Unknown to the public at large,
Stephen Hadley has carried on a brilliant career in the shadow of
Brent Scowcroft and Condoleeza Rice. A business lawyer convicted
of fraud, he became the lawyer of the largest arms manufacturer
in the world, Lockheed Martin. He trained the candidate George W.
Bush, wrote up the new nuclear doctrine, prepared the creation of
the Department of Homeland Security, supervised new entries into
NATO, and sold the invasion of Iraq. Ever faithful, he protected
Bush the father from the Irangate scandal and Bush the son from
the lies of the Iraq war. He now finds himself rewarded by becoming
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.
[1] Edmund Muskie was Secretary of State (Democrat)
under Jimmy Carter from 1977 until 1980.
[2] In 1991, John Tower died in a plane accident. Several other
“witnesses” to Irangate died within a few days of each
other in various accidents.
[3] « CSIS, les croisés du pétrole »,
Voltaire, 6 July 2004.
[4] National Security Presidential Directive #1, 13 February 2001.
[5] « Otto Reich et la contre-révolution », Voltaire,
14 May 2004.
[6] « Une guerre juteuse pour Lockheed Martin » Voltaire,
7 February 2003.
Translated by Signs of the Times
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