By 1993, he had ingratiated himself with Mr. Yeltsin's powerful and shadowy chief of security, Aleksandr Korzhakov and another hawkish top adviser, Oleg Soskovets, both of whom proved helpful when Mr. Berezovsky began expanding the Logovaz empire.

According to George Shultz's memoir, "Turmoil and Triumph," Mr. Reagan would become uneasy when his hawkish advisers entered the Oval Office.

Despite his pedigree as one of the administration's most hawkish advisers on national security issues, Mr. Libby is hard to pigeonhole among Washington insiders.

He would not be comfortable with some of the President's more hawkish advisers.

Still, there was some concern among Japanese officials here that some of Mr. Bush's more hawkish advisers would ultimately press him to take a hard line with North Korea and risk a military confrontation that Japan views as having potentially catastrophic consequences for other nations in the region.

He ditched his last hawkish adviser, Nikolai Yegorov, and replaced him as chief of staff - a job whose holder completely controls all access to the President - with Mr. Chubais, perhaps Russia's best known economic reformer.

President Bush and his hawkish advisers speak blithely about a U.S.-led invasion leading to a garden of democracy blooming in the desert soil of Iraq.

Or are some of the president's more hawkish advisers exaggerating North Korean missile capabilities and sabotaging a détente that could undermine the rationale for missile defense?

The president's most hawkish advisers in fact urged him to move against Mr. Hussein in the first days after the Sept. 11 attacks, even absent any evidence that he was involved.