INNER OFFICE.(The Talk of the Town)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 20-NOV-06

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COPYRIGHT 2006 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

Two months ago, Kenneth Adelman, the former director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, received a call from the Pentagon: Donald Rumsfeld would like to see him as soon as possible. Adelman said he knew then that this meeting might be their last.

The two men had been friends for thirty-six years. Adelman first worked for Rumsfeld in the Nixon Administration, and then served as Rumsfeld's assistant during his more rewarding term as the Secretary of Defense, under President Ford. Rumsfeld drafted Adelman to help him in his brief, ineffectual campaign for President, in 1988. Their families sometimes spent vacations together, and Rumsfeld continued to call on Adelman for advice. In 2001, Rumsfeld appointed his friend to the Defense Policy Board, a group of lobbyists, defense intellectuals, and politicians of once high standing, who gather periodically to give the Secretary...

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