'Miracle On the Hudson' Pilot Sully Sullenberger Nominated By Joe Biden As U.S. Ambassador
President Joe Biden announced that "Miracle on the Hudson" pilot C.B. "Sully" Sullenberger was among his U.S. ambassador nominations Tuesday.
Sullenberger is known for executing the emergency landing of U.S. Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River with no fatalities in 2009. If his nomination is confirmed, Sullenberger will assume the post of U.S. representative on the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization.
Biden announced several other ambassador picks, including Interior Secretary Ken Salazar for ambassador to Mexico and former deputy secretary of state Tom Nides for ambassador to Israel.
Biden didn't reject the notion of nominating political donors for ambassador positions before he was elected president, but promised that his picks would be the "best people" for the job, the Associated Press reported. The pledge marked a departure from former President Donald Trump's ambassador nominees, many of whom were political donors.
For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below.
More than 43 percent of Trump's ambassadorial appointments were political appointees, compared with 30.5 percent for Barack Obama and 31.8 percent for George W. Bush, according to the American Foreign Service Association. Biden hopes to keep political appointments to about 30 percent of ambassador picks, according to the White House.
"Nobody, in fact, will be appointed by me based on anything they contributed," Biden promised last year.
All the nominees must receive Senate confirmation before they can assume their roles.
Biden's other picks include:
—Julie Jiyoon Chung, a senior adviser to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, to serve as ambassador to Sri Lanka.
—Sharon Cromer, who currently serves as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Mission Director at the U.S. Embassy, Accra, Ghana, to serve as ambassador to Gambia.
—Troy Fitrell, currently the director of the Office of West African Affairs at the State Department, to serve as ambassador to Guinea. He has served as deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassies in Ethiopia and Mauritius, as deputy director of the Department's Office of Southern African Affairs, and as deputy director of the Office of International Security Cooperation in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs.
—Marc Ostfield, a 30-year veteran of the State Department, to serve as ambassador to Paraguay. Ostfield is currently the ombudsman of the State Department.
—Julianne "Julie" Smith, a former Obama administration national security aide currently serving as a senior adviser to the Secretary of State, to serve as permanent representative on the NATO council.
—Cynthia Telles, a clinical professor in the department of psychiatry at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, to serve as ambassador to Costa Rica. Telles also was a prominent fundraiser for the Biden White House campaign.
