Top White House adviser resigning

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By Jon Ward

President Bush's circle of intimates shrunk even smaller today as Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin announced he will leave on July 20.

"He is somebody who has been at the President's side since serving as deputy campaign manager during the 2000 campaign," said White House press secretary Dana Perino. "And as he begins his next experience in the private sector, we wish him all the best and we will miss his leadership and his friendship very much."

"I spoke to the president quickly about this this morning. He said that Joe is a -- has been a very loyal friend. He thanks him for his service and he is very excited for Joe's next chapter," Mrs. Perino said.

Only Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, his deputy Joel Kaplan, adviser Barry Jackson, and administrator Linda Gambatesa have been in or near Mr. Bush's inner circle since he took office almost eight years ago.

Mr. Hagin, 52, a tall and imposing physical figure, was a soft-spoken, behind the scenes operator who handled operations for Mr. Bush.

He had planned on serving only the first year of the Bush presidency, but has said that after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he decided to stay on at the White House, even telling the Cincinnati Enquirer in 2003 that he was there "for the duration."

Mr. Hagin is credited with modernizing the White House's communication systems, overseeing the modernization of the Eisenhower Executive Office building and the White House press briefing room, and planning the president's surprise visit to Baghdad in 2003, all in addition to handling day-to-day logistics and planning.

Mr. Hagin is also the only person to attend about 90 percent of Mr. Bush's 495 meetings with the families of soldiers killed in Iraq or Afghanistan.

In an interview last week, Mr. Hagin described how his unique role of accompanying the president to meetings with military families, and on trips to natural disaster zones, has changed him personally.

When I started this job I was a relatively unemotional person. Not in a crazy way. But Ive turned into a much more emotional person, between September 11 and the aftermath and this, and just the disasters that we go to see and the human suffering thats out there," he said. "You cant help but develop a real soft spot for people who have either sacrificed so much or who have lost so much."

Fittingly, Mr. Hagin was with Mr. Bush today when he visited for a few hours with injured war veterans at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda.

Mr. Hagin first came to know the Bush family when he worked for the president's father, President H.W. Bush. Mr. Hagin served as body man to then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, and later, from 1983-to-1985, was the vice president's director of legislative affairs.

Before coming to work for the second President Bush, Mr. Hagin was an executive at Chiquita Brands International, in his native town of Cincinnati.