The day after the November elections, the White House announced that Donald Rumsfeld was finally stepping down as Secretary of Defense. Soon after, we learned that Rumsfeld wasn’t vacating the premises immediately, because someone thought it would be cool if he became the longest serving Pentagon chief in U.S. history. That meant staying on through December, even as Robert Gates began to take on responsibilities.
What we didn’t know was that Rumsfeld would stick around — and is still at the Defense Department now, nearly three months after his announced departure.
On Jan. 4, Mr. Rumsfeld opened a government-provided transition office in Arlington and has seven Pentagon-paid staffers working for him, a Pentagon official said.
The Pentagon lists Mr. Rumsfeld as a “nonpaid consultant,” a status he needs in order to review secret and top-secret documents, the official said.
Mr. Rumsfeld and his aides, who include close adviser Stephen Cambone, are sifting through the thousands of pages of documents generated during his tenure.
The Pentagon official said former secretaries are entitled to a transition office to sort papers, some of which can be taken with them for a library, for archives or to write a book.
I’m not entirely sure what kind of “transition” Rumsfeld really needs. Asked last month, for example, how be might help his successor, Rumsfeld said, “I don’t have any advice for him…. I wish him well.” So why have seven taxpayer financed employees, including one of the chief architects of the administration’s torture policies, help Rumsfeld stick around?
Also, as Nico noted, Rumsfeld’s predecessors, William Cohen and William Perry, “both returned to private life immediately after leaving the Defense Department. Cohen had ‘two military personnel…sort through his papers for about six weeks,’ while Perry had his papers mailed via compact disk to Stanford University.”
So what’s the holdup?
Apparently, even Pentagon officials are surprised at Rumsfeld’s inability to walk away.
The transition office has raised some eyebrows inside the Pentagon. Some question the size of the staff, which includes two military officers and two enlisted men. They also ask why the sorting could not have been done from the time Mr. Rumsfeld resigned Nov. 8 to when he left the building Dec. 18. […]
Mr. Rumsfeld, who resigned under pressure after Republicans lost control of Congress in an election largely decided on the stalemated Iraq war, reportedly is undecided about his long-term plans.
How about this: Mr. Rumsfeld, you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay there.