This Week on the Right
John Hannah Takes Libby's Place as the VP's National Security Adviser
(Excerpted from new Right Web profile, which can be viewed at: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/2926)
During the weeks leading up to the indictment of I. Lewis Libby, the vice president's former chief of staff, a number of bloggers and pundits speculated on whether John P. Hannah, then the principal deputy assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney, was providing information to the special prosecutor that could be used to indict White House officials in the so-called PlameGate affair.
Although not charged, Hannah is mentioned—by title only—in the indictment as one of a number of officials in Cheney's office (including David Addington and press secretary Catherine Martin) who worked tirelessly in early 2003 to identify Valerie Plame, gather information about her husband's (Joseph Wilson) trip to Niger, and then spread this information. The indictment did not clarify what—if any—role Hannah played in helping the prosecutor indict Libby, but Fitzgerald left open the possibility of more indictments to come.
Before joining the VP's office in March 2001, Hannah worked alongside John Bolton in the State Department's office of arms control and international security. After Bolton “loaned” his long-time associate to Cheney, Hannah reportedly worked closely with Libby on an informal White House team called the “White House Iraq Group,” which was tasked with culling information about the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, presumably focusing on Iraq.
According to the New York Times (October 30, 2005), Hannah also served as the main liaison between the VP's office and Ahmed Chalabi, a leading Iraqi exile and close confidant of many neoconservative figures in and out of government who has been accused of helping feed false information to the Bush administration regarding Saddam Hussein's weapons programs.
Hannah also drafted with Libby a 48-page speech in January 2003 that was intended to lay out the administration's case for going to war. The speech was provided to then Secretary of State Colin Powell before his now-infamous speech to the United Nations Security Council in February 2003, although most of the Hannah/Libby claims were ultimately rejected by Powell and then-CIA Director George Tenet.
In the private sphere, Hannah has worked as a lawyer in Washington, DC and as a research fellow and deputy director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank established by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in the 1980s.
David Addington Selected as VP's New Chief of Staff
(Excerpted from new Right Web profile, which can be viewed at: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/2940)
Just before getting his new promotion, Addington was one of several Cheney aides cited in connection with the ongoing investigation by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald into the so-called PlameGate affair. Although not charged, Addington (along with John Hannah and press secretary Catherine Martin) is mentioned—by title only—in the indictment as part of a group of officials in Cheney's office who endeavored in early 2003 to identify Valerie Plame, gather information about her husband's (Joseph Wilson) trip to Niger, and then spread this information.
Addington, who began his government career as a lawyer for the CIA in the early 1980s, has been a loyal Cheney sidekick since the mid-1980s, when he served as counsel for the House Committees on Intelligence and Foreign Affairs. When Cheney moved from Congress to the Pentagon after the election of George H. W. Bush, Addington tagged along, serving as special assistant and later general counsel to then-Defense Secretary Cheney. And when Cheney became Vice President, Addington was again by his benefactor's side, becoming the VP's general counsel, a position he held until November 2005, when he took over as chief of staff.
The special prosecutor's investigation is only one of a series of controversies that have plagued Addington during his time in the VP's office. He has been accused of playing a central role in the decision to block the release of key documents to the Senate Intelligence Committee regarding its investigation into pre-war intelligence. In 2002, he helped draft the White House “torture memos,” which claimed that the president could sidestep the Geneva Conventions in the “war on terror.” In 2001, when the General Accounting Office was trying to investigate the role of executives and lobbyists in helping Cheney put together his energy plan, Addington consistently attacked in letters to the GAO the agency's authority to investigate the matter. Following up on his torture-memo success, Addington is currently leading efforts to block Congress's attempt to draft stringent rules governing the treatment of detainees in places like Abu Ghraib.
The Weekly Standard: Neoconservative Flagship Publication
(Excerpted from new Right Web profile, which can be viewed at: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/2891)
William Kristol, Fred Barnes, and John Podhoretz cofounded the Weekly Standard in March 1995 after meeting (along with David Tell of the Project for the Republican Future) with Rupert Murdoch at the Beverly Hills home of the international media mogul. The weekly newsmagazine published its first issue in mid-September 1995, “thanks to Murdoch's generosity.” William Kristol, son of Irving Kristol and Gertrude Himmelfarb, directed the Project for the Republican Future.
Fred Barnes came to the Weekly Standard from the New Republic, and John Podhoretz (son of longtime Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter) was a TV critic for the New York Post, also owned by Murdoch. In 1997 Podhoretz returned to the New York Post as an editor and columnist.
The Weekly Standard, closely associated with ideological and political agendas of the Project for the New American Century and the American Enterprise Institute, quickly established itself as the leading mouthpiece of the right's power complex. Commentary served until the late 1980s as the flagship publication of neoconservatism, but its influence among both neoconservatives and the Washington policy community has been far surpassed by Weekly Standard.
Weekly Standard, under the editorship of Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes, has succeeded in ways that Norman Podhoretz could never even imagine. Although Commentary has five decades head start on Weekly Standard and boasts more subscribers, its influence cannot compare with Kristol's glossy weekly. Unlike Commentary and other outlets for neoconservative opinion, the Weekly Standard began as an expressly political endeavor—a follow-up to the Project for the Republican Future. Kristol is a political intellectual who understands that the medium is as important as the message. For Kristol, ideas, communication, and political change are not distinct parts of a process but rather a continuum. The son of neoconservatives' godfather regards himself as a mover, a shaker, an ideological provocateur, and the Republican Party's goalie—one who keeps moving the goal posts farther to the right.
Ideas and principles are important to neoconservatives, but so is money. In a New York Observer article about neoconservatives, William Kristol suggested that “News Corp. should get a little spot on your map.” Actually, News Corporation deserves more than just a spot on the neoconservative map. The conglomerate owns at least 10 major English-language newspapers, including New York Post and Times of London, in addition to Weekly Standard. Rupert Murdoch's personal involvement has helped to ensure that almost all of his news organizations “have hewn very closely to Mr. Murdoch's own stridently hawkish political views, making his voice among the loudest in the Anglophone world in the international debate over the American-led war with Iraq.”
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