Obama, Bush Presidential Transitions Show Value Of Coordination : NPR

During the transition from President George W. Bush to President Barack Obama, Bush administration officials shared with the incoming Obama administration intelligence about a terrorist threat to disrupt Obama’s 2009 inauguration, a threat that ultimately did not come to pass.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

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J. Scott Applewhite/AP

During the transition from President George W. Bush to President Barack Obama, Bush administration officials shared with the incoming Obama administration intelligence about a terrorist threat to disrupt Obama’s 2009 inauguration, a threat that ultimately did not come to pass.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

As President Trump continues to contest the results of the election, President-elect Joe Biden continues to shape his administration, which will take office on Jan. 20. But there is still no formal transition underway, a far cry from the last several times new presidents have taken power.

In 2009, just before then-President-elect Barack Obama was to deliver his inaugural address, members of the outgoing Bush administration’s national security team sat down with the people who were about to take their place.

Stephen Hadley, who was George W. Bush’s national security adviser, remembers they were set to talk about the threat posed by Iran. He recounted the meeting at a webinar last month sponsored by the nonpartisan Center for Presidential Transition.

“And that weekend we had gotten intelligence that there was a potential threat to the inauguration itself,” he said. “So that Saturday morning, we had the FBI director come in and brief both the existing and incoming national security teams about that projected threat, what we knew about it and what we were doing about it, and then had kind of a roundtable discussion.”

Among those taking part in the discussion was then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, who was set to become Obama’s secretary of state. Hadley says Clinton posed an interesting question.

” ‘Well, what do we tell President Obama if he’s in the middle of his inauguration speech and he hears a loud bang, a potential bomb attack or something like that? What does he do? Does he hunker down? Do we rush him off the stage? How does he want to handle that moment?’ Well, that was a very productive discussion,” Hadley recalled.

Thankfully, there was no bang or attack, and Obama’s inauguration proceeded smoothly.

National security is one of the major reasons smooth transitions are so crucial, says Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center….