Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld reorganized the office
of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations/Low
Intensity Conflict (SO/LIC) late in 2001. Some of the changes were
a result of the change in priorities after the September 11 attacks.
In a letter to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin
(D-Mich.), Rumsfeld said, “Since the attacks of September
11, we have engaged in an extensive review of our operations to
determine if we are best organized and arranged to conduct a sustained
campaign against terrorism. As a partial result of our efforts,
it is becoming clear that we are likely to need reorganization in
two principal areas: intelligence and homeland security,”
he wrote.
On an interim basis, Rumsfeld assigned the post of the assistant
secretary of defense for SO/LIC to current Secretary of the Army
Thomas White.
Rumsfeld also made White the Defense Department’s executive
agent for homeland security. White, said Rumsfeld, “has assumed
the broad and growing responsibilities for coordinating our [Defense
Department] activities with Homeland Security Director [Tom] Ridge.”
White’s appointment, however, is “clearly not a long-term
solution to what we now see will be long-term responsibilities.”
Prior to his appointment as Secretary of the Army, White served
as vice chairman of Enron Energy Services, a subsidiary of Enron
Corporation, which recently made headlines by its spectacular collapse
and bankruptcy.
Rumsfeld did not need permission to assign White to the new posts,
because he had already been through the Senate approval process
to become secretary of the Army. Rumsfeld asked Levin to approve
the establishment of two new undersecretary of defense posts—one
for homeland security and one for intelligence.
When those undersecretary posts are established, White would probably
give up the post as executive agent for homeland security, said
Lt. Col. Rivers Johnson, a Defense Department spokesman.
Rumsfeld referred to “the experience of the terrorism campaign
to highlight a need to consolidate intelligence activities within
the department.”