Energy Secretary Rick Perry said Friday that the Energy Department has a broad mandate regarding national security issues — and that's why President Donald Trump selected him to serve on the National Security Council.
"There's probably a lot of reasons that the secretary of energy needs to be sitting at that table when decisions are made," Perry, 67, the former Texas governor, told the Washington Examiner. "There are [myriad] tentacles, if you will, that go very deep and very broad out of the Department of Energy that affect the security of our country."
Perry, however, would not disclose whether his department had any information on threats to the nation's energy resources, though nuclear power falls within the purview of the agency, the Examiner reports.
Earlier this month, Trump elevated Perry to the council's Principles Committee, in a reshuffling that ousted chief strategist Steve Bannon.
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