Between Presidents, a Dangerous Gap

By JAMIE GORELICK and SLADE GORTON
NYT

NOW that we have presumptive presidential nominees from the two major political parties, we need to turn our attention to the transition that will take place six months from now. One of the observations of the 9/11 commission was that the deeply flawed presidential transition of 2000 and 2001 created a dangerous period of vulnerability.

As always, the crowd coming in was dismissive of the concerns of the crowd going out. There was a mismatch between the concerns of the Clinton national security team and those of the incoming Bush team. While there were briefings between the election and the swearing-in, there was no trust — and thus no effective dialogue — between the members of the two administrations.

In addition, President Bush took too long to set priorities and direction for his national-security team. This was a result partly of the prolonged battle over the 2000 election, but it also reflected a basic problem in how we populate our government agencies — we do so much too slowly. Neither nominations nor confirmations come fast enough.

The 9/11 commission worried that terrorists would take advantage of our weakness during transitions, just as Al Qaeda did when it attacked Madrid just before Spain’s elections in 2004.

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