A little over a month after the secretary of energy demanded her resignation as head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, the Donald Trump administration welcomed Lisa Gordon-Hagerty back into the fold, appointing her to a Pentagon advisory board.
The Department of Defense announced Wednesday that Gordon-Hagerty will join its Defense Policy Board, potentially giving the Department of Energy’s former nuclear-weapons boss an official line of communication to the Joe Biden administration.
The board, a Federal Advisory Committee first chartered by the Pentagon in 1985, meets around four times a year, or as needed, to provide advice for the secretary of defense through the undersecretary of defense for policy. Members serve one- to four-year terms that must be renewed annually, according to the board’s latest two-year charter, which the Defense Department last renewed in 2019.
Just after the presidential election on Nov. 3, Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette demanded that Gordon-Hagerty resign after two years, eight months and 22 days leading the semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which runs DOE’s civilian nuclear weapons programs.
The two senior officials had feuded all year over the size of the NNSA’s budget for 2021 and beyond, with the White House eventually agreeing with Gordon-Hagerty — over Brouillette’s objections — that the weapons agency needed about $20 billion for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1.
Gordon-Hagerty was the shortest-tenured of all NNSA administrators except one, and only the second NNSA administrator in the position’s 20-year history who did not serve under two presidents. Two of the last three NNSA administrators, retired Gen. Frank Klotz and Thomas D’Agostino, stayed on at DOE after presidential transitions.
President-elect Joe Biden has not yet said who he will nominate as Secretary of Energy, much less who he might nominate to fill the undersecretary-level position of NNSA administrator. Trump did not officially nominate Gordon-Hagerty to run the NNSA until about a year into his term.
Meanwhile, William Bookless remains acting NNSA administrator. Bookless, a longtime Lawrence Livermore hand with policy experience at other DOE sites and headquarters, became NNSA’s principal deputy administrator in 2019.
