Tanker Inquiry Finds Rumsfeld's Attention Was Elsewhere

Rumsfeld is a former business executive and White House official who published a set of "Rumsfeld's Rules" that include the injunction: "Be precise -- a lack of precision is dangerous." But when investigators asked him whether he had approved the Boeing tanker lease in May 2003 -- despite widespread violations of Pentagon and government-wide procurement rules along the way -- Rumsfeld said: "I don't remember approving it. But I certainly don't remember not approving it, if you will."

Asked whether his subordinates, including former undersecretary of defense Edward C. "Pete" Aldridge, had accurately invoked Rumsfeld's approval when they signed documents authorizing the Boeing tanker lease to go forward, Rumsfeld said, "I may very well have said yes. I just don't remember. . . . I am not going to sit here and quibble over it." He did say he remembered approving a gun for a tank in 1976, during his first time as defense secretary.

When pressed about the tanker lease -- the largest such lease in U.S. history -- Rumsfeld offered two explanations for his distance from it. The first was related to his focus on what he called "the global war on terror," including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and what he termed the "continuing difficulties" with the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

"My time basically in the department was focused on those things and certainly not on acquisitions or -- or what have you," Rumsfeld said. "Basically I spend an overwhelming portion of my time with the combatant commanders and functioning as the link between the president . . . and the combatant commanders conducting the wars."

Asked if he was aware of concerns about the proposed Air Force lease from Capitol Hill and the Pentagon's own analysts, Rumsfeld responded, "I don't know what I knew then, compared to what I know now. . . . I am not able to go back and say . . . what did I know at a certain moment back in that period."

He also indicated that his office procedures are loose. "I work in here, I am going to guess, 12 hours a day. . . . I also know that people come in and out of this office all the time. Send me memos, half of which I -- are appropriate for me to have, some of which aren't, which I don't read. And call or come in and say I am going to do this or what do you think about that."

Rumsfeld said that given "all of those hours and hours in meetings and questions," he couldn't "say of certain knowledge" whether he provided any guidance about the lease to subordinates. He assumed, he said, that they were following "the normal rules that would apply to what it is they do."

This perplexed one of the investigators, who asked how Rumsfeld knew the information he got about the tankers was reliable if established procurement procedures were not followed. "In terms of knowledge that -- that -- from that period, I am without it," Rumsfeld replied.

The investigators tried a different tack. Tell us, one said, about the extent and nature of conversations with the White House about the tanker lease. The question related to the fact that in 2002 President Bush asked then-White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. to help reach a deal between the Pentagon and Boeing, which had substantial clout on Capitol Hill and was a major contributor to Bush's inaugural celebration.

"I have been told," Rumsfeld said, "that discussions with the president are privileged, and with his immediate staff." Large portions of text on the next five pages of the 38-page interview transcript were blacked out in the copy provided to The Post.

Part of the controversy over the tanker deal involved the department's failure to conduct an "Analysis of Alternatives" -- a routine comparison of options mandated by Pentagon rules before any large-scale weapons acquisition. When one investigator started asking about this, Rumsfeld demurred. "You are way out of my league on all of this," he said.

Rumsfeld went on to express frustration that some lawmakers responded to the scandal by blocking the promotions or new appointments of those involved. "We have practically no one left on the civilian side of the Air Force. . . . And the . . . damage that was done by the way this was handled has been terrible." Fortunately, he added, the lease "did not go through" because of "people in the Senate and others, whistleblowers, or whoever did what they did."

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman responded about two weeks ago that Rumsfeld views his role as setting top-level policy and keeping abreast of acquisition issues, not becoming involved in "day-to-day programmatic decisions." He created a video message stressing the importance of ethics in weapons-buying, Whitman said.

But in the past six years, while Rumsfeld occasionally mentioned procurement problems in his public appearances, he delivered only one major speech about the need for reform in how the Pentagon buys weapons. He complained in the speech that "our financial systems are decades old" and noted estimates that "we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions." He also said that the acquisition process was being improved and that "we now budget based on realistic estimates."

Rumsfeld's speech was delivered on Sept. 10, 2001.