Donald Rumsfeld

Donald Henry Rumsfeld was born on July 9, 1932, in Chicago, Illinois.¹ He was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1963 to 1969, an assistant to Richard Nixon, ambassador to NATO, White House chief of staff and Secretary of Defense under Gerald R. Ford, chief executive of G.D. Searle & Co. from 1977 to 1985 and of General Instrument Corporation from 1990 to 1993, and chairman of Gilead Sciences until January 2001.¹ He served a second time as Secretary of Defense from 2001 to 2006 under George W. Bush, and died on June 29, 2021, at 88; his family's statement said he "was surrounded by family in his beloved Taos, New Mexico."²

Congress and the Nixon administration

Before his first campaign Rumsfeld was administrative assistant to Representative David Dennison of Ohio from 1957 to 1959, a staff assistant to Representative Robert Griffin of Michigan in 1959, Dennison's campaign manager in 1959 and 1960, and a registered representative at the Chicago investment bank A.G. Becker & Co. from 1960 to 1962. He was elected to the House in 1962, served on the Science and Astronautics Committee and the Joint Economic Committee, and was a member of the transition team for President-elect Nixon.¹

The employment record he filed with the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2001 lists him as Assistant to the President from May 26, 1969, to February 2, 1973; Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity from May 26, 1969, to December 10, 1970; member of the Property Review Board from April 20, 1970, and its chairman from September 11, 1971; Counsellor to the President from December 10, 1970; and Director of the Cost of Living Council, the Economic Stabilization Program, from October 7, 1971, to February 2, 1973. From February 2, 1973, to December 5, 1974, he was the United States Permanent Representative on the Council of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Brussels.¹

At his 2001 confirmation hearing, Senator Carl Levin asked Rumsfeld about a 1971 taped conversation with Nixon reported that month by the Chicago Tribune, in which Nixon made racist remarks and Rumsfeld spoke of Republicans having ended "Democratic wars." Rumsfeld replied that he did not remember the meeting, that to the extent he agreed with anything on the tape it was only that "some people talk like that," and that the Tribune had opposed the civil rights legislation he supported in the 1960s.³ He was then a director of the Tribune Company, a seat he had held since July 1992.⁴

Ford White House

Alexander Haig, Nixon's chief of staff, met Vice President Ford twice on August 1, 1974. Ford testified under oath on October 17, 1974, that the afternoon meeting included a list of options under discussion in the White House, among them "a pardon to the President, should he resign," and that on the afternoon of August 2 he telephoned Haig to say that nothing they had discussed should be given any consideration.⁵ In August 1974 Rumsfeld was recalled from Brussels to chair the transition to the Ford presidency, and from September 27, 1974, to November 18, 1975, he was Assistant to the President and White House chief of staff.¹

On October 28, 1974, Rumsfeld sent a memorandum to the directors of the Executive Office agencies, among them the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Council and the Office of Economic Opportunity, stating that the President had directed all members of the executive branch to comply with the conflict-of-interest regulations, asking each to bring his Confidential Statement of Employment and Financial Interests up to date, and requesting a report on compliance to the staff secretary by November 30, 1974. A second memorandum of the same date circulated to the White House staff a manual on standards of conduct, with a memorandum from Counsel to the President Philip Buchen.⁶

In July 1975 William Colby, the Director of Central Intelligence, wrote to Rumsfeld ("Dear Don"), following their conversation of July 17, enclosing the Agency's quarterly report on CIA detailees to the White House. The letter stated that the Agency was prepared to provide information on the past association of any current White House employee or presidential appointee, would await the names from a Mr. Bennett to a Mr. Evans of Colby's staff, and would send its responses to Rumsfeld or to Dick Cheney.⁷

Cheney was Rumsfeld's deputy in the spring of 1975, while the Rockefeller Commission was investigating CIA activities inside the United States. Documents published by the National Security Archive in 2016 show handwritten edits by Cheney to the commission's draft report and the removal, on White House orders, of the report's entire 86-page section on CIA plots to assassinate foreign leaders.⁸

Secretary of Defense, 1975 to 1977

Rumsfeld became the 13th Secretary of Defense on November 18, 1975, and held the office until January 20, 1977.¹ On December 5, 1975, George A. Carver Jr., the CIA's Deputy for National Intelligence Officers, informed him in writing that, at General Haig's request, the CIA had arranged to give Haig, then the NATO commander, intelligence support tailored to his needs, concentrating on current political and economic developments and supplementing the support he received through military channels. The arrangements, the memorandum said, had been endorsed by Rumsfeld's predecessor and by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and set up with the full knowledge of the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. One copy was distributed to a file labeled "HAIG SUPPORT."⁹

On October 18, 1976, George H.W. Bush, then Director of Central Intelligence, wrote to Rumsfeld that, after Rumsfeld's comments that leaks might have come from the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, he had checked with the Board's secretariat and been told that the Board had not been briefed on the redacted subject. Bush wrote that he doubted the source of "these vicious leaks" would ever be found and that a recent meeting in the office of Deputy Secretary William Clements "laid to rest a lot of questions about the integrity of the process."¹⁰ In a letter dated January 24, 1977, Rumsfeld sent Bush the Annual Defense Department Report for fiscal year 1978, writing that "steadiness of purpose and continuing real growth in national defense efforts are required to counter the adverse trends of the past decade."¹¹ His form lists him as a consultant to the Defense Department, without compensation, from 1977 to 1980.¹

G.D. Searle and aspartame

Rumsfeld was a consultant to G.D. Searle from January to June 1977, became its president and chief executive officer in June 1977, and held the post until August 1985, when he became chairman, president and chief executive officer until September 30, 1985.¹ Gregory Gordon of United Press International reported in October 1987 that Searle, facing debt, posted a $28 million net loss in Rumsfeld's first year and that he sold more than 30 subsidiaries worth more than $400 million. Rumsfeld hired three outgoing Ford administration officials: John Robson, a former partner at the Chicago law firm Sidley & Austin and Ford's chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board, as executive vice president; Robert Shapiro, Robson's special assistant at the Department of Transportation, as general counsel; and William Greener, a Ford White House spokesman who had been Rumsfeld's chief spokesman at the Pentagon. Searle also hired William Timmons, a former Ford White House official, as a Washington lobbyist.¹²¹³

The aspartame petition predated him. According to the General Accounting Office, Searle began developing the sweetener in 1965, the Food and Drug Administration approved it for dry foods in 1974, and Searle was not permitted to market it until 1981. A 1975 FDA task force questioned the quality of the data in certain Searle studies; in 1977 the FDA and a group of university pathologists began detailed investigations of 15 studies; and in 1980 a public board of inquiry of three university scientists concluded that aspartame did not cause brain damage but that the studies did not conclusively show it did not cause brain tumors, and revoked the 1974 approval.¹⁴

Gordon reported that at the task force's request the FDA's general counsel, Richard Merrill, demanded in a letter that Samuel Skinner, the United States Attorney in Chicago, open a grand jury investigation of Searle and three of its employees. In February 1977 Skinner and an aide agreed to meet Searle's lawyers, among them Newton Minow of Sidley & Austin. A month later Skinner, a Republican appointee seeking a job after Jimmy Carter's election, informed aides by memorandum that he had begun preliminary employment discussions with the firm. He withdrew from the matter and suggested that his designated successor, Thomas Sullivan, decide whether to open a grand jury inquiry, a step that delayed action by at least four months. Sullivan took office 12 weeks before the statute of limitations for false statements on aspartame expired, and the grand jury that was convened did not explore those allegations. Skinner denied any conflict of interest. Assistant United States Attorney William Conlon worked with the grand jury until October 12, 1977, two days after the limitations period on the aspartame allegations expired; no indictments were brought. Conlon declined to comment and joined Sidley & Austin 15 months later.¹³

Gordon quoted the consumer lawyer James Turner, who had objected to the 1974 approval, as alleging that Searle chose, with Rumsfeld's hiring, not to redo the questioned studies, in the belief that he could handle aspartame as "a legal problem rather than a scientific problem."¹³ In October 1978 Howard Roberts, the acting director of the FDA's Bureau of Foods who had appointed a review of the task force findings, left to become a vice president of the National Soft Drink Association; between 1979 and 1982 four more FDA officials who took part in the approval process, among them acting commissioner Sherwin Gardner and the agency lawyer Michael Taylor, took jobs linked to the NutraSweet industry. All denied any conflict of interest.¹³

Searle waited until January 21, 1981, the day after Ronald Reagan's inauguration, to press for a reversal of the board of inquiry. Gordon reported that former commissioner Jere Goyan found the timing curious, and that Robert Dormer, a lawyer for The NutraSweet Company, said there was nothing special about the date. In May 1981, a month after Arthur Hull Hayes Jr. took office as commissioner, three scientists on a five-member commissioner's team, Satya Dubey, Douglas Park and Robert Condon, wrote memoranda to the team's lawyer, Joseph Levitt, setting out concerns about the sweetener's safety. Park told Gordon that Levitt "was obviously getting the pressure to get a resolution and a decision made"; Levitt said he had circulated an approval recommendation as a "tactical" step to break an impasse.¹³ The panel members told the General Accounting Office that they felt pressure to expedite their review because of a Searle lawsuit but none to recommend approval or disapproval. On July 18, 1981, Hayes overturned the board of inquiry and reapproved aspartame for dry foods. The GAO, which did not evaluate the scientific issues or aspartame's safety, "did not find any evidence that pressure was put on the former FDA Commissioner to approve aspartame."¹⁴

Gordon also reported that a former Searle saleswoman, Patty Wood-Allott, asserted in a letter written after the FDA cleared NutraSweet that Rumsfeld told his sales force shortly after Reagan took office that, if necessary, "he would call in all his markers and that no matter what he would see to it that aspartame would be approved that year." According to Gordon, Rumsfeld declined to return phone calls.¹³

In October 1982 Senator Howell Heflin proposed an amendment to the Orphan Drug Act extending Searle's domestic patent monopoly on aspartame by five years, ten months and 17 days; the Senate passed it without mentioning aspartame, Senator Orrin Hatch calling it "an excellent amendment." Gordon reported, from Federal Election Commission records, that Heflin's 1984 reelection committee received at least $9,000 from Searle's top officers and its political action committee and Hatch's at least $3,000, and that Searle's officers and political action committee gave nearly $200,000 in federal campaign contributions between 1979 and 1986. Heflin's spokesman said Searle representatives never mentioned contributions when asking him to sponsor the amendment, and Senator Howard Metzenbaum called the floor procedure "totally inappropriate."¹² Searle petitioned in late 1982 to use aspartame in soft drinks; Hayes's deputy, Mark Novitch, approved it on a day Hayes was away. Weeks later Hayes resigned amid an internal Department of Health and Human Services inquiry into gratuities from FDA-regulated companies, including flights on jets owned by General Foods, and became a consultant to Burson-Marsteller, which represented The NutraSweet Company. A Burson-Marsteller vice president said Hayes was not involved in NutraSweet matters; Metzenbaum called the arrangement "unbecoming."¹³

Federal Election Commission records show contributions by Rumsfeld to Searle's political action committee of $1,000 on November 13, 1979, $1,000 on September 18, 1980, $500 on May 26, 1981, $500 on April 20, 1982, $500 on November 4, 1983, and $900 on October 2, 1984, and $1,000 to Reagan for President on April 1, 1980.¹⁵ Searle's stockholders sold the company, including the NutraSweet division and its patents, to Monsanto for $2.7 billion in the summer of 1985. Gordon reported that Securities and Exchange Commission records showed Rumsfeld receiving more than $1.5 million in bonuses between 1979 and 1984.¹²

Envoy to the Middle East, 1983 and 1984

From October 1982 to February 1983 Rumsfeld was Presidential Envoy for the Law of the Sea, and from November 3, 1983, to April 1984 Presidential Envoy for the Middle East, in both cases part time and on leave from Searle; the Middle East post is marked "W.O.C.," without compensation.¹ On October 28, 1983, "Rumsfeld, Donald H" of Skokie, employer G D Searle, gave $750 to Reagan-Bush '84.¹⁵ On March 25, 1983, Rumsfeld wrote to Director of Central Intelligence William J. Casey ("Dear Bill") enclosing a paper on NATO that Casey had asked him to prepare as a member of the President's Foreign Policy Advisory Group before the inauguration, pointing to his comments on overhead photography on pages 6 and 7, and writing that the national consensus for a strong defense was "badly fractured and weakened and needs shoring up." Casey sent the letter to his deputy's office on August 13, 1983, "just for your interest."¹⁶

On December 7, 1983, a State Department cable signed "DAM" (Kenneth W. Dam) told the U.S. Interests Section in Baghdad that Rumsfeld did not think his visit worthwhile unless he met Saddam Hussein and asked: "how can we use this visit to get out of the GOI certain things we may desire."¹⁷ On December 20, 1983, Rumsfeld met Saddam for 90 minutes, with Tariq Aziz, William Eagleton and R. H. Pelletreau present. The London embassy's cable of December 21 (London 27572) reported that Saddam showed "obvious pleasure" at a letter from Reagan, that Rumsfeld told him the two countries had shared interests in preventing Iranian and Syrian expansion, that the United States was urging other states to curtail arms sales to Iran, and that Rumsfeld raised Iraqi oil exports, including a possible new pipeline through Jordan to Aqaba. Its assessment was that the meeting "marked positive milestone in development of US-Iraqi relations."¹⁸ Joyce Battle of the National Security Archive wrote that, according to the detailed notes of the Saddam meeting, Rumsfeld made no reference to chemical weapons.¹⁹

Rumsfeld's own NODIS report of his separate meeting with Aziz (London 27592, "FROM RUMSFELD") records him saying that "the U.S. had no interest in an Iranian victory" and, after a passage withheld on classification grounds, "I made clear that our efforts to assist were inhibited by certain things that made it difficult for us citing the use of chemical weapons, possible escalation in the Gulf, and human rights," followed by: "From US standpoint, obviously anything that is done that complicates life for Iran and Syria is helpful."²⁰

On December 22, 1983, the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs sent Under Secretary Lawrence Eagleburger an action memorandum recommending Export-Import Bank of the United States financing for Iraq, which would "go far to show our support for Iraq in a practical, neutral context." Eagleburger signed it on December 24 and wrote to the bank's president, William H. Draper III, that "the terrorism issue, therefore, should no longer be an impediment to EXIM financing for U.S. sales to Iraq."²¹ The bank's country review of February 21, 1984, rated Iraq a poor credit risk. Its appendix of potential U.S. suppliers, totaling $1,510.6 million, listed Westinghouse for $159 million of turbine generators, Bechtel for $150 million of engineering on a Baghdad metro and for the Jordan oil pipeline, General Electric for power projects and Halliburton for $10 million of oil field equipment.²²

On March 5, 1984, the State Department publicly condemned Iraq's use of chemical weapons. A cable signed by Secretary of State George P. Shultz on March 24, 1984, captioned "EXDIS, for Rumsfeld party," gave briefing notes for his second visit to Baghdad: bilateral relations had been "sharply set back by our March 5 condemnation of Iraq for CW use, despite our repeated warnings that this issue would emerge sooner or later," a decision "to consider, and to reject, a pending application from Westinghouse to participate in a $160 million portion of a $1 billion Hyundai thermal power plant project in Iraq" was expected to confirm Iraqi perceptions that bank financing for the Aqaba pipeline was out of the question, although Eagleburger had emphasized to an Iraqi official "the administration's firm support for the line."²³ Howard Teicher, a former National Security Council staff member who wrote that he co-authored a June 1982 national security decision directive under which the United States would do "whatever was necessary and legal to prevent Iraq from losing the war with Iran," stated in a declaration of January 31, 1995, in United States v. Cardoen (No. 93-241-CR-HIGHSMITH, Southern District of Florida), that in 1984 Israeli Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, at a Jerusalem meeting Teicher attended with Rumsfeld, asked Rumsfeld to deliver a secret offer of Israeli assistance to Iraq; that Teicher was present in Baghdad when Rumsfeld told Aziz of the offer; and that Aziz refused even to accept the Israeli letter, saying he "would be executed on the spot" by Saddam if he did.²⁴

Corporate boards, 1985 to 2000

From October 1985 to October 1990 Rumsfeld was a part-time senior advisor to the Chicago investment firm William Blair & Company, and from October 1990 to August 1993 chairman and chief executive officer of General Instrument Corporation.¹ He joined the Gilead board in July 1988 and became chairman in January 1997. The 1997 proxy statement listed his other boards as "ABB AB," Gulfstream Aerospace, Kellogg Company, Metricom, Sears, Roebuck & Co. and Tribune Company.²⁵

The Gilead directors in 1997 included Etienne Davignon, chairman of Societe Generale de Belgique since 1985 and European Community commissioner for industry from 1977 to 1981, a director since September 1990; James Denny, a former executive vice president and chief financial officer of Searle and chairman of the Searle-affiliated Pearle Health Services, a managing director of William Blair Capital Partners V, a director since January 1996; Gordon Moore of Intel; and Shultz, a director since January 1996, described as a Hoover Institution fellow, a director of the Bechtel Group, AirTouch Communications and Gulfstream Aerospace, and a former president of Bechtel.²⁵ The 1998 proxy statement reported 51,863 Gilead shares in a grantor annuity trust of which Rumsfeld was donor and trustee; the 2000 statement reported 30,854 shares in a grantor annuity trust of which Rumsfeld and Denny were co-donors and trustees.²⁶²⁷ The 2000 statement also disclosed that Gilead had paid $6,747,923 in 1999 to PharmaResearch Corporation, a contract research organization 45 percent owned by William Blair Capital Fund V, to whose manager Denny was a senior advisor.²⁷

In September 1996 Gilead and Hoffmann-La Roche signed a development and license agreement for influenza therapies. Tamiflu was co-developed by the two companies, and Roche sold it, paying royalties to Gilead. Gilead's annual report for 2005 records royalty revenues from Roche of $12.0 million in 2003, $44.6 million in 2004 and $161.6 million in 2005, the last including $80.7 million recognized on resolution of a dispute with Roche, and attributes the 2005 increase partly to "orders for pandemic readiness supplies in certain countries."²⁸ Rumsfeld resigned from the Gilead board in January 2001 to become Secretary of Defense, and Denny was elected chairman in his place.²⁹

His 2001 Senate form lists him as a director of ABB Asea Brown Boveri Ltd. of Zurich from June 1999; of Amylin Pharmaceuticals from November 1991 to September 1996 and again from September 1999; of Tribune Company from July 1992, chairing its technical advisory committee from 1995 to 2000; and of the private Overx, Inc. It lists him as adviser to Investor AB of Stockholm from January 1994, to Metricom from 1994 and to Nvidia from February 1998, and as chairman of the international advisory board of Salomon Smith Barney from November 1998. His investments included limited partnerships in Cerberus Institutional Partners (1999), Tiger Management (1993), Transpac Capital 1996 Investment Trust of Tortola, British Virgin Islands (1997), Chengwei Ventures Fund I of Shanghai (2000), and the Houston energy funds SCF Partners III and IV and R. Chaney & Partners III and IV, and a 1998 grantor retained annuity trust.⁴

The same form lists him as a member of the advisory board of the Jamestown Foundation from October 1985, a director of Empower America from January 1993, a member of the foreign policy grant advisory committee of the Smith Richardson Foundation from June 1998, a trustee of the Gerald R. Ford Foundation from September 1981, an overseer of the Hoover Institution in several periods from 1983, and a trustee of the RAND Corporation from 1977, chairing its board from April 1981 to April 1986 and from April 1995 to December 1996. It lists his membership of the Bohemian Club from December 1986, of its H.B. Camp from August 1987, and of the Alfalfa Club from 1976.⁴

ABB and North Korea

Swissinfo reported on February 24, 2003, that ABB had signed a $200 million contract with North Korea in January 2000 to supply equipment and services for two nuclear power stations at Kumho, and that Rumsfeld was a member of ABB's board "between 1990 and February 2001," dates that differ from the June 1999 start on his Senate form. ABB's spokesman, Wolfram Eberhardt, said Rumsfeld "was at nearly all the board meetings" and that the contract might or might not have been discussed. A Pentagon spokeswoman, Victoria Clark, told Newsweek that Rumsfeld "does not recall it being brought before the board at any time." ABB said it had sold its nuclear business to BNFL in early 2000.³⁰ At the January 11, 2001, hearing Levin asked whether the 1994 agreement under which the United States would lead a coalition to provide North Korea with proliferation-resistant light-water reactors served the national interest; Rumsfeld said the matter was "quite a distance off my turf" and described North Korea as a proliferator. The letters "ABB" appear in the hearing record only in his biographical sketch and his committee form.³

Commissions and intelligence advisory posts

Rumsfeld's form lists him as a member of Reagan's Interim Foreign Policy Advisory Board in 1981, senior advisor to the Scowcroft Commission on strategic forces in 1982 and 1983, a member of the General Advisory Committee of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency from 1982 to 1986, a consultant to the State Department from 1983 to about 1989, and a member of the National Economic Commission in 1988 and 1989.¹ He chaired the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States from December 1997 to July 1998. Its members, nominated by the Speaker of the House and the Senate majority leader and the minority leaders and appointed by the Director of Central Intelligence, were Rumsfeld, Barry Blechman, Lee Butler, Richard Garwin, William Graham, William Schneider Jr., Larry Welch, Paul Wolfowitz and R. James Woolsey; its executive summary was dated July 15, 1998.³¹ In July 1998 he became a consultant, without compensation, to the Director of Central Intelligence, a post he held until January 2001, and from June to December 2000 he chaired the Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization.¹

Political contributions

Federal Election Commission records list contributions from "Rumsfeld, Donald, Honorable" of Chicago to the Republican National Committee's state elections committee of $20,000 on December 28, 1995, $24,000 on June 7, 1996, $15,000 on June 30, 1998, $7,500 on April 13, 1999, $7,500 on June 10, 1999, and $10,000 on July 25, 2000, a total of $84,000. While chief executive of General Instrument he gave $5,000 to the General Instrument political action committee on January 9, 1991, and on October 16, 1992, and $1,000 and $3,000 to the cable industry's political action committee in 1991 and 1992. On January 27, 1988, he gave $1,000 to Haig for President, and on January 28 and February 4, 1988, $1,000 each to the campaigns of Jack Kemp, George Bush and Bob Dole. In August 1999 he gave $1,000 each to Bush for President and to Senator Bill Bradley's presidential campaign.¹⁵ The Associated Press described a brief Rumsfeld run for the 1988 Republican presidential nomination.²

Confirmation and the Pentagon, 2001 to 2003

President-elect Bush announced the nomination on December 28, 2000.¹ At the January 11, 2001, hearing, asked whether he had adhered to the conflict-of-interest laws, Rumsfeld answered "I do not know," saying the rules of the bodies reviewing his filings differed, that his papers were still at the Office of Government Ethics, and that he had "a large number of investments and activities that would have to be characterized as conflicts were they to be maintained"; asked again whether he would adhere to them, he said "Yes, sir."³ In a written answer on the Iraq Liberation Act he wrote: "In the past I have favored it."³²

On September 10, 2001, at the Pentagon, Rumsfeld said: "According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions."³³ Notes taken by his aide Stephen Cambone on September 11, 2001, record Rumsfeld at 2:40 p.m. asking for the best information fast, to judge whether it was good enough to hit "S.H." at the same time, "Not only UBL"; Battle described the notes as directing the Defense Department lawyer Jim Haynes to obtain "support" from Wolfowitz for a link between Iraq and Osama bin Laden.³⁴ Rumsfeld's typed talking points for his meeting with General Tommy Franks at Central Command on November 27, 2001, begin "Focus on WMD," list among possible ways to start a war "US discovers Saddam connection to Sept. 11 attack or to anthrax attacks?" and "Dispute over WMD inspections?", call for "Decapitation of government," and state: "Unlike in Afghanistan, important to have ideas in advance about who would rule afterwards." A handwritten addition reads "Influence campaign ... when begin?"³⁵

Detainee interrogation policy

On December 2, 2002, Rumsfeld signed a one-page recommendation from the Defense Department general counsel, William J. Haynes II, to approve all but three of 18 interrogation techniques requested by Guantanamo, adding by hand: "I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?" Haynes's memorandum said he had discussed the matter with Wolfowitz, Under Secretary Douglas Feith and General Richard Myers. After Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora told Haynes he would sign a memorandum of legal concerns, Rumsfeld rescinded the authority on January 15, 2003; on August 13, 2003, he approved an interrogation plan for the detainee Mohamedou Ould Slahi.³⁶ The Senate Armed Services Committee concluded that Haynes's review "was grossly deficient" (conclusion 12), that Rumsfeld's authorization "was a direct cause of detainee abuse" at Guantanamo and "influenced and contributed to the use of abusive techniques" in Afghanistan and Iraq (conclusion 13), and that the techniques used at Abu Ghraib "appeared in Iraq only after they had been approved for use in Afghanistan and at GTMO" (conclusion 19).³⁶ The Associated Press reported that Rumsfeld twice offered his resignation to Bush in 2004 after the Abu Ghraib disclosures; he left office in December 2006 and was replaced by Robert Gates.²

On June 29, 2006, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court held that the military commission convened to try the Guantanamo detainee Hamdan, a Yemeni national, "lacks the power to proceed because its structure and procedures violate both the UCMJ and the four Geneva Conventions signed in 1949."³⁷

Rumsfeld Foundation

After 2008 Rumsfeld headed the Rumsfeld Foundation.² The foundation, a Washington private foundation (EIN 26-0580915) with an IRS ruling date of August 2007, reported assets of $9,727,763 at the end of 2011, $11,418,376 at the end of 2012 and $1,515,771 at the end of 2023.³⁸ His 2001 Senate form lists him as president of a DHR Foundation of Chicago from December 1985, annotated "Possibly without investment control."⁴