Obama Set to Name Clinton Secretary of State

President Barack Obama could nominate Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state after Thanksgiving. Three aids on Obama's transition team said Defense Secretary Robert Gates could stay on in the Obama administration.

Three aids on President Obama's transition team said Sen. Hillary Clinton could be nominated as secretary of state after Thanksgiving. The three aids also said Defense Secretary Robert Gates is being talked about as staying on in an Obama administration.

Clinton senior adviser Philippe Reines repeated a statement that "any and all speculation about Cabinet or other administration appointments is for President-Elect Obama's transition team to address."

Obama is getting foreign policy advice from an unlikely source: Republican Brent Scowcroft, who was national security adviser in the first Bush administration.

Two sources familiar with the conversations said that Obama reached out to Scowcroft for phone chats, even before he ran for president, and the back-and-forth has continued in recent days as the president-elect assembles his Cabinet.

Scowcroft is very close to current Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who is rumored to be in the running to stay in the Cabinet for at least an interim period at the start of the new Obama administration.

"I actually think it would send the kind of signal that I think the president-elect intends, or spoke about in his campaign, and that is that we need to work together. We need to work as Americans," Scowcroft recent said on CNN. "And I think giving Bob Gates some more time to do the kinds of things he's doing would be a very wise course of action."

On Thursday, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said he is excited about the possibility of heading the Department of Health and Human Services in the Obama administration, where he would be the point person in helping to reform the nation's health care system.

Three sources close to Obama's transition said that the president-elect's choice to lead HHS is the former senator, if he passes the vetting process.

Daschle himself is on the health care advisory group of Obama's transition team.