Domestic-security adviser to step down
WASHINGTON - Fran Townsend, President Bush’s domestic-security adviser, announced Monday that she was resigning, the latest in a series of senior officials to leave the administration as the president juggles a still-full agenda.
Townsend, who began working for the government as an assistant U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, rose over two decades and the administrations of four presidents to become a regular fixture in the Oval Office and on Sunday talk shows, delivering confidential reports to the president and security warnings to the public as the homeland-security threat evolved.
She gave no reason for her departure, effective in January, other than to say she wanted to shift to the private sector. In a handwritten letter she delivered to Bush on Nov. 6, Townsend said she was leaving with “a heavy heart” but had “decided to take a respite from public service.”
The president said in a statement that Townsend had “played an integral role” in forming the administration’s anti-terrorism policies.
In recent months, some of Bush’s closest aides - including several who came to Washington with him nearly seven years ago - have left or announced they would leave soon, among them longtime political adviser Karl Rove; Dan Bartlett, the White House counselor; Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; and Karen Hughes, who preceded Bartlett as counselor and held several other key posts, most recently that of the State Department’s undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs.
With 14 months remaining in his second term and Democrats holding a majority in the House and Senate, Bush is struggling to fend off the appearance of being a lame duck, insisting he will press ahead with domestic-policy priorities and a foreign policy built around fighting terrorism abroad and bringing stability to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Dana Perino, the White House press secretary, said Bush had been able to replace departing advisers with worthy substitutes, and she took issue with what she said was the “story line” that the president’s self-proclaimed “sprint to the finish” would be more difficult with such top aides as Townsend heading for the exits. “Look at the people the president has been able to attract to the administration to work in the last little while: Fred Fielding, Ed Gillespie, Judge Mukasey,” she said.
Fielding, a respected Washington lawyer, joined the White House as Bush’s counsel earlier this year; Gillespie, a lobbyist and former chairman of the Republican National Committee, replaced Bartlett as White House counselor; and Michael Mukasey, a retired federal judge in New York, is the new attorney general.