Senior WH Official: Rumsfeld's Days As Defense Secretary May Be Numbered...

Newsweek Evan Thomas and Richard Wolffe October 1, 2006 at 11:24 AM
READ MORE: George W. Bush, Bob Woodward, 9/11, Washington Post

The White House had more than an inkling of what was coming. This was Bob Woodward's third book about the Bush administration since 9/11, and it was sure to be less friendly than the first two. In scores of interviews over many months, Woodward's questions to senior officials had been more aggressive, more hostile. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld seemed to be a particular target of the veteran Washington Post reporter, who remains, three decades after his Watergate debut, the best excavator of inside stories in the nation's capital. White House aides did recommend that the president and the vice president not grant interviews, but it was obvious that Woodward could, and would, get just about everyone else in positions of authority to talk...

...Democrats as well as a few Republicans will renew their calls for Rumsfeld's head, but it is doubtful that Bush will dump his Defense secretary before the elections. That might be seen as a concession to the "Defeatocrats," as the GOP likes to call the opposition. (Rumsfeld himself had no comment about Woodward's book.) But a senior White House official, operating under the usual cover of anonymity, gave a less than airtight guarantee of Rumsfeld's job security. The president, normally one to rely on his inner circle, has been consulting outsiders. The official did not say which ones, but it is known that Bush speaks on occasion to Henry Kissinger and to his father's former secretary of State, James A. Baker. The counsel of the outsiders, says this official, "so far has been that Rumsfeld should stay. But I can't predict the future."

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