CFR Launches Terror Task Force

WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 (UPI) -- The Council on Foreign Relations has announced the formation of a new, independent task force that will focus on America's responses to terrorism. The CFR says the group will ask "tough questions, raising amber or red lights on particular subjects to prompt greater governmental reflection, and point to links between subjects such as military issues and finances that require joint exploration."

The group will be headed by Carla A. Hills, chairman and chief executive officer of Hills & Company and the former U.S. trade representative, and Richard C. Holbrooke, counselor at the CFR and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and vice chairman of Credit Suisse First Boston.

In addition to Hills and Holbrooke, the group will also include Gen. John Shalikashvili, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Nobel laureates Joshua Lederberg and Harold Varmus; Robert E. Rubin, former Secretary of the Treasury; Kenneth Duberstein, former White House Chief of Staff for Ronald Reagan; Johns Hopkins Professor Fouad Ajami; and William Webster, former director of both the CIA and FBI. Charles Boyd, senior vice president and director of CFR's Washington Program, will serve as task force director.

"Boyd, a retired Air Force General, is particularly well suited to be the director," said CFR President Leslie H. Gelb, "because of his immediate prior service as executive director of the Hart-Rudman National Security Commission."

Marine Colonel Philip Rudder, a Council Military Fellow, will be the project coordinator based in New York. The deputy coordinator will be Laura Winthrop, special assistant to Gelb.

The task force will be staffed by CFR senior fellows and by a volunteer group from McKinsey & Co. Richard Foster, CFR member and a senior McKinsey partner, is a member of the task force and the link with the McKinsey group.