Obama Names Heads Of Pentagon, Treasury Transition Teams

November 13, 2008 7:57 a.m. EST

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - President-elect Barack Obama is sending out top members of his transition team for a thorough review of the government's departments and agencies so his administration can immediately begin implementing policies once he is sworn into office.

Obama's Agency Review Team will begin studying what kind of bureaucracy it will inherit starting at the end of the week. The review, which will include the White House, will "provide the President-elect, Vice President-elect, and key advisors with information needed to make strategic policy, budgetary, and personnel decisions prior to the inauguration," the Obama transition team said in a statement.

The team will be assisted by an Agency Review Working Group, which will manage and review the team's work and coordinate with other transition teams, such as those responsible for personnel, policy and the budget.

Reflecting the nation's woes - wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the worst credit crisis since the Great Depression and an increasingly dire outlook for the auto industry - Obama's first decisions about his agency review concerned the heads of his Defense, State and Treasury department transition teams.

Two former Clinton administration officials will lead the review of the Pentagon: John White, chair of the Kennedy School Middle East Initiative at Harvard University, deputy secretary of Defense from 1995 to 1997, and Marine Corps. veteran; Michele Flournoy, who is president of Washington, D.C.-based think-tank Center for a New American Security, member of the executive board of Women in International Security, and was simultaneously principal deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Strategy and Threat Reduction and deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Strategy under former President Bill Clinton.

The State department review will be led by Tom Donilon and Wendy Sherman. Donilon served as assistant secretary of State for Public Affairs and chief of staff at the State department during the Clinton administration. He is a partner at the law firm of O'Melveny & Myers and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Sherman was counselor of the State department, with rank of ambassador, and policy coordinator on North Korea and special advisor to the president under Clinton. She was recently appointed by Congress to serve on the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism.

Josh Gotbaum and Michael Warren will head the transition in the Treasury department. Gotbaum currently serves as an advisor to investment funds, with a special focus on restructurings and management turnaround. From1994-2001, he worked in the Defense and Treasury departments, as well as in the Office of Management and Budget, a group that oversees the activities of federal agencies.

Warren has worked at the White House as executive director of the president's National Economic Council. He previously worked at McKinsey & Company, as a strategic consultant in the technology and financial institutions industries and as a fellow of the McKinsey Global Institute.

Obama has not announced his decision for Cabinet members. He is reportedly leaning towards keeping Defense Sec. Robert Gates in the first months of his presidency. For the Treasury post, billionaire investor and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, former Clinton Treasury Sec. Lawrence Summers, former Federal Reserve chair Paul Volker and have all been floated as potential appointees. Buffett, Summers and Volcker are all members of Obama's economic transition team.

Obama's announcement of the leaders of his agency review was made the same day he issued a statement saying reports that former Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn and former secretary of state Warren Christopher have been tapped to help with the transition in the Defense and State departments were inaccurate.

The AP said in a report on Wednesday that Nunn would lead the Obama transition team in the Defense department. It added that Christopher would advice the president-elect on his transition in the State department.

But Obama-Biden transition team spokesperson Stephanie Cutter said in a statement there was "misinformation" in the report. She said Nunn "will play an informal senior advisor role throughout the defense transition process," but cautiously added that the former senator's "expertise... will be invaluable to ensure a smooth transition."

On Christopher, Cutter said while he is "deeply respected" across the nation and in the international community, he will have no role in the transfer of power.

The presidential transition ends on Jan. 20, 2009 when Obama, the first Democrat to win more than 51 percent of the popular vote since 1964, is sworn in as the 44th U.S. president at the west front of the Capitol.