Meetings Indicative of Clinton’s Ideas for Cabinet

President-elect Bill Clinton said Wednesday that he is nearing decisions on “a few” Cabinet appointments, amid signs that efforts to staff his incoming government are accelerating.

As aides announced the heads of nine “cluster groups” charged with reviewing operations in federal agencies, Clinton met for a second consecutive day behind closed doors with Democratic leaders who have been mentioned as possible Cabinet appointees.

Transition communications director George Stephanopoulos said the President-elect has made “no final decisions . . . on his Cabinet positions yet.” But with the increase in activity, one well-placed source in the transition effort said that final decisions could come relatively soon after Clinton returns to Little Rock, Ark., next week from a California weekend that begins Friday.

The transition team has “spent a huge amount of time going through lists of people, talking and looking at resumes,” said one ranking transition official. “But time is really crunching down on us.”

This week’s flurry of meetings may give some indication of Clinton’s focus as he works through the list of positions he must fill.

Clinton met Wednesday with former Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt, who has been mentioned as a potential candidate for several jobs including Interior secretary, and Rep. Bill Richardson (D-N.M.), who is being promoted for the Interior job by Latino activists.

Those meetings followed a session a day earlier with another rumored candidate for the position: outgoing Sen. Timothy E. Wirth (D-Colo.), whose name also has been mentioned as a possible head of the Energy Department or the Environmental Protection Agency.

Clinton also met Tuesday with two men considered to be candidates for the job of Treasury secretary: Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Tex.) and New York investment banker Robert E. Rubin, who advised Clinton on economic matters during the presidential election campaign.

Sources said that Clinton also met Tuesday with Rep. Leon E. Panetta (D-Carmel Valley), considered a candidate for director of the Office of Management and Budget. Last weekend, sources said, Clinton met with former Congressional Budget Office Director Alice Rivlin, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who also is considered a contender for the OMB job.

Speaking with reporters Wednesday, Clinton would not say whether he had offered jobs to any of his guests. Asked about his two-hour meeting with Bentsen on Tuesday, for example, the President-elect said only: “I asked his advice about a whole range of things.”

The transition official cautioned that the meetings do not assure jobs for any of those who Clinton has consulted--but that appointments could not be ruled out for them, either.

“Part of the purpose is base-touching, part of it is review and part of it is discussion about any individual’s desires and the President-elect’s desires” about appointments, the official said.

Clinton’s announcement of nine “cluster groups” to review operations at individual federal agencies filled out a transition policy structure that already includes advisory panels preparing options for the President-elect on broad areas such as health care, the economy and foreign policy.

Officials said the new cluster groups primarily will serve an audit function: reviewing operations at federal agencies, preparing a briefing book for the incoming Cabinet officials, acting as liaison with the career staff and consulting with the personnel operation headed by former South Carolina Gov. Richard W. Riley, which is attempting to fill thousands of sub-Cabinet jobs.