Answering the Call
Meet Sean Oehlbert (’98), former National Security Council director of nuclear nonproliferation.
It’s a warm Saturday evening and Sean Oehlbert (’98) is hosting a backyard barbecue with colleagues from work and their families. The adults are finishing dinner and watching the kids run around when Oehlbert’s phone rings, bringing the party to an abrupt end.
The call is from the White House Communications Office. North Korea has test-launched another missile. Oehlbert, director of nuclear nonproliferation for the National Security Council (NSC), removes himself from the barbecue and gets to work. The president’s senior staff will want detailed briefings tonight, and Oehlbert—the White House’s point person for many nuclear matters—needs to prepare for the meetings.
When it comes to the movement and testing of nuclear weapons, few people know more than Oehlbert, which is why the White House wants him on hand on nights like this.
Prior to joining the White House staff, Oehlbert spent nearly two decades working for the National Nuclear Security Administration within the US Department of Energy. In July 2016, he was serving as a senior policy advisor to the deputy secretary of energy when the Obama administration asked him to take a temporary assignment at the NSC. Oehlbert agreed and held the position until December 2017, when he returned to the Department of Energy to serve as a policy director there.
Typically, Oehlbert says, detailees like him (government agency employees on loan to the White House) serve in NSC policy positions for a year and then return to their home agencies. The jobs are professional, not political, so it’s not unusual for them to span more than one administration. Before Oehlbert’s stint on the NSC was up, the new Trump administration asked if he would stay a second year. “I told them I’d give them an additional six months,” he says, “just because I do miss my family.”
NSC jobs are notoriously demanding. During his 18 months working in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building—an elegant granite structure that sits on the White House grounds—Oehlbert usually left for work before his wife and two school-age children were awake and returned after they’d gone to bed. “And if you get a call from the Situation Room on a Saturday night because something has happened,” he says, “you drop everything and you go in.”
While the NSC job was a strain on his family, Oehlbert says, “you keep in mind that you’re doing this because you want to see the country’s security enhanced, to see the goals we have as a nation achieved. You’re mindful of the fact that you’re making personal sacrifices for a greater good.”
Congress established the National Security Council in 1947—soon after World War II—to help the president reconcile diplomatic and military concerns when making foreign-policy decisions. The NSC originally included just the president, the secretary of state, and the secretary of defense, but it has grown steadily in size and complexity ever since. According to a Washington Post analysis, the NSC included about 25 people under President Jimmy Carter, 50 under George H. W. Bush, 200 under George W. Bush, and well over 400 under Barack Obama. The NSC now consists of a Principals Committee, a Deputies Committee, and a number of Policy Coordinating Committees, as well as IT and administrative personnel.
The basic role of today’s NSC is to help presidents make national-security decisions by providing them with well- researched policy options. NSC staff are then responsible for working with government departments and agencies to implement White House decisions.
Day to day, says Oehlbert, his NSC job involved “a lot of writing, a lot of running meetings, and a lot of staffing.” By “staffing,” he means attending any high-level meetings where his expertise might be needed. The writing he did—often under intense deadlines—included position papers, memorandums for decision, and other documents intended to help White House leaders make complex decisions. The documents laid out policy options and their pros and cons, based on Oehlbert’s own expertise and his consultations with a variety of government offices. Much of Oehlbert’s NSC work centered on international nuclear nonproliferation treaties and regimes, such as reviewing the United States’ policies pertaining to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and its limited support of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty and overseeing negotiations of civil nuclear cooperation agreements (the bilateral agreements that must be in place before US companies can export nuclear equipment or materials).
While succeeding at the NSC requires self-reliance and confidence in your expertise, says Oehlbert, “it’s also vitally important to be humble.” NSC staffers are often pulled into high-level meetings and asked pointed questions. In those situations, Oehlbert says, “Senior officials are expecting you to provide the answer. That’s why you’re there. But if you don’t know the answer, it’s best to say ‘I don’t know. I’ll get back to you.’ It’s a hard thing to say because you want to be viewed as the expert, perfectly placed and perfectly prepared. But it’s going to happen, and you need to be humble about it,” he says. The Situation Room is no place for bluffing.
Effective NSC staffers also excel at working in teams, Oehlbert says, because no NSC issue is self-contained. When his office—the Weapons of Mass Destruction Office—worked on Iran-related issues, they worked closely with the Middle East Office. For issues related to India or Pakistan, they consulted colleagues in the South Asia Office. “You have to be able to work collaboratively,” he says, “because the different perspective others bring to the issue will only help create better policy.” It’s one of the many lessons from law school that he continues to apply today, he says.
Oehlbert’s interest in nuclear weapons began during his childhood in the 1980s. “I grew up at the height of the Cold War, in the Reagan administration, and I remember all of the worries that we were going to have a nuclear war with the Russians,” he says. “For whatever reason, I was always fascinated by these types of issues, and I was always fascinated by Russia.”
As an undergraduate majoring in political science, Oehlbert took courses in Russian politics, Russian history, and the Russian language. At BU Law, he focused on international relations and international law. After graduation, he landed a job working at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, assisting in the negotiation of civil nuclear cooperation agreements with foreign partners. During his first year on the job, he was thrilled to take an assignment at the US embassy in Moscow.
Oehlbert has since built a solid career on what he calls “the power of yes”—the power of accepting any challenge or opportunity that comes his way. “Sometimes the easier path is to say no, but if you say yes, you’re going to do things that you didn’t think you had the ability to do, and you’re going to learn and grow,” he says. “That’s been my governing philosophy. If someone asks you to do something, even if it’s not something you think you can do, just try to do it. Say yes. Don’t say no. That’s how I wound up sitting in the White House.”
Despite the pressure and long hours, Oehlbert never regretted saying “yes” to the NSC. The role provided an unparalleled opportunity to serve his country and invaluable career experience. His temporary seat at the White House, Oehlbert says, provided fresh perspective on his longtime work, and he’s now using that perspective for the good of his home department and the American taxpayer. “I am completely aware of the unique opportunity I’ve been presented,” Oehlbert says of his time at the NSC, “and am honored to have served.”
Reported by Corinne Steinbrenner (COM’06)
This feature originally appeared in The Record, BU Law’s alumni magazine. Read the full issue here.
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