Federal Eye

Amid the day's other big developments, a few other personnel moves announced Friday by Team Obama:

• The president tapped Cassandra Q. Butts to serve as senior adviser and CEO of the Millennium Challenge Corporation. She's currently White House deputy counsel, focusing especially on judicial nominations.

• The Senate confirmed David Ferriero on Friday as the 10th Archivist of the United States. He previously served as the director of the New York Public Library. "Once again, after searching the nation for the best candidate in the nation for an important job, President Obama found him working in New York City government," New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said in a statement. HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, urban affairs adviser Adolfo Carrion Jr. and CDC Director Thomas Frieden all previously held Big Apple city government jobs.

Track all Obama nominees with The Post's Head Count

Updated 2:30 p.m. ET

Fort Hood Sgt. Kimberly Munley has been credited with stopping Thursday's deadly rampage at Fort Hood by shooting the alleged gunman four times and taking wounds of her own.

Munley is a civilian police officer at Ft. Hood and a member of American Federation of Government Employee's Local 1920. AFGE is the largest federal employees union in the country.

“Sgt. Munley acted with great heroism, yesterday, as she and her partner were the first to respond to calls for help during the shooting rampage at Ft. Hood,” AFGE President John Gage said in a statement. “As a part its family, we offer our thoughts, our prayers, our support and our strength to our brave soldiers and their families, and our brothers and sisters, who are affected by this senseless and pointless tragedy."

The union represents 1,700 civilian Defense Department employees at the base, according to spokesman Michael Victorian. The union does not know if any of its members are among Thursday's victims.

President Obama will make his first visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center as commander in chief on Friday, but one administration official recalls seeing him there several times as a senator.

"He visited my hospital bed in the middle of the night as a junior senator," Veterans Affairs Assistant Secretary Tammy Duckworth recalled during a recent interview for a forthcoming profile.

VA Assistant Secretary Tammy Duckworth

Duckworth lost both of her legs five years ago next week after her Army Blackhawk helicopter was shot out of the skies over Baghdad. She recuperated at Walter Reed and joined VA in April as head of public affairs and intergovernmental affairs.

In her new role, Duckworth regularly quotes Obama's statement that, "American has a covenant to keep with her veterans," or a deep responsibility to ensure vets receive the benefits and services they need. She travels at least twice a week to meet with veterans groups or visit patients at VA hospitals, is partly responsible for leading an internal reorganization and regularly provides customer feedback as a high-profile recipient of VA benefits and services.

Duckworth admitted she cannot remember many details of her stay at Walter Reed, but said Obama visited her at least three times without staff in the evenings. He would ask about her recovery, asked questions about her unit still deployed in Iraq and if she had any other concerns about other veterans at the hospital.

"That’s why I’m working in this administration, because when I was laying in a hospital bed, that senator came through and spent a lot of time talking to me about what VA soldiers needed, and listened to me about what younger soldiers needed," Duckworth said.

"They were very personal conversations and he did that not just for me but for anybody else who was there," she added. But Duckworth also met frequently with former senator Robert Dole (R-Kan.) and Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), who later helped launch her ultimately unsuccessful bid for an Illinois congressional seat in 2006.

Happy Friday! The Ft. Hood shooting rampage comes amid growing cooperation between the Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs to address the stresses faced by current and former service members.

The Ft. Hood base "has been hard hit by the growing strain on the Army from multiple combat deployments -- with its personnel suffering the highest number of suicides among Army installations since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003," The Post's Ann Scott Tyson reports Friday.

"After many years of lengthy war zone rotations in Iraq and Afghanistan, Army personnel are experiencing record rates of suicide, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and other mental health problems, as well as worsening alcohol and drug abuse."

"I'm not sure most Americans are aware of this stress and strain on our military, but I believe that this horrific incident at Fort Hood will raise awareness across the country," retired Lt. Col. Todd Henshaw writes Friday for washingtonpost.com's On Leadership.

"There is also enormous stress on our support systems, more specifically the medical and psychological systems that heal our wounded and care for the many soldiers who return from deployments with hidden wounds," Henshaw said.

Just Wednesday, Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen told a meeting of mental health experts that "ton of programs” have been generated since the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, “But I need programs that work,”

“I need programs where we can see results and see output. Anything we put in place, we really need to measure how we’re doing," Mullen said.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and VA Secretary Eric K. Shinseki also co-hosted the first-ever join meeting on military mental health concerns last week in Washington.

“This is about doing what is best for those who serve this country and using every federal, state and community asset to do it,” Shinseki said at the conference. “We’re proud of the people and the organizations who have stepped up today to make sure everyone who fought for this country gets a fighting chance for a sound mind and an independent life.”

The Defense authorization bill signed last week by President Obama also requires service members returning from overseas conflicts to meet face-to-face with mental health experts once they return. Currently, military personnel must self-report mental health concerns, which official acknowledge has kept many from seeking assistance. The Pentagon is expected to issue new guidelines on how the new process will work by the Spring.

Here's a list of Web sites providing support to service members and their families:

AfterDeployment.org: An Army site, serving as an interactive, confidential self-help solution to behavioral health needs following deployment.

CinCHouse.com: Popular with military spouses and women in uniform.

Military.com: A news and social-networking site with more than 10 million members, mostly service members and their families.

MentalHealth.VA.gov: The VA's one-stop resource for suicide prevention, substance abuse issues, PTSD, depression and other concerns with returning service members.

Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

• Cabinet and Staff News: A profile of border czar Alan Bersin. The Obama administration is dispatching big names to next week's APEC forum in Singapore. First Lady Michelle Obama and Energy Secretary Steven Chu host high school science students. A new inspector general at Amtrak.

First Lady Michelle Obama and Energy Secretary Steven Chu lead a practice session for young people competing in the National Science Bowl at the Energy Department on Thursday. (TIM SLOAN/AFP/Getty)

First Lady Michelle Obama made her thirteenth visit to a D.C.-based federal agency or department on Thursday, meeting with high school science students at the Energy Department.

The first lady served as the moderator of a practice competition in an auditorium, joking that, "I’m like Alex Trebek. Secretary [Steven] Chu is like my Vanna White.”

Chu thanked Obama for her visit to the department, saying her visit would be helpful in “elevating the social status of nerds everywhere," according to a pool report of the event.

Obama also praised staff members for their decades of devotion to the department and said the nation will have to improve its education in order to continue its mission.

“We can’t transform our energy future unless we transform our education system,” Obama said. “Particularly when it comes to math and science.”

The high school students will participate in the National Science Bowl, a 19-year-old science and math competition run by the Energy Department. Regional winners are flown to Washington for the national competition, which takes place in April.

Updated 5:06 p.m. ET

The union representing thousands of Social Security Administration employees has reacted angrily to an official's recent assertion that H1N1 flu is not a serious communicable disease.

Celine Wilson, SSA's chief negotiator with the National Council of SSA Field Operations Locals AFGE, told labor leaders that H1N1 "is not a serious communicable disease," according to an account of the meeting described in a letter sent Wednesday from union President Witold Skwierczynski to SSA Administrator Michael J. Astrue.

At issue is any potential contact between SSA employees and customers at the 1,300 SSA service locations nationwide. The agency already provide tissues, hand sanitizers and face masks for employees who want them.

Union leaders asked for a meeting with officials in late October requesting that the agency add H1N1 to a list of serious communicable diseases covered by agency protocols regarding an employee's contact with sick customers. Employees are supposed to stop any interview with a customer who shows symptoms and refer them to a manager, Skwierczynski said. The current contract includes diseases such as tuberculosis, but not H1N1.

Wilson would not comment on the letter when reached by telephone, and did not confirm or deny making the statement. An SSA spokesman, Mark Hinkle, also did not confirm or deny Wilson's statement, but instead said Skwierczynski "continues to fabricate reports for media attention on this important public health issue."

"Social Security had worked long and hard on H1N1 policies before the union ever asked to discuss it," Hinkle said. "Our policies meet or exceed everything Health and Human Services is recommending, and we believe they are in the best interest of the public and our employees.”

Asked for further clarification, Hinkle said, "We recognize that H1N1 is a contagious disease that can be serious, and we are taking all recommended action."

Wilson's alleged statement is at odds with the opinion of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which describes H1N1 as a communicable disease that "is spreading from person-to-person worldwide." President Obama declared H1N1 a national emergency last month and demand for the H1N1 vaccine has forced federal officials to admit that it may not be widely available until December or January.

Very few people really understand the complexities of government contracting, so perhaps it's no surprise that President Obama dodged a very specific question Thursday morning about the Small Business Administration's 8(a) Business Development Program.

As The Eye has reported before, the program is designed to ensure that minority-owned small businesses -- especially Native American-owned shops -- secure government contracting work.

Leslie Lohse, with California's Paskenta Nomlaki, asked Obama about the program at the end of his remarks at Thursday's Tribal Nations conference:

...I'd like to ask you ... to take care of our 8(a) program because those of us -- those that are landless out there can develop economic development opportunities through the 8(a) contracting program, and that may ease some of the burdens that some of the landless tribes are, because you don't need to have land to operate that.

Roughly five months since the departure of its previous watchdog, Amtrak has hired a veteran government auditor to serve as its next inspector general.

The quasi-governmental rail agency announced Thursday that Ted Alves will lead its office of inspector general. Alves recently retired following 35 years of service at the Department of Transportation, FEMA, USAID and Government Accountability Office.

In a statement, Amtrak Chairman Thomas Carper said Alves is "highly respected in the inspector general community and will provide the leadership, integrity, independence and objectivity required for the position."

Alves replaces Fred Weiderhold Jr., who retired unexpectedly in June amid inquiries into allegations of interference with the investigations of other government watchdogs.

Thursday's announcement from Amtrak highlighted the methodical process used to recruit and hire Alves, which included input from former inspectors general and the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, the umbrella group representing federal watchdogs.

Sens. David Vitter (R-La.) and Robert Bennett (R-Utah) wanted the Census Bureau to ask about citizenship status next year.

Updated 2:28 p.m. ET

The Senate voted Thursday to block a Republican attempt to require the Census Bureau to ask people for their citizenship status during next year's decennial census.

Lawmakers voted 60 to 39 to effectively kill an amendment by Sens. David Vitter (R-La.) and Robert Bennett (R-Utah) that would have excluded illegal immigrants from population totals used to apportion Congressional seats in each state. The pair argued that the high numbers of illegal immigrants in larger, heavily-urbanized states would mean that at least nine other states would lose Congressional seats following next year's census. The proposed amendment would have been added to the 2010 Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriations Bill.

Several immigration and civil rights advocacy groups said the proposal would lead to a severe undercount of Hispanics and other immigrant groups fearful of potential punishment. The Census Bureau warned that passage of the amendment would add billions of dollars in costs to the 2010 Census to print new forms and retrain workers. By law, the decennial census counts the actual number of people living in the United States, without regard to citizenship status.

The secretary of state gets the TIME Magazine cover treatment this week, as correspondent Joe Klein traveled with Hillary Clinton during her recent overseas tour. Klein's report includes some interesting insights on the roles of the nation's top diplomat:

The job of Secretary of State is more thankless than glamorous; in some ways, the Department of State, a noble antique, is still trying to come to terms with the invention of the telephone. In an era when Twitter haiku-messaging rules, diplomacy moves at the speed, and requires the nuanced complexity, of literature. Power has drifted from State to the National Security Council and the Pentagon, especially in wartime. Only a few of Clinton's recent predecessors have distinguished themselves. Henry Kissinger, a National Security Adviser who belatedly became Secretary of State, was Richard Nixon's schizophrenic alter ego; George Shultz was a strong policy voice in the Reagan Administration; James Baker had clout because he was George H.W. Bush's best friend and a world-class dealmaker. Most of the others have been frustrated or forgettable. And yet this is Hillary Clinton we're talking about -- the second most popular American in the world, an eternally compelling and supremely talented character, the subject of constant speculation, a walking headline. Her very presence in the job makes it crucial once more.

Incidentally, Clinton has now appeared on TIME's cover at least 16 times. Read Klein's full report here.