Phase 2 Begins as Clinton Names ‘Cluster’ Heads : Transition: President-elect is step away from naming Cabinet, setting agenda as chief ‘fact finders’ are chosen.

With the presidential race now three weeks past, the first phase of President-elect Bill Clinton’s transition has ended and the second phase--the actual construction of a new government--is about to begin.

For Clinton aides here and in Little Rock, Ark., the main preoccupation for the last three weeks has been putting the machinery of the transition into place--setting up the elaborate network of committees, advisory panels and working groups that are designed to funnel recommendations and policy options to Clinton and his top advisers.

Now, with the final announcements Wednesday of who will head the various “cluster groups” that will audit federal agencies for Clinton and his aides, that machinery is in place. After a brief pause for the Thanksgiving holiday, which probably will be the last break most senior Clinton aides get before the inauguration, the transition teams are expected to begin producing reports and recommendations.

“If you wanted to accurately describe what we’ve been doing, you’d write, ‘Bill Clinton and his aides spent the last few days sitting and thinking about what the government should look like. No decisions were made,’ ” said one senior adviser.

But that dynamic likely will change soon after the holiday, aides said, noting that Clinton has told them to present options on major issues to him by mid-December and that he is likely to begin naming top Cabinet officers early in December.

Although Clinton has not set a firm timetable, senior advisers said that he would like to have his Cabinet named before Christmas--sticking roughly to the same pace as the last several transitions. Under that timetable, Clinton would move to the final phase of the transition--putting in place his specific agenda for the first 100 days of his Administration--by roughly the beginning of the new year.

Already, the structure that Clinton has created provides some clues to the ideas he has for his Administration.

Clinton’s priorities, for example, are clear from the agendas for the four policy teams that he set in place in Little Rock earlier this month. Those teams are working on proposals for the economy, national security, health care and a short list of domestic policy initiatives, such as his proposed national service plan that would allow college students to pay off some of their student loans through public service work.

That list is broad. But even so it leaves aside a host of other issues that will be deferred until the new Cabinet is in place, top aides said.

While those policy teams prepare lengthy sets of options for Clinton on the issues he has decided to concentrate on, the separate agency clusters announced Wednesday will work on preparing briefing papers for the new Cabinet members. Those papers are supposed to concentrate not on broad policy, but on specific lists of short-term problems that Clinton’s appointees will find waiting for them as soon as they move into their new offices.

“A lot of the policy decisions won’t be made until the new Cabinet members are named,” said one Clinton transition aide. “Obviously, you don’t want to name a Cabinet member and have him show up on his first day of work and have someone say: ‘Here’s your program.’ ”

Instead, the role of the cluster groups announced Wednesday will be to audit each agency in the vast federal bureaucracy. “They’re fact finders,” said another Clinton aide involved in the process. “It’s a bureaucratic task rather than a policy-making task.” The idea, the aide explained, is to compile as comprehensive a list as possible of questions that are likely to confront new Cabinet secretaries and agency directors in their first few months on the job.

The top priority will go toward identifying pending regulatory issues and key personnel decisions that could have political repercussions in the early days of the new Administration, the aide said. The job is to “find the land mines,” he said.

One other aspect of the transition structure that reflects Clinton’s priorities involves the way the transition teams for different agencies have been grouped into clusters.

Clinton has spoken admiringly of how President Bush’s chief national security aides--former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft--worked together as a team, and has pointed out the contrast between their cohesiveness and the fractious nature of Bush’s economic team.

One of the priorities for his Administration will be to choose Cabinet members in groups, with an emphasis on finding appointees who will cooperate, Clinton has said.

Whether that plan will avoid the usual bureaucratic turf battles remains to be seen, but as a step toward achieving his goal Clinton has started the transition with a structure in which teams auditing several agencies will each report to a small number of coordinators covering broad regions such as national security policy, natural resources policy or economics.

Finally, Clinton aides also have set up a series of advisory panels designed to ensure that local Democratic officials and constituency groups do not feel left out of the transition--a step to avoid what many Clinton advisers see as a key failing of Jimmy Carter’s transition process the last time a Democrat won the White House.

The Transition Building Blocks

The cluster groups announced by the Clinton camp Wednesday will prepare policy and personnel options for the 14 Cabinet secretaries. It is the second part of a three-phase program to develop initiatives for the new Administration:

PHASE I: TRANSITION TEAM

On Nov. 12, Clinton announces nearly 50 staff members to his transition team, including his top advisers on the economy, health care and other key issues. Among them: Robert B. Reich of Harvard to oversee economic policy.

PHASE II: CLUSTER GROUPS

Thomas J. Downey, Health, human services and housing

Sally K. Ride, Science, space and technology

Federico Pena, Transportation

Wednesday’s naming of the group leaders begins the second phase of the transition. The cluster group leaders will “produce the road map for the next 90 days,” a spokeswoman said. Here are the group leaders and some of the agencies for which they’ll be responsible:

Franklin Raines, vice chairman of Federal National Mortgage Assn.: Economics and international trade, including Department of Treasury, Department of Commerce, Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

Samuel (Sandy) Berger, Washington attorney and former State Department official: national security affairs including State Department, Defense Department, Central Intelligence Agency.

Federico Pena, former mayor of Denver: Department of Transportation and Interstate Commerce Commission.

Sally K. Ride, former shuttle astronaut: science, space and technology, including NASA and the FCC.

James Gustave Speth, president of the World Resources Institute: natural resources, including Department of Interior, Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Agriculture.

Johnnetta Cole, president of Spellman College: education and labor, including Department of Education, Department of Labor, National Endowment for the Humanities.

Rep. Thomas J. Downey (D-N.Y.): health, human services and housing, including Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Georgetown law professor Peter Edelman and attorney Bernard Nussbaum: justice, including Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Dietra L. Ford, a congressional staff member: government operations, including the postal service.

PHASE III: CABINET STUDIES OPTIONS

The final step is expected to take place in late December after all Cabinet posts have been filled. Cabinet secretaries will then choose from the various options compiled by the cluster groups.

Source: Times staff reports