Strategic staffing after 9/11: George W. Bush’s national security czars

Commentary on the George W. Bush Administration’s response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, typically focuses on the subsequent bombing of Talibancontrolled Afghanistan and the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Significantly less attention has been paid to the impact 9/11 had on the structure and function of the American government itself, and most of the work that does focuses on the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the related federal reorganization. Although clearly important, I argue that the Homeland Security expansion and reorganization-both with respect to the administration’s early efforts to create a new White House office and the congressional establishment of the new department-represents only the first of three important phases in the institutional response to the war on terror, each of which had at its core a primary coordinator or policy czar. In this chapter, I detail each of these phases: the administration’s creation of a homeland security czar (a position filled by Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge); the creation of an intelligence czar (aka the director of national intelligence, first filled by John Negroponte) in response to reports from a pair of post-9/11 blue-ribbon commission investigations; and the creation of a war czar to coordinate military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, a position that was eventually occupied by Lieutenant General Douglas Lute. I then analyze the key factors involved in how each position was created and how each of the individuals charged with coordinating the various operations were able to perform their administrative duties. By conducting this analysis, we not only gain more complete insight into the dynamics of the George W. Bush Administration’s institutional response to the War on Terror challenges but also develop a more nuanced understanding about the factors that both facilitate and constrain high-level executive management in the post-George W. Bush presidency.