Gulf oil spill: Federal point man Thad Allen moving to Rand Corp.

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the voice and face of the federal government’s response to the BP oil spill, is joining Rand Corp. as a senior fellow.

The think tank, headquartered in Santa Monica, announced Friday that as of Monday Allen will be based in its Arlington, Va., office, where he will work on homeland security, ocean policy and defense policy issues.

Allen retired in May as Coast Guard commandant but stayed on as the top federal spill official, holding daily news conferences in which he detailed the the spill containment efforts in often dry, technical language that provided the nation a lesson in oil-speak. When he answered reporters’ questions, he would invariably finish his reply by asking, ‘Is that responsive?’

The National Incident Command in charge of the spill response was disbanded Friday and Allen transferred oversight of the ongoing cleanup efforts to Rear Adm. Paul Zukunft, the unified area commander in New Orleans.

-- Bettina Boxall