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John P. Hannah is a political pundit and advisor associated with U.S. neoconservatism who served as a national security aide to Vice President Dick Cheney. After leaving government service, Hannah became a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a hawkish “pro-Israel” advocacy organization originally established as a policy counterpart to the influential lobby group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Hannah held his WINEP post until early 2010. In March 2011, the neoconservative group Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) named Hannah a senior fellow. Commenting on the hire, FDD’s Cliff May said, “John Hannah is a superbly qualified and creative national security and foreign policy professional. We are immensely pleased that he will be joining FDD and we look forward to the contributions he will make in this role to the critical debates now taking place in Washington and the nation.”[1]

Hannah has contributed to the neoconservative Weekly Standard and other right-wing journals. His writings have often focused on criticizing opponents of interventionist Middle East policies. For instance, in a September 2009 Standard article about election turmoil in Iran, Hannah pushed the Obama administration to seize the moment and encourage regime change in the country, arguing that the “survival, strengthening, and eventual success” of the Iranian opposition movement was “the most viable option available for satisfactorily resolving the Iranian nuclear crisis short of war.” He added, “Barring a minor miracle … the [Obama] administration appears to be hurtling toward that fateful moment in time that Senator [John] McCain crystallized so well during last year's campaign: The time when the world confronts the excruciating choice of ‘Iran with the bomb or bombing Iran.’"[2]

A month later, Hannah excoriated Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a National Review Online piece for criticizing Bush-era foreign policies during a meeting with Pakistani students. Wrote Hannah: “Does anyone advising President Obama and the secretary of state really believe that this kind of partisanship and trash-talking abroad about another American president is really going to buy us much long-term goodwill among either our friends or our adversaries?”[3]

Responded the New Republic’s Michael Crowley: “Personally, I really do think it might buy us long-term goodwill. It's a fact that people around the world loathed Bush (and Hannah's former boss), and the foreign policy associated with them. A change of faces in Washington certainly won't solve all our problems, but I think it can help along the margins. Hillary was, after all, applauded when she said this.”[4]

In the George W. Bush Administration

Hannah served as assistant for national security affairs to Vice President Dick Cheney during the second George W. Bush administration. Prior to this appointment, Hannah was part of the vice president's national security staff for more than four years, where he played a role in corralling intelligence used by the Bush administration to justify its 2003 invasion of Iraq.[5] He previously served in the State Department's Office of Arms Control and International Security, under Undersecretary John Bolton.

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Hannah worked closely with I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Cheney’s chief of staff. They were part of an informal White House team called the "White House Iraq Group," which was tasked with culling information about the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.[6] The Libby-Hannah team wrote a 48-page speech for then-Secretary of State Colin Powell's now-infamous 2003 address before the UN Security Council, which justified invading Iraq based on faulty evidence. According to political commentator Robert Dreyfuss, Powell regarded the draft to be "so extreme" that he "trashed the entire document."[7]

Cheney promoted Hannah to assistant for national security affairs following the indictment and resignation of Libby. Hannah had been interviewed by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald as part of the investigation that led to Libby's resignation. Despite speculation that he was involved in the outing of former CIA agent Valerie Plame, Hannah was not charged with a crime. Thus, Hannah's promotion in the aftermath of the Plame scandal disappointed reform-minded Democrats, who complained that Hannah was too closely linked to Libby. "Instead of cleaning house, you simply rearranged some of the furniture," Senate Democrats wrote Cheney, regarding Hannah's appointment.[8]

Soon after his promotion, Hannah—together with Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, and National Security Council Deputy Advisor Elliott Abrams—conducted high-level, strategic meetings with Israeli officials regarding "the Iranian government's growing radicalization and its irresponsible policy on nuclear issues.”[9]

Hannah was among the hardliners on Iran within Cheney's office. When Tehran refused to suspend its uranium enrichment operations in August 2006, Hannah insisted on a firm U.S. response. He maintained anything less risked "allowing Iran's response to appear reasonable.”[10]

Hannah was also a key liaison between the vice president's office and the Iraqi National Congress (INC) headed by Ahmed Chalabi, the controversial Iraqi exile who was a close confidant of many neoconservative figures in and out of government prior to the 2003 Iraq War. Chalabi was eventually accused of feeding false information to the Bush administration regarding Saddam Hussein's weapons programs.[11]

The INC's other main contact was Undersecretary of Defense William Luti, who working in the Defense Department's much-maligned Office of Special Plans (OSP). Under the direction of senior Defense Department staff, including Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary Douglas Feith, people associated with the OSP provided since-discredited evidence that supposedly linked Iraq to al-Qaida and detailed Iraq's pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.[12]

Early Track Record

A graduate of Duke University and Yale University Law School, Hannah worked as an attorney for in the Washington office of Powell, Goldstein, Frazer & Murphy before joining the Bush administration. He also served on the State Department Policy Planning Staff during 1991-1996.[13]

Hannah served on the 2000 “Presidential Study Group” convened by WINEP that examined U.S. policy in the Middle East. The group's report, "Navigating Through Turbulence: America and the Middle East in a New Century," was criticized by some as overly biased towards Israel and has been cited as the basis for some Bush administration Mideast policies.[14]

Other members of the WINEP study group included Paula J. Dobriansky, Michael Eisenstadt, Geoffrey Kemp, Zalmay Khalilzad, Charles Krauthammer, David Makovsky, Will Marshall, Daniel Pipes, James G.Roche, Peter W. Rodman, William Schneider, Steve Solarz, Shibley Telhami, R. James Woolsey, and Dov S. Zakheim.[15]

In a critique of the study, Michael Hudson, a professor at Georgetown University, wrote: “At first glance the reader might be misled into thinking that this report is the product of a study group convened by the president of the United States and might therefore represent a wide range of views and experience. A look at its membership and organizers reveals, however, a vast preponderance of pro-Israel and conservative-hawkish voices. Perhaps it is naïve to expect anything better from the Washington Institute of Near East Policy. … [N]onetheless, it is a shame that such an enterprise could not have been undertaken with more balance and depth. God knows, the new administration could use some good advice on the Middle East. But what has been served up here is a catalogue of pro-Israel exhortations, anodyne pieties, patronizing prescriptions, and alarmist declarations, interspersed only occasionally with useful recommendations. What emerges from this tepid think-tank exercise are more of the same clichés and mantras that have guided our politicians into an ever-depending spiral of policy failures in the Middle East.”[16]

Please note: IPS Right Web neither represents nor endorses any of the individuals or groups profiled on this site.