http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/10/politics/10LETT.htmlA Father's Nemesis Who Became a Son's Trusted Aide
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
WASHINGTON
At the heart of the melodrama playing out in Washington is the complex character of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the great warrior of Iraq and Afghanistan who is now struggling to hang on to his job. If he survives, it will largely be because of President Bush, who publicly spanked him last week for his handling of the Iraq prison abuse scandal but insisted Mr. Rumsfeld's position was secure.
Mr. Bush's relationship with Mr. Rumsfeld seems complicated right now, but it is nothing compared to the relationship that Mr. Rumsfeld had with Mr. Bush's father. People close to the Bushes say the family history may color Mr. Rumsfeld's future, even if it means that the second President Bush, whose administration has so often gone in the opposite direction of the first one's, will deal with Mr. Rumsfeld in an entirely different way than his father did.
As veterans of the Ford White House remember, Mr. Rumsfeld was an intense rival of George Bush's, and by all accounts the men had a terrible relationship in the 1970's and 1980's. Bush partisans still say that Mr. Rumsfeld masterminded what became known as the Halloween Massacre, the 1975 Ford cabinet shake-up in which Mr. Rumsfeld jumped from his position as White House chief of staff to become secretary of defense, thereby enhancing his prospects, never realized, of being President Gerald R. Ford's running mate in 1976.
In that same shuffle, Mr. Bush, who had been the chief United States envoy to China, was sidelined as director of central intelligence — a job that took Mr. Bush out of the running for vice president, since at the time C.I.A. directors were thought to have no future in politics.
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