OxBlog

# Posted 10:47 AM by Patrick Belton

SECRETARY WOLFOWITZ?: Sergeant Chafetz has recalled me to post (quite literally) after a lovely weekend leave of being reunited with my wife. Expect OxBlog restaurant reviews for the D.C. area to follow, but first off, keeping with the martial motif, let's look at personnel switch-ups contemplated for the administration’s national security team….

The New York Times speculates this morning about the positions of Secretary of State, Deputy Secretary, and DCI coming vacant in a second Bush term. Powell attributes this to a promise to his wife, and Armitage to his desire only to serve under his close friend the current secretary. The current horse race? It's Condi vs. Wolfowitz for Secretary, with Wolfowitz having short odds on National Security Advisor if Condi moves out of the Old Executive Office Building and into Foggy Bottom. Lugar and Gingrich round out the long list to be signing SecState on the cable traffic. For DCI, Rep. Porter Goss, a former case officer, is being batted around, along with DOD intelligence officials Stephen Cambone and Richard Haver, and the omnipresent Wolfowitz. Also being mentioned for Langley are current NSA director LTG Michael Hayden (USAF), former NSA director and Agency deputy director Adm. William Studeman, along with retired senators Warren Rudman and Fred Thompson - Thompson, incidentally, played DCI in a 1987 film, No Way Out. (I'm not a DCI, but I do play one on tv…) While the prospects of a Condian elevation to the seventh floor do make one’s pulse race, her writings do display a bent slightly more Kissingerian than idealistic; for my part, I'll be cheering in the peanut gallery for Wolfowitz, Lugar, and Goss.

UPDATE: Greg casts his ballot over at Belgravia Dispatch. (And whoever said you couldn't vote for appointed officials?)

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