National Security Advisers

President Bush's new national security advisor has made a career out of being the perfect right-hand man to a series of powerful Washington conservatives. Now the self-effacing Stephen J. Hadley, often described as one of the nicest guys in Washington, is doing one of toughest jobs in the U.S. government. Like John R. Bolton, Hadley is a Yale-trained lawyer known for his tremendous energy and hawkish credentials, and as a conservative loyalist with close ties to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Among Washington insiders, a favorite topic of conversation has become, "Is Condoleezza Rice doing her job?" What prompts the speculation is the indecorous bureaucratic wrestling match between Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell that became embarrassingly public this month over the reconstruction of Iraq. The question inside the Beltway is: Why hasn't Rice stepped in to referee?

A prison door slammed and a disembodied voice warned, "Bureaucrats, do not take bribes!" Then the popular war hero appeared in army uniform and growled: "I really advise you not to." That was the TV ad, during the election campaign. Now the candidate who finished third in Russia's presidential election Sunday has won a mandate to pursue his law-and-order crusade from an office in the Kremlin, as President Boris N. Yeltsin's national security advisor. Retired Gen. Alexander I.

President Clinton, laying the foundation for his second-term Cabinet, nominated U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright on Thursday to be the nation's first female secretary of State and chose retiring Republican Sen. William S. Cohen of Maine to be secretary of Defense. Ending a tortuous search for a national security team, Clinton also named National Security Advisor Anthony Lake to run the troubled Central Intelligence Agency and filled Lake's current post with his deputy, Samuel R.

Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger and Bill Clinton have known each other, as the president said Thursday, "since we were about half our present age," putting the newly named White House national security advisor into the forefront of the fraternity known as "friends of Bill." But it is more than a friendship--started when both men were working in the failed presidential campaign of Sen. George S.

Outraged by images of dead Americans being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, many members of Congress revolted against President Clinton's Somalia policy Tuesday as Democrats and Republicans alike demanded the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the African country. Emerging unmollified from a two-hour meeting with Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Defense Secretary Les Aspin, some lawmakers threatened to back new legislation by Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.

President-elect Bill Clinton, saying the nation needs steady hands in a "time of great change and challenge," named an experienced national security team Tuesday led by his transition director, Warren Christopher, as his designee for secretary of state. Joining Christopher will be Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, as secretary of defense, and R.

The national security team named by President-elect Clinton Tuesday reflects the outline of his emerging foreign policy: long on reassurance and continuity--and more cautious about innovation than candidate-Clinton sometimes seemed to promise. During his presidential campaign, the Arkansas governor offered a policy geared for the tumultuous new world that has followed the end of the Cold War: a new emphasis on U.S.

Anthony Lake was a 21-year-old Harvard senior when he found himself caught up in the election eve crowd that greeted Sen. John F. Kennedy as he returned to Boston at the end of the 1960 presidential campaign. "His confident smile and the almost-hysterical adulation of the people (which I shared) produced an incredible sense of power--and the feeling that it could be harnessed to serve great purposes," Lake wrote 15 years later. "I desperately wanted to follow it."

The Bush Administration, looking beyond Tuesday's deadline for Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait, has quietly mobilized a special interagency task force to deal with the "end game" of the Persian Gulf crisis--the complex political problems that will exist whether the confrontation is resolved by diplomacy or war. "Getting Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait is going to look easy compared to what must be accomplished afterwards to stabilize the region," said an official close to the task force.