Doug Fremont is the new chief of staff for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), an agency spokesperson said Monday. He succeeds William “Ike” White, who left to work at the Department of Energy’s Cold War nuclear-weapon cleanup program.
Fremont is the former security chief for the semiautonomous DOE nuclear-weapons agency. He was removed from that post in 2012, after an elderly nun and two other anti-nuclear activists breached the perimeter of the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee and painted pacifist slogans on some federal property.
Fremont remained with the the agency after the Y-12 incident and eventually worked his way back to being chief and associate administrator of the NNSA’s Office of Defense Nuclear Security. In that role, his most recent until the reassignment to the administrator’s office, he set the direction for security programs at the agency’s field sites.
He will now be the point person at DOE headquarters for interfacing with the NNSA administrator and ensuring cooperation among headquarters employees.
Ike White earlier this month became senior adviser for environmental management to Paul Dabbar, DOE’s undersecretary for science. He is the top official at the nuclear cleanup office following Anne Marie White’s resignation on June 14 as assistant energy secretary for environmental management.
David Huizenga, the longtime deputy for NNSA Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation, replaced Ike White as the agency’s associate principal administrator: the top career civil servant at the weapons agency. However, Huizenga is not dual-hatted as NNSA chief of staff, as Ike White was.
