It was January 1976. The US secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, was in Moscow talking to the Russians about the very real prospect of agreement on the landmark SALT II arms control treaty.
Unknown to him, however, in Washington a special meeting of the National Security Council had been convened and by the time it was over Kissinger's mandate had been withdrawn in the face of an onslaught from the chiefs of staff. The treaty was dead for the rest of the duration of the Ford administration and would only finally be signed in 1993.
Kissinger had been out-manoeuvred by the one man he admits ever bested him in Washington bureaucratic infighting, a master of the art, the then, and now once again, hawkish Secretary of Defence, Don Rumsfeld. Without even being present at the meeting, Rumsfeld engineered one of his boldest of many strokes.
"Rumsfeld afforded me a close-up look at a special Washington phenomenon: the skilled full-time politician-bureaucrat in whom ambition, ability and substance fuse seamlessly," Kissinger would write in his memoirs.
Then Rumsfeld was 45, the youngest ever Secretary of Defence. If, after a 23-year highly successful return to business, the 69-year-old now lasts out President Bush's full term, he will be the oldest. Then as now he is no great admirer of arms control treaties, a believer in the assertion of US power.
There is little sign of any loss of energy in this former Princeton football and wrestling captain who boasted in his first term that he could do 50 consecutive one-arm press-ups. Perhaps not any more, but the old Cold Warrior of the Ford era has slipped easily into his new role as the public face of the military campaign and the military's political master.
These days he briefs the press personally at least three days a week to answer questions about the campaign, urging patience, warning of the administration's determination. It is usually an engaging performance, a double-act with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Dick Myers, plain-spoken, blunt, without the politician's usual circumlocutions, and laced with an endearing wry humour.
His candour, like his willingness to acknowledge difficulties in capturing Osama bin Laden, has won admirers in the sceptical press. As have his "Rumsfeld's Rules", a collection of aphorisms about life and working in a government bureaucracy which he has posted on the Defence Department's website.
The rules range from the common-sense advice that "With the press, nothing is 'off the record' " to old army sayings like the apposite "No plan survives contact with the enemy". "Simply because a problem is shown to exist, it doesn't necessarily follow that there is a solution," he argues and warns that "If a person with a rural accent says 'I don't know much about politics', zip your pockets." His line in self-deprecating humour is reflected in the last rule, No. 154: "If you develop rules never have more than ten." Another recommends "avoid public spats - when a department argues with other government agencies in the press it reduces the President's options." And it is advice he has clearly taken to heart, preserving what many see as a surprising degree of public harmony with the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, with whose view of the limits of the war he is said to disagree profoundly Others, like his deputy, the ultra-hawkish Paul Wolfowitz, have engaged in more public debate, or their proxies in the media have done so. But Rumsfeld has kept his powder dry, accepting that the present phase of the war, that against Afghanistan, is one on which they can agree. For now.
But that there are differences, there is no doubt. Unlike some conservatives, Rumsfeld has remained committed to American global primacy even in the absence of Soviet communism.
Though he got his job partly because of his assertive chairmanship of the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threats to the United States, in the late 1990s, and his passionate advocacy for the Bush pet project of missile defence, Rumsfeld stands for more than that.
On all the major foreign policy issues of our day - Iran, Iraq, North Korea, China, Russia - Rumsfeld is an outspoken hawk. "Nor does he view America's values and strategic aims as inherently incompatible, as Powell and [National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice] do", Leonard Kaplan argues in the New Republic.
"We need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity and our principles," declared a statement of foreign policy principles that Rumsfeld and a group of neo-conservatives drafted two years ago for the Project for a New American Century, an organisation that lobbies for an activist foreign policy and which recently sponsored an appeal to the administration to go after Saddam Hussein.
"History teaches us that weakness is provocative," he says.
Born in Chicago's northern suburbs in 1932 of a father who worked as an estate agent, Rumsfeld went to Princeton on a scholarship, mastering in political science. His wife of 47 years, Joyce, was his high school sweetheart, and they have three children.
After college he became a naval aviator and then launched into a political career, first as a congressional aide, and then at the age of 30 winning election to the House from Illinois's 15th District. In 1969 he left Congress to join the Nixon administration as a domestic adviser, then accepting a posting to Brussels as NATO ambassador in time not to be tainted by the Watergate debacle.
After Nixon's forced resignation Gerald Ford made Rumsfeld his chief of staff - one of his subordinates would be Dick Cheney who has claimed that he regards Rumsfeld as his role model. Then Ford made him secretary of defence, presiding successfully over a department badly demoralised by Vietnam.
The election of Jimmy Carter saw him plunging into business where he is credited with saving two major companies as CEO and then chairman, GD Searle and General Instrument Corp. He made a lot of money and when he returned to government in the Bush Cabinet he was one of its several multimillionaires.
He took over at Defence, with its $315 billion a year budget and 3 million employees, tasked with a formidable challenge of not only turning the cumbersome bureaucracy into a fighting machine for the new challenges of the millennium, but to change the management culture of the huge military bureaucracy.
The US no longer faces the prospect of a massive land war in Europe. Instead, it makes more sense, Bush had argued in the election, to focus on homeland defence, to counter coming ballistic-missile threats, on the international policing missions that mushroomed in the 1990s even as military funding declined, and on maintaining conventional superiority over the next likely adversary, China.
In a war in the Pacific, where the distances are long and the fight is likely to take place in the water, tanks and short-range fighter jets are likely to be less useful than cruise missiles and long-range bombers.
He redefined the US defence mission statement from a capability to fight two simultaneous major wars to an ability to fight one with multiple other smaller engagements.
And he set a massive review of strategic priorities in place that put him on a collision course not only with the military but Congress where the closure of bases and military sales are huge voter issues.
To make matters more complicated he needed serious extra cash to raise salaries.
"This is one of the most interesting situations I've seen in a long time," Representative Norm Dicks, a pro-military Democrat from Washington state, told Time. "He says he wants the military to stop saying they can fight two wars on two fronts simultaneously. But he has opened more fronts in Washington than any defence secretary in memory."
It did not go well, even for the legendary infighter. The President gave him far less than he needed and there was even considerable speculation that Rumsfeld would be the first of the Cabinet to be replaced.
And then came September 11th. Rumsfeld was in his office in the Pentagon and went out to tend the wounded. He held the first administration press conference. He was experienced, authoritative, calm, reassuring. His age became a virtue. He came into his own.
And now, with budget constraints blown away by Osama bin Laden, the military will get both resources and reform. Even missile defence seems these days to have a fair wind.
For Rumsfeld, who has warned for so long that the US was deeply vulnerable and needed to strengthen its defences, these days have been a cruel vindication. It is likely to have steeled his determination to see the US complete the task that it failed to do in the Gulf War by toppling Saddam Hussein, and no one should be fooled by his current acquiescence in a more limited campaign. Rumsfeld has yet to play his formidable hand.
psmyth@irish-times.ie