Lucent CEO tapped for U.S. security

President Bush has enlisted Lucent Technologies' chief executive for a telecommunications group focused on national security.

Patricia Russo joins a list of telecom luminaries who are members of the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC). The more than two dozen committee members include Verizon Communications Chairman Charles Lee, Motorola chief Christopher Galvin and SBC Communications CEO Edward Whitacre.

The NSTAC, created in 1982 by President Reagan, provides analysis and recommendations to the president regarding policy that affects national security and emergency preparedness tied to telecommunications.

Apart from the devastating human toll, the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington D.C. on Sept. 11, 2001, exposed the susceptibility of the nation's telecommunications networks, which suffered widespread outages. In the aftermath, the NSTAC's importance swelled in its role to make the telecommunications infrastructure more secure.

Russo, as part of the committee, will be involved with a wide range of policy and technical issues related to telecommunications, infrastructure protection and homeland security. Russo became Lucent's chief in January 2002.