"Rumfeld Remains Defense Department ‘Consultant,’ Opens ‘Transition Office’ Near Pentagon"

Gone, but Not Really Gone

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld “has left the Pentagon, but not the Defense Department.” The Washington Times reports:

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.

The Times reports that Rumsfeld has brought with him close adviser Stephen Cambone, a fierce advocate of the Iraq war and the chief planner of questionable interrogation tactics at military and CIA detention sites around the world.

Rumsfeld’s new office is reportedly raising eyebrows at the Pentagon:

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.

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.

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.

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/01/25/rumsfeld-consultant/