Donald Rumsfeld Documentary Planned By Oscar Winning Filmmaker

Errol Morris, an Academy Award winning filmmaker, will direct an upcoming documentary that profiles former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Morris will team up with three Hollywood firms to release “The Unknown Known: The Life and Times of Donald Rumsfeld,” including the company behind former Vice President Al Gore’s global warming film “An Inconvenient Truth.”

The title of the documentary refers to a Rumsfeld speech delivered on February 12, 2002, which dealt with evidence that connected the Iraqi government with the supply of weapons of mass destruction given to terrorist organizations.

“There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know,” Rumsfeld said. “There are known unknowns; that is to say there are things that, we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns...”

The company that will distribute the documentary, RADiUS-TWC, indicated in a statement that the movie would provide a “rare and provocative look into one of the world's most polarizing and charismatic political figures.”

Other companies that are working in conjunction toward a 2013 release date are History Films, and Participant Media, the company involved with “An Inconvenient Truth.”

According to the executive producers, the documentary will utilize Morris’s interviews of Rumsfeld and will include never-before-seen material from Rumsfeld's private archive.

Morris previously profiled another U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara, in the 2003 documentary “The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara,” for which he received an Oscar.

Morris has characterized Rumsfeld as “a remarkable man whose career spans nearly one third of our nation's history” from the Watergate era to war on terror.