White House backtracks on Rumsfeld

Says defense secretary not in on new reconstruction office

By Guy Dinmore and James Harding
FINANCIAL TIMES

WASHINGTON, Oct. 8 — The Bush administration’s shake-up of its policymaking structure for Iraq was overshadowed on Wednesday by an admission from the White House that Donald Rumsfeld, the defense secretary in charge of reconstruction, had not been consulted.

BACKTRACKING on the assurances he made at the beginning of the week that Mr. Rumsfeld had been “very involved in this process,” Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said on Wednesday: “Maybe I should not have characterized it that way.”

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