[Mb-civic] An Outsider's Quick Rise To Bush Terror Adviser - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

An Outsider's Quick Rise To Bush Terror Adviser

By Susan B. Glasser and Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, August 27, 2005; Page A01

Frances Fragos Townsend wanted an answer.

The government's senior terrorism officials were poring through 
intelligence reports last summer suggesting that New York's financial 
district was being targeted by al Qaeda. The question at hand was 
whether to raise the nation's terrorism threat level to orange.

Asa Hutchinson, then an undersecretary at the Department of Homeland 
Security, recalled that he deferred to his absent boss. But Townsend, 
the top White House adviser on counterterrorism and homeland security, 
had a higher authority to invoke. "You don't understand," she said. "The 
president will be calling momentarily. We need your position."

 From the low-ceilinged, windowless confines of a basement office in the 
West Wing, Townsend runs President Bush's far-flung campaign against 
terrorism. Her two predecessors were four-star generals who brought 
decades of experience to the fight. Townsend, 43, a former mob 
prosecutor, has a different credential -- the president's ear.

Just a little over two years ago, she had never met Bush and was viewed 
with suspicion by the inner circle of a tribalistic White House that 
does not easily accept outsiders. But the hard-charging Townsend has 
parlayed a succession of powerful patrons into one of the government's 
most important jobs. Along the way, in a city where partisan lines are 
rarely bridged, she has transformed herself from confidante of 
then-Attorney General Janet Reno to a confidante of George W. Bush.

In many ways, Townsend is the perfect match for a leader who sees the 
battle with al Qaeda as a black-and-white struggle against radical 
outlaws. At a time when experts in and out of government complain that 
the White House is more focused on killing and capturing Osama bin 
Laden's inner circle than the broader task of countering a rapidly 
metastasizing global jihad movement, Townsend offers Bush a "tactical, 
one-at-a-time prosecutor, 'get the bad guys' approach," said a former 
senior official who worked closely with her.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/26/AR2005082601511.html
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20050827/c5ab32d9/attachment.htm