Always Ready for the Storm
Adm. Thad Allen, the commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, almost didn't take the job that has put him in the spotlight. It was Labor Day weekend 2005, and Allen had just learned from the Department of Homeland Security that he might be asked to serve as the deputy to Michael Brown—the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency—who was floundering almost a week after Hurricane Katrina made landfall. Allen, vacationing on the Virginia shore with his wife, Pam, says they talked it over and were "truly hesitant."
But that feeling wouldn't last long. He was formally asked to be Brown's deputy on Labor Day. By Friday, Brown was shuttled back to Washington, and DHS Chief Michael Chertoff appointed Allen, a gruff-faced, little-known official with a commanding presence, as head of the federal response for the entire Gulf Coast region. "I realized when you get a call to duty, you don't say no," says Allen, who was also inspired by the notion that leadership involves both ability and opportunity. "You can be a quiet, fine leader your whole life," he explains. "But if you ... don't ever act on a massive scale, you could go a whole career without anybody knowing it."
Iwo Jima. Recognition certainly isn't an issue for Allen these days. The 57-year-old coastie-as Coast Guard members are often called-has become the face of the Coast Guard, a service whose rescue teams pulled roughly 33,000 stranded Katrina victims off rooftops and overpasses. Allen and Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré set up their rescue headquarters on the USS Iwo Jima-a Navy ship docked in the New Orleans port-offering a breath of hope a week and a half after the storm. This May, President Bush, citing Allen's "Energizer bunny" work ethic and integrity, appointed Allen head of the Coast Guard, where he'd already served 35 years.
To those who have watched Allen's career, his guardian-angel role was no deviation. As former Coast Guard chief of staff, he led the transition team that merged the agency into DHS in 2003. Heading up East Coast operations in 2001, Allen had organized the sea response to September 11. "I was getting my blood drawn at a physical, of all things, when the first plane hit the north tower," Allen recalls. Within hours of the attack, he'd ordered the large Coast Guard cutters, the ships used primarily for patrolling the high seas, to block the mouths of every major East Coast port. Even though Allen points out the Coast Guard hadn't done that sort of thing before, the ships' practice of inspecting high-threat cargo at sea and escorting suspicious boats to shore in the days after the attacks were precursors for port security operations that continue today.
When he took over the Katrina response, Allen says he relied on a "bias for action," the practice of moving, not endlessly deliberating. Within 24 hours, he and Honoré set up a planning group that would soon meet on the Iwo Jima. Each day, the two would deliver a report on what they hoped to do the next day to New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco. Of course, decisions made quickly can have massive consequences-something Allen had experienced years earlier, in 1999, when he ordered his charges to bring 5-year-old Elián Gonzáles onto U.S. soil after he was told the youngster was hypothermic. Even though the Cuban boy's presence ignited a custody battle, Allen says he never regretted that decision. "You develop a battle rhythm in these moments," he says.
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