OMB official to be named as NASA head

WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 (UPI) — President George W. Bush has selected Sean O’Keefe, Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget, to head NASA, sources tell United Press International.

O’Keefe – whose nomination must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate — was named by President Bush as deputy OMB director on February 6th of this year. He spent part of his time at OMB working on NASA budget issues, including cost overruns on the International Space Station project.

O’Keefe, a New Orleans, La. native, was selected as secretary of the Navy in 1992 by former President George H. W. Bush, having served earlier in the first Bush administration as Comptroller and Chief Financial Officer at the Defense Department. His previous assignments include eight years on the professional staff of the Senate Appropriations Committee and service as staff director of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. In 1993, O’Keefe received the Distinguished Public Service award by then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney.

Since leaving government service in 1993 O’Keefe had been Louis A. Bantle Professor of Business and Government Policy at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs in Syracuse, N.Y.

O’Keefe holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Loyola University in New Orleans, and a master’s in public administration from the Maxwell School. O’Keefe, his wife and three children live in upstate New York.