Todd Jacobson
NS&D Monitor
4/11/2014
More than seven months after Frank Klotz was nominated to head up the National Nuclear Security Administration, the Senate finally confirmed the retired lieutenant general, clearing him by a voice vote late in the afternoon on April 8. Klotz’s confirmation ends the NNSA’s 15-month gap without a permanent administrator; Neile Miller, Michael Lempke and Bruce Held have each led the agency in an acting capacity since Tom D’Agostino left the NNSA in January 2013. Klotz was nominated to the position in August and cleared by the Senate Armed Services Committee in September, but his nomination became bogged down in a broader partisan dispute over nominees in the Senate. “We really need someone who is deeply educated and experienced in this,” Held told NS&D Monitor on the sidelines of a House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee hearing, minutes after Klotz was confirmed. “NNSA is a major national security element of the U.S. government so we really need someone of Frank’s stature and leadership ability to run it, and then get [Principal Deputy Administrator nominee] Madelyn [Creedon] in there with him.” Creedon has yet to be confirmed.
Klotz retired from the Air Force in 2011 after standing up Global Strike Command, and has worked since then as a fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations. During his Air Force career, he commanded a strategic missile squadron and operations group at Grand Forks Air Force Base and a missile wing at Minot Air Force Base. He also headed up Air Force Space Command’s 20th Air Force and Strategic Command’s Task Force 214, and worked as Director for Nuclear Policy and Arms Control with the National Security Council at the White House and as a defense attaché at the American embassy in Moscow. “Lieutenant General Klotz’s confirmation comes at a critical point for the National Nuclear Security Administration,” Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said in a statement. “His breadth of military and national security leadership experience makes him uniquely suited to lead the NNSA, fulfilling its commitments to the management and security of the nation’s nuclear weapons, nuclear nonproliferation, naval reactor programs, and nuclear and radiological emergency preparedness efforts.”
House Lawmakers Pushed for Klotz’s Confirmation
Klotz will take the helm at the agency at a pivotal time in its history. The NNSA is embarking on a massive plan to modernize the nation’s weapons complex and nuclear stockpile, but cost overruns and delays on major projects, as well as safety and security scandals, have sapped the agency’s credibility with Congress. Last month, the co-chairmen of the Congressionally appointed advisory panel on NNSA governance acknowledged that the current governance structure of the agency had failed. In the months that Klotz’s nomination languished in the Senate, lawmakers keen on improving the NNSA pressed for his confirmation. “However much we may wish for the cultural problems and mismanagement at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to go away, they are sure to continue without robust leadership at the top of the organization,” Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) and Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) said in a letter to Sens. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on the day Klotz was confirmed.
The lawmakers—the chairman and ranking member of the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee—said Klotz would “provide the necessary leadership and stability that this organization desperately needs. Any further delay in his confirmation would have deeply negative and long-lasting impacts on national security and the future of the nuclear security enterprise.” Though Klotz has been confirmed, it remains unclear when he will actually assume his leadership duties. An NNSA spokesman said this week that a date for his swearing in ceremony had not yet been set.
