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Jeff 'Skunk' Baxter, guitarist for Steely Dan and The Doobie Brothers, works for the National Imagery and Mapping Agency. |
Two rock stars are in the autumn of their music careers.
Both are 54.
One is Ozzy Osbourne, until recently best known for biting the heads off bats and urinating on the Alamo. Now, he spends much of his time mumbling obscenities and passing out on his reality-TV show, "The Osbournes." Even though he still leads the Ozzfest tour each year, Osbourne has become essentially a caricature of himself.
The other is Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, legendary lead guitarist of the Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan.
He does not have a reality-TV show.
But Baxter does have other things going on. He's an adviser to Congress on antiballistic missile systems. He's a consultant to the Missile Defense Agency and to various organizations in the intelligence community.
He works with the National Mapping and Imagery Agency (NIMA) on spy-satellite technology in Washington, specializing in technologies for future warfare.
NIMA employs a number of residents of the Fredericksburg area, some in high positions.
Baxter also works in the Los Angeles Police Department Anti-terrorism Unit as a reserve officer.
Oh, and in his spare time, he's recording his first solo CD and remains a sought-after studio musician on other artists' albums.
OK. Osbourne and Baxter. So which one is the household name, which one is more famous than ever, which one is the idol of millions?
Not Baxter, of course.
That's the way of the world.
But that's just fine with Baxter, who's thrilled with the way his life is playing out.
"Skunk is such an admirable person on so many levels," said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif. "He's a patriot and a musical genius. At the same time, he has this 'I wanna help' attitude that is truly admirable. You can't say that about a lot of rock stars.''
Much as a music-label rep discovers a band, Rohrabacher discovered Baxter as a player in the intelligence community when he read a paper the musician wrote on missile defense.
For years, Baxter had spent his band road time while touring poring over magazines about technical advances in weaponry, technical manuals and books about national defense. He believed he could apply all kinds of new technical information to music-business uses.
For instance, the same technology that is used to track Russian submarines is now used to track songs played all across the radio dial to make sure artists get royalties.
"Technology is technology," he said. "It's neutral."
But it's not that simple.
Baxter sees things others don't.
"He's got an ability to think in a totally different way, which enables him to envision certain potential situations nobody else can envision," Rohrabacher said. "He's the classic out-of-the-box thinker."
Ed Mornston NIMA's Future Warfare Systems Office director, said Baxter brings "technical ability, but more importantly, the insight to see how technology can be applied to operations.
"He has a much different mindset than most of us," said Mornston. "He asks the hard questions and synthesizes information very well. He's a great problem-solver."
Baxter said he believes musicians and athletes have a proclivity for using using their left brain and right brain together to solve problems.
"It's a multidimensional approach to solving problems," he said.
Still, one does not see Britney Spears or Shaquille O'Neill advising Congress on missile defense.
However, Baxter points out that comic actor Dan Ackroyd is helping the U.S. and Canada work together to reduce transnational crime and keep terrorists from crossing the border.
"Danny's pretty knowledgeable on transnational crime," he said.
Baxter's celebrity has been far more an advantage than a detriment in first getting a foothold, then moving up in the intelligence community.
"It never was a tough sell for me to get [intelligence community leaders] to meet him because everybody was a Steely Dan fan, Rohrabacher said. "And once he meets people, he doesn't have to sell himself. Clearly, he's a creative thinker with valuable insights to impart."
Only once was the idea of a rocker being consulted on national security sneered at, and that was early on.
"If you can walk the walk, that's the bottom line," Baxter said. "Certainly, this generation in the military and on the Hill is much more interested in whether you can solve a problem than what you look like."
InnoVision, the NIMA directorate for which Baxter works, looks at global trends, forecasts future threats, defines future needs in research and development and develops plans and technology initiatives based on analysis of trends.
Baxter's participation in computer war games designed to anticipate enemy moves has convinced any doubters. He almost always wins playing the part of a U.S. adversary.
One of his first victories was over the person who said he did not have the background to contribute.
"I usually win because when you're the enemy, you're pretty much unconstrained," Baxter said. "Ruthlessness is an asset."
But so are imagination and ingenuity, areas where America has often excelled.
"Every agency," he said of NIMA and InnoVision, "needs a group of people to push the envelope because that's when it gets really creative," Baxter said. "And creativity, I think, is our ace in the hole."
Being creative, Baxter said, means risking failing and losing face. He said the agency understands some failures must come in the creative process
Members of NIMA traveled to Iraq with U.S. military personnel to help commanders "visualize" battles. But being willing to take creative chances back home in the office is where the real fearlessness comes into play.
The San Diego Union-Tribune recently reported that the agency is considering developing virtual-reality technology that would provide a "God's-eye" view of a war.
Prior to the invasion of Iraq, NIMA developed three-dimensional animation from satellite images of Iraq so military personnel could virtually fly or drive through Baghdad in practice runs.
At first, Baxter's other job put off some fellow rock artists.
"In the beginning, they didn't understand it," Baxter said. "I try not to be too partisan. I see it from a national-security perspective. But certainly there were certain folks who thought I was selling out to the military-industrial complex. It's amazing how that changed after 9/11."
Baxter said as odd as the pairing of his two careers might seem, "I think they're extremely compatible. There's something really cleansing about working on a record with somebody for five days and flying back to D.C. to work with NIMA. It keeps your perspective fresh. The bottom line is that I really love my country, I'm extremely lucky to have had success as a musician, and only because I live in a free country was I able to do that."
