The man who is temporarily replacing Eric Shinseki as secretary of Veterans Affairs is a U.S. Military Academy graduate, a onetime banker and a former chief executive of the USO who joined the Department of Veterans Affairs just three months ago. The acting secretary, Sloan Gibson, was confirmed by the Senate in February to be Shinseki's deputy. President Obama on Friday elevated Gibson while the White House searches for a permanent replacement. "Sloan, I think, would be the first to acknowledge that he's going to have a learning curve that he's got to deal with," Obama said. The son of a member of the Army Air Corps who served as a B-17 tail gunner during World War II, Gibson graduated from West Point in 1975 and later obtained a master's degree in economics from the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a master's in public administration from Harvard. In his new Veterans Affairs post, he will be charged with the immediate task of getting veterans off long waiting lists to see doctors.
New York Times
