It settles one of the last major questions about who goes and who stays in the second-term Cabinet.

Rumsfeld's future was sealed in an Oval Office meeting with Bush on Monday but not announced until Friday. Also on Friday, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson announced he was leaving departing with a warning about a possible terror attack on the nation's food supply.

"For the life of me, I cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply because it is so easy to do," Thompson said. "We are importing a lot of food from the Middle East, and it would be easy to tamper with that."

With Thompson's resignation, eight members of Bush's 15-person Cabinet have said they will depart. Treasury Secretary John Snow, despite being called by the White House a valuable member of the president's economic team, has not received a public endorsement of continued service.

Rumsfeld's tenure has been marked by unanticipated postwar violence in Iraq and more than 1,250 US deaths, as well as enormous increases in spending on the military after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Despite controversies, the hawkish, sometimes acid-tongued Rumsfeld has kept Bush's confidence.