Nicholson Persuades Three Top Staff Members, All Retired Military, to Stay at Agency
By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Leading the Department of Veterans Affairs is one of the biggest jobs in the federal government.
With 230,000 employees and an annual budget approaching $70 billion, Veterans Affairs is the government's second-largest agency, after the Defense Department. It has the important and politically sensitive job of delivering federally subsidized health care and other benefits to the nation's 26 million veterans and their families.
The new man in charge is Secretary Jim Nicholson, 66, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point who served as an Army Ranger in Vietnam. Nicholson took over in February for Anthony J. Principi, who was widely viewed as an effective advocate for veterans. Nicholson's résumé includes stints as Republican National Committee chairman and, most recently, U.S. ambassador to the Vatican. But absent, until now, has been any direct VA administrative experience.
The department is facing greater scrutiny than ever. Veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are returning home, sometimes with serious wounds and facing a difficult transition back into civilian life. More generally, some veterans have complained that the department is slow and sloppy in processing their disability claims. And Congress is pressing the agency to provide more and better services at a time when budgets are tight and the federal deficit is growing.
"As you will soon find out, running VA is one of the tougher jobs in Washington," Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho), chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, told Nicholson at his confirmation hearing in January.
Nicholson is not on his own. Three top officials who served under Principi remain at the department, providing the new secretary with a golden triangle of key advisers and administrators.
"The reason I kept them is because I got lucky enough to talk them into staying," Nicholson said in an e-mail statement. "They're each veterans with distinguished military careers. They each know the VA very well. Their experience, expertise and loyalty are a real value to me and to the VA."
Here is a brief look at the three key members of Nicholson's inner circle:
Gordon H. Mansfield , 63, deputy secretary, is a veteran both of the military and of Washington. His wide-ranging duties include ensuring that Nicholson has all the information he needs, overseeing the vast VA operation, making the department more efficient, and keeping in touch with Capitol Hill and veterans service organizations.
Mansfield enlisted in the Army in 1964 and did two tours in Vietnam, where he was shot during the Tet Offensive in 1968, suffering a spinal cord injury that left him with limited use of one leg. He received VA care for his wounds and vocational training when he left the military.
After practicing law in Florida, Mansfield went to work for the Paralyzed Veterans of America, a Washington-based nonprofit advocacy group, in 1981. Eight years later he became an assistant secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and he returned to the advocacy group as executive director in 1993. His advocacy jobs taught Mansfield how to navigate Capitol Hill, and President Bush nominated him in 2001 to be assistant VA secretary for congressional and legislative affairs under Principi. He rose to the deputy secretary's post 2 1/2 years later.
"I've really had an opportunity to see what was going on across the whole department," he said, "because all the issues, one way or another, wind up working their way through Capitol Hill."
Claude M. "Mick" Kicklighter , 71, chief of staff. In Kicklighter, Nicholson has a versatile aide with years of experience as a leader and manager, as well as experience in Iraq and extensive knowledge of the military and the federal bureaucracy.
A career military man, Kicklighter was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army after graduating from Mercer University in 1955. He rose to the rank of lieutenant general during a 36-year career that took him to places such as Vietnam, Iran, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii and the Netherlands. He retired from active duty in 1991 but did not slow down, serving as deputy undersecretary of the Army for international affairs during the Clinton administration and later as deputy VA undersecretary for memorial affairs. When Bush took office, he nominated Kicklighter to be assistant VA secretary for policy and planning, but soon the ex-general was on the move again.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist strikes, Kicklighter led the effort to harden VA facilities against any attack. In December 2003, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld picked him to direct the Pentagon's Iraq Transition Team, an entity that helped shut down the Coalition Provisional Authority and install the new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Kicklighter moved to the State Department as a special adviser for stabilization and security operations in Iraq and Afghanistan last fall, but in February, Nicholson called him back.
"For me, with the nation at war, the international war on terrorism, I'm just proud to serve in any capacity," Kicklighter said.
Long-standing ties to Principi brought Tim S. McClain , 56, to the department as general counsel in 2001 . McClain had met Principi years earlier when both were serving in the Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps. McClain and Principi's wife, Elizabeth, later were partners in a small law practice in San Diego, where McClain specialized in military administrative law, medical licensing and civil litigation.
A 1970 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, McClain served in Vietnam as a surface warfare officer before attending law school as part of the Navy's Law Education Program.
At Veterans Affairs, he oversees a legal team of nearly 400 lawyers and grapples with matters that include health care benefits law, employment law, regulation and appropriations and legislation. A variety of legal issues crop up at such a big department, an agency that adjudicates disability and pension claims and has a health care system with 157 hospitals, 850 outpatient clinics and more than 5 million patients annually.
McClain, who also has pulled extra duty as VA chief management officer and acting assistant secretary for human resources, said the department's biggest challenge is providing the best service it can during a time of tight budgets.
"We see an opportunity to really have a very positive impact on those who have served and those who are serving," McClain said. "We get the opportunity to interact with these heroes. There is no shortage of job satisfaction at the VA."
