In last week's dispatch, the directors danced around the issue.
The president moved quickly on Saturday to show his administration responding forcefully to events in Arizona, dispatching the director of the F.B.I., Robert S. Mueller III, to oversee the investigation.
Among the options under discussion at the meeting, aside from sending Secretary Powell, was dispatching the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, who supervised meetings between the Israeli and Palestinian security forces during the Clinton administration.
Promising to provide Oklahoma "everything that it needs right away," Mr. Obama dispatched W. Craig Fugate, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to coordinate recovery efforts.
Yentob had dispatched a director named Jack Cocker, whom he uses for Imagine, the arts series he has presented since 2003, to make a film inside the camp.
In the last two weeks, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, dispatched the director of his political action committee to run his primary campaign in California, where a bill to move the primary to Feb. 5 is on the desk of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Before shooting began in November, Hitchcock dispatched assistant director Hilton A. Green to Phoenix to scout locations and shoot the opening scene.
President Barack Obama's administration dispatched Gil Kerlikowske, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy and a well-known marijuana foe, to handle the query.
Mr. Edwards, who hopes his populist appeal will draw support from Hispanics, is dispatching his political director, David Medina, to meet with members of Democratic Hispanic Caucus of Florida.
While new presidents routinely take more time to submit their inaugural budgets, Mr. Trump unveiled his unusually late, and in an uncommonly low-key fashion, dispatching his budget director to unveil the plan while he was overseas.
