Charles Timothy Hagel (/ˈheɪɡəl/ HAY-gəl;[2] born October 4, 1946)[3] is an American politician and Army veteran who served as the 24th United States secretary of defense from 2013 to 2015 in the administration of Barack Obama.

He co-founded Vanguard Cellular, the primary source of his personal wealth, and served as president of the McCarthy Group, an investment banking firm, and CEO of American Information Systems Inc., a computerized voting machine manufacturer.

[10] Hagel previously served as a professor at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, chairman of the Atlantic Council, and co-chairman of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board.

[21] After his discharge, he worked as a radio newscaster and talk show host in Omaha from 1969 to 1971[22] while finishing college on Veterans Administration (VA) assistance under the GI Bill.

For the next four years, he worked as a lobbyist for Firestone Tire and Rubber Company,[24] and in 1980, he served as an organizer for the successful presidential campaign of former California Governor Ronald Reagan.

[27] Although he was pressured by some to run for Governor of Virginia, where he had lived for 20 years, in 1992 Hagel moved back to Nebraska to become president of the McCarthy Group, LLC, an investment banking firm.

[70] On August 18, 2005, Hagel compared the Iraq War to Vietnam, and openly mocked Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion that the Iraqi insurgency was in its "last throes.

"[75] Following heavy Republican losses in the 2006 midterm election, Hagel penned an editorial in The Washington Post highly critical of military strategies both employed and proposed for Iraq.

"[79] Together with Democrats Joe Biden and Carl Levin, he proposed a non-binding resolution to the Democratic-controlled Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which rejected Bush's policy as "not in the national interest" in a 12–9 vote.

[100][101][102] In Hagel's 2008 book, America: Our Next Chapter: Tough Questions, Straight Answers (with Peter Kaminsky), he suggests that the United States should adopt independent leadership and possibly another political party.

[112] Hagel, who became, upon confirmation, the first former enlisted combat soldier to hold the office of Secretary of Defense, was interviewed by the Senate Armed Services Committee during a seven-and-a-half-hour hearing on January 31, 2013.

[113] According to Jon Swaine writing in The Daily Telegraph, Hagel has been accused of having "views [that] verged on anti-Semitic" due to his stating in a 2006 interview with Aaron David Miller that "[t]he Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people [on Capitol Hill]",[114] and "I'm not an Israeli senator.

[116] Hagel also has been criticized by the American Jewish Committee for an incident in 1999 where he was the only senator not to sign an open letter to Russian President Boris Yeltsin threatening to cut aid to Russia if it did not take action against rising anti-Semitism in the country.

"[124] The Human Rights Campaign criticized Hagel for having a "consistent anti-LGBT" voting record in the Senate and for opposing President Bill Clinton's nomination of James Hormel as the U.S.

[131] Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina predicted that Hagel would be "the most antagonistic Secretary of Defense toward the State of Israel in our nation's history" and called it an "in-your-face nomination.

"[120] Harvard University Professor Stephen Walt, co-author of a 2007 book critical of the Israeli lobby wrote in Foreign Policy that "The real meaning of the Hagel affair is what it says about the climate inside Washington.

Simply put, the question is whether supine and reflexive support for all things Israeli remains a prerequisite for important policy positions here in the Land of the Free.

[149] Senator Ted Cruz played video excerpts from a 2009 Al Jazeera interview and asserted that Hagel had agreed with a caller who suggested that Israel had committed war crimes.

Reasons given included a demand for more White House information about the 2012 Benghazi attack, remaining questions about Hagel's views on Iran and Israel, and assertions two weeks after the hearings was insufficient time.

Friedman asked if the Senate committee was more concerned with Hagel's "relationship with Israel than with the future of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the fate of U.S. troops engaged in both locations.

"[162] Gene Healy in Reason called the hearings "farcical" and wrote there was "plenty of bloviating, grandstanding and browbeating—but, apparently, not enough time for serious deliberation over key policy questions facing any new Pentagon chief.

"[163] Mark Mardell, the BBC News North America editor, criticized the "whole process, which has been used not to examine a candidate's fitness for high office, but to underline the rather obvious fact that the Obama administration does not share the world view of Republican senators, and they don't like their former colleague joining it.

[176] After Yanukovych's impeachment and the beginning of the Crimean crisis in February 2014, Hagel warned Russia against military maneuvers "that could be misinterpreted, or lead to miscalculation during a very delicate time".

We must see renewed financial commitments from all NATO members.Hagel was not insensitive to the European dependence on Russian natural gas and consequent exposure to "Russia’s coercive energy policies".

[185] Hagel was instrumental in formulating the 2014 NATO Wales summit declaration, in which the Allies agreed to increase (over a period of ten years) their defence expenditures.

[186] The target of 2% GDP, formulated as a trial balloon at the 2006 NATO Riga summit by then-NATO Ambassador Victoria Nuland,[187] had been scorned by most in Europe, for example Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands.

[189] On November 24, 2014, The New York Times reported that Hagel would be resigning from his position as Secretary of Defense under pressure from the Obama administration, in particular because of a dispute with NSA Advisor Susan E. Rice over Syria policy.

[195] In December 2015, during an interview with Foreign Policy, Hagel stated he was "backstabbed" and accused Obama administration officials of making anonymous comments after his resignation in an effort to destroy his reputation.

[199] Hagel, along with all other former secretaries of defense, nine in total, published a Washington Post op-ed piece in January 2021 telling President Trump not to involve the military in determining the outcome of the 2020 elections.

[211] While a Senator, Hagel had a tradition of wearing costumes to work on Halloween, usually masquerading as one of his colleagues or other notable political figures, including Joe Biden, John McCain, Colin Powell, and Pat Roberts in past years.