Errol Morris on Donald Rumsfeld, The Unknown Known, and Evidence-Based Journalism

“Errol Morris on Donald Rumsfeld, The Unknown Known, and
Evidence-Based Journalism”, by Nick Gillespie and Jim Epstein, was
released on April 3, 2014. The original writeup follows:

Donald Rumsfeld’s “war crime,” says Oscar-winning filmmaker
Errol Morris, is “the gobbledygook, the blizzard of words, the
misdirections, the evasions…and ultimately at the heart of it
all…the disregard and devaluation of evidence.”

The former secretary of defense’s complicated relationship with
the truth is the subject of Morris’ new
documentary, The Unknown
Known, which opens in theaters nationwide on Friday,
April 4.The Unknown Known is an extended conversation
with Rumsfeld, tracing his long career through the Nixon, Ford,
Reagan, and Bush administrations, and focusing on his role in
leading U.S. military forces into Iraq to fight a bloody and
senseless war.

In the film, Morris engages in a verbal sparring session with
Rumsfeld in an effort to break through the linguistic “evasions”
and “gobbledygook” for which he’s known.

The title of the film comes from Rumsfeld’s response to a
question by NBC reporter Jim Miklaszewski at a Pentagon news
conference on February 12, 2002. When Miklaszewski asked Rumsfeld
if there was any evidence that Iraq was supplying terrorists with
weapons, Rumsfeld replied:

Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always
interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns;
there are things we know we know. We also know there are known
unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not
know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know
we don’t know.

In a
four-part series in The New York
Times titled “The Certainty of Donald Rumsfeld,” Morris
wrote: “Many people believe Rumsfeld’s reply was brilliant. I think
otherwise.”

The Unknown Known is Errol Morris’ 10th
documentary feature. He’s also the author of two best-selling books
and the director of over 1,000 TV commercials. Much of Morris’ work
explores, as he puts it, “how people prefer untruth to truth” and
how they’re “blinded by their own spurious convictions.”

Reason TV‘s Nick Gillespie sat down for an extended
chat with Morris about The Unknown Known. They
discussed, among other things, the difference between Rumsfeld and
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, whose complicated
relationship with his own mistakes is the subject of Morris’
Oscar-winning film, The Fog of War;
Morris’ take on the Jeffrey MacDonald murder case, which was the
subject of his book, A
Wilderness of Error; how Obama compares to Bush; his
friendships with Roger Ebert and Werner Herzog; and why “we’re all
morons.”

Gillespie conducted the interview using an “interrotron,”
a device Morris invented, which projects an interviewer’s face over
the camera lens. It creates the impression that the subject is
looking directly into the eyes of the viewer.

About 41 minutes.

Shot and edited by Jim Epstein.