Known and Unknown - Donald Rumsfeld [154]
He presented me with a plastic cup. As I went to the bathroom to follow through with the request, he added one more instruction. “Sir, please leave the door open.” I laughed, but complied. As the young man departed, he said, “I can’t wait to tell my girlfriend that I just did the drug test on a secretary of defense.”
Back in 1975, one of my first acts in the Pentagon had been to turn the lights on—literally. I wanted to brighten up the halls with displays that conveyed the historical importance of the Department and the special privilege it was to be working in the Pentagon. In the quarter-century since I had departed, some had attached more to the meaning of privilege than I ever intended. Lunches for senior officials had become high-end affairs. The Pentagon even had a pastry chef, who displayed his colorful creations in glass cases in the hall just down from my office.
Another sign of how things had changed in the building were the Marine sentries posted at the door outside my office and the security detail that was assigned to follow me everywhere I went inside the Pentagon. These things made me uncomfortable. If the Pentagon was secure enough for the rest of the twenty-five thousand employees in the building to walk around without personal armed guards or sentries at their doors, I concluded it was secure enough for me. And if it wasn’t secure enough, then we had even bigger problems than I thought.
Within days, I had removed as many of the vestiges of pageantry as I could with a few snowflakes. These short memos became my method of communicating directly with the individuals I worked with closely.1 Some would say they developed into an unrelenting snowstorm. They were raw thoughts that I dictated into my still trusty Dictaphone. Some were trivial housekeeping, some were humorous, and, I admit, some missed the mark. Nonetheless, they reminded Department officials of what I believed needed to be done. I hoped they would encourage people to reach out to me in return. After I had sent a few snowflakes, the sentries at my door were soon gone. But I was never certain about the pastry chef.
Shortly after I arrived, I met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff to discuss my approach and what I hoped we could expect from each other. “I look forward to meeting with you frequently,” I said. I added that I hoped our meetings would not simply be gripe sessions on anyone’s part. It was often the case that military leaders got caught up in rivalries among the services. I wanted an open atmosphere in which we put the interests of the Department and the country first.
“I am not one to believe that everything that was done previously was wrong,” I told the chiefs. “Indeed, I am assuming it is right.” I had respect for them and their contributions, and I intended to build on the work they had done. “As I said in my confirmation hearing, there is a lot I don’t know. I need to get briefed up, and I intend to do so.”2 I told the senior civilian appointees in the Department that they should seek out the chiefs’ advice early and often and “find ways to ask them for their collective judgment.”3 Early on I established a new entity called the Senior Level Review Group (SLRG) that brought together the military chiefs and civilian leadership in the decision-making process.4 We met regularly to discuss important policy issues facing the Department.
My first task was to consider candidates for the post of deputy secretary of defense. I knew the job could be more difficult with a second-in-command who was not on the same page. President Bush had requested through Cheney that I consider two candidates for deputy: Richard Armitage and Paul Wolfowitz. They were part of the group called “the Vulcans” that had advised Bush on defense policy issues during his campaign. I don’t recall ever having met Armitage before, but from the