http://www.theday.com/eng/web/news/r...3-B648BA801D05
Intel Community Adapting To Post-9/11 World
Information-sharing much improved, says top official
Frances Fragos- Townsend, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism and former first Assistant Commandant of the Coast Guard for Intelligence, climbs the rigging of the U.S. Coast Guard training barque Eagle in this undated photograph. Fragos-Townsend recently spoke to cadets at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.
By ROBERT A. HAMILTON
Day Staff Writer, Navy/Defense/Electric Boat
Published on 9/18/2005
New London — For years the intelligence community has closely guarded its “product,” but after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, it has loosened up considerably, a White House intelligence staffer said Tuesday.
Frances Fragos-Townsend, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, cited the growing evidence last year that terrorists might be planning an attack on the New York financial district, which was quickly shared with state and local officials.
“The people at the deckplate level are in a much better position” to assess their vulnerability and come up with strategies to fend off any potential threat, she told the corps of cadets at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. “Pushing it down helps us to make better decisions.”
Fragos-Townsend said officials still have to weigh the specificity and credibility of the threat against the potential for a panic. They must also consider whether a public release of the information might trigger public assistance in the investigation.
But the decisions have to be made quickly, she said, because the Sept. 11 attacks showed that too many delays can be costly. Fragos-Townsend was the third speaker in the academy's Institute for Leadership lecture series.
Before being named to the White House staff, she served as the first Assistant Commandant of the Coast Guard for Intelligence, appointed just months before the 9/11 attacks.
“If crisis reveals character, I certainly witnessed an organization with tremendous character,” Fragos-Townsend said. “And just as we have seen recently in the heroic and sacrificial service to tens of thousands of our citizens along the flooded Gulf Coast, the enduring qualities of the Service shine brightest when the heat is on.”
She said in her new job, she finds herself traveling to some of the most dangerous corners of the earth. Recently, she made a swing through Afghanistan, the Middle East and Northern Africa at the behest of the president, trying to win U.S. allies in the war on terror, when she got to know the head of her Secret Service detail, a former Special Forces soldier.
“He never lost his cool, and he never interfered with the trip, and it caused me to stop and wonder — what would possess a man to put his life at risk for a total stranger?” she asked cadets. “What he was willing to risk his life for was a principle I represent the principle of freedom. It was a very humbling revelation.”
“You, too, have taken on that noble burden,” Fragos-Townsend told the cadets. “You will be asked to put your life at risk for total strangers.”
But she added, “if any of you are having any doubts as to whether you chose the right career — join the rest of the world... watching from their living rooms — and look at the pictures of the Coast Guard relief efforts in Southern Mississippi or Louisiana. You should be very proud, as I am, as the President is of you, because your Service is making a profound difference.”
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