Adviser who insulted Clinton returns

Will aid transition at State Dept.

WASHINGTON - An adviser to Barack Obama's presidential campaign who was forced to resign earlier this year after calling Senator Hillary Clinton a "monster" is now working on the transition team for the agency Clinton is expected to lead.

State Department officials said yesterday that Samantha Power is among a group of foreign policy analysts that the president-elect's office selected to help the incoming administration prepare for Clinton's anticipated nomination as secretary of state. The Obama transition team's website includes Power's name as one of 14 members of the "Agency Review Team" for the State Department.

Clinton's role at State is expected to be announced after the Thanksgiving weekend.

Clinton's office declined to comment on Power's inclusion in the State Department transition, but an official close to the Obama transition team said that Power had "made a gesture to bury the hatchet" with Clinton and that it had been well-received.

Power has been given a State Department e-mail address and has been seen in the building, said the State officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the transition. A State Department spokesman referred questions to Obama's transition team, which later declined to comment.

Power, a Harvard professor, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, and noted commentator on genocide, is dealing with global humanitarian issues as part of the team, according to the officials. It is not clear whether she is in line for any State Department job, they said.

Power made headlines in March during the height of the fierce fight for the Democratic presidential nomination when she called Clinton "a monster" in an interview with a Scottish newspaper, setting off angry exchanges about the tenor of the campaign.

Power told the Scotsman newspaper that Clinton would stop at nothing to defeat Obama. "She is a monster, too," Power said in the interview. "She is stooping to anything."

A few hours after her comments were published, Power resigned, saying the remarks were inexcusable and contradictory to her admiration for Clinton. Power said Obama had rebuked her for the comment.