National security

CMU professor to aid Trump team on national security

Carnegie Mellon University associate professor Kiron Skinner joined President-elect Donald Trump's National Security Council transition team, the university said.

Skinner, who declined through a spokeswoman to comment, began working at Carnegie Mellon in 1999 and heads its Institute for Politics and Strategy. Skinner served from 2001 to 2007 as a member of the Defense Department's Defense Policy Board as an adviser on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Trump's national security transition team got off to a tumultuous start.

The New York Times reported last week that Trump's transition team fired former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers and consultant Matthew Freedman as national security advisers. The Times said Freedman was removed after questions arose over his lobbying work, while Trump's team had concerns about a 2012 House Intelligence report that “concluded that the Obama administration had not intentionally misled the public” about attacks on U.S. government facilities in Benghazi, Libya.