The Department of Energy is pushing back against the narrative that Lisa Gordon-Hagerty was forced out of her job as administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration by Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette.
Gordon-Hagerty abruptly resigned Friday after more than two-and-a-half years in the top spot at DOE’s semi-autonomous nuclear-weapons agency. Her resignation letter, reportedly delivered to the White House rather than Brouillette, had not surfaced in public at deadline Monday. Likewise, Gordon-Hagerty herself had not spoken much about her departure in any public forum, except for a short note posted to her personal Twitter account.
You are so kind. It’s been an honor
— Lisa Gordon-Hagerty (@LGordonHagerty) November 6, 2020
“It’s been an honor,” Gordon-Hagerty wrote, appearing to acknowledge the end of her historic tenure as the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) first female administrator.
The NNSA confirmed Gordon-Hagerty’s departure shortly after Defense News reported the post-election-day surprise. The publication cited a pair of “senior NNSA officials” who spoke on background and said Gordon-Hagerty was quitting because of ongoing disagreements with Brouillette over the right budget for the NNSA.
Senior Republican lawmakers quickly picked up that thread, with one even condemning Brouillette by name in a curt statement that shredded the cabinet secretary’s national security aptitude.
Defense News later quoted a DOE official who denied that Brouillette pushed out Gordon-Hagerty. The official framed her departure as a normal part of post-election turnover — media project that Joe Biden won last week’s presidential election, meaning President Donald Trump and his cabinet will leave office in a matter of months — but the NNSA administrator is not ordinarily part of the first wave of departures during a presidential transition.
For example, Gordon-Hagerty’s immediate predecessor, Barack Obama appointee Frank Klotz, served in the Trump administration for a year. George W. Bush’s last NNSA administrator, Thomas D’Agostino, served clear through the first Obama term and into part of the second.
Brouillette’s most ardent detractor last week was Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the octagenarian chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee who easily won reelection on Nov. 3.
Inhofe has insinuated for months that Brouillette was undermining Gordon-Hagerty, but on Friday, he finally took the gloves off and called Brouillette out by name. In a prepared statement, Inhofe said that Brouillette “effectively demanded” Gordon-Hagerty resign, and that the secretary of energy “doesn’t know what he’s doing in national security matters.”
What distinction, if any, Inhofe drew between an effective demand and a literal demand was unclear.
The retiring Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee who did not stand for reelection last week, issued a more restrained condemnation. Thornberry did not name names, but his statement “on leadership changes at NNSA” decried “petty personal grievances.”
Armed Services Democrats were publicly silent about Gordon-Hagerty’s decision.
In late 2019 and early 2020, Gordon-Hagerty and Brouillette clashed over whether the NNSA should get the roughly $20-billion budget the then-NNSA chief wanted, or the roughly $17 billion budget Brouillette preferred.
During this intra-agency debate, Gordon-Hagerty vented her concerns to the Pentagon in an official memorandum that found its way to Capitol Hill more than a month before the White House shared its official budget request with Congress. After the memo leaked, key lawmakers, including Inhofe, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) visited the oval office and prevailed on Trump to side with Gordon-Hagerty over Brouillette, in the matter of the 2021 budget request for civilian nuclear weapons programs.
