
Errol Morrisās documentary The Unknown KnownĀ views the political career of Donald Rumsfeld and his time as US Secretary of Defence between 2001 and 2006. The film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival at the end of last August; was given a limited release in the United States on Wednesday; and has been showing at select Picturehouse Cinemas in the UK this week. Conceived as a companion piece to MorrisāsĀ 2003 documentary, The Fog of War ā Morris has called the two works āsalt-and-pepper shakersā or ābookendsā ā where that film explored the War in Vietnam, this focuses on the early days of the War in Iraq. Morris views these two wars as disastrous, unjustified and error-strewn, horrific episodes in American and world history. Yet where The Fog of War was a penetrating analysis of Robert McNamaraās decisions, considerations, and regrets regarding the Vietnam War,Ā structured within a chronology of McNamaraās life, The Unknown Known is more amorphous.
McNamara had already shown a penchant for retrospection and reconsideration. His 1995 book, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, and 2001ās Wilsonās Ghost: Reducing the Risk of Conflict, Killing, and Catastrophe in the 21st Century, co-authored by James G. Blight, were both impetuses for Morrisās film, and Morris drew from the former for the eleven lessons which serve as structural points in The Fog of War. Rumsfeldās participation in such aĀ projectĀ comes as more of a surprise. Morris has recounted that when he first contacted Rumsfeldās lawyer, this lawyer assured him that Rumsfeld was never likely to speak to him on film. Rumsfeld eagerly chose to engage; yet at the close of the documentary, when asked by Morris the reason for his participation, Rumsfeld hesitates and offers only āIāll be damned if I knowā, his words accompanied by the grin which has become his trademark over the preceding hour and a half of footage.
Emerging from a closed subject, this grin comes to serveĀ asĀ a point of reference for the audience, appearing to offer some insight into the nature of the man. It can be read in a number of ways: as the sinister smirk of someone unwilling to reflect openly on his own failings or wrongdoings; as the connivance of a lifelong politician; as an attempt to disarm his interviewer; or more plainly as a genuine expression of engagement, of pleasure, or of well-being. For Rumsfeld himself, the smile seems both to challenge and to conciliate. With it, he affirms toĀ his correspondent that they are engaged together in a battle of wits, while suggesting that this battle amounts to a game, to a play of language and personality, rather than to any deeper ideals or absolutes.
Morris interviewed Rumsfeld for 33 hours over the course of one year. The interviews followed the same filming technique which characterises The Fog of WarĀ and several of Morrisās other works:Ā Morris utilised what he calls the Interrotron, which allows interviewee and interviewer to sit apart, but to look at one another via a screen while they talk. This enables Morris and his interviewee to maintain something approximating eye contact, while on the other hand providing the separation which Morris believes is conducive to revealing interviews. Morris thinks that subjects will say more to a camera than they will face-to-face with a person; and thatĀ with a camera in front of them, he can use pauses to encourage his subjects to fill in the blanks, speakingĀ where they would otherwise remain silent.Ā The Unknown Known centres entirely on Rumsfeldās face: largely eschewing the archival footage that was a feature of The Fog of War, we are given Morrisās interview, and brief clips from Rumsfeldās press conferences, while dictionary definitions of words circle against the dark background as Rumsfeld extends his own endeavours with language.
There isĀ a brief recapitulation of Rumsfeldās earlier political career. After opening in the midst of the Iraq War, and with the suggestive phrase which makes up the documentaryās title, we go back to the late 1960s and the 1970s, when Rumsfeld served first under the Nixon administration, then later under Gerald Ford. As Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity during Nixonās Presidency, Rumsfeld appointed Dick Cheney and Frank Carlucci, then at the very beginning of their careers in politics. Serving as Chief of Staff under Gerald Ford from September 1974, a reshuffle the following year saw Rumsfeld become the 13th United States Secretary of Defence, with Cheney taking Rumsfeldās previous position as Fordās Chief of Staff. This reshuffle was dubbed the āHalloween Massacreā, and as Morris shows, Rumsfeld was widely fingered as its chief architect. While it effectively saw Rumsfeld and Cheney promoted ā and made Rumsfeld, at 43, the youngest Secretary of Defence in US history ā it saw several moderate Republicans fired, and made George H. W. BushĀ the Director of Central Intelligence, head of the CIA. While ostensibly a promotion for Bush too, the move has been seen as an attempt on the part of Rumsfeld to compartmentalise and therefore marginalise a political rival. Yet in 1980, it was Bush rather than Rumsfeld who Ronald Reagan chose as hisĀ Vice Presidential running mate.
Bush would succeed Reagan as President in 1989. Morris suggests to Rumsfeld that, had Reagan chose his Vice President differently, it would have been he rather than Bush in line for the Presidency. Rumsfeldās response is one of the most revealing in the documentary: a terse, purse-lipped āThatās possibleā. The prominent economist Milton Friedman once stated that he personally regarded Reaganās selection of Bush over Rumsfeld as āthe worst decision not only of his campaign but of his presidencyā; and that had Rumsfeld been chosen, āI believe he would have succeeded Reagan as president and the sorry Bush-Clinton period would never have occurredā.
Overall, this section of Morrisās filmĀ is richly instructive, informing or reminding viewers of an able and precocious political career, and one characterised by maneuvering and ambition, plus some disappointment. After 1977 and the end of the Ford administration, Rumsfeld spent the next two decades developing a career in business, and continuing to take part-time political roles. The most significant of these saw him appointed Reaganās Special Envoy to the Middle East: travelling to Baghdad in December 1983, he met with Saddam Hussein and Husseinās deputy, and Iraqi Foreign Minister, Tariq Aziz. It was not until 2001 that Rumsfeld returned to the forefront of politics, when he was appointed Secretary of Defence in the administration of George W. Bush. Fred Smith, the founder of FedEx and Bushās friend at Yale University, had been the newly elected Presidentās first choice for the post, but he turned the position down; and Bushās Vice President, Dick Cheney, forwarded the name of his old colleague, which Bush agreed to despite Rumsfeldās differences with his father. So Rumsfeld became the 21st United States Secretary of Defence, and he would now become the oldest in US history.
Morrisās endeavour is to navigate the Iraq War perceived and conceptualised by just one of its predominant figures. He does not attempt an exhaustive account of the war, nor does he succeed in explaining its causes. Given the nature of Rumsfeldās responses ā by turns resolute and equivocal ā the documentary poses more questions than it answers. It is one of Morrisās most provocative searches into his perennial themes: how we wilfully construct knowledge and how this constructed knowledge entangles with truth. We traverse the Iraq War amidst āsnowflakesā: the name Rumsfeld embraced to refer to the memos he would send other officials and members of staff. He suspects he wrote and sent at least 20,000 of these during his six years as Secretary of Defence as part of the Bush administration: when he finally left the role at the end of 2006, a final memo sent to all Pentagon personnel declared āthe blizzard is overā.
Morris displays some of these snowflakes on screen, and asks Rumsfeld to read several aloud. Some of the liveliest exchanges between the interviewer and his subject centre upon the two major controversies of the Iraq War: the decision to go to war itself, which implicates Iraqās alleged but nonexistent weapons of mass destruction; and the abuses of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. Yet even here, while Morrisās opposition to the Iraq War and his absolute disdain for its atrocities is clear, he does not attack Rumsfeld directly or attempt to hang blame heavily about his shoulders. There exists a memo, for instance, written by Rumsfeld on 27 November 2001, which appears to show him willing to concoct motivation for a war in Iraq, rather than responding honestly to intelligence:
Even on the day of 11 September 2001, Rumsfeld is reported to have asked for any evidence that might link the dayās terrorist attacks to Saddam Hussein, and thereby legitimise military action. Morris doesnāt include the above memo in his film. Rather than analysing the motivations for war, he prefers instead to contemplate Rumsfeldās response once it had been concluded that Iraq did not, after all, possess weapons of mass destruction. He wants to allow Rumsfeld the space in which to express himself, to implicate himself or to reveal some pertinent detail as he sees it. Instead, Rumsfeld embarks on a rhetorical exercise, suggesting that āabsence of evidence isnāt evidence of absenceā ā words which, applied to the context ofĀ Iraq and the devastating loss of life war has caused, Morris has subsequently called the most disturbing in his film.
Rather than open hostility, Morris expresses scepticism, and at certain moments allows his camera to linger on Rumsfeld after he has finished speaking in an attempt to achieve a sort of dramatic irony: viewers are supposed to understand the flaws in Rumsfeldās arguments, and to see that his reflections upon and criticisms of others apply equally to himself. Speaking of his meeting in 1983 with Hussein and Aziz, and remarking that he continues to find it difficult to understand their respective states of mind, he reflects that they lived āpretendā lives, fulfilling only their images of themselves. The lingering camera implies that this can be applied equally to Rumsfeld; but beyond the extent to which we all build our selves through images, it is not easy to conclude that there is anything especially counterfeit or deluded about Rumsfeld.
While expressing no remorse for his role initiating the Iraq War, readily chalking up points in his own favour when he feels he has bested Morris or uncovered a misleading interpretation of events, speaking sometimes directly and sometimes ambiguously, and appearing impervious to the lures of self-reflection, still there are few points in the film where Rumsfeld does not appear to be speaking candidly. Morris asks him about Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. Rumsfeld argues that the public opinion of Guantanamo Bay is grossly misguided; and describes it as one of the best-run prisons anywhere in the world. Of course, this lays aside concerns over the ideology behind the prison, and over the morality of the procedures which those who run it are required to carry out. Rumsfeld discusses authorising āSpecial Interrogation Plansā for Guantanamo detainees in late 2002, but he depicts this as a procedural responsibility, in which he was essentially obliged to sign off from a listĀ different levels of interrogative techniques.
Rumsfeld is adamant that Guantanamo Bay remains a legitimate institution; but he admits himself appalled by the abuses which took place at Abu Ghraib, the central prison twenty miles outside of Baghdad, in late 2003 and early 2004. Morris asks Rumsfeld whether the fact of Guantanamo Bay, its āSpecial Interrogation Plansā, and a lack of clarity within the military regarding these, together influenced events in Abu Ghraib, and after some hesitancy, Rumsfeld admits this possibility. It was his sense that, as Secretary of Defence, he was ultimately responsible for these wrongdoings which caused Rumsfeld to twice offer his resignation ā which was twice declined by President Bush. On the other hand, pushed to admit a narrower responsibility for the Abu Ghraib abuses ā which saw detainees stripped, tortured, raped, sodomised, and murdered ā Rumsfeld declines. Regarding the āTorture Memosā ā sent by the Office of Legal Counsel of the United States Department of Justice in August 2002 and March 2003, and advising that āenhanced interrogation techniquesā, including waterboarding, might be permissable outside the United States ā Rumsfeld states that he never read them, which prompts Morrisās most physical reaction: an immediate, incredulous āReally?ā.
As with others who were part of the Bush administration, it is difficult to discern whether Rumsfeld is a deep thinker or instead a quick thinker, whose strength lies in thinking on his feet and making points firmly and effectively. Still ā even for someone who disagrees wholeheartedly with Rumsfeldās militarist ethos and with so many of his conclusions ā The Unknown Known suggests Rumsfeld as a ready intellectual, who might be guilty of intellectual error more than moral malevolence. There is much philosophical interest in how Rumsfeld conceptualises power and its responsibilities, and in many of the things he says ā even in his most notorious soundbites.
The filmās title derives from a Department of Defence briefing given in February 2002. Rumsfeld was discussing the lack of evidence for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Utilising a form of tricolon, he said:
āReports that say that something hasnāt happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we now know we donāt know. But there are also unknown unknowns ā there are things we do not know we donāt know.ā
The idea of āunknown knownsā emerged as the logical fourth part of this series. Yet what āunknown knownsā actually are remains a point of contention throughout the documentary, as Rumsfeld himself fluctuates between opposing definitions. At the beginning of the film, he defines them as āthings that you think you know, that it turns out you did notā. This is a reading whose sense has precedents, for instance in the phrase attributed to Mark Twain that, āIt aināt what you donāt know that gets you into trouble. Itās what you know for sure that just aināt soā. However, Rumsfeldās initial definition does not follow the grammar of the earlier three; and at the end of the film, he redefines āunknown knownsā accordingly as things that we do not know that we know. As Morris points out, the difference here is polarising: according to the first definition, we know less than we think; whereas according to the later definition, we know more. So do we know more than we think we know, or do we know less? Or is it not both?
Rumsfeld believes that all policy, but foreign policy most of all, requires imagination. This imagination is not cast as empathetic, and it does not, in the view of Rumsfeld, extend directly from knowledge.Ā Elaborating on his quote, he locates āunknown unknownsā as the sites of fundamental, world-altering change ā which is to say that, for Rumsfeld, the most important events which occur are often those of which we have not even conceived, never mind expected. For Rumsfeld, Pearl Harbor and September 11 are the defining moments in American history, and they were allowed to come about through a complete vacuum of knowledge: America had not conceived of such attacks, and did not appreciate that such attacks were possible: the possibility of such attacks was unknown and had been unthought. So for Rumsfeld it is in the area of āunknown unknownsā that we must imagine. He believes that the imagination must be harnessed to give the best sense of what is possible, thereby allowing not only for preparation, but for action. This sense of what constitutes an āunknown unknownā may be debated: was there not a store of knowledge out of which Pearl Harbor and September 11 could have been conceived? And at the same time, Rumsfeldās series raises interesting epistemological questionsĀ regarding how we build and access knowledge: to what extent is imagining and thinking through an āunknown unknownā possible, and to what extent is all thought merely a reconfiguration of existing knowledge? Should āknown unknownsā be the realm and starting point of the imagination rather than āunknown unknownsā?
Whatever, we can allow even extreme or apparently absurd hypotheses as important facets of scientific and philosophical methodology; and we can allow hypotheses an important place too in political thinking. Yet to embrace the unfettered imagination as a source of potential knowledge, which can and ought to then be acted upon, seems profoundly dangerous in the political sphere. Rumsfeldās philosophy allowed him a justification for war in Iraq regardless of all evidence ā essentially on the basis of what might exist, and what, if we stretch thought to its limits, might occur. It is a chain of reasoning which results in militarisation, preemptive military action which in fact initiates rather than counters conflict, and a marked lack of proportionality in all military endeavour.
So in Rumsfeld there is a peculiar compoundĀ of narrow accountancy when it comes to analysing military might (as Secretary of Defence in the 1970s he was concerned at trends in comparative US-Soviet military strength, and ordered the development of new weapons and machinery in order to restore the balance in the Americansā favour) and of free thought when it comes to evaluating the justifications for military action. Errol Morrisās friend and sometime collaborator Wernor Herzog has spoken with regard to his own documentaries about foregoing an accountantās truth for the āecstatic truthā of the cinema: but aside from their widely different mediums, Herzog seeks in his films to reveal the full consciousness of individual human beings, while Rumsfeld too readily forgets the lives of others and asserts his own psychology in place of matters of fact. So too when it comes to language, Rumsfeld at once understands how words are used as tools, with nuanced and changeable meanings, yet seeks to fix their power by restricting and defining their application. He is an adroit and entertaining communicator, but his numerous memos seeking after dictionary definitions of words make it clear that he does not feel himself their master. He was content enough with his speech on knowns and unknowns that he incorporated it as the title of his autobiography, Known and Unknown: A Memoir, published in 2011. ConsideringĀ the aftermath to September 11 and the path towards war in Iraq, Rumsfeld writes:
āIt was a time of discoveryāof seeking elusive, imperfect solutions for new problems that would not be solved quickly. There was no guidebook or road map for us to follow.ā
In fact, it was Slavoj Žižek, in a May 2004 article entitled āWhat Rumsfeld Doesnāt Know That He Knows About Abu Ghraibā, who first theorised the missing term in Rumsfeldās series. Žižek argued about Rumsfeld that:
āWhat he forgot to add was the crucial fourth term: the āunknown knowns,ā the things we donāt know that we knowāwhich is precisely, the Freudian unconscious, the āknowledge which doesnāt know itself,ā as Lacan used to say.
If Rumsfeld thinks that the main dangers in the confrontation with Iraq were the āunknown unknowns,ā that is, the threats from Saddam whose nature we cannot even suspect, then the Abu Ghraib scandal shows that the main dangers lie in the āunknown knownsāāthe disavowed beliefs, suppositions and obscene practices we pretend not to know about, even though they form the background of our public values.ā
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A transcript of an interview with Errol Morris, in which he discusses the film,Ā at Democracy Now!:Ā http://www.democracynow.org/2014/3/27/the_unknown_known_errol_morris_new
Another interview with the director via Reuters:Ā http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/01/us-donaldrumsfeld-idUSBREA300TM20140401
Two insightful reviews of The Unknown Known, by The New York Times:Ā http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/02/movies/deciphering-donald-h-rumsfeld-in-the-unknown-known.html?hpw&rref=movies&_r=0Ā and The Spectator:Ā http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/culturehousedaily/2014/03/the-unknown-known-errol-morris-tries-to-trip-up-donald-rumsfeld-and-fails/
A 2003 article in The Atlantic on Rumsfeldās early political career:Ā http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/11/close-up-young-rumsfeld/302824/
Slavoj Žižekās piece āWhat Rumsfeld Doesnāt Know That He Knows About Abu Ghraibā, fromĀ In These Times, 21 May 2004:Ā http://inthesetimes.com/article/747
The Unknown Known Trailer:
Good interesting article