The Terror Consigliere

Townsend has always had a brassy streak. A working-class kid who grew up in Wantagh, N.Y., Townsend at age 11 wrote letters to her priest, bishop, Cardinal and finally the Vatican asking to be an altar boy. Turned down, she tried to sneak into Mass in a borrowed robe before being caught by her priest. After law school, she prosecuted Gambino crime-family members for the U.S. Attorney's office in New York City under Rudolph Giuliani. She then moved to the Justice Department's Washington offices in 1993 and rose quickly to become a close Reno adviser on counterintelligence and wiretap cases. When John Ashcroft arrived in early 2001, Townsend left Justice and ended up overseeing the U.S. Coast Guard's small intelligence unit. It was a backwater job until 9/11. When the National Security Council needed quick help in staffing counterterrorism tasks, it became the "go-to organization," says retired General John A. Gordon, Bush's counterterrorism adviser from 2002 to 2003. When Gordon left that post to head the White House Homeland Security Council in 2003, he persuaded Rice, then National Security Adviser, to make Townsend his replacement.

To many counterterrorism purists, Townsend was a questionable choice because she had no operational experience. Conservatives warned she could prove to be an "enemy within," as columnist Robert Novak put it, although Townsend says she's been a Republican since age 18. But Bush stood by her and a year later added to her portfolio Gordon's post as presidential homeland-security adviser. In that role, she led the internal inquiry into the Administration's response to Hurricane Katrina, prompting Democrats to complain of a conflict of interest. Her report last February acknowledged flawed planning and recommended 125 fixes but didn't blame Bush or top officials.

The criticisms haven't made Townsend shrink from the light. She sticks close to the boss. When Bush posed for photographers at the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean, Va., last month, Townsend stood behind him along with bigger fish John Negroponte, director of national intelligence, and Michael Hayden, CIA chief. While many officials in this White House shun media interviews, she plainly enjoys them. And why not? She's got the job, and without the borrowed robe.