Thad W. Allen

National Incident Commander of the BP Oil Spill

(dhs.gov)

Why He Matters

After 39 years of government service, Allen should have retired in May 2010. Instead, he is heading the Obama administration's efforts to clean up the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which is now officially the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

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Corrections?

Background

At a Glance

Career History: U.S. Coast Guard, Commandant (2006-2010), Chief of Staff (2002-2006), Commander, Atlantic Area (2001-2002)
Hometown: Tuscon, Ariz.

Alma Mater: U.S. Coast Guard Academy, B.S., 1971; George Washington University, M.P.A.;Massachusetts Institute of Technology, M.S.
Spouse: Pam

Path to Power

Allen has spent his entire life connected to the Coast Guard: his father was a chief petty officer. After graduating high school, Allen enrolled in the Coast Guard Academy, where he was a linebacker for the Coast Guard Academy Bears.

As a young man, Allen struggled to control his temper. During his time at the academy, he was arrested for fighting, and he later received a DUI charge, he told the Washington Post.He has said that if he wrote his autobiography, he'd title it "The Accidental Admiral."

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Coast Guard

Allen entered the Coast Guard as an ensign and served on the Androscoggin and Gallatin. During his earlier years, his assignments took him across the country, to New York, D.C., El Paso, Puerto Rico and Atlantic City. He worked on budgets, fleet modernization, and intelligence. By the early 1990s, he had landed in Connecticut as a captain of the port and the commanding officer of Group Long Island Sound. He handled issues like breaking up ice on the Connecticut River, recovering the victims of a small plane crash in the Sound, and updating the technology the Coast Guard uses to monitor buoys.

Allen's first assignment as a senior officer was to the Coast Guard's seventh district, where he oversaw operations in the Southeast and in the Caribbean from the district's Miami headquarters.

In 1999, he circumvented the Coast Guard's usual procedures to bring ashore a hypothermic Cuban boy found in the water-Elian Gonzalez. Illegal Cuban immigrants were generally returned directly to Cuba, but Allen had Gonzalez taken to a hospital in Florida, beginning what would become a long debate over whether the boy should return to his father in Cuba. In 2006, Allen told U.S. News and World Report that he didn't regret the decision.

"You develop a battle rhythm in these moments," he said.

9/11 and Hurricane Katrina

In 2001, Allen became the commander of the Atlantic Area. On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, he was at a physical, having his blood drawn, when the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center.

Within hours, the cutters under Allen's command had blocked off every major port on the East Coast. In the weeks that followed, they began establishing the security procedures-inspecting high-threat cargo at sea, for example-that would harden into new port-security measures. In the following months, the Coast Guard began assuming wide-ranging homeland security responsibilities, and by November Allen told Navy Times that worried about the strain it was putting on the service's resources.

By 2002, Allen was serving as the Coast Guard's chief of staff. He headed the transition team that in 2003 ushered the Coast Guard into the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and worked with DHS on what he called its "first major regulatory initiative," the Maritime Transportation Security Act, which strengthened port security.

When Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, Allen was assigned to support then-FEMA Chief Michael Brown in the government's response efforts. Within days, Allen took over the administration's response, and for three months worked to coordinate cleanup and recovery efforts. He said his priority was housing, and when returning to Coast Guard after three months, he told TIME magazine, "I think we were successful given the resources we had. The requirements of this event dwarfed anything that was planned for."

Commandant

In his four years as commandant, Allen has overseen the Coast Guard as it settled into its new homeland security duties. He worked to reform the troubled Deepwater program, a fleet modernization effort that had run dramatically over budget, and to bring the Coast Guard into the digital age.

The Issues

The Coast Guard has assumed new missions as its homeland security responsibilities increased, and at times that has stretched its resources. Because of its many missions, which include search-and-rescue and environmental protection, the Coast Guard has not always fit comfortably into DHS.

Allen has spoken optimistically about the service's ability to handle anything thrown at it, however. "Each time we've assumed a new duty or function into the Coast Guard, we've adapted by absorbing the cultures and dialects that went with them," he told National Journal in 2006.Allen pointed to points of coordination like software and hand-gun contracts as indicators that the Coast Guard was working closely with DHS.

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The Network

Allen worked with current and former DHS leaders like Janet Napolitano and Michael Chertoff during his time with the Coast Guard. He also worked closely with incoming Commandant Robert Papp.

Additional Resources