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

Earlier this week, the White House announced the resignation of
Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel who leaves behind a brief legacy
and the greatest unrest in U.S. foreign policy since the dog days
of George W. Bush’s first term.  

Bush’s Secretary of Defense during that tumultuous first term,
Donald Rumsfeld, was the subject of the well-received documentary,
“The Unknown Known,” by Oscar-winning filmmaker Errol Morris.

Reason TV spoke with Morris earlier this year, upon the film’s
release. 

“Errol Morris on Donald Rumsfeld, The Unknown Known, and
Evidence-Based Journalism” Produced by Jim Epstein.
 About 41 minutes.

Original release date was April 3, 2014 and the original
writeup is below.

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.

View this article.