Meanwhile, Douglas Lute, the deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan, was said to have been leaving this summer — apparently someone had been tapped to replace him, but that didn’t work out — but Lute has just told his staff that he’s staying indefinitely.
Lippert news?
(Washington Post photo illustration) - Orly Taitz was reprimanded by Judge Royce Lamberth, who said she was “toying with the court or displaying her own stupidity.”
Speaking of staff moves, we had thought something was going to be worked out for former NSC chief of staff Mark Lippert , who was last seen on Oct. 1, 2009, heading off to an active-duty posting as an intelligence officer with the Navy SEALs.
Lippert, our colleague Bob Woodward wrote in “Obama’s Wars,” was bounced after former NSC chief Jim Jones complained that Lippert was leaking damaging stories about him.
Lippert left Iraq earlier this year and apparently has been either ensconced at the Pentagon or doing various missions that we can’t talk about in places we don’t know.
The respected South Korean newspaper Dong-A Ilbo reported on April 17 that Lippert “will take over as the Pentagon’s assistant secretary for Asia-Pacific security affairs,” but he has yet to be nominated.
There have been reports of quiet opposition to him in the Senate related to his opposition to the Afghan surge — although he left the White House two months before the surge was announced.
Latest word is that Lippert’s nomination for the job may well be good to go.
Contractors’ pay
Federal contractors are getting increasingly worried that a partisan deadlock over the debt ceiling may result in the government’s not being able to pay them.
Well, there’s good news and bad news here. The good news is the law says that as a government contractor you can take your case to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims and get a default judgment ordering the government to pay up.
The bad news? The judges won’t be working and the lights at the court will be out.
Frantz in motion
Major move at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Douglas Frantz, the committee’s highly regarded deputy staff director and chief investigator, is off to open the new office here of Kroll’s business intelligence and investigations practice. His title will be managing director.
Frantz has been with the committee since Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) became chairman 21 / 2 years ago. Before that, Frantz had made an honest living as a reporter and editor at the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. It had been widely assumed that when Kerry became secretary of state in a second Obama administration, he’d take Frantz with him for a top spot. That may be less likely now.
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