WASHINGTON — President- elect Barack Obama on Wednesday named a team heavy on experience in the Clinton administration to help guide transition efforts in the State, Defense and Treasury departments.
In a statement, Obama revealed the agency review team leaders who will be responsible for reviewing budgets, personnel and policy in the three departments so the new administration can begin working as soon as he is sworn in on Jan. 20.
He named two leaders for each of the three agencies, and all six served in some capacity under President Clinton.
The list comes out a day after Obama announced an ethics policy that all transition officials must sign, agreeing to avoid work for him that’s related to any of their lobbying activities for one year. An Associated Press check of public records found some former lobbyists among Obama’s team leaders, along with some top fundraisers to his presidential campaign.
The Treasury team leaders are Josh Gotbaum, an investment fund adviser who has experience in multiple federal agencies, and Michael Warren, chief operating officer of advisory firm Stonebridge International. Warren was executive director of the President’s National Economic Council.
At State, the leaders are Tom Donilon, a lawyer who was an assistant secretary of state, and Wendy Sherman, a principal of The Albright Group advisory firm and a former top State Department official.
The Defense team is being led by John P. White, chair of the Kennedy School Middle East Initiative at Harvard and a former deputy defense secretary, and Michele Flournoy, president of the Center for a New American Security who worked in the Pentagon under Clinton.
Obama also named a 14-member working group that will oversee the entire review process. The three co-chairs include Melody Barnes, a domestic-policy adviser on Obama’s campaign, and two former top aides to Vice President Al Gore. Lisa Brown is executive director of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, and Don Gips is an executive at Level 3 Communications.
The former lobbyists on Obama’s list include Donilon, for Fannie Mae and the Civil Justice Reform Group; Barnes, for The Raben Group, working on civil rights, bankruptcy, family and civil liberties issues; and Tom Wheeler, an Obama campaign bundler and a former member of the working group who lobbied for the cellular telephone industry.
