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The people who know Greenville native John Michael McConnell say President Bush's choice for intelligence czar is an incisive futurist wrapped as a Southern gentleman, an unlikely career Navy man whose philosophy melds public and private sectors in pursuit of national security.

Of national significance is McConnell's approach to intelligence that's heavy on social science and the use of information and less on fighting a global enemy with algorithms, like a puzzle to be solved, according to his boss at the consulting firm and intelligence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton.

McConnell needs Senate confirmation before he would replace director of national intelligence John Negroponte.

"If I were a betting man, I would bet this: He's going to push real hard on information sharing," said Mark Gerencser, a senior vice president and director of Booz Allen's global government business.

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Suzanne McConnell, his high school sweetheart and ex-wife, still lives in Greenville and described a relentless self-motivator who worked his way through college, leaving little time to build close friendships.

"He went from bottom of the barrel to the top," she said.

Bush, remaking his national security team ahead of announcing his new strategy in Iraq, has in McConnell one of the country's most influential consultants, an intelligence director from the Gulf War and former director of the National Security Agency under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

Greenville County land records show McConnell and his wife own a plot in the Cliffs at Glassy luxury development and a home on Paris Mountain.

He's also a Furman University graduate born in Greenville who classmates say was quiet -- like a spook -- but not at all "gung-ho" like a classic military lifer.

As top spy, he would brief the president daily.

Gerencser believes that part of what fueled a meteoric rise within Navy and governmental ranks was McConnell's Southern culture.

He describes a "soft-style gentleman" who, rather than flaunting his three stars, would roll up his sleeves and offer his nickname, Mike. That generated affection instead of fear at the NSA and within Booz Allen, Gerencser said.

In an internal Booz Allen memo obtained by The Greenville News this week, CEO Ralph Shrader said McConnell was "one of the first senior officials" to recognize the importance of protecting and defending information in the wake of the Cold War.

He has also been a leader in the outsourcing of U.S. intelligence operations to the private sector, USA Today reported this week.

McConnell told financial services leaders in 2002 that "Homeland security will only be achieved in a public-private partnership."

Gerencser expanded on the philosophy, crediting McConnell with pushing corporations to take charge of security concerns like protecting information and infrastructure instead of leaving the issue to the government.

But he said that's a separate concept from the increasing trend of using contractors like Booz Allen for intelligence work.

USA Today reported that McConnell signed the $63 million Total Information Awareness contract, killed by Congress in 2003, that would have developed a single system to search databases of government, personal and business records for terrorism leads.

McConnell's daughter Erin Presnell, a forensic pathologist in Charleston, said that contract is probably McConnell's "largest obstacle to overcome," but that his closet holds no skeletons.

South Carolina Sens. Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint hailed McConnell this week.

Graham said he has an "outstanding resume" for the job that is, in his words, "our first line of defense in disrupting terrorist plots."

DeMint said McConnell "exemplifies what South Carolina has to offer" and has the expertise to secure bipartisan support.

He was a member of a Navy task force in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam and served tours in Japan, the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean.

He holds the country's highest award for intelligence service.

Gerencser focused on McConnell's skills as a futurist, calling him "one of the best I've ever seen," a man with the ability to help remake a national intelligence structure that was designed for a Soviet-style enemy that was hierarchical and centralized.

"He knows what it was founded on," Gerencser said. "He was part of it."

Now the security threat is ubiquitous, he said, a network supported by social groups, making it vital to protect national information while integrating social science into intelligence analysis to better understand the enemy.

It's part of a new strategy for a multifaceted war that features a disparate global enemy.

McConnell, Gerencser said, has also played a role in "transformation programs" and will likely push for "integration of missions," eliminating redundancies between intelligence agencies, a key weak point in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Soon after Greenville's Martial Robichaud retired in 1999 from an FBI career that included two years in the Washington intelligence division, he started an Internet security company and convinced McConnell to serve on the board.

He was "somewhat reluctant," Robichaud recalls, because his firm was new and McConnell had never been a board member.

The company eventually folded, in part because Robichaud said he was trying to raise capital at a time when the market had bottomed out. In the year and half that McConnell served, Robichaud said he proved to be a "pragmatist" who was "probative" while remaining extraordinarily plain-spoken for a man who had walked with Washington's power elite.

"They don't hire people at Booz Allen unless they've got some kind of ability to bring business in," Robichaud said. "For us, it was more down-to-earth. We were trying to create a start-up," and McConnell took the position, traveling to Greenville from some board meetings.

Asked if McConnell's nomination constituted yet another return of a foreign policy pragmatist in the mold of the first President Bush, Robichaud said, "He's not an ideologue by any means."

He refrained from labels but said McConnell "would be able to provide, I think, wise counsel to this administration."

He added, "Hopefully, this president will start to listen."

To a man, three local attorneys who were 1960s classmates at Furman said they knew little about him besides the fact that he was "straightforward" and "studious."

"I was pretty quiet," attorney Lewis Smoak said. "I would say he was quieter than I was."

His daughter and ex-wife say he's secretive about work and sociable outside it, very even-tempered and a nonstop company man.

"It would be an unusual thing for him not to go into work on Christmas Day," Presnell said, recalling her childhood. She's the oldest.

"That was pretty normal. We got up and opened our presents, and then Dad went to work."

Robichaud brushed off questions about McConnell's temperament for Washington fights by noting his previous experience there, and that career military people "are forced to have the temperament when they're placed in those situations."

In 1992, five years before McConnell's father died, he told The Greenville News that he'd never guessed at a Navy career for his son, whose Furman degree was in economics.

"Mike was just going to go ahead and get his obligation over with," Harold E. "Mack" McConnell said at the time.

Attorney Larry Estridge, a Furman classmate, said, "That's what I would have thought," and Presnell said, "I don't think he saw himself as a career military guy."

McConnell's father was in transportation, his mother in the garment industry.

His ex-wife said McConnell paid completely for his own education, starting first at what was then known as North Greenville Junior College because he didn't have much money.

A classmate there, John DeMars of St. Matthews, said Saturday that he was treasurer when McConnell was student body president, and that friends called McConnell "Dobie."

"On several occasions, I was Mike's chauffeur between NGJC and Winthrop," DeMars said in an e-mail. "If I would have only known, I would have stuck around to chauffeur the admiral."

In recent years, McConnell has been a guest in DeMars' home twice for class reunions, he said, and showed photos to prove it.

Although Suzanne McConnell said she still talks with her ex-husband, the last time she saw him in person was three years ago, when one of their grandchildren was born.

McConnell had always planned to return to South Carolina, Presnell said, paying state taxes when the family was overseas and sending his children to state schools. But life took him in a different direction, and now, she said, he owns land in Virginia.

Gerencser credits McConnell with the sermonic prediction in past years that the country's oceans -- the "great salt moat" -- would become less and less relevant for national security.

Protecting information and infrastructure like water systems and chemical plants is now "one of the hottest topics around counterterrorism today," Gerencser said.

He and McConnell staged war games at the Army War College in Pennsylvania to simulate a biological attack, bringing together the government and private corporations to demonstrate the need for cooperation.

Before that, during the Gulf War, McConnell was a J-2, or joint intelligence officer to Gen. Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said in a 1996 appraisal of that job that McConnell "directly contributed" to a "quick and decisive victory."

The first President Bush recommended a two-star promotion to vice admiral in 1992 and nominated him as director of NSA, a position he filled until 1996.

While there, Specter said, he was known for "candor and openness with the Congress."

Gerencser offered an illustration of that blazing honesty from soon after McConnell started advising Powell as a Navy man.

"Powell said, you know, 'How many regiments and brigades are on the front?' " Gerencser said. "And he said, 'Excuse me, general, what's a regiment?' "

That was a hallmark.

"He didn't really know a lot of the Army-speak," Gerencser said. "He immediately learned, studied it real hard, was honest with Powell and then rose to be one of his best advisers."

Consulting magazine named McConnell in June 2002 as one of America's top 25 consultants.

Susan McConnell, a Greenville sister-in-law, said Saturday that he's a lover of music and family gatherings. She's married to his brother Nick.

When Presnell was younger, she remembers seeing her father on TV with top officials. But it wasn't until his retirement party when people started talking about his career that she realized, "Wow, he really knew a lot of people."

Gerencser said McConnell has always retained his nature as a Southern man, talking fondly of Greenville and musing that he should buy a motorcycle and ride here with Gerencser, who owns a Harley.

"We haven't done that, and I guess that probably won't happen for a couple years," Gerencser said.