Stephen Hadley

Since taking over as national security adviser, Hadley, whose tenure as deputy national security adviser was tainted by allegations about his involvement in the mishandling of intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq, has proved a controversial figure. In April 2007, Hadley and other administration figures announced they were looking for a "war czar" to serve as overseer of the war efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq and act as an intermediary between the White House and the various agencies involved in prosecuting the "war on terror." The announcement, which came during the dramatic ramp-up of troops in Iraq as part of the "surge" plan, was applauded by many hardliners and neoconservatives, who argued it was a necessary component of success for the new plan. "It [finding a war czar] would be definitely a good idea," said Frederick Kagan, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "Hope they do it, and hope they do it soon. And I hope they pick the right guy. It's a real problem that we don't have a single individual back here who is really capable of coordinating the effort" (Washington Post, April 11, 2007). Hadley concurred, saying, "We're at a point now where we've got a plan. Execution of that plan is now everything" (Associated Press, May 6, 2007).

However, many observers as well as potential candidates for the job ridiculed the idea, arguing that it was further sign of desperation from an administration still under the sway of Vice President Dick Cheney. One retired general approached about the position, retired Marine Gen. John J. "Jack" Sheehan, told the Washington Post: "The very fundamental issue is, they don't know where the hell they're going." Explaining why he turned down the offer, Sheehan pointed to what he saw as the continuing dominance of Cheney and his allies in the administration. "So rather than go over there, develop an ulcer, and eventually leave, I said, 'No, thanks'" (Washington Post, April 11, 2007).

In late 2006 and early 2007, Hadley's National Security Council (NSC) staff, including most notably his former deputy J.D. Crouch II, oversaw the development of the "surge" strategy for Iraq, which was announced by the president in January 2007 (Washington Post, May 5, 2007). The strategy, an idea heavily promoted by neoconservatives, was viewed by many observers as a direct response to the final report of the Iraq Study Group (ISG), headed by former Secretary of State James Baker and the former Democratic Chairman of the House International Relations Committee, Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-IN). (For more on the ISG, see Jim Lobe and Michael Flynn, "The Push Behind the Surge," Right Web, January 11, 2007.) Hadley served as a key spokesperson for the president's response to the ISG (which had concluded that the United States should shift troops to training efforts and engage Syria and Iran, among other things), floating the alternative idea of a temporary "surge" in troop levels in mid-December 2006 (New York Times, December 13, 2006).

During the run up to the release of the ISG's report, also known as the Baker-Hamilton report, Hadley played a prominent role in preparing the ground for the president's negative response, repeatedly telling reporters that Bush was willing to consider a number of options because he knows that "things are not proceeding well enough or fast enough in Iraq" (Washington Post, December 4, 2006). However, he made clear that the president would not consider any rapid withdrawal from Iraq, even if—as many pundits surmised—the Baker-Hamilton report were to serve as a convenient cover for such a strategy. Hadley told NBC's Meet the Press a few days before the report's release: "That's cut and run and, of course, as the president has said, cut and run is not his cup of tea" (New York Times, December 4, 2006).

During George W. Bush's first term, Hadley gained attention for his role in abetting National Security Adviser Rice's alleged mishandling of information about Iraq's purported effort to buy uranium from Niger. According to the Washington Post, Hadley was told by CIA Director George Tenet that the Niger allegations, which were used by Bush in his January 2003 State of the Union Address and served as a key justification for invading Iraq, were probably bogus and should not be used by the president. Hadley, who claimed that Rice had been unaware of the controversy, told the newspaper, "I should have recalled ... that there was controversy associated with the uranium issue" (Washington Post, July 23, 2003).

A few weeks after Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address, in a Chicago Tribune op-ed Hadley repeated the allegation that the Iraqi "regime has tried to acquire natural uranium from abroad," pointing to what he said was a sustained, wide-ranging effort to acquire nuclear weapons (Chicago Tribune, February 16, 2003).

Hadley's credibility also took a hit for pushing the idea that Mohamed Atta, the lead hijacker in the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, met with Iraqi intelligence agent Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani in the Czech Republic several months before the attack. In an effort to establish a connection between former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaida hijackers, Hadley—in tandem with Vice President Cheney and his top aide I. Lewis Libby—worked to have the allegation mentioned in speeches during the lead up to the war, despite the Czech Republic's admission that it could not verify that the meeting took place and U.S. intelligence agencies' inability to prove that Atta was out of the United States at the time of the alleged meeting. This effort apparently alienated several officials in the Bush administration.

According to a September 29, 2003, Washington Post article: "Behind the scenes, the Atta meeting remained tantalizing to Cheney and his staff. Libby—along with Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley, a longtime Cheney associate—began pushing to include the Atta claim in Powell's appearance before the UN Security Council a week after the State of the Union speech. Powell's presentation was aimed at convincing the world of Iraq's ties to terrorists and its pursuit of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. On Jan. 25, with a stack of notebooks at his side, color-coded with the sources for the information, Libby laid out the potential case against Iraq to a packed White House situation room. 'We read [their proposal to include Atta] and some of us said, Wow! Here we go again,' said one official who helped draft the speech. 'You write it. You take it out, and then it comes back again' ... [Some] officials present said they felt that Libby's presentation was over the top, that the wording was too aggressive and most of the material could not be used in a public forum. Much of it, in fact, unraveled when closely examined by intelligence analysts from other agencies and, in the end, was largely discarded" (Washington Post, September 29, 2003).

Hadley began his government career in the early 1970s, when he served as a Pentagon policy analyst during the first Nixon administration. He steadily moved up the ladder in the national security community, serving as a member of President Gerald Ford's NSC staff and then on a number of official committees, including the Defense Policy Board and the National Security Advisory Panel to the Director of Central Intelligence.

Hadley also worked in the administration of George H.W. Bush. From 1989 to 1993, Hadley served as an assistant to then-Undersecretary of Defense Wolfowitz, during which time Wolfowitz, under the auspices of then-Defense Secretary Cheney, oversaw the production of the now infamous 1992 Draft Defense Planning Guidance, a document that largely foreshadowed the post-Cold War evolution of neoconservative discourse. According to his NSC biography, as assistant secretary of defense for international security policy in the Bush Senior Pentagon, Hadley "had responsibility for defense policy toward NATO and Western Europe, on nuclear weapons and ballistic missile defense, and arms control. He also participated in policy issues involving export control and the use of space. Mr. Hadley served as Secretary of Defense Cheney's representative in talks led by Secretary of State Baker that resulted in the START I and START II Treaties."

According to the Center for Public Integrity, before joining the George W. Bush administration, Hadley "was a board member of ANSER Analytic Services, an Arlington, VA-based nonprofit research group that specialized in government effectiveness and threat assessment. Its trustees include several former Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency officials as well as corporate officers from defense contractors such as Raytheon and Bellcore" (Center for Public Integrity, "The Bush 100," January 2002). Hadley was also a partner in the law firm of Shea & Gardner, which serves a number of major corporate clients, including the defense contractors Boeing and Lockheed Martin and which counts among its former employers James Woolsey, the former CIA head and Defense Policy Board member.

Hadley participated in the study team at the hardline National Institute for Public Policy (NIPP) that produced Rationale and Requirements for U.S. Nuclear Forces and Arms Control, a study that called for the development of "mini" nuclear weapons and served as a road map for George W. Bush's Nuclear Posture Review. The NIPP report advocated the use of bunker-busting nuclear weapons—even against non-nuclear countries—to rid rogue nations of any weapons of mass destruction, such as stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons. Prefiguring the preventive national security doctrine of the Bush administration, the report stated: "Under certain circumstances very severe nuclear threats may be needed to deter any of these potential adversaries" (for more information, see the World Policy Institute report, "About Face," May 2002).

Hadley has advocated extending the role of nuclear weapons to include deterrence against all so-called weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological weapons. He wrote in the Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law: "To say that a security policy based on nuclear weapons was 'irresponsible' and 'immoral' from the outset is to accuse the United States government of pursuing a policy that was irresponsible and immoral. Such a serious and false accusation against a democratic government destroys public confidence in our institutions and our leaders. ... It is often an unstated premise in the current debate that if nuclear weapons are needed at all, they are needed only to deter the nuclear weapons of others. I am not sure this unstated premise is true. As [former head of U.S. Space Command] General [Charles] Horner pointed out, this is not why we got into the nuclear business. In fact, one of the lessons other countries have drawn from the Gulf War is that no nation should even consider a confrontation with the United States military without having a weapon of mass destruction at its disposal, be it nuclear, chemical, or biological. They drew this lesson after observing the overwhelming conventional non-nuclear military capability that General Horner and others so visibly demonstrated on the Gulf War battlefield."

Government Service

Private Sector

Education

James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, Viking, 2004.

Deb Riechman, "White House Searches for War Czar," Associated Press, May 6, 2007.

Peter Baker, "Bush Aide to Leave No. 2 National Security Post," Washington Post, May 5, 2007.

Peter Baker and Thomas E. Ricks, "3 Generals Spurn the Position of War 'Czar,'" Washington Post, April 11, 2007.

Center for Public Integrity, "The Bush 100," January 2002.

World Policy Institute, "About Face: The Role of the Arms Lobby in the Bush Administration's Radical Reversal of Two Decades of U.S. Nuclear Policy," May 2002, http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/reports/reportaboutface.html.

Stephen Hadley, "Policy Consideration in Using Nuclear Weapons," Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law, vol. 23, http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/djcil/articles/djcil8p23.htm.

Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus, "Bush Aides Disclose Warnings from CIA," Washington Post, July 23, 2003.

Stephen Hadley, "Two Potential Iraqi Weapons: Denial and Deception," Chicago Tribune, February 16, 2003.

Dana Priest and Glenn Kessler, "Iraq, 9/11 Still Linked by Cheney," Washington Post, September 29, 2003.

"Rice's Deputy is Promoted by Bush," New York Times, November 16, 2004.

Jim Rutenberg and David E. Sanger, "White House to Delay Shift on Iraq Until '07," New York Times, December 13, 2006.

David Sanger, "Amid Hints Bush Will Change Policy, Clues that He Won't," New York Times, December 4, 2006.

Charles Babington, "Bush Is Weighing Options for New Strategy in Iraq, Aide Says," Washington Post, December 4, 2006.

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