Trump team has barely engaged with current National Security Council below senior levels

Less than three days before President Obama turns the keys to the White House, and the nuclear codes, over to President-elect Donald J. Trump, Mr. Trump’s transition staff has barely engaged with the National Security Council below the most senior levels. His designated national security adviser, Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, has met four times with his Obama counterpart, Susan E. Rice, most recently on Tuesday afternoon…

“We really wanted to make sure there was nothing a new team needed to know that we hadn’t told them,” Ms. Rice said in an interview. “It took them more time than we expected for them to be ready to engage with us.” Now, she added, “we’re racing to make up lost time.”

Ms. Rice insisted that she was confident the Trump administration would have the information it needed by the time Mr. Trump was sworn in. The process has settled down in recent days with the arrival of Keith Kellogg, a retired three-star Army general whom Mr. Trump named as chief of staff of the N.S.C. last month, and who is now running the transition…

Still, officials from both the Obama and Trump teams acknowledged that the transition had been rocky, in no small part because Mr. Trump’s defeat of Hillary Clinton caught both the outgoing and incoming administrations so completely by surprise. Had Mrs. Clinton won, her staff planned to place a transition team in the N.S.C. within a couple of days.