A note posted on the VA's Web site last week said that McClain plans to return to the private sector. His departure follows the resignation late last month of Pedro Cadenas, who had been the VA's chief information security officer.

VA Secretary R. James Nicholson said in a statement that McClain "has been an integral part of [the] VA's senior leadership team."

Members of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs also commended McClain for his contributions to the agency at last Thursday's hearing on the massive data breach at the VA.

But McClain has faced considerable criticism at other congressional hearings over what some have seen as his role in limiting the authority of the VA's CIO and CISO via a pair of internal memoranda written in August 2003 and April 2004.

In the first memo, McClain expressed the opinion that responsibility for IT security under the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) rested not with the VA's central CIO but with executives in its health care, benefits and cemetery divisions.