Stephen John Hadley (born February 13, 1947) is an American attorney and senior government official who served as the 20th United States National Security Advisor from 2005 to 2009.

[4] After reading the Allen Drury novel Advise and Consent, he became intrigued by the governing process and was elected student body president of Charles F. Brush High School.

During the administration of George H. W. Bush, Hadley was a Pentagon aide to Paul Wolfowitz,[7] serving as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy from 1989 to 1993.

[6] Hadley served as a senior foreign and defense policy adviser to Governor Bush during the 2000 presidential campaign and worked in the Bush-Cheney Transition on the National Security Council.

In January 2001, as George W. Bush prepared to take office, Hadley served on a panel for nuclear weapons issues sponsored by the National Institute for Public Policy, a neoconservative think tank.

[6] Hadley played a significant role during the critical phase of the Iraq War, including the controversial 2007 "surge" strategy, which increased U.S. troop levels to combat rising insurgency and stabilize the country.

In a town populated by people nursing grandiose views of their own importance and scheming for greater glory, Hadley still thinks of himself as a staff man.

[16] Beginning in 2009, Hadley served as senior adviser for international affairs at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, DC.

"[18] Hadley widely promoted the Interim Report in the media, including with United States Institute of Peace president Nancy Lindborg on the Foundation for Defense of Democracies' podcast "Foreign Podicy" hosted by Clifford May.

[20] In 2013, Hadley was a signatory to an amicus curiae brief submitted to the Supreme Court in support of same-sex marriage during the Hollingsworth v. Perry case.

[22] During the Syrian chemical weapons crisis in September 2013, Hadley appeared on Bloomberg Television, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and also wrote an op-ed piece for The Washington Post in which he advocated attacking Syria with missiles.

At the time, Hadley was a director at Raytheon and owned 11,477 shares of stock, but the news organizations failed to disclose the link and conflict of interest.

This article incorporates text from Stephen Hadley's National Security Council biography, which, as a work of the U.S. government, is in the public domain