26 Facts About David Addington

David Addington was the vice president of domestic and economic policy studies at The Heritage Foundation from 2010 to 2016.

David Addington was appointed to replace I Lewis "Scooter" Libby Jr.

David Addington was born in Washington, DC, the first son of Eleanore "Billie" and the late Jerry Spears David Addington, a retired brigadier general and West Point graduate.

The David Addington family moved often and there were periods during which Jerry was posted overseas while his family remained stateside.

David Addington graduated from Sandia High School in Albuquerque, New Mexico in May 1974.

David Addington was admitted to the United States Naval Academy and attended beginning in fall 1974, but dropped out during his freshman year.

David Addington took classes at the University of Albuquerque before enrolling at Georgetown University in 1975.

David Addington was admitted to the bar in both Virginia and the District of Columbia in 1981.

David Addington was an assistant general counsel for the Central Intelligence Agency from 1981 to 1984.

David Addington was a special assistant for legislative affairs to President Ronald Reagan for one year in 1987, before becoming Reagan's deputy assistant.

In 1993 and 1994, David Addington was the Republican staff director of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

In both roles, David Addington provided advice to the White House staff, as he had the additional role of Assistant to the President, as his predecessor Scooter Libby had likewise held.

David Addington tried to protect the inner workings of the Office of the Vice President from investigations by the Government Accountability Office and private organizations.

David Addington provided advice and drafted memoranda on many of the most controversial policies of the Bush administration.

David Addington has consistently advocated that under the Constitution, the president has substantial and expansive powers as commander-in-chief during wartime, if need be.

David Addington is the legal force behind over 750 signing statements that President George W Bush issued when signing bills passed by Congress, expanding the practice relative to other Presidents.

Charlie Savage, the former national legal affairs writer for The Boston Globe who won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on signing statements, quotes former associate White House counsel Brad Berenson saying that David Addington "would dive into a 200-page bill like it was a four-course meal" as he crafted the statements.

Press reports state that David Addington reportedly took a leading role in pressing for the use of torture for interrogations when a delegation of top Bush administration attorneys traveled to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in September 2002 to observe operations there, although David Addington said that he could not recall this in his sworn House Judiciary Committee testimony.

Some press reports indicate that David Addington advocated scaling back the authority of lawyers in the uniformed services; David Addington in fact advocated merely that the civilian general counsels of the military departments be recognized as the chief legal officers of those departments.

Goldsmith noted that David Addington was speaking sarcastically at the time.

Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman writes that David Addington was the author of the controlling legal and technical documents for the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program, typing the documents on a Tempest-shielded computer across from his desk in room 268 of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and storing them in a vault in his office.

David Addington had previously pushed for elimination of a presidentially-mandated position of director of the oversight office after a dispute over oversight of classified information.

On June 26,2008, David Addington appeared to testify under subpoena from the House Judiciary Committee along with former Justice Department attorney John Yoo in a contentious hearing on detainee treatment, interrogation methods and the extent of executive branch authority.

David Addington worked as group vice president for research at The Heritage Foundation and as senior vice president, general counsel, and chief legal officer at the National Federation of Independent Business.

David Addington is married to Cynthia Mary David Addington; the couple have three children.

Previously, David Addington had been married to Linda Werling, whom he met while the two were both attending Duke University.