Sucking up

Meet Bush's pick to "investigate the federal government's response to the Katrina disaster.

Townsend is a former prosecutor who toiled for both Rudy Guiliani and Janet Reno. The Post points out that her husband, referred to in the piece only as "John," was "a classmate of Bush's at Andover and Yale." It adds that her position was occupied previously by "four-star generals who brought decades of experience to the fight," but that her greatest asset is "the president's ear" -- not to mention a contribution of the maximum $2,000 to the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign in March 2004, an unusual move from a National Security Council staffer, and generally regarded, as U.S. News and World Report put it, as "a pledge of loyalty."

But there are more questions worthy of exploration than just those about Townsend's connections. The office she headed while at the Justice Department has also been mired in post-9/11 controversy. Apparently, pre-9/11, it was Townsend who had the power to decide when wiretaps could be authorized. She had to make a distinction between those intended for collecting intelligence, which was more acceptable, and those necessary to pursue criminal investigations, which demanded a higher bar. As U.S. News & World Report noted in its December 2004 profile, "many prosecutors felt that Townsend was less than helpful in making sure the FBI shared wiretap data with lawyers at Main Justice when there was evidence of criminal activity." Townsend says she was following proper procedure. But US News mentions that "others suspect an ulterior motive. Some Justice Department prosecutors felt Townsend wanted to keep the wall up because it kept prosecutors out of national security investigations, leaving more authority in the hands of Townsend and friendly [FBI] agents."

"Whatever the case, there were serious consequences," writes U.S. News. "Both the Government Accountability Office and the 9/11 commission have blamed [Townsend's office] in part for the government's intelligence failures before the terrorist attacks. Sources say that [Townsend's office's] narrow interpretation of [the wiretap law] led to misunderstandings and overly cautious behavior by the FBI. As a result, in July and August of 2001, FBI intelligence analysts prohibited their own criminal-case agents from searching for two men on the government's terrorist watch list who they knew had entered the United States. The men later proved to be two of the 19 hijackers."

This seems like valid information to include when introducing the women who will lead the investigation into the federal government's response to one of the nation's worst natural disasters. The Post and U.S. News profiles are good places to start. They both paint the picture of an extremely ambitious and well-connected player, who has achieved a high-level position at the age of 43, and somehow, in the process managed to gain the confidence of high officials in both Democratic and Republican administrations. Not an easy task. As a former Bush administration official said anonymously (and a bit maliciously) about her in the U.S. News piece, "She's a trip; she's one of the most ambitious people I've met. She's always sucking up."

It just never ends. The cronyism, the mediocrity, the lack of accountability that lies at the heart of just about (and by "just about," I mean, "all") the administration's actions.