who was vice president under george h bush

The history of the NSC is a classic demonstration of how a few serving in government can amass enormous power in the name of national security when the public can’t see what they’re up to. There’s no organized deep state in Washington today, but I can understand why Americans might worry about what unelected officials do when left to their own devices. Coming from a president who has sharply criticized other bureaucratic entities and complained aloud about the “deep state,” Trump’s tweet is ironic proof of the NSC’s staying power. The 45th president has even taken to Twitter to thank NSC staffers for their service. Thirty years later, the institution that Scowcroft empowered serves at the pleasure of Donald Trump. Bush’s national security adviser, Scowcroft built an NSC far more powerful than the one North had served on, despite calls by some to eradicate the staff. As part of the special review board that investigated Iran-Contra, and then as President George H. Even before North testified, Scowcroft took steps to not only save the staff but empower it. Brent Scowcroft, an unassuming Utahn, retired Air Force lieutenant general, and former national security adviser, has done more than anyone to shape the NSC and the way Washington makes foreign policy today. There is one Washington wise man to thank for that. Yet when I began research for a book on the people and power of the NSC-a project that eventually included reviewing 10,000 archival documents and almost 100 interviews with policy makers from the Reagan administration and more-I was surprised how seldom Iran-Contra came up. As rain ruined a family-vacation day that July, I sat in a hotel room with my mother and siblings, captivated by the testimony of a man whose deeds, I realize now, could have besmirched the NSC’s reputation for posterity. Like just about everyone else in the United States, I watched North’s hearing. Amid what became known as the Iran-Contra affair, North and the rest of the NSC looked to many like, in the words of one observer, “reckless cowboys, off on their own on a wild ride.” Today conspiracy theorists would have simply called them part of a “deep state”-shadowy, unelected officials controlling government even as presidents come and go. On paper, North and others at the NSC were supposed to support the president’s policy-making process, but Reagan staffers had cooked up their own plans and then carried them out. As television cameras rolled, the staffer recounted his role in the scheme to sell weapons to Iran and funnel the proceeds to Contras battling a socialist government in Nicaragua.

North, a Marine lieutenant colonel who’d been assigned to work on Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council staff, sat upright in his olive-green uniform before a joint congressional committee. I n July 1987, Oliver North was living proof of what could happen when obscure government staffers exercise power on their own.

Who was vice president under george h bush