4 picks for national security team named

WASHINGTON - President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden yesterday announced four more top picks for the administration's national security team, including a Boston native and a longtime adviser to the late House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill.

Three out of the four individuals played prominent roles in the Clinton administration, continuing the president-elect's trend of naming Democratic veterans to his White House staff and Cabinet departments.

James B. Steinberg, who was on the Clinton National Security Council, will return to Washington from his post as dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin to be Obama's nominee as top deputy to Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton.

Steinberg, 55, was born in Boston and graduated from Harvard University before serving as the top defense aide to Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts in the 1980s.

Steinberg, an early advocate of setting a timetable to withdraw US forces from Iraq, wrote in an e-mail to staff at the University of Texas at Austin yesterday that "it will be a great privilege to serve with President Obama, Secretary of State-designate Clinton, and the entire national security team at this time of great challenge but also of great opportunity for the United States and the world."

Also joining Clinton as a deputy at the State Department would be Jacob J. "Jack" Lew, an investment banker and former Clinton administration budget director who was a senior policy adviser to Massachusetts political legend Tip O'Neill in the 1970s and '80s.

Lew, previously the chief operations official at New York University, is leaving his job as CEO of Citi Alternative Investments.

A transition official said Lew, 53, will be responsible for running day-to-day operations of the diplomatic corps, while Steinberg would be the chief assistant to Clinton. In addition to Clinton's, both nominations require Senate confirmation.

Meanwhile, Thomas E. Donilon, 53, was chosen be deputy to retired Marine Corps General James L. Jones, previously tapped by Obama to be his national security adviser.

Donilon is another veteran of the Clinton administration, having been chief of staff at the State Department in the last Democratic administration.

In the vice president's office, Antony Blinken, who was Biden's staff director on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, will follow his boss to the White House, where he will be Biden's national security adviser.

"The team that we have assembled is uniquely suited to meet the great global challenges facing us today," Obama, who is spending the Christmas holiday in his native Hawaii, said in the statement. "They join a strong team of leading experts and accomplished managers."

While the two State Department positions require Senate approval, the White House staff positions are the prerogative of the president and vice president.

Material from the Associated Press was included in this report. Bryan Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com.