A GENERATION after Bob Woodward helped to destroy a White House Administration of which Donald Rumsfeld was part, the two men are once more locked in a fight where their credibility — and that of the President — is at stake.

Woodward, the veteran investigative journalist who exposed the Watergate scandal and helped to bring down Richard Nixon, has produced a new book that lays much of the blame for the growing carnage in Iraq squarely at the door of Mr Rumsfeld.

The book portrays the Bush Administration as divided to the point of dysfunction over the war. It accuses the White House of hiding the truth about the worsening violence in Iraq from the American public, particularly intelligence reports predicting a deteriorating situation next year.

President Bush and Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, are described as “increasingly removed from reality”, with both consulting Henry Kissinger, President Nixon’s Secretary of State, who, Woodward claims, is “still fighting the Vietnam War”.

The Defence Secretary, who held a variety of posts under President Nixon, is depicted as an alienating, arrogant figure who has been unable to accept any blame for the mistakes made in Iraq. Woodward says that at one point Mr Rumsfeld refused to return the telephone calls of Condoleezza Rice, then the National Security Adviser, telling her that she was not in the chain of command.

In State of Denial, which arrived in bookshops yesterday, Woodward writes that he was left speechless after two interviews in July with Mr Rumsfeld. The Defence Secretary rejected the notion that he might bear direct responsibility for mistakes that cost lives, saying that he was “two or three steps removed”.

Woodward, 63, asks: “How could he not see his role and responsibility? I could think of nothing more to say.”

Mr Rumsfeld not only dismissed a question about the rapidly rising insurgent attacks but also affected not to know much about a May 24 intelligence report from the Joint Chiefs of Staff saying that the violence would get much worse in 2007. “When was this? Gosh, I don’t know,” he told Woodward. “I read so many of those intelligence reports and they are all over the lot.”

The book also quotes senior military and Pentagon figures castigating Mr Rumsfeld’s “counterproductive” and “indecisive” leadership, before claiming that there had been high-level efforts to remove the Defence Secretary after Mr Bush’s 2004 re-election.

These were led by Andrew Card, the former White House Chief of Staff, and, Woodward claims, supported by Laura Bush, the First Lady, who believed that Mr Rumsfeld’s overbearing style and mistakes were hurting her husband.

Mr Rumsfeld, 74, said that he was not surprised by the reports but insisted that he had not considered resigning. Speaking on a flight to Nicaragua, he said that Mr Bush had discussed the controversy the book raised “and then he called me personally”. Asked if the President had expressed his support for him, Mr Rumsfeld said: “Oh my Lord, yes.”

Woodward’s first book on the Administration, Bush At War, was regarded as strongly supportive, even a “hagiography”. His second, Plan of Attack, was more nuanced but still acclaimed by the White House — which cleverly chose to ignore any negativity.

This time Mr Bush and Mr Rumsfeld have been bracing themselves for an assault, with one Administration official reportedly saying: “We had a sense that this was going to be a different kind of book”.

The White House has embarked on some frenetic firefighting, issuing a press release entitled: “Five key myths in Bob Woodward’s book”. These include the claim that Mr Card and Mrs Bush wanted Mr Rumsfeld sacked.

Other claims include the allegation that George Tenet, the former CIA Director, warned Dr Rice in a meeting on July 10, 2001, of an impending al-Qaeda attack. The book states that Mr Tenet and his former counter-terrorism chief, J. Cofer Black, felt “brushed off” by her.

Dr Rice said yesterday that she could not recall Mr Tenet giving any such warning. “I would remember if I was told, as this account apparently says that there was about to be an attack in the United States, and the idea that I would somehow have ignored that, I find incomprehensible,” she said.

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