Shaping a security team, Obama’s challenge deepens

BEN FELLER

AP White House Correspondent

WASHINGTON — Barely a week after win­ning re-election, Pres­i­dent Barack Obama sud­denly con­fronts a deep­en­ing chal­lenge in assem­bling a new national secu­rity team, his task com­pli­cated by a scan­dal that has cost him a CIA chief and raised doubts about his Afghanistan war commander.

Hard ques­tions from Con­gress, poten­tially bit­ter con­fir­ma­tion hear­ings and a scan­dal of infi­delity and inap­pro­pri­ate emails are sud­denly shap­ing the fight ahead. The White House por­trayed a pres­i­dent focused on the econ­omy and con­fi­dent in his mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence lead­er­ship, but clearly not thrilled.

When asked if the per­son­nel trou­bles were an unwel­come dis­trac­tion, pres­i­den­tial spokesman Jay Car­ney said: “I cer­tainly wouldn’t call it welcome.”

Obama was already expect­ing to have to replace his chief diplo­mat, Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton, and per­haps his defense sec­re­tary, Leon Panetta. Those two alone — plus Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Tim­o­thy Gei­th­ner, who is also leav­ing — help shape Obama’s think­ing and rep­re­sent him before the world.

Now Obama is with­out his CIA direc­tor, David Petraeus, the once acclaimed mil­i­tary gen­eral in Iraq and Afghanistan who resigned in dis­grace last week over an extra­mar­i­tal affair.

The details of that scan­dal keep expand­ing Tues­day, includ­ing the rev­e­la­tion that the top U.S. com­man­der in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen, is under inves­ti­ga­tion by the Pen­ta­gon for poten­tially inap­pro­pri­ate com­mu­ni­ca­tions with another woman in the case. That, in turn, has frozen Allen’s nom­i­na­tion to be the next com­man­der of U.S. Euro­pean Com­mand and the com­man­der of NATO forces in Europe, which casts more doubt about a mil­i­tary lead­er­ship in which each move affects another.

“It’s a hard moment for the admin­is­tra­tion,” said Joshua Rovner, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of strat­egy and pol­icy at the U.S. Naval War Col­lege in Rhode Island. “It cer­tainly wasn’t expected, but if any­thing good comes out of it, they do have a chance to take a long, hard look at strategy.”

He noted that Petraeus had taken on such revered sta­tus for his mil­i­tary career that he won con­fir­ma­tion as CIA chief with lit­tle scrutiny.

Even beyond the sur­prise dif­fi­cul­ties, Obama could have trou­ble with the rest of his high-stakes turnover.

When Clin­ton leaves, a favorite to replace her is Susan Rice, an Obama loy­al­ist who serves as U.S. ambas­sador to the United Nations. She could face a bruis­ing con­fir­ma­tion hear­ing given that she was the first face of the administration’s maligned expla­na­tion of the fatal attack on the U.S. con­sulate in Beng­hazi, Libya.

“She’s clearly going to have a lit­tle more dif­fi­cult time than she would have if she hadn’t gone out on all those talk shows,” said Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., the second-ranking Sen­ate Repub­li­can. Kyl is retir­ing at year’s end and likely would not get a vote on Rice, but he said: “As of right now, I wouldn’t sup­port her.”

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said Rice could have a dif­fi­cult time win­ning con­fir­ma­tion, although he didn’t take a position.

“I’m con­cerned about the fact that she went on Sun­day shows and said it was the prod­uct of a spon­ta­neous upris­ing as opposed to a ter­ror­ist attack. Why did they wait so long to pub­licly …change their posi­tion on it? I think she’d have to answer ques­tions about that, no doubt about it.”

Some of Rice’s key advo­cates pre­dict Repub­li­can law­mak­ers would not have the incli­na­tion or the votes to try to block Obama from appoint­ing the State Depart­ment chief he wants. Yet oth­ers expect her con­fir­ma­tion hear­ing to be con­tentious and are wary of pick­ing that fight at the start of the sec­ond term.

The other top can­di­date for the State job is Sen. John Kerry of Mass­a­chu­setts, who is expected to be con­firmed eas­ily by his cham­ber col­leagues. His depar­ture from the Sen­ate, though, could poten­tially cost Obama’s party a seat by cre­at­ing an open­ing for the man who just lost the other Sen­ate seat, Scott Brown.

The idea of Kerry as defense sec­re­tary, which has also been floated, is not one that he has expressed an inter­est in, accord­ing to peo­ple close to him.

For Obama, the post-election period was intended to focus on start­ing to enact the eco­nomic agenda at the core of his re-election bid. He and Con­gress are in the hunt for elu­sive com­pro­mise before Jan. 1 if they are to avoid a huge pack­age of tax increases and spend­ing cuts that could derail the eco­nomic recovery.

Obama is, in fact, pur­su­ing that course. But a story involv­ing sex, res­ig­na­tions, national secu­rity and con­gres­sional over­sight has a way of grab­bing attention.

Car­ney, the president’s spokesman, char­ac­ter­ized the cases of Petraeus and Allen as indi­vid­ual mat­ters that reflected no broader theme or challenge.

“I really would ask you to not extrap­o­late broadly,” Car­ney told reporters. “The pres­i­dent has great con­fi­dence in the mil­i­tary, great con­fi­dence in his com­man­ders, and will con­tinue to have that confidence.”

That expres­sion of con­fi­dence extends to Allen, which is sig­nif­i­cant given the state of America’s longest war. Allen is due soon to give Panetta a rec­om­men­da­tion on the pace of U.S. troop with­drawals in 2013; about 68,000 U.S. troops are still serv­ing in a war that is on pace to con­tinue until the end of 2014.

How long Panetta him­self will lead the defense agency is yet another unknown for Obama. The Pen­ta­gon chief Panetta recently has indi­cated a will­ing­ness to stay on for at least some of Obama’s second-term.

When asked whether he would rule out stay­ing for all of Obama’s sec­ond term, Panetta said: “Who the hell knows?”

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