Stephen Hadley - George W. Bush Administration

George W. Bush Administration

Hadley served as a senior foreign and defense policy adviser to then-Governor Bush during the 2000 presidential campaign and worked in the Bush-Cheney Transition on the National Security Council. Previous to this position, he was a partner in the Washington, D.C. law firm of Shea & Gardner and a principal in The Scowcroft Group, Inc., an international consulting firm.

He had been Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor from January 22, 2001. In 2002, Hadley was a member of the White House Iraq Group. He admitted fault in allowing a disputed claim about Iraq's quest for nuclear weapons material to be included in Bush's January 28, 2003 State of the Union Address (see Yellowcake forgery). On July 22, 2003, Hadley offered his resignation to Bush because he had "failed in that responsibility" and that "the high standards the president set were not met." Bush denied Hadley's request. Amid this, The Times of London reported that Hadley was Bob Woodward's source for Valerie Plame's name in the CIA leak scandal, but this report proved to be false when Richard Armitage admitted that he was Woodward's source.

On January 26, 2005, he replaced Condoleezza Rice as National Security Advisor, upon Rice's confirmation as Secretary of State. He is currently a senior adviser for international affairs at the United States Institute for Peace in Washington, DC.

In former president Jimmy Carter's book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, Hadley is referred to, without being named, as personally denying Carter permission to visit Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in early 2005 due to "differences with Syria concerning U.S. policy in Iraq."