Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House

by Peter Baker

At 10:00 a.m. on May 5, Bush met with Rumsfeld, who handed him a handwritten letter. “Read this,” the secretary said. Mr. President, I want you to know that you have my resignation as Secretary of Defense anytime you feel it would be helpful to you. Don Rumsfeld Rumsfeld told the president that there had to be accountability and the furor would just grow until there was a sense that the government had taken it seriously. Bush agreed. “Don, someone’s head has to roll on this one,” he said. Well, Rumsfeld responded, you have my resignation. The meeting broke up without a decision. Rumsfeld’s letter was not precisely a letter of resignation; it was an offer to resign if the president wanted him to. Generously, it could be read as an honorable act taking responsibility; more cynically, it could be seen as forcing Bush either to support him or cut him loose. Bush saw it as the latter. “Pretty smooth move by the crusty old guy,” Bush told Dan Bartlett. “He called my hand.”