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National security adviser Stephen Hadley says U.S. President Bush has made it clear that Iranian or Syrian support of Iraqi insurgents is "unacceptable." Hadley appeared Sunday on ABC News' "This Week with George Stephanopolous." "We know that there are jihadists moving from Syria into Iraq," Hadley said. " ... We know also that Iran is supplying elements in Iraq that are attacking Iraqis and attacking our forces." Also appearing on the program, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee and an Iraq policy critic, said Democrats will do what they can to change the "direction of this...

WASHINGTON - While President Bush acknowledges the need for major changes in Iraq, he will not use this week's Iraq Study Group report as political cover for bringing troops home, his national security adviser said Sunday. "We have not failed in Iraq," Stephen Hadley said as he made the talk show rounds. "We will fail in Iraq if we pull out our troops before we're in a position to help the Iraqis succeed." But he added: "The president understands that we need to have a way forward in Iraq that is more successful." The White House readied for an important...

Bush presents firm front on Iraq By Jon Leyne BBC News, Amman It was billed as a crisis meeting at a crucial time in Iraq's history - although you would never have guessed, watching a disarmingly relaxed President Bush field questions afterwards. Mr Bush rubbished rumours of a loss of confidence in Mr Maliki There was certainly no hint that his project to spread democracy across the Middle East was in the tiniest bit of trouble. "There are reports from Washington that we are looking for a graceful exit," said Mr Bush. "But we will stay until the job...

Excerpt - WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Attorney General John Ashcroft received the same CIA briefing about an imminent al-Qaida strike on an American target that was given to the White House two months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The State Department's disclosure Monday that the pair was briefed within a week after then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was told about the threat on July 10, 2001, raised new questions about what the Bush administration did in response, and about why so many officials have claimed they never received or don't remember the warning. One...

Preview and Analysis of the Weekend Talk Shows for 9/16 & 9/17/06The President is up dramatically in the polls.  Unemployment is down, inflation is under control, growth is continuing at a robust but sustainable rate and gas prices are falling dramatically.  So what's the topic this week?  Yep.  George Bush and the Republicans are in trouble.  Read on.Meet the Press continues their Senate debate series with Virginia's Republican Senator George Allen and his Democrat challenger former Reagan Secretary of the Navy James Webb.  When they set this up for this week I think they were planning on "macaca" being the...

Weekend Talk Show Preview - Analysis for August 5th and 6th, 2006On the Sunday shows I'm probably most interested in Fox News Sunday's line up.  I want to hear Newt and Biden, mostly to see if they've changed their act for their second appearance together in three weeks.  What is this, a do over or the beginning of a traveling show?  Actually, that might have some interest.  Maybe they're auditioning to get their own show if this whole presidential thing doesn't work out.  Hadley made news on Iraq this week by saying that this is mostly sectarian violence now, instead...

A veteran CIA operations official who clashed with former agency Director Porter J. Goss was formally named the deputy CIA director yesterday, raising concerns among critics who say he will hamper reform at the agency. Stephen R. Kappes, who is well-liked among CIA rank and file but who is viewed as someone supporting the status quo at the embattled agency, began work yesterday in his new role, a CIA statement said.

White House: The President is not going to make military decisions for Israel http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=30084 For Immediate Release Office of the White House Press Secretary July 14, 2006 Press Gaggle by Tony Snow Strelna, Russia 5:47 P.M. (L) www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/07/20060714-4.html MR. SNOW: ...the President ...was pleased by a statement -- I don't know if you've seen it -- that came out yesterday by the Saudis that, among other things, pointed out that Hezbollah, acting independent of a government, had behaved in a manner that I will paraphrase as irresponsible. I would direct you to the Saudi statement because I'm sure I don't...

The Bush administration has decided to release most of the documents captured in post-war Afghanistan and Iraq. The details of the document release are still being worked out, according to officials with knowledge of the discussions. Those details are critical. At issue are things like the timeframe for releasing the documents, the mechanism for scrubbing documents for sensitive information, and most important, the criteria for withholding documents from the public. But some of the captured files should be available to the public and journalists within weeks if not days. President George W. Bush has made clear in recent weeks his...

A ban on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of foreign terrorism suspects is likely to be included mostly, if not entirely, in a final defense bill, a key House Republican said Tuesday. Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, who is leading negotiations to iron out differences between the House and Senate versions of the measure, said if the ban or another provision limiting interrogation techniques U.S. troops can use are changed, they won't be drastically watered down. The White House opposes the provisions and has threatened to veto any bill containing them. But President Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, has...

As reporters keep scrambling to find out who told Bob Woodward about Joe Wilson’s wife, Woodward himself has told TIME about a related mystery: what made the source finally come forward. When the Washington Post reporter went public with his involvement in the CIA leak case earlier this week, he failed to explain why his source waited silently for two years before coming clean to special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. In an interview today, Woodward described the sequence of conversations with his source and Post executive editor Leonard Downie, Jr. that led to the latest twist in Fitzgerald’s investigation into the...

THE mysterious source who gave America’s foremost journalist, Bob Woodward, a tip-off about the CIA agent at the centre of one of Washington’s biggest political storms was Stephen Hadley, the White House national security adviser, according to lawyers close to the investigation. Woodward, the Washington Post reporter who broke the Watergate scandal that forced President Richard Nixon out of office, has refused publicly to divulge the name of his informant without permission, which has thus far been withheld. A spokeswoman for the National Security Council (NSC) denied that Hadley was the journalist’s source. However, in South Korea on Friday during...

BUSAN, South Korea — National Security Adviser won't say if he was the source who told Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward that Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. But Hadley volunteered on Friday that some administration officials say he's not the leaker. Accompanying President Bush at a summit here, Hadley was asked at a news briefing whether he was Woodward's source. Referring to news accounts about the case, Hadley said with a smile, "I've also seen press reports from White House officials saying that I am not one of his sources." He said he would not comment further...

Bush Didn't Mislead on War, Adviser Says By DOUGLASS K. DANIEL, Associated Press Writer Sun Nov 13,10:16 PM ET WASHINGTON - While admitting "we were wrong" about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, President Bush's national security adviser on Sunday rejected assertions that the president manipulated intelligence and misled the American people. ADVERTISEMENT Bush relied on the collective judgment of the intelligence community when he determined that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, national security adviser Stephen Hadley said. "Turns out, we were wrong," Hadley told "Late Edition" on CNN. "But I think the point that needs to be...

Thursday July 17, 2003 The Guardian As the CIA director, George Tenet, arrived at the Senate yesterday to give secret testimony on the Niger uranium affair, it was becoming increasingly clear in Washington that the scandal was only a small, well-documented symptom of a complete breakdown in US intelligence that helped steer America into war. It represents the Bush administration's second catastrophic intelligence failure. But the CIA and FBI's inability to prevent the September 11 attacks was largely due to internal institutional weaknesses. This time the implications are far more damaging for the White House, which stands accused of politicising...

In a wide-ranging exclusive interview with GSN on August 23, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, the military intelligence operative who collaborated with Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA) to draw worldwide attention to the Able Danger intelligence unit, described Able Danger’s origins, explained how it tracked terrorists as they visited individual mosques around the world, discussed the CIA’s refusal to cooperate with the program, acknowledged the supporting technical role played by the Raytheon Company, and described Able Danger’s ultimate demise.

Democrats seem determined to filibuster John Bolton's nomination to be U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., embarrassing President Bush and sending a message that any public official who declines to kowtow to the permanent bureaucracy will be punished. Mr. Bush now has to decide how to respond in a way that shows he's not a lame duck. The easiest response would be to make a recess appointment, which would send Mr. Bolton to Turtle Bay for the duration of this Congress, roughly 18 months. But this would allow Democrats to claim that they've wounded Mr. Bolton and embolden U.N. officials to...

Russian and U.S. Views of History Differ — Hadley Just ahead of U.S. President George Bush’s European tour for Victory Day celebrations, Russia’s Profil magazine interviewed National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley on the significance of Bush’s visit to the Baltic states and to Russia to watch the Victory Day parade on Red Square. Then, on May 9, Hadley gave a press briefing in Moscow where he talked about the results of the meeting between the two leaders. The following interview begins with comments Hadley gave to Profil magazine. Why did President Bush combine his Moscow visit with visits to two...

WASHINGTON - Elliott Abrams, a special assistant to the president and an assistant secretary of state in the Reagan administration, has been appointed deputy national security adviser with a focus on promoting global democracy and human rights. President Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, also announced Wednesday that Faryar Shirzad will continue to serve in an expanded role as deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs. Abrams, who becomes national security adviser for global democracy strategy, will continue work on Israeli-Palestinian affairs in concert with Hadley and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Abrams has served as special assistant...

When experts from the US and the IAEA came upon blueprints for a 10-kiloton atomic bomb in the files of the Libyan weapons program earlier this year, they found themselves caught between gravity and pettiness. The discovery gave the experts a new appreciation of the audacity of the rogue nuclear network led by A. Q. Khan, a chief architect of Pakistan's bomb. Intelligence officials had watched Dr. Khan for years and suspected that he was trafficking in machinery for enriching uranium to make fuel for warheads. But the detailed design represented a new level of danger, particularly since the Libyans...