1 The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign ...

Q: Then we’ll go on to what you did after the transition worked its way out, and I haven’t
asked you about how the transition team, in your particular aspect, fit with the State
Department and CIA and all, were there any problems, and that sort of thing. So we’ll
pick it up then.
MILLER: Yes, all right.
Q: Today is the twelfth of March, 2004. Bill, just to reprise a bit – who composed the
transition team to the State Department?
***
MILLER: Well, the key players in the State Department transition team, I would say,
were Tony Lake, Richard Moose, Leon Fuerth, Warren Christopher, and Brian Atwood.
These were all significant figures in previous administrations. They had held high
positions in foreign affairs. The transition team of Clinton, just as other president’s
transition teams, was also composed of people who were involved in the campaign, so
they were really political operatives. A number were office-seekers who had a place in the
transition which they carved for themselves, in many cases, because of money given or
services rendered during a campaign not because of experience or skills or ability in
foreign affairs. Then there were the bureaucratic professionals, who were expected to
continue to hold key positions in the new administration. The transition team I just
described were in charge of putting together the policy papers for the new president and
the new administration, and to draw up lists of personnel who would be appointed by the
president to key positions.
It was very free-form – one could not say it was an orderly process. It was governed by
the collegiality and comfortable familiarity of many of the individuals involved. There is,
in this sense, a continuity in our political system, even in foreign affairs and defense. The
people who go into policy work tend to do it for a lifetime, even if there are interruptions
because of change of party and changes of direction in individual professions. So this was
not a group of people without experience. They were extremely experienced, and were
able to draw on an enormous reservoir of experienced people. The non-governmental
world is characterized by the think tanks, which are, in some respects, holding places for
people who would like to be running things in government and have done so in the past.
It was the place of lawyers, who were involved in legal work on international matters, or
they were doing legal work in campaigns. The Council on Foreign Relations in New York
and Washington is another holding place, as are the faculties and institutes in the major
universities. If you had to give numbers, there were several thousand people who were
milling about in the transition, most, of course, were on the fringes hoping to break into
the inner circles.
The transition had two major categories. First, personnel – that is, who was going to be
appointed to what position, and how they were to be vetted. The second was, what is the
174