Washington Whispers
'Secretary of Tech' Is No Fan of E-mail
He may be in charge of the gizmos used to find illegal border crossers and deadly chemicals in subways, but Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff likes to keep his personal tech simple. "I don't use E-mail," he confides. "You just get deluged with a lot of garbage." Chertoff describes his experience with electronic mail as "picking through genuine work E-mails and invitations to baby showers." Worse: "People sometimes will think you've gotten something that you actually haven't gotten." Been there.
Chertoff insists he's not out of touch just because he isn't glued to a BlackBerry. "I rely on people communicating with my staff," he says. "At any moment, I can request an update, and I can always be reached." His E-mail discipline has roots in last year's Hurricane Katrina, when unfiltered messages about the levee breach flooded in after he'd left for the night. "It is unhelpful to have 15 or 16 E-mails coming from all different directions being thrown at you," he says. "When people rely on E-mail chains, it can sometimes leave the decision maker unable to sort out good information from information that's just plain wrong." His new rule for aides: Verify the info before clicking "forward." As for this hurricane season, he's doing better than E-mail by personally traveling to the Gulf region to view rescue drills. "I'm going down there," he says, "and kicking the tires myself."
Time for Some Hill Hazard Pay?
Being a top aide to congressional leaders isn't normally risky business, but that wasn't the case last week when House Speaker Dennis Hastert led a small delegation to Baghdad. About halfway through their first day on the ground, Hastert and other lawmakers helicoptered from an Army base to the Iraqi speaker's office. His aides and physician were to follow in another Black Hawk, but when it got 30 feet off the ground, it suddenly fell, bouncing a few times, spilling fuel everywhere, and damaging the landing gear. "We were pretty scared," Hastert's spokesman, Ron Bonjean, tells us, "but we had faith in the pilots." Bonjean said the chopper was leaning badly, the rotors just skimming the pebble-strewn ground. "The pilots were shouting to us to stay seated so it wouldn't tip over," he says. "They saved the day--and us." After a brief wait, they got a ride on another chopper. Noting the danger, heat, and heavy gear, Bonjean says, "we certainly got a real appreciation of what our troops go through to fight the war on terror."
In Iraq, Squabbling Over an $11 Tab
Influential retired Gen.Barry McCaffrey has finally reported to West Point on his recent trip to Iraq, and what he found surprised even the gruff old critic of the war: troops pumped up, local military are up to the job--even the Baghdad government is starting to take charge. But McCaffrey,an adjunct professor at the Point, found the nonmilitary U.S. bureaucracy a total mess. The federal agencies, he writes, "actually fight over who will pay the $11-per-day per diemon food."
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