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The Unknown Known review: 'The director is stumped by wily Rumsfeld' The Unknown Known review: 'The director is stumped by wily Rumsfeld'
(21 days later)
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It's not a question of letting Donald Rumsfeld off the hook. Errol Morris never brings the hook anywhere him, perhaps on the assumption that, un-hooked, he will be more relaxed and revealing. Actually, it's Morris himself on the hook, effectively stumped by Rumsfeld's wily, placid, narrow-eyed cordiality and blather. The object of the interview is the former secretary of defence's entire career, as recorded in a mountain of control-freaky memos. He was an outsider in the Nixon government, a Ford trusty during the 1975 Saigon debacle, a Middle East envoy for Reagan at a time when the US cultivated Saddam as a counterweight to the hated Iranians, then in the wilderness during the elder George Bush's presidency (Bush Sr had no great liking for him) and finally brought back to office by the younger Bush, almost certainly at the urging of alpha-hawk Dick Cheney. Again and again, Morris fails to challenge Rumsfeld: on that meeting with Saddam in the early 80s, he allows Rumsfeld to waffle about how absurdly delusional and conceited the Iraqi leader was. (Might not Uncle Sam's support have encouraged him in this?) He never really confronts Rumsfeld on the administration's sleight-of-hand link between Saddam and al-Qaida as a justification for war. He lets him get away with his habit of asking and answering his own leniently phrased questions. Worst of all, he indulges Rumsfeld in this nonsense about "unknown knowns" – meaningless, valueless gibberish designed to fog the issue about getting stuff wrong and making stuff up. David Frost's soft approach to Nixon got results. This doesn't.It's not a question of letting Donald Rumsfeld off the hook. Errol Morris never brings the hook anywhere him, perhaps on the assumption that, un-hooked, he will be more relaxed and revealing. Actually, it's Morris himself on the hook, effectively stumped by Rumsfeld's wily, placid, narrow-eyed cordiality and blather. The object of the interview is the former secretary of defence's entire career, as recorded in a mountain of control-freaky memos. He was an outsider in the Nixon government, a Ford trusty during the 1975 Saigon debacle, a Middle East envoy for Reagan at a time when the US cultivated Saddam as a counterweight to the hated Iranians, then in the wilderness during the elder George Bush's presidency (Bush Sr had no great liking for him) and finally brought back to office by the younger Bush, almost certainly at the urging of alpha-hawk Dick Cheney. Again and again, Morris fails to challenge Rumsfeld: on that meeting with Saddam in the early 80s, he allows Rumsfeld to waffle about how absurdly delusional and conceited the Iraqi leader was. (Might not Uncle Sam's support have encouraged him in this?) He never really confronts Rumsfeld on the administration's sleight-of-hand link between Saddam and al-Qaida as a justification for war. He lets him get away with his habit of asking and answering his own leniently phrased questions. Worst of all, he indulges Rumsfeld in this nonsense about "unknown knowns" – meaningless, valueless gibberish designed to fog the issue about getting stuff wrong and making stuff up. David Frost's soft approach to Nixon got results. This doesn't.