More than 10 months into the Donald Trump administration, the White House has not nominated anyone to lead the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) — something entirely consistent with the few organizational precedents the agency has established in its short history.
Yet Trump prides himself on shattering Washington precedents and is, according to rumor, on track to become only the second first-term U.S. president to nominate an administrator for the semiautonomous Department of Energy’s (DOE) agency.
George W. Bush was the first, and had been in office for more than two years before appointing Linton Brooks to the job.
Trump is looking to move faster. In June, sources with knowledge of discussions between DOE and the White House said the president wanted Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, a former National Security Council and DOE staffer, to succeed Frank Klotz as head of the NNSA.
Gordon-Hagerty herself did not reply to a phone message seeking comment and has previously declined to speak to Nuclear Security and Deterrence Monitor about her possible ascent to the top DOE nuclear weapons post.
Klotz, at deadline Friday, was still NNSA administrator, as he has been for more than three years and seven months now.
There have been all of four Senate-confirmed NNSA administrators since Congress created the agency in 2000 by reshuffling DOE’s active nuclear weapons programs into a single organization stovepipe that reports to the Office of the Secretary of Energy.
Of these, Klotz is the third-longest serving, barely trailing Brooks. Brooks might have made it longer, had he not been forced to resign in 2007 by Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman after a serious security breach at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Thomas D’Agostino, Klotz’s Bush-appointed predecessor, is the longest-serving NNSA administrator to date. D’Agostino served nearly five-and-a-half years in the top spot at NNSA, mostly during the Barack Obama administration.
With the exception of Brooks, who resigned midway through George W. Bush’s presidency, every NNSA administrator has served in more than one presidential administration. If Klotz hangs on another two months, every NNSA administrator but Brooks will have served at least a year working for the successor of the president who appointed him.
The NNSA is a roughly $13-billion-a-year DOE agency that maintains, repairs, and ensures the continuing potency of U.S. nuclear warheads. The agency also manages global nuclear nonproliferation programs and reactor programs for U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines.
