Townsend, the savy inside operator, did not manage the White House response to Hurricane Katrina. Like most of her peers, Fran was on vacation just before Katrina. She rushed back, only to fly to Saudi Arabia. The same day she landed in Riyadh, Septermber 3rd, the last hospital patient was evacuated from Memorial Hospital, which housed LifeCare, a long term acute care hospital.
While Bush tapped her to do a "robust" investigation, her report was simply a "bust". It failed to mention Memorial or LifeCare and their record hospital patient deaths. The Carlyle Group closed on LifeCare just weeks before Katrina made landfall. The lack of mention in Bush's "Lessons Learned" report has to help as the firm enters civil wrongful death lawsuits.
LifeCare's defense is their patients became wards of the federal as soon as FEMA teams set up in New Orleans. In other words, it's the fed fault! Now that's risk management, which happends to be Fran's speciality. I heard she wants to work for a big investment house. It seems one already owes her a favor.
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Why is the White House having such trouble filling jobs? Intelligence and counterterrorism officials say that with less than a year to go in the Bush administration, well-known candidates aren't eager to volunteer for a round-the-clock, high-pressure job—especially one that could ruin their reputations if something goes wrong on their watch.
Update: On Wednesday, the White House announced that Kenneth Wainstein, chief of the national security division at the Justice Department, had been named by the president to replace Frances Townsend as the White House homeland security and counter-terrorism advisor. The White House also announced, as predicted by Terror Watch, that the president is nominating Michael Leiter to become permanent director of the National Counterterrorism Center.
Terror Watch appears weekly on Newsweek.com
© 2008
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