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Spring 2009

Faculty Member Chris Kojm Serves on National Security Transition Team

Most Americans read headlines about transition teams. Christopher A. Kojm, professor of the practice of international affairs, observed the process from the inside.

"I got a call from the Obama presidential transition team looking for help. They were looking for Democrats with national security backgrounds who knew Capitol Hill," said Kojm, who directs the Elliott School's Master of International Policy and Practice program and its U.S. Foreign Policy Summer program. As a former House Foreign Affairs Committee staffer, deputy director of the 9/11 Commission, and senior advisor to the Iraq Study Group, Kojm certainly fit the bill.

The team of about 10 people was tasked with facilitating the Senate confirmation process for President Obama's intelligence nominees. The team's responsibilities included visiting senators to get a feel for the types of questions to expect, filling out detailed personnel and policy questionnaires, and helping the nominees prepare for real hearings through several "mock" hearings. The entire process is necessary, Kojm said, so that the Senate can be sure that the President's nominees are people of integrity, capable of fulfilling their duties of office.

Almost without exception, problems arise during the vetting process.

"People who do not like [the nominee] come out of the woodwork," he said. He believes most of the complaints are exaggerations. Nevertheless, he says the Senate is predisposed to confirming presidential nominees unless there are major concerns.

"If all goes well, there is only one public hearing," Kojm said. In fact, it took the Senate Intelligence Committee less than three hours to consider Dennis C. Blair as director of national intelligence. Pending Senate votes pushed the hearing of Leon Panetta, the nominee for director of the CIA, into a second day. Both nominees were confirmed by unanimous consent by the Senate — the ideal outcome.

This was the first time Kojm had served on a transition team, but he has testified before Congress five times that he can remember. "In a sense, I've done this all my life," he said, "I've organized hearings, and prepared members, witnesses, and myself for hearings. It's a setting I know very well."

Kojm had been working for the Obama campaign in the summer and fall on his own time before receiving the call around Thanksgiving to serve on the transition team. "The nearly two-and-a-half month job of volunteering for a transition team is like taking on another full-time job," said Kojm. But he was willing to volunteer his time, including weekends, for an important cause. "It's an honor to be asked and a responsibility as a citizen," he said.

His co-director on the project was former CIA Inspector General L. Britt Snider, who served previously on the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Kojm has kept in touch with both officials he helped get confirmed, and Snider has agreed to come speak to MIPP students at the Elliott School in the beginning of April. "Contacts I've made throughout the process have immediate and direct benefit to the school," he said.

Kojm also draws upon his experiences on the transition team in the course he teaches on Congress in foreign policy. "I bring to the students things you cannot get from the textbook and cannot get from the library. You just get them by experience," he says.

And ultimately, the experience reflects well on the entire school, Kojm said. "It means the Elliott School is a policy player."