It may seem hard to believe, but as awful as Condoleezza Rice was as Bush’s national security advisory, her replacement, Stephen Hadley, may be worse.<\/p>\n
Perhaps most troubling about Hadley’s record from Bush’s first term was a little scandal briefly called Niger-gate. As you no doubt recall, Bush told the world — in the State of the Union, no less — that Saddam Hussein had tried to purchase uranium from Africa for his nonexistent nuclear weapons program. After some typical finger-pointing games, the mess landed on Hadley’s lap<\/a> in July 2003.<\/p>\n Hadley ultimately acknowledged that the CIA alerted him to the fact that Iraq-Niger claim was false well before the State of the Union but he failed to have the charge removed from the speech. In fact, the CIA told Hadley directly — including two memos and at least one phone call from CIA Director George Tenet — that the Niger claim was unreliable and shouldn’t be used by the president.<\/p>\n Asked for an explanation as to how the CIA could warn him about this bogus claim but have it still end up in the SOTU, Hadley explained that he forgot<\/i><\/a> what the CIA had told him.<\/p>\n It was the most notable in a series of incompetent moments for Hadley. General Donald Kerrick served as deputy national security adviser under Clinton and remained on the NSC into the Bush administration. He wrote his replacement, Stephen Hadley, a two-page memo. “It was classified,” Kerrick told me. “I said they needed to pay attention to al-Qaida and counterterrorism. I said we were going to be struck again. They never once asked me a question, nor did I see them having a serious discussion about it.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n * Hadley was the primary hatchet man against Richard Clarke<\/a>. Hadley’s attacks against Clarke, however, have since been discredited<\/a>. Clarke was right; Hadley was wrong.<\/p>\n * Hadley was part of a secretive “White House Iraq Group<\/a>,” along with Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin, Rice, and Scooter Libby, which manipulated unreliable information about Iraq to exaggerate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.<\/p>\n * Hadley is also a central figure in the Plame Game investigation<\/a>.<\/p>\n
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\n* Hadley was told directly by a national security council member to be prepared for an al Queda attack, but Hadley blew off the warning<\/a>.<\/p>\n