Anti-Terror Guru Abruptly Quits State PostThe Bush Administration’s chief of counterterrorism operations at the State Department is out the door, The Washington Post reported this morning. In the mold of the sudden resignation, he says he’s leaving for “family reasons.” But a recent news piece noted that he’d had trouble getting the ear of the administration.
Henry A. “Hank” Crumpton was a career CIA agent who led the CIA’s campaign in Afghanistan after 9/11. He only came out of hiding last summer to take the helm at the State Department. By all accounts widely regarded, he, along with his deputy, have tried to push the Bush Administration toward a more expansive approach to the “War on Terror” – as documented extensively by George Packer in the current issue of The New Yorker. Packer, in his adulatory piece, profiles Crumpton’s deputy David Kilcullen, a former captain in the Australian Army who’s become Crumpton’s chief strategist:
“You don’t play to the enemy’s global information strategy of making it all one fight,” Kilcullen said. He pointedly avoided describing this as the Administration’s approach [i.e. The War on Terror]. “You say, ‘Actually, there are sixty different groups in sixty different countries who all have different objectives. Let’s not talk about bin Laden’s objectives-let’s talk about your objectives. How do we solve that problem?’ ” In other words, the global ambitions of the enemy don’t automatically demand a monolithic response.
Kilcullen’s (and Crumpton’s) “ideas have yet to penetrate the fortress that is the Bush White House,” Packer notes.
Now, an anonymous State official tells the Post that Crumpton is jumping ship after only one year at the helm, because of “”unexpected, unplanned and compelling family reasons,’ including family health issues and financial obligations for higher education for his children.” That may be. He might have cashed in by taking a lucrative private-sector post, like his predecessor Cofer Black who moved on to be Vice Chairman of Blackwater, the increasingly massive (and profitable) defense contractor.
Alternatively, in an administration that’s had its share of frustrated resignations, he might have packed up his things and headed out the door (not giving the State Department time to appoint a successor or even issue an official statement about his departure) for another reason.
Late Update: George Packer writes me: “I am fairly certain that, for once, the reasons truly are personal.”
