Newsmakers

QUOTE/UNQUOTE "The administration wasn't matching its deeds to its words in the war on terrorism." -RAND BEERS '64, WHO QUIT AS THE TOP COUNTER-TERRORISM ADVISOR TO THE WHITE HOUSE, IN THE WASHINGTON POST

As the Kobe Bryant trial nears, a Dartmouth alum figures prominently. Eagle County, Colorado, district attorney Mark Hurlbert '91, a former Big Green skier, opens the highprofile trial in October. He has been thrown into the fire quickly—he just took office last December at age 34—and it seems every legal expert in America has been weighing in on whether he is fully prepared to handle the latest Trial of the Century. Hurlbert, however, has exuded confidence since Bryant was charged with sexually assaulting a Colorado hotel employee in June. "I'm determined to go ahead and do my job," he told the Associated Press. "It is huge,yes; I don't think there's anybody who would be fully prepared to do it, no matter how much experience they have."... Another issue on the minds of Americans continues to be national security, which makes the recent actions of Rand Beers '64 so headlinegrabbing. Beers resigned his post as a top White House counter-terrorism advisor, a position he took just days before the start of the war in Iraq. Weeks after his abrupt resignation, Beers volunteered as national security advisor for Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.), who hopes to win the Democratic presidential nomination next year. "The difficult, long-term issues both at home and abroad have been avoided, neglected or shortchanged and generally underfunded," Beers told The WashingtonPost on June 15. "As an insider, I saw the things that weren't being done. And the longer I sat and watched, the more concerned I became, until I got up and walked out." If anyone understands the system, it is Beers, who worked as director of counter-terrorism in the Reagan administration. His job under Bush involved dealing with up to 1,000 pieces of threat information per day. It took a toll: "The first day I came in fresh and eager," said Beers, "on the last day, I came home tired and burned out. And it only took seven months." Bush has since nominated another alum—Robert Charles '82—to fill the position Beers vacated....When it comes to war, Bob Messner '60 is stuck in the '5Os—the 17505, that is. Amember of Braddock's Field Historical Society in Pennsylvania, Messner has been front and center in the campaign to re-create the battlefield and establish a visitors' center by July 9,2005, the 250 th anniversary of the Braddock's Field battle during the French and Indian War. The importance of that battle? One of the aides to British Gen. Edward Braddock that day was George Washington, who would use the French and Indian tactics of wilderness warfare 22 years later when he led the American colonists to their independence. "If we are successful, the Braddocks Field area may be a very special place 10 years from now," Messner told the Pzteburgh Post-Gazette....Halt a world away, Dr. Joyce Sackey-Acheampong'85 and her husband, Kwaku, are fighting a different battle. The couple is in their native Ghana with several other Boston-area doctors to continue combating HIV-AIDS in that country. Three years into the program, the clinic they run now treats more than 100 HIV-AIDS patients. Sackey-Acheampong's next step is to develop a curriculum for an elective in international health for Harvard Medical School students. "We hope the elective will establish a model that can be used to train physicians from underdeveloped countries to treat HIV-AIDS patients," she told the Sharon, Massachusetts, Advocate last July.... Since founding Gordon Rush shoes in 1998, Alan Gordon '92 has shod the feet of stars such as Regis Philbin, Billy Bob Thornton, Antonio Banderas and Enrique Iglesias. "It has been a domino effect," Gordon told the San Diego Union-Tribune recently. "We've had great people who have worked with us to build the line, and we get prestige by association." If you are looking for Gordon Rush at your local Payless, try again; the shoes are available only in 48 Nordstrom stores across the country. "In the latter half of 2004 we will take a serious look at opening a shop in Los Angeles or San Diego," said Gordon....Fashion veteran Marty Staff '72 has left clothing behind to take a job as CEO of PH Brand Management, a new affiliate of skin mag Penthouse. In his new job, Staff is in charge of reviving the Penthouse brand into profitable licensing deals. "Its all about the strength of the name, and this is a name and a product you can exploit. The product happens to be naked women," the former senior manager at Polo Ralph Lauren Corp. and Calvin Klein Inc. told the weekly Cretin'sNew York Business. Among Staffs ideas? A line of Penthouse apparel, of course.... Last fall Raymond Gilliar '01 was working for the Andrew Cuomo Democratic gubernatorial primary campaign in New York—until Cuomo dropped off the ballot in September. Gilliar then heard that a group of Tibetan monks who were in the United States for a year-long North American tour were stuck in Washington, D.C., in need of a driver. With one call to the monks' coordinator, Gilliar was on a plane to D.C. Though neither Tibetan nor Buddhist, he has been "minister of transportation" for the monks since November, driving them through Florida? across Texas, out to California and on through the Midwest. "[The trip] has been a crash course in culture and language," Gilliar told The DeseretNews in Salt Lake City, Utah, in March. He admits that he has learned quite a bit from his passengers. "To achieve any goal, you need both wisdom and method," he said....Finally, Geeta Anand '89—who cut her journalistic teeth at The Dartmouth and now writes as a health and science reporter for The WallStreet Journal—won a Pulitzer Prize with her colleagues in April for a series about corporate scandals, including a story on clinical drug trials and another on disgraced Imclone CEO Sam Waksal. "I was very excited and so was everyone here, because a group of us contributed to the winning stories," she told The India-West in Emeryville, California. She does not see the award changing her, though: "I'm in journalism because I think its important work and I enjoy my job very much."

Mark Hulbert '91

Alan Gordon '92

Mike Mahoney is associate director of athletic media services at Northwestern University inEvanston, Illinois, and the '92 class secretary.