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Rumsfeld: Nixon's Loathesome Dove

By Al Kamen
Friday, October 10, 2003; Page A25

A new generation of American antiwar critics may decry Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld's moves in Iraq. But there was a time when other critics -- such as President Richard M. Nixon and then-national security adviser Henry A. Kissinger -- saw him as an incorrigible peacenik, an annoying White House dove, according to a most interesting article in the November Atlantic Monthly by James Mann.

Using the Nixon Tapes -- the gift that will forever keep on giving -- Mann found Nixon one night fretting about "the Rumsfeld problem."

Rumsfeld, then a former congressman working on the White House domestic policy staff, was "becoming a troublesome anti-war advocate," Mann writes in this excerpt from his upcoming book "Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet."

In an April 7, 1971, chat, Nixon, Kissinger and then-Chief of Staff H.R. "Bob" Haldeman talked about the war in Vietnam. "I think Rumsfeld may be not too long for this world," Nixon said, a few minutes later suggesting, "Let's dump him."

In a generally conservative administration, Rumsfeld had been on the moderate-to-liberal wing, credited by some with saving President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society anti-poverty program, the Office of Economic Opportunity. His assistants there included two young fellows, Dick Cheney and Frank Carlucci. ..