Press Release - President Biden Announces Additional Members of His Diplomatic and Homeland Security Teams

WASHINGTON – Today, President Joe Biden announced his intent to nominate the following individuals to serve in key roles:

• Laura Farnsworth Dogu, Nominee for Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Republic of Honduras
• Kenneth L. Wainstein, Nominee for Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis at the Department of Homeland Security

Laura Farnsworth Dogu, Nominee for Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Republic of Honduras
Laura Farnsworth Dogu is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service with the rank of Career Minister and a former U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Nicaragua. Currently serving as the Foreign Policy Advisor to the Chief of Staff of the Army, at the Pentagon, Dogu was previously the Deputy Director of the Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell at the FBI. She has served overseas as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico, the U.S. Consulate General in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and the U.S. embassies in Turkey, Egypt, and El Salvador. Washington assignments at the Department of State included Deputy Executive Director of the Bureau of Consular Affairs and Operations Center Watch Officer.

Dogu received an M.S. from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in Washington, D.C., and an MBA, BBA and B.A. from Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. She is the recipient of numerous honors, including a Presidential Merit Award and the James A. Baker III and C. Howard Wilkins Jr. Award for Outstanding Deputy Chief of Mission. Dogu speaks Spanish, Turkish, and Arabic.

Kenneth L. Wainstein, Nominee for Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis at the Department of Homeland Security
Kenneth L. Wainstein is a litigation partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Davis Polk & Wardwell. During his time in private practice, Wainstein also served as a law school adjunct professor teaching national security law for twelve years, as a commissioner on the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense, as a member of the Public Interest Declassification Board, and in a number of other national security organizations.

Wainstein previously spent over 20 years in a number of law enforcement and national security positions in the federal government. Between 1989 and 2001, Wainstein served as a federal prosecutor in both the Southern District of New York and the District of Columbia, where he handled criminal prosecutions ranging from public corruption to violent gang cases and held a variety of supervisory positions, including Acting United States Attorney. In 2001, he was appointed Director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys where he provided oversight and support to the 94 U.S. Attorneys' Offices. Between 2002 and 2004, Wainstein served as General Counsel of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and then as Chief of Staff to Director Robert S. Mueller, III. Wainstein was then nominated and confirmed as United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, where he led the largest U.S. Attorney's Office in the country, and in 2006 he was again confirmed as the first Assistant Attorney General for National Security at the Department of Justice. In that position, Wainstein established and led the new National Security Division, which consolidated the Justice Department's law enforcement and intelligence operations on all national security matters. In 2008, Wainstein was named Homeland Security Advisor by President George W. Bush. In that capacity, he advised the President, convened and chaired meetings of the Cabinet Officers on the Homeland Security Council, and oversaw the inter-agency process coordinating the nation's counterterrorism, homeland security, infrastructure protection, and disaster response and recovery efforts.

Wainstein graduated from the University of Virginia and received his law degree from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. He lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and their four daughters.