Archives

Welcome to the home of the Rumsfeld Archive, a site that was created in conjunction with the publication of Secretary Rumsfeld’s memoir, Known and Unknown, in 2011. With its launch, Rumsfeld released the following statement, “This website was designed to feature documents cited in my memoir, Known and Unknown, so they could be easily searched and reviewed.  In addition to those cited in Known and Unknown, we hand-selected a number of documents from my personal collection that are of particular historical interest.

A few documents have been redacted to protect the personal privacy of others, and some have been withheld because they contain sensitive information, generally on personnel matters. These documents were not designed with an eye to history as part of an authoritative archive. They are largely working papers often drafted in great haste under difficult circumstances. While some are polished, most were never edited. They contain typos, misspellings and some outright errors. They should be handled as archival material.

Despite an inclination to go back in and clean them up, I have concluded to do so would give the impression of a polished, even a sanitized record.  Instead, I have put them on this website, as they were, for readers to draw their own conclusions.”