New No. 1 at DIA, No. 2 at NNSA, missing emails and more

No. 1 position at DIA changes hands

Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn retired Aug. 7, and Deputy Director David Shedd has taken over as acting director.

The Washington Post reported in April that Flynn had been asked by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper Jr. and others to leave DIA a year before his tenure was up in the wake of a number of leaked intelligence disclosures.

DIA has also been searching for a new CIO. Grant Schneider, a career employee who had held the job since 2007, left in mid-July. DIA did not elaborate on Schneider's departure, and the agency's USAJobs.gov listing for the position closed July 25.

DIA said Shedd would serve in the acting role until a new director is confirmed by the Senate. He has served as DIA's deputy director since August 2010. Prior to that, he was deputy director of national intelligence for policy, plans and requirements, where he was responsible for overseeing the formulation and implementation of major intelligence community policies.

No. 2 at NNSA sworn in

Madelyn Creedon was sworn in on Aug. 7 as the second in command at the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration.

Creedon, who was confirmed by the Senate on July 23, had served as assistant secretary of Defense for global strategic affairs since 2011, where she oversaw policy development and execution in the areas of countering weapons of mass destruction, U.S. nuclear forces and missile defense, as well as DOD's cybersecurity and space issues.

She has also served as counsel for the Democratic staff on the Senate Armed Services Committee, which she joined in March 1997. Before that, she was associate deputy secretary of Energy for national security programs beginning in October 1995. In 2000, she left the Senate panel to become deputy administrator for defense programs at NNSA and returned to the committee in January 2001.

Navy gets new information dominance commander

On Aug. 7, Rear Adm. David Lewis replaced Rear Adm. Patrick Brady as head of the Navy command in charge of information dominance.

As commander of the 10,000-person Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command for the last four years, Brady established a single IT Technical Authority, which sets standards and architectures for IT acquisition, the Navy said in a release.

Lewis said he wants to make sure the command "continues to deliver an enduring cyber engineering construct that codifies and establishes the way we architect, design, accredit and continuously monitor our secure, performance-based afloat, ashore and aloft systems," according to the release.

Lewis was most recently a program executive officer in charge of shipbuilding and other foreign military sales.

HHS still seeking Tavenner emails about HealthCare.gov launch

Some e-mails from Marilyn Tavenner, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service, about the ill-fated launch of HealthCare.gov and its immediate aftermath may be missing, according to a letter from a senior Department of Health and Human Services official.

Jim Asquea, Assistant Secretary for Legislation at HHS, told Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) that some "potentially responsive emails might not be retrievable," particularly those sent outside the agency. Issa, who heads the Oversight and Government Reform committee in the House, first subpoenaed emails from agency officials, including HHS CIO Frank Baitman, CMS CIO Tony Trenkle (now retired), CMS chief information security officer Teresa Fryer, and others.

CMS also filed a report with the National Archive and Records Administration alerting them to the potential loss of documents and steps being taken to strengthen document retention practices. The report explains that Tavenner was in the habit of forwarding emails to staff for archival purposes. The report does not say why certain emails may have fallen through the cracks. Emails sent within the department are likely to be found by searching through records on the recipients, the report indicated.

"It defies logic that so many senior Administration officials were found to have ignored federal recordkeeping requirements only after Congress asked to see their emails," Issa said in an emailed statement.