Rumsfeld's Style, Goals Strain Ties In Pentagon

"Rumsfeld has changed over time. He's still cantankerous, but he's not necessarily as combative as he was at one point in time," one three-star officer said. "There is more mutual respect."

Others are far more pessimistic. "Things are more fouled up [at the Pentagon] than I've ever seen them," said one former defense official sympathetic to Rumsfeld.

"The depth of disaffection is really quite striking," added one defense consultant. "I think Rumsfeld is courting a rebellion."

Two other people who have dealt with Rumsfeld said there is still a glass bowl in the secretary's office. Rumsfeld likes to tell people that if he says anything nice about anyone, a coin is put in the bowl. Rumsfeld likes to point out that the bowl is almost always empty. It puzzles some generals that he would take pride in such a hard-line approach.

"It is," said one, "a heck of a way to run an organization."

Joint Staff in the Cross Hairs

Rumsfeld's primary objective in reasserting civilian control over the Pentagon has been in reining in a Joint Staff that the defense secretary, according to associates, believed had become too powerful and independent of civilian control, with officers acting at times as though they were not subordinate to their civilian bosses.

The Joint Staff, an umbrella organization that draws from all four services, consists of about 1,200 officers and other personnel and plays a critical role in overseeing the daily activities of the U.S. military around the world. The staff works for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But Rumsfeld has made it clear that, in his Pentagon, the chairman works for him.

Since Rumsfeld's first tour as defense secretary in the mid-1970s, the Joint Staff has grown enormously in power and capability. During the Ford administration, it was something of a backwater where the services placed officers considered second-rate. But after the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act greatly empowered the chairman, making him the formal leader of the Joint Chiefs and explicitly the principal military adviser to the president, the staff began getting the best the services had to offer, in part because that law barred officers lacking "Joint" time from becoming top generals or admirals.

Rumsfeld, say people who have dealt with him over the last two years, saw the Joint Staff as sometimes unresponsive to civilian leadership, even asserting its own policy positions at interagency meetings. He wasn't alone in that feeling, recalled one officer at the Pentagon, who said that Joint Staff officers sometimes seemed to have the attitude that "the suits don't need to know this, they stay in our lane, we stay in ours."

Under Rumsfeld, the civilians are no longer cut out.

Rumsfeld, early on, tried to gain control over the key position of director of the Joint Staff, the person who helps determine the daily agenda of the U.S. military leadership. When his move to oust the incumbent met opposition, he backed down. But he succeeded in making the point that the defense secretary would be intimately involved in deciding who filled the top positions. And he prevailed when it came time this year to pick a new J-3 to replace Gen. Newbold, who had told colleagues he found the job deeply frustrating partly because of Rumsfeld's constant bypassing of the Joint Staff.

Rumsfeld made it clear that he did not feel Keys, the general first nominated by Myers to succeed Newbold, was suited for the job. One three-star officer said Rumsfeld considered Keys unimaginative, while a four-star officer said the defense secretary considered Keys arrogant.

"He has been relentless and aggressive in putting these guys in their place," concluded one former Pentagon official. Myers also has come in for criticism from other generals who think he has failed to stand up to Rumsfeld, and some point to the Keys nomination to make their case.

"In the Rumsfeld Pentagon, the chairman works as staff to the secretary of defense," the former official added.