A Happy New Year to all of our readers.
William Lynn, the former Pentagon comptroller and current Raytheon executive, is being vetted for a senior position in the Obama administration, and defense industry insiders believe that position will be deputy defense secretary.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has officially invited political appointees to stay in their positions until replaced.
The New York Times used its lead editorial on Sunday to propose significant changes to the Pentagon's spending plans, declaring "there is plenty of fat in the defense budget."
Army Secretary Pete Geren won't be sticking around for the Obama administration, he announced today -- though he will stay until his successor is confirmed.
Inside the Army this week runs a story on the service's transition efforts that's based on a briefing you should check out even if you're not all that interested in the Army.
A moment worth noting from yesterday's press briefing with Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell.
The Cambridge, MA-based Project on Defense Alternatives has released two new reports on the future of national security, one targeted at the transition and near-term debate over defense and the other more broadly focused.
Bush Defense Secretary Robert Gates, soon to be Obama Defense Secretary Robert Gates, has a neatly timed article in Foreign Affairs that was just made available.
Politico reports Defense Secretary Robert Gates has agreed to stick at the Pentagon, where he will be part of an Obama national security team that includes Sen. Hillary Clinton at State and retired Gen. James Jones as national security adviser.
The Washington Post is reporting on its Web site this afternoon that President-Elect Obama is "close" to naming his national security adviser -- retired Marine Corps Gen.
As we told you this morning over on the INSIDER, there's a new U.S. Strategic Command message out there suspending the use of "flash media"devices -- "memory sticks, thumb drives and camera flash memory cards" -- because of some significant security concerns.
The Obama transition team has issued an expanded list of "team leaders" for its agency reviews.
The Washington Post today looks somewhat skeptically at President-elect Obama's plans to "reverse years-long trends, including pork barrel spending by Congress, the tendency of government employees to leave to work for government contractors and a sharp rise in the use of no-bid contracts."
Don't miss our new special report on what comes next now that the biggest question -- who's the next president? -- has been answered.
The Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute has published a monograph summing up a conference on “Leadership and National Security Reform: The Next President’s Agenda," hosted earlier this year by the Bush School of Texas A&M University.
Buried within this Bloomberg story on how well Republicans and Democrats say the current administration is handling the transition process is this bit on matters of interest in these parts:
The New York Times today reports that the Bush administration got together recently with Afghanistan experts to talk about the rapidly growing conclusion that things are not improving over there.
Check out today's INSIDER for a good rundown of the latest.