Stephen Hadley, National Security Advisor

Among the hard core of the Second Bush Administration, Stephen J. Hadley is the least known element to the public and the least visible personality. He plays, nonetheless, a central role.

Leaving Yale University, where he got his law degree, calling himself Steven Hadley, he joined the Secretary of Defense as controller of the analysis group. Richard Nixon had not yet signed the Peace Accord with Vietnam. Noticed by General Brent Scowcroft, an associate of Henry Kissinger and who succeeded him as National Security Advisor, Mr. Hadley joined the National Security Council in 1975 under the Ford Administration. In 1977, when the Republicans lost the White House, he left public service for the private sector. He joined the firm Shea & Gardner, legal counsel to the world’s largest arms manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, as a lawyer. The firm then had to face a scandal that began in Japan and extended to Europe: the company had corrupted political leaders who, one by one, were forced to resign. Hadley kept this job for twenty-four years, including the periods when he returned to public life or when he invested himself in a firm for strategic counseling.

At the beginning of the 1980s, Mr. Steven Hadley set up an insurance fraud of close to 1.1 million dollars. He was discovered, found guilty by a court in Iowa, and forced to reimburse the money. To erase any trace to his crime, he changed his name to Stephen John Hadley.

When Ronald Reagan took the White House, Mr. Hadley stayed in the private sector. However, in 1986, the Irangate scandal broke. President Reagan appointed a commission of three wise men to look into it. It was composed of the Texan Senator John Tower, Edmund Muskie [1], and Brent Scowcroft who called once more Stephen J. Hadley to his side. In spite of the implausibility, the commission concluded that President Reagan and Vice-President Bush were innocent. They found that the financing of the Contras in Nicaragua through the trafficking of drugs and illegal weapons sales to Iran was a secret initiative of over-zealous members of the National Security Council, put into place without the knowledge of their superiors.

In 1989, George H. Bush (father) took the place of Ronald Reagan. To thank those who had whitewashed him, he named Brent Scowcroft National Security Advisor and John Tower Secretary of Defense. But the link was too obvious, and the Senate resisted. Finally, Mr. Tower [2] withdrew for the benefit of Dick Cheney who took Stephen Hadley into his service as assistant for International Security Policy, that is, as the liaison officer with Scowcroft. He would notably be involved with the invasion of Panama and the Gulf War. He was also the special envoy of Cheney to the post-Soviet States. In 1993 Clinton swept away the Republicans. General Brent Scowcroft returned to private security consulting. He created his own firm, the Scowcroft Group, where he surrounded himself with proven talent, notably General Colin Powell, Stephen Hadley, and Condoleeza Rice.

Hadley added this responsibility to his job at Shea & Gardner. He was soon joined by another former collaborator of Scowcroft, Democratic Ambassador R. James Woolsey, specialist in the balance of arms and ephemeral director of the CIA.

As lawyer for Lockheed Martin, Hadley was in contact with the directors of the firm, notably Lyne Cheney (wife of Dick). He became close with Bruce P. Jackson, the vice-president of the firm in charge of conquering new markets. They developed together the US Committee to Expand NATO into which they brought Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz. The Committee steered the entry of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland in 1999. Then that of Bulgaria, Estonia, Latonia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Each time, the leaders of the new member States were solicited to bring their armies up to the norms of NATO, that is to say, to purchase material from Lockheed Martin. The pressure was so strong that certain of them denounced "the racket" into which they were forced.

During this period, Hadley also invested himself in a think tank of the extreme right, the National Institute for Public Policy (NIPP). Nostalgic for Dr. Strangelove, they studied all possible uses for the atomic bomb. With thirty or so people, including his colleague R. James Woolsey, Hadley participated in a working group that produced the celebrated report Rationale and Requirements for U.S. Nuclear Forces.

In 2001 this group would be integrated into the Bush Administration in a consultation panel on concepts of deterrence (Deterrence Concepts Advisory Panel). He reformulated the report to make it official nuclear doctrine (Nuclear Posture Review) in January 2002. During the Cold War, NIPP ensured the development of the atomic bomb for protection against the Red Menace. Once the USSR disappeared, NIPP made sure that they had to continue to develop the bomb because they didn’t know who the next enemy would be. It was therefore necessary to prepare for all eventualities by inventing and producing new types of atomic bombs, notably tactical nuclear weapons.

Mr. Hadley is also a director of Advanced National Strategies and Enabling Results (ANSWER), a private institute issued from Rand Corporation and that works exclusively for government agencies. There he rubs shoulders with former directors of the Pentagon and the CIA, who are usually also members of the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals. ANSWER has a discrete subsidiary, Legi-Slate, a specialist in the study of parliamentary documents having to do with questions of defense. This is a joint venture with the Washington Post.

Between 1998 and 2000 ANSWER and CSIS [3] developed a new concept - Homeland Security. The word "Homeland" was before this absent from political discourse because it was badly viewed in a nation of immigrants, and the expression "Homeland Security" was totally unknown. It designates the necessity of preparing the country to confront an attack by weapons of mass destruction. This includes everything from protective measures against the dealings of the enemy to the organization of large-scale emergency aid and the continuity of government.

The working group at the CSIS included thirty or so people, including L. Paul Bremmer III, Richard Clarke, General Wayne Downing, and, obviously, R. James Woolsey and Stephen J. Hadley, who was the only one to sit both on ANSWER and CSIS.

Hadley also participated in a group of eight specialists, trained by Condoleeza Rice, the Vulcans. Like the Roman God who forged weapons for the Gods in the bottom of volcanoes, they trained the candidate George W. Bush in international politics.

Upon his arrival in the White House, George W. Bush reformed the National Security Council. He totally reorganized the work in sub-committees [4] and created a post of Deputy Advisor that he gave to Mr. Hadley.

It wasn’t a surprise that one of the eleven policy coordination committees was named "proliferation, counter-proliferation and homeland security".

In a general fashion, George W. Bush opened the doors of his administration to Lockheed Martin. The directors and managers of the firm colonized the posts of high responsibility: vice-president Norman Mineta became Transportation Secretary, director of operations Peter B. Teets took over the direction of the Air Force and NRO, the deputy director of the firm, Everet Beckner, took over the direction of nuclear programmes, a lobbyist of the firm, Otto Reich [5] was named to the Latin America bureau of the State Department, etc. In the week that followed the attacks of September 11, 2001, the White House produced a complete plan for the formation of the Department of Homeland Security. According to the explanations furnished then, a cell led by Vice-President Dick Cheney had been working in secret on this plan for eight months and had been preparing to deliver the report for October 1. The work was so secret that the existence of the cell had not been revealed and there exists no trace of its activities. Everything leads us to think that this story is a fable and that in reality it was ANSWER and CSIS that prepared this plan. It remains to be seen why such a fable was created.

In 2002 Stephen Hadley supervised the creation of the Project on transitional Democracies, once again with his friend Bruce P. Jackson. It was a matter of bringing together the military-industrial complex with the «spontaneous revolutions» that the National Security Council was in the process of planning for Central and Eastern Europe: Georgia, Belarus, the Ukraine, etc. and to integrate these States into NATO.

In December of the same year, the two accomplices created the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. This organization, that would go on to dramatically increase the number of its public meetings and interventions in the media in order to mobilize US public opinion for the war, was administrated by a board exclusively composed of shareholders and employees of Lockheed Martin [6]. To sell this war, Mr. Hadley was active on all fronts. It was he who transmitted the documents attesting that Saddam Hussein attempted to obtain nuclear materials from Niger to the UN. It was also he again who attested to the secret rendezvous in Prague between Mohammed Atta, presumed chief of the September 11 attacks, and a responsible of the Iraqi secret service. He took from that the proof that "Saddam" had plotted against «America» and that he was ready to strike again with an atomic bomb. The moment had come to deliver the war against Iraq with the excellent material furnished by Lockheed Martin and to insure «Homeland Security». But the documents were obvious forgeries, the rendezvous was complete nonsense, and the invasion of Iraq a military fiasco. Mr. Hadley accepted the blame to protect President Bush. He assumed responsibility for all the errors. It was assumed that he had been completely burned, but in November 2004, George W. Bush chose him to become his National Security Advisor for his second administration.