When he heard a plane had hit the building, he didn't stop to think about what it meant, he wandered outside without telling anyone—to have a look. ...It finally dawned on him that he might have a job to do, but even then, the plane hit the Pentagon at 9:38 a.m. and he didn't arrive at the National Military Command Center until about 10:30. They were desperately looking for him and no one knew where he was.
____In 2002 Rumsfeld signed a now-famous directive that approved sleep deprivation, stress positions, and the refinement of various cruel methods. He had this guy in mind when he signed it. ...Rumsfeld was regularly calling in to find out what was happening with al-Qahtani's interrogation, and it was clear that they were using techniques on him that had been approved by Rumsfeld.
____The underlying approach used by the Pentagon was “information dominance”—you produce so much news that you satiate the media's requirement for information. You supply it all. They'd bring in retired military officers for briefings at the Pentagon and give them information that had not yet been released. These guys would speed away to Fox and sound incredibly knowledgeable. ... Some of the retired generals were making good money on consulting deals with the networks and they were obviously reluctant to risk that.
____He adopted the “neoconservative/contractor” agenda for reforming the Department of Defense. It was a fantasy of high-tech video-game warfare. At one point there were dozens of groups studying “transformation”; one insider told me that they were “breeding like drunken muskrats.”
From an interview with Alexander Cockburn by Ken Silverstein.
