The Senate Armed Services Committee is scheduled on Nov. 29 to vet William Bookless, a veteran nuclear weapons scientist who spent much of his career at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, to be second in command at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).
The Donald Trump administration on Aug. 16 nominated Bookless as principal deputy administrator for the semiautonomous Department of Energy agency. On Tuesday, the Senate Armed Services Committee announced the senior Livermore physicist would at last get a nomination hearing.
Bookless would fill the last of four senior NNSA management jobs that require Senate confirmation. The others are: NNSA administrator; deputy administrator for defense programs; and deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation. Half of those jobs will be filled by former Livermore hands, if the committee approves Bookless’ nomination and the full Senate confirms him in the waning days of the 115th Congress.
In October, Charles Verdon was sworn in as NNSA deputy administrator for defense programs, in charge of all the agency’s nuclear weapons and special nuclear materials missions. Verdon was principal associate director for Livermore’s Weapons and Complex Integration Directorate before joining NNSA headquarters in Washington.
Congress is slated to end its 115th session on Dec. 14, setting a shot clock to get Bookless to the Forrestal Building in Washington within the first half of Trump’s first term. Republicans added to their Senate majority in the midterm elections last week, so the GOP can still confirm Bookless in the 116th Congress that begins in January.
Bookless retired from government service in 2015, after serving as an adviser to then-NNSA Administrator Tom D’Agnostio. Prior to that, he was assistant laboratory director for policy and planning at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York state. He more than three decades at Livermore, where among other jobs he served as deputy associate director for the facility’s nuclear weapons program and associate director for safety and environmental protection.
