Ex-Bush Loyalists: Where Are They Now? (Page 4)

This article originally appeared on TomDispatch.

Board to Death

Bush administration officials have also been popping up on various boards of directors. Richard Armitage is perhaps typical. He sits on the board at military-corporate complex member ManTech International. He also serves on the boards of oil giant ConocoPhillips, "pharmaceutical and cosmeceutical" company Transcu Ltd., and his own firm, Armitage International, which, according to its website, provides "multinational clients with critical support in the areas of international business development, strategic planning, and problem-solving."

In April, chemical giant DuPont announced that Samuel Bodman, secretary of energy from 2005-2009 (and before that, deputy secretary of the treasury, 2004-2005, and deputy secretary of the department of commerce, 2001-2004) had been elected to its board of directors.

That same month, former CIA chief Michael Hayden became a member of the Board of Directors of the National Interest Security Company, an "information technology, information management, and management technology consulting services" provider serving the US Intelligence Community and the departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Energy. There, Hayden joined fellow former administration cronies Henry A. Crumpton (coordinator for counterterrorism at the State Department, 2005-2007) and Donald Kerr (principal deputy director of national intelligence, 2007-2009).

Meanwhile, Andrew Card not only serves on the board of directors of railroad giant Union Pacific but has also turned up on the board of directors of the George W. Bush Presidential Library Foundation.

In the Tank

If you can't get a gig at a law firm, a PR agency, or on a corporate board of directors, there are always the nation's think-tanks to fall back into--and they've become a shelter for more than a few Bush administration refugees in the Obama era. For example, after serving as a deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser in the Bush administration, Elliott Abrams has now joined the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) as senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies.

Alongside Abrams at CFR are a number of officials who served during the Bush years, including Evan Feigenbaum, former deputy assistant secretary of state for India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and the Maldives; Paul Lettow, former senior adviser to the under-secretary of state for democracy and global affairs and the senior director for strategic planning and institutional reform on the National Security Council staff; and Dan Senor, an administration foreign policy advisor and senior advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.

Meanwhile, the conservative Heritage Foundation is, not surprisingly, housing a large contingent of Bush loyalists, including Becky Norton Dunlop, who served as the chairperson of the Federal Services Impasse Panel (which handles disputes between government agencies and labor unions); Kim R. Holmes, assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs; Terry Miller, ambassador to the United Nations Economic and Social Council; Peter Brookes, deputy assistant defense secretary for Asian and Pacific affairs; and Mike Gonzalez who, in 2005, left the Wall Street Journal to join the Bush administration, where, according to his Heritage Foundation bio, he "wrote speeches for Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox, then moved to the State Department in 2006 as communications adviser and speechwriter on European and Eurasian affairs" and even "helped craft an op-ed column...which appeared throughout Europe under the bylines of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates."

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