My new novel comes out on November 4. It’s available now for pre-order on Kindle, with other formats and stores to come. Here’s the prologue.
Prologue
Many people knew about Donald Rumsfeld. But only a few, like me, actually knew him.
His friends called him Rummy. So did his enemies. Born in Chicago in 1933, Rummy made Congress in his twenties. Then he worked for President Nixon but left Washington to be NATO Ambassador in Brussels just before the Watergate scandal exploded. He was Jerry Ford’s Chief of Staff and later his Defense Secretary. Then he ran the pharmaceutical giant G. D. Searle. Years later, he returned to the Pentagon as George W. Bush’s Defense Secretary, where he presided over the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
Not a bad resume for an ambitious fellow like Rummy. But this was all just prelude to the real drama.
A series of unfortunate events in 2005 led to Rummy becoming President of the United States. While the path there was twisted and scandalous, he made it to the top, like he always dreamed he would. His first order as Commander in Chief—to invade Iran—was a disaster. And Barack Obama came around a few years later and walloped him at the polls. Rummy had big plans for a second term that never came to be.
His story, however, didn’t stop after leaving Washington. While his rise was stratospheric—from unknown kid in the Chicago suburbs to the President of the United States—his fall was historic. Rummy ultimately became the most prominent victim of Donald Trump’s presidential wrath.
What follows is all this in detail, plus much more. It’s Rummy’s life story. The ups. The downs. The shock. The awe. The big parts—the parts that matter most to him and to the world. Much has been told before, in newspapers, classrooms, and history books. But much is revealed here for the first time. I’ve included some words of wisdom (and, in retrospect, irony) from Rummy himself—Rumsfeld’s Rules—which are plucked from his famous book of axioms.
We’ll start at Rummy’s 2018 war-crimes trial at the International Criminal Court. Then we’ll take a step back and explore his decades-long rise and the ambition that ultimately determined his fate. From there, we’ll dive into his return to Washington in the 2000’s and the seismic events that propelled him to both the Oval Office as president and the witness box as defendant. Finally, we’ll chart his trial’s unusual origin, its dramatic unfolding, and its stunning result.
Whether you love Rummy or hate him (and few are in between) it’s one heck of a story.
How do I fit in? Well, that will eventually become clear. Let’s just say for now that while I respected Rummy, I had a little bone to pick with him, and shedding some light on his life isn’t just good for the world. It’s good for me, too.
