When Ford lost the 1976 election, Rumsfeld returned to private business and financial life, and was named president and CEO of the pharmaceutical corporation G. D. Searle & Company.

During this time, he hired Frank Carlucci[41] and Dick Cheney[42][43] to serve under him.He was the subject of one of writer Jack Anderson's columns, alleging that "anti-poverty czar" Rumsfeld had cut programs to aid the poor while spending thousands to redecorate his office.

He sought to reverse the gradual decline in the defense budget and to build up U.S. strategic and conventional forces, undermining Secretary of State Henry Kissinger at the SALT talks.

[56] He asserted, along with Team B (which he helped to set up),[57] that trends in comparative U.S.-Soviet military strength had not favored the United States for 15 to 20 years and that, if continued, they "would have the effect of injecting a fundamental instability in the world".

[56] Rumsfeld made some changes at the Pentagon, including appointing a second deputy secretary of defense (a position created in 1972 but, before Robert Ellsworth, never filled before[58]) and combining certain offices.

[1] Kissinger, his bureaucratic adversary, later paid him a different sort of compliment, pronouncing him "a special Washington phenomenon: the skilled full-time politician-bureaucrat in whom ambition, ability, and substance fuse seamlessly".

Journalist Andrew Cockburn of Harper's Magazine claimed that Rumsfeld suppressed news that Searle's key product, aspartame, was shown to have potentially dangerous effects by leveraging old government contacts at the Food and Drug Administration.

"[39]: 6  The Washington Post reported that "Although former U.S. officials agree that Rumsfeld was not one of the architects of the Reagan administration's tilt toward Iraq—he was a private citizen when he was appointed Middle East envoy—the documents show that his visits to Baghdad led to closer U.S.–Iraqi cooperation on a wide variety of fronts.

In its findings, the commission concluded that Iraq, Iran, and North Korea could develop intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities in five to ten years and that U.S. intelligence would have little warning before such systems were deployed.

[76] During the 1976 Republican National Convention, Rumsfeld received one vote for Vice President of the United States, although he did not seek the office, and the nomination was easily won by Ford's choice, Senator Bob Dole.

[84] By the same token, his leadership was exposed to much criticism through books covering the Iraq conflict, like Bob Woodward's State of Denial, Thomas E. Ricks' Fiasco, and Seymour Hersh's Chain of Command.

[85] On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked commercial airliners and crashed them in coordinated strikes into both towers of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, New York City, and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

"[88] On the afternoon of September 11, Rumsfeld issued rapid orders to his aides to look for evidence of possible Iraqi involvement in regard to what had just occurred, according to notes taken by senior policy official Stephen Cambone.

[93] Richard A. Clarke, the White House counter-terrorism coordinator at the time, has revealed details of another National Security Council meeting the day after the attacks, during which officials considered the U.S. response.

"[100] Rumsfeld announced in November 2001, that he received "authoritative reports" that Al-Qaeda's number three Mohammed Atef, bin Laden's primary military chief and a planner of the September 11 attacks on America, was killed by a U.S.

"[101] In a press conference at the Pentagon on November 19, 2001, Rumsfeld described the role of U.S. ground forces in Afghanistan as firstly in the north, American troops are "embedded in Northern Alliance" elements, helping arrange food and medical supplies and pinpointing airstrikes and in the south, commandos and other troops are operating more independently, raiding compounds, monitoring roadblocks and searching vehicles in the hope of developing more information about al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders.

[107] Even though the drones were not ready for deployment until 2002,[107] Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon have argued that "these quarrels kept the Predator from being used against al Qaeda ... One anonymous individual who was at the center of the action called this episode 'typical' and complained that 'Rumsfeld never missed an opportunity to fail to cooperate.

[109] In 2009, three years after Rumsfeld's tenure as Defense secretary ended, the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations led an investigation into the Battle of Tora Bora in December 2001, during the early phase of the U.S-led coalition war in Afghanistan.

According to an unnamed Pentagon source quoted by Hersh, the OSP "was created in order to find evidence of what Wolfowitz and his boss, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, believed to be true—that Saddam Hussein had close ties to Al Qaeda, and that Iraq had an enormous arsenal of chemical, biological, and possibly even nuclear weapons that threatened the region and, potentially, the United States".

[116]In a press conference at the Pentagon on February 27, 2003, Rumsfeld told reporters after being asked a question that Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki suggested it would take several hundred thousand troops on the ground to secure Iraq and provide stability.

"[118] Rumsfeld's role in directing the Iraq War included a plan that was the Shock and Awe campaign,[119] which resulted in a lightning invasion with 145,000 soldiers on the ground that took Baghdad in well under a month with very few American casualties.

[citation needed] Many government buildings, plus major museums, electrical generation infrastructure, and even oil equipment were looted and vandalized during the transition from the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime to the establishment of the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Those who are fighting against the Iraqi government want to seize power so that they can establish a new sanctuary and a base of operations for terrorists and any idea that U.S. military leaders are rigidly refusing to make adjustments in their approaches is just flat wrong.

Because of this, critics, including members of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, held Rumsfeld responsible for the ensuing Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal.

[152] Rumsfeld's disclosure of the whistleblower's identity during a Senate hearing, despite assurances to Joe Darby of his anonymity[153][154][155] led to shunning within the community, harassment and death threats against him and his family, resulting in them being taken into protective custody by the U.S.

[158][159][160] Commentator Pat Buchanan reported at the time that Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who traveled often to Iraq and supported the war, said the generals "mirror the views of 75 percent of the officers in the field, and probably more".

After his retirement from government, Rumsfeld criticized former fellow Cabinet member Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State, in his memoir, asserting that she was basically unfit for office.

[179] In March 2011, Rumsfeld spoke out on the 2011 military intervention in Libya, telling ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper that the Obama administration should "recognize the mission has to determine the coalition.

Foukara asked Rumsfeld whether, in hindsight, the Bush administration had sent enough troops into Iraq to secure the borders of the country, and whether that made the United States culpable in the death of innocent Iraqis.

"[210] Neoconservative commentator Bill Kristol was also critical of Rumsfeld, stating he "breezily dodged responsibility" for planning mistakes made in the Iraq War, including insufficient troop levels.