Donald Rumsfeld is still working at the Department of Defense as a non-paid consultant.
Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has left the Pentagon, but not the Defense Department.
On Jan. 4, Mr. Rumsfeld opened a government-provided transition office in Arlington and has seven Pentagon-paid staffers working for him, a Pentagon official said.
The Pentagon lists Mr. Rumsfeld as a "nonpaid consultant," a status he needs in order to review secret and top-secret documents, the official said.
Mr. Rumsfeld and his aides, who include close adviser Stephen Cambone, are sifting through the thousands of pages of documents generated during his tenure.
Apparently, he is entitled to a transition office to organize any paperwork that accrued while he was Secretary of Defense. However, neither of the last two secretaries did so.
Mr. Rumsfeld's two immediate predecessors handled their transitions differently.
William Cohen, President Clinton's last defense secretary, went straight to his new consulting firm in Washington, said a top adviser, Robert Tyrer.
The Pentagon set up an office with two military personnel to sort through his papers for about six weeks.
And Cohen's predecessor, William Perry, started teaching at Stanford immediately after he left office. His Defense Department papers were sent to him at Stanford on CDs.
What is most interesting about Rumsfeld's continued presence at the DoD is the man he chose to assist him. Stephen Cambone has quite a resume.
In January of 2001, as George W. Bush prepared to take office, Cambone served on a panel for nuclear weapons issues sponsored by the National Institute for Public Policy, a conservative think tank. Other members of the panel included Stephen Hadley, William Schneider, and Robert Joseph. This panel advocated using tactical nuclear weapons as a standard part of the United States defense arsenal.
Hmmmm.... I wonder what kind of paperwork he and Rumsfeld are sorting through.
Cambone was known in the Pentagon as Donald Rumsfeld's "chief henchman". The orders to soften up Iraqi prisoners for intelligence interrogators (both military and private contractors) are said to have come directly from Cambone's office.
Does anyone remember the Abu Ghraib Senate hearings? Seems like he and Rumsfeld might be doing a little house cleaning. A lot more information about Steven Cambone can be found in this CounterPunch article:
Rumsfeld's Enforcer
Cambone has stealthily positioned himself as the most powerful intelligence operator in the Bush administration. On May 8, 2003, Rumsfeld named him Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, a new position which Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz described thus: "The new office is in charge of all intelligence and intelligence-related oversight and policy guidance functions".
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In April of 2003, Rumsfeld placed Cambone in charge of counter-terrorism teams operating under the code-name "Grey Fox". This covert operation is a kind of sabotage and assassination squad run out of the civil wing of the Pentagon.
I recommend that you read the entire CounterPunch piece. It is well worth your time. Cambone is a scary individual who has managed to stay under the radar, at least more so than his neocon allies Doug Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Stephen Hadley, and of course Donald Rumsfeld. We need to find out why he is still at the DoD.