DOES RUMSFELD E-​​MAIL?

The Project on Government over­sight has doubts:

Does Mr. High-​​Tech Revolution-​​in-​​Military-​​Affairs Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld even have an email address? Apparently not. POGO tried to obtain his email to no avail begin­ning this Tuesday. You can, how­ever, snail mail him.

What does it say about the future of defense trans­for­ma­tion if the SECDEF doesn’t use the most ubiuitous appli­ca­tion of the PC age?
I mounted my own inves­ti­ga­tion. After click­ing through sev­eral hun­dred news sto­ries (all online, baby) that men­tion “Donald Rumsfeld” in close prox­im­ity to “e-​​mail”, I think POGO is on to some­thing.
Rumsfeld appar­ently has strong opin­ions on how to e-​​mail and keep an inbox clean, accord­ing to the Ottawa Citizen:

Mr.Rumsfeld was giv­ing advice on time man­age­ment to his staff, and the major item was the e-​​mail in-​​box. His advice was to stay on top of it, but he also explained how.
The trick is appar­ently to remem­ber “your own agenda.” The let­ters to answer are the ones that offer an oppor­tu­nity to advance it. The let­ters to ignore are the many that don’t. And ignore means ignore, as ruth­less means ruthless.

Unfortunately, the arti­cle — David Warren, “Me, myself and e-​​mail,” The Ottawa Citizen, December 8, 2002, p. A16 — is not online. But Rumsfeld’s reported use of “let­ter” to describe an e-​​mail seems, well, sus­pi­cious. It wouldn’t be the first time the SECDEF gave unso­licited advice on a sub­ject about which he knows very lit­tle.
The only spe­cific ref­er­ence to Rumsfeld e-​​mailing comes from the Washington Post, which notes:

[Chairman of the Defense Policy Board Newt] Gingrich uses his access to Rumsfeld to pep­per the defense sec­re­tary with e-​​mails on defense-​​related topics.

The most famous exam­ple was Gringrich’s inter­ven­tion to pre­serve the Stryker Interim Armored Vehicle, which prompted “a recent series of e-​​mails to Rumsfeld’s office now cir­cu­lat­ing around the Pentagon.“
I notice that story says the e-​​mails were sent to Rumsfeld’s office.
I tracked down a web­site pur­port­ing to pub­lish the full text of the e-​​mails, which are filled with amus­ing lit­tle bits of arcana like the fact that Newt’s e-​​mail address is Thirdwave2​@​aol.​com — a ref­er­ence to futur­ist Alvin Toffler’s book The Third Wave.
The e-​​mails, from Newt’s per­sonal account, are addressed to Larry DiRita — con­sis­tent with the hypoth­e­sis that SECDEF doesn’t e-​​mail.
Man, defense trans­for­ma­tion is screwed.
–Jeffrey Lewis

December 16th, 2004 | Uncategorized | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.