The White House this week officially nominated National Security Council and Department of Energy veteran Lisa Gordon-Hagerty to replace retired general Frank Klotz as head of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA): the semiautonomous Department of Energy agency in charge of U.S. nuclear warhead stewardship and nonproliferation programs.
The Donald Trump administration took the procedural step Tuesday, just over a week after it announced its intention to nominate Gordon-Hagerty as the NNSA’s fifth full-time administrator and undersecretary for nuclear security.
Gordon-Hagerty now faces a nomination hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee and, if that goes well, a confirmation vote in the full Senate. Neither had been scheduled at deadline Friday for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor.
If history is a guide, it should not be long before Gordon-Hagerty is on the job at DOE’s James V. Forrestal Building in Washington, D.C.
Most of the previous nominees for the top NNSA post worked their way through the Senate in two to three months. John Gordon, the first confirmed NNSA administrator, had the shortest confirmation process at about a month-and-a-half.
Meanwhile, Klotz, who has been on the job since 2014, has not yet left the NNSA, the Donald Trump administration confirmed Tuesday.
Also this week, Trump officially nominated Andrea Thompson to be undersecretary of state for arms control and international security. Thompson, a retired U.S. Army colonel, previously served as national security adviser for Vice President Mike Pence and is currently a special adviser at State’s Office of Policy Planning. If approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and confirmed by the full Senate, Thompson would coordinate the State Department’s nonproliferation and arms-control policies, including treaty negotiations.
As with Gordon-Hagerty, Thompson was not scheduled for a confirmation hearing at deadline Friday.
If confirmed, Thompson will replace Barack Obama appointee Rose Gottemoeller, who resigned last year and is now deputy secretary general of NATO.
