Former Doobie Brother Now A Counterterrorism Expert (Jeff Baxter)

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Jeff Baxter played psychedelic music with Ultimate Spinach, jazz-rock with Steely Dan and funky pop with the Doobie Brothers. But in the last few years he has made an even bigger transition: Mr. Baxter, who goes by the nickname "Skunk," has become one of the national-security world's well-known counterterrorism experts.

A wiry man who wears a beret to many of his meetings, Mr. Baxter, who is now 56 years old, has gone from a rock career that brought him eight platinum records to a spot in the small constellation of consultants paid to help both policy makers and defense contractors better understand the way terrorists think and plan attacks.


The guitarist-turned-defense-consultant does regular work for the Department of Defense and the nation's intelligence community, chairs a congressional advisory board on missile defense, and has lucrative consulting contracts with companies like Science Applications International Corp., Northrop Grumman Corp. and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. He says he is in increasing demand for his unconventional views of counterterrorism.

"We thought turntables were for playing records until rappers began to use them as instruments, and we thought airplanes were for carrying passengers until terrorists realized they could be used as missiles," says Mr. Baxter, who sports a ponytail and handlebar mustache. "My big thing is to look at existing technologies and try to see other ways they can be used, which happens in music all the time and happens to be what terrorists are incredibly good at."

One of Mr. Baxter's clients -- General Atomics' vice president Mike Campbell -- likens him to a "gluon," a term drawn from quantum physics that refers to the particles binding together the basic building blocks of all matter. Contractors and policymakers say Mr. Baxter can see past bureaucratic boundaries and integrate information drawn from a variety of sources, though some who have worked with him say he can also be a self-promoter.

Mr. Baxter can speak the acronym-heavy vernacular of the professional defense consultant, but he would never be mistaken for one of the hardened ex-military men who fill the ranks of the industry. He rarely wears ties, is fond of self-deprecating jokes, makes frequent popular-culture references, and peppers his speech with casual profanity. He also often appears on VH1 music retrospectives.

Still, he's careful not to discuss current or past projects that might be classified and keeps to a punishing schedule. One morning recently, a black government-issued sport-utility vehicle picked him up outside a Washington café as soon as he had finished breakfast and whisked him to a Pentagon agency for nearly 12 hours of meetings. That evening, he traveled to Ohio's Wright-Patterson Air Force Base for several days of briefings and meetings. He flew 230,000 miles last year, and makes a point of dissolving brightly colored packets of vitamin supplements into his drinks to stave off illness.

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB111689939107541385-IRjgoNjlaF4np2raICIaKmBm5,00.html

I don't care WHAT he's doing now. :cry:

Talk about a career change.

i am a bit shocked,
i have always enjoyed what he brought to the table musically.

He's been doing this stuff since the early 90s, I think. He used to be a consultant in missile technology and computer science, IIRC.

of Frank Zappa advising Vaclav Havel.

Note certain entrenched stupid ideas in the original story, like "he would never be mistaken for one of the hardened ex-military men who fill the ranks of the industry." A lot of our most effective tacticians were distinctly not spit-and-polish: Richard Marcinko, a Vietnam vet who trained special ops (see his book Rogue Warrior) was called "Pigpen," and worse, for his casual deportment.

That said, I do wonder what Skunk actually brings to the table. He was a kick ass guitarist, but he never struck me as an intellectual heavyweight in any of the bands he was in. (And it wouldn't have been hard to look like a genius in the context of the Doobie Bros.)