WASHINGTON -- Another leading candidate to be the next secretary of defense has pulled out of consideration.
The candidate, Michele Flournoy, a former undersecretary of defense, said she was taking herself out of consideration because of family concerns.
Flournoy was considered to be at the top of President Barack Obama's short list of candidates to succeed Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who resigned under pressure Monday.
She said in a letter Tuesday that she would remain on the board of the Center for a New American Security, a Washington policy group that she co-founded and where she is chief executive. In the letter, she said she had personally asked Obama to take her out of consideration.
Her decision was announced a day after a spokesman for Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island disclosed that he, too, was not interested in the post, especially given that he is now the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee.
That leaves Ashton Carter, a former deputy defense secretary, as the leading candidate on the initial list of prospects mentioned by White House officials Monday. Obama had no plans to make an announcement this week, officials said.
Other names that have been floated around Washington include former Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and Denis McDonough, the White House chief of staff and former deputy national security adviser. But analysts said Lieberman is probably too hawkish and conservative for the White House, and McDonough is considered too liberal for the Pentagon.
Jeh Johnson, the secretary of homeland security, also has been mentioned as a possibility. He was the Pentagon's chief lawyer during Obama's first administration, spearheading the repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy concerning gays in the military. But he has been a contentious figure among Obama's supporters on the left because he was one of the legal architects of the administration's war policy.
There also has been a flurry of speculation about Louis Chenevert, who abruptly resigned as chairman and chief executive of United Technologies Corp. on Monday.
But a check with the White House put an end to that rumor. "We tend not to go to Canadians," a senior administration official said.
A Section on 11/27/2014