Obama to Broaden National Security Council Power

The decades-old National Security Council will undergo sweeping changes under President Obama, who is expected this week to issue a directive increasing its membership and broadening its authority, the Washington Post reports. The move is part of a strategy to modernize the agency and integrate supervision to cover a wide variety of domestic and international issues.

New directorates in the NSC, which traditionally has only addressed foreign policy concerns, will deal with such issues as cyber security, energy, climate change, nation-building, and infrastructure. Many duties of the Homeland Security Council will likely be absorbed into the NSC, and changes will be supervised by national security adviser James Jones. (More National Security Council stories.)