and don’t do what they're told but pretend they do.

MR. WOODWARD: Corruption is a big issue, isn't it? In fact, there was an NSC meeting where you and your J5 -- speaking out on the importance of corruption in Iraq. Is that correct?

STAFF: Well, I don't recall the specifics to the corruption. It continued to be a problem for us in --

SEC. RUMSFELD: It's a problem not just there, but in lots of parts of the world. We're worried about it in Latin America because it gives democracy a bad name --

MR. WOODWARD: (Laughs.)

SEC. RUMSFELD: It does. And people expect that a democratic system -- (inaudible) -- like America, and it ends up with people being corrupt, and then they go to -- (inaudible).

(Cross talk.)

MR. WOODWARD: In August '05, Kissinger wrote and has talked to the president about this at length. You know he meets with the president regularly?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I helped set it up.

MR. WOODWARD: You did. And you and Kissinger are supposed to be at odds.

SEC. RUMSFELD: no – that’s baloney

MR. WOODWARD: And he says -- Kissinger says victory over the insurgency is the only meaningful exit strategy in this war.

Do you agree?

SEC. RUMSFELD: He's right. Sure. No, no, I'd qualify it. First of all, I don't agree that he said that.

MR. WOODWARD: Oh, he did. He's written it publicly and he's --

SEC. RUMSFELD: He may have, I think ultimately, the victory over the insurgency will be made by the Iraqis because it will take time. As I mentioned in the memo I showed you, it could take eight to 10 years. Insurgencies have a tendency to do that. Victory -- is that the word he used?

MR. WOODWARD: Yes. Victory by the insurgency is the only meaningful exit strategy. It's a great line.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Yeah, but I would say that our exit strategy is to have the Iraqi government and security forces capable of managing a lower level insurgency and ultimately achieving victory over it and repressing it over time. But it would be a period after we may very well not have large numbers of people there.

MR. WOODWARD: The key word in that sentence, though, is victory. You have to have victory.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Yeah, absolutely.

MR. WOODWARD: You can't have --

SEC. RUMSFELD: You can't live with it for 50 years and let it simmer there.

MR. WOODWARD: And General Casey's campaign plan calls for neutralizing the insurgency, which has technical meanings. And I understand he's said, look, we haven't neutralized it yet; we've contained it.

Is that correct?

SEC. RUMSFELD: If you say it is. I don't know --

MR. WOODWARD: (Inaudible.)

SEC. RUMSFELD: You said he said it.

MR. WOODWARD: Yes, sir.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Is it correct that he said it?

MR. WOODWARD: I sure believe so.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Well, then he said it.

MR. WOODWARD: Now you're on top, wrestling. I mean, the question was do you agree it has not been neutralized, only contained?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Yeah, yeah.

MR. WOODWARD: Okay.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Thus far.

MR. WOODWARD: Okay. Last fall, Secretary Rice went over this saying the overall Iraq strategy is clear, hold and build. You had some objections to that.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Yeah, I was a little worried that -- and we talked about it. I mean, clearly, you need a bumper sticker, and that's what they were looking for. And they felt that a bumper sticker was needed. I didn't need one. We've got our job to do; we were doing it. And they had to fashion something like that. And they're right. If you're going to communicate with multiple audiences, including ours -- our Congress, our public, the Iraqi people -- they may want to know, well, what are you doing? Do you have a strategy? Do you have a plan? The answer is, we do have a plan.

But the question was clear, is one thing. And my problem was that I wanted -- if that is our strategy for the United States, then I worried about it, because in fact, I wanted -- we've got -- what? -- 263,000 Iraqi security forces. I wanted them clearing and them holding. And I didn't want the idea to be that it was just us. And so that was my concern, because that is grabbing a hold of the bicycle seat and hanging on for dear life.



MR. WOODWARD: Forever.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Forever. Clear, hold and build – worried me -- for the reason I mentioned earlier -- on reconstruction, because that's going to take 30 years and it's going to take a pile of money and it is not going to be the taxpayers' money -- our taxpayers' money.

MR. WOODWARD: Someone said you objected to it so much, a half hour before the president was adopting that in the speech you called Andy Card and said take it out.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Probably true, yeah. I was concerned that it had a connotation that sounded good at the moment, but that it could, over time, come back and -- because of the nuances in it -- not be seen right. So then we tried to define it. We left the words and we tried to define it in a way that was accurate.

MR. WOODWARD: And what was that definition that's accurate, do you know?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Well, the way I said it. In other words, it's not just us clearing, it's the coalition. And the holding -- it's clearly increasingly them and not us. And the building is we want to help create environments that they can reconstruct their own country, and that type of thing. And those refinements are in there now.

MR. WOODWARD: In May, two months ago, one assessment said the Sunni Arab insurgency is gaining strength and increasing capacity, despite political progress and Iraqi security force development.

Does that sound right to you? That was one written assessment --

SEC. RUMSFELD: When?

MR. WOODWARD: Two months ago, six weeks ago.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Gosh, I don't know. I don't want to comment on it. I'd have to go -- I read so many of those intelligence reports and they are all over the lot. In a given day, you can see one from one agency, and one from another agency, and then I'll ask Casey or Abizaid what they think about it or Pete Pace, "is that your view?" and trying to triangulate and see what people think, but it changes from month to month. I'm not going to get tied to saying I agree or don't agree with something like that.

MR. WOODWARD: Just so we can have some -- you remember this snowflake from '01? I have to give a copy of this to Gene too. Maybe the problems in the Navy might be systemic, -- it's one thing to make mistakes when you are pushing the envelope; it is another thing if you make mistakes walking to work.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Oh, I can't remember.

You don't remember that?

MR. WOODWARD: Do you remember the anchor chain memos?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Oh, I wrote that myself. You bet.

MR. WOODWARD: Yeah. I've got four drafts of it.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Do you really?

MR. WOODWARD: Yes, sir. I wanted to give you a copy --

SEC. RUMSFELD: It got better.



MR. WOODWARD: What?

SEC. RUMSFELD: It got better.

MR. WHITMAN: It did. (Laughter.)

MR. WOODWARD: I mean, it really -- tell me, were you -- it almost looks like you struggled, if I may be frank with you, trying to define the number of problems and the magnitude of the task.

SEC. RUMSFELD: This is a difficult job here. This is not easy -- this department. And I can remember, having been here a month or two and standing up at my desk and at night reflecting over this whole thing and saying, okay, I was asked to do this job, I've accepted. And what is it? How do you define the job? And what are the problems you are facing, and what are the obstacles to getting it done? And what's doable and what isn't doable? And the more I reflected on it, I ended up coming up with this kind of an analysis that --

MR. WOODWARD: In the end saying we won't be able to do it for this president, we'll have to do it for the next president.

SEC. RUMSFELD: You know, in any administration that's almost true of everything. The people that they -- each president either benefits or is disadvantaged by the decisions of his predecessor. And each president and each Congress has at their fingertips only those things that were invested in five, 10, 15, 20 years before. And if you think about it -- I approved the M-1 tank that was used in the Gulf War and was used in Iraq, back in 1975. The F-16, which we're using, which is what bombed Zarqawi, I was at the fly-over for the F-16 in Fort Worth back in 1974 or 1975. That's the nature of this. These decisions you make play out over a long period of time, either to the benefit of the country or, conversely, to the detriment of the country if you fail to do something.

MR. WOODWARD: Do you know, as I look at the history of these past three years, postwar, one of the things a number of military people, active military people have said to me is that, particularly with Garner and Bremer -- until Casey and Negroponte got there, it was kind of a pick up team, and that for some reason, the government assigned a pickup team the most important thing that they were doing. Is that fair?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Oh, I don't think so, no. I mean --

MR. WOODWARD: Garner had to beg George Casey for people. He was then director of the Joint Staff and Casey said to him, you sound like this is going to be 24/7. And Garner said you're damn right. But I don't think it's.

SEC. RUMSFELD: We’re still trying to find people to go over and advise the ministries. Not at the Ministry of Defense or Ministry of Interior. You've got about 485 people that we haven't filled and all the other ministries in Iraq. How do you find people that other Departments aren’t deploying? I mean, our government's not arranged to do that.

MR. WOODWARD: To me, looking at it, looks like a pickup team was thrown together in a way that did not get the attention that we now know it should have had.

SEC. RUMSFELD: That doesn't sound correct to me.

MR. WOODWARD: Doesn't it?

SEC. RUMSFELD: No. I mean, if you think about it, we had 150,000 troops over there. We had terrific military leadership. We had a back office here, which was functioning full-time. We had enormous numbers of people of real talent who volunteered to go over there, spent six months – Larry DiRita went over, Suzanne -- my top secretary here went over there. These people flocked over there to do it, and they did a darn good job.

Is it a tough job? You bet. Is it a heck of a lot harder than people sitting in Washington think it is? You bet. But they did it, and they did well at it, and they worked their heads off, and it was 24/7. But the fact that you did not have in being a government or a set of government advisers for an entire country and that you could then implant and that you paid to stay and wait year after year after year after year --

MR. WOODWARD: Until this moment comes --

SEC. RUMSFELD: -- in case you don't need them is nonsensical. Of course, you can be pejorative and say it's a pickup team, but it wasn't a pickup team at all. It was a bunch of -- Jerry Bremer is not a pickup team. Jay Garner isn't. These are talented people. And the team they put together are very talented people. I mean, look where they are now. Meghan O'Sullivan, she was over there; she's working at the White House, and a whole bunch of people who were involved there. I think that would be a mischaracterization.

MR. WOODWARD: The number of --

SEC. RUMSFELD: You would be embarrassed in history if you did something like that but wouldn't want to do that. As your old friends say, that would be wrong. (Laughter.)

MR. WOODWARD: Talk to some military people and they say, you know, did the war get subcontracted to the military? Where is the rest of the government? I get lots of people saying that.

SEC. RUMSFELD: I hear it all the time. Yeah. And it's one of those things that -- I mean, look at the sign up there: "We're at war; are you doing all you can?" See the thing on the wall --

MR. WOODWARD: Right. "We're at war; are you doing all you can?" Uncle Sam pointing at you.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Yeah, yeah. And, I mean, this department is at war. And on the other hand, that's why it's here. The other departments are not here for that. They've been asked to do something that they were not organized, trained and equipped to do, and it takes time, and it's hard, and there's resistance in the Congress. And there are -- people are attracted to different organizations depending on what their bent is. And the people that are attracted here are people who are ready to be deployed and ready to go into danger zones. And the people who are attracted in other departments may or may not be. And if they're asked to, it wasn't something they signed up for, and it may not be career enhancing. In this department --

MR. WOODWARD: Can you share the concern that military people have?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Well, sure. I do. My lord, can I share it? I'm here!

MR. WOODWARD: Can you mobilize the rest -- help mobilize the rest of the government?

SEC. RUMSFELD: We've tried and tried and tried.

MR. WOODWARD: And?

SEC. RUMSFELD: And we've had some success and some areas where we've not succeeded.

MR. WOODWARD: It's not equal burden sharing, is it?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Well, no. And it -- I mean, if you think about it, it took us I don't know how long.

Gene or Bill?

We needed money for the Afghan security forces, and we couldn't get a nickel anywhere. And the funds for foreign countries --

MR. WOODWARD: When was this, sir?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Right after the -- 2001.

LT GEN RENUART: Fifty thousand dollar French bill.

SEC. RUMSFELD: And we finally went and tin-cupped the French.

LT GEN RENUART:: Yes, sir, borrowed money from the French. They gave us money.

SEC. RUMSFELD: And we couldn't get the Congress to do anything. We couldn't get the government here to do anything legally, and we knew we needed to train Afghan soldiers. Now, why couldn't we? Well, because the Department of State has the training plan, and they've programmed out two or three years in advance. And they're divided up by the subcommittees in Congress. They decide who gets that money. Well, no one really thought of Afghanistan back then. And trying to get the government to spin on a dime and adjust, it just doesn't do it.

MR. RENUART: It took us five years and we now have what's called 1206 authority -- just passed by the Congress a few months ago. It doesn't appropriate money; it gives the secretary authority to spend $200 million on training and equipping indigenous forces out of his own pocket. So we're one step at a time.

SEC. RUMSFELD: And it is the most cost-effective thing we can do. We can put five or 10 Afghan or Iraqi soldiers out there for every one of ours.

MR. WOODWARD: You know, you've got lots of people in the military who are quite unhappy that the rest of the government hasn't showed up with the same level --

SEC. RUMSFELD: Don’t say you have, we have --

MR. WOODWARD: We have. Okay, fair point, fair point.

SEC. RUMSFELD: You’re a citizen. I've got a lot of rocks in my knapsack, and I don't mind you dumping some more in there. But I like to think we're all part of this country.

MR. WHITMAN -- the last one.

MR. WOODWARD: Yes, this is -- no, I -- here's what -- I numbered the questions, and I had 53 questions, and I have 24 more, and I'd like to come back.

SEC. RUMSFELD: So you've done about half.

MR. WOODWARD: Just about half.

SEC. RUMSFELD: You can come back.

MR. WOODWARD: Thank you. That's -- and I'm a real short fuse on this. I was exactly at that point, I will tell you, with your friend, Alan Greenspan, and President Bush in interviews. And I got through half the questions and they both said exactly what you said -- you can come back. And they both said the next day, "I don't know that that's possible." It would be really helpful -- tomorrow or --

SEC. RUMSFELD: We could probably do it in the afternoon -- early afternoon I could probably stay here. I was trying to get out of here at some point, but I've got an extra hour isn’t going to make a difference.

MR. WOODWARD: That would be great. And let me know.

Part II