President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration will at last have a confirmation hearing Thursday before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The committee announced the hearing Tuesday, one month and 21 days after the White House nominated Lisa Gordon-Hagerty to run the semiautonomous Department of Energy agency in charge of roughly $13-billion a year in nuclear-weapon, naval nuclear reactor, and nonproliferation programs.
If approved by the committee and confirmed by the full Senate, Gordon-Hagerty would become the first female administrator of the NNSA, and the fifth leader since the agency was established by Congress in 2000.
Gordon-Hagerty would replace Frank Klotz, a retired Air Force general who served about four years before retiring in January. Steven Erhart, head of the NNSA’s Office of Policy, is the agency’s acting administrator.
Gordon-Hagerty has previously served at DOE and the National Security Council, and on Capitol Hill. She is currently president of Tier Tech International: a government consulting firm in McLean, Va., specializing in national security. She also owns and operates her own consulting firm, LEG Inc., in McLean.
Prior to those gigs, Gordon-Hagerty was vice president and chief operating officer of the quasi-public United States Enrichment Corp., now the privately held Centrus Energy. She was laid off from the company in 2005 as part of a reorganization that preceded the 2014 bankruptcy filing that transformed the former enrichment company into a uranium reseller.
Gordon-Hagerty’s last stint in public service was on the National Security Council during President George W. Bush’s first term. She last served at DOE in the 1990s during the Bill Clinton administration. Gordon-Hagerty was first director of DOE’s Office of Emergency Response, where she led efforts on emergency readiness and response for nuclear or radiological incidents. She then became acting director of the Office of Weapons Surety, lead official for ensuring the safety and security of the U.S. nuclear arms program.
