. >> i, donald h. rumsfeld -- >> reporter: the 69-year-old secretary was at the pentagon just nine months on september 11th, 2001. he was in his office when suddenly it seemed to shake. [ sirens ] >> reporter: he raced towards the smoke. >> i came around that corner down there. >> reporter: right. >> and it was -- it was just in flames, in smoke. >> reporter: you can see him there helping them carry the wounded. >> this was the first war of the 21st century. i had to impose a sense of

. >> donald h. rumsfeld. >> reporter: a single force elected to congress when he was 30 years old, the youngest secretary of defense under gerald ford and oldest brought back by the son of a man who had been his adversary. george h.w. bush was said to have believed it was rumsfeld who pushed him out of a shot at a national campaign and into the cia. what was your estimation of george h.w. bush. >> i never worked for him. >> reporter: admire him enormously. >> no, no, no, i was kind of disappointed in him. he decided he wanted to leave people with the impression he didn't want to go to the cia and that someone made him go there and it was probably rumsfeld or something. i didn't find that impressive. >> reporter: so his son calls you in. >> i was amazed. i was amazed. and it shows a lot about george w. bush that he's his own man. >> reporter: just mine months into the bush administration suddenly rumsfeld's office seemed to shake. a plane had hit the pentagon. he raced toward the smoke. >> i came around that

. >> i, donald h. rumsfeld -- >> reporter: the 69-year-old secretary was at the pentagon just nine months on september 11th, 2001. he was in his office when suddenly it seemed to shake. [ sirens ] >> reporter: he raced towards the smoke. >> i came around that corner down there. >> reporter: right. >> and it was -- it was just in flames, in smoke. >> reporter: you can see him there helping them carry the wounded. >> this was the first war of the 21st century. i had to impose a sense of urgency into the department. there wasn't a guide book or a map or some program that said here's how you do this. we had to figure it out. >> reporter: ten years later a central question, why introduce iraq after 9/11 on that very day? >> people were trying to figure out what had happened, who did it, what was going on. so it was their responsibility to raise those questions. >> reporter: did you drive iraq? >> no. >> reporter: into the conversation? >> no, absolutely not. >> reporter: he says it was the president himself who aske