The Unknown Known: The Life and Times of Donald Rumsfeld is a 2013 documentary directed by Errol Morris, similar to his 2003 documentary The Fog of War about Robert McNamara, the controversial US Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968 during the Vietnam War. Rumsfeld was US Secretary of Defense from January 20, 2001 to December 18, 2006 with a similar level of controversy over his handling of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. With the United States embroiled in a hot proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, it is perhaps time to revisit some lessons from previous wars such as Vietnam and Iraq.
The Unknown Known does not feature the feel good self-help platitudes used in The Fog of War. Rumsfeld’s manner is blunter and more aggressive than McNamara. Like Fog of War with McNamara, The Unknown Known paints a picture of Rumsfeld as a well meaning, arrogant genius lost in his own intellectual and ideological fantasy world. This is done by pairing excerpts from lengthy interviews with Rumsfeld with contradictory news footage and video from some of Rumsfeld’s numerous, sometimes combative press conferences on the Iraq war. Rumsfeld for example is shown denying the George W. Bush Administration ever claimed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein backed Al Qaeda in the interviews paired with a press conference where he appears to clearly assert exactly this.
Rumsfeld’s Mysterious Motive
One ought to wonder, especially since The Fog of War was released in 2003, why a smart, shrewd bureaucrat and politician like Rumsfeld would set himself up for a similar hatchet job to McNamara’s unflattering portrayal in Fog of War. There are of course many excellent conservative documentarians capable of producing either a shameless puff piece or a more credible documentary with a few carefully selected and answered hard questions presenting Rumsfeld in a much more flattering light. Indeed, the Unknown Known ends with Errol Morris asking Rumsfeld why he agreed to the interview/documentary, perhaps to mollify the many more insightful viewers who should be asking themselves this question.
Rumsfeld: That is a vicious question. I’ll be darned if I know.
In 2011, Rumsfeld published a 834 page book Known and Unknown: A Memoir complete with a web site and links to electronic copies of many of his memos as Secretary of Defense. He seems to have engaged in a PR campaign for the book at the same time, including a combative interview with Abderrahim Foukara of Al Jazeera.
The Unknown Known documentary seems scripted and edited to confirm the prejudices and stereotypes of liberal Democrat intellectuals who read the New York Times, listen to NPR, and rarely question what they read or hear unless it is a guest opinion piece by someone like Rumsfeld. Surely Rumsfeld expected this, so indeed why give the interview? What is in it for Rumsfeld?
A Failure of Imagination
That said, Morris lets Rumsfeld get away with some whoppers. Speaking about the September 11, 2022 terrorist attacks, Rumsfeld attributes the debacle and Pearl Harbor both to a “Failure of Imagination.” Not just Rumsfeld, but historical footage and CGI animations in the documentary imply no one anticipated the Japanese could or would launch a successful attack on the US Pacific fleet in Pearl Harbor. This of course is and was total nonsense.
Up until late 1940, the US Pacific Fleet operated out of the port of San Pedro in southern California — not Pearl Harbor, a much safer location than Pearl Harbor, under the command of Admiral James Richardson. President Roosevelt “temporarily” sent the fleet to Pearl Harbor for “two weeks” that soon turned into a permanent relocation. Richardson challenged the decision, writing a report outlining in large measure the Japanese attack that happened. He was fired by Roosevelt and replaced by Admiral Husband Kimmel who Roosevelt then blamed for the disaster. Roosevelt and his staff had been warned very specifically of the dangers of a surprise aerial attack by the Japanese months before Pearl Harbor.
Similarly, the US Air Force and other agencies had performed several simulations of terrorist attacks in which planes were hijacked and flown into buildings prior to September 11, 2001. Astonishingly, simulations of hijacking scenarios were under way on September 11, 2001, apparently contributing to the confusion during the attack: “is this a simulation or real?” The Air Force would go on to repeatedly change their stories about the failure of the air defense system on September 11, 2001. Despite his hard nosed image, Rumsfeld never seems to have conducted a tough, thorough investigation into the failure, instead citing bogus “failure of the imagination” excuses.
According to the official story — the 9/11 Commission report — Flight 77 turned off its transponder — surely a red flag — over forty minutes before it struck the Pentagon. It proceeded to fly off course to the Pentagon, the US Capitol City, at an altitude allegedly over 30,000 feet in full view of the multi-billion dollar active air defense radars — they do not require a transponder — which are supposed to track and intercept nuclear bombers from Russia and other threats. Yet the fighter planes stationed at Andrews Air Force base only miles from the Pentagon and several other air bases around DC failed to intercept the plane. Nor did any of the presumed classified defenses, surface to air missiles, etc. around Washington DC stop the plane which in fact could have contained nerve gas, biological agents or even a nuclear weapon.
Given the active air defense radars, the main reason to turn off the transponder seems to be that one plans to fly under the radar, have a way to jam the active radars, or have some other way to become invisible to the active air defense radars. Did something like this happen? If so, why has it never been disclosed?
Torture Porn
A large section of the documentary dwells on the alleged torture of Guantanamo prisoners which Rumsfeld largely blames on the CIA and the Department of Justice which authored the notorious memos justifying torture and the Abu Ghraib scandal clearly conducted by DoD soldiers and not the CIA. Rumsfeld concedes abuses occurred, he was “the captain of the ship” and responsible, and claims to have offered his resignation to President Bush after the scandal broke — which Bush refused. The documentary shows what appear to be segments of a hand written resignation note.
This certainly beats Robert McNamara who managed to disclaim any responsibility for anything that went wrong in the Vietnam War in The Fog of War.
But are BDSM abuses perpetrated by enlisted men and women, allegedly acting without orders or directions from above really the most serious problems during Rumsfeld’s reign?
Conclusion
Why does a shrewd, tough politician, bureaucrat, and sometime corporate CEO like Donald Rumsfeld grant a lengthy interview for a documentary that paints him as a delusional whacko? Especially when the documentarian has done this before to a previous Secretary of Defense who mismanaged a previous disastrous war? I’ll be darned if I know. 🙂 One should however strongly suspect a hidden agenda.
(C) 2022 by John F. McGowan, Ph.D.
About Me
John F. McGowan, Ph.D. solves problems using mathematics and mathematical software, including developing gesture recognition for touch devices, video compression and speech recognition technologies. He has extensive experience developing software in C, C++, MATLAB, Python, Visual Basic and many other programming languages. He has been a Visiting Scholar at HP Labs developing computer vision algorithms and software for mobile devices. He has worked as a contractor at NASA Ames Research Center involved in the research and development of image and video processing algorithms and technology. He has published articles on the origin and evolution of life, the exploration of Mars (anticipating the discovery of methane on Mars), and cheap access to space. He has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).