Tarullo, Rice given key roles in Obama transition
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Former Clinton administration aides Daniel Tarullo, Susan Rice and James Steinberg were named on Wednesday by President-elect Barack Obama to advise him on policy matters as he prepares for his move to the White House.
Obama, who will succeed President George W. Bush on January 20, released a list of names of people who will head "policy working groups" during the next two months of the presidential transition.
Several of the names on the list are people believed to be under strong consideration for senior jobs in the incoming Obama administration.
One of the advisers, former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle, has been selected by Obama to become secretary of Health and Human Services, according to two Democratic officials.
The working groups will focus on seven areas: the economy; education; energy and the environment; health care; immigration; national security; and technology, innovation and government reform.
The appointments continue a pattern set so far by Obama, a Democrat, of tapping veterans who served under President Bill Clinton, the Democratic predecessor to Bush.
Tarullo, an expert on the international economy and regulatory matters, was named to head up the economic working group. He is a law professor at Georgetown University. During the Clinton administration, he worked in the State Department and later became a top White House adviser on international economic policy.
Tarullo has been mentioned in several media reports as a leading contender to head up the White House National Economic Council, which coordinates economic policy throughout the administration.
Heading up the advisory team on national security will be Steinberg, who was deputy national security adviser to Clinton; and Rice, who was assistant secretary of state for African affairs in the Clinton administration.
Rice was a senior adviser to Obama's campaign and an early supporter of the Democratic president-elect.
Steinberg, dean of the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, has been an informal adviser to Obama for the past several months.
Steinberg is among a handful of contenders under consideration for White House national security adviser.
Rice has been described in media reports as a candidate for a senior role within the White House, such as national security adviser. She has also been mentioned by some media as a possible contender to become ambassador to the United Nations.
Carol Browner, who served eight years in the Clinton administration as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, will head up the transition's advisory team on energy and the environment.
Alexander Aleinikoff, dean of the Georgetown University Law Center and a former official in the Immigration and Naturalization Service, will be part of a two-person team taking the lead on immigration issues.
Also heading up the immigration policy group will be Mariano-Florentino Cuellar, a Stanford Law School professor who served in Clinton's Treasury Department working on countering money-laundering and other financial crimes.
Leading the technology team are former Federal Communications Commission official Blair Levin; Sonal Shah, a former White House official who is now with the philanthropic arm of Google, and Julius Genachowski, a venture capitalist specializing in technology issues and a former FCC official.
Stanford University professor Linda Darling-Hammond will oversee the policy group on education.
(Editing by David Wiessler)
