Barack Obama's transition team dropped broad hints Wednesday about who will fill a raft of top posts in his administration, naming teams of aides to develop policies in key areas. Former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle was named to head a healthcare working group – at the same time as CNN reported he had already accepted an offer to serve in the cabinet as secretary of health and human services. James Steinberg, thought to be the favorite to serve as national security advisor in the Obama administration, was named to head a national security working group. Another close foreign policy aide, Susan Rice, who is also tipped for a top White House or State Department national security post, will work alongside Steinberg. Steinberg served as deputy national security advisor in president Bill Clinton's administration and accompanied Obama as an unpaid aide on his trip to Europe and the Middle East in July. Rice was assistant secretary of state for African affairs between 1997 and 2001. Daniel Tarullo, who has been mentioned as a possibility for a job on the president's National Economic Council, was named as head of an economic working group during the transition. Sonal Shah, head of the philanthropic arm of Internet giant Google, was named as part of a three-person team to coordinate technology, innovation and government reform during the transition. She will serve alongside telecommunications and media strategist Blair Levin and Julius Genachowski, a former chief counsel to the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Obama, who will succeed President George W. Bush on Jan. 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. 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. 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.
