Andrew Cockburn: Interviewed about his new book on Rumsfeld

Amy Goodman: We turn now to a new book by investigative journalist Andrew Cockburn, which goes behind the scenes to reveal never-before-told stories about Donald Rumsfeld, relying on sources that include high-ranking officials in the Pentagon and White House. It chronicles Rumsfeld's early career as an Illinois Congress member to his rise in the Nixon White House. From his tenure as CEO of pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle to his decisions as Defense Secretary in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Author Andrew Cockburn, joins from us Washington, D.C., writer and lecturer on defense and national security affairs and author of five nonfiction books. ... As we talk about Scooter Libby and whether he was the fall guy for a higher-up, namely Vice President Dick Cheney, why don't we start off by talking about Rumsfeld's relationship with Dick Cheney?

Cockburn: Well, it's a very -- you know, it's a key relationship in the history of our times. It goes back to the Nixon White House, when Cheney went to work for Rumsfeld, when Rumsfeld first moved over there from the Congress. And he was regarded in those days by anyone who encountered them as very much Rumsfeld's flunky. And he rose with Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld put him out to pasture when he went off for a job in Europe for a couple years, but then brought him back as his deputy in the Ford White House.

But then, actually, interestingly, I discovered, to my surprise, that during the years in the relative wilderness for Rumsfeld, when he was out of office and decided to run for president, which he always thought he was the person most fitted for that job, in 1988, he called on Cheney and said, you know,"Report for duty, Cheney." And Cheney, by this time, had his own political career and refused. And Rumsfeld took tremendous umbrage at this and went into a deep sulk and actually wouldn't speak to Cheney for some years. And then, of course, the partnership was reforged with disastrous effect this time around.

Goodman: And what about Rumsfeld's relationship with George Bush, Sr.? Why did the President, the former president, dislike Rumsfeld so intensely?

Cockburn: Because it goes back to -- they were basically rivals, first of all, at the court of Richard Nixon, because they were each sort of proteges of Nixon, and each found ways to court Nixon's favor. But then, in the Ford administration, they were rivals for the slot. They both wanted to be picked by Ford to run with him in 1976. And Bush suspected, entirely correctly, that Rumsfeld had sabotaged his chances by getting him made head of the CIA, which was thought -- I mean, wrongly, as it turned out -- but was thought to have politically neutralized Bush for the rest of his career.

And the loathing continued. I mean, Rumsfeld used to give very sort of cruel imitations of Bush. He would entertain dinner parties with his renditions of Bush's style of speaking. And then, when Bush was elected president, Rumsfeld applied for a job as ambassador to Japan. And Bush wrote across the letter,"No. This will never happen. G.B." So, it's -- you know, it's endured.

Goodman: So what does it say about George W. Bush, that one of the few men who were in that circle that, as you put it, the former president and George W. Bush's father, of course, despised, that he made one of his top key people in his own administration, George W. Bush?

Cockburn: Well, isn't that very interesting? I mean, it tells us a lot about the relationship between the two Bushes. You know, we've heard this before, that there was an antipathy certainly on the younger Bush's side towards his father. I mean, who knows? Unless we get him on the couch one day, we'll not really find out where this came from. But it's certainly there. I mean, you know, there's so much anecdotal evidence of him expressing resentment -- I mean, his famous remark that he didn't pay attention to his own father, but he answered to a higher father, as he told Bob Woodward. So it's there. And how can one not assume that the appointment selection of Don Rumsfeld to be his Defense Secretary was, in a way, one more jab by the son toward the father?....