As Usual, Rumsfeld Stares Down the Storm

At the darkest moment of his Pentagon tenure, when the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal was gathering steam and many in Washington were betting on his swift exit, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld boarded a C-17 cargo plane last year and made an emergency trip to Baghdad.

There, Rumsfeld told a throng of U.S. troops that he had no intention of going down without a fight.

“It’s a fact,” Rumsfeld said. “I’m a survivor.”

Back home, Rumsfeld’s trip became fodder for late-night television.

“Yeah, a survivor about to be voted off the island,” Jay Leno cracked on “The Tonight Show.”

Yet in Washington’s own brand of reality television, where Machiavellian intrigue is not a ratings game, Rumsfeld has done far more than survive. Five months into President Bush’s second term, Rumsfeld’s influence within the administration shows no sign of waning.

Even as the war in Iraq casts a long shadow over the reform agenda that Rumsfeld is pushing at the Pentagon, the Defense chief who remains a magnet for controversy is staying on the offensive.

With public support for the Iraq war declining and the number of critics on Capitol Hill growing, Rumsfeld in the last week emerged again as the Bush Cabinet’s most prominent spokesman for the war effort. Three days before appearing on talk shows last Sunday, the 72-year-old Defense secretary withstood eight hours of congressional questioning -- peppered with lawmakers’ harsh criticism about the war’s progress.

Afterward, aides said Rumsfeld spent little time worrying about critics such as Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who characterized Iraq as a “quagmire” and called for the Defense secretary’s resignation.

“He doesn’t dwell and is always looking ahead to the next thing. This is not a guy who looks back and agonizes,” said Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita, who is also one of Rumsfeld’s closest advisors.

Beyond Iraq, the White House has given Rumsfeld an unusually long leash that allows him to hold forth on issues far outside his portfolio as Defense secretary.

During the first stop of a two-continent tour last month, Rumsfeld caused a sensation when he delivered a speech in Singapore to Asian defense ministers warning of the threat that China’s military poses to the balance of power in the Pacific.

The speech was the buzz of the two-day conference, and not just because Rumsfeld chose to fire a warning shot at China right in the emerging giant’s backyard. Straying from purely military issues, the Defense secretary urged the Chinese to speed the pace of political reforms and pressed China to lean on North Korea to return to diplomatic talks about its nuclear program.

Even Bush administration critics who attended the conference were amazed at the breadth of topics the White House allows Rumsfeld to weigh in on -- and at a time when the Bush administration is wrestling with the question of how hard a stance to take toward China.

“He’s not just speaking as the defense minister. It’s like a super minister, ... speaking on trade, diplomatic and other economic issues,” said Kurt Campbell, the head of Asia policy at the Pentagon during the Clinton administration who attended the speech in Singapore. “It’s really quite remarkable, and it’s something we really haven’t seen before in the past.”

In his sixth decade of government service, Rumsfeld still earns his reputation as one of Washington’s most adept bureaucratic warriors.

For example, the creation of a director of national intelligence to oversee the nation’s $40-billion intelligence apparatus led to predictions that the power of the Defense secretary -- who historically has controlled most of the intelligence budget -- would greatly diminish.

Bush has indeed given John D. Negroponte, the spy chief, unprecedented power. Yet Rumsfeld is vastly expanding the Pentagon’s role in clandestine espionage operations, sending special operations troops and civilian Defense Department personnel on intelligence missions that traditionally have been the work of CIA spies.

This effort has rankled some State Department officials, who say U.S. embassies abroad have not been kept informed about the Pentagon missions. Yet the Defense Department has not surrendered its prerogatives. The White House recently signed off on procedures allowing Pentagon spies on clandestine missions to report directly to regional military commanders, not U.S. embassies.

Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, Negroponte’s deputy, said Wednesday that the Pentagon and CIA are in the process of forging a “memorandum of understanding” regarding intelligence operations. According to one senior intelligence official, the two departments are negotiating how soldiers and spies can both run intelligence missions against adversaries without encroaching on each others’ turf.

At home and abroad, Rumsfeld’s role in the military and political battles of the past four years has assured him a spot as one of America’s most important Defense secretaries. What remains unclear, however, is how history will judge his tenure at the Pentagon.

Despite all of Rumsfeld’s initiatives to transform the Pentagon, many agree that his ultimate legacy will hinge on two outcomes: whether Iraq can emerge from its crucible of violence before the American public pushes in earnest for a troop withdrawal, and whether a drawdown in Iraq can occur before the all-volunteer military buckles under the weight of its global demands.

“If things turn out well in Iraq, he will be the man known for reforming the military and this building,” said a senior military officer at the Pentagon. “If Iraq goes south, fair or not, he will go down as the man who bullied the military into an unpopular war.”

John F. Lehman, secretary of the Navy during the Reagan presidency and a member of the independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks, said the “jury is still out” on how Rumsfeld will be regarded by history, yet Rumsfeld has found the perfect formula for longevity in an often-brutal job.

“He knows that you can’t accomplish anything in the bureaucracy unless you have the confidence of the president. He clearly does,” Lehman said. “And you have to stay there a long time, because the bureaucracy can always just wait you out.”

Lehman added: “I think he’s settled in for the duration.”

Rumsfeld’s much-publicized battles with the generals over the pace of Pentagon reform have largely died down, in part because Rumsfeld’s long tenure has allowed him to promote officers who accept his vision of a lighter, leaner military. Unlike many of his predecessors, Rumsfeld devotes much of his time to scrutinizing the candidacies of one- and two-star generals and admirals for lower posts -- an influence over the Pentagon’s “farm system” that ensures a legacy at the Pentagon years after he is gone.

The height of the Abu Ghraib scandal, a period during which Rumsfeld twice submitted his resignation to President Bush, was hardly the only moment when many in Washington predicted that Rumsfeld’s days at the Pentagon were numbered.

During the summer before the Sept. 11 attacks, when top military leaders were protecting prized weapons and blocking Rumsfeld’s push to transform the military, conventional wisdom was that Rumsfeld had been outmaneuvered by an entrenched military bureaucracy and that he had lost the White House’s confidence.

More recently, during a trip to Kuwait in December, one soldier sharply questioned Rumsfeld about why reservists heading into Iraq lacked proper equipment and were resorting to “hillbilly armor” to protect their combat vehicles. Rumsfeld’s reply -- “You go to war with the army you have” -- was widely perceived as callous and out of touch. It led Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona to declare he had no confidence in Rumsfeld’s leadership.

Rumsfeld weathered all these storms, emerging each time with his clout inside the White House intact.

Even with the ascension of Condoleezza Rice as a secretary of State who, unlike predecessor Colin L. Powell, has Bush’s ear, Rumsfeld is undiminished. Some administration officials point out that the difference is that while Rumsfeld used to dominate the meetings of Bush’s war cabinet, Rice now shares the spotlight.

Rumsfeld often says the judgment of history means more than the daily musings of pundits and editorial writers. And even as the violence in Iraq shows no sign of abating, he evinces little doubt that, in the end, he will be proved right.

During the surprise May 2004 trip to Baghdad after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, Rumsfeld told the assembled troops that he had stopped reading newspapers and that on the plane to Iraq he instead passed the time reading a book about the Civil War to put the current struggles in context.

During last week’s contentious hearings on Capitol Hill, amid flagging public support for the U.S. mission in Iraq, Rumsfeld drew parallels between the Iraq war and the dark days of America’s Revolutionary War. He also quoted Abraham Lincoln telling Union soldiers, “I beg of you, as citizens of this great Republic, not to let your minds be carried off from the great work we have before us.”

“That was good advice,” Rumsfeld said.

Rumsfeld’s prickly, often-abrasive style has at times rankled longtime U.S. allies.

He has taken a more diplomatic tack in recent months, even remarking during a European trip this year that it was “Old Rumsfeld” who made the infamous comments about “Old Europe” concerning French and German criticism of U.S. preparations for the 2003 war in Iraq.

Yet, he has little hesitation about barreling down paths where diplomats often fear to tread.

One recent target of Rumsfeld’s verbal barbs has been Russia. The Defense secretary has criticized the Russian government for its close financial ties with Syria and for selling 100,000 AK-47 rifles to President Hugo Chavez’s government in Venezuela.

The issues were expected to come up when Rumsfeld met with Russian Defense Minister Sergei B. Ivanov last month in Brussels.

As the two men shook hands amid popping flashbulbs, video cameras and boom microphones, the smiling Ivanov fired the first shot.

“Mr. Rumsfeld, where is your Kalashnikov?” Ivanov asked.

Rumsfeld pretended to look inside the jacket of his dark flannel suit, looked back up at Ivanov, and shot back.

“I must have given it to Venezuela,” he said, grinning.

The two men turned, walked into a conference room and shut the door.