The Lacuna Project

lacuna (n.) a gap in a record where something should be

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Exhibit 929

Snowflake, Donald Rumsfeld to Steve Cambone, 8 September 2003 (11-L-0559/OSD/18828)

Exhibit 929 ยท Internal memorandum (snowflake)

Snowflake, Donald Rumsfeld to Steve Cambone, 8 September 2003 (11-L-0559/OSD/18828)

I have no visibility into who the bad guys are in Afghanistan or Iraq. I read all the intel from the community and it sounds as thought we know a great deal but in fact, when you push at it, you find out we haven't got anything that is actionable.

One-page memo from the Secretary of Defense to the Under Secretary for Intelligence, released by DoD in the Rumsfeld snowflakes FOIA litigation and posted by the National Security Archive. Rumsfeld writes that he cannot tell who the enemy is in Afghanistan or Iraq and that the intelligence community has nothing actionable. He calls the department woefully deficient in human intelligence. A handwritten note shows a response attached on 15 September.

Source
U.S. Department of Defense, Office of the Secretary of Defense
Date
8 September 2003
Quoted from
Body text, Bates 11-L-0559/OSD/18828 (read from the page image; National Security Archive page: nsarchive.gwu.edu/media/24553). The DoD's own Seventh Release PDF on esd.whs.mil returned 403 on 2026-11-10.
Grade
Primary record
Document
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/sites/default/files/documents/qy3fic-cl4be/08.pdf
Accessed
2026-11-10
Cited by
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