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"FacebookPinterest\n\nThe private plane about to deliver Rummy and Mrs. Rummy to their getaway in Taos, New Mexico, is idling on the tarmac at Dulles when the Secretary arrives. He enters smiling, beaming, swaggering, a compact little 75-year-old package of waning testosterone, dressed in real-man-headed-to-his-ranch khaki, two dachshunds (names: Reggie and Chester) yapping at his loafers, classy, no-nonsense wife of fifty-two years Velcroed to his side. In other words, the perfect tableau of a Bush-administration official\u2014except, of course, that he no longer is and has chosen this outing to talk at length for the first time since he was rudely banished from the kingdom last December.\n\nTwo young, studly pilots\u2014from the private firm Rummy uses to book his private planes\u2014greet him in the doorway of the airport lobby. They are terribly excited to have the Secretary as their charge this morning. They've never met the man before\u2014were never \"lucky enough\"\u2014and so, yes, they fall into the category (small, if you believe the press; huge, if you believe the Rumsfelds) of Great Admirers. They stand erect and giddy, very respectful. \"Mister Secretary,\" they say in unison, extending their hands, explaining that they, Jeff and Jason, will be safely delivering him to Taos this morning, sir! Rumsfeld seizes the moment. He has always known how to play to his audience. \"Let me tell you, as an old navy pilot, fellas\u2026\" And he's off and running, flashing that special Rumsfeldian ability to exude charm and arrogance at the same time: praising their fine choice of career, giving them tips on the runway layout in Taos, conspiratorially gauging whether we might have to stop for fuel, and letting them know, in that passive-aggressive way he has, that he personally has already scoped out the weather conditions. \"You don't need any final instructions or anything\" he says more than asks.\n\n\"No, sir!\"\n\nJason and Jeff head off to the cockpit, leaving the Rummys\u2014and their two security guys\u2014to schlep their stuff to the plane. (Rummy still has round-the-clock government security, because of \"threats and things,\" but he doesn't want to talk about that. This will be the first of a great many Things Rummy Doesn't Want to Talk About.) But Oh Lordy, as Rummy would say, what the heck are they bringing with them to Taos What is all this stuff Is that a king-size mattress pad from Macy's, with the tags still hanging off it, that they are lugging across the country And what's with the straw rugs Joyce, a.k.a. Mrs. Rummy, says she found those nifty rugs at a hardware store, though her preferred shopping venue is Target. As for the mattress pad, it was on sale! And they needed a new one at the ranch. They are, they explain, frugal.\n\nExcept when it comes to their preferred mode of transport.\n\nThe Lear 60 they have leased for the journey is about fifty feet away on the tarmac. Would the Secretary like a ride out to the plane asks one of the security guys. Rummy gives him his best \"You idiot, I'm Donald Rumsfeld\" look. \"'Course not!\" he barks.\n\nAnd we are off to Taos.\n\n\"Feel free to open the windows, ladies,\" says Rummy, in his oozing-charm voice. (He is either Rummy or Mr. Secretary or DHR, as he refers to himself; or DR, as his staff refers to him, with abbreviated reverence.) Open the windows \"No, no,\" he says. An impatient snarl. (Is she going to take everything literally) The shades! The shades!\n\nWe settle in on the plane. Me, Joyce (with both dogs on her lap), DHR, and in the fourth seat, DHR's reading materials. Mounds and mounds of newspapers: USA Today, The New York Times, Financial Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, etc. (Though the next day, he will claim, when asked what it's like to get excoriated in the press: \"I don't spend a lot of time reading newspapers.\") He has also brought with him a thick stack of e-mails and memos that he has printed out for the trip. He still does his famous \"snowflake\" thing, so named for his propensity to put every thought that crosses his mind into memos and distribute them like a blizzard (to whom, these days, it is not clear), with the exception, perhaps, of those things he does not recall, such as his role, or nonrole, in the Pat Tillman cover-up, which he will testify about a month after our trip. For much of the four-hour flight to New Mexico, he hands notes and papers, one page at a time, across the aisle to Joyce with a \"Sweetheart, look at this\" instruction. Or: \"Here, this is interesting.\" Or: \"Here, now this is interesting.\"\n\nI let at least two states pass underneath us before I dare to ask: So\u2026whatcha all reading\n\nHeh heh. \"You see the mountains There they are!\" says DHR.\n\nNo, really, what's so interesting\n\n \"Bad thunderstorms, like they said.\"\n\nFinally, he begins to hand pages across the aisle to me, with a caveat: \"You can read it, but you can't use it.\" Heh heh\n\nThe Rumsfelds are headed to Taos on this gorgeous summer day to greet the only creature who might be more stubborn than DR. That would be Gus, the new mule Rummy bought for Joyce for her seventy-fifth birthday. \"I said to Don,\" says Joyce, filing her nails, \"'I want a mule.' Because our horses, I haven't been on in six years. And I just feel, at this age, it's safer for me to be on a mule than a horse. A mule is not spooked easily, very sure-footed, calm\u2026\"\n\nDHR puts his paper down and squints. Joyce wanted a mule, he says, so he bought her one. The least he could do.\n\nAnd you know, says Joyce, \"in the history of the army, they were on mules.\" So they had that little military connection.\u2026\n\n\"Kit Carson rode one from California to Taos, New Mexico!\" says Rummy.\n\n\"Isn't that crazy\" says Joyce.\n\nSo how, exactly, do you go about buying a mule\n\n\"On the Internet!\" Rummy says.\n\nHe goes on to explain that he found \"this mule fella in Missouri. I found the man who trained them and bred them. And, uh, he sent a video. And we looked at the video and satisfied ourselves that Gus was at least a possibility. There's always a risk! When you buy a\u2014\"\n\nA mule online\n\n\"You can get a bad one. But from the video, he looks like a good-looking animal.\"\n\nAnd you named him Gus because\u2026\n\n \"Oh no, it was already named. The animal's name, technically, was Augustus. But that's a little too grand for us. So he's gonna be Gus.\" He picks up another newspaper. The headlines are full of news about Hillary, Barack, Rudy, McCain. Surely he has an opinion on how the election is shaping up.\n\n\"The what\" says Rummy.\n\nThe presidential election.\n\n\"I think, uh\u2026I'm gonna eat my lunch now.\"\n\nKevin, his security guard who's sitting in the jump seat behind the cockpit, proffers the prepackaged lunches. \"Chicken or tuna salad,\" says Rummy. \"Ladies\"\n\nHe eats in silence, occasionally gazing out the window, then declares that he is going to \"not talk for a while.\"\n\nJoyce is less reticent. While her husband shields himself with The Wall Street Journal, she talks about how surreal it has been for them to \"reenter,\" as she puts it. For six years, they lived in the bubble of the Bush administration\u2014they couldn't even go to Taos! But now that they are \"reentering,\" life has gotten interesting again. Why, just the other day, they flew commercial for the first time in six years!\n\n\"It was fun,\" says Rummy, piping up.\n\n\"Oh, my gosh,\" says Joyce. \"It was exciting. And then we went on the train to New York. Which was the first time since he left the Pentagon. It was the first time we had done anything really like that! And it was absolutely\u2026 We were like two kids on an adventure!\"\n\nDHR has his nose back in the papers as Joyce tells the rest of the story about the amazing train ride. \"And then the conductor came through and said, 'There's been a terrible tragedy.' And we thought\u2014I mean, from where we're coming from, 'terrible tragedy' is serious. And the conductor said, 'Anna Nicole Smith has died.' \"\n\nA little snort from Rummy.\n\n\"And so isn't that\u2026,\" Joyce trails off. \"I mean, it's really\u2026 And then the darling couple in front of us, who had said nothing, they turned around and said, 'We've been trying to respect your privacy, but we're quite sure you have no idea who Anna Nicole Smith is.' Isn't that adorable!\"\n\nHe peers over his newspaper and snorts again.\n\n\"And Don said, 'Help us out a little bit.' \"\n\nThey exchange a knowing chuckle.\n\n\"But I mean, it was the real world, you know\" says Joyce.\n\nSpeaking of the real world, when the Rummys are in Taos, do they ever get to hang out with Julia Roberts\n\nRummy smiles. \"Noooo. But we've met her, and she's very nice.\"\n\n\"She just had another baby, Don. A boy,\" says Joyce.\n\nSo they've met her\n\n\"Well, yeah, I'd say,\" says Rummy. \"I sold her some land. We had land that abutted each other, and she wanted it, so we sold it to her. But don't put that in there! I don't want that in the story.\"\n\n(\"That's okay,\" whispers Joyce. \"It was all over the Taos papers.\")\n\nFor the next half hour, his lovely and open wife tells me about the love affair the two have shared for more than six decades. They met when they were 14. Freshman year in high school, Winnetka, Illinois. \"I was obsessed!\" she says. \"But he wasn't crazy about me.\" She spent her high school years offering condolences to the other girls he shafted. Finally, she snagged him senior year. Then he got accepted to Princeton. And she made a decision\u2014\"it was deliberate,\" she says\u2014to go as far away as possible. She picked Colorado. \"I went west when he went east, because I didn't want to spend four years hoping he would call.\"\n\nRummy pretends to be ignoring this conversation.\n\nThen what\n\nWell\u2026Joyce was no dummy. She got herself \"pinned\" to another guy, and Rummy went berserk. (\"I think it still bothers him,\" she whispers.) He instantly proposed.\n\nDR peers over his newspaper. \"Oh, come on! She was so crazy about me that she ran off and got pinned to some guy in Colorado!\"\n\n\"See\" says Joyce. \"That still makes him a little mad, right\"\n\n\"Do you think it was a strategy\" Rummy asks me.\n\nI think it was a brilliant strategy!\n\n \"Yeah, well. Do you want more lunch\"\n\nHe returns to the papers, and Joyce returns to the topic of reentering. I probably won't believe this, she says, but one of the really great things that's happened since the president did or did not fire her husband is that everywhere they go, people just adore Donald Rumsfeld. \"They come up to him on the street and tell him how much they like him,\" says Joyce. \"They throw their arms around him! Wherever we go. Even in New York, where you'd think it would be enemy territory! People come up to him and throw their arms around him.\"\n\nShe says that he got \"hundreds and hundreds of letters\" when he left the Pentagon. All positive. \"I said to Don, 'Did you get any bad ones'\" DHR squints over his papers. Well, there was one negative letter, says Joyce. \"From someone who was mad because he sold property to Julia Roberts.\"\n\nRummy grimaces.\n\nHe tosses another memo across to Joyce for her opinion. \"Lisa's gonna think all my good ideas come from you,\" he says. To me: \"I feel like her secretary.\" (Speaking of which, Joyce reminds him, they need to thank Lynne Cheney for dinner.) Finally, he starts to share. Among the things I am allowed to read: his eulogy for Gerald Ford (yes, he carries it around with him) and a rather fascinating chronology he has typed up interspersing the life of Donald Rumsfeld with Major World Events (\"1946: DHR meets Joyce.\u2026 1947: DHR becomes an Eagle Scout.\u2026 2003: Operation Iraqi Freedom begins\"). I learn that he was born the day after the stock market hit bottom in 1932, that he was 11 on D-day, and that his father died, of Alzheimer's, the same year Ford made Rummy chief of staff. Rummy says he stole this chronology idea from a book he read on Churchill. He thinks it might be a nifty way to start his own book\u2014which he is, in fact, planning to write, despite coy protestations. The chronology is a reminder of the profound influence DHR has wielded for more than half a century: naval officer. Four-term congressman. The youngest (and then oldest) secretary of defense. Top aide under Ford and Nixon (who once called him \"a ruthless little bastard\"). Ambassador to NATO. Middle East envoy. Two lucrative stints as a CEO in private industry\u2014\n\nHe hands over another memo. \"I sat down the other day and made a list of challenges in the world,\" he says. (\"Subject: Challenges.\") Another is an April 26, 2006, memo addressed to President Bush titled \"Some Illustrative New Approaches and Initiatives to Meet the 21st-Century Challenges.\" (I can read it, but I can't have it.)\n\nWe move on to some photographs. DHR in his Princeton-graduation photo, DHR on a unicycle, DHR with Gerald Ford in bedroom slippers. And a really creepy shot of DHR's face on a shooting target in Iraq. \"These were found in the terrorist training camp,\" he explains. \"Before the war even started, they were there.\"\n\nWith you as the target\n\n\"Yeah. When we conquered Baghdad, we went into this terrorist training camp and this was their target, all over the place. They were using these.\"\n\nDidn't that freak you out\n\nA loud belly laugh. \"There are so many things that should freak me out!\" Then, a straight face. \"No. Not really.\"\n\nRummy collects his papers and memos and stuffs them into his old, beat-up leather briefcase. (He's had it since 1977.) Then he gathers up the newspapers and offers them to me. In return I toss him the New York Post, the only paper he hasn't devoured today. On the cover: Paris Hilton, just released from jail. He reads the headline\u2014V-D DAY!\u2014and cracks up. Then he starts to read the story.\n\nSuddenly, the quizzical Rumsfeldian look.\n\n\"Sweetheart\" he says to his wife. \"What's a hair extension\"\n\n\"It's a very big thing right now,\" says Joyce. \"I just learned about it three weeks ago.\"\n\nRummy looks on in horror as she describes\u2014quite accurately\u2014how it is done.\n\n\"Hmmmph,\" he says.\n\nAs we approach Taos, he gestures out the window. Look! \"There's the Rio Grande.\" And the famous Gorge Bridge. \"A friend flew under that Gorge Bridge. He got arrested for it. He was foolhardy.\" A beat. \"And there's Julia Roberts's land!\" (But he'd prefer I not mention that.)\n\nWhen the plane touches down, the Rummys applaud. \"Way to go!\" DHR shouts to the cockpit. \"You could have been a navy pilot!\" Then to me: \"He had a little runway left there, didn't use it all.\" This is apparently high praise.\n\nJoyce tells me I should dress as casually as possible when I come to visit the farm tomorrow. Jeans \"Absolutely!\" (They prefer to call it a farm, not a ranch.) \"Not those shoes,\" adds Rummy, pointing to my high heels. \"Those aren't Taos shoes.\"\n\nI mention that maybe we could talk about Iraq tomorrow.\n\nA squint of the eyes. A dawning realization.\n\n\"What is this for\" he asks. \"And why\"\n\n\n\nThat night Rummy calls, as promised, with directions to the farm. I already have a set of directions from his guy back in Washington\u2014with the words please destroy after use on a sticky note on top\u2014but I indulge him. He seems in good spirits; he explains that he and Joyce are enjoying their \"last night alone\" before Gus arrives. His directions are complicated, military-precise, every detail mentioned\u2014including two \"cattle guards\" that one must navigate correctly. Um, what's a cattle guard \"That is such a New York question!\" says Rummy, roaring with laughter.\n\nAt nine the next morning, he's waiting in the driveway of the farm with Chester and Reggie. \"C'mon, Reggie, it's Lisa! He can't see well.\" Reggie nuzzles my ankles. \"Good dog.\" Today he's dressed in real-man-on-the-farm garb: old, faded jeans, a Patagonia vest, an oord shirt and white undershirt, New Balance sneakers. Despite a limp (he wiped out on the slopes last winter and screwed up his hip pretty good) that has added a bit of frailty to the Persona, he still has the macho thing going. He walks like a man with a ranch.\n\n\"You wanna leave your gear here, and I'll walk you around a bit\" he asks.\n\nThough Rummy doesn't make a habit of inviting members of the press to his farm, he seems to love showing it off. The place is\u2014there's just no way to say it without clich\u00E9s\u2014peaceful, quiet, rustic, stunning in its raw natural beauty. It's his fifty-acre piece of heaven, his sanctuary\u2014particularly now. In fact, it kinda ticked him off that he got out here only a handful of times while he was secretary of defense. \"Have been a little busy for the last six and a half years,\" he says, chuckling. One of the upsides to his exile\u2014though he doesn't call it that\u2014is being able to come here whenever the heck he wants. He shows me every barn, every tractor, every animal on the property. \"I just love it here,\" he says. \"Where's my chain saw\"\n\nIf you're expecting Don Rumsfeld\u2014out of government now, on his farm, in a moment of repose\u2014to play the bitter, angry, reflective, tragic fallen hero\u2026ain't gonna happen. If he feels any of those things, he's not showing it. (And if he did, he probably wouldn't be Donald H. Rumsfeld.) The man does not do regret. Over the course of the next few hours, he will answer every question asked of him, and even when the answer is \"I'm not gonna talk about that,\" there's never a flash of anger. Impatience, yes, but never anger.\n\nAnd anyway, he would much rather show me around. \"You gotta see this,\" he says, leading me past piles of horse manure, past an outhouse, over an irrigation ditch, into a series of dilapidated barns. Rummy's spread used to be a dairy farm\u2014he bought it from the farmer's wife at auction, after the guy died\u2014and he has kept everything the old man left here. His tools, his machinery, his clothes, his rifle holster (\"You ever seen one\"). He even kept his dirt-encrusted delivery log. \"Look at this: 'Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Homogenized for Herman Quintana. Put it in the icebox.' Isn't that interesting He pretty much ran this place by himself. So he had to do it wisely.\"\n\nThe Rumsfelds lease part of their land to a friend who runs cattle out here\u2014\"They were all right here this morning,\" Rummy says; \"it looked to be thirty head in this patch\"\u2014and have some handsome-looking horses. In another barn, he stores his guns. Which come in handy, with the darn coyotes. He has to be careful that Chester and Reggie don't get eaten. \"They go after the young ones,\" he explains. \"They got a calf one night.\" He tells the story of how he tried to save that calf in the middle of the night. \"Joyce likes to keep the ammunition far away from the weapons. So we keep the weapons locked up in here and the ammunition somewhere else. And one night, you could hear the coyotes killing a calf. As sure as anything. It was calving season. And I raced out here, got the ammunition, then I ran to the gun locker, got that open, then I ran all the way back.\" He stops for a second, stares out at the field where it happened. Did I just detect a hint of emotion I did. \"By the time I got out there, they'd finished.\"\n\nWas it bad\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\nSo then what do you do with\u2014\n\n\"A dead calf\" That hint of emotion is suddenly gone. \"Oh, they kind of pack it up,\" he says matter-of-factly. \"A dead horse or anything, they pack it up and take it out to the dump.\"\n\nHe shows me his little workshop (\"I like to fix things\"), the guesthouse, the barn he converted to a playroom filled with dollhouses and a Foosball table (for the grandkids). Then, suddenly, there's a bit of a crisis: Reggie, the older dachshund who can't see much anymore, has somehow gotten into the corral with the horses. \"Oh no! Reggie! Come, pal!\" To me: \"This is not good. They'll stomp him to death. They don't know what he is. He could be a coyote or something.\u2026 Where the hell is he Reggie! Ho! I don't see him. Stay here, Chester.\"\n\nHe goes off and rescues Reggie. But the darn dog keeps wandering off. Will he know not to go back in there with the horses\n\n\"No, he may not,\" says DR. \"But he's gotta learn, I suppose.\" He shrugs. Learning the hard way is apparently a Rumsfeld tradition.\n\n(A week later, Reggie will have what first appears to be a stroke. And Rumsfeld\u2014though he won't admit this\u2014will be crushed.)\n\nHe leads me into the farmhouse. Their main house, where Joyce is spending the morning, is across the highway, on even more land. (They've made quite a haul in New Mexico real estate acquisitions over the years.) But since it's being renovated, they've been bunking down on the farm. The farmhouse is adorable. It's a \"real adobe\" Taos house, with two-foot-thick walls and beamed ceilings. Joyce has it decorated in southwestern WASP: warm, muted colors; tasteful rugs on stone floors; a few carefully selected pieces of art (a simple wooden cross, a Curtis print of the Taos pueblo, a painting by a local artist of the famous St. Francis of Assisi church in Taos\u2014made more famous by Georgia O'Keeffe\u2014where they like to go to Mass on Sundays even though they're not Catholic); framed pictures of their three children and seven grandchildren; and a touch of whimsy, like the black steel cow sprawled out in the foyer. \"That scare ya\" asks DR. \"Joyce found that.\" To commemorate one of their favorite cows, who died birthing a calf. His wife is the type of woman who turned his old congressional spittoon into a centerpiece for dinner parties. You can see why he loves her.\n\n\"We can sit here, if you want to visit,\" says Rummy, offering a sturdy chair at the kitchen table. For several minutes, he futzes around, trying to figure out how to pour me a glass of water. (Where the heck did Joyce put the glasses) Then he sits down, crosses his legs, and gestures at the tape recorder. Right. He had asked me to remind him first about an article in yesterday's paper speculating on whether he was shopping some tell-all book. \"I don't even want to bother with that article,\" he says. (It will be a memoir, not a darn tell-all, spanning the full seventy-five years of his illustrious life and career.) Okay. \"But I'll tell you what I'm doing. Joyce and I are in the process of typing up the papers that I was working on on the plane over. To create a new foundation. But this is a foundation that will be an operating foundation. And we have four purposes at the present time.\u2026\"\n\nSo he's not, as the article speculated, about to write a book that will \"correct the factual record, so he can sleep more gently\"\n\n\"Noooo! That's nonsense!\" An impatient snarl. \"I sleep fine.\"\n\nHe'd like to explain the four purposes of his foundation: \"One is to provide fellowships for postgraduate work in a variety of areas, including economics and foreign policy and national-security affairs. Our second purpose is to sponsor a lecture series\u2014Pipe down!\" One of the dogs is barking. \"We ran out of food, so he's hungry.\" He looks to the ceiling. \"Oh, Joyce, tell me how to do this!\" To the dog: \"We don't have any food. I'll give you a YipYap, that's what I'll give ya.\"\n\nA YipYap\n\n\"It's something that Joyce has to calm them down. It's a treat. Kind of a little\u2026 Here, pal. The third thing is, we're interested in microenterprise. Most of the poor countries of the world\u2014I shouldn't say most\u2014a number of the poorer countries of the world have corrupt governments, and so when nations help nations, a lot of that money doesn't end up going to the people; it gets stuck in graft and corruption.\" He explains that before he came back to government, he worked on microloans with some outfit doing work in India and was impressed by it. He wants to do it in Afghanistan. \"The fourth thing we'll do is be involved and interested in the Central Asian former Soviet republics.\u2026\" A brief history lesson, then an explanation of what the Big Goal is: \"We talked about it and decided that these were four things that looked like it would be timely to be helpful on. Each of us believes in free political systems and free economic systems, and so that's a thread that will run through. I just think there ought to be a way\u2026to try to be helpful to these former Soviet republics in ways that make their transition from a communist system and a command economy to a free political system and a free economy better. So that is what we're doing. If I do write a book, the funds from the book would go right into that foundation.\"\n\nSounds ambitious.\n\n\"It is!\"\n\nYou could just hang out in Taos and not do anything.\n\n\"Oh, that's not like me. I have too much energy to do that. And it's a wonderful world, all the things that can be done.\"\n\nIs it your legacy you're worried about\n\n\"Nooo! I don't think in that term.\"\n\nYou don't Maybe a little bit\n\n\"No. You get up and do what you do. And when it's over, it's over.\"\n\nHe pushes out his chair, checks his watch.\n\nBut when you look back\u2026\n\n\"You know I am not a person who looks back. You say, 'When you look back.' If you asked me when was the last time I looked back, I don't do much of it. I just don't. Tomorrow's what's important, much more important than yesterday.\"\n\nBut how do you want to be remembered\n\n\"Oh, I don't know,\" he says. \"Accurately.\"\n\nOkay, then. How do you think you'll be remembered\n\n\"I don't have any idea.\" He's slightly annoyed now. But: \"I know it'll be different than it is today; it always is. I think you read in that little paper I showed you on the plane that Harry Truman went out of office with, I think, a 19 or 20 percent approval rating. And yet what was accomplished in his presidency, with all those institutions that served the world and our country so well for fifty years, it's just amazing.\"\n\nDo you think your old buddy W. hopes he's Harry Truman in fifty years\n\n\"I. Don't. Know.\"\n\nDo you miss him\n\n\"Um, no.\"\n\nA wry Rummy smile.\n\nHow about Colin Powell Are you still close\n\n\"No! We're not close. Never were.\"\n\nCheney\n\n\"I still see Cheney.\"\n\nYes, they have houses right near each other on the eastern shore of Maryland. And yes, it is true they watched the last two presidential elections together over at Dick's place, and no, Rummy is not sure if they'll be doing that again.\n\n\"I don't know!\" he says. \"He's a busy guy.\"\n\nA few things he will say about W. He believes that someday he'll be vindicated. He believes he's a lot more intelligent and curious than people give him credit for. \"Oh, my goodness gracious!\" That's a yes. \"But you say 'than people give him credit for.' Than the press. Let's lay it on the line. 'Than the press gives him credit for.' Just think, in my lifetime, the Republican presidential candidates: Eisenhower, considered to be a bumbler, bad syntax. Gerald Ford, the best athlete they had in decades, and they called him a stumblebum and demeaned him and made fun of him. Said he wasn't smart, which he was. He'd gone to Michigan, he'd gone to Yale Law School. I mean\u2026 And Ronald Reagan. You read his diaries now, and the man is remarkable. And yet he was dismissed as a movie actor and not very smart. So I mean, the fact that President Bush is demeaned is no different than Eisenhower or Ford or Reagan. And the fact that people believe that to be the case is not a surprise when they're told it day in, day out, by the, uh, eastern media.\"\n\nI can see how you and Bush got along in the loyalty department.\n\n\"Now, that's funny.\"\n\nYou still like him\n\n\"I do.\"\n\nYou don't talk, though, right\n\n\"Uhhh\u2026I'm trying to think. No.\"\n\nWas the last time you talked to him the day you resigned\n\nHe can't recall.\n\nWhat he does recall is that twice before, at the height of the Abu Ghraib disgrace, he offered to resign. \"I wrote a note. The first note basically said, 'Look, this is a difficult problem for our country, and it happened on my watch, and you have my resignation anytime you feel it would be helpful.' And then I gave him that, and he rejected it. And then I wrote out a longer resignation, and, uh, resigned as opposed to offering a resignation. And he rejected that.\"\n\nWhat does that tell you about him\n\nLong pause. \"I don't know that I want to go there. That's none of my business. To analyze\u2026\"\n\nA month and a half after our visit, Reuters would break the story that Rumsfeld gave his final (and apparently third) resignation letter to the president the day before the midterm elections, though Bush chose not to announce it until the day after, infuriating many Republicans who felt the election could have been won if Rummy had been sacrificed first. In Taos, I asked him if he considered resigning before the elections.\n\n\"Uhhh, no,\" he replied. \"But it was very clear in my mind that if the Democrats won the House or the Senate or both, that it made sense for me to\u2026that it would be best for the department if someone else was there.\"\n\nSo it could have been different for you if the Republicans had won\n\n\"Mmm-hmm.\"\n\nI tell him there's something I've been curious about. In the early days, before the invasion, where did Donald Rumsfeld stand, exactly Were you one of the people driving the bus who wanted to invade Iraq, or\u2014\n\n\"No.\" He cuts me off. \"I think [Bush] was quoted in the Woodward book as saying he didn't ask me. And that's true.\"\n\nBut surely, at some point you must have expressed your concerns.\n\nHe did. First of all, \"we\u2014without separating me from the others\u2014we tried not to have that happen. We tried to get Saddam Hussein to adhere to the U.N. resolutions. We tried to get other countries to put diplomatic pressure on him. Even at the very end, we tried to get him to leave the country and seek safe haven elsewhere so that that\"\u2014he means the war\u2014\"wouldn't have to happen. And before the war, I sat and\u2014this is on the record, all of this\u2014I sat down and handwrote fifteen, twenty, twenty-five things that could be\u2026could go wrong, could be real problems.\"\n\nHe says he will show me the memo. (And eventually, he does. It's just as he describes it.) \"I wrote down all of the things that could be problems: That we wouldn't find weapons of mass destruction. That there'd be a Fortress Baghdad, and a lot of people would be killed. All of this\u2026 I read it in a National Security Council meeting. Then I went back to my office\u2014I had handwritten it\u2014and I dictated it and added four or five things. And I think there's probably thirty items on it. And then I sent it around to each of the members of the National Security Council, to the president and the vice president. So that all of them had in their heads the things that were difficult, problematic, worrisome, dangerous.\"\n\nAnd how was it received\n\n\"Um\u2026\" A pause. He is carefully choosing his words. \"I think it was\u2026appreciated by the president that I took the time to do that.\"\n\nAnd do you think the president\u2014\n\n\"Yeah, I thought he read it. Yeah.\"\n\nAlmost on cue, the dogs start barking. Joyce walks in, with Blanca, their housekeeper.\n\n\"Hi, Blanca!\" says DR.\n\n\"Hi, sir.\"\n\nHe notices that Blanca looks upset. \"You doin' all right What happened\"\n\nJoyce explains that a good friend of Blanca's just lost her son. Killed in a car accident last night. With another friend. Fifteen years old.\n\n\"Fifteen,\" says Rummy, shaking his head. \"Oh, that is a shame.\"\n\nHe walks over to Blanca, has a private word with her.\n\nThen we move into the parlor, so Blanca and Joyce can put the groceries away. We sit down at a big, oval wooden table next to Joyce's piano and shelves filled with jigsaw puzzles and Scrabble games. They're big Scrabble people.\n\nSo: Could you ever see yourself pulling a Robert McNamara and apologizing for your role in this war\n\nHe doesn't blink. \"McNamara is a good man. And an intelligent man.\u2026\" And the rest is off the record. \"Very much off the record.\" (DR always adds degrees to his off-the-recordness. There is, to my count, \"off the record,\" \"very off the record,\" and \"way off the record.\" And he always remembers, sometimes in midsentence, to tell you when he's back on. The man is nothing if not precise.)\n\nAt one point I ask him what the hardest time in his life was. \"The hardest time, without question, was being chief of staff to President Ford,\" he says. \"Because [Ford] stepped into a flying airplane, with no crew! And to come in and be his chief of staff was just a terribly difficult assignment.\" It was brutal being in charge, he says, \"in the immediate aftermath of Watergate, when the reservoir of trust in this country had been drained,\" where \"you'd go out and give a press conference in the White House, and if I said, 'That's the ceiling,' they would wonder why; they'd say, 'Why is he saying that's the ceiling' I mean, there was no trust in anyone for any reason. The environment was just polluted. It was just rotten in our country.\"\n\nHarder than the past six years, though\n\n\"Oh yeah. You know, people think now, Gee, isn't everything horrible and isn't it terrible \" But look at the other times in history, in his own lifetime, he says. \"I mean, Lyndon Johnson couldn't leave the White House during the Vietnam War, they were throwing blood on the Pentagon\u2026 They were digging graves in my front lawn the last time I was secretary of defense! So you know, everything's new and everything changes, and nothing changes.\"\n\nThere are a lot of people who think that you guys are cold and callous, I say, that you don't hear criticism, that it doesn't seem to affect you when you see the death toll every day coming out of Iraq.\n\n\"Oh.\" It's more of a moan than an \"oh.\"\n\nWhy is that\n\n\"Probably ignorance.\"\n\nBut it has to affect you.\n\n\"Oh.\" The moan again. \"Off the record\u2026\" And he tells a story that, frankly, should be on the record. It's personal and pretty heart-wrenching, the kind of thing that people who despise Donald Rumsfeld might be surprised to hear.\n\nWhy do you want this o\u00AC the record\n\n\"I just do. I don't like to talk about myself.\"\n\nDays later, I ask if I could put the story he told me on the record. And he responds with one of his dictated memos. (\"Subject: Lisa's Questions on Hospital Visits.\") What follows is several paragraphs of efficient, sterile prose utterly devoid of the seeming emotion I sensed when he talked at the kitchen table about visiting wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital with Joyce. But that is Rummy. Given the chance\u2014even a second chance\u2014to show a pulse, he chooses not to.\n\nDHR still lives by a code that no doubt served him well\u2014to a point. You don't self-aggrandize, you don't kiss and tell, you don't open a vein and act like you're on Oprah. An example: I tell him I'd really love to know where he stands on social issues. He has lived a life fuller than most, and his intellectual wattage is undeniable. Surely he has thought about some of this stuff. He snorts. No, really. How does Donald Rumsfeld feel about gay marriage, abortion, etc.\n\n\"Um, I'm not gonna get into it.\"\n\nBut why\n\n\"The administration has positions on these things, and if you're part of the administration, you're supportive of the administration.\"\n\nYeah, but you're not anymore.\n\n\"I know. But it's just not the way I am.\"\n\nHe has made it very clear that he is not a man who looks back. But surely, I say, when you think about the past six years, where it began and where it is now, there must be regrets.\n\n\"Well, sure.\" A pause. Is he going to elaborate Sort of. \"I mean, you'd always wish things were perfect, but they never are. The enemy has a brain. And the enemy watches what our folks do, and they adjust to it and adapt to it, and in the process there's friction. And, uh, I mean, the fact that we were not able to get a division in through Turkey at the outset meant that the Saddamists, today's insurgents, had free play for a good period of time.\u2026\" And so on. \"I mean, there's a dozen things like that.\"\n\nBut what would you have done differently\n\n\"Oh, I don't think I'm gonna get into that.\" He checks his watch again. \"We're winding up, right\"\n\nSo do you ever feel like you've been made the fall guy with Iraq\n\n\"No. I think anyone who's involved in a war\u2014eh, wars are difficult things, they're messy things, they're dangerous things, people die, people get wounded. And anyone who's involved, someone's not gonna like it, someone's gonna be critical of it. So I\u2014if you're in the business I was in, uh, that goes with the territory.\"\n\nIt's hard to argue with this logic. But it does have the added benefit of deflecting any sort of criticism. It is also the kind of mindset that lets you sleep at night.\n\nHe goes on. \"If you do anything, somebody's not gonna like it, that's inevitable. Therefore, if you want to be liked\u2014as Tony Blair said, popular, which is a terrible word\u2014if you don't do anything, then everyone's gonna like you. And if you do do something, somebody's not gonna like it. And when you cancel weapons systems, you're gonna get a bunch of generals unhappy about it. Because that's what they spent their whole life on, working on those things, getting ready for it. That doesn't bother me. I've been changing things for decades. I went into companies and changed them. And I\u2014I'm comfortable with that, I accept that, that there's gonna be opposition to things. I was asked to come into the department, by the president, to transform it. I could have gone in and not done that. And everyone would have been smiling. And the defense contractors that were doing what they were doing would be happy, the congressmen who had things going on in their districts would be happy\u2026\n\n\"The fact is, we're in a conflict and a struggle\u2014the first conflict of the twenty-first century for the United States of America. It is new, it is unfamiliar to the American people, and there's\u2026 In a very real sense, the American military cannot lose a battle, they can't lose a war. On the other hand, they can't win the struggle themselves. It requires diplomacy, it requires economic assistance, it requires a range of things that are well beyond the purview of the Department of Defense.\" His purview. \"In terms of what's going on in Iraq or Afghanistan today, what the Department of Defense is doing is working. What isn't working is the diplomatic side. The government of Iraq has not been able to find ways to bring the elements of that country together sufficiently that they can create an environment hospitable to, uh, whatever one wants to call their evolving way of life, a democracy or a representative system or a freer system. Look at Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, 28 million people are free. They have their own president, they have their own parliament. Improved a lot on the streets.\"\n\nAll your theories worked there, in other words.\n\n\"It's been a big success! The Iraqi government has not been successful as yet. And, uh, it's gonna take some time and some effort.\"\n\nWhen do you see it resolved\n\n\"I'm not gonna get into that.\"\n\nRight. But if you distill the general sense\u2026the measured general sense\u2026of what the American public feels about Iraq right now, it would be: a plan in but not a plan out. Do you agree with that\n\n\"No! No, no! The military has to have plans for post-major-conflict stabilization, and they did. And, uh, the focus of the insurgents and the terrorists and the Al Qaeda have put on Iraq\u2026 It's enormously important to them.\"\n\nBut you sleep okay\n\n\"I do. Always have.\"\n\nNo nightmares\n\n\"Nope.\"\n\nBut surely, it has to be rough getting trashed every day.\n\nHe chuckles. \"No. I get up and go right on.\"\n\nEven when there's a headline where another general says, \"Rumsfeld failed America\"\n\n\"Uh-huh. And you know, that's one general out of forty. So\u2014\"\n\nIs that how you deal with it\n\n\"Yeah. I mean, you should see the hundreds and hundreds of letters I received. Appreciating my service to the country. And complimenting me.\u2026 People that fuss, they're mostly retired people who don't agree with some of the things that we're doing. But I tell ya, I walk down the street\u2014people are wonderful! It's incredible. Oh, my goodness, it's overwhelming.\"\n\nDoes that surprise you\n\n\"Nope.\"\n\nIt is interesting, really, that the Rumsfelds have chosen Taos as their refuge. You couldn't possibly find a more liberal-hippie-crunchy hangout. And in fact, while the locals will tell you they tolerated Donald Rumsfeld's presence just fine before Iraq\u2014 \"He was just another rich guy,\" says one nose-pierced store owner\u2014they haven't exactly made his life easy since then. He doesn't get a whole lot of hugs in Taos\u2014except for one guy, not terribly popular, who rides around town shouting, \"Viva Rumsfeld!\" there've been numerous protests. Like the time some group carried an enormous weapon of mass destruction (a giant papier\u2013m\u00E2ch\u00E9 Rummy) through the streets of town. Or the time his little grandchildren got heckled in the Fourth of July parade. The Fourth of July parade, for goodness sake! There are the people who shout \"Warmonger!\" from their pickup trucks. And there was the well-circulated story about the dude in the ski lodge who really let Rummy have it. Gave him such heck\u2014\"Well, lookee here! If it isn't Donald Rumsfeld, our favorite local war criminal\"\u2014but DHR being DHR, he just ignored him.\n\nWasn't that a little difficult\n\n\"No, not really. It's a free country. People can say what they want.\"\n\nRummy checks his watch again. Golly, we've gone on longer than he'd planned. Do I know how to get back to my hotel Do I need any suggestions for later There are some great bars in Taos! The Trading Post is nice also! Gotta check that out. He walks me to my car. The doggies lick good-bye. Wait a minute\u2014do I want to see a real adobe house I am instructed to follow him in his Toyota Land Cruiser to his real house across the highway\u2026but this is strictly off the record!\n\nAn hour later, more good-byes in yet another gravel driveway.\n\nThis time he really has to go. Gus the mule is due any minute.\n\nLisa DePaulo is a GQ correspondent."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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