House Armed Services Committee Staff Biographies

Andrew K. Ellis
Staff Director

The unitary staff and the retiring nature of Chairman Floyd Spence of South Carolina concentrate an unusual amount of power in the hands of the staff director. By all accounts, Ellis does not shy from exerting tight control. Nor does he apologize for it: "Ninety-nine percent of the committee's legislative effort is wrapped up in the year-long process of drafting and passing the annual defense authorization bill," said Ellis. "Coordinating and deconflicting the thousands of issues addressed in the bill would be even more complicated than it is now if the committee were entirely decentralized." The subcommittee's lead staffers, applauded for their mastery of the issues, operate within budget and policy constraints set by the full committee, where Ellis is the political maestro. "He does not have a reputation for being Mr. Nice Guy," as one noncommittee staffer put it, but all interviewed admire his command of legislative politics and process. Ellis, 40, did not serve in the military. A Greater Boston native and a graduate of the universities of Vermont and Southern California, Ellis came to Washington in 1985 and, after a year with Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., has spent his whole career on Armed Services. He became its top GOP staffer in 1989, and staff director after 1994.

Robert S. Rangel
Deputy Staff Director

As potent as Ellis is, coordinating this committee is beyond any one person. Rangel is Ellis' No. 2 in fact as well as title: they're "a duopoly," one colleague said; "truly symbiotic," added another. The two men sit at desks 10 feet apart and have worked together since 1987. Officially, Ellis handles the committee's external relations, while Rangel is in charge of internal administration, from keeping the committee on message to keeping hearings on schedule-what he himself modestly calls "things that are rather boring and mundane but tend to be a key part of what we do." In practice, Rangel's responsibilities blur into Ellis', with the two tag-teaming to share the burden. Rangel also covers several specific issues-Defense Department reorganization, acquisition policy, and intelligence-which do not fall under any subcommittee. A native of Lexington, Ky., the 40-year-old Rangel graduated from the University of Kentucky and worked for then-Rep. Larry Hopkins before joining the committee in 1987.

John D. Chapla
Professional Staff Member

Chapla is the exemplary subcommittee "lead." A veteran of 22 years in the Army and a decade with Armed Services, Chapla has experience not only writing complicated and politically sensitive legislation about military personnel, but also living with its consequences. "If you make a mistake in the personnel arena," Chapla said, "it's kind of hard to go back." Sources agree that Chapla-ably assisted by retired Air Force Lt. Col. Michael Higgins-makes very few mistakes. Advocates for better pay and benefits for service members call him "very responsive" to their concerns. On the other hand, said one otherwise-admiring former colleague, "he's got a political tin ear," the downside of a typical subcommittee staffer's concentration on the technical details. A retired lieutenant colonel, the 52-year-old Cleveland native graduated from the Virginia Military Institute and served in the Army's elite 82nd Airborne Division as well as at the Pentagon before joining the committee in 1990.

Philip W. Grone
Professional Staff Member

After Ellis and Rangel, said one former staffer, "the guy with the most political acumen is Phil Grone"-and he needs it: he leads staff work on the annual military construction bill, which pays for everything from barracks and airfields to family housing and military day care centers. "Mil-con" money, much-beloved by members, has shrunk dramatically since the 1980s, leading to fierce fights over pork. In this dangerous arena, good-government Grone wins plaudits for his expertise at trimming the traditional fat. One Democratic colleague said Grone has made his military-construction team "a model of how bipartisanship on the committee runs." Grone, 38, grew up in Berlanger, Ky., and holds degrees from Northern Kentucky University and the University of Virginia. He came to the Hill in 1985 and joined the committee in 1993.

Steven A. Thompson
Professional Staff Member

Although military construction is often viewed as the biggest pork-magnet in the defense budget, military procurement-which buys everything from planes to ships to uniforms-creates hundreds of thousands of jobs all over the country. Thompson, lead staffer for procurement, "has to deal with many more member requests than he has dollars to play with," said one colleague. Thompson's continued survival on such a battlefield owes something to a habit of keeping his head down-he is famously media-shy-but owes more to his extensive experience. An Air Force Academy graduate with seven years in uniform, the 52-year-old Washington native had a civilian career in Air Force acquisitions, and at the Congressional Budget Office before he joined the committee in 1989.

Thomas P. Glakas
Minority Staff Director

Called "Tommy" even on official committee rosters, Glakas holds the less-than-comfortable position of being the de facto minority staff director on a committee without a full minority staff. One former colleague said Glakas was a "reluctant bridesmaid" when he was tapped by his longtime boss Ike Skelton of Missouri, the committee's ranking Democrat, to replace retiring minority staff director Marilyn Elrod in 1998. Though a veteran staffer, Glakas had been back on the Hill for only seven months at the time, after several years' teaching in Germany at the Marshall Center. Glakas is a consummate policy expert, with a Russian studies master's degree from Georgetown University. Glakas, 47, grew up in Bethesda, Md., graduated from Ohio's Miami University, and spent three years in the Marine Corps.

Douglas H. Necessary
Minority Professional Staff Member

It is Necessary's long tenure with the committee staff-he joined it in 1984-that puts him in a class by himself. "If he hasn't worked it before," said one Republican staffer, "it probably is something completely new under the sun." Added a former staffer: "He knows how to stand up to members and tell them `no' to their face and get away with it." The aptly named Necessary provides essential expertise to the committee, not only on military procurement and acquisition policy, his specialty, but on intelligence policy and top-secret "black programs" as well. Born in Los Angeles, the 54-year-old Necessary holds degrees from Alabama's Auburn University and from the Florida Institute of Technology. A Vietnam veteran, Necessary rose from private to lieutenant colonel before retiring from the Army to join the committee.

Mieke Y. Eoyang
Minority Professional Staff Member

Being a woman of 26 and a Democrat with no military experience does not make life exactly easy on this "boys-with-toys" committee, but Eoyang has wowed those who watch her work. "I think she's tops," said one hard-bitten Army retiree. "She can go as far and as fast as she wants to." An intern and then legislative aide to Colorado Democrat Pat Schroeder, Eoyang joined the committee staff after Schroeder's 1996 retirement. She works closely with Chapla's team as the minority's sole staffer on personnel, where she has impressed service members' advocates with her quick grasp of notoriously complex and often-touchy issues. Raised in Monterey, Calif., Eoyang graduated from Wellesley College.