Friend of Cheney tapped to become NASA chief

The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — Ending months of speculation, the White House has picked a seasoned public management expert with close ties to Vice President Dick Cheney to run America’s troubled space agency.

Sean O’Keefe, currently deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, will be nominated today as the new administrator to NASA, a White House official said Wednesday morning.

O’Keefe, who will need Senate confirmation, is not known as a space enthusiast. NASA, however, faces a budget crisis due to severe cost overruns on the international space station, of which Boeing is a prime contractor, and O’Keefe is reputed to be a tough and pragmatic manager with experience at large government agencies.

He has served as secretary of the Navy, as comptroller and chief financial officer for the Pentagon, and as staff director of the U.S. Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.

O’Keefe is "a troubleshooter, and he’s got a long track record of loyalty and success with Cheney and Bush. He’s their man," said Robert McClure, senior associate dean of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, where O’Keefe was a professor before joining the Bush administration. "He’s that rare combination of a man who knows good management and knows good politics … . I can’t imagine anybody who can deal with the problems at NASA any better than Sean."

Daniel Goldin, who leaves Friday after nearly 10 years as administrator, called O’Keefe "a man of intelligence, energy and integrity."

O’Keefe testified earlier this month that, when he examined NASA’s problems this spring, he realized that the agency faced "a management and financial crisis." He said that NASA has to put "management excellence" on par with technical excellence.

He provided a chart showing that NASA’s budget for human space flight dwarfs the budgets of several other major government research-and-development areas, such as the Pentagon’s basic and applied research program, and the National Cancer Institute. Human spaceflight is budgeted for more than $7 billion in fiscal year 2002 — "a huge amount when compared to other science and technology opportunities," O’Keefe said.

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