Wasn't the Genome project completed earlier because Craig Venter was threatening

to beat them to the tape ?

That was definitely a factor, but competition alone wasn't going to get the job done. I recommend Cracking the Genome by Kevin Davies if anyone is looking for a good, readable history of the HGP and the private counterpart.

How would the presence of such an external driver diminish the administrative talents needed to spearhead the project?

The top post is correct, I was going to post the same thing. The genome project was originally designed as a boondoogle, divided between all the developed nations. They were going to dabble at it a little at a time and hold lots of international conferences in the interim. Dr. Craig Ventner saw that tecnology had advanced much faster than this plan. He bought a bunch of sequencing equipment and would have easily beaten the original NIH plan to the punch. He will probably be the first person to create a synthetic organism.