HOBSON, AUGUSTINE SELECTED BY LEVIN FOR NNSA GOVERNANCE PANEL

Former Ohio lawmaker David Hobson (R) and retired Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine have been selected to serve on the Congressionally mandated National Nuclear Security Administration governance panel by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, NW&M Monitor has learned. The pair are certainly familiar with the weapons complex, with Hobson heading up the House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee for six years and Augustine leading Lockheed Martin while it bid to manage Sandia National Laboratories, but they were picked to also bring an outside perspective to the 12-member panel. Hobson, in particular, is an interesting choice, not only because he was a Republican selected to the panel by a Democrat. During his time as the House’s top Energy and Water appropriator, he was responsible for requiring competitive bidding for all DOE contracts that had not been competed in the previous 50 years, was an adamant opponent of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, and helped oppose the scuttled Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator and Reliable Replacement Warhead programs. Augustine was the CEO of Martin Marietta and later Lockheed Martin from 1987 to 1997, when the company ran the Y-12 National Security Complex for DOE and took over as the management and operating contractor at Sandia National Laboratories. More recently, he served on a three-person panel that analyzed security across the weapons complex in the wake of last year’s security breach at the Y-12 National Security Complex.

NW&M Monitor has also learned that former Strategic Command chief Adm. Richard Mies will serve as a co-chair of the panel. Mies was selected to the panel by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Democrats have not yet selected a co-chair. Ten members of the panel have been picked thus far; only Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have not made their selections to the committee, which is required to finish an interim report by the end of June and complete its report Feb. 1, 2014.