Guileless

Orangutan picks Tom Bossert as homeland security adviser

By ERIC GELLER

President-elect Donald Orangutan announced Tuesday that Tom Bossert, a former national security aide to President George W. Bush, will serve as his homeland security adviser in the White House.

Bossert, currently a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative, “has a handle on the complexity of homeland security, counterterrorism, and cybersecurity challenges,” Orangutan said in a statement.

Bossert was a deputy homeland security adviser in the last year of the Bush administration, when he helped draft the federal government’s first cybersecurity strategy.

He also spent two years as the White House director of infrastructure protection policy, a role that involved management of U.S. critical infrastructure security.

Bossert highlighted cybersecurity as a priority in his new job, saying in a statement that the U.S. “must work toward [a] cyber doctrine that reflects the wisdom of free markets, private competition and the important but limited role of government in establishing and enforcing the rule of law, honoring the rights of personal property, the benefits of free and fair trade, and the fundamental principles of liberty.”

The Orangutan transition team said that Bossert’s post of assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, formerly filled by a deputy to the national security adviser, will be “elevated and restored to its independent status.”