WASHINGTON, Feb. 27 (UPI) -- President Bush has nominated a new inspector general for the Defense Department, the latest effort to fill a post that has been vacant for 16 months.
The White House said in a statement Monday that the nomination of Claude Kicklighter had been sent to the Senate. If confirmed, Kicklighter will replace Deputy Inspector General Thomas Gimble, who has been acting boss since September 2005.
Last year, the nomination of David Laufman to the post stalled amid concerns from Democrats that he would not prove sufficiently independent.
But Kicklighter, who has spent much of the last three years working on Iraq for the State Department and Pentagon, and currently runs their joint Iraq-Afghanistan Transition Planning Group, may also face tough questions.
In December 2003, then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tapped him to run the Pentagon's Iraq transition operations and liaise with the ill-fated Coalition Provisional Authority.
According to a Washington Times report from January 2004, one of his first jobs there was "aiding in the award of reconstruction contracts."
Many of those contracts have since come under harsh congressional scrutiny.
In April 2005, the White House withdrew his nomination to be a member of the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission.
Prior to moving to the Pentagon in 2003, Kicklighter worked at the Department of Veterans Affairs, and he returned there in February 2005 as chief of staff, after a final stint on Iraq, as a special adviser for stabilization and security operations at the Department of State.
Kicklighter received his bachelor's degree from Mercer University and his master's degree from George Washington University.
