The NSC's Sesame Street Generation

For many of the generals with whom O'Sullivan consults in her current job, the painful experience of Vietnam permeates their thinking on Iraq. Not for O'Sullivan. "We are the first post-Vietnam generation, without the baggage of Vietnam, which doesn't mean we don't try to learn some of the lessons from there about counterinsurgency and so forth, but it's not my first frame of reference and I think that's a good thing," said O'Sullivan.

Same goes for Afghanistan, where she and her team guide policy as the United States seeks to stabilize the friendly government of President Hamid Karzai installed after the fall of the Taliban. "If your frame of reference is the Soviet invasion and how they got bogged down, then I think you'd be very modest about what could be achieved in Afghanistan," O'Sullivan said. "That's not how I see it. I see an end of Taliban rule and a nascent democracy."

Her National Security Council colleague, John D. Rood, is two years older and the president's senior adviser on countering nuclear threats. That includes searching for ways to roll back the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea.

The earliest news event he recalls understanding was the Iran hostage crisis; not the storming of the embassy, but the added tragedy that followed. For the 11-year-old Rood, a child of divorce growing up in a middle-class section of Phoenix, the botched rescue attempt so troubled him that he asked a teacher to find out whether there were other U.S. forces in the region who could be sent in to save the hostages. "I recall reading some of the articles and not understanding. They said we had a large number of aircraft in the region that could have provided support and we just abandoned it," Rood said.

Much of Rood's job includes dealing with Cold War leftovers such as the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a decades-old arms control agreement between Washington and Moscow, which Rood spent his first year in the White House dismantling. "We had all sorts of quotes from critics that the sky would fall if we left the ABM treaty, and no one even mentions this anymore because nothing happened -- it went away with a whimper. Not being encumbered with all this baggage from the Cold War is a huge advantage."

But for Juan Zarate, deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism strategy, the Cold War hung over his childhood home in very personal ways. The son of a Mexican father and Cuban mother, the fear of communism was ever present. At Harvard, he wrote his thesis on the effects of U.S. foreign policy on democracy in Latin America -- a region that has all but been ignored by Bush. But in law school, he focused on international law and security issues and wrote his third-year paper on the use of private military contractors in war. He has known nothing since but the threat of terrorism and war. He joined the criminal division of the Justice Department in 1998, just as it was taking on the largest terrorism investigation of the decade, the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

His deputy, Michelle Malvesti, became a terrorism analyst on a lark that same year with the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency. Now Zarate, 34 and Malvesti, 35, coordinate the administration's plan for fighting what Bush calls the "war on terrorism."

Michele Davis, an economist, and Frederick L. Jones II, a foreign service officer, handle communications and media for the NSC -- jobs that begin at 5 a.m. and often end after midnight. They have worked only in a world that operates on a 24-hour news cycle -- fielding calls from Brazil, and setting up interviews in Pakistan -- an experience their predecessors and bosses do not share.

John Simon, 38, left a classic Gen-X job as a management consultant to become the NSC's senior director for relief, stabilization, and development. Now he is awaiting confirmation to the post of vice president of the Overseas Private Investment Corp., a U.S. agency that helps American businesses invest overseas. William Inboden, a 33-year-old historian charged with planning for the future, is exploring the next generation of alliances and partnerships that will serve U.S. interests for the 21st century.

For Zarate, Sept. 11 presented the challenge of his generation, more than just the challenge of the administration he serves. "Maybe in 20 or 30 years, folks will look back on us and say these guys were the young pioneers, we'll be the Kissingeresque-type folks," he said. "Hopefully, if we do our jobs right."

linzerd@washpost.com

Dafna Linzer, who covers national security for the Washington Post, loved it when the Brady Bunch went to Hawaii.