USCFL - Who's Who in the Bush Administration

Elliot Abrams

Neoconservative hawks in the administration of President George W. Bush have won a major battle against the State Department in the fight for control of U.S. Mideast policy with the surprise appointment of Iran-Contra figure Elliott Abrams to the region's top policy spot in the National Security Council (NSC).

For the first time, someone who has publicly assailed the "land-for-peace" formula that has guided U.S. policy in the Arab-Israeli conflict since the 1967 war has been appointed to a top spot in Mideast policy.

Abrams, appointed by the White House December 2, 2002, first came to national prominence as a controversial political appointee in the Reagan administration. He later pleaded guilty to lying to Congress regarding the Iran-Contra scandal, and has also opposed the Oslo peace process and called for Washington to “stand by Israel,” rather than act as a neutral mediator between Israel and the Palestinians.

In Present Dangers, a book produced by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) in 2000, Abrams outlined a new U.S. Mideast policy that called for "regime change" in Iraq and for cracking down on the Palestinian Authority. Foreshadowing the current U.S. policy based on superior military power, Abrams recommended that in the Middle East "our military strength and willingness to use it" should be the "key factor in our ability to promote peace."

Currently the NSC staff chief for Democracy, Human Rights, and International Operations, Abrams will become Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director on the NSC for Near East and North African Affairs.

As such, he will be in charge of presenting policy papers and options for National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, whose own opinions have proven decisive in cases where the president receives conflicting views from hawks, represented by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, and the more dovish Secretary of State, Colin Powell, who is often backed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the uniformed military. Rice, a Russia specialist, had no experience with Mideast issues until her current job.

Abrams will replace Zalmay Khalilzad, a prominent foreign policy strategist whose views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are considered much more neutral than Abrams'. Khalilzad succeeded Clinton holdover Bruce Reidel early last year but was quickly consumed with his native-born Afghanistan after being named special envoy to the interim president, Hamid Karzai. Khalilzad will now become "ambassador-at-large for free Iraqis" and is expected to play a key role in sorting out internal conflicts among the Iraqi opposition. Both Khalilzad and Abrams were among the signatories of the 1997 founding statement of principles of the Project for the New American Century, whose neoconservative and hawkish foreign policy positions have found a home in the Bush administration.

Beloved by right-wingers, who hail him as a hero for his championship of the Nicaraguan contras during the 1980s, Abrams first gained prominence as a leading neoconservative when he served as Reagan's Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights in the early 1980s and then as Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs.

In both positions, he clashed frequently and angrily with mainstream church groups and human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, who often accused him of covering up horrendous abuses committed by U.S.-backed governments, such as those in El Salvador and Guatemala, and rebel forces, such as the Contras and Angola's Unita, while at the same time exaggerating abuses by U.S. foes.

He was indicted by the Iran-Contra special prosecutor for giving false testimony about his role in illicitly raising money for the Contras, but pleaded guilty to two lesser offenses of withholding information to Congress in order to avoid a trial and a possible jail term. President George H.W. Bush pardoned Abrams along with a number of other Iran-Contra defendants in 1992.

After Reagan left office in 1989, Abrams, like a number of other prominent neoconservatives, was not invited to serve in the Bush Sr. administration. Instead, he worked for a number of think tanks and eventually became head of the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) where he wrote widely on foreign policy issues, including the Middle East, and the threats posed by U.S. secular society to Jewish identity. He also remained an integral part of the tight-knit neoconservative foreign policy community in Washington that revolved around one of his early mentors, Richard Perle, and former UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

Then-House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich furthered his public rehabilitation by appointing him to the new U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom in 1999, for which he also served as chairman in 2000-01. Muslim groups here have complained about his refusal to criticize Israeli practices in the occupied territories and Jerusalem, such as sealing off Muslim holy sites, as violations of religious freedom.

He is not known as an Arab-Israeli specialist but has long favored Likud positions on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and even assailed former Likud Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for caving in to U.S. pressure to respect the Oslo peace process. Shortly after the outbreak of the al-Aqsa intifida at the end of September 2000, he criticized mainstream Jewish groups for calling for a resumption of peace talks between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, as well as a halt to the violence. Writing during the 2000 presidential campaign, Abrams observed that the coming decade "will present enormous opportunities to advance American interests in the Middle East." But these opportunities will be realized "not for the most part through painstaking negotiations of documents." Abrams called for a policy of "boldly asserting our support of our friends and opposing with equal boldness our enemies."

Like Perle, as well as Rumsfeld's civilian advisers like Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith and Cheney's top deputy, I. Lewis Libby, he has favored a Mideast strategy based on the overwhelming military power of both the United States and Israel and on a military alliance between Israel and Turkey against hostile Arab states, particularly Syria and Iraq, in order to create a "broader strategic context" that would ensure whatever state might emerge on Palestinian territory would be friendly to U.S. and Israeli interests and that could force Syria to withdraw from Lebanon. He has long favored forceful action to oust Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

He has also long accused Palestinian Authority leader Yassir Arafat of being an untrustworthy partner under the Oslo process and is believed to have used his previous NSC Democracy position to push for his ouster from power as part of a thorough reform process. That view, which was strongly backed by Rumsfeld and Cheney's offices, was eventually accepted by Bush last June, over strenuous objections by the State Department and senior aides for Bush's father, notably his former national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft.

In his new position, according to John Prados, a historian who has written about the National Security Council, Abrams should be in an excellent position to influence U.S. policy on the Mideast, particularly in "delaying and/or halting policy on the 'roadmap'" that is being developed by the "Quartet"--the U.S., European Union, Russia, and the United Nations--on resuming political negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Indeed, it already appears that British hopes for a major meeting of the Quartet on the roadmap before the end of the year are fading quickly.

Abrams is expected to support Israel's recent requests both to put off discussion of the roadmap until after Israel's elections at the end of next month and for some 14 billion dollars in military aid and loan guarantees to help the country cope with economic hard times.

Richard Lee Armitage

A specialist in southeast Asia and the middle east, Armitage, an adviser to Bush during the campaign, has been nominated for the position of Deputy Secretary of State. Armitage is a close personal friend of Secretary of State Colin Powell, and has a long relationship with the Bushes--both I and II.

Born in 1945, Armitage graduated from the Naval Academy and served in Vietnam. Armitage is president of Armitage Associates L.C., and formerly served on the Board of Directors of General Dynamics.

Fluent in Vietnamese, he organized the removal of the South Vietnamese navy after the fall in 1975. In 1975, he served as a Pentagon consultant in Teheran. He was foreign policy adviser to the Reagan campaign. From 1981 to 1983 he was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia and Pacific Affairs in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. In the Pentagon from June 1983 to May 1989, he served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, with a role in Middle East security. From 1992 to 1993 he was the Bush appointee for Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Office of International Security Affairs, with the personal rank of ambassador. He worked on U.S. assistance activities for the Newly Independent States (NIS) of the former Soviet Union.

Bush the elder nominated Armitage to be secretary of the Army, but Armitage withdrew his name before the hearings. According to a recent In These Times article, shortly before the hearings writer Jim Naureckas showed a draft of an article documenting Armitage's intimate relationship with a Vietnamese woman in Virginia who had been convicted of running an illegal gambling operation for a Republican senator. It was enough to sink Armitage.

Earlier, as Assistant Secretary of Defense, Armitage had been involved in the Iran-Contra scandal of the late 1980s. According to independent counsel Lawrence Walsh, the evidence was short of airtight, but Armitage had been party to the meetings with General Richard Secord and Oliver North--activities Armitage denied.

Armitage headed a study group on Japan under the auspices of the military-sponsored Institute for National Strategic Studies. The group, consisting mostly of military and intelligence personnel, released its report, The United States and Japan: Advancing Toward a Mature Partnership, last October. The report finds much about Japan to criticize, and urges the U.S. to pressure Japan into making vast changes in its economic and military systems, but laments that the Japanese are, "averse to radical change, except in circumstances where no other options exist."

Whether Armitage is as arrogant in his new role is uncertain, but clearly neither Bush nor Powell is alarmed at either his history or his prescriptions.

John R. Bolton, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs

John R. Bolton, the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs, represents the right wing of the foreign policy establishment. How right? In January 2001, Jesse Helms endorsed Bolton: "John Bolton is the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon, if it should be my lot to be on hand for what is forecast to be the final battle between good and evil in this world."

Bolton, a senior vice president for pubic policy research with the American Enterprise Institute, was spotted in the thick of the battle for the White House during the contested presidential election. Press photographers snapped him with other Bush stalwarts counting hanging chads in Palm Beach.

Bolton's other battles, at least in recent years, have centered on Taiwan and the United Nations. In a clear break with Washington's long-standing "one-China" policy, Bolton advocates that Taiwan be recognized as an independent state and be given a seat in the United Nations. In 1994, Bolton opened his testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee by declaring, "I believe that the United States should support the efforts of the Republic of China on Taiwan to become a full member of the United Nations."

Such views set him apart not only from the Democrats but also from the Bush, Sr. administration. When Senator John Kerry (D-MA) raised the Taiwan issue at Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearings last month, Bolton dissembled, "It's not my function to advocate diplomatic recognition for Taiwan and it would be inappropriate for me to do so."

Yet on the AEI website, Bolton's views remain clearly spelled out. He writes that "diplomatic recognition of Taiwan would be just the kind of demonstration of U.S. leadership that the region needs and that many of its people hope for… The notion that China would actually respond with force is a fantasy, albeit one the Communist leaders welcome and encourage in the West."

And, according to the Washington Post (April 9, 2001), Bolton is motivated by more than his ultra-rightwing ideology. He's also been on the payroll of the Taiwan government. According to the Post, over a period of three years in the 1990s and at the time he promoting diplomatic recognition of Taiwan before various congressional committees, Bolton was paid a total of $30,000 by the government of Taiwan for "research papers on UN membership issues involving Taiwan." Bolton has denied that his testimony was in any way tied to the fee paid by the Taiwanese.

A Yale-educated lawyer, Bolton has held a variety of posts in both the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations at State, Justice and USAID. Besides his tenure at the pro-business AEI, Bolton was a senior fellow at the equally right-wing Manhattan Institute in 1993.

Bolton's hard-line and right-wing credentials were affirmed in 1999 when he signed a statement prepared by the Project for the New American Century criticizing the Clinton administration for its failure to offer unequivocal support of Taiwan. The statement, signed by other neoconservative and right-wing luminaries such as William Kristol, William Buckley, Paul Weyrich, James Woolsey, Paul Wolfowitiz, William Bennett, and Elliott Abrams, called for a "state-to-state" relationship with Taiwan.

Additional evidence of Bolton's extreme, take-no-prisoners worldview is not difficult to find. He is a prolific writer and speaker.

In an article for the right-wing Weekly Standard (10/4/99) entitled "Kofi Annan's UN Power Grab," Bolton excoriates the UN Secretary General for trying to limit warfare and to establish the supremacy of UN forces. In Bolton's words, "If the United States allows that claim to go unchallenged, its discretion in using force to advance its national interests is likely to be inhibited in the future."

On U.S. arrears to the UN, Bolton proclaimed, "Many Republicans in Congress--and perhaps a majority--not only do not care about losing the General Assembly vote but actually see it as a 'make my day' outcome. Indeed, once the vote is lost… this will simply provide further evidence to may why nothing more should be paid to the UN system." Not surprisingly, Bolton is also a hard-line opponent to U.S. peacekeeping missions, whether under the UN or unilaterally. When George W. Bush denounced the use of the military for so-called "nation building," he was repeating Bolton's criticism of the Clinton administration's efforts in Somalia and elsewhere. Nonetheless, Bolton did favor the bombing of Serbia--which was presumably not nation building, nor was it pursued under UN auspices. On North Korea, Bolton has declared that the U.S. should make "it clear to the North that we are indifferent to whether we ever have 'normal' diplomatic relations with it, and that achieving that goal is entirely in their interests, not ours."

After the Senate voted not to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), Bolton declared categorically, "CTBT is dead." Here he's at odds with much of the American public. Public opinion polls consistently show that more nearly 80% of Americans support a ban on all underground tests.

Bolton's reputation has the advance man for the right wing has continued to grow during his tenure in the George W. administration. Although his office has no purview over human rights or international justice issues, he was the one to sign the letter to Kofi Annan in May 2002 renouncing any role for the U.S. in the International Criminal Court. Bolton has been a staunch advocate of the administration's revival of the "Star Wars" missile defense system, and its rejection of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

A speech by Bolton at the Heritage Foundation, also in early May 2002, signaled that the administration may be targeting Cuba in its war on terrorism. His "Beyond the Axis of Evil" speech claimed, without any evidence, that Cuba was developing biological weapons and sharing its expertise with other U.S. enemies.

Tom Delay, Majority Whip

If "European elites" and other effete multilateralists consider U.S. President George W. Bush the "Toxic Texan," what will they think of the new Republican Majority Leader in the House of Representatives, Tom DeLay?

DeLay not only hails from Texas as does the president; he is truly toxic. Before entering politics in 1979, he ran a pest extermination business. And he still thinks all this talk about global warming, the ozone hole, and even pesticides like DDT as being potentially hazardous to human health, is a lot of nonsense.

And unlike Bush, DeLay is a real Texas cowboy (although he learned how to wrestle steers in rural Venezuela). Prominently on display in his House office are two bull whips, and he is not averse to showing visitors how he can crack them.

He also differs with Bush in personal reputation. Even among Democratic rivals, Bush is seen as one of the most likable people in politics. The adjective that most often comes up to describe DeLay, even among some of his allies, is "mean." It is not for nothing that he is called "The Hammer," a moniker that rarely fails to bring a smile to his face.

DeLay, as Majority Whip, has wielded the most power among Republican representatives ever since former House Speaker Newt Gingrich resigned in 1998, in the opinion of most political insiders. Indeed, he could have been elected Speaker, but, knowing that he would be a lightning rod for Democratic attacks, he handpicked the avuncular former high school wrestling coach, Dennis Hastert, for the spot. He also decided against challenging another Texan with more seniority, Dick Armey, for the Leader's position.

At the Party's request, he stayed out of the spotlight during the 2000 elections, allowing George W. to woo moderate independents to the party's ticket.

In many ways DeLay embodies the Christian Right that has almost completely taken over the core of the Republican Party since the 1980s reign of former president Ronald Reagan. Southern, white, intense, angry, and self-righteous at the same time, and profoundly anti-government in all things except national security, DeLay rarely speaks at any length without inveighing against the "elite" and the "privileged few who are determined to discredit and, ultimately, replace core American traditions."

Or, as he told the Christian Coalition in 1999: "will this country accept the worldviews of humanism, materialism, sexism, naturalism, postmodernism, or any of the other 'isms'? Or will we march forward with a biblical worldview, a worldview that says God is our creator, that man is a sinner, and that we will save this country by changing the hearts and minds of Americans?"

DeLay has no doubts that "the United States has been the world's greatest force for good," grounded in "the basic principles that are at the root of our exceptionalism," which he lists as "our faith in God, our belief in the sanctity of human life, our acceptance of moral absolutes, and our certainty that we are ultimately accountable for our own actions." To retain that "exceptionalism," he has been a staunch foe of global treaties and institutions, particularly the International Criminal Court (ICC). Last year, he introduced the American Servicemembers Protection Act (ASPA), which not only forbids Washington from cooperating with the Court, but authorizes the president to use military force to free any U.S. soldier held by the ICC in The Hague or anywhere else.

Over the past two years, as Bush has shown more of his true colors, it has become clear that the two men are ideologically much more compatible on issues ranging from church-state relations and government regulation of business to global warming, Israel, and other key foreign-policy issues than had been assumed two years ago.

And now, it appears, DeLay feels he's ready for prime time and the national spotlight.

Andrew W. Marshall

His actual title is rather obscure: director of the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment, a think tank under the direction of the undersecretary of defense for policy. But Andrew W. Marshall is currently wielding a great deal of power. That's because George W. has designated Marshall-a favorite of Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld-to make a quick but politically important strategic review of likely threats to the U.S., the nature of future wars and how we can fight simultaneously, and the forces we need to do so. And to have it ready within a month or two.

That such a vast undertaking is even remotely possible is testament to Marshall's life's work. While portraying himself as an iconoclastic reformer, Marshall has been in the business since 1949, when he started out as a nuclear strategist for the Rand Corporation. For the past 28 years he's headed the little-known Office of Net Assessment. And during most of that time he has been in the business of criticizing military policy as short-sighted focused on "fighting the last war." At 79, this is Marshall's last shot at making his futuristic visions into national policy.

President Bush delivered his signature campaign speech on defense policy at the South Carolina military academy, the Citadel, where he said, "Today, our military is still more organized for cold war threats than for the challenges of a new century." Those were Marshall's words and tune, and now Bush is promoting Marshall's vision onto the world's dominant military.

What, precisely, Marshall's strategic review will say is anybody's guess (according to Inside the Pentagon, the news blackout on the review "reaches to the most senior levels of the military"). Yet Marshall's paper trail over his long career suggests that his visions include the risk of bringing wars into being.

Marshall has been a main proponent of the "Revolution in Military Affairs" (RMA), a term he borrowed from a Soviet General Staff member and adapted to describe the need to concentrate on information warfare and precision-guided munitions. "Rather than closing with an opponent," he said in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in May, 2000, "the major mode will be destroying him at a distance." But Air Force Magazine rebuked Marshall in an editorial saying, "Tell this to the Bosnians." In other words, while Marshall proposes to build his high-tech systems of long-range power projection, real conflicts continue to fester on the ground unaffected and unabated by them.

His enthusiasm for high-tech warfare has led him to raise the possibility of canceling some existing programs-most often mentioned is the F-22 fighter plane, at $182 million a copy. The "next-generation" systems he would put in their place would, of course, be all but certain to cost even more. Beginning in 1995, his office began sponsoring an RMA Operational Concept War gaming Program, which has explored space-based warfare and "multi-theater global war." He is also a strong proponent of an expansive version of National Missile Defense. Such plans have the effect of provoking others to react; China cites these plans in its recent announcement to increase its military spending by 17 percent, and to accelerate its missile program.

Marshall's record as a prognosticator of future threats has not been impressive. As late at 1988 he headed a commission which judged that the Soviet Union would be the main U.S. military competitor for the next 20 years.

When this position proved unsustainable, even for him, he quickly settled on China as the next threat. In the summer of 1999, his "Asia 2025" report envisioned China and India dividing Asia into spheres of influence at America's expense. "China," according to the report, "will be a persistent competitor of the United States. A stable and powerful China will be constantly challenging the status quo in East Asia. An unstable and relatively] weak China could be dangerous because its leaders might try to bolster their power with foreign military adventurism." As Robert Kaiser of the Washington Post noted, the report "rejects the view that Chinese-American relations might evolve gently or fruitfully."

The question is to what extent Marshall's visions of futuristic wars and weapons to fight them will be allowed to dominate U.S. military policy, as well as becoming the self-fulfilling prophecies for the conflicts they envision.

John Negroponte, UN Ambassador

John Dimitri Negroponte, Bush's choice for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, certainly has plenty of diplomatic experience. His foreign service career spans nearly four decades and includes eight postings on several continents. His first overseas assignment was to the U.S. embassy in Saigon in the mid-1960s, and since the 1980s, he has been ambassador to Honduras, Mexico, and the Philippines. Negroponte speaks four foreign languages: Vietnamese, Greek, French, and Spanish. And, in keeping with the rest of the Bush team, he also has some corporate expertise; most recently he was executive vice president for global markets at McGraw-Hill.

But his resume conceals the darker side of Negroponte. This may explain why the ambassador has, since his nomination, been ducking requests for press interviews, especially from reporters with some historical memory. As New Republic assistant editor Sarah Wildman put it, with Negroponte's nomination, "human rights activists did a collective double take." Indeed, Negroponte has a reputation, even among some U.S. diplomats who served with him, both for "doggedly defending U.S. interests overseas" and for "making sure human rights don't get in the way." Wildman finds this particularly problematic, since "one of the primary responsibilities of George W. Bush's new ambassador to the United Nations will be to berate countries like China, Burma, and Afghanistan for their violations of human rights."

The Negroponte nomination is coupled with Bush's decision to downgrade the United Nations ambassadorship position by depriving it of Cabinet rank. This decision raises concerns that the Republican White House will become as hostile to the UN as congressional conservatives have been since the 1994 Republican takeover. U.S.-UN tensions eased in the final months of the Clinton administration after Washington managed to strike a deal to pay the bulk of its UN dues, but now there are fears that the Bush team will seek to denigrate and defend the international organization.

Negroponte, the son of a Greek-American shipping magnate, was born in London in 1939, graduated from Yale, and entered the Foreign Service in 1960. From 1971 to 1973, Negroponte was the officer-in-charge for Vietnam at the National Security Council (NSC) under Henry Kissinger. In 1987, during the administration of George Bush the elder, Negroponte returned to the NSC to work under Colin Powell as deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs. Within two years, he was back in Latin America; Bush appointed Negroponte ambassador to Mexico, where he served from July 1989 to September 1993. There, he officiated at the block-long, fortified embassy and directed, among other things, U.S. intelligence services to assist the war against the Zapatista rebels of Chiapas.

But it was during his tour as ambassador to Honduras that Negroponte earned his reputation for being soft on human rights abuses. From 1981 to 1985, Negroponte was U.S. ambassador to Honduras, where he helped prosecute the contra war against Nicaragua and helped strengthen the military dictatorship in Honduras. Under the helm of General Gustavo Alvarez Martínez, Honduras's military government was both a close ally of the Reagan administration and was disappearing dozens of political opponents in classic death squad fashion. Negroponte's predecessor, Ambassador Jack Binns, had repeatedly warned Washington to take a stand to stop the killings. In one cable, Binns reported that General Alvarez was modeling his campaign against suspected subversives on Argentina's "dirty war" in the 1970s. Indeed, Argentine military advisers were in Honduras, both advising Alvarez's armed forces and assembling and training a contra army to fight in Nicaragua. President Reagan responded by removing Binns and putting in Negroponte, who, writes Eric Alterman in an MSNBC.com piece, "turned a deliberate blind eye to a murderous pattern of political killings."

On Negroponte's watch, diplomats quipped that the embassy's annual human rights reports made Honduras sound more like Norway than Argentina. Former official Rick Chidester, who served under Negroponte, says he was ordered to remove all mention of torture and executions from the draft of his 1982 report on the human rights situation in Honduras. In a 1982 letter to The Economist, Negroponte wrote that it was "simply untrue to state that death squads have made their appearance in Honduras." The Country Report on Human Rights Practices that the embassy submitted to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee took the same line, insisting that there were "no political prisoners in Honduras" and that the "Honduran government neither condones nor knowingly permits killings of a political or nonpolitical nature."

Yet, according to a four-part series in the Baltimore Sun, in 1982 alone the Honduran press ran 318 stories of murders and kidnappings by the Honduran military. In a 1995 series, Sun reporters Gary Cohn and Ginger Thompson detailed the activities of a secret CIA-trained Honduran army unit, Battalion 316, that used "shock and suffocation devices in interrogations. Prisoners often were kept naked and, when no longer useful, killed and buried in unmarked graves." In 1994, Honduras's National Commission for the Protection of Human Rights reported that it was officially admitted that 179 civilians were still missing.

During Negroponte's tenure, U.S. military aid to Honduras, a country of five million, skyrocketed from $3.9 million to $77.4 million. Much of this largesse went to assure the Honduran army's loyalty in the battle against political leftists throughout Central America. Embassy reports to Washington singled out for particular praise army chief Alvarez, a School of the Americas graduate who was direct commander of Battalion 316.

In 1996, when Negroponte was sent to Panama as the U.S. negotiator regarding military bases, the Human Rights Research Center of Panama objected. Negroponte, they said, covered up human rights abuses and, according to the BBC, "knew about the CIA-trained Honduran army unit that tortured and killed alleged subversives." In a 1997 roundtable gathering at the Center for International Policy, Sun reporter Cohn noted that Negroponte was central to the human rights violations. Said Cohn, "He was ambassador when the worst of the abuses were taking place. He knew everything that was going on." "Not exactly the moral sensibility you want in a UN ambassador," notes New Republic's Wildman.

Even today, Negroponte is unrepentant, arguing that, given the political realities, his hands were tied. As he told CNN, "Some of these regimes, to the outside observer, may not have been as savory as Americans would have liked; they may have been dictators, or likely to [become] dictators, when you would have been wanting to support democracy in the area. But with the turmoil that [was there], it was perhaps not possible to do that."

Richard N. Perle

Richard Perle graduated from the University of Southern California, and has an MA in political science, Princeton University. Since 1987 he has been a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington specializing in: Defense, Intelligence, National security, Europe, Middle East and the Russian region. Perle directs AEI's Commission of Future Defense. He was also the chairman of a Council on Foreign Relations study group on non-lethal options in overseas contingencies.

Perle got his start in politics in 1969 as an aide to Washington Senator Henry 'Scoop' Jackson. He drafted the Jackson-Vannik Amendment, which linked Soviet trade concessions to liberalized emigration. He was assistant secretary of defense for international security policy from 1981 to 1987 under Reagan. Perle was responsible for "theater and strategic nuclear weapons policy, trade and technology exports, European and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) policy, and negotiations between the United States and its western allies and the Soviet Union."

He was Chairman and chief executive officer, Hollinger Digital, Inc. and Director, Jerusalem Post. He is an active media pundit.

Condoleezza Rice, National Security Adviser

Condoleezza "Condi" Rice, is the first woman to be nominated as National Security Adviser. According to Salon magazine, she "calls herself an 'all-over-the-map Republican' who considers herself 'very conservative' on foreign policy."

Over the past two decades, though, she has come to identify with the Bush family brand of foreign policy-support for the energy, armament, and financial industries, and a rejection of isolationism.

Rice grew up in segregated Birmingham, Alabama a child prodigy who could play classical piano, dance ballet, ice skate, and speak French.

She enrolled at the University of Denver at the age of 15, graduating at 19 with a BA in political science. There, she took Soviet studies with Joseph Korbel, the father of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and became a Russian scholar. She then obtained an MA at Notre Dame and a Ph.D. from Denver's Graduate School of International Studies. Rice went to Stanford in 1981 to study arms control and became a tenured professor in political science as well as a Hoover Institution national fellow.

In 1986, she went to work for the Reagan administration on nuclear strategic planning at the Joint Chiefs of Staff as part of a Council on Foreign Relations fellowship. In 1989 she returned to Washington to become director of Soviet and East European affairs at the National Security Council. She also became assistant to president Bush for national security affairs and senior director for Soviet affairs at the National Security Council. President Bush once introduced Rice to Mikhail Gorbachev saying, "This is Condoleezza Rice. She tells me everything I know about the Soviet Union."

After Bush left office, Rice became senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the youngest-ever provost of Stanford University, and a member of the boards of Chevron, the Hewlett Foundation, and Charles Schwab. She is also a member of J.P. Morgan's international advisory council where she has met with some of the world's most powerful CEOs. In 1995, Chevron honored her by naming its largest fleet tanker the Condoleezza Rice; she also owns a reported $250,000 of Chevron stock.

Rice was chosen for her loyalty as much as her undeniable talent and experience. She has been close to the Bush family, including former first lady Barbara, since her stint at the State Department. And, over the past two years, she has become one of the most frequent overnight guests at the Governor's mansion in Austin. During the presidential campaign, she even advanced the dubious claim that Bush is "someone of tremendous intellect."

Rice claims to put America first. "American foreign policy in a Republican administration should refocus the United States on the national interest," she said in Foreign Affairs magazine. "There is nothing wrong with doing something that benefits all humanity, but that is, in a sense, a second-order effect." Yet her circle of associates favor a highly regulated globalized economy and she was part of the team that introduced Bush Sr.'s New World Order. The New York Times (11/17/00) reported that Rice said, "it might be necessary to set up international police forces to carry out peacekeeping functions that are now the responsibility of soldiers."

This is totally unpalatable to the ideological far right, who see Rice as an agent of the United Nations. From the left, though, she often sounds like a cold warrior who hasn't caught up with the changes during the Clinton administration. She knows little about the developing world, although she apparently retains an implacable hatred for Cuba.

On the other hand, Rice was among several who encouraged candidate Bush to recommend unilateral cuts in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, while at the same time urging a robust national missile defense system.

For the foreseeable future, Rice is unlikely to champion any national security changes outside the well-trodden middle ground. How she will react to the next crisis, and what she will recommend is still unknown.

George Schultz

George Pratt Schultz was born in New York City in 1920. He has a BA from Princeton, and a Ph.D. in industrial economics from MIT. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II.

He was a member the economics department faculty at M.I.T. and then in 1957 went to the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business as professor of industrial relations in 1957. He was Dean of the Graduate School of Business from 1962 to 1968. Under the Eisenhower administration, Schultz was on the President's Council of Economic Advisers, and later as a consultant to the Secretary of Labor.

Schultz held three major posts in the Nixon administration: Secretary of Labor, the first Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Treasury Secretary from 1972-74. He was Secretary of State under Reagan and Bush from 1982 to 1989.

Paul Wolfowitz

Paul Wolfowitz, Ph.D., is Dean and Professor of International Relations at The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.

From 1973-1977, Wolfowitz held a variety of positions in the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency including Special Assistant to the Director for the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. From 1977 to 1980, he was Director of Policy Planning for the Carter State Department, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense. From 1982 through 1986, he was Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. From 1986 to 1989 Wolfowitz was the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Indonesia. During the Bush administration, Wolfowitz was Dick Cheney's Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, the principal civilian official responsible for strategy, plans and policy.

In an unguarded moment last May, Richard Holbrooke opened a foreign policy speech in Italy with a fawning tribute to his host, Paul Wolfowitz, the dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Wolfowitz was a senior diplomat in the Reagan and first Bush administrations, having succeeded Holbrooke in 1983 as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. President Bush recently appointed him to the number two spot in the Defense Department.

In his new position of deputy secretary, Wolfowitz will have day-to-day control over the Pentagon and a perch to play out his hard-line views on theater missile defense (TMD), which he supports; North Korea, which he views as the rogue nation TMD was designed for; Iraq, where he wants the United States to arm the opposition; and China, which, according his comments to the New York Times last year, he sees as “the major strategic competitor and potential threat to the United States.” Wolfowitz will also play a key role in forming and shaping new military alliances—a job he took to with relish in the waning years of the cold war.

Holbrooke, a senior adviser to Al Gore, was clearly aware that either he or Wolfowitz would be playing important roles in next administration. Looking perhaps to assure Europe of the continuity of U.S. foreign policy, he told an audience in Bologna last year that Wolfowitz’s “recent activities illustrate something that’s very important about American foreign policy in an election year, and that is the degree to which there are still common themes between the parties.” more

Robert B. Zoellick, Trade Representative

Robert B. Zoellick, a seasoned foreign policy overachiever, emerged as George Bush's U.S. Trade Representative at a January 11 press conference in Washington. Zoellick described his views of the world thusly. "As the president-elect said during the campaign, free trade is about freedom. It's important for our economy but also for America's other interests and values throughout the world."

What sort of Trade Representative Zoellick makes? The most likely answer is, unsurprising. He's a known quantity, to the Bush family, to the State Department and to the established think tanks which will be busily formulating the new trade positions. These will not, in all probability, differ greatly from the Clinton positions, but they may have a more jingoistic and even more evangelical air to them. Zoellick himself is both jingo and evangelical. Last year, for instance, he wrote in Foreign Policy: