Try Yahoo News on Firefox
Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III said in an Associated Press interview that he told Panetta last Friday, on Panetta's first day as Pentagon chief, that he planned to resign for personal reasons.
"I thought this was a logical point for me to depart the Pentagon," Lynn said during the interview in his office.
He said he told Panetta that he would be best served by having a deputy who was willing to stay at least through President Barack Obama's first term, which ends in January 2013. ...
Lynn said he was leaving for "personal, family reasons," and wanted to spend more time with his children. He said it had nothing to do with Obama's choice of CIA director Panetta to succeed Robert Gates. Lynn said he knew Panetta only slightly from periodic contact while both served in the Clinton administration. [...]
Panetta's chief spokesman, Doug Wilson, said Panetta has begun a search for a deputy. Wilson said it was possible that a nomination could come by the end of the summer.
A former Pentagon comptroller and Raytheon executive, Lynn has focused on budgets, and other close-in management tasks of the enormous agency, while also tending to more specialized issues, such as cybersecurity.
It's not clear if the former CIA chief Panetta--himself a former head of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB)--will want a deputy who has similar budget-crunching skills.
One obvious potential candidate to succeed Lynn: Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy, who has frequently served as a critical DoD point person at committee meetings among inter-agency National Security Council deputies.
- Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III
- Leon Panetta
- Policy Michele Flournoy
- National Security Council deputies
- President Barack Obama s
- Secretary of Defense
- the Pentagon
