U.S. President-elect Barack Obama held a national security meeting Monday in Chicago, with his picks for the top diplomatic and security posts in his administration.
The meeting was to include Secretary of State-designate Hillary
Clinton; current Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who is to stay in that
post; Attorney General-designate Eric Holder; and Mr. Obama's pick for
secretary of Homeland Security, Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano.
Also attending the talks were to be the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen; United Nations Ambassador-designate Susan
Rice; National Intelligence chief Mike McConnell; and National Security
Advisor-designate James Jones.
Separately, Mr. Obama held an afternoon news conference to announce his energy and environmental teams, and to discuss the nation's future in those sectors. Mr. Obama named Nobel physics laureate Steven Chu as energy secretary. Chu shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics for developing methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light. He is the director of the U.S. Energy Department's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.
The chief of staff for the governor of (the northeastern state of) New Jersey, Lisa Jackson, was named to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She previously was New Jersey's environmental protection commissioner. Mr. Obama also named former EPA chief Carol Browner to a newly created post to coordinate policy on energy, the environment and climate change.