George W. Bush's tenure as the 43rd president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 2001, and ended on January 20, 2009. Bush, a Republican from Texas, took office following a narrow victory over Democratic incumbent vice president Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election. Four years later, in the 2004 presidential election, he defeated Democrat nominee John Kerry to win re-election. Bush was succeeded by Democrat Barack Obama, who won the 2008 presidential election. Bush, the 43rd president, is the eldest son of the 41st president, George H. W. Bush.
Brent Scowcroft was a United States Air Force officer who was a two-time United States National Security Advisor, first under U.S. President Gerald Ford and then under George H. W. Bush. He served as Military Assistant to President Richard Nixon and as Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs in the Nixon and Ford administrations. He served as Chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005, and advised President Barack Obama on choosing his national security team.
Richard Alan Clarke is an American novelist and former government official. He was National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism for the United States between 1998 and 2003.
Robert Michael Gates is an American intelligence analyst and university president who served as the 22nd United States secretary of defense from 2006 to 2011. He was originally appointed by president George W. Bush and was retained for service by President Barack Obama. Gates began his career serving as an officer in the United States Air Force but was quickly recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Gates served for 26 years in the CIA and the National Security Council, and was Director of Central Intelligence under President George H. W. Bush. After leaving the CIA, Gates became president of Texas A&M University and was a member of several corporate boards. Gates served as a member of the Iraq Study Group, the bipartisan commission co-chaired by James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, that studied the lessons of the Iraq War.
Meghan L. O'Sullivan is a former deputy national security adviser on Iraq and Afghanistan. She is Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School and a board member of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Kennedy School. She is a member of the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Raytheon, and the North American chair of the Trilateral Commission.
Lt. Gen. Douglas Edward Lute is a retired United States Army lieutenant general and public servant who served as the United States Permanent Representative to NATO from 2013 to 2017. He was nominated for the post by President Obama on May 23, 2013, confirmed by the Senate on August 1, 2013 by voice vote, and assumed his position on September 3, 2013.
Sandra Hodgkinson is an American lawyer and officer in the United States Navy Reserve. She currently serves as senior vice president for strategic planning and chief of staff at DRS Technologies and Leonardo North America, headquartered in Arlington, Virginia.
Mark William Lippert is an American diplomat who has worked as the vice president for international affairs at Boeing since 2017. He previously served as the United States Ambassador to South Korea from 2014 to 2017. Prior to his tour as an ambassador, Lippert had served as Chief of Staff for Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, Chief of Staff for the National Security Council, and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs in the Department of Defense. On March 5, 2015, he was attacked by a man wielding a knife in South Korea.
Jane Holl Lute is an American diplomat and security analyst currently serving as the UN special envoy on the Cyprus dispute. She served as the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security from 2009 through 2013, after having been confirmed by the U.S. Senate on April 3, 2009. Previously, Lute was the United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Peacebuilding Support. Before that she was Assistant Secretary-General for Mission Support in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations since August 2003. She is the President and CEO of the Arlington-based Council on CyberSecurity and Senior Advisor of Measure, a Drone as a Service company. On January 5, 2014, she was appointed Special Adviser for Relocation of Camp Hurriya Residents Outside of Iraq by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. On February 8, 2016, she was appointed Special Coordinator on Improving the United Nations Response to Sexual Exploitation and Abuse.
Thomas Edward Donilon is an American lawyer, business executive, and former government official who served as the 23rd National Security Advisor in the Obama administration from 2010 to 2013. Donilon also worked in the Carter and Clinton administrations, including as Chief of Staff of the U.S. State Department. He is now Chairman of the BlackRock Investment Institute, the firm's global think tank.
Hugo Llorens is a retired American diplomat. He is a former U.S. Special Chargé d'Affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, (2016–17) and United States Ambassador to Honduras (2008–2011). In his 36-year career he was posted to numerous countries spanning 6 continents. In 2002–2003, he joined the White House staff and served as Director of Andean Affairs advising the President and National Security Advisor on issues pertaining to Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador.
Energy Czar, and also later Climate Czar, is a nickname, using the political term "czar", for the person in the Government of the United States given authority over energy or climate policy within the executive branch. This has never been the official title of any office, but has often been informally used to refer to various officials since the 1970s.
Czar, sometimes spelled tsar, is an informal title used for certain high-level officials in the United States and United Kingdom, typically granted broad power to address a particular issue.
Paul D. Miller is an American academic, writer and former White House staffer for Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. He is a Professor in the Practice of International Affairs at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. He is a former Associate Director of The William P. Clements, Jr. Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin. He formerly worked as an adjunct political scientist at the RAND Corporation. He is a reserve Army officer and veteran of the War in Afghanistan. Miller's writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, The American Interest, World Affairs, The Washington Quarterly, War on the Rocks, and elsewhere.
William K. Lietzau is an American lawyer, former U.S. Marine Corps Judge Advocate, and the current Director of the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency.
Lisa Oudens Monaco is an American attorney and politician who has served as the 39th deputy attorney general of the United States since April 2021.
Brett H. McGurk is an American diplomat, attorney, and academic who served in senior national security positions under presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump. He was the Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL. He was appointed to this post by President Barack Obama in October 2015 and was retained in that role by the Trump administration until 2018. McGurk had been slated to leave the post in mid-February 2019, but announced his resignation in December following President Trump's decision to withdraw troops from Syria.
Jacob Jeremiah Sullivan is an American political advisor who currently serves as the United States National Security Advisor to President Joe Biden. He was previously a senior policy advisor to Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential election campaign and her deputy chief of staff at the Department of State, when she was Secretary of State. Sullivan was also a senior advisor to the U.S. government for the Iran nuclear negotiations, a visiting professor at Yale Law School, and an unnamed foreign policy advisor.
Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War is a nonfiction book written by Robert M. Gates, a former U.S. Secretary of Defense. It was published in January 2014 by Alfred A. Knopf. The time period is from 2006 to 2011, and includes the George W. Bush administration (2006–2009), the Obama administration (2009–2011), the Afghan war, and the Iraq War.