John Peter Hannah (born January 5, 1962) is a senior counselor at Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and a senior advisor to Chairman Ron Wahid of Arcanum, a global strategic intelligence company and a subsidiary of Magellan Investment Holdings. [1] He was formerly a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Washington, DC think tank which was founded in 1985. He is also a former national security adviser to U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney from 2005 to 2009. [2] [3]
Hannah's father was an oil executive working for Shell in the 1960s and 1970s. The Hannah family was stationed in Libya before Muammar Gaddafi came to power and nationalized the oil industry. They returned to the U.S. in the late 1970s and lived in Huntington, New York, for several years, before moving to Bahrain. Hannah graduated from Huntington High School in 1980.[ citation needed ], then went on to graduate from Duke University and Yale Law School.
On October 31, 2005, Cheney named Hannah as his assistant for national security affairs. At the same time, Cheney appointed another Duke alumnus, David S. Addington, as his chief of staff. The two took over duties that had previously been jointly held by I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Hannah had originally been on loan to the Office of the Vice President from the office of former State Department official and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton. [4]
On February 11, 2007, The Washington Post reported that an unnamed ambassador present in a meeting with Hannah had been "taken aback" by a remark Hannah made that the Bush administration considered 2007 to be "the year of Iran," with Hannah indicating that he believed a U.S. attack on that country to be a real possibility. [5] [6] [7] [8]
Hannah and his wife Laura have two children and are members of the Temple Sinai, Washington, D.C., having joined in the fall of 2006.[ citation needed ]
Bandar bin Sultan is a member of the House of Saud and was Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States from 1983 to 2005. From 2005 to 29 January 2015 he served as secretary general of the National Security Council, and was director general of the Saudi Intelligence Agency from 2012 to 2014. On 1 July 2014 he was appointed King Abdullah's special envoy which lasted until 29 January 2015.
Paul Dundes Wolfowitz is an American political scientist and diplomat who served as the 10th President of the World Bank, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia, and former dean of Johns Hopkins SAIS. He is currently a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
Iran and the United States have had no formal diplomatic relations since 1980. Pakistan serves as Iran's protecting power in the United States, while Switzerland serves as the United States' protecting power in Iran. Contacts are carried out through the Iranian Interests Section of the Pakistani Embassy in Washington, D.C., and the US Interests Section of the Swiss Embassy in Tehran. As of 2018, Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei banned direct talks with the United States. Relations between the two nations began in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, when Persia was known to the west as Iran. Initially, while Persia was very wary of British and Russian colonial interests during the Great Game, the United States was seen as a more trustworthy foreign power, and the Americans Arthur Millspaugh and Morgan Shuster were even appointed treasurers-general by the Shahs of the time. During World War II, Persia was invaded by the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, both US allies, but relations continued to be positive after the war until the later years of the government of Mohammad Mosaddegh, who was overthrown by a coup organized by the Central Intelligence Agency and aided by the MI6. This was followed by an era of very close alliance and friendship between Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's regime and the US government, Persia being one of the US's closest allies, which was in turn followed by a dramatic reversal and disagreement between the two countries after the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
Seymour Myron "Sy" Hersh is an American investigative journalist and political writer. He is a longtime contributor to The New Yorker magazine on national security matters and has also written for the London Review of Books since 2013.
Valerie Elise Plame Wilson, is an American writer, spy novelist, and former officer who worked at the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). As the subject of the 2003 Plame affair, also known as the CIA leak scandal, Plame's identity as a CIA officer was leaked to and subsequently published by Robert Novak of the Washington Post.
The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9/11 Commission, was set up on November 27, 2002, "to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11 attacks", including preparedness for and the immediate response to the attacks. The commission was also mandated to provide recommendations designed to guard against future attacks.
John Dimitri Negroponte is an American diplomat. He is currently a James R. Schlesinger Distinguished Professor at the Miller Center for Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. He is a former J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of International Affairs at the George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs. Prior to this appointment, he served as a research fellow and lecturer in international affairs at Yale University's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, United States Deputy Secretary of State (2007–2009), and the first ever Director of National Intelligence (2005–2007).
Joseph Charles Wilson IV was an American diplomat who was best known for his 2002 trip to Niger to investigate allegations that Saddam Hussein was attempting to purchase yellowcake uranium; his New York Times op-ed piece, "What I Didn't Find in Africa"; and the subsequent leaking of information pertaining to the identity of his wife Valerie Plame as a CIA agent. He also served as the CEO of a consulting firm he founded, JC Wilson International Ventures, and as the vice chairman of Jarch Capital, LLC.
Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir is a Saudi diplomat who is the former Saudi Minister of Foreign Affairs and the current Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs. He is the second person not belonging to the House of Saud to hold the office, after Ibrahim bin Abdullah Al Suwaiyel. He previously served as the Saudi Ambassador to the United States from 2007 to 2015, and was also a foreign policy advisor to King Abdullah.
John Robert Bolton is an American attorney, political commentator, Republican consultant, former diplomat and national security advisor.
The Niger uranium forgeries were forged documents initially released in 2001 by SISMI, which seem to depict an attempt made by Saddam Hussein in Iraq to purchase yellowcake uranium powder from Niger during the Iraq disarmament crisis. On the basis of these documents and other indicators, the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom asserted that Iraq violated United Nations sanctions against Iraq by attempting to procure nuclear material for the purpose of creating weapons of mass destruction.
Lawrence B. "Larry" Wilkerson is a retired United States Army Colonel and former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell. Since the end of his military career, Wilkerson has publicly criticized many aspects of the Iraq War, including his own preparation of Powell's presentation to the UN, as well as other aspects of American policy in the Middle East.
Donald Phinney Gregg is a retired American politician, CIA employee, and U.S. Ambassador to South Korea. Gregg worked for the Central Intelligence Agency for 31 years, from 1951 to 1982. He was a National Security Council advisor (1979–1982) and National Security Advisor to U.S. Vice President George H. W. Bush (1982–1989), United States Ambassador to Korea (1989–1993), and the chairman of the board of The Korea Society, where he called for greater engagement with North Korea.
The rationale for the Iraq War has been a controversial issue since the Bush Administration began actively pressing for military intervention in Iraq in late 2001. The primary rationalization for the Iraq War was articulated by a joint resolution of the United States Congress known as the Iraq Resolution.
David Wurmser is an American foreign policy specialist. He served as Middle East Adviser to former US Vice President Dick Cheney, as special assistant to John R. Bolton at the State Department and as a research fellow on the Middle East at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). He served in the U.S. Navy Reserve as an intelligence officer at the rank of Lieutenant Commander.
Richard Bruce Cheney is an American politician and businessman who served as the 46th vice president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. He has been cited as the most powerful vice president in American history. He is also one of the most unpopular politicians in the history of the US, holding an approval rating of just 13% at the time of leaving office.
Wilson v. Libby, 498 F. Supp. 2d 74, affirmed, 535 F.3d 697, was a civil lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on 13 July, 2006, by Valerie Plame and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, IV, against Richard Armitage (individually) for allegedly revealing her identity and thus irresponsibly infringing upon her Constitutional rights and against Vice President of the United States Dick Cheney, Lewis Libby, Karl Rove, and the unnamed others (together) because the latter, in addition, allegedly "illegally conspired to reveal her identity." The lawsuit was ultimately dismissed.
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is an American lawyer and former adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney.
Barton David Gellman is an American journalist and bestselling author known for his reports on the September 11 attacks, on Dick Cheney's vice presidency and on the global surveillance disclosure.
Robert James "Jim" Woolsey Jr. is an American lawyer and diplomat who headed the Central Intelligence Agency from February 5, 1993, until January 10, 1995. He held a variety of government positions in the 1970s and 1980s, including as Under Secretary of the Navy from 1977 to 1979, and was involved in treaty negotiations with the Soviet Union for five years in the 1980s. His career also included time as a professional lawyer, venture capitalist and investor in the private sector.
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Scooter Libby | National Security Advisor to the Vice President of the United States 2005–2009 | Succeeded by Tony Blinken |