As the State Department celebrates its
biggest success by signing the
new START treaty in Prague today, back in
Washington a key arms-control job remains unfilled with no nominee in
sight.
The "T" family at State, which is
comprised of three arms-control related bureaus, has seen a real
resurgence in this administration. This is due both to the genuine
desire of President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
to reinvigorate the capacity and strength of the arms-control
bureaucracy and the efforts of under secretary Ellen
Tauscher, the former congresswoman who now
finds herself with the ability to implement the arms-control agenda
she advocated for years on Capitol Hill.
The bureau itself is alive again. It's
even been
redecorated.
And Tauscher has brought on a top-echelon staff
with a broad range of experience. Some stars include Deputy Assistant
Secretary Frank Rose, who was Tauscher's key missile defense
aide in Congress, chief of staff Simon Limage, Wade Boese, formerly of the Arms Control Association,
Jofi Joseph, former foreign-policy advisor
for Sen. Bob Casey, Josh
Kirshner, formerly of the House Intelligence Committee
, and
many others.
But one key position in her bureau
remains leaderless. The bureau of International Security and
Nonproliferation (ISN) still has no assistant secretary and there are
no signs a nomination is coming any time soon. That's a problem
because the ISN bureau is crucial to Tauscher's plan to reorganize
the T family, and even Sen. Richard Lugar has
noted that this will be more difficult without
an assistant secretary at the helm.
The staff is ably led by acting
assistant secretary Vann
Van Diepen, but his nomination could
reopen a contentious debate about the 2007 National Intelligence
Estimate on Iran, which the administration is trying to avoid.
State is right to be concerned about a
lengthy and contentious fight over the nomination. Leading GOP
senators such as Minority Whip Jon Kyl have been constantly
frustrated by what they see as the State
Department's reluctance to keep them in the loop on arms-control
issues.
State disputes that, pointing to the multiple breifings administration officials have given Kyl and his staff and noting that Kyl has even been to Geneva to oberserve the START negotiations himself.
He held up for months State's last arms
control nominee, Ambassador Laura Kennedy,before
finally removing his objections in February.
And the most obvious choice for the
open job, Van Diepen, is controversial as far as the GOP
leadership is concerned, due to his involvement in writing a
controversial 2007 National Intelligence estimate on Iran's nuclear
program.
Van Diepen was one of three principal
authors of the estimate,
which concluded, "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003,
Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program."
The administration is said to be
preparing a
new estimate that rolls back that claim,
although that will be classified.
In a little noticed congressional
hearing in late March, Congressman Ed Royce pressed Van Diepen
on the issue. Van Diepen tried to defend the NIE and said,
"by ‘nuclear weapons program' we mean Iran's nuclear weapon
design and weaponization work. ... We do not mean Iran's ...
uranium conversion and enrichment."
Clinton is said to be
supportive of Van Diepen. However, the GOP is already warning that
the nomination would be problematic.
"If Vann were nominated for any
role requiring senate confirmation, GOP senators would demand a
thorough review of the entire record related to the 2007 NIE and its
terribly flawed and political judgments," a senior GOP senate aide
told The Cable. "I would have thought State already has
enough fights on its hands."
Sources said that State had forwarded
the name of Steve Mull to the White House, but the White House
never acted on it and Mull is now said to be in line for another
State Department job in a different bureau.
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