Douglas Feith, the Defense Department’s top policy officer and an architect of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, announced Wednesday that he would leave his job this summer for personal and family reasons.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld praised Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, as having contributed to U.S. security and said he would be missed.
Feith “is creative, well organized and energetic, and he has earned the respect of civilian and military leaders across the government,” Rumsfeld said in a statement.
Before the Iraq war, Feith oversaw Defense Department officials accused of selectively using uncorroborated intelligence reports to build what turned out to be the false case that President Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of banned deadly weapons.
He has also been blamed for overseeing what is widely considered by U.S. officials to have been inadequate postwar planning.
Feith’s planned departure had nothing to do with policy matters, said Eric Ruff, a spokesman for the Defense Department.
Feith will continue to work on “big-ticket” issues until he leaves, including the U.S.-declared war on terrorism, the development of a new U.S. global defense posture and the Quadrennial Defense Review, a Defense Department planning tool that is redone every four years, Ruff said.
Rumsfeld had encouraged his top aides to give early notice of any departure plans, Larry DiRita, the Defense Department’s chief spokesman, told reporters.
Rumsfeld’s core team, including Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, also closely associated with the decision to go to war in Iraq, was staying largely intact at the Defense Department as President Bush began his second term last week, DiRita said.
