The Vice President

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates

Ambassador Susan Rice, Permanent U.S. Representative to the United Nations

Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg

Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan (via videoconference)

Karl Eikenberry, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan (via videoconference)

Anne Patterson, U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan (via videoconference)

Under Secretary of Defense Michele Flournoy

Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

General James E. Cartwright, USMC, Vice Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff

General David Petraeus, U.S. Central Command

General Stanley McChrystal, U.S. Commander in Afghanistan (via videoconference)
Lieutenant General Dave Rodriguez (via videoconference)

Lietenant General William Caldwell (via videoconference)

Vice Admiral Michael LaFever (via videoconference)

Admiral Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence

CIA Director Leon Panetta

Deputy Secretary of Treasury Neal Wolin

General James Jones, National Security Advisor

Tom Donilon, Deputy National Security Advisor

John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security

Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, Special Assistant to the President for Afghanistan and Pakistan

Robert Nabors, OMB Deputy Director

Adm. LaFever, if you didn’t recognize the name, is the Pentagon’s man in Pakistan.

[S]ome State Department bureaucrats privately gripe about what they see as Steinberg’s sometimes intrusive style, and some of his policy proposals have been seen as poorly coordinated with the other parts of the policy community. “He’s a brilliant guy, but just not a great fit for that job,” said one administration source.

According to two sources familiar with the process, Steinberg has met with the Georgetown search committee and expressed an interest in applying for the job. The search committee has also met with individuals close to Steinberg, to hear their recommendations for him. Sources said the search committee is still narrowing the candidate list and conducting interviews, before making any recommendations to the university president.

When asked if he was a candidate for the job by The Cable, Steinberg said by email, “It would be news to me.”

But before Bowen gets to USOCO, his own organization, known as SIGIR (“Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction”), has to go out of business. To be clear, Bowen told me he’s not looking to run USOCO; I’m just using this as a cheap transition device to get to Josh Rogin’s report in Foreign Policy on the last days of SIGIR:

Bowen is currently searching for a way to keep SIGIR’s institutional knowledge and expertise in the government and to keep his staff employed. He has been shopping around town his idea for a new U.S. government agency that would manage all reconstruction efforts in areas where the military is deployed. He calls it the U.S. Office for Contingency Operations, which would exist in perpetuity and stand independent of either the State or Defense Departments, as SIGIR does now.

“It assumes that over time, contingencies will occur,” said Bowen, “It’s sort of like FEMA. FEMA is set up to address disasters, but disasters aren’t continuous. The history of the last 50 years, with 15 contingencies or so, indicates that the next 50 years will probably have more contingency operations.”

Rogin reports that Bowen met on Thursday with Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg and will soon get an audience with Anne-Marie Slaughter, State’s policy planning chief who’s in charge of a big diplomacy and development review.

Steinberg right now is believed — ah, the obfuscatory wonders of the passive voice! Friend to lazy and ignorant journalists worldwide — to have the inside track. And Susan Rice is believed to be young enough to be considered for a sub-cabinet-level post and then advance. But what does that really mean? Up until last week I had never heard Hillary Rodham Clinton as a short-list contender for secretary of state and had reported that it was John Kerry’s position to lose. So I’m just going to confess to you that I have no idea, largely because Obama hasn’t made these decisions yet, and it’s no use pretending otherwise.

Jones is a really interesting figure. In addition to constantantly nudging the Europeans to do more in Afghanistan as NATO commander, Jones produced an extremely thorough and well-respected report last year into the parlous condition of the Iraqi security forces. He has a reputation for bluntness, clear-eyed thinking and results that gibes well with the idea of keeping Bob Gates at the Pentagon temporarily. And Jones has no known ideological character. Plus, I can make Dipset references for the span of his tenure in the administration.

Long before he became one of Washington’s most respected foreign policy hands, the affable Steinberg did a stint as a bartender at Columbia Station, a popular joint in D.C.’s funky Adams Morgan neighborhood. Steinberg had just graduated from Yale Law in 1978 and was studying for, well, the bar.

How’d Stein know about Steinberg’s history behind the bar? A TWI EXCLUSIVE: He worked at Columbia Station too. Maybe it was a better place in the late 70s, because right now it’s one of the million 18th Street bars to avoid unless you like — how did that Washington City Paper writer put it? — “all the ass-grabbing, vomiting, and fighting.”

Maybe Steinberg has opinions on proper pairings of beer and/or cocktails with meals, instead of the traditional wine option. Alas, national security adviser isn’t a Senate-confirmable post, so we may never know.