There is certainly a strong kinship between, and a
through line connecting, Errol Morris’s 2002 documentary The Fog of War, whose subject was former Secretary of Defense
Robert McNamara, and his latest, The Unknown
Known, in which he sits down for a series of lengthy interviews with the
linguistically elusive Donald Rumsfeld. In the earlier film, McNamara
illustrated eleven lessons from his professional life in the Air Force and, in
the Cabinets of both Kennedy and Johnson, the architect of the Vietnam War. He
proved himself reflective and introspective, a man willing to examine his
choices and the decisions of presidents and other high level officials, and say
that something was wrong. It would be shocking to expect a similar ‘get’ from
Rumsfeld and of course it never comes. But that’s not really what Morris is
after.
