John O. Brennan Counterterrorism advisor to President Obama
When did his time as a counterterrorism advisor to Obama begin?
When did John O. Brennan's time as a counter terrorism advisor to Obama begin?
In late 2008, Brennan was reportedly the top choice to become the next Director of the CIA in the incoming Obama administration. However, Brennan withdrew his name from consideration because of opposition to his CIA service under President George W. Bush and past public statements he had made in support of enhanced interrogation and the transfer of terrorism suspects to countries where they might be tortured (extraordinary rendition). President Obama then appointed him to be his Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, the President's chief counterterrorism advisor and a position that did not require Senate confirmation.  In August 2009, Brennan criticized some Bush-administration anti-terror policies, saying that waterboarding had threatened national security by increasing the recruitment of terrorists and decreasing the willingness of other nations to cooperate with the U.S. He also described the Obama administration's focus as being on "extremists" and not "jihadists". He said that using the second term, which means one who is struggling for a holy goal, gives "these murderers the religious legitimacy they desperately seek" and suggests the US is at war with the religion of Islam.  In an early December 2009 interview with the Bergen Record, Brennan remarked, "the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement communities have to bat 1.000 every day. The terrorists are trying to be successful just once". At a press conference days after the failed Christmas Day bomb attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, Brennan said U.S. intelligence agencies did not miss any signs that could have prevented the attempt but later said he had let the President down by underestimating a small group of Yemeni terrorists and not connecting them to the attempted bomber. Within two weeks after the incident, however, he produced a report highly critical of the performance of U.S. intelligence agencies, concluding that their focus on terrorist attempts aimed at U.S. soil was inadequate. In February 2010, he claimed on Meet the Press that he was tired of Republican lawmakers using national security issues as political footballs, and making allegations where they did not know the facts.  Brennan was present in the Situation Room in May 2011 when the United States conducted the military operation that killed Osama bin Laden. He called President Obama's decision to go forward with the mission one of the "gutsiest calls of any president in memory." In the aftermath of the operation, Brennan said that the U.S. troops in the raid had been "met with a great deal of resistance," and bin Laden had used a woman as a human shield. CANNOTANSWER
President Obama then appointed him to be his Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, the President's
Melissa "Mel" Winter (born November 16, 1967) is an American Democratic political aide who served as a senior advisor to First Lady Michelle Obama throughout the Presidency of Barack Obama.

Winter was born in Chicago but her family later moved to La Jolla, California.

After graduating from Skidmore College, she moved to Washington, D.C. and began an 18-year career on Capitol Hill. She worked for then-Congressman Norman Mineta for seven years as a Staff Assistant and Executive Assistant before joining the staff of Senator Joe Lieberman. Winter was Senator Lieberman's Traveling Aide during his time as the Democratic candidate for Vice President in the 2000 election.  She later served as Director of Scheduling for Lieberman's 2004 Presidential campaign.

In 2007, Winter was Mrs. Obama's first hire on the Obama Presidential campaign.  She served as a close aide to Mrs. Obama throughout the 2008 campaign.  After the election, Winter was appointed Deputy Chief of Staff to the First Lady and was later promoted to Senior Advisor to the First Lady.

Since leaving the White House, Winter continues to serve as Mrs. Obama's personal Chief of Staff.

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1967 births
Living people
Obama administration personnel
People from Chicago
People from La Jolla, San Diego
Skidmore College alumni Seth Wheeler is an American businessman and former policy advisor. In the Bush Administration, he helped coordinate the federal response to housing crisis related to the Great Recession. In the Obama White House, he was Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and Senior Advisor for Financial Services, and is currently an employee at JPMorgan Chase.

Career 
Wheeler graduated from Brigham Young University with a B.A. in Economics & Asian Studies, later earning an M.B.A. and a J.D. from Harvard Business School and Columbia Law School. After his time in the private sector at Bain and Morgan Stanley, he moved into the public sector in the Bush Administration in the US Treasury Department, and continued into the Obama Administration as the highest paid advisor in the Obama White House. He also spent time at The Brookings Institution as a Guest Scholar on Financial Innovation.

Response to Housing Crisis 

Wheeler came onto the Treasury Department in 2007 to help with the financial crisis and stayed on for two and a half years. His main accomplishment was contributing to the Home Affordable Modification Program. The purpose of this program was to ease the impact of the foreclosure of homes of millions of homeowners by providing refinancing options. The program ran into implementation issues related to the operational details of refinancing, though it did help refinance the mortgages of more than 200 thousand homeowners. He is said to have left the public sector due to personal reasons.

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Brigham Young University alumni
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Harvard Business School alumni
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George W. Bush administration personnel Christopher P. Lu (; born June 12, 1966) is a Chinese American political advisor who serves as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations for Management and Reform. He is also an alternative representative to the United Nations General Assembly during his tenure as Representative for Management and Reform. In the administration of United States President Barack Obama, Lu served as the United States Deputy Secretary of Labor from 2014 to 2017, the White House Cabinet Secretary and Assistant to the President from 2009 to 2013, and the co-chair of the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Lu graduated from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University and from Harvard Law School, where he was a classmate of Obama's.

After serving briefly as an advisor on Senator John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign, Lu began working for Barack Obama in 2005 in his U.S. Senate office, where Lu served as legislative director and acting chief of staff. Following Obama's successful 2008 campaign for presidency, Lu was appointed executive director of the Obama-Biden Transition Project. When Obama appointed Lu as Cabinet Secretary, The New York Times described him as "one of the highest-ranking Asian Americans in the Obama administration".

Early life and education
Chris Lu was born on June 12, 1966 in New Jersey. In 1974, his family moved to the Fallsmead neighborhood of Rockville, Maryland, where he graduated from Thomas S. Wootton High School in 1984. Lu is the son of Eileen and Chien-Yang Lu, both of whom were born in mainland China and lived in Taiwan until the 1950s when they emigrated to the United States to attend college. Lu's grandfather, Wang Renyuan, was Republic of China Minister of Justice from 1970 to 1976 and was elected to the first Legislative Yuan in 1948 to represent Tianjin. Lu said he was heavily influenced by his father, who worked as an electrical engineer but loved literature and history; the two would read biographies of politicians and watch the evening news together.

Lu attended the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, where he was the senior news editor of the Daily Princetonian. Lu's ambition for a political career developed at Princeton, particularly during his internship in the Capitol Hill office of Senator Charles Mathias. He graduated magna cum laude in 1988, after writing a 161-page long senior thesis titled "Press Coverage of Presidential Primaries, 1972-1984." After graduating from Princeton, Lu attended Harvard Law School, where he was one of Barack Obama's classmates from 1988 to 1991.

Career
After graduating cum laude from Harvard in 1991, Lu started his career as a law clerk to Judge Robert Cowen in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. In 1992, he began working as a litigation attorney at the Washington, D.C. office of Sidley Austin, a large Chicago-based law firm. Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, also worked at Sidley Austin, in the firm's Chicago office.

In 1997, Lu left Sidley Austin and took his first job in the political arena as deputy chief counsel for Representative Henry Waxman and the Democratic staff of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee of the House of Representatives. Phil Schiliro, Waxman's chief of staff, had a large part in the decision to hire Lu; the two would work together again later on the Obama administration; Lu later said he considers Schiliro and Pete Rouse, another future White House staffer, among his most influential mentors. During his tenure with the Government Reform Committee, Lu conducted several high-profile investigations, including investigations into campaign fundraising during the 1996 presidential election, the collapse of Enron, and substandard nursing home conditions. Lu also served as special adviser for communications to Senator John Kerry during the 2004 presidential election. One of his primary duties there was coordinating the activities of families of September 11 attack victims supporting the Kerry campaign.

Barack Obama's Senate office
After Barack Obama was elected as U.S. Senator of Illinois, Lu joined Obama's office in early 2005 as legislative director. Lu developed a strong admiration for Obama, of whom he said, "With his quick and incisive mind, Obama is the most intelligent person that I have ever met (in the political arena)." As legislative director, Lu led a 15-person group and was responsible for overseeing the drafting of all legislation and advising Obama on votes and policy decisions. When weighing difficult votes, Obama had Lu and his other staff members assemble together and argue about the issue in front of him. David Mendell, a Chicago Tribune reporter and Obama biographer, said Lu was among the "moderate voices in this atmosphere of smart young staffers." Lu advised Obama to vote in favor of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 because he felt it would have been politically wiser to support it, but Obama ultimately voted against it.

Lu said of his role as legislative director, "It's one of the most fun jobs in the Senate (but) it's also an incredibly difficult job because you have to know something about any given thing going on in the Senate at the time ... It takes a couple years off your life." Lu, along with Robert Gibbs and several other Obama staffers, read Obama's manuscript for The Audacity of Hope and provided him with several editorial suggestions.

Lu eventually became acting chief of staff in Obama's Senate office. When Obama announced his candidacy for president in February 2007, Lu did not move over to the campaign, but remained to continue running Obama's operations in the Senate; Lu said of Obama at that time, "Even while he was running for president, he had a day job [in the Senate]."

Obama administration

In May 2008, Obama asked Lu to begin planning for a possible presidential transition. Obama warned him to tell no one about the nascent operation, even his own wife, so Lu quietly rented a small office in D.C. and secretly met with people who had worked on previous Democratic presidential transition efforts. The planning efforts produced policy options on a wide range of topics, compiled names of and began vetting potential political appointees for top jobs, arranged over 100 security clearances, and managed the logistics for expanding the operations after Election Day.

After Obama's victory, Lu became executive director of the Obama-Biden Transition Project, a position that was responsible for the day-to-day operations of the transition.  During the transition period, Lu was in daily contact with Bush administration officials, managed the $9 million budget, and negotiated the ground rules for Obama transition representatives to gather information on federal agency operations and programs.

Obama selected Lu to serve as Cabinet Secretary, making him one of the highest-ranking Asian Americans in the administration, along with Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke and Secretary of Energy Steven Chu. At the time of his selection, The New York Times reporter Michael Falcone wrote, "By now, Mr. Lu knows the president-elect's record better than almost anyone."

Lu's responsibilities included representing Obama's positions to each of the Cabinet secretaries and agencies and coordinating a common White House agenda among them. Marc Ambinder, associate editor of The Atlantic, said of Lu, "when agency heads have a problem, or when the White House has a problem with an agency head, Mr. Lu will be the first person who's called, or calls."

In July 2009, Lu visited China as part of an official delegation for the Obama administration, along with Locke and Chu. Although his parents were born there, it was the first time Lu had set foot on Chinese soil. Lu was introduced to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who said upon meeting Lu, "I know the name and also the importance of his position." In July 2010, Lu was a member of the official U.S. delegation to the Shanghai Expo, along with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

On January 8, 2014, Lu was nominated by President Obama to be the Deputy Secretary for the United States Department of Labor.  He was unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate on April 1, 2014. Lu became the first Asian American to hold the position, and only the second Asian American in history to serve as deputy secretary of a cabinet department, after Elaine Chao. Lu's service in this position ended on January 20, 2017, concurrent with the end of the Obama Administration.

Career after Obama administration
Lu soon took up positions as a Senior Fellow of the University of Virginia Miller Center, specializing in presidential scholarship, and as a Senior Advisor to FiscalNote. He remains heavily involved as a DNC superdelegate and co-chaired DNC Chairman Tom Perez's transition committee.

In November 2020, Lu was named a volunteer member of the Joe Biden presidential transition Agency Review Team to support transition efforts related to the United States Department of Labor.

Ambassador to United Nations
On April 27, 2021, United States President Joseph Biden nominated Lu to serve as Permanent Representative of the United States of America to the United Nations for UN Management and Reform. The United States Senate confirmed Lu on December 18, 2021 by voice vote, and he was sworn into office on January 4, 2022.

References

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1966 births
American politicians of Chinese descent
American politicians of Taiwanese descent
Harvard Law School alumni
Living people
Obama administration personnel
People from New Jersey
People from Rockville, Maryland
United States Deputy Secretaries of Labor
Lawyers from Washington, D.C.
Princeton School of Public and International Affairs alumni
American lawyers of Chinese descent