Obama to Broaden National Security Council Power

Prez will boost group's authority on wider range of issues
By Matt Cantor,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 8, 2009 8:33 AM CST
Obama to Broaden National Security Council Power
Brack Obama, then-Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton, and then-National Security Adviser-designate James Jones speak at a news conference.   (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

The decades-old National Security Council will undergo sweeping changes under President Obama, who is expected this week to issue a directive increasing its membership and broadening its authority, the Washington Post reports. The move is part of a strategy to modernize the agency and integrate supervision to cover a wide variety of domestic and international issues.

New directorates in the NSC, which traditionally has only addressed foreign policy concerns, will deal with such issues as cyber security, energy, climate change, nation-building, and infrastructure. Many duties of the Homeland Security Council will likely be absorbed into the NSC, and changes will be supervised by national security adviser James Jones. (More National Security Council stories.)

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