>> rose: welcome to the broadcast. tonight, two washington reporters take a look at the city, the obama administration and the former secretary of defense donald rumsfeld. we begin with famed reporter bob woodward of the "washington post". >> here this very young, inexperienced president has put so much on the table. once i had somebody count it up and it was 131 major initiatives legislation, major appointments, major ideas. the day this came to me, 131, on the front page of my own newspaper, the "washington post," president obama issued an executive order saying he was going to clean up the chesapeake bay. he is undertaking just about everything and all of those

things are like planes unlanded at the airport. they're circling and we don't know what order they're going to land in, whether they're going to land at all. >> we conclude with bradley graham, our "washington post" pentagon correspondent talking about his book "by his own rules: the ambitions, successes and ultimate failures of donald rumsfeld." >> he was very quick, within hours after the attack, to focus on some kind of military action against iraq. and even while planning proceeded to go into afghanistan rumsfeld continued to argue within the administration about widening the fight at that point. going after terrorists or sponsors of terrorism like iraq. >> rose: woodward and graham on washington. next.

captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: bob woodward joins me tonight from washington. he's an associatedtor for the "washington post," he's considered one of the pre-eminent investigative journalists of our time and certainly the most famous. his investigation into the watergate coverup with fellow "washington post" reporter carl

bernstein earned him fame and the paper a pulitzer prize. he's since gone on to write numerous books about washington, including on the presidency, the supreme court and the military. he recently accompanied national security advisor jim jones to afghanistan and wrote about the trip in the "post". i am pleased to have him back on this broadcast. welcome. >> thank you. >> i want to take the temperature of washington today as you see it. what are pros saying about the president so far? >> they don't know and there's a lot of politics and a lot of rhetoric gets thrown around on both sides. but i think people are kind of... if you're looking for what's going on or what's the sense, and obviously there's never agreement, but it's kind of the shakespearean dilemma is the king a good king or a flawed king?

and people on both sides just aren't sure. here's this very young, inexperienced president who's put so much on the table. once i had subpoena count it up and it was 131 major fish initiatives, legislation, major appointments, major ideas. the day this came to me, 131, on the front page of my own newspaper, the "washington post," president obama issued an executive order saying he was going to clean up the chesapeake bay. he is undertaking just about everything. and all of those things are like planes unlanded at the airport. they're circling and we don't know what order they're going to land in, whether they're going to land at all. >> rose: there are conventional wisdoms that are in collision. ronald reagan, for example, said "do a few big things well.

make sure you get them established." he didn't necessarily get them all accomplished, but he tried. f.d.r. realized he had an urgency, so therefore he tried to get as much done as he could as fast as he could. >> and clearly what's interesting about obama is doing, he's very deice i have. he has a process about "we've got this problem, let's hear everyone out, let's do it." and then he decides there are all of those unlanded planes that i think people are... as you suggest, waiting to see what happens, seeing if they're collisions, crashes or if it's just some of these planes disappear from the radar, which is quite likely. >> rose: you said once in a recent interview that you were searching for the center of gravity about him. >> yes. >> rose: what does that mean?

>> that means what's going to define him. first of all, he's had no real crisis. he's inherited all the crises of the bush administration as he says repeatedly "not of my making, this is not of my making." but he doesn't have or has not yet had his own crisis. and he's then going to be defined by that crisis. the first nine months of the bush administration i spent working on bush's tax cut thinking that would be the center of gravity. of course, i was dead wrong and i still have boxes of interviews and notes if you ever run into anyone who wants to write a book about the bush tax cut, it's there. but i worked for months on it thinking it was important, it's important. but compared to 9/11 which still defines our times and the problems obama has, you know,

it... the bush tax cut probably is not going to go into the history books. >> rose: you also wrote a piece that i think i'm right about this called "what obama could learn for from bush" better or worse. and got a huge amount of e-mail when it went on line. >> yeah, yeah. >> rose: what was that about? >> i was astonished. it was about people being angry, saying, gee, how come you criticize bush or say these are the mistakes bush made that obama can learn from. and then lots of... about half of the people saying "oh, that's a really good list. that applies not just to obama but just to anyone undertaking a new office or a project or a series of responsibilities." for instance, one of the core conclusions i reached was you

have to have an open debate in the national security council, on those issues or in the economic council on those issues. and it can't be just chummy. it can't be one of those things where it's scripted. you really have to get the issues out on the table. for instance, vice president cheney had these meetings... lunches with president bush and would whisper in his ear "this is what i think you ought to do" and whether you like or don't like cheney, he's a good advocate. and they agreed that this was so confidential they would never tell anyone, including members of the national security council and the white house staff, cabinet members, what cheney's recommendation was. so it never got tested in a forum. and what bush should have done is gone in and said "okay, dick,

the vice president, has just recommended and argued for this. dick, tell them what you think and now let's debate it." you can't have somebody whispering offline in the leader's ear because... particularly when it's somebody who had the influence that cheney did, without testing some of those ideas. i think, quite frankly, obama does that. i think he has pretty open debates and if people sit there silent, he'll say "what do you think?" >> rose: that's exactly the point that bob gates made, in fact. he said, you know, occasionally president obama would not go around the room even in the latest stages when gates was there but that president obama wants to know and will put everybody in the room on the spot. >> and president bush, as he told me repeatedly in interviews i did for the... i wrote four books on him, he said "i'm a gut

player, i'm not a textbook player." and i think that's the way he made lots of his decisions, by gut. oh, i'll take the green one, that's what i want. around obama's much more analytical, much more methodical about it. now, is that going to necessarily lead to better decisions? you would tend to think so. but, again, we don't know. i... it's a very unusual moment. i was saying to friends of mine just last night that it's like that summer before 9/11 in an odd way where everyone thinks, well, the economy's going along, it's in trouble, yes, but it seems to be going along. two wars seems to be going along. there's no dominant story that... the supreme court nomination of... is getting lots

of attention. but really there's not much controversy there. so, you know, maybe we're in a pre-9/11 and we'll have a crisis or a very serious defining problem for obama this fall. >> rose: who do you think... what do you think it's likely to be? >> you don't know. >> but you could look at it and say "it may be the failure of health care reform" or "it may be afghanistan" or it may be iran and something that might... maybe some unforeseen clash with china." whatever. >> yes. now, talk to people in the white house and they use the term "game changer. what's going to be a game changer?" certainly afghanistan, iraq, another terrorist attack could be. health care reform not working itself out. i don't know that that's necessarily a crisis. it would be kind of, well, other

presidents tried, it didn't work out, it didn't work out enough. now, president obama is driving that. but it's the game changer and people in the white house realize. and i think this is very important, that it's one of the most dangerous times for the country. though there seems to be a kind of, well, what's going to happen with these things since and no one knows, there's so many danger points out there: iran, north korea, the two wars, the whole financial crisis, the whole state of the economy. i think a political game changer for president obama could turn out to be the unemployment rate. it keeps going up. it's going to, apparently, get to 10% or above 10%. there's going to be an expectation in the democratic

party that a democratic president can solve that problem. not get jobs for everyone, but bring that number down. remember ronald reagan used to call... talk about the misery index. and it was... a lot of it had to do with inflation. a lot of it had to do with the unemployment rate. this is an astronomical unemployment rate and the pain in the country, in those families where people lose their jobs is almost something that we can't measure. and the political ramifications can manifest itself in the twep election, 2012 election. >> i'm going to go back to bush for a anybody because what's interesting to me-- and you

alerted me to this idea in those four books-- they talk a lot about a bunch of stuff as to how they were going to do it, but they never talked about-- according to you-- should we do it? should we go to war? >> particularly in iraq. that's what's so astonishing. and i wrote the second book "plan of attack," about how they made that decision. and a number of people after the book came out, called me up and said "you know, what's interesting about this book is the meeting they didn't have, which is the meeting to sit down and say okay, we've done all this planning, we have military plans that they've updated and changed and thought they made better time and time again. now let's sit back and say should we do it?" there was a momentum, there was a sense of inevitability, there was a sense that it was going to

be easy and no meeting, no discussion. i asked president bush "did you ask colin powell for his recommendation on war?" and president bush said "no, i didn't." >> rose: well, did colin powell do everything he could and should have in order to make the president clear what his opinion on it was? >> well, the president said "i knew what he thought." but when you get into the details and god is in the details here, powell's objections were voiced very early and they were in the context of, well, let's consider the ramifications of this. if we invade iraq it will take all the oxygen out of the air in foreign policy. it will dominate everything politically. it was not an argument against war. powell, as you know, very

strongly held the belief that presidents decide on wars, not generals or.... >> rose: or diplomats. >> but i'm sure that you f you got colin powell on sodium pentathol, the truth serum, he would acknowledge that his arguments got diluted in the process and he probably should have been more aggressive in going to the president and saying "we really haven't thought about the consequences of this and the down side and the planning. are we absolutely sure when president bush told colin powell that he decided on war with the it was a 12 minute meeting. >> rose: 12 minutes? >> 12 minutes, head to head. and the president asked powell "will you be with me?" and powell kind of... i think paused and then said "i'll be

with you, mr. president." >> rose: you have said on a program that you think george bush of all the people writing memoirs will write the most interesting. >> yes, i think it may actually be a memoir that goes right to the heart of some of the questions we have about the bush administration and bush. because i know he's working on it, i've talked to people who are working with him and, you know, that's a hope. i think it's really important that presidents write good memoirs. we've had lots of presidents who have not written good memoirs. reagan's memoir was a nothing burger. and i've... really argued to people who were involved in that process for bush, "you've got to go out and talk to people, you've got to interview people, you've got to list the key

unanswered questions and try to address them." it's not just a kind of stream of consciousness of my thoughts from the ranch in crawford. it really should be.... >> rose: you have said, in fact, that al gore said that the public only knows 1% of what goes on at the white house. >> yeah. that's... he did say that. i think he said... he wrote his memoir, gore, he put his memoir then they'd know 2% of what went on in the clinton white house. >> rose: meaning what? >> meaning that the truth doesn't come out. let me just give you an example that... something i've thought about two years ago when i was writing the last bush book. i went with my assistant brady dennis over to interview former secretary of defense robert

mcnamara, who's then 91 and asked him about... he was very opposed to the iraq war, but it really was a long full morning interview about the vietnam war. and mcnamara, who recently died, in this interview-- which may be his last interview-- he kept saying things, and it's all taped and he said "now, don't put this in your notes, this is off the record. don't tell anyone. i don't want to be quoted saying this." this is a 91-year-old man. >> rose: that's unbelievable. >> yeah, exactly. he'd written his mea culpa in 1995, his book "in retrospect." supposeally coming totally clean about vietnam and his conclusions. and then here in 2007 at the age of 91 with his lovely wife

sitting there, his second wife diana, going through this and saying "i don't want this known. i don't want to be quoted. don't put this in your notes. i don't want this out." >> rose: tell me about it. after the movie came out, earl marsh's movie came out, i had both of them on this program and i tried... we walked through it and he was saying all these things about his experience and afterlife and experience with respect to vietnam. i tried to get him to talk about iraq. and why he wasn't speaking out. did not want to do it. and it was just the same thing. >> but here he didn't want to do it about his war, vietnam. >> rose: right. >> and i'm thinking, i should publish this interview or what to do with it. because, again, it's... and this is what makes you in this business inclined to go back to people, to go back, to peel it

away that in the first, the second, the ninth, the 0th interview, you still haven't gone deep enough. and that you have to kind of just dig and dig and dig to find out what really happened. and it's not that people are lying or that there's conscious deception. it's that they are protective of themselves, the people they work for or with with and, most importantly, they think they're protecting their reputation. but it may be to a certain extent they are. but the job in our business is to get that that out. and i was just astonished. here's bob mcnamara still hiding. >> rose: access, access. i mean, can you go back and back and back if you don't have

access? >> well, of course if they won't let you in the door, you.... >> rose: can't do it. >> you can't do it. but, you know, you can do it. when i was working on the last bush book, there was a general that wouldn't talk to me. i'd call, i'd leave messages, talk to people who worked for him, no, no answer, just radio silence. so i found out where he lived and add, so, the age of 64 or 63 me, i went and knocked on his door, there's a perfect time to knock on somebody's door if they're home and it's about 8:30 at night because they've had dinner. if they don't have plans maybe you can get to talk to him. >> rose: gay talese was just on this program and we taped a show a few minutes before you came on in which he was very critical of washington coverage saying there's too much access. in washington everybody parties

with everybody, they go to the same parties, they scratch everybody's back and that that's not in the best interest of good journalism. >> or this is manhattan view of washington journalism. and, you know, i don't go to parties with these people. maybe accidentally sometimes. i by and large don't go to many parties. you know, it's just not so. but, you know, talk about access. how do do you find out what somebody did or thought unless you talk to them or unless you get their diary or their documents? there is this sense that people have that somehow if you represent somebody's point of view, you're being spun or taken in. well, you want to test it, you want to surround it with

reporting and look for notes and documentation and so forth. but i think it's kind of a journalistic felony to not seek from somebody what they did and why they did it and to include it in your coverage. during the watergate period carl bernstein and i would beat down the door of the white house to get their response. and it would often be the white house said "our sources are liars." or they had no comment. but we would include that and sometimes include that at length. and so i don't know where this idea comes that don't talk to people who are making the decisions. better to cover the administration from the outside. yes. the outside. and, yes, you're going to talk to all kind of people and you're

going to try to see if what people are saying is true, but you want to hear what they have to say. >> rose: how would you find your way to the obama administration? you talk to people? you mentioned i travel with general jones to afghanistan and pakistan. you knock on doors. you listen to people and you go back and back and try to understand what they're doing. but believe me-- and i'm getting dizzy trying to figure out where the center of gravity is, where the story is. and i, quite honestly, am not sure so i'm reporting half a dozen stories and the one i'm working on may be the... or all six of those may be the equivalent of the bush tax cut. >> rose: the other thing you've said about "all the president's men" the movie, which i found interesting, you asked people about the impression of the

movie and what is so obvious is so much of it takes place at night. because that's where you get things done. by knocking on a door at 8:30 p.m., not at 9 a.m. in their office. >> that's correct. sometimes it can be in the daytime, somebody at home or somebody coming to lunch at my house who doesn't have... "oh, i've got to go, i've got to run out to the next appoint." and so forth. but, yeah, the night is a... it cleanses people. puts them a more philosophical posture about what's going on and not just delivering the pattern and the storyline and the public relations line that every institution, every individual puts out. >> rose: let's just talk about interesting people.

first, jim jones. tell me what you learned ant him in this trip. he was a man you knew, a man you interviewed before, a man that's been a part of washington as a marine officer and in various commands. what did you get on this trip? >> that... i wrote a story for a "washington post" about part of it. and most of what i was doing was for the book. >> rose: what book? >> for the book on obama. and, you know, all of that may stay in the files because the big story... the center of gravity will be elsewhere. general jones was on a fact-finding mission to talk to people and to look at the war in afghanistan, look at what's going on in pakistan. and he delivered a message and the message was "let's deal with the strategy in the afghanistan

war that we now with with v with the troop level, it's now been approved, and not be thinking about more troops and, in fact, you will create a whiskey tango fox-trot moment for the president if you come until with more troops." and that was a very clear message that the pentagon and the generals since the story came out made it clear, well, they're going to ask for what they want. jones made it clear that wasn't an absolute restriction but he was carrying a message from the president of the united states that it's already obama's war and he hopes to do with the troop level we have there now and we're going see. but that was an important message to deliver. >> rose: what does he think of hillary clinton? >> you know, i don't... i did not the a kind of what does he

think of the cabinet members. people reported that the national security council is kind of working and functioning. we'll see. because the real test is not just everyday business. the real test is going to be when there's a crisis. >> rose: increasingly i hear from people of the president's reliance on rahm emanuel. >> rahm emanuel's as chief of staff is critical. david axelrod from the campaign is central to what's going on. there's a whole campaign team, advisors. they brought in aknee tra dunn as the communications director. she's somebody experienced with lots of political campaigns. close advisor to tom daschle, former senator. bill bradley, the former senator and so forth. so there are all kinds of people and then there's what i call the

really important "x" factor in all of this, michelle obama as clearly not somebody who's just going to sit on the sidelines as the presidency goes by. i suspect there is significant discussion in the white house residence between she and the president obvious the presidency and what he's doing and what the priorities should be. what the decisions should be. >> rose: more like bill clinton and hillary clinton than others? >> yeah, i think so. i mean, she's a smart, engaged woman who has strong views, as i understand it. so that will be part of the peeling, you know? trying to find out as much about that as possible. >> rose: two other institutions. number one, the congress. are you the least bit interested in the congress? >> yes, sure, i think the congress is.... >> rose: you've written about the supreme court, you've

written about the presidency, you've written about the military, you've written about the c.i.a. >> and in all of those books and stories, congress plays a role. and sometimes it's a big role, sometimes it's a role more on the sideline. but it's quite evident that the presidency now has concentration of power, given all of the problems and wars and the financial... ongoing financial difficulties and economic difficulty and that that's where the action is. but, you know, congress can do all kinds of things. i think that they are a player in this, but if you want to describe the era, just like i made an attempt to describe the bush era, you've got to understand the president. you've got to understand how the

president thinks, gets advice, weighs it, makes decisions, who are the president listens to, who the president doesn't really listen to even if they're talking. because that's often the case. >> rose: your assessment of bush. over the years, your assessment of him, your admiration for him, your judgment of him changed? >> well, you know, people have talked about how he in the first book, response the 9/11, going to war in afghanistan, that's an accurate... fully accurate account of what went on. there's some criticisms in the book about him. writing four books about a president contemporaneously-- i've said this before-- is like covering four baseball games. and anyone who's covered four baseball games knows that a team can do great in the first, mixed

in the second and then maybe blow the third and fourth. and you can't write about the fourth game-- which has not occurred-- when you're writing and covering the first game. >> rose: you're reading "lessons in disaster" or you have, a book really, about national security advisors. >> gordon goldstein's book is a terrific book. it's about mcgeorge bundy, who was the national security advisor for john kennedy and then lyndon johnson for a couple of years. and it's about the vietnam war and the road to vietnam and bundy, who defended all the decisions at the time and afterwards, in the '90s wanted to write a book, somewhat like mcnamara, and look back at it. and gordon goldstein was his assistant on this. and interviewed him and bundy

wrote some fragments and then died. and so he put all together and it has got... it's just full of lessons about what a president should do in war and what needs to be weighed and really explains, i think as well as anything, why and how we got into vietnam and why no one kind of put the brakes on it. >> rose: take a look... try to answer this as my last question. one, i think you and others have said there are big stories we didn't see well. we, those of us who do what you do, who do what i do, who are daily reporters for the "washington post" and the "new york times," things that we didn't see. what might be one of those stories that we are not focusing on enough? >> (laughs) boy, that's what i spend every

day working on. it's... you know, somebody was joking to me some time ago, said "please don't do a book on the agriculture department because we'll have a famine." and, you know, who knows? maybe swine flu. maybe some other.... >> rose: pandemic. >> ...disease. pandemic will be the story of the era. so you don't know. you try to cover them all. you try to get a sense of what the president's agenda is, what he's working on. and what his process is. and it's... you know, it's trying to work on it everyday. but it really is humbling because you don't know the answers to the really big questions. >> rose: did the stories about the salon at the "washington

post", at the publisher's house, do damage the post? >> sure. it was a mistake. it's been acknowledged. the publisher and the editor have kind of... not kind of, it's kind of after no-excuses apology. they tried to explain how it happened and i think they have and it never occurred. there was no salon. no money changed hands. but it was something that never should have been launched in any manner, shape, or form. and i think they know that and i think they learned a great lesson from it. and on one of your shoes i remember talking after i'd done one of the bush books about george tenet, the c.i.a. director, going in and saying "it's a slam dunk case we can make about iraq having weapons

of mass destruction." and that, obviously, was a giant mistake and somebody afterwards said... after it turned out to be a mistake, now george ten net's qualified to be c.i.a. director because he realizes how with good intent what you think is good process you can make a giant mistake. and i think that catherine weymouth, the young publisher of the "post" has now made a mistake and in a visible one, an embarrassing one, and that now makes her qualified to be publisher of the "washington post." >> rose: interesting. the c.i.a., do you think we're just beginning? we've got... perhaps eric holder is going to do an investigation or appoint a special prosecutor. perhaps the congress is going to be looking into whether the vice president told them not to disclose things to congress

about this initiative to assassinate al qaeda. i mean, is that, maybe, going to be at some point an emerging and converging story? >> it could be. i wrote stories for the "washington post" after 9/11, big headlines that said "bush orders c.i.a. to kill osama bin laden." and that, you know, i don't think there was much secret about that. now, whether they were thinking as these teams and so forth i think is rather logical. but we'll see. you don't know what's hidden. you don't know what people won't tell you or that they don't put in documents. so i think there should be inquiries or investigations into all those matters. they're important. but i don't find it surprising

that bush wanted to kill osama bin laden. it turns out, as we know, bill clinton wanted to and actually tried to kill osama bin laden. >> rose: and you also have suggested that if vice president t vice president was doing that he would have told the president? the president would have known? >> yeah. and i've... but, you know, we'll see. let's have an inquiry. i suspect-- but sure could be dead wrong-- that that's old business and obama's made it very clear that he wants to look ahead and even though congress is independent and the attorney general has some independent authorities on this, i don't think we're going to have big

investigations on these matters. >> rose: thank you very much. >> thank you. >> rose: bob woodward. back in a moment. stay with us. >> rose: bradley graham is here. he was a reporter and editor at the "washington post" for more than 5 yearss. he covered the military and foreign affairs. he recently published a biography of former defense secretary donald rumsfeld, it's called "by his own rules: the ambitions, successes and ultimate failures of donald rumsfeld." the book is based on hundreds of interviews including eight with rumsfeld. i'm pleased to have bradley graham at this table again. thank you. >> nice to be here. >> rose: why rumsfeld? >> for several reasons. no matter how you feel about rumsfeld, you can't deny that he has been the most consequential as well as controversial secretary of defense that we've had since mcnamara. the rumsfeld story is just a

wonderful washington story. it's a... the way i tell it is, it's framed as a kind of tragedy. here's somebody who had a whole career both in government and business of great success. he was picked to be secretary of defense for the second time in his life, the only one who had a second shot at the job, he was an experienced washington player a skilled veteran of bureaucratic maneuvering and yet he got a number of things very wrong. he left office very disparaged and he became such a political liability to his president that the president was compelled to ask rumsfeld to go. >> rose: and how did rumsfeld take that? >> i think he saw that it was coming, you know? he left the day after... he announced his resignation the day after the congressional elections in november, 2006. and as i write in the book, he

and his wife joyce had anticipated weeks before that if the republicans were to lose control of congress, that rumsfeld would likely have to leave. what he didn't seem to know was exactly how it would be choreographed. that the ax would fall on him immediately after the vote, the day after. bush had decided, it turns out, before the vote to have rumsfeld leave. but he hadn't sat with rumsfeld and told rumsfeld exactly timing. >> rose: and, in fact, bush had been urged to do it earlier and even at the end rumsfeld had his supporters, including dick cheney. >> that was about the only supporter of real significance that rumsfeld had. >> rose: where was karl rove on this? >> karl rove had favored rumsfeld's removal months before. and so had a number of the other president's top aides. by the time the end came,

rumsfeld had lost support of key members of congress. he had lost support of very senior members of the military. so cheney was about his only real supporter. >> rose: how did he become secretary of defense when george bush 43 is elected president. why him? >> that, of course; was not a fore ordained conclusion. rumsfeld had been involved somewhat in the bush campaign, although the two were not close. in fact, rumsfeld had some real tensions, a history of tensions with bush's dad. >> rose: bush's family, right. >> going back to the nixon/ford years. rumsfeld wasn't bush's first chase for secretary of defense. former senator from indiana, dan koets was. but that interview between bush and coates didn't go very well. so cheney very quickly recommended rumsfeld to be secretary of defense. bush met with rumsfeld once, they clicked and bush picked

him. >> rose: and now make the assessment of donald rumsfeld as secretary of defense. >> you know, rumsfeld got off to a very difficult start. he took the job really with a main mission to transform many t military. that was a mission basically handed to him by the president. and he went after it with characteristic zeal but also with characteristic aggressiveness to the point where within a few months there are already rumors that he would be possibly the first cabinet casualty. >> rose: right. >> but this established a pattern for rumsfeld through the rest of his term that are he had very difficult relations with the military, with congress, with others in the... the

administration. >> rose: with secretary powell? >> with powell, with condoleezza rice. and so there was repeated speculation throughout hiss six years at various points that rumsfeld would not last. the arc, though, of his time as secretary does have a kind of up-and-down up-and-down quality. because just when it was being speculated in late summer of 2001 that he might have to go, 9/11 happened and the afghan war happened and rumsfeld's popularity suddenly surged. he was the star of the news conferences. he became the face of the war. bush nicknamed him rumstud. and it looked lake he was going to be secure. but, of course, the iraq war

came and his fortunes began falling. >> rose: okay, there are two things about that. number one, did he want to after 9/11 invade iraq? and did he make that clear to the president? >> he looked at the option of attacking iraq in some way. it wasn't clear that it would have ever evolved at that early stage to an invasion. but he was very quick, within hours after the attack, to focus on some kind of military action against iraq. and even while the planning proceeded to go into afghanistan rumsfeld continued to argue within the administration about widening the fight at that point

and going after roouss or sponsors of terrorism like iraq. >> rose: others? he wanted to go into other countries, too? >> sure, there was a whole list of... not necessarily invade other countries but to target terrorist networks in different places around the world. >> rose: like what other countries? you mean bomb them or what did he want to do? >> he was more selective kinds of attacks using special operations forces. and that also became a focus of his efforts, which was to beef up the special operations command and form these teams that then.... >> rose: they were never very success... they were very successful in afghanistan. >> initially, yeah. >> rose: the c.i.a. and special forces prevailed in kicking out the taliban. >> that's right. >> rose: it is said this about him. one is that he wanted to get into iraq and get out fast. he had no stomach for a war because he had other higher

agenda items like transforming the military. two, that he thought that they would be able to do that and so therefore he had no understanding of the problems that came after the initial attack was very successful. and therefore he was caught unaware of what to do. and that's when he said "stuff happens." there's also the perception that he never understood after that the nature of the war and the counterinsurgency tactics that were necessary. didn't believe in them, didn't understand them. and his stewardship of the war after that was incompetent. which part of that is true? >> it's all true. and it's really astonishing when you go back and you look at the record how many strategic misjudgments were made both in the pre-war planning and in the immediate aftermath of the

invasion and then in later years as the insurgency grew and took root and u.s. military struggled to deal with it. and it's one of the great paradoxes of rumsfeld that i write about in the book. because, you know, there's a lot of blame to go around. it wasn't just rumsfeld. some of his generals didn't quite get the conflict. also certainly others in the administration. the president, the vice president didn't challenge the strategy, didn't challenge rumsfeld enough. there's a lot of responsibility here. but rumsfeld of all of them had spent years warning people not to go with the conventional wisdom. there was a favorite essay that he loved to distribute to people that is the preface to a book on

pearl harbor that warns against confusing the unfamiliar with the improbable. that warns against a poverty of expectations. and yet rumsfeld until the runup to the iraq war was not able to anticipate enough of what might come after and then was very slow after the invasion to identify the insurgency and the threat that that posed and then to adjust to it. he also very strangely did not provide sufficient strategic guidance to his generals. as i write in the book-- and this is about a year into the occupation already, when the generals are changed and general george casey goes to take command in baghdad. casey was given very few... next to know instructions about the kind of new counterinsurgency

plans to craft. he basically had to invent it, send it back to washington for a stamp of approval. >> rose: abu ghraib. did he understand that? did he see that's what it was and therefore how horrendous it was for america's image? >> he still to this day refuses to accept responsibility for what happened at abu ghraib. i'm not saying that he knew what was going on beforehand or that he should bear direct responsibility for that. but as an independent panel who studied this-- that he appointed-- found, rumsfeld does bear indirect responsibility for what happened in the sense that he failed to provide clear guidance for how troops should handle detainees in the field. he, however, maintains that the

mistreatment at abu ghraib and a number of other military facilities was really more the result of either bad behavior by individuals or inadequate supervision. >> rose: the relationship with cheney. it began with cheney working for rumsfeld. in the end cheney was vice president and rumsfeld was secretary of defense. did the relationship change? who was the senior partner? >> that's a very difficult relationship to penetrate. >> rose: don't they have houses now out on chesapeake bay next to each other? >> oh, they do and there was a lot of contact throughout that period. but if there were differences between them, they managed to keep them really pretty much known only to the two of them. snoo soup what does he say when you talk to them? does he have any regrets? does he have any guilt? >> he's struggling. he is still struggling with all of that. on the question of regrets,

which i pressed him on in my final interview, he wanted to dismiss the question. he said "that's a favorite press question." and i think in part he isn't sure himself what to think of everything that happened to him. he's writing his own memoir, it's going to take him another year or more. >> rose: but he had to give you the outline of the defense he's going to make of himself. >> well, i've gotten bits of it. on iraq, for instance, he did write an op-ed piece that appeared in the "new york times" last fall in which he argues that among other things he was in favor of the surge in iraq at the end. now by many other accounts rumsfeld was not in favor of increasing troops in iraq. but as he sees it, his approach to iraq helped lay the basis for

then what finally succeeded in iraq after he left. he did very interestingly admit a mistake in one area, and that is in the area of detainees. and he volunteered this. where he feels looking back that he left too much the shaping of that policy in the hands of the pentagon's general counsel and lawyers and didn't bring in enough policy people and other people. so it's an acknowledgment not of an error in judgment, he hasn't gone that far, but it is an admission of a mistake, at least in process. >> rose: you think he's at peace? or he's anguishd? >> i think at some level he's still quite anguished with how it all ended up. >> rose: "by his own rules, the admissions, successes, and ultimate failures of donald rumsfeld" by bradley graham.

>> thank you. >> thank you for having me. >> rose: thank you for joining us. see you next time. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org