Known and Unknown_ A Memoir - Donald Rumsfeld [150]
“Turbulence in the intelligence community has been a problem,” I told him. There had been six CIA directors and seven directors of the Defense Intelligence Agency between 1987 and 2000. “If a corporation changed its management almost every other year,” I said, “it would go broke—and it ought to.” Bush laughed. I suggested that he nominate someone who could remain in the position long enough to make substantial progress.
Bush asked how I felt about taking a role in his administration. “I’m not eager to go back into government,” I replied, “but I would consider it if you thought I could be helpful.” However, I advised, there were a number of things he would need to be aware of before coming to a decision.
I cautioned him that after more than two decades in the private sector, running two Fortune 500 companies, serving on a number of boards of directors, and being involved in a number of nonprofit activities, my personal situation was complex and my business responsibilities were extensive. While not connected to major defense contractors, I did have ties to a number of companies, some of which did business, however loosely, with the federal government. Extracting myself from all of those relationships would be difficult—not to mention costly.
I also informed him that like many families across America, ours had not been immune to the problem of drug addiction. Two of our children, Marcy and Nick, had found themselves caught up in that personal torment, and the experience had been heartbreaking and difficult for Joyce and me. But by December 2000, Marcy and Nick were both in recovery. Marcy had been clean for more than a decade and was active in the community of recovering addicts. I wanted the President-elect to be aware of this, so I shared our family’s experience with him, as I had with Cheney, who had known our children since they were little. Bush listened with understanding.*
“You might be better off considering candidates who had fewer complications in their lives,” I suggested to him. Bush said he appreciated my position and asked me to forward to him or Cheney the names of people I thought might be appropriate for DoD or CIA. I promised to do so.
Before our meeting ended, I had one other thought I wanted to share. I had observed over the past few years that there were ways of behaving that could invite one’s enemies to act aggressively, with unintended but dangerous consequences.6 The American withdrawal under fire from Somalia in the early 1990s was an example. In like fashion, American leaders did not act forcefully in response to al-Qaida’s fatal attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000. The cumulative effect, I cautioned, suggested to our enemies that the United States was not willing to defend its interests. “Weakness is provocative,” I said to the President-elect, who nodded in agreement. “But so is the perception of weakness,” I added.
As I saw it, a decade of hesitation and half measures had undermined our national security. The incoming administration would need to give the country strategic direction and build up our defenses and intelligence capabilities. Anyone assuming those posts would need to have that in mind.
I wanted Bush to know that if he selected me I would not intend to simply preside over the department or agency. “Governor, if I were to serve in your administration I would be leaning forward,” I said. “If you would be uncomfortable with that, then I would be the wrong man for the job.”
CHAPTER 21
Here We Go Again
After my meeting with Bush, Joyce and I spent the Christmas holidays with our family at our home just north of Taos, New Mexico. Dick Cheney called me the afternoon of December 26 to talk about the names I had passed along for the CIA and the Pentagon. I had suggested that they consider Jim Woolsey, who had been Clinton’s CIA director, and Bob Kerrey, the former Democratic senator from Nebraska for secretary of defense.1 I liked the idea of someone who could give the administration bipartisan appeal. I also mentioned a CEO like General Electric’s Jack Welch, who