President Obama Announces Ashton Carter As Next Defense Secretary

John Brennan, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), from left, Jacob Lew, U.S. Treasury secretary, Ernest Moniz, U.S. energy secretary, and Senator Carl Levin, a Democrat from Michigan, listen during a nomination announcement for Ashton Carter, former deputy secretary of defense and U.S. President Barack Obama's nominee to be U.S. secretary of defense, not pictured, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Friday, Dec. 5, 2014. Carter, 60, spent more than two years as the Defense Department's No. 2 civilian leader under former Secretary Leon Panetta and then Chuck Hagel, the current defense secretary. He also served under Obama's first Pentagon chief, Robert Gates, as the military's top weapons buyer. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images