Under a shroud of secrecy, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the nation’s top military leader, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers flew on a U.S. Air Force 747 for 14 hours to Kuwait, where they then boarded a smaller plane for the flight to Baghdad. Rumsfeld’s trip took him directly into the heart of the darkness—to Abu Ghraib prison, ground zero of the prisoner mistreatment scandal.

I’ve had both a personal and professional relationship with the Secretary of Defense for more than 30 years and this trip was vintage Rumsfeld. At the hearings in Washington he took responsibility for what had happened, but further, he decided to fly to Baghdad and the prison itself to boost the morale of the troops still serving there. He felt strongly that it was his duty to show the soldiers that they had the backing of both the civilian and military leaders at the highest level.

I was the only civilian photographer on the trip, and my photos were “pooled” so that every news agency in the United States received them. My pictures of Rumsfeld’s trip ended up on the front page of practically every newspaper in America, which was professionally satisfying to me. It’s sad and ironic, however, that some of a journalist’s greatest successes are born out of tragedies such as these.

David Hume Kennerly
May 19, 2004

The Iraq War: Rumsfeld tours Abu Ghraib prison

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