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Names: Lynne Weil to join USAID

Lynne Weil confirms to The Cable that she’ll be moving on from her post as communications director for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and its chairman Howard Berman to take over the press shop at USAID. The move was first reported by the Washington Post‘s Al Kamen. "Bad news usually travels fast, so it’s nice ...

Lynne Weil confirms to The Cable that she'll be moving on from her post as communications director for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and its chairman Howard Berman to take over the press shop at USAID. The move was first reported by the Washington Post's Al Kamen.

Lynne Weil confirms to The Cable that she’ll be moving on from her post as communications director for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and its chairman Howard Berman to take over the press shop at USAID. The move was first reported by the Washington Post‘s Al Kamen.

"Bad news usually travels fast, so it’s nice when good news does, too," she wrote in by email. "There’s lots of the latter to be told about the work of USAID; I’m eager to have a role in that, along with other things."

Here’s how Kamen describes the current staffing situation at the agency:

The beleaguered Agency of International Development is awaiting the arrival of some assistant administrators to give the new boss, Rajiv Shah, some help in restoring the dysfunctional shop to at least some semblance of robust health (he is a doctor, after all). In the meantime, he’s been filling the ranks of his inner circle, bringing in as his chief of staff Sean Carroll, former program director for the Club of Madrid, a nongovernmental group promoting democracy.

We’re hearing that the White House and the State Department both cleared Weil’s appointment over the past week and she gave notice to Berman on Wednesday. Weil also worked for the late Rep. Tom Lantos, former Sen. Joe Biden, and was a reporter for some 15 years.

We’re also told that Maura O’Neill is now counselor and chief innovation officer at USAID. She was with Shah at USDA and remains a key figure in his circle.

Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.

Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.

A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.

Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin

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