Norman Augustine

orman Augustine grew up during World War II, became a legendary guru of the Cold War, and saw the current war coming. He worked in the aerospace industry from 1958 to 1997, except for four years he spent as assistant secretary and then undersecretary of the Army from 1973 to 1977, the critical period when the Army emerged from Vietnam. When the dust cleared from the mega-mergers of the 1990s, Augustine was head of giant defense contractor Lockheed Martin, where he remains chairman of the executive committee.

But this high-tech Cold Warrior was alert to a new threat. When he joined the celebrated Hart-Rudman Commission on National Security in the 21st Century-which first proposed a Homeland Security Department-people assumed, Augustine recalled, "we would recommend more carrier battle groups and fighter wings and infantry divisions." He said the commission "shocked people" with its first report in 1999, which declared, "Americans will die on our own soil by the thousands if we don't do something about it."

After 9/11, Augustine became a member of the President's Council of Advisers on Homeland Security, which has evolved into Secretary Ridge's Homeland Security Advisory Council. He is also a long-serving member of the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology. Today, Augustine is confident that Al Qaeda is "disrupted," even "decapitated," and that it cannot easily repeat 9/11. But that hardly makes him sanguine. "I don't want to be too specific here," he said, "but we've got to be prepared for a total change in their tactics."

Augustine, 68, grew up in the Denver area and graduated from Princeton University with a degree in aeronautical engineering. His official bio, in addition to listing two solid pages of honors and awards, notes that the adventurous Augustine "has stood on both the North and South Poles and has traveled to Timbuktu."