_______________________________________________________________
 |
 |  George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography
 |  by Webster Griffin Tarpley; Marianna Wertz; Anton Chaitkin
 |  [ISBN: 0943235057]
 |
 |
 |  With this issue of the New Federalist, Vol. V, No. 39, we
 |  begin to serialize the book, "George Bush: The Unauthorized
 |  Biography," by Webster Griffin Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin.
 |  This book will soon be published by "Executive Intelligence
 |  Review".
 |
 |  At the heart of any effort at biography is the attempt to
 |  discover the essence of the subject as a human personality.
 |  The essential character of the subject is what the
 |  biographer must strive to capture, since this is the
 |  indispensable ingredient that will provide coherence to the
 |  entire story whose unity must be provided by the course of a
 |  single human life.
 |
 |  During the preparation of the present work, there was one
 |  historical moment which more than any other delineated the
 |  character of George Bush. The scene was the Nixon White
 |  House during the final days of the Watergate debacle. White
 |  House officials, including George Bush, had spent the
 |  morning of that Monday, August 5, 1974 absorbing the impact
 |  of Nixon's notorious "smoking gun" tape, the recorded
 |  conversation between Nixon and his chief of staff, H.R.
 |  Haldemann, shortly after the original Watergate break-in,
 |  which could now no longer be withheld from the public. In
 |  that exchange of June 23, 1972, Nixon ordered that the CIA
 |  stop the FBI from further investigating how various sums of
 |  money found their way from Texas and Minnesota via Mexico
 |  City to the coffers of the Committee to Re-Elect the
 |  President (CREEP) and thence into the pockets of the
 |  "Plumbers" arrested in the Democratic Party headquarters in
 |  the Watergate building. These revelations were widely
 |  interpreted as establishing a "prima facie" case of
 |  obstruction of justice against Nixon. That was fine with
 |  George, who sincerely wanted his patron and benefactor Nixon
 |  to resign. George's great concern was that the smoking gun
 |  tape called attention to a money-laundering mechanism which
 |  he, together with Bill Liedtke of Pennzoil, and Robert
 |  Mosbacher, had helped to set up at Nixon's request. When
 |  Nixon, in the "smoking gun" tape, talked about "the Texans"
 |  and "some Texas people," Bush, Liedtke, and Mosbacher were
 |  among the most prominent of those referred to. The threat to
 |  George's political ambitions was great.
 |
 |  The White House that morning was gripped by panic. Nixon
 |  would be gone before the end of the week. In the midst of
 |  the furor, White House Congressional liaison William Timmons
 |  wanted to know if everyone who needed to be informed had
 |  been briefed about the smoking gun transcript. In a roomful
 |  of officials, some of whom were already sipping Scotch to
 |  steady their nerves, Timmons asked Dean Burch, "Dean, does
 |  Bush know about the transcript yet?"
 |
 |  "Yes," responded Burch.
 |
 |  "Well, what did he do?" inquired Timmons.
 |
 |  "He broke out into assholes and shit himself to death,"
 |  replied Burch.
 |
 |  In this exchange, which is recorded in Woodward and
 |  Bernstein's "The Final Days," we grasp the essential George
 |  Bush, in a crisis, and for all seasons.
 |
 |  Introduction
 |
 |  The thesis of this book is simple: if George Bush were to be
 |  re-elected in November 1992 for a second term as the
 |  President of the United States, this country and the rest of
 |  the world would face a catastrophe of gigantic proportions.
 |
 |  The necessity of writing this book became overwhelming in
 |  the minds of the authors in the wake of the ghastly
 |  slaughter of the Iraq war of January-February 1991. That war
 |  was an act of savage and premeditated genocide on the part
 |  of Bush, undertaken in connivance with a clique in London
 |  which has, in its historical continuity, represented both
 |  the worst enemy of the long-term interests of the American
 |  people, and the most implacable adversary of the progress of
 |  the human species.
 |
 |  The authors observed George Bush as the Gulf crisis and the
 |  war unfolded, and had no doubt that his enraged public
 |  outbursts constituted real psychotic episodes, indicative of
 |  a deranged mental state that was full of ominous portent for
 |  humanity. The authors were also horrified by the degree to
 |  which their fellow citizens willfully ignored the shocking
 |  reality of these public fits. A majority of the American
 |  people proved more than willing to lend its support to a
 |  despicable enterprise of killing.
 |
 |  By their role-call votes of January 12, 1991, the Senate and
 |  the House of Representatives authorized Bush's planned war
 |  measures to restore the Emir of Kuwait, who owns and holds
 |  chattel slaves. That vote was a crime against God's justice.
 |
 |  This book is part of an attempt to help the American people
 |  to survive this terrible crime, both for the sake of the
 |  world and for their own sake. It is intended as a
 |  contribution to a process of education that might help to
 |  save the American people from the awesome destruction of a
 |  second Bush presidency. It is further intended as a warning
 |  to all citizens that if they fail to deny Bush a second
 |  term, they will deserve what they get after 1993.
 |
 |  As this book goes to press, public awareness of the
 |  long-term depression of the American economy is rapidly
 |  growing. If Bush were re-elected, he would view himself as
 |  beyond the reach of the American electorate; with the
 |  federal deficit rising over a billion dollars a day, a
 |  second Bush administration would dictate such crushing
 |  austerity as to bring the country to the brink of civil war.
 |  Some examples of this point are described in the last
 |  chapter of this book.
 |
 |  Our goal has been to assemble as much of the truth about
 |  Bush as possible within the time constraints imposed by the
 |  1992 election. Time and resources have not permitted us
 |  meticulous attention to certain matters of detail; we can
 |  say, nevertheless, that both our commitment to the truth and
 |  our final product are better than anything anyone else has
 |  been able to muster, including news organizations and
 |  intelligence agencies with capabilities that far surpass our
 |  own.
 |
 |  Why do we fight the Bush power cartel with a mere book? We
 |  have no illusions of easy success, but we were encouraged in
 |  our work by the hope that a biography might stimulate
 |  opposition to Bush and his policies. It will certainly pose
 |  a new set of problems for those seeking to get Bush
 |  re-elected. For although Bush is now what journalists call a
 |  world leader, no accurate account of his actual career
 |  exists in the public domain.
 |
 |  The volume which we submit to the court of world public
 |  opinion is, to the best of our knowledge, the first
 |  book-length, unauthorized biography of George Bush. It is
 |  the first approximation of the truth about his life. This is
 |  the first biography worthy of the name, a fact that says a
 |  great deal about the sinister and obsessive secrecy of this
 |  personage. None of the other biographies (including Bush's
 |  campaign autobiography) can be taken seriously; each of
 |  these books is a pastiche of lies, distortions and
 |  banalities that run the gamut from campaign panegyric, to
 |  the Goebbels Big Lie, to fake but edifying stories for
 |  credulous children. Almost without exception, the available
 |  Bush literature is worthless as a portrait of the subject.
 |
 |  Bush's family pedigree establishes him as a network asset of
 |  Brown Brothers Harriman, one of the most powerful political
 |  forces in the United States during much of the twentieth
 |  century, and for many years the largest private bank in the
 |  world. It suffices in this context to think of Averell
 |  Harriman negotiating during World War II in the name of the
 |  United States with Churchill and Stalin, or of the role of
 |  Brown Brothers Harriman partner Robert Lovett in guiding
 |  John F. Kennedy's choice of his cabinet, to begin to see the
 |  implications of Senator Prescott Bush's post as managing
 |  partner of this bank. Brown Brothers Harriman networks
 |  pervade government and the mass media. Again and again in
 |  the course of the following pages we will see stories
 |  embarrassing to George Bush refused publication, documents
 |  embarrassing to Bush suspiciously disappear, and witnesses
 |  inculpatory to Bush be overtaken by mysterious and
 |  conveniently timed deaths. The few relevant facts which have
 |  found their way into the public domain have necessarily been
 |  filtered by this gigantic apparatus. This pro blem has been
 |  compounded by the corruption and servility of authors,
 |  journalists, news executives and publishers who have
 |  functioned more and more as kept advocates for a
 |  governmental regime of which Bush has been a prominent part
 |  for a quarter-century.
 |
 |  The Red Studebaker Myth
 |
 |  George Bush wants key aspects of his life to remain covert.
 |  At the same time, he senses that his need for coverup is a
 |  vulnerability. The need to protect this weak flank accounts
 |  for the steady stream of fake biographical material
 |  concerning George, as well as the spin given to many studies
 |  that may never mention George directly. Over the past
 |  several months, we have seen a new book about Watergate that
 |  pretends to tell the public something new by fingering Al
 |  Haig as Deep Throat, but ignoring the central role of George
 |  Bush and his business partners in the Watergate affair. We
 |  have a new book by Lt. Col. Oliver North which alleges that
 |  Reagan knew everything about the Iran-Contra affair, but
 |  that George Bush was not part of North's chain of command.
 |  The latter point merely paraphrases Bush's own lame excuse
 |  that he was "out of the loop" during all those illegal
 |  transactions. During the hearings on the nomination of
 |  Robert Gates to become director of Central Intelligence,
 |  nobody had anything new to add about the role of George
 |  Bush, the boss of the National Security Council's Special
 |  Situation Group crisis staff that was a command center for
 |  the whole affair. These charades are peddled to a very
 |  credulous public by operatives whose task goes beyond mere
 |  damage control to mind control -- the "MK" in the
 |  government's MK-Ultra operation.
 |
 |  Part of the free ride enjoyed by George Bush during the 1988
 |  elections is reflected in the fact that at no point in the
 |  campaign was there any serious effort by any of the news
 |  organizations to provide the public with an accurate and
 |  complete account of his political career. At least two
 |  biographies of Dukakis appeared which, although hardly
 |  critical, were not uniformly laudatory either. But in the
 |  case of Bush, all the public could turn to was Bush's old
 |  1980 campaign biography and a newer campaign autobiography,
 |  both of them a tissue of lies.
 |
 |  Early in the course of our research for the present volume
 |  it became apparent that all books and most longer articles
 |  dealing with the life of George Bush had been generated from
 |  a single print-out of thoroughly approved "facts" about Bush
 |  and his family. We learned that during 1979-80, Bush aide
 |  Pete Roussel attempted to recruit biographers to prepare a
 |  life of Bush based on a collection of press releases, news
 |  summaries, and similar pre-digested material. Most
 |  biographical writing about Bush consists merely of the
 |  points from this printout, strung out chronologically and
 |  made into a narrative through the interpretation of
 |  comments, anecdotes, embellishments, or special stylistic
 |  devices.
 |
 |  The canonical Bush-approved printout is readily identified.
 |  One dead giveaway is the inevitability with which the hacks
 |  out to cover up the substance of Bush's life refer to a 1947
 |  red Studebaker which George Bush allegedly drove into
 |  Odessa, Texas in 1948. This is the sort of detail which has
 |  been introduced into Bush's real life in a deliberate and
 |  deceptive attempt to humanize his image. It has been our
 |  experience that any text that features a reference to Bush's
 |  red Studebaker has probably been derived from Bush's list of
 |  approved facts, and is therefore practically worthless for
 |  serious research into Bush's life. We therefore assign such
 |  texts to the "red Studebaker school" of coverup and
 |  falsification.
 |
 |  Some examples? This is from Bush's campaign autobiography,
 |  "Looking Forward," ghost-written by his aide Vic Gold:
 |  "Heading into Texas in my Studebaker, all I knew about the
 |  state's landscape was what I'd seen from the cockpit of a
 |  Vultee Vibrator during my training days in the Navy." [1] 
 |
 |  Here is the same moment as recaptured by Bush's crony
 |  Fitzhugh Green, a friend of the Malthusian financier Russell
 |  Train, in his "George Bush: An Intimate Portrait," published
 |  after Bush had won the presidency: "He (Bush) gassed up his
 |  1948 Studebaker, arranged for his wife and son to follow,
 |  and headed for Odessa, Texas." [2] 
 |
 |  Harry Hurt III wrote the following lines in a 1983 Texas
 |  magazine article that was even decorated with a drawing of
 |  what apparently is supposed to be a Studebaker, but which
 |  does not look like a Studebaker of that vintage at all:
 |  "When George Herbert Walker Bush drove his battered red
 |  Studebaker into Odessa in the summer of 1948, the town's
 |  population, though constantly increasing with newly-arrived
 |  oil field hands, was still under 30,000." [3] 
 |
 |  We see that Harry Hurt has more imagination than many Bush
 |  biographers, and his article does provide a few useful
 |  facts. More degraded is the version offered by Richard Ben
 |  Kramer, whose biography of Bush is expected to be published
 |  during 1992. Cramer was given the unenviable task of
 |  breathing life once more into the same tired old printout.
 |  But the very fact that the Bush team feels that it requires
 |  another biography indicates that it still feels that it has
 |  a potential vulnerability here. Cramer has attempted to
 |  solve his problem by recasting the same old garbage into a
 |  frenetic and hyperkinetic, we would almost say
 |  "hyperthyroid" style. The following is from an excerpt of
 |  this forthcoming book that was published in "Esquire" in
 |  June 1991: "In June, after the College World Series and
 |  graduation day in New Haven, Poppy packed up his new red
 |  Studebaker (a graduation gift from Pres), and started
 |  driving south." [4] 
 |
 |  Was that Studebaker shiny and new, or old and battered?
 |  Perhaps the printout is not specific on this point; in any
 |  case, as we see, our authorities diverge.
 |
 |  Joe Hyams's 1991 romance of Bush at war, the "Flight of the
 |  Avenger," [5]  does not include the obligatory "red
 |  Studebaker" reference, but this is more than compensated for
 |  by the most elaborate fawning over other details of our
 |  hero's war service. The publication of "Flight of the
 |  Avenger," which concentrates on an heroic retelling of
 |  Bush's war record, and ignores all evidence that might tend
 |  to puncture this myth, was timed to coincide with Bush's war
 |  with Iraq. This is a vile tract written with the open
 |  assistance of Bush, Barbara Bush, and the White House staff.
 |  "Flight of the Avenger" recalls the practice of totalitarian
 |  states according to which a war waged by the regime should
 |  be accompanied by propaganda which depicts the regime's
 |  strong man in a martial posture. In any case, this book
 |  deals with Bush's life up to the end of World War II; we
 |  never reach Odessa.
 |
 |  Only one of the full-length accounts produced by the Bush
 |  propaganda machine neglects the red Studebaker story. This
 |  is Nicholas King's "George Bush: A Biography," the first
 |  book-length version of Bush's life, produced as a result of
 |  Pete Roussel's efforts for the 1980 campaign. Nicholas King
 |  had served as Bush's spokesman when he was U.S. Ambassador
 |  to the United Nations. King admits in his preface that he
 |  can be impugned for writing a work of the most transparent
 |  apologetics: "In retrospect," he says , "this book may seem
 |  open to the charge of puffery, for the view of its subject
 |  is favorable all around." [6]  Indeed.
 |
 |  Books about Barbara Bush slavishly rehearse the same details
 |  from the same printout. Here is the relevant excerpt from
 |  the warmly admiring "Simply Barbara Bush: A Portrait of
 |  America's Candid First Lady," written by Donnie Radcliffe
 |  and published after Bush's 1988 election victory: "With
 |  $3,000 left over after he graduated in June, 1948, he headed
 |  for Texas in the 1947 red Studebaker his father had given
 |  him for graduation after George's car died on the highway."
 |  [7] 
 |
 |  Even foreign journalists attempting to inform their publics
 |  about conditions in the United States have fallen victim to
 |  the same old Bush printout. The German author and reporter
 |  Rainer Bonhorst, the former Washington correspondent of the
 |  "Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung," in his 1988 book "George
 |  Bush: The New Man in the White House," named a chapter of
 |  this Bush political biography "To Texas in the Red
 |  Studebaker." Bonhorst writes as follows: "Then there was
 |  still the matter of the red Studebaker. It plays -- right
 |  after the world war effort -- a central role in the life
 |  history of George Bush. It is the history of his rebellion.
 |  The step which made a careless Texan out of a stiff New
 |  Englander, a self-made man out of a patrician's son, born
 |  into wealth.... Thus, George and Barbara Bush, 24 and 23
 |  years old, he having just finished with his studies, she
 |  having prematurely withdrawn from her university and become
 |  a mother a few months earlier, packed their baby and their
 |  suitcases and loaded them into their glaring red Studebaker
 |  coupe.
 |
 |  "|'A supermodern, smart car, certainly somewhat loud for the
 |  New England taste,' the Bushes later recalled. But finally
 |  it departed towards Texas." [8] 
 |
 |  We see that Bonhorst is acutely aware of the symbolic
 |  importance assumed by the red Studebaker in these
 |  hagiographic accounts of Bush's life.
 |
 |  What is finally the truth of the matter? There is good
 |  reason to believe that George Bush did not first come to
 |  Odessa, Texas, in a red Studebaker. One knowledgeable source
 |  is the well-known Texas oil man and Bush campaign
 |  contributor Oscar Wyatt of Houston. In a recent letter to
 |  the "Texas Monthly," Wyatt specifies that "when people speak
 |  of Mr. Bush's humble beginnings in the oil industry, it
 |  should be noted that he rode down to Texas on Dresser's
 |  private aircraft. He was accompanied by his father, who at
 |  that time was one of the directors of Dresser Industries....
 |  I hate it when people make statements about Mr. Bush's
 |  humble beginnings in the oil industry. It just didn't happen
 |  that way," writes Mr. Wyatt. [9]  Dresser was a Harriman
 |  company, and Bush got his start working for one of its
 |  subsidiaries. One history of Dresser Industries contains a
 |  photograph of George Bush with his parents, wife, and infant
 |  son "in front of a Dresser company airplane in West Texas."
 |  [10]  Can this be a photo of Bush's arrival in Odessa during
 |  the summer of 1948? In any case, this most cherished myth of
 |  the Bush biographers is very much open to doubt.
 |
 |  The Roman Propaganda Machine
 |
 |  Fawning biographies of bloodthirsty tyrants are nothing new
 |  in world literature. The red Studebaker school goes back a
 |  long way; these writers of today can be usefully compared
 |  with a certain Gaius Velleius Paterculus, who lived in the
 |  Roman Empire under the emperors Augustus and Tiberius, and
 |  who was thus an approximate contemporary of Jesus Christ.
 |  Velleius Paterculus was an historian and biographer who is
 |  known today, if at all, for his biographical notes on the
 |  Emperor Tiberius, which are contained within Paterculus's
 |  history of Rome.
 |
 |  Paterculus, writing under Tiberius, gave a very favorable
 |  treatment of Julius Caesar, and became fulsome when he came
 |  to write of Augustus. But the worst excesses of flattery
 |  came in Velleius Paterculus's treatment of Tiberius himself.
 |  Here is part of what he writes about that tyrannical ruler:
 |
 |  "Of the transactions of the last sixteen years, which have
 |  passed in the view, and are fresh in the memory of all, who
 |  shall presume to give a full account? ... credit has been
 |  restored to mercantile affairs, sedition has been banished
 |  from the forum, corruption from the Campus Martius, and
 |  discord from the senate-house; justice, equity and industry,
 |  which had long lain buried in neglect, have been revived in
 |  the state; authority has been given to the magistrates,
 |  majesty to the senate, and solemnity to the courts of
 |  justice; the bloody riots in the theatre have been
 |  suppressed, and all men have had either a desire excited in
 |  them, or a necessity imposed on them, of acting with
 |  integrity. Virtuous acts are honored, wicked deeds are
 |  punished. The humble respects the powerful, without dreading
 |  him; the powerful takes precedence of the humble without
 |  condemning him. When were provisions more moderate in price?
 |  When were theb lessings of peace more abundant? Augustan
 |  peace, diffused over all the regions of the east and the
 |  west, and all that lies between the south and the north,
 |  preserves every corner of the world free from all dread of
 |  predatory molestation. Fortuitous losses, not only of
 |  individuals, but of cities, the munificence of the prince is
 |  ready to relieve. The cities of Asia have been repaired; the
 |  provinces have been secured from the oppression of their
 |  governors. Honor promptly rewards the deserving, and the
 |  punishment of the guilty, if slow, is certain. Interest
 |  gives place to justice, solicitation to merit. For the best
 |  of princes teaches his countrymen to act rightly by his own
 |  practice; and while he is the greatest in power, he is still
 |  greater in example.
 |
 |  "Having exhibited a general view of the administration of
 |  Tiberius Caesar, let us now enumerate a few particulars
 |  respecting it.... How formidable a war, excited by the
 |  Gallic chief Sacrovir and Julius Florius, did he suppress,
 |  and with such amazing expedition and energy, that the Roman
 |  people learned that they were conquerors, before they knew
 |  that they were at war, and the news of the victory
 |  outstripped the news of the danger! The African war too,
 |  perilous as it was, and daily increasing in strength, was
 |  quickly terminated under his auspices and direction...."
 |  [11] 
 |
 |  All of this was written in praise of the regime that
 |  crucified Jesus Christ, and one of the worst genocidal
 |  tyrannies in the history of the world. Paterculus, we must
 |  sadly conclude, was a sycophant of the Tiberius
 |  administration. Some of his themes are close parallels to
 |  the propaganda of today's Bush machine.
 |
 |  In addition to feeding the personality cult of Tiberius,
 |  Paterculus also lavished praise on Lucius Aelius Sejanus,
 |  the Prefect of the Praetorian Guard and for many years
 |  Tiberius's number one favorite, second in command, and
 |  likely successor. In many respects Sejanus was not unlike
 |  James Baker III under the Bush regime. While Tiberius spent
 |  all of his time in seclusion on his island of Capri near
 |  Naples, Sejanus assumed day to day control of the vast
 |  empire and its 100 million subjects. Paterculus wrote of
 |  Sejanus that he was "a most excellent coadjutor in all the
 |  toils of government ... a man of pleasing gravity, and of
 |  unaffected cheerfulness ... assuming nothing to himself."
 |  That was the voice of the red Studebaker school in about 30
 |  A.D. Paterculus should have limited his fawning to Tiberius
 |  himself; somewhat later, the emperor, suspecting a coup
 |  plot, condemned Sejanus and had him torn limb from limb in
 |  gruesome retribution.
 |
 |  But why bring up Rome? Some readers may be scandalized by
 |  the things that truth obliges us to record about a sitting
 |  president of the United States. Are we not disrespectful to
 |  this high office? No. One of the reasons for glancing back
 |  at Imperial Rome is to remind ourselves that in times of
 |  moral and cultural degradation like our own, rulers of great
 |  evil have inflicted incalculable suffering on humanity. In
 |  our modern time of war and depression, this is once again
 |  the case. If Caligula was possible then, who could claim
 |  that the America of the New World Order should be exempt?
 |  Let us therefore tarry for a moment with these old Romans,
 |  because they can show us much about ourselves.
 |
 |  In order to find Roman writers who tell us anything reliable
 |  about the first dozen emperors, we must wait until the
 |  infamous Julio-Claudian dynasty of Julius Caesar, Augustus,
 |  Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, and the rest had
 |  entirely passed from the scene, to be supplanted by new
 |  ruling houses. Tiberius reigned from 14 to 37 A.D.;
 |  Caligula, his designated successor, from 37 to 41 A.D.; and
 |  Nero from 54 to 68 A.D. But the first accurate account of
 |  the crimes of some of these emperors comes from Publius
 |  Cornelius Tacitus in about 115-17 A.D., late in the reign of
 |  the emperor Trajan. It was feasible for Tacitus to write and
 |  publish a more realistic account of the Julio-Claudian
 |  emperors because one of the constant themes of Trajan's
 |  propaganda was to glorify himself as an enlightened emperor
 |  through comparison with the earlier series of bloody
 |  tyrants.
 |
 |  Tacitus manages to convey how the destructiveness of these
 |  emperors in their pe rsonal lives correlated with their mass
 |  executions and their genocidal economic policies. Tacitus
 |  was familiar with the machinery of Roman Imperial power: he
 |  was of senatorial rank, served as consul in Italy in 97
 |  A.D., and was the governor of the important province of
 |  western Anatolia (today's Turkey) which the Romans referred
 |  to simply as Asia. Tacitus writes of Tiberius: "... his
 |  criminal lusts shamed him. Their uncontrollable activity was
 |  worthy of an oriental tyrant. Free-born children were his
 |  victims. He was fascinated by beauty, youthful innocence,
 |  and aristocratic birth. New names for types of perversions
 |  were invented. Slaves were charged to locate and procure his
 |  requirements.... It was like the sack of a captured city."
 |
 |  Tiberius was able to dominate the legislative branch of his
 |  government, the senate, by subversion and terror: "It was,
 |  indeed, a horrible feature of this period that leading
 |  senators became informers even on trivial matters -- some
 |  openly, many secretly. Friends and relatives were as suspect
 |  as strangers, old stories as damaging as new. In the Main
 |  Square, at a dinner-party, a remark on any subject might
 |  mean prosecution. Everyone competed for priority in marking
 |  down the victim. Sometimes this was self-defense, but mostly
 |  it was a sort of contagion, like an epidemic.... I realize
 |  that many writers omit numerous trials and condemnations,
 |  bored by repetition or afraid that catalogues they
 |  themselves have found over-long and dismal may equally
 |  depress their readers. But numerous unrecorded incidents,
 |  which have come to my attention, ought to be known.
 |
 |  "... Even women were in danger. They could not be charged
 |  with aiming at supreme power. So they were charged with
 |  weeping: one old lady was executed for lamenting her son's
 |  death. The senate decided this case.... In the same year the
 |  high price of corn nearly caused riots....
 |
 |  "Frenzied with bloodshed, (Tiberius) now ordered the
 |  execution of all those arrested for complicity with Sejanus.
 |  It was a massacre. Without discrimination of sex or age,
 |  eminence or obscurity, there they lay, strewn about -- or in
 |  heaps. Relatives and friends were forbidden to stand by or
 |  lament them, or even gaze for long. Guards surrounded them,
 |  spying on their sorrow, and escorted the rotting bodies
 |  until, dragged to the Tiber, they floated away or grounded
 |  -- with none to cremate or touch them. Terror had paralyzed
 |  human sympathy. The rising surge of brutality drove
 |  compassion away." [12] 
 |
 |  This is the same Tiberius administration so extravagantly
 |  praised by Velleius Paterculus.
 |
 |  Because of lacunae in the manuscripts of Tacitus's work that
 |  have come down to us, much of what we know of the rule of
 |  Caligula (Gaius Caesar, in power from 37 to 41 A.D.) derives
 |  from "The Lives of the Twelve Caesars," a book by Gaius
 |  Suetonius Tranquillus. The character and administration of
 |  Caligula present some striking parallels with the subject of
 |  the present book.
 |
 |  As a stoic, Caligula was a great admirer of his own
 |  "immovable rigor." His motto was "Remember that I have the
 |  right to do anything to anybody." He made no secret of his
 |  bloodthirsty vindictiveness. Caligula was a fan of the green
 |  team in the Roman arena, and when the crowd applauded a
 |  charioteer who wore a different color, Caligula cried out,
 |  "I wish the Roman people had but a single neck." At one of
 |  his state dinners Caligula burst into a fit of
 |  uncontrollable laughter, and when a consul asked him what
 |  was so funny, he replied that it was the thought that as
 |  emperor Caligula had the power to have the throats of the
 |  top officials cut at any time he chose. Caligula carried
 |  this same attitude into his personal life: whenever he
 |  kissed or caressed the neck of his wife or one of his
 |  mistresses, he liked to remark: "Off comes this beautiful
 |  head whenever I give the word."
 |
 |  Above all, Caligula was vindictive. After his death, two
 |  notebooks were found among his personalpapers, one labelled
 |  "The Sword" and the other labelled "The Dagger." These were
 |  lists of the persons he had proscribed and liquidated, and
 |  were the forerunners of the enemies lists and discrediting
 |  committee of today. Suetonius frankly calls Caligula "a
 |  monster," and speculates on the pyschological roots of his
 |  criminal disposition: "I think I may attribute to mental
 |  weakness the existence of two exactly opposite faults in the
 |  same person, extreme assurance and, on the other hand,
 |  excessive timorousness." Caligula was "full of threats"
 |  against "the barbarians," but at the same time prone to
 |  precipitous retreats and flights of panic. Caligula worked
 |  on his "body language" by "practicing all kinds of terrible
 |  and fearsome expressions before a mirror."
 |
 |  Caligula built an extension of his palace to connect with
 |  the Temple of Castor and Pollux, and often went there to
 |  exhibit himself as an object of public worship, delighting
 |  in being hailed as "Jupiter Latiaris" by the populace. Later
 |  Caligula would officially open temples in his own name.
 |  Caligula was brutal in his intimidation of the senate, whose
 |  members he subjected to open humiliations and covert
 |  attacks; many senators were "secretly put to death." "He
 |  often inveighed against all the Senators alike.... He
 |  treated the other orders with like insolence and cruelty."
 |  Suetonius recites whole catalogues of "special instances of
 |  his innate brutality" toward persons of all walks of life.
 |  He enjoyed inflicting torture, and revelled in liquidating
 |  political opponents or those who had insulted or snubbed him
 |  in some way. He had a taste for capital executions as the
 |  perfect backdrop for parties and banquets. Caligula also did
 |  everything he could to denigrate the memory of the great men
 |  of past epochs, so that their fame could not eclipse his
 |  own: "He assailed mankind of almost every epoch with no less
 |  envy and malice than insolence and cruelty. He threw down
 |  the statues of famous men" and tried to destroy all the
 |  texts of Homer.
 |
 |  Caligula "respected neither his own chastity nor that of any
 |  one else." He was reckless in his extravagance, and soon
 |  emptied out the imperial treasury of all the funds that old
 |  Tiberius had squirreled away there. After that, Caligula
 |  tried to replenish his coffers through a system of spies,
 |  false accusations, property seizures, and public auctions.
 |  He also "levied new and unheard-of taxes," to the point that
 |  "no class of commodities was exempt from some kind of tax or
 |  other." Caligula taxed all foodstuffs, took a fortieth of
 |  the award in any lawsuit, an eighth of the daily wages of
 |  the porters, and demanded that the prostitutes pay him a
 |  daily fee equal to the average price charged to each
 |  individual customer. (It is rumored that this part of
 |  Caligula's career is under study by those planning George
 |  Bush's second term.) Caligula also opened a brothel in his
 |  palace as an additional source of income, which may
 |  prefigure today's White House staff. Among Caligula's more
 |  singular hobbies Suetonius includes his love of rolling and
 |  wallowing in piles of gold coins.
 |
 |  Caligula kept his wife, Caesonia (described by Suetonius as
 |  "neither beautiful nor young") with him until the very end.
 |  But his greatest devotion was to his horse, whom he made
 |  consul of the Roman state. Ultimately Caligula fell victim
 |  to a conspiracy of the Praetorian Guard, led by the tribune
 |  Gaius Chaerea, a man whom Caligula had taken special delight
 |  in humiliating. [13] 
 |
 |  The authors of the present study are convinced that these
 |  references to the depravity of the Roman emperors, and to
 |  the records of that depravity provided by such authors as
 |  Tacitus and Suetonius, are directly germane to our present
 |  task of following the career of a member of the senatorial
 |  class of the Anglo-American elite through the various stages
 |  of his formation and ultimate ascent to imperial power. The
 |  Roman Imperial model is germane because the American ruling
 |  elite of today is far closer to the world of Tiberius and
 |  Caligula than it is to the world of the American Revolution
 |  or the Constitutional Conventionof 1789. The leitmotif of
 |  modern American presidential politics is unquestionably an
 |  imperial theme, most blatantly expressed by Bush in his sl
 |  ogan for 1990, "The New World Order," and for 1991, the "pax
 |  universalis." The central project of the Bush presidency is
 |  the creation and consolidation of a single, universal
 |  Anglo-American (or Anglo-Saxon) empire very directly
 |  modelled on the various phases of the Roman Empire.
 |
 |  The Olympian Delusion
 |
 |  There is one other aspect of the biographical-historical
 |  method of the Graeco-Roman world which we have sought to
 |  borrow. Ever since Thucydides composed his monumental work
 |  on the Peloponnesian War, those who have sought to imitate
 |  his style -- with the Roman historian Titus Livius prominent
 |  among them -- have employed the device of attributing long
 |  speeches to historical personages, even when it appears very
 |  unlikely that such lengthy orations could have been made by
 |  the protagonists at the time. This has nothing to do with
 |  the synthetic dialogue of current American political
 |  writing, which attempts to present historical events as a
 |  series of trivial and banal soap-opera exchanges, which
 |  carry on for such interminable lengths as to suggest that
 |  the authors are getting paid by the word. Our idea of
 |  fidelity to the classical style has simply been to let
 |  George Bush speak for himself wherever possible, through
 |  direct quotation. We are convinced that by letting Bush
 |  express himself directly in this way, we afford the reader a
 |  more faithful -- and damning -- account of Bush's actions.
 |
 |  George Bush might agree that "history is biography,"
 |  although we suspect that he would not agree with any of our
 |  other conclusions. There may be a few peculiarities of the
 |  present work as biography that are worthy of explanation at
 |  the outset.
 |
 |  One of our basic theses is that George Bush is, and
 |  considers himself to be, an oligarch. The notion of
 |  oligarchy includes first of all the idea of a patrician and
 |  wealthy family capable of introducing its offspring into
 |  such elite institutions as Andover, Yale, and Skull and
 |  Bones. Oligarchy also subsumes the self-conception of the
 |  oligarch as belonging to a special, exalted breed of
 |  mankind, one that is superior to the common run of mankind
 |  as a matter of hereditary genetic superiority. This
 |  mentality generally goes together with a fascination for
 |  eugenics, race science and just plain racism as a means of
 |  building a case that one's own family tree and racial stock
 |  are indeed superior. These notions of "breeding" are a
 |  constant in the history of the titled feudal aristocracy of
 |  Europe, especially Britain, towards inclusion in which an
 |  individual like Bush must necessarily strive. At the very
 |  least, oligarchs like Bush see themselves as demigods
 |  occupying a middle ground between the immortals above and
 |  the "hoi polloi" below. The culmination of this insane
 |  delusion, which Bush has demonstrably long since attained,
 |  is the obsessive belief that the principal families of the
 |  Anglo-American elite, assembled in their freemasonic orders,
 |  by themselves directly constitute an Olympian Pantheon of
 |  living deities who have the capability of abrogating and
 |  disregarding the laws of the universe according to their own
 |  irrational caprice. If we do not take into account this
 |  element of fatal and megalomaniac hubris, the lunatic
 |  Anglo-American policies in regard to the Gulf War,
 |  international finance, or the AIDS epidemic must defy all
 |  comprehension.
 |
 |  Part of the ethos of oligarchism as practiced by George Bush
 |  is the emphasis on one's own family pedigree. This accounts
 |  for the attention we dedicate in the opening chapters of
 |  this book to Bush's family tree, reaching back to the
 |  nineteenth century and beyond. It is impossible to gain
 |  insight into Bush's mentality unless we realize that it is
 |  important for him to be considered a cousin, however
 |  distant, of Queen Elizabeth II of the House of
 |  Mountbatten-Windsor and for his wife Barbara to be viewed in
 |  some sense a descendant of President Franklin Pierce.
 |
 |  The Family Firm
 |
 |  For related reasons, it is our special duty to illustrate
 |  the role played in the formation of George Bush as a
 |  personality by his maternal grandfather and uncle, George
 |  Herbert Walker and George Herbert Walker, Jr., and by George
 |  H.W. Bush's father, the late Senator Prescott Bush. In the
 |  course of this task, we must speak at length about the
 |  institution to which George Bush owes the most, the Wall
 |  Street international investment bank of Brown Brothers
 |  Harriman, the political and financial powerhouse mentioned
 |  above. For George Bush, Brown Brothers Harriman was and
 |  remains the family firm in the deepest sense. The formidable
 |  power of this bank and its ubiquitous network, wielded by
 |  Senator Prescott Bush up through the time of his death in
 |  1972, and still active on George's behalf down to the
 |  present day, is the single most important key to every step
 |  of George's business, covert operations, and political
 |  career.
 |
 |  In the case of George Bush, as many who have known him
 |  personally have noted, the network looms much larger than
 |  George's own character and will. The reader will search in
 |  vain for strong principled commitments in George Bush's
 |  personality; the most that will be found is a series of
 |  characteristic obsessions, of which the most durable are
 |  race, vanity, personal ambition, and settling scores with
 |  adversaries. What emerges by contrast is the decisive
 |  importance of Bush's network of connections. His response to
 |  the Gulf crisis of 1991 will be largely predetermined, not
 |  by any great flashes of geopolitical insight, but rather by
 |  his connections to the British oligarchy, to Kissinger, to
 |  Israeli and Zionist circles, to Texas oilmen in his
 |  fundraising base, to the Saudi Arabian and Kuwaiti royal
 |  houses. If the question is one of finance, then the opinions
 |  of J. Hugh Liedtke, Henry Kravis, Robert Mosbacher, T. Boone
 |  Pickens, Nicholas Brady, James Baker III and the City of
 |  London will be decisive. If covert operations and dirty
 |  tricks are on the agenda, then there is a whole stable of
 |  CIA old boys with whom he will consult, and so on down the
 |  line. During much of 1989, despite his control over the
 |  presidency, Bush appeared as a weak and passive executive,
 |  waiting for his networks to show him what it was he was
 |  supposed to do. When German reunification and the crumbling
 |  of the Soviet empire spurred those -- primarily British --
 |  networks into action, Bush was suddenly capable of violent
 |  and daring adventures. As his battle for a second term
 |  approaches, Bush may be showing increasing signs of a
 |  rage-driven self-starter capability, especially when it
 |  comes to starting new wars designed to secure his
 |  re-election.
 |
 |  The United States in Decline
 |
 |  Biography has its own inherent discipline: It must be
 |  concerned with the life of its protagonist, and cannot stray
 |  too far away. In no way has it been our intention to offer
 |  an account of American history during the lifetime of George
 |  Bush. The present study nevertheless reflects many aspects
 |  of that recent history of U.S. decline. It will be noted
 |  that Bush has succeeded in proportion as the country has
 |  failed, and that Bush's advancement has proceeded "pari
 |  passu" with the degradation of the national stage upon which
 |  he has operated and which he has come to dominate. At
 |  various phases in his career, Bush has come into conflict
 |  with persons who were intellectually and morally superior to
 |  him. One such was Senator Ralph Yarborough, and another was
 |  Senator Frank Church. Our study will be found to catalogue
 |  the constant decline in the qualities of Bush's adversaries
 |  as human types until the 1980s, by which time his opponents,
 |  as in the case of Al Haig, are no better than Bush himself.
 |
 |  The exception to this trend is Bush's long-standing personal
 |  vendetta against Lyndon LaRouche, his most consistent and
 |  capable adversary. LaRouche was jailed seven days after
 |  Bush's inauguration in the most infamous political frameup
 |  of recent U.S. history. As our study will document, at
 |  critical moments in Bush's career, LaRouche's political
 |  interventions have frustrated some of Bush's best-laid
 |  political plans: A very clear example is LaRouche's role in
 |  defeating Bush's 1980 presidential bid in the New Hampshire
 |  primary. Over the intervening years, LaRouche has become
 |  George Bush's "man in the iron mask," the principled
 |  political adversary whom Bush seeks to jail and silence at
 |  all costs. The restoration of justice in this country must
 |  include the freeing of Lyndon LaRouche, LaRouche's political
 |  associates, and all the other political prisoners of the
 |  Bush regime.
 |
 |  As for the political relevance of our project, we think that
 |  it is very real. During the Gulf crisis, it would have been
 |  important for the public to know more about Bush's business
 |  dealings with the Royal Family of Kuwait. During the 1992
 |  presidential campaign, as Wall Street's recent crop of
 |  junk-bond assisted leveraged buyouts line up at the entrance
 |  to bankruptcy court, and state workers all across the United
 |  States are informed that the retirement pensions they had
 |  been promised will never be paid, the relations between
 |  George Bush and Henry Kravis will surely constitute an
 |  explosive political issue. Similarly, once Bush's British
 |  and Kissingerian pedigree is recognized, the methods he is
 |  likely to pursue in regard to situations such as the planned
 |  Romanian-style overthrow of the Castro regime in Cuba, or
 |  the provocation of a splendid little nuclear war involving
 |  North Korea, or of a new Indo-Pakistani war, will hardly be
 |  mysterious.
 |
 |  The authors have been at some pains to make this work
 |  intelligible to readers around the world. We offer this book
 |  to those who share our aversion to the
 |  imperialist-colonialist New World Order, and our profound
 |  horror at the concept of a return to a single, worldwide
 |  Roman Empire as suggested by Bush's "pax universalis"
 |  slogan. This work is tangible evidence that there is an
 |  opposition to Bush inside the United States, and that the
 |  new Caligula is very vulnerable indeed on the level of the
 |  exposure of his own misdeeds.
 |
 |  It will be argued that this book should have been published
 |  before the 1988 election, when a Bush presidency might have
 |  been avoided. That is certainly true, but it is an objection
 |  which should also be directed to many institutions and
 |  agencies whose resources far surpass our modest
 |  capabilities. We can only remind our fellow citizens that
 |  when he asks for their votes for his re-election, George
 |  Bush also enters that court of public opinion in which he is
 |  obliged to answer their questions. They should not waste
 |  this opportunity to grill him on all aspects of his career
 |  and future intentions, since it is Bush who comes forward
 |  appealing for their support. To aid in this process, we have
 |  provided a list of Twenty Questions for Candidate George
 |  Bush on the campaign trail, and this will be found in the
 |  appendix.
 |
 |  We do not delude ourselves that we have said the last word
 |  about George Bush. But we have for the first time sketched
 |  out at least some of the most salient features and gathered
 |  them into a comprehensible whole. We encourage an aroused
 |  citizenry, as well as specialized researchers, to improve
 |  upon what we have been able to accomplish. In so doing, we
 |  recall the words of the Florentine Giovanni Boccaccio when
 |  he reluctantly accepted the order of a powerful king to
 |  produce an account of the old Roman Pantheon: "If I don't
 |  succeed completely in this exposition, at least I will
 |  provide a stimulus for the better work of others who are
 |  wiser." -- Boccaccio, "Genealogy of the National Gods"
 |
 |  "To be continued."
 |
 |  Notes
 |
 |  1. George Bush and Vic Gold, "Looking Forward," (New York:
 |  Doubleday, 1987), p. 47.
 |
 |  2. Fitzhugh Green, "Looking Forward," (New York: Hippocrene,
 |  1989), p. 53.
 |
 |  3. Harry Hurt III, "George Bush, Plucky Lad," "Texas
 |  Monthly," June, 1983, p. 142.
 |
 |  4. Richard Ben Cramer, "How He Got Here," "Esquire," June,
 |  1991, p. 84.
 |
 |  5. Joe Hyams, "Flight of the Avenger" (New York, 1991).
 |
 |  6. Nicholas King, "George Bush: A Biography" (New York,
 |  Dodd, Mead, 1980), p. xi.
 |
 |  7. Donnie Radcliffe, "Simply Barbara Bush," (New York:
 |  Warner, 1989), p. 103.
 |
 |  8. Rainer Bonhorst, "George Bush, Der Neue Mann im Weissen
 |  Haus," (Bergisch Gladbach: Gustav Luebbe Verlag, 1988), pp.
 |  80-81.
 |
 |  9. See "The Roar of the Crowd," "Texas Monthly," November,
 |  1991. See also Jan Jarboe, "Meaner Than a Junkyard Dog,"
 |  "Texas Monthly," April 1991, p. 122 ff. Here Wyatt observes:
 |  "I knew from the beginning George Bush came to Texas only
 |  because he was politically ambitious. He flew out here on an
 |  airplane owned by Dresser Industries. His daddy was a member
 |  of the board of Dresser."
 |
 |  10. Darwin Payne, "Initiative in Energy" (New York: Simon
 |  and Shuster, 1979), p. 233.
 |
 |  11. John Selby Watson (translator), "Sallust, Florus, and
 |  Velleius Paterculus" (London: George Bell and Son, 1879),
 |  pp. 542-46.
 |
 |  12. Cornelius Tacitus, "The Annals of Imperial Rome"
 |  (Penguin, 1962), pp. 193-221.
 |
 |  13. Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, "The Lives of the Twelve
 |  Caesars" (New York: Modern Library, 1931), pp. 165-204, "
 |  passim.
 |
 |
 |  CHAPTER 2
 |
 |  THE HITLER PROJECT
 |
 |  Bush Property Seized -- Trading with the Enemy
 |
 |  In October 1942, ten months after entering World War II,
 |  America was preparing its first assault against Nazi
 |  military forces. Prescott Bush was managing partner of Brown
 |  Brothers Harriman. His 18-year-old son George, the future
 |  U.S. President, had just begun training to become a naval
 |  pilot.
 |
 |  On October 20, 1942, the U.S. government ordered the seizure
 |  of Nazi German banking operations in New York City which
 |  were being conducted by Prescott Bush.
 |
 |  Under the "Trading with the Enemy Act", the government took
 |  over the "Union Banking Corporation," in which Bush was a
 |  director. The U.S. Alien Property Custodian seized Union
 |  Banking Corp.'s stock shares, all of which were owned by
 |  Prescott Bush, E. Roland "Bunny" Harriman, three Nazi
 |  executives, and two other associates of Bush. [1] 
 |
 |  The order seizing the bank "vest[ed] [seized] all of the
 |  capital stock of Union Banking Corporation, a New York
 |  corporation," and named the holders of its shares as:
 |
 |     *  "E. Roland Harriman -- 3991 shares." Harriman was
 |  chairman and director of Union Banking Corp. (UBC); this is
 |  "Bunny" Harriman, described by Prescott Bush as a place
 |  holder who didn't get much into banking affairs; Prescott
 |  managed his personal investments.
 |
 |     *  "Cornelis Lievense -- 4 shares." Lievense was
 |  president and director of UBC, and a New York resident
 |  banking functionary for the Nazis.
 |
 |     *  "Harold D. Pennington -- 1 share." Pennington was
 |  treasurer and director of UBC, and an office manager
 |  employed by Bush at Brown Brothers Harriman.
 |
 |     *  "Ray Morris -- 1 share." Morris was director of UBC,
 |  and a partner of Bush and the Harrimans.
 |
 |     *  "Prescott S. Bush -- 1 share." Bush was director of
 |  UBC, which was co-founded and sponsored by his father-in-law
 |  George Walker; he was senior managing partner for E. Roland
 |  Harriman and Averell Harriman.
 |
 |     *  "H.J. Kouwenhoven -- 1 share" Kouwenhoven was director
 |  of UBC; he organized UBC as the emissary of Fritz Thyssen in
 |  negotiations with George Walker and Averell Harriman; he was
 |  also managing director of UBC's Netherlands affiliate under
 |  Nazi occupation; industrial executive in Nazi Germany, and
 |  also director and chief foreign financial executive of the
 |  German Steel Trust.
 |
 |     *  "Johann G. Groeninger -- 1 share." Groeninger was
 |  director of UBC and of its Netherlands affiliate; he was an
 |  industrial executive in Nazi Germany.
 |
 |  The order also specified: "all of which shares are held for
 |  the benefit of ... members of the Thyssen family, [and] is
 |  property of nationals ... of a designated enemy country...."
 |
 |  By October 26, 1942, U.S. troops were underway for North
 |  Africa. On October 28, the government issued orders seizing
 |  two Nazi front organizations run by the Bush-Harriman bank:
 |  the "Holland-American Trading Corporation" and the "Seamless
 |  Steel Equipment Corporation." [2] 
 |
 |  U.S. forces landed under fire near Algiers on November 8,
 |  1942; heavy combat raged throughout November. Nazi interests
 |  in the "Silesian-American Corporation," long managed by
 |  Prescott Bush and his father-in-law George Herbert Walker,
 |  were seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act on November
 |  17, 1942. In this action, the government announced that it
 |  was seiz ing only the Nazi interests, leaving the Nazis'
 |  U.S. partners to carry on the business. [3] 
 |
 |  These and other actions taken by the U.S. government in
 |  wartime were, tragically, too little and too late. President
 |  Bush's family had already played a central role in financing
 |  and arming Adolf Hitler for his takeover of Germany; in
 |  financing and managing the buildup of Nazi war industries
 |  for the conquest of Europe and war against the U.S.A.; and
 |  in the development of Nazi genocide theories and racial
 |  propaganda, with their well-known results.
 |
 |  The facts presented here must be known, and their
 |  implications reflected upon, for a proper understanding of
 |  President George Herbert Walker Bush and of the danger to
 |  mankind that he represents. The President's family fortune
 |  was largely a result of the Hitler project. The powerful
 |  Anglo-American family associations, which later boosted him
 |  into the Central Intelligence Agency and up to the White
 |  House, were his father's partners in the Hitler project.
 |
 |  President Franklin Roosevelt's Alien Property Custodian, Leo
 |  T. Crowley, signed Vesting Order Number 248 seizing the
 |  property of Prescott Bush under the Trading with Enemy Act.
 |  The order, published in obscure government record books and
 |  kept out of the news, [4]  explained nothing about the Nazis
 |  involved; only that the Union Banking Corporation was run
 |  for the "Thyssen family" of "Germany and/or Hungary" --
 |  "nationals ... of a designated enemy country."
 |
 |  By deciding that Prescott Bush and the other directors of
 |  the Union Banking Corp. were legally "front men for the
 |  Nazis", the government avoided the more important historical
 |  issue: In what way "were Hitler's Nazis themselves hired,
 |  armed, and instructed by" the New York and London clique of
 |  which Prescott Bush was an executive manager? Let us examine
 |  the Harriman-Bush Hitler project from the 1920s until it was
 |  partially broken up, to seek an answer for that question.
 |
 |  2. Origin and Extent of the Project
 |
 |  Fritz Thyssen and his business partners are universally
 |  recognized as the most important German financiers of Adolf
 |  Hitler's takeover of Germany. At the time of the order
 |  seizing the Thyssen family's Union Banking Corp., Mr. Fritz
 |  Thyssen had already published his famous book, "I Paid
 |  Hitler", [5]  admitting that he had financed Adolf Hitler
 |  and the Nazi movement since October 1923. Thyssen's role as
 |  the leading early backer of Hitler's grab for power in
 |  Germany had been noted by U.S. diplomats in Berlin in 1932.
 |  [6]  The order seizing the Bush-Thyssen bank was curiously
 |  quiet and modest about the identity of the perpetrators who
 |  had been nailed.
 |
 |  But two weeks before the official order, government
 |  investigators had reported secretly that "W. Averell
 |  Harriman was in Europe sometime prior to 1924 and at that
 |  time became acquainted with Fritz Thyssen, the German
 |  industrialist." Harriman and Thyssen agreed to set up a bank
 |  for Thyssen in New York. "[C]ertain of [Harriman's]
 |  associates would serve as directors...." Thyssen agent "H.J.
 |  Kouwenhoven ... came to the United States ... prior to 1924
 |  for conferences with the Harriman Company in this
 |  connection...." [7] 
 |
 |  When exactly was "Harriman in Europe sometime prior to
 |  1924"? In fact, he was in Berlin in 1922 to set up the
 |  Berlin branch of W.A. Harriman & Co. under George Walker's
 |  presidency.
 |
 |  The Union Banking Corporation was established formally in
 |  1924, as a unit in the Manhattan offices of W.A. Harriman &
 |  Co., interlocking with the Thyssen-owned "Bank voor Handel
 |  en Scheepvaart" (BHS) in the Netherlands. The investigators
 |  concluded that "the Union Banking Corporation has since its
 |  inception handled funds chiefly supplied to it through the
 |  Dutch bank by the Thyssen interests for American
 |  investment."
 |
 |  Thus by personal agreement between Averell Harriman and
 |  Fritz Thyssen in 1922, W.A. Harriman & Co. (alias Union
 |  Banking Corporation) would be transferring funds back and
 |  forth between New York and the "Thyssen interests" in
 |  Germany. By putting up about $400,000, the Harriman
 |  organization would be joint owner and manager of Thyssen's
 |  banking operations outside of Germany.
 |
 |  "How important was the Nazi enterprise for which President
 |  Bush's father was the New York banker?"
 |
 |  The 1942 U.S. government investigative report said that
 |  Bush's Nazi-front bank was an interlocking concern with the
 |  Vereinigte Stahlwerke (United Steel Works Corporation or
 |  "German Steel Trust") led by Fritz Thyssen and his two
 |  brothers. After the war, congressional investigators probed
 |  the Thyssen interests, Union Banking Corp. and related Nazi
 |  units. The investigation showed that the Vereinigte
 |  Stahlwerke had produced the following approximate
 |  proportions of total German national output: "50.8% of Nazi
 |  Germany's pig iron; 41.4% of Nazi Germany's universal plate;
 |  36.0% of Nazi Germany's heavy plate; 38.5% of Nazi Germany's
 |  galvanized sheet; 45.5% of Nazi Germany's pipes and tubes;
 |  22.1% of Nazi Germany's wire; 35.0% of Nazi Germany's
 |  explosives." [8] 
 |
 |  This accounts for many, many Nazi submarines, bombs, rifles,
 |  gas chambers, etc.
 |
 |  Prescott Bush became vice president of W.A. Harriman & Co.
 |  in 1926. That same year, a friend of Harriman and Bush set
 |  up a giant new organization for their client Fritz Thyssen,
 |  prime sponsor of politician Adolf Hitler. The new "German
 |  Steel Trust," Germany's largest industrial corporation, was
 |  organized in 1926 by Wall Street banker Clarence Dillon.
 |  Dillon was the old comrade of Prescott Bush's father Sam
 |  Bush from the "Merchants of Death" bureau in World War I.
 |
 |  In return for putting up $70 million to create his
 |  organization, majority owner Thyssen gave the Dillon Read
 |  company two or more representatives on the board of the new
 |  Steel Trust. [9] 
 |
 |  Thus there is a division of labor: Thyssen's own
 |  confidential accounts, for political and related purposes,
 |  were run through the Walker-Bush organization; the Steel
 |  Trust did its corporate banking through Dillon Read.
 |
 |  - * * * -
 |
 |  The Walker-Bush firm's banking activities were not just
 |  politically neutral money-making ventures which happened to
 |  coincide with the aims of German Nazis. All of the firm's
 |  European business in those days was organized around
 |  anti-democratic political forces.
 |
 |  In 1927, criticism of their support for totalitarianism drew
 |  this retort from Bert Walker, written from Kennebunkport to
 |  Averell Harriman: "It seems to me that the suggestion in
 |  connection with Lord Bearsted's views that we withdraw from
 |  Russia smacks somewhat of the impertinent.... I think that
 |  we have drawn our line and should hew to it." [10] 
 |
 |  Averell Harriman met with Italy's fascist dictator, Benito
 |  Mussolini. A representative of the firm subsequently
 |  telegraphed good news back to his chief executive Bert
 |  Walker: "... During these last days ... Mussolini ... has
 |  examined and approved our c[o]ntract 15 June." [11] 
 |
 |  The great financial collapse of 1929-31 shook America,
 |  Germany, and Britain, weakening all governments. It also
 |  made the hard-pressed Prescott Bush even more willing to do
 |  whatever was necessary to retain his new place in the world.
 |  It was in this crisis that certain Anglo-Americans
 |  determined on the installation of a Hitler regime in
 |  Germany.
 |
 |  W.A. Harriman & Co., well-positioned for this enterprise and
 |  rich in assets from their German and Russian business,
 |  merged with the British-American investment house, Brown
 |  Brothers, on January 1, 1931. Bert Walker retired to his own
 |  G.H. Walker & Co. This left the Harriman brothers, Prescott
 |  Bush, and Thatcher M. Brown as the senior partners of the
 |  new Brown Brothers Harriman firm. (The London, England
 |  branch of the Brown family firm continued operating under
 |  its historic name -- Brown, Shipley.)
 |
 |  Robert A. Lovett also came over as a partner from Brown
 |  Brothers. His father, E.H. Harriman's lawyer and railroad
 |  chief, had been on the War Industries Board with Prescott's
 |  father. Though he remained a partner in Brown Brothers
 |  Harriman, the junior Lovett soon replaced his father as
 |  chief exexcutive of Union Pacific Railroad.
 |
 |  Brown Brothers had a racial tradition that fitted it well
 |  for the Hitler project. American patriots had cursed its
 |  name back in Civil War days. Brown Brothers, with offices in
 |  the U.S.A. and in Engla nd, had carried on their ships fully
 |  75 percent of the slave cotton from the American South over
 |  to British mill owners; through their usurious credit they
 |  controlled and manipulated the slave-owners.
 |
 |  Now, in 1931, the virtual dictator of world finance, Bank of
 |  England Governor Montagu Collet Norman, was a former Brown
 |  Brothers partner, whose grandfather had been boss of Brown
 |  Brothers during the U.S. Civil War. Montagu Norman was known
 |  as the most avid of Hitler's supporters within British
 |  ruling circles, and Norman's intimacy with this firm was
 |  essential to his management of the Hitler project.
 |
 |  In 1931, while Prescott Bush ran the New York office of
 |  Brown Brothers Harriman, Prescott's partner was Montagu
 |  Norman's intimate friend Thatcher Brown. The Bank of England
 |  chief always stayed at the home of Prescott's partner on his
 |  hush-hush trips to New York. Prescott Bush concentrated on
 |  the firm's German actitivites, and Thatcher Brown saw to
 |  their business in old England, under the guidance of his
 |  mentor Montagu Norman. [12] 
 |
 |  3. Hitler's Ladder to Power
 |
 |  Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany January 30, 1933,
 |  and absolute dictator in March 1933, after two years of
 |  expensive and violent lobbying and electioneering. Two
 |  affiliates of the Bush-Harriman organization played great
 |  parts in this criminal undertaking: Thyssen's German Steel
 |  Trust; and the Hamburg-Amerika Line and several of its
 |  executives. [13] 
 |
 |  Let us look more closely at the Bush family's German
 |  partners.
 |
 |  "Fritz Thyssen" told Allied interrogators after the war
 |  about some of his financial support for the Nazi Party: "In
 |  1930 or 1931 ... I told [Hitler's deputy Rudolph] Hess ... I
 |  would arrange a credit for him with a Dutch bank in
 |  Rotterdam, the Bank fussaur Handel und Schiff [i.e. Bank
 |  voor Handel en Scheepvaart (BHS), the Harriman-Bush
 |  affiliate]. I arranged the credit ... he would pay it back
 |  in three years.... I chose a Dutch bank because I did not
 |  want to be mixed up with German banks in my position, and
 |  because I thought it was better to do business with a Dutch
 |  bank, and I thought I would have the Nazis a little more in
 |  my hands....
 |
 |  "The credit was about 250-300,000 [gold] marks -- about the
 |  sum I had given before. The loan has been repaid in part to
 |  the Dutch bank, but I think some money is still owing on
 |  it...." [14] 
 |
 |  The overall total of Thyssen's political donations and loans
 |  to the Nazis was well over a million dollars, including
 |  funds he raised from others -- in a period of terrible
 |  money-shortage in Germany.
 |
 |  "Friedrich Flick" was the major co-owner of the German Steel
 |  Trust with Fritz Thyssen, Thyssen's longtime collaborator
 |  and sometime competitor. In preparation for the war crimes
 |  tribunal at Nuremberg, the U.S. government said that Flick
 |  was "one of leading financiers and industrialists who from
 |  1932 contributed large sums to the Nazi Party ... member of
 |  'Circle of Friends' of Himmler who contributed large sums to
 |  the SS." [15] 
 |
 |  Flick, like Thyssen, financed the Nazis to maintain their
 |  private armies called Schutzstaffel (S.S. or Black Shirts)
 |  and Sturmabteilung (S.A., storm troops or Brown Shirts).
 |
 |  The Flick-Harriman partnership was directly supervised by
 |  Prescott Bush, President Bush's father, and by George
 |  Walker, President Bush's grandfather.
 |
 |  The Harriman-Walker Union Banking Corp. arrangements for the
 |  German Steel Trust had made them bankers for Flick and his
 |  vast operations in Germany by no later than 1926.
 |
 |  The "Harriman Fifteen Corporation" (George Walker,
 |  president, Prescott Bush and Averell Harriman, sole
 |  directors) held a substantial stake in the Silesian Holding
 |  Co. at the time of the merger with Brown Brothers, January
 |  1, 1931. This holding correlated to Averell Harriman's
 |  chairmanship of the "Consolidated Silesian Steel
 |  Corporation," the American group owning one-third of a
 |  complex of steelmaking, coal-mining and zinc-mining
 |  activities in Germany and Poland, in which Friedrich Flick
 |  owned two-thirds. [16] 
 |
 |  The Nuremberg prosecutor characterized Flick as follows:
 |
 |  "Proprietor and head of a large group of industrial
 |  enterprises (coal and iron mines, steel producing and
 |  fabricating plants) ... 'Wehrwirtschaftsfuehrer,' 1938
 |  [title awarded to prominent industrialists for merit in
 |  armaments drive -- 'Military Economy Leader']...." [17] 
 |
 |  For this buildup of the Hitler war machine with coal, steel,
 |  and arms production, using slave laborers, the Nazi Flick
 |  was condemned to seven years in prison at the Nuremberg
 |  trials; he served three years. With friends in New York and
 |  London, however, Flick lived into the 1970s and died a
 |  billionaire.
 |
 |  On March 19, 1934, Prescott Bush -- then director of the
 |  German Steel Trust's Union Banking Corporation -- initiated
 |  an alert to the absent Averell Harriman about a problem
 |  which had developed in the Flick partnership. [18]  Bush
 |  sent Harriman a clipping from the "New York Times" of that
 |  day, which reported that the Polish government was fighting
 |  back against American and German stockholders who controlled
 |  "Poland's largest industrial unit, the Upper Silesian Coal
 |  and Steel Company...."
 |
 |  The "Times" article continued: "The company has long been
 |  accused of mismanagement, excessive borrowing, fictitious
 |  bookkeeping and gambling in securities. Warrants were issued
 |  in December for several directors accused of tax evasions.
 |  They were German citizens and they fled. They were replaced
 |  by Poles. Herr Flick, regarding this as an attempt to make
 |  the company's board entirely Polish, retaliated by
 |  restricting credits until the new Polish directors were
 |  unable to pay the workmen regularly."
 |
 |  The "Times" noted that the company's mines and mills "employ
 |  25,000 men and account for 45 percent of Poland's total
 |  steel output and 12 percent of her coal production.
 |  Two-thirds of the company's stock is owned by Friedrich
 |  Flick, a leading German steel industrialist, and the
 |  remainder is owned by interests in the United States."
 |
 |  In view of the fact that a great deal of Polish output was
 |  being exported to Hitler's Germany under depression
 |  conditions, the Polish government thought that Bush,
 |  Harriman, and their Nazi partners should at least pay full
 |  taxes on their Polish holdings. The U.S. and Nazi owners
 |  responded with a lockout. The letter to Harriman in
 |  Washington reported a cable from their European
 |  representative: "Have undertaken new steps London Berlin ...
 |  please establish friendly relations with Polish Ambassador
 |  [in Washington]."
 |
 |  A 1935 Harriman Fifteen Corporation memo from George Walker
 |  announced an agreement had been made "in Berlin" to sell an
 |  8,000 block of their shares in Consolidated Silesian Steel.
 |  [19]  But the dispute with Poland did not deter the Bush
 |  family from continuing its partnership with Flick.
 |
 |  Nazi tanks and bombs "settled" this dispute in September,
 |  1939 with the invasion of Poland, beginning World War II.
 |  The Nazi army had been equipped by Flick, Harriman, Walker,
 |  and Bush, with materials essentially stolen from Poland.
 |
 |  There were probably few people at the time who could
 |  appreciate the irony, that when the Soviets also attacked
 |  and invaded Poland from the East, their vehicles were fueled
 |  by oil pumped from Baku wells revived by the
 |  Harriman/Walker/Bush enterprise.
 |
 |  Three years later, nearly a year after the Japanese attack
 |  on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government ordered the seizure of
 |  the Nazis' share in the Silesian-American Corporation under
 |  the Trading with the Enemy Act. Enemy nationals were said to
 |  own 49 percent of the common stock and 41.67 percent of the
 |  preferred stock of the company.
 |
 |  The order characterized the company as a "business
 |  enterprise within the United States, owned by [a front
 |  company in] Zurich, Switzerland, and held for the benefit of
 |  Bergwerksgesellschaft George von Giesche's Erben, a German
 |  corporation...." [20] 
 |
 |  Bert Walker was still the senior director of the company,
 |  which he had founded back in 1926 simultaneously with the
 |  creation of the German Steel Trust. Ray Morris, Prescott's
 |  partner from Union Banking Corp. andBrown Brothers Harriman,
 |  was also a dir ector.
 |
 |  The investigative report prior to the government crackdown
 |  explained the "NATURE OF BUSINESS: The subject corporation
 |  is an American holding company for German and Polish
 |  subsidiaries, which own large and valuable coal and zinc
 |  mines in Silesia, Poland and Germany. Since September 1939,
 |  these properties have been in the possession of and have
 |  been operated by the German government and have undoubtedly
 |  been of considerable assistance to that country in its war
 |  effort." [21] 
 |
 |  The report noted that the American stockholders hoped to
 |  regain control of the European properties after the war.
 |
 |  4. Control of Nazi Commerce
 |
 |  Bert Walker had arranged the credits Harriman needed to take
 |  control of the Hamburg-Amerika Line back in 1920. Walker had
 |  organized the "American Ship and Commerce Corp." as a unit
 |  of the W.A. Harriman & Co., with contractual power over
 |  Hamburg-Amerika's affairs.
 |
 |  As the Hitler project went into high gear, Harriman-Bush
 |  shares in American Ship and Commerce Corp. were held by the
 |  Harriman Fifteen Corp., run by Prescott Bush and Bert
 |  Walker. [22] 
 |
 |  It was a convenient stroll for the well-tanned, athletic,
 |  handsome Prescott Bush. From the Brown Brothers Harriman
 |  skyscraper at 59 Wall Street -- where he was senior managing
 |  partner, confidential investments manager and advisor to
 |  Averell and his brother "Bunny" -- he walked across to the
 |  Harriman Fifteen Corporation at One Wall Street, otherwise
 |  known as G.H. Walker & Co. -- and around the corner to his
 |  subsidiary offices at 39 Broadway, former home of the old
 |  W.A. Harriman & Co., and still the offices for American Ship
 |  and Commerce, and of the Union Banking Corporation.
 |
 |  In many ways, Bush's Hamburg-Amerika Line was the pivot for
 |  the entire Hitler project.
 |
 |  Averell Harriman and Bert Walker had gained control over the
 |  steamship company in 1920 in negotiations with its
 |  post-World War I chief executive, "Wilhelm Cuno", and with
 |  the line's bankers, M.M. Warburg. Cuno was thereafter
 |  completely dependent on the Anglo-Americans, and became a
 |  member of the Anglo-German Friendship Society. In the
 |  1930-32 drive for a Hitler dictatorship, Wilhelm Cuno
 |  contributed important sums to the Nazi Party. [23] 
 |
 |  "Albert Voegler" was chief executive of the Thyssen-Flick
 |  German Steel Trust for which Bush's Union Banking Corp. was
 |  the New York office. He was a director of the Bush-affiliate
 |  BHS Bank in Rotterdam, and a director of the Harriman-Bush
 |  Hamburg-Amerika Line. Voegler joined Thyssen and Flick in
 |  their heavy 1930-33 Nazi contributions, and helped organize
 |  the final Nazi leap into national power. [24] 
 |
 |  The "Schroeder" family of bankers was a linchpin for the
 |  Nazi activities of Harriman and Prescott Bush, closely tied
 |  to their lawyers Allen and John Foster Dulles.
 |
 |  Baron Kurt von Schroeder was co-director of the massive
 |  Thyssen-Huette foundry along with Johann Groeninger,
 |  Prescott Bush's New York bank partner. Kurt von Schroeder
 |  was treasurer of the support organization for the Nazi
 |  Party's private armies, to which Friedrich Flick
 |  contributed. Kurt von Schroeder and Montagu Norman's
 |  proteaageaa Hjalmar Schacht together made the final
 |  arrangments for Hitler to enter the government. [25] 
 |
 |  Baron Rudolph von Schroeder was vice president and director
 |  of the Hamburg-Amerika Line. Long an intimate contact of
 |  Averell Harriman's in Germany, Baron Rudolph sent his
 |  grandson Baron Johann Rudolph for a tour of Prescott Bush's
 |  Brown Brothers Harriman offices in New York City in December
 |  1932 -- on the eve of their Hitler-triumph. [26] 
 |
 |  Certain actions taken directly by the Harriman-Bush shipping
 |  line in 1932 must be ranked among the gravest acts of
 |  treason in this century.
 |
 |  The U.S. Embassy in Berlin reported back to Washington that
 |  the "costly election campaigns" and "the cost of maintaining
 |  a private army of 300,000 to 400,000 men" had raised
 |  questions as to the Nazis' financial backers. The
 |  constitutional government of the German republic moved to
 |  defend national freedom by ordering the Nazi Party private
 |  armies disbanded. The U.S. Embassy reported that the
 |  "Hamburg-Amerika Line was purchasing and distributing
 |  propaganda attacks against the German government, for
 |  attempting this last-minute crackdown on Hitler's forces."
 |  [27] 
 |
 |  Thousands of German opponents of Hitlerism were shot or
 |  intimidated by privately armed Nazi Brown Shirts. In this
 |  connection, we note that the original "Merchant of Death,"
 |  Samuel Pryor, was a founding director of both the Union
 |  Banking Corp. and the American Ship and Commerce Corp. Since
 |  Mr. Pryor was executive committee chairman of Remington Arms
 |  and a central figure in the world's private arms traffic,
 |  his use to the Hitler project was enhanced as the Bush
 |  family's partner in Nazi Party banking and trans-Atlantic
 |  shipping.
 |
 |  The U.S. Senate arms-traffic investigators probed Remington
 |  after it was joined in a cartel agreement on explosives to
 |  the Nazi firm I.G. Farben. Looking at the period leading up
 |  to Hitler's seizure of power, the senators found that
 |  "German political associations, like the Nazi and others,
 |  are nearly all armed with American ... guns.... Arms of all
 |  kinds coming from America are transshipped in the Scheldt to
 |  river barges before the vessels arrive in Antwerp. They then
 |  can be carried through Holland without police inspection or
 |  interference. The Hitlerists and Communists are presumed to
 |  get arms in this manner. The principal arms coming from
 |  America are Thompson submachine guns and revolvers. The
 |  number is great." [28] 
 |
 |  The beginning of the Hitler regime brought some bizarre
 |  changes to the Hamburg-Amerika Line -- and more betrayals.
 |
 |  Prescott Bush's American Ship and Commerce Corp. notified
 |  Max Warburg of Hamburg, Germany, on March 7, 1933, that
 |  Warburg was to be the corporation's official, designated
 |  representative on the board of Hamburg-Amerika. [29] 
 |
 |  Max Warburg replied on March 27, 1933, assuring his American
 |  sponsors that the Hitler government was good for Germany:
 |  "For the last few years business was considerably better
 |  than we had anticipated, but a reaction is making itself
 |  felt for some months. We are actually suffering also under
 |  the very active propaganda against Germany, caused by some
 |  unpleasant circumstances. These occurrences were the natural
 |  consequence of the very excited election campaign, but were
 |  extraordinarily exaggerated in the foreign press. The
 |  Government is firmly resolved to maintain public peace and
 |  order in Germany, and I feel perfectly convinced in this
 |  respect that there is no cause for any alarm whatsoever."
 |  [30] 
 |
 |  This seal of approval for Hitler, coming from a famous Jew,
 |  was just what Harriman and Bush required, for they
 |  anticipated rather serious "alarm" inside the U.S.A. against
 |  their Nazi operations.
 |
 |  On March 29, 1933, two days after Max's letter to Harriman,
 |  Max's son Erich sent a cable to his cousin Frederick M.
 |  Warburg, a director of the Harriman railroad system. He
 |  asked Frederick to "use all your influence" to stop all
 |  anti-Nazi activity in America, including "atrocity news and
 |  unfriendly propaganda in foreign press, mass meetings, etc."
 |  Frederick cabled back to Erich: "No responsible groups here
 |  [are] urging [a] boycott [of] German goods[,] merely excited
 |  individuals." Two days after that, On March 31, 1933, the
 |  "American-Jewish Committee," controlled by the Warburgs, and
 |  the "B'nai B'rith," heavily influenced by the Sulzbergers'
 |  ("New York Times"), issued a formal, official joint
 |  statement of the two organizations, counselling "that no
 |  American boycott against Germany be encouraged, [and
 |  advising] ... that no further mass meetings be held or
 |  similar forms of agitation be employed." [31] 
 |
 |  The American Jewish Committee and the B'nai B'rith (mother
 |  of the "Anti-Defamation League") continued with this
 |  hardline, no-attack-on-Hitler stance all through the 1930s,
 |  blunting the fight mounted by many Jews and other
 |  anti-fascists.
 |
 |  Thus the decisive interchange reproduced above, taking place
 |  entirely within the orbit of the Harriman/Bush firm, may
 |  explain something of the relation ship of George Bush to
 |  American Jewish and Zionist leaders. Some of them, in close
 |  cooperation with his family, played an ugly part in the
 |  drama of Naziism. Is this why "professional Nazi-hunters"
 |  have never discovered how the Bush family made its money?
 |
 |  -* * *-
 |
 |  The executive board of the "Hamburg Amerika Line" "(Hapag)"
 |  met jointly with the North German Lloyd company board in
 |  Hamburg on September 5, 1933. Under official Nazi
 |  supervision, the two firms were merged. Prescott Bush's
 |  American Ship and Commerce Corp. installed Christian J.
 |  Beck, a longtime Harriman executive, as manager of freight
 |  and operations in North America for the new joint Nazi
 |  shipping lines "(Hapag-Lloyd)") on November 4, 1933.
 |
 |  According to testimony of officials of the companies before
 |  Congress in 1934, a supervisor from the "Nazi Labor Front"
 |  rode with every ship of the Harriman-Bush line; employees of
 |  the New York offices were directly organized into the Nazi
 |  Labor Front organization; Hamburg-Amerika provided free
 |  passage to individuals going abroad for Nazi propaganda
 |  purposes; and the line subsidized pro-Nazi newspapers in the
 |  U.S.A., as it had done in Germany against the constitutional
 |  German government. [32] 
 |
 |  In mid-1936, Prescott Bush's American Ship and Commerce
 |  Corp. cabled M.M. Warburg, asking Warburg to represent the
 |  company's heavy share interest at the forthcoming
 |  Hamburg-Amerika stockholders meeting. The Warburg office
 |  replied with the information that "we represented you" at
 |  the stockholders meeting and "exercised on your behalf your
 |  voting power for Rm [gold marks] 3,509,600 Hapag stock
 |  deposited with us."
 |
 |  The Warburgs transmitted a letter received from Emil
 |  Helfferich, German chief executive of both Hapag-Lloyd and
 |  of the Standard Oil subsidiary in Nazi Germany: "It is the
 |  intention to continue the relations with Mr. Harriman on the
 |  same basis as heretofore...." In a colorful gesture, Hapag's
 |  Nazi chairman Helfferich sent the line's president across
 |  the Atlantic on a Zeppelin to confer with their New York
 |  string-pullers.
 |
 |  After the meeting with the Zeppelin passenger, the
 |  Harriman-Bush office replied: "I am glad to learn that Mr.
 |  Hellferich [sic] has stated that relations between the
 |  Hamburg American Line and ourselves will be continued on the
 |  same basis as heretofore." [33] 
 |
 |  Two months before moving against Bush's Union Banking Corp.,
 |  the U.S. government ordered the seizure of all property of
 |  the Hamburg-Amerika Line and North German Lloyd, under the
 |  Trading with the Enemy Act. The investigators noted in the
 |  pre-seizure report that Christian J. Beck was still acting
 |  as an attorney representing the Nazi firm. [34] 
 |
 |  In May 1933, just after the Hitler regime was consolidated,
 |  an agreement was reached in Berlin for the coordination of
 |  all Nazi commerce with the U.S.A. The "Harriman
 |  International Co.," led by Averell Harriman's first cousin
 |  Oliver, was to head a syndicate of 150 firms and
 |  individuals, to conduct "all exports from Hitler's Germany
 |  to the United States". [35] 
 |
 |  This pact had been negotiated in Berlin between Hitler's
 |  economics minister, Hjalmar Schacht, and John Foster Dulles,
 |  international attorney for dozens of Nazi enterprises, with
 |  the counsel of Max Warburg and Kurt von Schroeder.
 |
 |  John Foster Dulles would later be U.S. Secretary of State,
 |  and the great power in the Republican Party of the 1950s.
 |  Foster's friendship and that of his brother Allen (head of
 |  the Central Intelligence Agency), greatly aided Prescott
 |  Bush to become the Republican U.S. senator from Connecticut.
 |  And it was to be of inestimable value to George Bush, in his
 |  ascent to the heights of "covert action government," that
 |  both of these Dulles brothers were the lawyers for the Bush
 |  family's far-flung enterprise.
 |
 |  Throughout the 1930s, John Foster Dulles arranged debt
 |  restructuring for German firms under a series of decrees
 |  issued by Adolf Hitler. In these deals, Dulles struck a
 |  balance between the interest owed to selected, larger
 |  investors, and the needs of the growing Nazi warmaking
 |  apparatus for producing tanks, poison gas, etc.
 |
 |  Dulles wrote to Prescott Bush in 1937 concerning one such
 |  arrangement. The German-Atlantic Cable Company, owning Nazi
 |  Germany's only telegraph channel to the United States, had
 |  made debt and management agreements with the Walker-Harriman
 |  bank during the 1920s. A new decree would now void those
 |  agreements, which had originally been reached with non-Nazi
 |  corporate officials. Dulles asked Bush, who managed these
 |  affairs for Averell Harriman, to get Averell's signature on
 |  a letter to Nazi officials, agreeing to the changes. Dulles
 |  wrote: "Sept. 22, 1937 "Mr. Prescott S. Bush "59 Wall
 |  Street, New York, N.Y.
 |
 |  "Dear Press,
 |
 |  "I have looked over the letter of the German-American [sic]
 |  Cable Company to Averell Harriman.... It would appear that
 |  the only rights in the matter are those which inure in the
 |  bankers and that no legal embarrassment would result, so far
 |  as the bondholders are concerned, by your acquiescence in
 |  the modification of the bankers' agreement.
 |
 |  "Sincerely yours,
 |
 |  "John Foster Dulles"
 |
 |  Dulles enclosed a proposed draft reply, Bush got Harriman's
 |  signature, and the changes went through. [36] 
 |
 |  In conjunction with these arrangements, the German Atlantic
 |  Cable Company attempted to stop payment on its debts to
 |  smaller American bondholders. The money was to be used
 |  instead for arming the Nazi state, under a decree of the
 |  Hitler government.
 |
 |  Despite the busy efforts of Bush and Dulles, a New York
 |  court decided that this particular Hitler "law" was invalid
 |  in the United States; small bondholders, not parties to
 |  deals between the bankers and the Nazis, were entitled to
 |  get paid. [37] 
 |
 |  In this and a few other of the attempted swindles, the
 |  intended victims came out with their money. But the Nazi
 |  financial and political reorganization went ahead to its
 |  tragic climax.
 |
 |  For his part in the Hitler revolution, Prescott Bush was
 |  paid a fortune.
 |
 |  This is the legacy he left to his son, President George
 |  Bush.
 |
 |  Notes
 |
 |  1. Office of Alien Property Custodian, Vesting Order Number
 |  248. Signed by Leo T. Crowley, Alien Property Custodian,
 |  executed October 20, 1942; F.R. Doc. 42-11568; Filed,
 |  November 6, 1942. 7 Fed. Reg. 9097 (November 7, 1942).
 |
 |  The "New York City Directory of Directors", 1930s-40s, list
 |  Prescott Bush as a director of Union Banking Corp. from 1934
 |  through 1943.
 |
 |  2. Alien Property Custodian Vesting Order No. 259: Seamless
 |  Steel Equipment Corporation; Vesting Order Number 261:
 |  Holland-American Trading Corp.
 |
 |  3. Alien Property Custodian Vesting Order No. 370:
 |  Silesian-American Corp.
 |
 |  4. "New York Times," December 16, 1944, ran a five-paragraph
 |  page 25 article on actions of the New York State Banking
 |  Department. Only the last sentence refers to the Nazi bank,
 |  as follows: "The Union Banking Corporation, 39 Broadway, New
 |  York, has received authority to change its principal place
 |  of business to 120 Broadway."
 |
 |  The "Times" omitted the fact that the Union Banking
 |  Corporation had been seized by the government for trading
 |  with the enemy, and the fact that 120 Broadway was the
 |  address of the government's Alien Property Custodian.
 |
 |  5. Fritz Thyssen, "I Paid Hitler", 1941, reprinted in (Port
 |  Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1972), p. 133. Thyssen
 |  says his contributions began with 100,000 marks given in
 |  October 1923, for Hitler's attempted "putsch" against the
 |  constitutional government.
 |
 |  6. Confidential memorandum from U.S. Embassy, Berlin, to the
 |  U.S. Secretary of State, April 20, 1932, on microfilm in
 |  "Confidential Reports of U.S. State Dept., 1930s, Germany,"
 |  at major U.S. libraries.
 |
 |  7. October 5, 1942, Memorandum to the Executive Committee of
 |  the Office of Alien Property Custodian, stamped
 |  CONFIDENTIAL, from the Division of Investigation and
 |  Research, Homer Jones, Chief. Now declassified in United
 |  States National Archives, Suitland, Maryland annex. Note
 |  Record Group 131, Alien Property Custodian, investigative
 |  reports, in file box relating to Vesting Order Number 248.
 |
 |  8. "Elimination of German Resources for War": Hearings
 |  Before a Subcommittee of the Com mittee on Military Affairs,
 |  United States Senate, Seventy-Ninth Congress; Part 5,
 |  Testimony of [the United States] Treasury Department, July
 |  2, 1945. Page 507: Table of Vereinigte Stahlwerke output,
 |  figures are percent of German total as of 1938; Thyssen
 |  organization including Union Banking Corporation pp.
 |  727-731.
 |
 |  9. Robert Sobel, "The Life and Times of Dillon Read" (New
 |  York: Dutton-Penguin, 1991), pp. 92-111. The Dillon Read
 |  firm cooperated in the development of Sobel's book.
 |
 |  10. George Walker to Averell Harriman, August 11, 1927, in
 |  W. Averell Harriman papers, Library of Congress (hereafter
 |  "WAH papers").
 |
 |  11. "Iaccarino" to G. H. Walker, RCA Radiogram Sept. 12,
 |  1927.
 |
 |  12. Andrew Boyle, "Montagu Norman" (London: Cassell, 1967).
 |
 |  Sir Henry Clay, "Lord Norman" (London, MacMillan & Co.,
 |  1957), pp. 18, 57, 70-71.
 |
 |  John A. Kouwenhouven, "Partners in Banking ... Brown
 |  Brothers Harriman" (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1969).
 |
 |  13. Coordination of much of the Hitler project took place at
 |  a single New York address. The Union Banking Corporation had
 |  been set up by George Walker at 39 Broadway. Management of
 |  the Hamburg-Amerika Line, carried out through Harriman's
 |  American Ship and Commerce Corp., was also set up by George
 |  Walker at 39 Broadway.
 |
 |  14. Interrogation of Fritz Thyssen, EF/Me/1 of Sept. 4, 1945
 |  in U.S. Control Council records, photostat on page 167 in
 |  Anthony Sutton, "An Introduction to The Order" (Billings,
 |  Mt.: Liberty House Press, 1986).
 |
 |  15. "Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Supplement B", by the
 |  Office of United States Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of
 |  Axis Criminality, U. S. Government Printing Office,
 |  (Washington, D.C., 1948), pp. 1597, 1686.
 |
 |  16. "Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation - [minutes of
 |  the] Meeting of Board of Directors," October 31, 1930 (WAH
 |  papers), shows Averell Harriman as Chairman of the Board.
 |
 |  Prescott Bush to W.A. Harriman, Memorandum December 19, 1930
 |  on their Harriman Fifteen Corp.
 |
 |  Annual Report of United Konigs and Laura Steel and Iron
 |  Works for the year 1930 (WAH papers) lists "Dr. Friedrich
 |  Flick ... Berlin" and "William Averell Harriman ... New
 |  York" on the Board of Directors.
 |
 |  "Harriman Fifteen Coporation Securities Position February
 |  28, 1931," WAH papers. This report shows Harriman Fifteen
 |  Corporation holding 32,576 shares in Silesian Holding Co.
 |  V.T.C. worth (in scarce depression dollars) $1,628,800, just
 |  over half the value of the Harriman Fifteen Corporation's
 |  total holdings.
 |
 |  The "New York City Directory of Directors" volumes for the
 |  1930s (available at the Library of Congress) show Prescott
 |  Sheldon Bush and W. Averell Harriman as the directors of
 |  Harriman Fifteen Corp.
 |
 |  "Appointments," (three typed pages) marked "Noted May 18
 |  1931 W.A.H.," (among the papers from Prescott Bush's New
 |  York Office of Brown Brothers Harriman, WAH papers), lists a
 |  meeting between Averell Harriman and Friedrich Flick in
 |  Berlin at 4:00 P.M., Wednesday April 22, 1931. This was
 |  followed immediately by a meeting with Wilhelm Cuno, chief
 |  executive of the Hamburg-Amerika Line.
 |
 |  The "Report To the Stockholders of the Harriman Fifteen
 |  Corporation," October 19, 1933 (WAH papers) names G.H.
 |  Walker as president of the corporation. It shows the
 |  Harriman Fifteen Corp.'s address as 1 Wall Street -- the
 |  location of G.H. Walker and Co.
 |
 |  17. "Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Supplement B", "op.
 |  cit.," p. 1686.
 |
 |  18. Jim Flaherty (a BBH manager, Prescott Bush's employee),
 |  March 19, 1934 to W.A. Harriman.
 |
 |  "Dear Averell:
 |
 |  "In Roland's absence Pres[cott] thought it adviseable for me
 |  to let you know that we received the following cable from
 |  [our European representative] Rossi dated March 17th
 |  [relating to conflict with the Polish government]...."
 |
 |  19. Harriman Fifteen Corporation notice to stockholders
 |  January 7, 1935, under the name of George Walker, President.
 |
 |  20. Order No. 370: Silesian-American Corp. Executed November
 |  17, 1942. Signed by Leo T. Crowley, Alien Prop. Custodian.
 |  F.R. Doc. 42-14183; Filed, December 31, 1942; 8 Fed. Reg. 33
 |  (Jan. 1, 1943).
 |
 |  The order confiscated the Nazis' holdings of 98,000 shares
 |  of common and 50,000 shares of preferred stock in
 |  Silesian-American.
 |
 |  The Nazi parent company in Breslau, Germany wrote to Averell
 |  Harriman at 59 Wall St. on Aug. 5, 1940, with "an invitation
 |  to take part in the regular meeting of the members of the
 |  Bergwerksgesellsc[h]aft Georg von Giesche's Erben...." WAH
 |  papers.
 |
 |  21. Sept. 25, 1942, Memorandum To the Executive Committee of
 |  the Office of Alien Property Custodian, stamped
 |  CONFIDENTIAL, from the Division of Investigation and
 |  Research, Homer Jones, Chief. Now declassified in United
 |  States National Archives, Suitland, Maryland annex. See
 |  Record Group 131, Alien Property Custodian, investigative
 |  reports, in file box relating to Vesting Order Number 370.
 |
 |  22. George Walker was a director of American Ship and
 |  Commerce from its organization through 1928. Consult "New
 |  York City Directory of Directors".
 |
 |  "Harriman Fifteen Corporation Securities Position February
 |  28, 1931," "op. cit." The report lists 46,861 shares in the
 |  American Ship & Commerce Corp.
 |
 |  See "Message from Mr. Bullfin," August 30, 1934 (Harriman
 |  Fifteen section, WAH papers) for the joint supervision of
 |  Bush and Walker, respectively director and president of the
 |  corporation.
 |
 |  23. Cuno was later exposed by Walter Funk, Third Reich Press
 |  Chief and Under Secretary of Propaganda, in Funk's postwar
 |  jail cell at Nuremberg; but Cuno had died just as Hitler was
 |  taking power. William L. Shirer, L., "The Rise and Fall of
 |  the Third Reich" (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960), p.
 |  144. "Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Supplement B", "op.
 |  cit.," p. 1688.
 |
 |  24. See "Elimination of German Resources for War," "op.
 |  cit.," pages 881-882 on Voegler.
 |
 |  See Annual Report of the
 |  (Hamburg-Amerikanische-Packetfahrt-Aktien-Gesellschaft
 |  (Hapag or Hamburg-Amerika Line), March 1931, for the board
 |  of directors. A copy is in the New York Public Library Annex
 |  at 11th Avenue, Manhattan.
 |
 |  25. "Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression -- Supplement B," "op.
 |  cit.," pp. 1178, 1453-1454, 1597, 1599.
 |
 |  See "Elimination of German Resources for War," "op. cit.,"
 |  pp. 870-72 on Schroeder; p. 730 on Groeninger.
 |
 |  26. Annual Report of Hamburg-Amerika, "op. cit."
 |
 |  Baron Rudolph Schroeder, Sr. to Averell Harriman, November
 |  14, 1932. K[night] W[ooley] handwritten note and draft reply
 |  letter, December 9, 1932.
 |
 |  In his letter, Baron Rudolph refers to the family's American
 |  affiliate, J. Henry Schroder [name anglicized], of which
 |  Allen Dulles was a director, and his brother John Foster
 |  Dulles was the principal attorney.
 |
 |  Baron Bruno Schroder of the British branch was adviser to
 |  Bank of England Governor Montagu Norman, and Baron Bruno's
 |  partner Frank Cyril Tiarks was Norman's co-director of the
 |  Bank of England throughout Norman's career. Kurt von
 |  Schroeder was Hjalmar Schacht's delegate to the Bank for
 |  International Settlements in Geneva, where many of the
 |  financial arrangements for the Nazi regime were made by
 |  Montagu Norman, Schacht and the Schroeders for several years
 |  of the Hitler regime right up to the outbreak of World War
 |  II.
 |
 |  27. Confidential memorandum from U.S. Embassy, Berlin, "op.
 |  cit."
 |
 |  28. U.S. Senate "Nye Committee" hearings, Sept. 14, 1934,
 |  pp. 1197-1198, extracts from letters of Col. William N.
 |  Taylor, dated June 27, 1932 and January 9, 1933.
 |
 |  29. American Ship and Commerce Corporation to Dr. Max
 |  Warburg, March 7, 1933.
 |
 |  Max Warburg had brokered the sale of Hamburg-Amerika to
 |  Harriman and Walker in 1920. Max's brothers controlled the
 |  Kuhn Loeb investment banking house in New York, the firm
 |  which had staked old E.H. Harriman to his 1890s buyout of
 |  the giant Union Pacific Railroad.
 |
 |  Max Warburg had long worked with Lord Milner and others of
 |  the racialist British Round Table concerning joint projects
 |  in Africa and Eastern Europe. He was an advisor to Hjalmar
 |  Schacht for several decades and was a top executive of
 |  Hitler's Reichsbank. The reader may consult David Farrer,
 |  "The Warburgs: The Story of A Family" (New York: Stein and
 |  Day, 1975).
 |
 |  30. Max Warburg, at M.M. Warburg and Co., Hamburg, to
 |  Averill [sic] Harriman, c/o Messrs. Brown Brothers Harriman
 |  & Co., 59 Wall Street, New York, N.Y., March 27, 1933.
 |
 |  31. This correspondence, and the joint statement of the
 |  Jewish organizations, are reproduced in Moshe R. Gottlieb,
 |  "American Anti-Nazi Resistance, 1933-41: An Historical
 |  Analysis" (New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1982).
 |
 |  32. "Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and
 |  Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities":
 |  Public Hearings before A Subcommittee of the Special
 |  Committee on Un-American Activities, United States House of
 |  Representatives, Seventy Third Congress, New York City, July
 |  9-12, 1934 -- Hearings No. 73-NY-7 (Washington, D.C., U.S.
 |  Govt. Printing Office, 1934). See testimony of Capt.
 |  Frederick C. Mensing, John Schroeder, Paul von
 |  Lilienfeld-Toal, and summaries by Committee members.
 |
 |  See "New York Times," July 16, 1933, p. 12, for organizing
 |  of Nazi Labor Front at North German Lloyd, leading to
 |  Hamburg-Amerika after merger.
 |
 |  33. American Ship and Commerce Corporation telegram to
 |  Rudolph Brinckmann at M.M. Warburg, June 12, 1936.
 |
 |  Rudolph Brinckmann to Averell Harriman at 59 Wall St., June
 |  20, 1936, with enclosed note transmitting Helferrich's
 |  letter.
 |
 |  Reply to Dr. Rudolph Brinkmann c/o M.M. Warburg and Co, July
 |  6, 1936, WAH papers. The file copy of this letter carries no
 |  signature, but is presumably from Averell Harriman.
 |
 |  34. Office of Alien Property Custodian, Vesting Order Number
 |  126. Signed by Leo T. Crowley, Alien Property Custodian,
 |  executed August 28, 1942. F.R. Doc. 42-8774; Filed September
 |  4, 1942, 10:55 A.M.; 7 F.R. 7061 (Number 176, Sept. 5,
 |  1942.)
 |
 |  July 18, 1942, Memorandum To the Executive Committee of the
 |  Office of Alien Property Custodian, stamped CONFIDENTIAL,
 |  from the Division of Investigation and Research, Homer
 |  Jones, Chief. Now declassified in United States National
 |  Archives, Suitland, Maryland annex. See Record Group 131,
 |  Alien Property Custodian, investigative reports, in file box
 |  relating to Vesting Order Number 126.
 |
 |  35. "New York Times," May 20, 1933. Leading up to this
 |  agreement is a telegram which somehow escaped the shredder.
 |  It is addressed to Nazi official Hjalmar Schacht at the
 |  Mayflower Hotel, Washington, dated May 11, 1933: "Much
 |  disappointed to have missed seeing you Tueday afternoon....
 |  I hope to see you either in Washington or New York before
 |  you sail.
 |
 |  with my regards W.A. Harriman" (WAH papers).
 |
 |  36. Dulles to Bush, letter and draft reply in WAH papers.
 |
 |  37. "New York Times," Jan. 19, 1938.
 |
 |
 |  Chapter 3
 |
 |  RACE HYGIENE:
 |
 |  Three Bush Family Alliances
 |
 |
 |  "The [government] must put the most modern medical means in
 |  the service of this knowledge.... Those who are physically
 |  and mentally unhealthy and unworthy must not perpetuate
 |  their suffering in the body of their children.... The
 |  prevention of the faculty and opportunity to procreate on
 |  the part of the physically degenerate and mentally sick,
 |  over a period of only 600 years, would ... free humanity
 |  from an immeasurable misfortune." See #1
 |
 |  "The per capita income gap between the developed and the
 |  developing countries is increasing, in large part the result
 |  of higher birth rates in the poorer countries.... Famine in
 |  India, unwanted babies in the United States, poverty that
 |  seemed to form an unbreakable chain for millions of people
 |  -- how should we tackle these problems?.... It is quite
 |  clear that one of the major challenges of the 1970s ... will
 |  be to curb the world's fertility."
 |
 |  These two quotations are alike in their mock show of concern
 |  for human suffering, and in their cynical remedy for it: Big
 |  Brother must prevent the "unworthy" or "unwanted" people
 |  from living.
 |
 |  Let us now further inquire into the family background of our
 |  President, so as to help illustrate how the second quoted
 |  author, "George Bush" [1]  came to share the outlook of the
 |  first, "Adolf Hitler". [2] 
 |
 |  We shall examine here the alliance of the Bush family with
 |  three other families: "Farish, Draper" and "Gray."
 |
 |  The private associations among these families have led to
 |  the President's relationship to his closest, most
 |  confidential advisers. These alliances were forged in the
 |  earlier Hitler project and its immediate aftermath.
 |  Understanding them will help us to explain George Bush's
 |  obsession with the supposed overpopulation of the world's
 |  non-Anglo-Saxons, and the dangerous means he has adopted to
 |  deal with this "problem."
 |
 |  Bush and Farish
 |
 |  When George Bush was elected vice president in 1980, Texas
 |  mystery man William Stamps Farish III took over management
 |  of all of George Bush's personal wealth in a "blind trust."
 |  Known as one of the richest men in Texas, Will Farish keeps
 |  his business affairs under the most intense secrecy. Only
 |  the source of his immense wealth is known, not its
 |  employment. [3] 
 |
 |  Will Farish has long been Bush's closest friend and
 |  confidante. He is also the unique private host to Britain's
 |  Queen Elizabeth: Farish owns and boards the studs which mate
 |  with the Queen's mares. That is her public rationale when
 |  she comes to America and stays in Farish's house. It is a
 |  vital link in the mind of our Anglophile President.
 |
 |  President Bush can count on Farish not to betray the violent
 |  secrets surrounding the Bush family money. For Farish's own
 |  family fortune was made in the same Hitler project, in a
 |  nightmarish partnership with George Bush's father.
 |
 |  On March 25, 1942, U.S. Assistant Attorney General Thurman
 |  Arnold announced that William Stamps Farish (grandfather of
 |  the President's money manager) had pleaded "no contest" to
 |  charges of criminal conspiracy with the Nazis. Farish was
 |  the principal manager of a worldwide cartel between Standard
 |  Oil Co. of New Jersey and the I.G. Farben concern. The
 |  merged enterprise had opened the Auschwitz slave labor camp
 |  on June 14, 1940, to produce artificial rubber and gasoline
 |  from coal. The Hitler government supplied political
 |  opponents and Jews as the slaves, who were worked to near
 |  death and then murdered.
 |
 |  Arnold disclosed that Standard Oil of New Jersey (later
 |  known as Exxon), of which Farish was president and chief
 |  executive, had agreed to stop hiding from the United States
 |  patents for artificial rubber which the company had provided
 |  to the Nazis. [4] 
 |
 |  A Senate investigating committee under Senator (later U.S.
 |  President) Harry Truman of Missouri had called Arnold to
 |  testify at hearings on corporations' collaboration with the
 |  Nazis. The Senators expressed outrage at the cynical way
 |  Farish was continuing an alliance with the Hitler regime
 |  that had begun back in 1933, when Farish became chief of
 |  Jersey Standard. Didn't he know there was a war on?
 |
 |  The Justice Department laid before the committee a letter,
 |  written to Standard president Farish by his vice president,
 |  shortly after the beginning of World War II (September 1,
 |  1939) in Europe. The letter concerned a renewal of their
 |  earlier agreements with the Nazis:
 |
 |  Report on European Trip Oct. 12, 1939 Mr. W.S. Farish 30
 |  Rockefeller Plaza
 |
 |  Dear Mr. Farish:
 |
 |  ... I stayed in France until Sept. 17th.... In England I met
 |  by appointment the Royal Dutch [Shell Oil Co.] gentlemen
 |  from Holland, and ... a general agreement was reached on the
 |  necessary changes in our relations with the I.G. [Farben],
 |  in view of the state of war.... [T]he Royal Dutch Shell
 |  group is essentially British.... I also had several meetings
 |  with ... the [British] Air Ministry....
 |
 |  I required help to obtain the necessary permission to go to
 |  Holland.... After discussions with the [American] Ambassador
 |  [Joseph Kennedy] .. the situation was cleared completely....
 |  The gentlemen in the Air Ministry ... very kindly offered to
 |  assist me [later] in reentering England....
 |
 |  Pursuant to these arrangements, I was able to keep my
 |  appointments in Holland [having flown there on a British
 |  Royal Air Force bomber], where I had three days of
 |  discussion with the representatives of I.G. They delivered
 |  to me assignments of some 2,000 foreign patents and "we did
 |  our best to work out complete plans for a modus vivendi
 |  which could operate through the term of the war, whether or
 |  not the U.S. came in...." [emphasis added]
 |
 |  Very truly yours, F[rank] A. Howard [5] 
 |
 |  Here are some cold realities behind the tragedy of World War
 |  II, which help explain the Bush-Farish family alliance --
 |  andtheir peculiar closeness to the Queen of England:
 |
 |     *  Shell Oil is principally owned by the British Royal
 |  family. Shell's chairman, Sir Henri Deterding, helped
 |  sponsor Hitler's rise to power, [6]  by arrangement with the
 |  Royal Family's Bank of England Governor, Montagu Norman.
 |  Their ally, Standard Oil, would take part in the Hitler
 |  project right up to the bloody, gruesome end.
 |
 |     *  When grandfather Farish signed the Justice
 |  Department's consent decree in March 1942, the government
 |  had already started picking its way through the tangled web
 |  of world-monopoly oil and chemical agreements between
 |  Standard Oil and the Nazis. Many patents and other
 |  Nazi-owned aspects of the partnership had been seized by the
 |  U.S. Alien Property Custodian.
 |
 |  Uncle Sam would not seize Prescott Bush's Union Banking
 |  Corporation for another seven months.
 |
 |  The Bush-Farish axis had begun back in 1929. In that year,
 |  the Harriman bank bought Dresser Industries, supplier of
 |  oil-pipeline couplers to Standard and other companies.
 |  Prescott Bush became a director and financial czar of
 |  Dresser, installing his Yale classmate Neil Mallon as
 |  chairman. [7]  George Bush would later name one of his sons
 |  after the Dresser executive.
 |
 |  William S. Farish was the main organizer of the Humble Oil
 |  Co. of Texas, which Farish merged into the Standard Oil
 |  Company of New Jersey. Farish built up the Humble-Standard
 |  empire of pipelines and refineries in Texas. [8] 
 |
 |  The stock market crashed just after the Bush family got into
 |  the oil business. The world financial crisis led to the
 |  merger of the Walker-Harriman bank with Brown Brothers in
 |  1931. Former Brown partner Montagu Norman and his protege
 |  Hjalmar Schacht, who was to become Hitler's economics
 |  minister, paid frantic visits to New York that year and the
 |  next, preparing the new Hitler regime for Germany.
 |
 |  The Congress on Eugenics
 |
 |  The most important American political event in those
 |  preparations for Hitler was the infamous Third International
 |  Congress on Eugenics, held at New York's American Museum of
 |  Natural History August 21-23, 1932, supervised by the
 |  International Federation of Eugenics Societies. [9]  This
 |  meeting took up the stubborn persistence of
 |  African-Americans and other allegedly "inferior" and
 |  "socially inadequate" groups in reproducing, expanding their
 |  numbers, and "amalgamating" with others. It was recommended
 |  that these "dangers" to the "better" ethnic groups and to
 |  the "well-born," could be dealt with by sterilization or
 |  "cutting off the bad stock" of the "unfit."
 |
 |  Italy's fascist government sent an official representative.
 |  Averell Harriman's sister Mary, director of "entertainment"
 |  for the Congress, lived down in Virginia fox-hunting
 |  country; her state supplied the speaker on "racial purity,"
 |  W.A. Plecker, Virginia commissioner of vital statistics.
 |  Plecker reportedly held the delegates spellbound with his
 |  account of the struggle to stop race-mixing and interracial
 |  sex in Virginia.
 |
 |  The Congress proceedings were dedicated to Averell
 |  Harriman's mother; she had paid for the founding of the
 |  race-science movement in America back in 1910, building the
 |  Eugenics Record Office as a branch of the Galton National
 |  Laboratory in London. She and other Harrimans were usually
 |  escorted to the horse races by old George Herbert Walker --
 |  they shared with the Bushes and the Farishes a fascination
 |  with "breeding thoroughbreds" among horses and humans. [10] 
 |
 |  Averell Harriman personally arranged with the Walker/Bush
 |  Hamburg-Amerika Line to transport Nazi ideologues from
 |  Germany to New York for this meeting. [11]  The most famous
 |  among those transported was Dr. Ernst Rudin, psychiatrist at
 |  the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Genealogy and Demography in
 |  Berlin, where the Rockefeller family paid for Dr. Rudin to
 |  occupy an entire floor with his eugenics "research." Dr.
 |  Rudin had addressed the International Federation's 1928
 |  Munich meeting, speaking on "Mental Aberration and Race
 |  Hygiene," while others (Germans and Americans) spoke on
 |  race-mixing and sterilization of the unfit. Rudin had led
 |  the German delegation to the 1930 Mental Hygiene Congress in
 |  Washington, D.C.
 |
 |  At the Harrimans' 1932 New York Eugenics Congress, Ernst
 |  Rudin was unanimously elected President of the International
 |  Federation of Eugenics Societies. This was recognition of
 |  Rudin as founder of the German Society for Race Hygiene,
 |  with his co-founder, Eugenics Federation vice president
 |  Alfred Ploetz.
 |
 |  As depression-maddened financiers schemed in Berlin and New
 |  York, Rudin was now official leader of the world eugenics
 |  movement. Components of his movement included groups with
 |  overlapping leadership, dedicated to:
 |
 |     *  sterilization of mental patients ("mental hygiene
 |  societies");
 |
 |     *  execution of the insane, criminals and the terminally
 |  ill ("euthanasia societies"); and
 |
 |     *  eugenical race-purification by prevention of births to
 |  parents from inferior blood stocks ("birth control
 |  societies").
 |
 |  Before the Auschwitz death camp became a household word,
 |  these British-American-European groups called openly for the
 |  elimination of the "unfit" by means including force and
 |  violence. [12] 
 |
 |  Ten months later, in June 1933, Hitler's interior minister
 |  Wilhelm Frick spoke to a eugenics meeting in the new Third
 |  Reich. Frick called the Germans a "degenerate" race,
 |  denouncing one-fifth of Germany's parents for producing
 |  "feeble-minded" and "defective" children. The following
 |  month, on a commission by Frick, Dr. Ernst Rudin wrote the
 |  "Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseases in
 |  Posterity," the sterilization law modeled on previous U.S.
 |  statutes in Virginia and other states.
 |
 |  Special courts were soon established for the sterilization
 |  of German mental patients, the blind, the deaf, and
 |  alcoholics. A quarter million people in these categories
 |  were sterilized. Rudin, Ploetz, and their colleagues trained
 |  a whole generation of physicians and psychiatrists -- as
 |  sterilizers and as killers.
 |
 |  When the war started, the eugenicists, doctors, and
 |  psychiatrists staffed the new "T4" agency, which planned and
 |  supervised the mass killings: first at "euthanasia centers,"
 |  where the same categories which had first been subject to
 |  sterilization were now to be murdered, their brains sent in
 |  lots of 200 to experimental psychiatrists; then at slave
 |  camps such as Auschwitz; and finally, for Jews and other
 |  race victims, at straight extermination camps in Poland,
 |  such as Treblinka and Belsen. [13] 
 |
 |  In 1933, as what Hitler called his "New Order" appeared,
 |  John D. Rockefeller, Jr. appointed William S. Farish the
 |  chairman of Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey (in 1937 he was
 |  made president and chief executive). Farish moved his
 |  offices to Rockefeller Center, New York, where he spent a
 |  good deal of time with Hermann Schmitz, chairman of I.G.
 |  Farben; his company paid a publicity man, Ivy Lee, to write
 |  pro-I.G. Farben and pro-Nazi propaganda and get it into the
 |  U.S. press.
 |
 |  Now that he was outside of Texas, Farish found himself in
 |  the shipping business -- like the Bush family. He hired Nazi
 |  German crews for Standard Oil tankers. And he hired "Emil
 |  Helfferich," chairman of the Walker/Bush/Harriman
 |  Hamburg-Amerika Line, as chairman also of the Standard Oil
 |  Company subsidiary in Germany. Karl Lindemann, board member
 |  of Hamburg-Amerika, also became a top Farish-Standard
 |  executive in Germany. [14] 
 |
 |  This interlock between their Nazi German operations put
 |  Farish together with Prescott Bush in a small, select group
 |  of men operating from abroad through Hitler's "revolution,"
 |  and calculating that they would never be punished.
 |
 |  In 1939, Farish's daughter Martha married Averell Harriman's
 |  nephew, Edward Harriman Gerry, and Farish in-laws became
 |  Prescott Bush's partners at 59 Broadway. [15] 
 |
 |  Both Emil Helfferich and Karl Lindemann were authorized to
 |  write checks to Heinrich Himmler, chief of the Nazi SS, on a
 |  special Standard Oil account. This account was managed by
 |  the German-British-American banker, Kurt von Schroeder.
 |  According to U.S. intelligence d ocuments reviewed by author
 |  Anthony Sutton, Helfferich continued his payments to the SS
 |  into 1944, when the SS was supervising the mass murder at
 |  the Standard-I.G. Farben Auschwitz and other death camps.
 |  Helfferich told Allied interrogators after the war that
 |  these were not his personal contributions -- they were
 |  corporate Standard Oil funds. [16] 
 |
 |  After pleading "no contest" to charges of criminal
 |  conspiracy with the Nazis, William Stamps Farish was fined
 |  $5,000. (Similar fines were levied against Standard Oil --
 |  $5,000 each for the parent company and for several
 |  subsidiaries.) This of course did not interfere with the
 |  millions of dollars that Farish had acquired in conjunction
 |  with Hitler's New Order, as a large stockholder, chairman,
 |  and president of Standard Oil. All the government sought was
 |  the use of patents which his company had given to the Nazis
 |  -- the Auschwitz patents -- but had withheld from the U.S.
 |  military and industry.
 |
 |  But a war was on, and if young men were to be asked to die
 |  fighting Hitler .. something more was needed. Farish was
 |  hauled before the Senate committee investigating the
 |  national defense program. The committee chairman, Senator
 |  Harry Truman, told newsmen before Farish testified: "I think
 |  this approaches treason." [17] 
 |
 |  Farish began breaking apart at these hearings. He shouted
 |  his "indignation" at the senators, and claimed he was not
 |  "disloyal."
 |
 |  After the March-April hearings ended, more dirt came gushing
 |  out of the Justice Department and the Congress on Farish and
 |  Standard Oil. Farish had deceived the U.S. Navy to prevent
 |  the Navy from acquiring certain patents, while supplying
 |  them to the Nazi war machine; meanwhile, he was supplying
 |  gasoline and tetraethyl lead to Germany's submarines and air
 |  force. Communications between Standard and I.G. Farben from
 |  the outbreak of World War II were released to the Senate,
 |  showing that Farish's organization had arranged to deceive
 |  the U.S. government into passing over Nazi-owned assets:
 |  They would nominally buy I.G.'s share in certain patents
 |  because "in the event of war between ourselves and Germany
 |  ... it would certainly be very undesireable to have this 20
 |  percent Standard-I.G. pass to an alien property custodian of
 |  the U.S. who might sell it to an unfriendly interest." [18] 
 |
 |  John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (father of David, Nelson, and John
 |  D. Rockefeller III), the controlling owner of Standard Oil,
 |  told the Roosevelt administration that he knew nothing of
 |  the day-to-day affairs of his company, that all these
 |  matters were handled by Farish and other executives. [19] 
 |
 |  In August, Farish was brought back for more testimony. He
 |  was now frequently accused of lying. Farish was crushed
 |  under the intense, public grilling; he became morose, ashen.
 |  While Prescott Bush escaped publicity when the government
 |  seized his Nazi banking organization in October, Farish had
 |  been nailed. He collapsed and died of a heart attack on
 |  November 29, 1942.
 |
 |  The Farish family was devastated by the exposure. Son
 |  William Stamps Farish, Jr., a lieutenant in the Army Air
 |  Force, was humiliated by the public knowledge that his
 |  father was fueling the enemy's aircraft; he died in a
 |  training accident in Texas six months later. [20] 
 |
 |  With this double death, the fortune comprising much of
 |  Standard Oil's profits from Texas and Nazi Germany was now
 |  to be settled upon the little four-year-old grandson,
 |  William ("Will") Stamps Farish III. Will Farish grew up a
 |  recluse, the most secretive multimillionaire in Texas, with
 |  investments of "that money" in a multitude of foreign
 |  countries, and a host of exotic contacts overlapping the
 |  intelligence and financial worlds -- particularly in
 |  Britain.
 |
 |  The Bush-Farish axis started George Bush's career. After his
 |  1948 graduation from Yale (and the Skull and Bones secret
 |  society), George Bush flew down to Texas on a corporate jet
 |  and was employed by his father's Dresser Industries. In a
 |  couple of years he got help from his uncle, George Walker,
 |  Jr., and Farish's British banker friends, to set him up in
 |  the oil property speculation business. Soon thereafter,
 |  George Bush founded the Zapata Oil Company, which put oil
 |  drilling rigs into certain locations of great strategic
 |  interest to the Anglo-American intelligence community.
 |
 |  Twenty-five-year-old Will Farish was personal aide to Zapata
 |  chairman George Bush in Bush's unsuccessful 1964 campaign
 |  for Senate. Farish used "that Auschwitz money" to back
 |  George Bush financially, investing in Zapata. When Bush was
 |  elected to Congress in 1966, Farish joined the Zapata board.
 |  [21] 
 |
 |  When George Bush became U.S. vice president in 1980, the
 |  Farish and Bush family fortunes were again completely,
 |  secretly commingled. As we shall see, the old projects were
 |  now being revived on a breathtaking scale.
 |
 |  Bush and Draper
 |
 |  Twenty years before he was U.S. President, George Bush
 |  brought two "race-science" professors in front of the
 |  Republican Task Force on Earth Resources and Population. As
 |  chairman of the Task Force, then-Congressman Bush invited
 |  Professors William Shockley and Arthur Jensen to explain to
 |  the committee how allegedly runaway birth-rates for
 |  African-Americans were "down-breeding" the American
 |  population.
 |
 |  Afterwards, Bush personally summed up for the Congress the
 |  testimony his black-inferiority advocates had given to the
 |  Task Force. [22]  George Bush held his hearings on the
 |  threat posed by black babies on August 5, 1969, while much
 |  of the world was in a better frame of mind -- celebrating
 |  mankind's progress from the first moon landing 16 days
 |  earlier. Bush's obsessive thinking on this subject was
 |  guided by his family's friend, Gen. William H. Draper, Jr.,
 |  the founder and chairman of the Population Crisis Committee,
 |  and vice chairman of the Planned Parenthood Federation.
 |  Draper had long been steering U.S. public discussion about
 |  the so-called "population bomb" in the non-white areas of
 |  the world.
 |
 |  If Congressman Bush had explained to his colleagues "how his
 |  family had come to know General Draper," they would perhaps
 |  have felt some alarm, or even panic, and paid more healthy
 |  attention to Bush's presentation. Unfortunately, the
 |  Draper-Bush population doctrine is now official U.S. foreign
 |  policy.
 |
 |  William H. Draper, Jr. had joined the Bush team in 1927,
 |  when he was hired by Dillon Read & Co., New York investment
 |  bankers. Draper was put into a new job slot at the firm:
 |  handling the Thyssen account.
 |
 |  We recall that in 1924, Fritz Thyssen set up his Union
 |  Banking Corporation in George Herbert Walker's bank at 39
 |  Broadway, Manhattan. Dillon Read & Co.'s boss, Clarence
 |  Dillon, had begun working with Fritz Thyssen some time after
 |  Averell Harriman first met with Thyssen -- at about the time
 |  Thyssen began financing Adolf Hitler's political career.
 |
 |  In January 1926, Dillon Read created the "German Credit and
 |  Investment Corporation" in Newark, New Jersey and Berlin,
 |  Germany, as Thyssen's short-term banker. That same year,
 |  Dillon Read created the "Vereinigte Stahlwerke" (German
 |  Steel Trust), incorporating the Thyssen family interests
 |  under the direction of New York and London finance. [23] 
 |
 |  William H. Draper, Jr. was made director, vice president,
 |  and assistant treasurer of the German Credit and Investment
 |  Corp. His business was short-term loans and financial
 |  management tricks for Thyssen and the German Steel Trust.
 |  Draper's clients sponsored Hitler's terroristic takeover;
 |  his clients led the buildup of the Nazi war industry; his
 |  clients made war against the United States. The Nazis were
 |  Draper's direct partners in Berlin and New Jersey: Alexander
 |  Kreuter, residing in Berlin, was president; Frederic Brandi,
 |  whose father was a top coal executive in the German Steel
 |  Trust, moved to the United States in 1926 and served as
 |  Draper's co-director in Newark.
 |
 |  Draper's role was crucial for Dillon Read & Co., for whom
 |  Draper was a partner and eventually vice president. The
 |  German Credit and Investment Corp. (GCI) was a "front" for
 |  Dillon Read: It had the same New Jersey address as U.S. &
 |  International Securities Corp. (USIS), and the same man
 |  served as treasu rer of both firms. [24] 
 |
 |  Clarence Dillon and his son C. Douglas Dillon were directors
 |  of USIS, which was  spotlighted when Clarence Dillon was
 |  hauled before the Senate Banking Committee's famous "Pecora"
 |  hearings in 1933. USIS was shown to be one of the great
 |  speculative pyramid schemes which had swindled stockholders
 |  of hundreds of millions of dollars. These investment
 |  policies had rotted the U.S. economy to the core, and led to
 |  the Great Depression of the 1930s.
 |
 |  But William H. Draper, Jr.'s GCI "front" was not
 |  "apparently" affiliated with the USIS "front" or with
 |  Dillon, and the GCI escaped the congressmen's limited
 |  scrutiny. This oversight was to prove most unfortunate,
 |  particularly to the 50 million people who subsequently died
 |  in World War II.
 |
 |  Dillon Read hired public relations man Ivy Lee to prepare
 |  their executives for their testimony and to confuse and
 |  further baffle the congressmen. [25]  Lee apparently took
 |  enough time out from his duties as image-maker for William
 |  S. Farish and the Nazi I.G. Farben Co.; he managed the
 |  congressional thinking so that the congressmen did not
 |  disturb the Draper operation in Germany -- and did not
 |  meddle with Thyssen, or interfere with Hitler's U.S.
 |  moneymen.
 |
 |  Thus, in 1932, Willam H. Draper, Jr. was free to finance the
 |  International Eugenics Congress as a "Supporting Member."
 |  [26]  Was he using his own income as a Thyssen trust banker?
 |  Or did the funds come from Dillon Read corporate accounts,
 |  perhaps to be written off income tax as "expenses for German
 |  project: race purification"? Draper helped select Ernst
 |  Rudin as chief of the world eugenics movement, who used his
 |  office to promote what he called Adolf Hitler's "holy,
 |  national and international racial hygienic mission." [27] 
 |
 |  W.S. Farish was publicly exposed in 1942, humiliated and
 |  destroyed. Just before Farish died, Prescott Bush's Nazi
 |  banking office was quietly seized and shut down. But
 |  Prescott's close friend and partner in the Thyssen-Hitler
 |  business, William H. Draper, Jr., "neither died nor moved
 |  out of German affairs." Draper listed himself as a director
 |  of the German Credit and Investment Corp. through 1942, and
 |  the firm was not liquidated until November 1943. [28]  But a
 |  war was on. Draper, a colonel from previous military
 |  service, went off to the Pacific theater and became a
 |  general.
 |
 |  General Draper apparently had a hobby: magic -- illusions,
 |  sleight of hand, etc. -- and he was a member of the Society
 |  of American Magicians. This is not irrelevant to his
 |  subsequent career.
 |
 |  The Nazi regime surrendered in May 1945. In July 1945,
 |  General Draper was called to Europe by the American military
 |  government authorities in Germany. Draper was appointed head
 |  of the Economics Division of the U.S. Control Commission. He
 |  was assigned to take apart the Nazi corporate cartels. There
 |  is an astonishing but perfectly logical rationale to this --
 |  Draper knew a lot about the subject! General Draper, who had
 |  spent about 15 years financing and managing the dirtiest of
 |  the Nazi enterprises, was now authorized to decide "who was
 |  exposed, who lost and who kept his business, and in
 |  practical effect, who was prosecuted for war crimes." [29] 
 |
 |  (Draper was not unique within the postwar occupation
 |  government. Consider the case of John J. McCloy, U.S.
 |  Military Governor and High Commissioner of Germany,
 |  1949-1952. Under instructions from his Wall Street law firm,
 |  McCloy had lived for a year in Italy, serving as an adviser
 |  to the fascist government of Benito Mussolini. An intimate
 |  collaborator of the Harriman/Bush bank, McCloy had sat in
 |  Adolf Hitler's box at the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin, at
 |  the invitation of Nazi chieftains Rudolf Hess and Hermann
 |  Goering.) [30] 
 |
 |  William H. Draper, Jr., as a "conservative," was paired with
 |  the "liberal" U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau in a
 |  vicious game. Morgenthau demanded that Germany be utterly
 |  destroyed as a nation, that its industry be dismantled and
 |  it be reduced to a purely rural country. As the economic
 |  boss in 1945 and 1946, Draper "protected" Germany from the
 |  Morgenthau Plan ... but at a price.
 |
 |  Draper and his colleagues demanded that Germany and the
 |  world accept the "collective guilt of the German people" as
 |  "the "explanation for the rise of Hitler's New Order, and
 |  the Nazi war crimes. This, of course, was rather convenient
 |  for General Draper himself, as it was for the Bush family.
 |  It is still convenient decades later, allowing Prescott's
 |  son, President Bush, to lecture Germany on the danger of
 |  Hitlerism. Germans are too slow, it seems, to accept his New
 |  World Order.
 |
 |  After several years of government service (often working
 |  directly for Averell Harriman in the North Atlantic
 |  Alliance), Draper was appointed in 1958 chairman of a
 |  committee which was to advise President Dwight Eisenhower on
 |  the proper course for U.S. military aid to other countries.
 |  At that time, Prescott Bush was a U.S. senator from
 |  Connecticut, a confidential friend and golf partner with
 |  National Security Director Gordon Gray, and an important
 |  golf partner with Dwight Eisenhower as well. Prescott's old
 |  lawyer from the Nazi days, John Foster Dulles, was Secretary
 |  of State, and his brother Allen Dulles, formerly of the
 |  Schroder bank, was head of the CIA.
 |
 |  This friendly environment emboldened our General Draper to
 |  pull off a stunt with his military aid advisery committee.
 |  He changed the subject under study. The following year, the
 |  Draper committee recommended that the U.S. government react
 |  to the supposed threat of the "population explosion" by
 |  formulating plans to depopulate the poorer countries. The
 |  growth of the world's non-white population, he proposed,
 |  should be regarded as dangerous to the national security of
 |  the United States! [31] 
 |
 |  President Eisenhower rejected the recommendation. But in the
 |  next decade, General Draper founded the "Population Crisis
 |  Committee" and the "Draper Fund," joining with the
 |  Rockefeller and DuPont families to promote eugenics as
 |  "population control." The administration of President Lyndon
 |  Johnson, advised by Draper on the subject, began financing
 |  birth control in the tropical countries through the Agency
 |  for International Development.
 |
 |  General William Draper was George Bush's guru on the
 |  population question. [32]  But there was also Draper's money
 |  -- from that uniquely horrible source -- and Draper's
 |  connections on Wall Street and abroad. Draper's son and
 |  heir, William H. Draper III, was co-chairman for finance
 |  (chief of fundraising) of the Bush-for-President national
 |  campaign organization in 1980. With George Bush in the White
 |  House, the younger Draper heads up the depopulation
 |  activities of the United Nations throughout the world.
 |
 |  Draper was vice president of Dillon Read until 1953. During
 |  the 1950s and 1960s, the chief executive there was Frederic
 |  Brandi, the German who was Draper's co-director for the Nazi
 |  investments and his personal contact man with the Nazi Steel
 |  Trust. Nicholas Brady was Brandi's partner from 1954, and
 |  replaced him as the firm's chief executive in 1971. Nicholas
 |  Brady, who knows where all the bodies are buried, was
 |  chairman of his friend George Bush's 1980 election campaign
 |  in New Jersey, and has been United States Treasury Secretary
 |  throughout Bush's presidency. [33] 
 |
 |  Bush and Grey
 |
 |  The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) says
 |  that surgical sterilization is the Bush administration's
 |  "first choice" method of population reduction in the Third
 |  World. [34] 
 |
 |  The United Nations Population Fund claims that 37 percent of
 |  contraception users in Ibero-America and the Caribbean have
 |  already been surgically sterilized. In a 1991 report,
 |  William H. Draper III's U.N. agency asserts that 254 million
 |  couples will be surgically sterilized over the course of the
 |  1990s; and that if present trends continue, 80 percent of
 |  the women in Puerto Rico and Panama will be surgically
 |  sterilized. [35] 
 |
 |  The U.S. government pays directly for these sterilizations.
 |
 |  Mexico is first among targeted nations, on a list which was
 |  drawn up in July 1991, at a USAID str ategy session. India
 |  and Brazil are second and third priorities, respectively.
 |
 |  On contract with the Bush administration, U.S. personnel are
 |  working from bases in Mexico to perform surgery on millions
 |  of Mexican men and women. The acknowledged strategy in this
 |  program is to sterilize those young adults who have not
 |  already completed their families.
 |
 |  George Bush has a rather deep-seated personal feeling about
 |  this project, in particular as it pits him against Pope John
 |  Paul II in Catholic countries such as Mexico. (See Chapter 4
 |  below, on the origin of a Bush-family grudge in this
 |  regard.)
 |
 |  The spending for birth control in the non-white countries is
 |  one of the few items that is headed upwards in the Bush
 |  administration budget. As its 1992 budget was being set,
 |  USAID said its Population Account would receive $300
 |  million, a 20 percent increase over the previous year.
 |  Within this project, a significant sum is spent on political
 |  and psychological manipulations of target nations, and
 |  rather blatant subversion of their religions and
 |  governments. [36] 
 |
 |  These activities might be expected to cause serious
 |  objections from the victimized nationalities, or from U.S.
 |  taxpayers, especially if the program is somehow given
 |  widespread publicity.
 |
 |  Quite aside from moral considerations, "legal" questions
 |  would naturally arise, which could be summed up: "How does
 |  George Bush think he can get away with this?"
 |
 |  In this matter the President has expert advice. Mr.
 |  (Clayland) Boyden Gray has been counsel to George Bush since
 |  the 1980 election. As chief legal officer in the White
 |  House, Boyden Gray can walk the President through the
 |  dangers and complexities of waging such unusual warfare
 |  against Third World populations. Gray knows how these things
 |  are done.
 |
 |  When Boyden Gray was four and five years old, his father
 |  organized the pilot project for the present worldwide
 |  sterilization program, from the Gray family household in
 |  North Carolina.
 |
 |  It started in 1946. The eugenics movement was looking for a
 |  way to begin again in America.
 |
 |  Nazi death camps such as Auschwitz had just then seared the
 |  conscience of the world. The Sterilization League of
 |  America, which had changed its name during the war to
 |  "Birthright, Inc.," wanted to start up again. First they had
 |  to overcome public nervousness about crackpots proposing to
 |  eliminate "inferior" and "defective" people. The League
 |  tried to surface in Iowa, but had to back off because of
 |  negative publicity: a little boy had recently been
 |  sterilized there and had died from the operation.
 |
 |  They decided on North Carolina, where the Gray family could
 |  play the perfect host. [37]  Through British imperial
 |  contacts, Boyden Gray's grandfather Bowman Gray had become
 |  principal owner of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. Boyden's
 |  father, Gordon Gray, had recently founded the Bowman Gray
 |  (memorial) Medical School in Winston-Salem, using his
 |  inherited cigarette stock shares. The medical school was
 |  already a eugenics center.
 |
 |  As the experiment began, Gordon Gray's great aunt, Alice
 |  Shelton Gray, who had raised him from childhood, was living
 |  in his household. Aunt Alice had founded the "Human
 |  Betterment League," the North Carolina branch of the
 |  national eugenical sterilization movement.
 |
 |  Aunt Alice was the official supervisor of the 1946-47
 |  experiment. Working under Miss Gray was Dr. Claude Nash
 |  Herndon, whom Gordon Gray had made assistant professor of
 |  "medical genetics" at Bowman Gray medical school.
 |
 |  Dr. Clarence Gamble, heir to the Proctor and Gamble soap
 |  fortune, was the sterilizers' national field operations
 |  chief.
 |
 |  The experiment worked as follows. "All children enrolled in
 |  the school district of Winston-Salem, N.C., were given a
 |  special "intelligence test." Those children who scored below
 |  a certain arbitrary low mark were then cut open and
 |  surgically sterilized."
 |
 |  We quote now from the official story of the project: "In
 |  Winston-Salem and in [nearby] Orange County, North Carolina,
 |  the [Sterilization League's] field committee had
 |  participated in testing projects to identify school age
 |  children who should be considered for sterilization. The
 |  project in Orange County was conducted by the University of
 |  North Carolina and wasfinanced by a 'Mr. Hanes,' a friend of
 |  Clarence Gamble and supporter of the field work project in
 |  North Carolina. The Winston-Salem project was also financed
 |  by Hanes. ["Hanes" was underwear mogul James Gordon Hanes, a
 |  trustee of Bowman Gray Medical School and treasurer of Alice
 |  Gray's group]....
 |
 |  "The medical school had a long history of interest in
 |  eugenics and had compiled extensive histories of families
 |  carrying inheritable disease. In 1946, Dr. C. Nash Herndon
 |  ... made a statement to the press on the use of
 |  sterilization to prevent the spread of inheritable
 |  diseases....
 |
 |  "The first step after giving the mental tests to grade
 |  school children was to interpret and make public the
 |  results. In Orange County the results indicated that three
 |  percent of the school age children were either insane or
 |  feebleminded.... [Then] the field committee hired a social
 |  worker to review each case ... and to present any cases in
 |  which sterilization was indicated to the State Eugenics
 |  Board, which under North Carolina law had the authority to
 |  order sterilization...."
 |
 |  Race science experimenter Dr. Claude Nash Herndon provided
 |  more details in an interview in 1990: [38] 
 |
 |  "Alice Gray was the general supervisor of the project. She
 |  and Hanes sent out letters promoting the program to the
 |  commissioners of all 100 counties in North Carolina.... What
 |  did I do? Nothing besides riding herd on the whole thing!
 |  The social workers operated out of my office. I was at the
 |  time also director of outpatient services at North Carolina
 |  Baptist Hospital. We would see the [targeted] parents and
 |  children there.... I.Q. tests were run on all the children
 |  in the Winston-Salem public school system. Only the ones who
 |  scored really low [were targeted for sterilization], the
 |  real bottom of the barrel, like below 70.
 |
 |  "Did we do sterilizations on young children? Yes. This was a
 |  relatively minor operation.... It was usually not until the
 |  child was eight or ten years old. For the boys, you just
 |  make an incision and tie the tube.... We more often
 |  performed the operation on girls than with boys. Of course,
 |  you have to cut open the abdomen, but again, it is
 |  relatively minor."
 |
 |  Dr. Herndon remarked coolly that "we had a very good
 |  relationship with the press" for the project. This is not
 |  surprising, since Gordon Gray owned the "Winston-Salem
 |  Journal," the "Twin City Sentinel," and radio station WSJS.
 |
 |  In 1950 and 1951, John Foster Dulles, then chairman of the
 |  Rockefeller Foundation, led John D. Rockefeller III on a
 |  series of world tours, focusing on the need to stop the
 |  expansion of the non-white populations. In November 1952,
 |  Dulles and Rockefeller set up the Population Council, with
 |  tens of millions of dollars from the Rockefeller family.
 |
 |  At that point, the American Eugenics Society, still cautious
 |  from the recent bad publicity vis-a-vis Hitler, left its old
 |  headquarters at Yale University. The Society moved its
 |  headquarters into the office of the Population Council, and
 |  the two groups melded together. The long-time secretary of
 |  the Eugenics Society, Frederick Osborne, became the first
 |  president of the Population Council. The Gray family's
 |  child-sterilizer, Dr. C. Nash Herndon, became president of
 |  the American Eugenics Society in 1953, as its work expanded
 |  under Rockefeller patronage.
 |
 |  Meanwhile, the International Planned Parenthood Federation
 |  was founded in London, in the offices of the British
 |  Eugenics Society.
 |
 |  The undead enemy from World War II, renamed "Population
 |  Control," had now been revived.
 |
 |  George Bush was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in
 |  1972, when with prodding from Bush and his friends, the
 |  United States Agency for International Development first
 |  made an official contract with the old Sterilization League
 |  of America. The league had changed its name twice again, and
 |  was now called the "Association for Voluntary Surgical
 |  Contraception." The U.S. government began paying the old
 |  fascist group to ster ilize non-whites in foreign countries.
 |
 |  The Gray family experiment had succeeded.
 |
 |  In 1988, the U.S. Agency for International Development
 |  signed its latest contract with the old Sterilization League
 |  (a.k.a. "Association for Voluntary Sterilization"),
 |  committing the U.S. government to spend $80 million over
 |  five years.
 |
 |  Having gotten away with sterilizing several hundred North
 |  Carolina school children, "not usually less than eight to
 |  ten years old," the identical group is now authorized by
 |  President Bush to do it to 58 countries in Asia, Africa, and
 |  Ibero-America. The group modestly claims it has directly
 |  sterilized only 2 million people, with 87 percent of the
 |  bill paid by U.S. taxpayers.
 |
 |  Meanwhile, Dr. Clarence Gamble, Boyden Gray's favorite soap
 |  manufacturer, formed his own "Pathfinder Fund" as a
 |  split-off from the Sterlization League. Gamble's Pathfinder
 |  Fund, with additional millions from USAID, concentrates on
 |  penetration of local social groups in the non-white
 |  countries, to break down psychological resistance to the
 |  surgical sterilization teams.
 |
 |  Notes
 |
 |  1. Phyllis Tilson Piotrow, "World Population Crisis: The
 |  United States Response" (New York: Praeger Publishers,
 |  1973), "Forward" by George H.W. Bush, pp. vii-viii.
 |
 |  2. Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" (Boston, Houghton Mifflin
 |  Company, 1971), p. 404.
 |
 |  3. "The Ten Richest People in Houston," in "Houston Post
 |  Magazine," March 11, 1984. "$150 milion to $250 million from
 |  ... inheritance, plus subsequent investments ... chief heir
 |  to a family fortune in oil stock.... As to his financial
 |  interests, he is ... coy. He once described one of his
 |  businesses as a company that 'invests in and oversees a lot
 |  of smaller companies ... in a lot of foreign countries.'|"
 |
 |  4. The announcements were made in testimony before a Special
 |  Committee of the U.S. Senate Investigating the National
 |  Defense Program. The hearings on Standard Oil were held
 |  March 5, 24, 26, 27, 31, and April 1, 2, 3 and 7, 1942.
 |  Available on microfiche, law section, Library of Congress.
 |  See also "New York Times," March 26 and March 27, 1942, and
 |  "Washington Evening Star," March 26 and March 27, 1942.
 |
 |  5. "Ibid.," Exhibit No. 368, printed on pp. 4584-87 of the
 |  hearing record. See also Charles Higham, "Trading With The
 |  Enemy" (New York: Delacorte Press, 1983), p. 36.
 |
 |  6. Confidential memorandum from U.S. Embassy, Berlin, "op.
 |  cit.," chapter 2. Sir Henri Deterding was among the most
 |  notorious pro-Nazis of the early war period.
 |
 |  7. See sections on Prescott Bush in Darwin Payne,
 |  "Initiative in Energy: Dresser Industries, Inc." (New York:
 |  Distributed by Simon and Schuster, 1979) (published by the
 |  Dresser Company).
 |
 |  8. William Stamps Farish obituary, "New York Times," Nov.
 |  30, 1942.
 |
 |  9. "A Decade of Progress in Eugenics: Scientific Papers of
 |  the Third International Congress of Eugenics held at
 |  American Museum of Natural History New York, August 21-23,
 |  1932." (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins Company, September,
 |  1934).
 |
 |  The term "eugenics" is taken from the Greek to signify "good
 |  birth" or "well-born," as in aristocrat. Its basic
 |  assumption is that those who are not "well-born" should not
 |  exist.
 |
 |  10. See among other such letters, George Herbert Walker, 39
 |  Broadway, N.Y., to W. A. Harriman, London, February 21,
 |  1925, in W.A. Harriman papers.
 |
 |  11. Averell Harriman to Dr. Charles B. Davenport, President,
 |  The International Congress of Eugenics, Cold Spring Harbor,
 |  L.I., N.Y.:
 |
 |  January 21, 1932
 |
 |  Dear Dr. Davenport:
 |
 |  I will be only too glad to put you in touch with the
 |  Hamburg-American Line .. they may be able to co-operate in
 |  making suggestions which will keep the expenses to a
 |  minimum. I have referred your letter to Mr. Emil Lederer [of
 |  the Hamburg-Amerika executive board in New York] with the
 |  request that he communicate with you.
 |
 |  Davenport to Mr. W.A. Harriman, 59 Wall Street, New York,
 |  N.Y.
 |
 |  January 23, 1932
 |
 |  Dear Mr. Harriman:
 |
 |  Thank you very much for your kind letter of January 21st and
 |  the action you took which has resulted at once in a letter
 |  from Mr. Emil Lederer. This letter will serve as a starting
 |  point for correspondence, which I hope will enable more of
 |  our German colleagues to come to America on the occasion of
 |  the congresses of eugenics and genetics, than otherwise.
 |
 |  Congressional hearings in 1934 established that
 |  Hamburg-Amerika routinely provided free transatlantic
 |  passage for those carrying out Nazi propaganda chores. See
 |  "Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and
 |  Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities," "op.
 |  cit.," chapter 2.
 |
 |  12. Alexis Carrel, "Man the Unknown" (New York: Halcyon
 |  House, published by arrangement with Harper & Brothers,
 |  1935), pp. 318-19.
 |
 |  The battle cry of the New Order was sounded in 1935 with the
 |  publication of "Man the Unknown," by Dr. Alexis Carrel of
 |  the Rockefeller Institute in New York. This Nobel
 |  Prize-winner said "enormous sums are now required to
 |  maintain prisons and insane asylums.... Why do we preserve
 |  these useless and harmful beings? This fact must be squarely
 |  faced. Why should society not dispose of the criminals and
 |  the insane in a more economical manner? ... The community
 |  must be protected against troublesome and dangerous
 |  elements.... Perhaps prisons should be abolished.... The
 |  conditioning of the petty criminal with the whip, or some
 |  more scientific procedure, followed by a short stay in
 |  hospital, would probably suffice to insure order.
 |  [Criminals, including those] who have ... misled the public
 |  on important matters, should be humanely and economically
 |  disposed of in small euthanasic institutions supplied with
 |  proper gases. A similar treatment could be advantageously
 |  applied to the insane, guilty of criminal acts."
 |
 |  Carrel claimed to have transplanted the head of a dog to
 |  another dog and kept it alive for quite some time.
 |
 |  13. Bernhard Schreiber, "The Men Behind Hitler: A German
 |  Warning to the World," France: La Hay-Mureaux, ca. 1975),
 |  English language edition supplied by H. & P. Tadeusz, 369
 |  Edgewere Road, London W2. A copy of this book is now held by
 |  Union College Library, Syracuse, N.Y.
 |
 |  14. Higham, "op. cit.," p. 35.
 |
 |  15. Engagement announced Feb. 10, 1939, "New York Times," p.
 |  20. See also "Directory of Directors" for New York City,
 |  1930s and 1940s.
 |
 |  16. Higham, "op. cit.," pp. 20, 22 and other references to
 |  Schroeder and Lindemann.
 |
 |  Anthony Sutton, "Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler" (Seal
 |  Beach: '76 Press, 1976). Sutton is also a good source on the
 |  Harrimans.
 |
 |  17. "Washington Evening Star," March 27, 1942, p. 1.
 |
 |  18. Higham, "op. cit." p. 50.
 |
 |  19. "Ibid.," p. 48.
 |
 |  20. "Washington Post," April 29, 1990, p. F4. Higham, "op.
 |  cit.," pp. 52-53.
 |
 |  21. Zapata annual reports, 1950s-1960s, Library of Congress
 |  microforms.
 |
 |  22. See "Congressional Record" for Bush speech in the House
 |  of Representatives, Sept. 4, 1969. Bush inserted in the
 |  record the testimony given before his Task Force on August
 |  5, 1969.
 |
 |  23. Sobel, "op. cit.," pp. 92-111. See also Boyle, "op.
 |  cit.," chapter 1, concerning the Morgan-led Dawes Committee
 |  of Germany's foreign creditors.
 |
 |  Like Harriman, Dillon used the Schroeder and Warburg banks
 |  to strike his German bargains. All Dillon Read & Co. affairs
 |  in Germany were supervised by J.P. Morgan & Co. partner
 |  Thomas Lamont, and were authorized by Bank of England
 |  Governor Montagu Norman.
 |
 |  24. See "Poor's Register of Directors and Executives," (New
 |  York: Poor's Publishing Company, late 1920s, '30s and '40s).
 |  See also "Standard Corporation Records" (New York: Standard
 |  & Poor), 1935 edition pp. 2571-25, and 1938 edition pp.
 |  7436-38, for description and history of the German Credit
 |  and Investment Corporation. For Frederic Brandi, See also
 |  Sobel, "op. cit.," p. 213-214.
 |
 |  25. Sobel, "op. cit.," pp. 180, 186. Ivy Lee had been hired
 |  to improve the Rockefeller family image, particularly
 |  difficult after their 1914 massacre of striking miners and
 |  pregnant women in Ludlow, Colorado. Lee got old John D.
 |  Rockefeller to pass out dimes to poor people lined up at his
 |  porch.
 |
 |  26. Third International Eugenics Congress papers "op. cit.,"
 |  footnote 7, p. 512, "Supporting Members."
 |
 |  27. Schreiber, "op. cit.," p. 160. The Third Int. Eugenics
 |  Congress papers, p. 526, lists the officers of the
 |  International Federation as of publication date in
 |  September, 1934. Rudin is listed as president -- a year
 |  after he has written the sterilizationlaw for Hitler.
 |
 |  28. "Directory of Directors for New York City," 1942.
 |  Interview with Nancy Bowles, librarian of Dillon Read & Co.
 |
 |  29. Higham, "op. cit.," p. 129, 212-15, 219-23.
 |
 |  30. Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, "The Wise Men: Six
 |  Friends and the World They Made -- Acheson, Bohlen,
 |  Harriman, Kennan, Lovett, McCloy" (New York: Simon and
 |  Schuster, 1986), pp. 122, 305.
 |
 |  31. Piotrow, "op. cit.," pp. 36-42.
 |
 |  32. "Ibid.," p. viii. "As chairman of the special Republican
 |  Task Force on Population and Earth Resources, I was
 |  impressed by the arguments of William H. Draper, Jr....
 |  General Draper continues to lead through his tireless work
 |  for the U.N. Population Fund."
 |
 |  33. Sobel, "op. cit.," pp. 298, 354.
 |
 |  34. Interview July 16, 1991, with Joanne Grossi, an official
 |  with the USAID's Population Office.
 |
 |  35. Dr. Nafis Sadik, "The State of World Population," 1991,
 |  New York, United Nations Population Fund.
 |
 |  36. See "User's Guide to the Office of Population," 1991,
 |  Office of Population, Bureau for Science and Technology,
 |  United States Agency for International Development.
 |  Available from S&T/POP, Room 811 SA-18, USAID, Washington
 |  D.C. 20523-1819.
 |
 |  37. "History of the Association for Voluntary Sterilization
 |  [formerly Sterilization League of America], 1935-64," thesis
 |  submitted to the faculty of the graduate school of the
 |  University of Minnesota by William Ray Van Essendelft,
 |  March, 1978, available on microfilm, Library of Congress.
 |  This is the official history, written with full cooperation
 |  of the Sterilization League.
 |
 |  38. Interview with Dr. C. Nash Herndon, June 20, 1990.
 |
 |
 |  CHAPTER 4: "THE CENTER OF POWER IS IN WASHINGTON"
 |
 |
 |  Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. 59 Wall Street, New York Cable
 |  Address "Shipley-New York" Business Established 1818
 |
 |  Private Bankers
 |
 |  September 5, 1944
 |
 |  The Honorable W. A. Harriman American Ambassador to the
 |  U.S.S.R. American Embassy, Moscow, Russia
 |
 |  Dear Averell:
 |
 |  Thinking that possibly Bullitt's article in the recent issue
 |  of "LIFE" may not have come to your attention, I have
 |  clipped it and am sending it to you, feeling that it will
 |  interest you.
 |
 |  At present writing all is well here.
 |
 |  With warm regards, I am, Sincerely yours,
 |
 |  Pres
 |
 |  'At present writing all is well here." Thus the ambassador
 |  to Russia was reassured by the managing partner of his firm,
 |  Prescott Bush. Only 22 and a half months before, the U.S.
 |  government had seized and shut down the Union Banking
 |  Corporation, which had been operated on behalf of Nazi
 |  Germany by Bush and the Harrimans. But that was behind them
 |  now, and they were safe. There would be no publicity on the
 |  Harriman-Bush sponsorship of Hitlerism.
 |
 |  Prescott's son George, the future U.S. President, was also
 |  safe. Three days before this note to Moscow was written,
 |  George Bush had parachuted from a Navy bomber airplane over
 |  the Pacific Ocean, killing his two crew members when the
 |  unpiloted plane crashed.
 |
 |  Five months later, in February 1945, Prescott's boss Averell
 |  Harriman escorted President Franklin Roosevelt to the
 |  fateful summit meeting with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin at
 |  Yalta. In April Roosevelt died. The agreement reached at
 |  Yalta, calling for free elections in Poland once the war
 |  ended, was never enforced.
 |
 |  Over the next eight years (1945 through 1952), Prescott Bush
 |  was Harriman's anchor in the New York financial world. The
 |  increasingly powerful Mr. Harriman and his allies gave
 |  Eastern Europe over to Soviet dictatorship. A Cold War was
 |  then undertaken, to "counterbalance" the Soviets.
 |
 |  This British-inspired strategy paid several nightmarish
 |  dividends. Eastern Europe was to remain enslaved. Germany
 |  was "permanently" divided. Anglo-American power was jointly
 |  exercised over the non-Soviet "Free World." The confidential
 |  functions of the British and American governments were
 |  merged. The Harriman clique took possession of the U.S.
 |  national security apparatus, and in doing so, they opened
 |  the gate and let the Bush family in.
 |
 |  - * * * -
 |
 |  Following his services to Germany's Nazi Party, Averell
 |  Harriman spent several years mediating between the British,
 |  American, and Soviet governments inthe war to stop the
 |  Nazis. He was ambassador to Moscow from 1943 to 1946.
 |
 |  President Harry Truman, whom Harriman and his friends held
 |  in amused contempt, appointed Harriman U.S. ambassador to
 |  Britain in 1946.
 |
 |  Harriman was at lunch with former British Prime Minister
 |  Winston Churchill one day in 1946, when Truman telephoned.
 |  Harriman asked Churchill if he should accept Truman's offer
 |  to come back to the U.S. as Secretary of Commerce. According
 |  to Harriman's account, Churchill told him: "Absolutely. The
 |  center of power is in Washington." [1] 
 |
 |  Jupiter Island
 |
 |  The reorganization of the American government after World
 |  War II -- the creation of the U.S. Central Intelligence
 |  Agency along British lines, for example -- had devastating
 |  consequences. We are concerned here with only certain
 |  aspects of that overall transformation, those matters of
 |  policy and family which gave shape to the life and mind of
 |  George Bush, and gave him access to power.
 |
 |  It was in these postwar years that George Bush attended Yale
 |  University, and was inducted into the Skull and Bones
 |  society. The Bush family's home at that time was in
 |  Greenwich, Connecticut. But it was just then that George's
 |  parents, Prescott and Dorothy Walker Bush, were wintering in
 |  a peculiar spot in Florida, a place that is excluded from
 |  mention in literature originating from Bush circles.
 |
 |  Certain national news accounts early in 1991 featured the
 |  observations on President Bush's childhood by his elderly
 |  mother Dorothy. She was said to be a resident of Hobe Sound,
 |  Florida. More precisely, the President's mother lived in a
 |  hyper-security arrangement created a half-century earlier by
 |  Averell Harriman, adjacent to Hobe Sound. Its correct name
 |  is Jupiter Island.
 |
 |  During his political career, George Bush has claimed many
 |  different "home" states, including Texas, Maine,
 |  Massachusetts, and Connecticut. It has not been expedient
 |  for him to claim Florida, though that state has a vital link
 |  to his role in the world, as we shall see. And George Bush's
 |  home base in Florida, throughout his adult life, has been
 |  Jupiter Island.
 |
 |  The unique, bizarre setup on Jupiter Island began in 1931,
 |  following the merger of W.A. Harriman and Co. with the
 |  British-American firm Brown Brothers.
 |
 |  The reader will recall Mr. Samuel Pryor, the "Merchant of
 |  Death." A partner with the Harrimans, Prescott Bush, George
 |  Walker, and Nazi boss Fritz Thyssen in banking and shipping
 |  enterprises, Sam Pryor remained executive committee chairman
 |  of Remington Arms. In this period, the Nazi private armies
 |  (SA and SS) were supplied with American arms -- most likely
 |  by Pryor and his company -- as they moved to overthrow the
 |  German republic. Such gun-running as an instrument of
 |  national policy would later become notorious in the
 |  "Iran-Contra" affair.
 |
 |  Sam Pryor's daughter Permelia married Yale graduate Joseph
 |  V. Reed on the last day of 1927. Reed immediately went to
 |  work for Prescott Bush and George Walker, as an apprentice
 |  at W.A. Harriman and Co.
 |
 |  During World War II, Joseph V. Reed had served in the
 |  "special services" section of the U.S. Army Signal Corps. A
 |  specialist in security, codes and espionage, Reed later
 |  wrote a book entitled "Fun with Cryptograms". [2] 
 |
 |  Sam Pryor had had property around Hobe Sound, Florida, for
 |  some time. In 1931, Joseph and Permelia Pryor Reed bought
 |  the entirety of Jupiter Island.
 |
 |  This is a typically beautiful Atlantic coast "barrier
 |  island," a half-mile wide and nine miles long. The middle of
 |  Jupiter Island lies just off Hobe Sound. The south bridge
 |  connects the island with the town of Jupiter, to the north
 |  of Palm Beach. It is about 90 minutes by auto from Miami --
 |  today, a few minutes by helicopter.
 |
 |  Early in 1991, a newspaper reporter asked a friend of the
 |  Bush family about security arrangements on Jupiter Island.
 |  He responded, "If you called up the White House, would they
 |  tell you h ow many security people they had? It's not that
 |  Jupiter Island is the White House, although he [George Bush]
 |  does come down frequently."
 |
 |  But for several decades before Bush was President, Jupiter
 |  Island had an ord inance requiring the registration and
 |  fingerprinting of all housekeepers, gardeners, and other
 |  non-residents working on the island. The Jupiter Island
 |  police department says that there are sensors in the two
 |  main roads that can track every automobile on the island. If
 |  a car stops in the street, the police will be there within
 |  one or two minutes. Surveillance is a duty of all employees
 |  of the Town of Jupiter Island. News reporters are to be
 |  prevented from visiting the island. [3] 
 |
 |  To create this astonishing private club, Joseph and Permelia
 |  Pryor Reed sold land only to those who would fit in.
 |  Permelia Reed was still the grande dame of the island when
 |  George Bush was inaugurated President in 1989. In
 |  recognition of the fact that the Reeds know where "all" the
 |  bodies are buried, President Bush appointed Permelia's son,
 |  Joseph V. Reed, Jr., chief of protocol for the U.S. State
 |  Dept., in charge of private arrangements with foreign
 |  dignitaries.
 |
 |  Averell Harriman made Jupiter Island a staging ground for
 |  his 1940s takeover of the U.S. national security apparatus.
 |  It was in that connection that the island became possibly
 |  the most secretive private place in America.
 |
 |  Let us briefly survey the neighborhood, back then in
 |  1946-48, to see some of the uses various of the residents
 |  had for the Harriman clique.
 |
 |  Residence on Jupiter Island
 |
 |     *  Jupiter Islander "Robert A. Lovett," [4] , Prescott
 |  Bush's partner at Brown Brothers Harriman, had been
 |  Assistant Secretary of War for Air from 1941 to 1945. Lovett
 |  was the leading American advocate of the policy of
 |  terror-bombing of civilians. He organized the Strategic
 |  Bombing Survey, carried out for the American and British
 |  governments by the staff of the Prudential Insurance
 |  Company, guided by London's Tavistock Psychiatric Clinic.
 |
 |  In the postwar period, Prescott Bush was associated with
 |  Prudential Insurance, one of Lovett's intelligence channels
 |  to the British secret services. Prescott was listed by
 |  Prudential as a director of the company for about two years
 |  in the early 1950s.
 |
 |  Their Strategic Bombing Survey failed to demonstrate any
 |  real military advantage accruing from such outrages as the
 |  fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany. But the Harrimanites
 |  nevertheless persisted in the advocacy of terror from the
 |  air. They glorified this as "psychological warfare," a part
 |  of the utopian military doctrine opposed to the views of
 |  military traditionalists such as Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
 |
 |  Robert Lovett later advised President Lyndon Johnson to
 |  terror-bomb Vietnam. President George Bush revived the
 |  doctrine with the bombing of civilian areas in Panama, and
 |  the destruction of Baghdad.
 |
 |  On October 22, 1945, Secretary of War Robert Patterson
 |  created the Lovett Committee, chaired by Robert A. Lovett,
 |  to advise the government on the post-World War II
 |  organization of U.S. intelligence activities. The existence
 |  of this committee was unknown to the public until an
 |  official CIA history was released from secrecy in 1989. But
 |  the CIA's author (who was President Bush's prep school
 |  history teacher; see chapter 5) gives no real details of the
 |  Lovett Committee's functioning, claiming: "The record of the
 |  testimony of the Lovett Committee, unfortunately, was not in
 |  the archives of the agency when this account was written."
 |  [5] 
 |
 |  The CIA's self-history does inform us of the advice that
 |  Lovett provided to the Truman cabinet, as the official War
 |  Department intelligence proposal.
 |
 |  Lovett decided that there should be a separate Central
 |  Intelligence Agency. The new agency would "consult" with the
 |  armed forces, but it must be the sole collecting agency in
 |  the field of foreign espionage and counterespionage. The new
 |  agency should have an independent budget, and its
 |  appropriations should be granted by Congress without public
 |  hearings.
 |
 |  Lovett appeared before the Secretaries of State, War, and
 |  Navy on November 14, 1945. He spoke highly of the FBI's work
 |  because it had "the best personality file in the world."
 |  Lovett said the FBI was expert at producing false documents,
 |  an art "which we developed so successfully during the war
 |  and at which we became outstandingly adept." Lovett pressed
 |  for a virtual resumption of the wartime Office of Strategic
 |  Services (OSS) in a new CIA.
 |
 |  U.S. military traditionalists centered around Gen. Douglas
 |  MacArthur opposed Lovett's proposal. The continuation of the
 |  OSS had been attacked at the end of the war on the grounds
 |  that the OSS was entirely under British control, and that it
 |  would constitute an American Gestapo. [6]  But the CIA was
 |  established in 1947 according to the prescription of Robert
 |  Lovett, of Jupiter Island.
 |
 |     *  "Charles Payson" and his wife, "Joan Whitney Payson,"
 |  were extended family members of Harriman's and business
 |  associates of the Bush family.
 |
 |  Joan's aunt, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, was a relative of
 |  the Harrimans. Gertrude's son, Cornelius Vanderbilt
 |  ("Sonny") Whitney, long-time chairman of Pan American
 |  Airways (Prescott was a Pan Am director), became assistant
 |  secretary of the U.S. Air Force in 1947. Sonny's wife Marie
 |  had divorced him and married Averell Harriman in 1930. Joan
 |  and Sonny's uncle, Air Marshal Sir Thomas Elmhirst, was
 |  director of intelligence for the British Air Force from 1945
 |  to 1947.
 |
 |  Joan's brother, John Hay ("Jock") Whitney, was to be
 |  ambassador to Great Britain from 1955 to 1961 ... when it
 |  would be vital for Prescott and George Bush to have such a
 |  friend. Joan's father, grandfather, and uncle were members
 |  of the Skull and Bones secret society.
 |
 |  Charles Payson organized a uranium refinery in 1948. Later,
 |  he was chairman of Vitro Corporation, makers of parts for
 |  submarine-launched ballistic missiles, equipment for
 |  frequency surveillance and torpedo guidance, and other
 |  subsurface weaponry.
 |
 |  Naval warfare has long been a preoccupation of the British
 |  Empire. British penetration of the U.S. Naval Intelligence
 |  service has been particularly heavy since the tenure of
 |  Joan's Anglophile grandfather, William C. Whitney, as
 |  secretary of the Navy for President Grover Cleveland. This
 |  traditional covert British orientation in the U.S. Navy,
 |  Naval Intelligence and the Navy's included service, the
 |  Marine Corps, forms a backdrop to the career of George Bush
 |  -- and to the whole neighborhood on Jupiter Island. Naval
 |  Intelligence maintained direct relations with gangster boss
 |  Meyer Lansky for Anglo-American political operations in Cuba
 |  during World War II, well before the establishment of the
 |  CIA. Lansky officially moved to Florida in 1953. [7] 
 |
 |     *  "George Herbert Walker, Jr." (Skull and Bones, 1927),
 |  was extremely close to his nephew George Bush, helping to
 |  sponsor his entry into the oil business in the 1950s. "Uncle
 |  Herbie" was also a partner of Joan Whitney Payson when they
 |  co-founded the New York Mets baseball team in 1960. His son,
 |  G.H. Walker III, was a Yale classmate of "Nicholas Brady"
 |  and Moreau D. Brown (Thatcher Brown's grandson), forming
 |  what was called the "Yale Mafia" on Wall Street.
 |
 |     *  "Walter S. Carpenter, Jr." had been chairman of the
 |  finance committee of the Du Pont Corporation (1930-40). In
 |  1933, Carpenter oversaw Du Pont's purchase of Remington Arms
 |  from Sam Pryor and the Rockefellers, and led Du Pont into
 |  partnership with the Nazi I.G. Farben company for the
 |  manufacture of explosives. Carpenter became Du Pont's
 |  president in 1940. His cartel with the Nazis was broken up
 |  by the U.S. government. Nevertheless, Carpenter remained Du
 |  Pont's president, as the company's technicians participated
 |  massively in the Manhattan Project to produce the first
 |  atomic bomb. He was chairman of Du Pont from 1948 to 1962,
 |  retaining high-level access to U.S. strategic activities.
 |
 |  Walter Carpenter and Prescott Bush were fellow activists in
 |  the Mental Hygiene Society. Originating at Yale University
 |  in 1908, the movement had been organized into the World
 |  Federation of Mental Health by Montague Norman, himself a
 |  frequen t mental patient, former Brown Brothers partner and
 |  Bank of England Governor. Norman had appointed as the
 |  federation's chairman, Brigadier John Rawlings Rees,
 |  director of the Tavistock Clinic, chief psychiatrist and
 |  psychological warfare expert for the British intelligence
 |  services. Prescott was a director of the society in
 |  Connecticut; Carpenter was a director in Delaware.
 |
 |     *  "Paul Mellon" was the leading heir to the Mellon
 |  fortune, and a long-time neighbor of Averell Harriman's in
 |  Middleburg, Virginia, as well as Jupiter Island, Florida.
 |  Paul's father, Andrew Mellon, U.S. treasury secretary
 |  1921-32, had approved the transactions of Harriman, Pryor,
 |  and Bush with the Warburgs and the Nazis. Paul Mellon's
 |  son-in-law, "David K.E. Bruce," worked in Prescott Bush's
 |  W.A. Harriman & Co. during the late 1920s; was head of the
 |  London branch of U.S. intelligence during World War II; and
 |  was Averell Harriman's Assistant Secretary of Commerce in
 |  1947-48. Mellon family money and participation would be
 |  instrumental in many domestic U.S. projects of the new
 |  Central Intelligence Agency.
 |
 |     *  "Carll Tucker" manufactured electronic guidance
 |  equipment for the Navy. With the Mellons, Tucker was an
 |  owner of South American oil properties. Mrs. Tucker was the
 |  great-aunt of "Nicholas Brady," later George Bush's
 |  Iran-Contra partner and U.S. treasury secretary. Their son
 |  Carll Tucker, Jr. (Skull and Bones, 1947), was among the 15
 |  Bonesmen who selected George Bush for induction in the class
 |  of 1948.
 |
 |     *  "C. Douglas Dillon" was the boss of William H. Draper,
 |  Jr. in the Draper-Prescott Bush-Fritz Thyssen Nazi banking
 |  scheme of the 1930s and 40s. His father, Clarence Dillon,
 |  created the Vereinigte Stahlwerke (Thyssen's German Steel
 |  Trust) in 1926. C. Douglas Dillon made "Nicholas Brady" the
 |  chairman of the Dillon Read firm in 1971 and himself
 |  continued as chairman of the Executive Committee. C. Douglas
 |  Dillon would be a vital ally of his neighbor Prescott Bush
 |  during the Eisenhower administration.
 |
 |     *  "Publisher Nelson Doubleday" headed his family's
 |  publishing firm, founded under the auspices of J.P. Morgan
 |  and other British Empire representatives. When George Bush's
 |  "Uncle Herbie" died, Doubleday took over as majority owner
 |  and chief executive of the New York Mets baseball team.
 |
 |  Some other specialized corporate owners had their place in
 |  Harriman's strange club.
 |
 |     *  "George W. Merck," chairman of Merck & Co., drug and
 |  chemical manufacturers, was director of the War Research
 |  Service: Merck was the official chief of all U.S. research
 |  into biological warfare from 1942 until at least the end of
 |  World War II. After 1944, Merck's organization was placed
 |  under the U.S. Chemical Warfare Service. His family firm in
 |  Germany and the United States was famous for its manufacture
 |  of morphine.
 |
 |     *  "James H. McGraw, Jr.," chairman of McGraw Hill
 |  Publishing Company, was a member of the advisory board to
 |  the U.S. Chemical Warfare Service and a member of the Army
 |  Ordnance Association Committee on Endowment.
 |
 |     *  "Fred H. Haggerson," chairman of Union Carbide Corp.,
 |  produced munitions, chemicals, and firearms.
 |
 |     *  "A.L. Cole" was useful to the Jupiter Islanders as an
 |  executive of "Readers Digest." In 1965, just after
 |  performing a rather dirty favor for George Bush [which will
 |  be discussed in a coming chapter -- ed.], Cole became
 |  chairman of the executive committee of the "Digest," the
 |  world's largest-circulation periodical.
 |
 |  >From the late 1940s, Jupiter Island has served as a center
 |  for the direction of covert action by the U.S. government
 |  and, indeed, for the covert management of the government.
 |  Jupiter Island will reappear later on, in our account of
 |  George Bush in the Iran-Contra affair.
 |
 |  ====== Target: Washington
 |
 |  George Bush graduated from Yale in 1948. He soon entered the
 |  family's Dresser oil supply concern in Texas. We shall now
 |  briefly describe the forces that descended on Washington,
 |  D.C. during those years when Bush, with the assistance of
 |  family and powerful friends, was becoming "established in
 |  business on his own."
 |
 |  From 1948 to 1950, Prescott Bush's boss Averell Harriman was
 |  U.S. "ambassador-at-large" to Europe. He was a non-military
 |  "Theater Commander," the administrator of the
 |  multi-billion-dollar Marshall Plan, participating in all
 |  military/strategic decision-making by the Anglo-American
 |  alliance.
 |
 |  The U.S. secretary of defense, James Forrestal, had become a
 |  problem to the Harrimanites. Forrestal had long been an
 |  executive at Dillon Read on Wall Street. But in recent years
 |  he had gone astray. As secretary of the navy in 1944,
 |  Forrestal proposed the racial integration of the Navy. As
 |  defense secretary, he pressed for integration in the armed
 |  forces and this eventually became the U.S. policy.
 |
 |  Forrestal opposed the utopians' strategy of appeasement
 |  coupled with brinkmanship. He was simply opposed to
 |  communism. On March 28, 1949, Forrestal was forced out of
 |  office and flown on an Air Force plane to Florida. He was
 |  taken to "Hobe Sound" (Jupiter Island), where Robert Lovett
 |  and an army psychiatrist dealt with him. [8] 
 |
 |  He was flown back to Washington, locked in Walter Reed Army
 |  Hospital and given insulin shock treatments for alleged
 |  "mental exhaustion." He was denied all visitors except his
 |  estranged wife and children -- his son had been Averell
 |  Harriman's aide in Moscow. On May 22, Forrestal's body was
 |  found, his bathrobe cord tied tightly around his neck, after
 |  he had plunged from a sixteenth-story hospital window. The
 |  chief psychiatrist called the death a suicide even before
 |  any investigation was started. The results of the Army's
 |  inquest were kept secret. Forrestal's diaries were
 |  published, 80 percent deleted, after a year of direct
 |  government censorship and rewriting.
 |
 |  - * * * -
 |
 |  North Korean troops invaded South Korea in June 1950, after
 |  U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson (Harriman's very close
 |  friend) publicly specified that Korea would not be defended.
 |  With a new war on, Harriman came back to serve as President
 |  Truman's adviser, to "oversee national security affairs."
 |
 |  Harriman replaced Clark Clifford, who had been special
 |  counsel to Truman. Clifford, however, remained close to
 |  Harriman and his partners as they gained more and more
 |  power. Clifford later wrote about his cordial relations with
 |  Prescott Bush:
 |
 |  "Prescott Bush ... had become one of my frequent golfing
 |  partners in the fifties, and I had both liked and respected
 |  him.... Bush had a splendid singing voice, and particularly
 |  loved quartet singing. In the fifties, he organized a
 |  quartet that included my daughter Joyce.... They would sing
 |  in Washington, and, on occasion, he invited the group to
 |  Hobe Sound in Florida to perform. His son [George], though,
 |  had never struck me as a strong or forceful person. In 1988,
 |  he presented himself successfully to the voters as an
 |  outsider -- no small trick for a man whose roots wound
 |  through Connecticut, Yale, Texas oil, the CIA, a patrician
 |  background, wealth, and the Vice Presidency." [9] 
 |
 |  With Forrestal out of the way, Averell Harriman and Dean
 |  Acheson drove to Leesburg, Virginia, on July 1, 1950, to
 |  hire the British-backed U.S. Gen. George C. Marshall as
 |  secretary of defense. At the same time, Prescott's partner,
 |  Robert Lovett, himself became assistant secretary of
 |  defense.
 |
 |  Lovett, Marshall, Harriman, and Acheson went to work to
 |  unhorse Gen. Douglas MacArthur, commander of U.S. forces in
 |  Asia. MacArthur kept Wall Street's intelligence agencies
 |  away from his command, and favored real independence for the
 |  non-white nations. Lovett called for MacArthur's firing on
 |  March 23, 1951, citing MacArthur's insistence on defeating
 |  the Communist Chinese invaders in Korea. MacArthur's famous
 |  message, that there was "no substitute for victory," was
 |  read in Congress on April 5; MacArthur was fired on April
 |  10, 1951.
 |
 |  That September, Robert Lovett replaced Marshall as secretary
 |  of defense. Meanwhile, Harriman was named director of the
 |  Mutual Security Agency, making him the U.S. chief of the
 |  Anglo-American military alliance. By now, Brown Brothers
 |  Harriman was everything but commander-in-chief.
 |
 |  - * * * -
 |
 |  These were, of course, exciting times for the Bush family,
 |  whose wagon was hitched to the financial gods of Olympus --
 |  to Jupiter, that is.
 |
 |  Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. 59 Wall Street, New York 5,
 |  N.Y. Business Established 1818 Cable Address
 |  "Shipley-NewYork"
 |
 |  Private Bankers
 |
 |  April 2, 1951
 |
 |  The Honorable W.A. Harriman, The White House, Washington,
 |  D.C.
 |
 |  Dear Averell:
 |
 |  I was sorry to miss you in Washington but appreciate your
 |  cordial note. I shall hope for better luck another time.
 |
 |  I hope you had a good rest at Hobe Sound.
 |
 |  With affectionate regard, I am,
 |
 |  Sincerely yours,
 |
 |  Pres [signed]
 |
 |  Prescott S. Bush
 |
 |  A central focus of the Harriman security regime in
 |  Washington (1950-53) was the organization of covert
 |  operations, and "psychological warfare." Harriman, together
 |  with his lawyers and business partners, Allen and John
 |  Foster Dulles, wanted the government's secret services to
 |  conduct extensive propaganda campaigns and mass-psychology
 |  experiments within the U.S.A., and paramilitary campaigns
 |  abroad. This would supposedly ensure a stable world-wide
 |  environment favorable to Anglo-American financial and
 |  political interests.
 |
 |  The Harriman security regime created the Psychological
 |  Strategy Board (PSB) in 1951. The man appointed director of
 |  the PSB, Gordon Gray, is familiar to the reader as the
 |  sponsor of the child sterilization experiments, carried out
 |  by the Harrimanite eugenics movement in North Carolina
 |  following World War II.
 |
 |  Gordon Gray was an avid Anglophile, whose father had gotten
 |  controlling ownership of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company
 |  through alliance with the British Imperial tobacco cartel's
 |  U.S. representatives, the Duke family of North Carolina.
 |  Gordon's brother, R.J. Reynolds chairman Bowman Gray Jr.,
 |  was also a naval intelligence officer, known around
 |  Washington as the "founder of operational intelligence."
 |  Gordon Gray became a close friend and political ally of
 |  Prescott Bush; and Gray's son became for Prescott's son,
 |  George, his lawyer and the shield of his covert policy.
 |
 |  But President Harry Truman, as malleable as he was,
 |  constituted an obstacle to the covert warriors. An insular
 |  Missouri politician vaguely favorable to the U.S.
 |  Constitution, he remained skeptical about secret service
 |  activities that reminded him of the Nazi Gestapo.
 |
 |  So, "covert operations" could not fully take off without a
 |  change of the Washington regime. And it was with the
 |  Republican Party that Prescott Bush was to get his turn.
 |
 |  Prescott Runs for Senate
 |
 |  Prescott had made his first attempt to enter national
 |  politics in 1950, as his partners took control of the levers
 |  of governmental power. Remaining in charge of Brown Brothers
 |  Harriman, he ran against Connecticut's William Benton for
 |  his seat in the U.S. Senate. (The race was actually for a
 |  two-year unexpired term, left empty by the death of the
 |  previous senator).
 |
 |  In those days, Wisconsin's drunken Senator Joseph R.
 |  McCarthy was making a circus-like crusade against communist
 |  influence in Washington. McCarthy attacked liberals and
 |  leftists, State Department personnel, politicians, and
 |  Hollywood figures. He generally left unscathed the Wall
 |  Street and London strategists who donated Eastern Europe and
 |  China to communist dictatorship -- like George Bush, their
 |  geopolitics was beyond left and right.
 |
 |  Prescott Bush had no public ties to the notorious Joe
 |  McCarthy, and appeared to be neutral about his crusade. But
 |  the Wisconsin senator had his uses. Joe McCarthy came into
 |  Connecticut three times that year to campaign for Bush and
 |  against the Democrats. Bush himself made charges of "Korea,
 |  Communism and Corruption" into a slick campaign phrase
 |  against Benton, which then turned up as a national
 |  Republican slogan.
 |
 |  The response was disappointing. Only small crowds turned out
 |  to hear Joe McCarthy, and Benton was not hurt. McCarthy's
 |  pro-Bush rally in New Haven, in a hall that seated 6,000,
 |  drew only 376 people. Benton joked on the radio that "200 of
 |  them were my spies."
 |
 |  Prescott Bush resigned from the Yale Board of Fellows for
 |  his campaign, and the board published a statement to the
 |  effect that the "Yale vote" should support Bush -- despite
 |  the fact that Benton was a Yale man, and in many ways
 |  identical in outlook to Bush. Yale's Whiffenpoof singers
 |  appeared regularly for Prescott's campaign. None of this was
 |  particularly effective, however, with the voting population.
 |  [10] 
 |
 |  Then Papa Bush ran into a completely unexpected problem. At
 |  that time, the old Harriman eugenics movement was centered
 |  at Yale University. Prescott Bush was a Yale trustee, and
 |  his former Brown Brothers Harriman partner, Lawrence Tighe,
 |  was Yale's treasurer. In that connection, a slight glimmer
 |  of the truth about the Bush-Harriman firm's Nazi activities
 |  now made its way into the campaign.
 |
 |  Not only was the American Eugenics Society itself
 |  headquartered at Yale, but all parts of this undead fascist
 |  movement had a busy home at Yale. The coercive psychiatry
 |  and sterilization advocates had made the Yale/New Haven
 |  Hospital and Yale Medical School their laboratories for
 |  hands-on practice in brain surgery and psychological
 |  experimentation. And the Birth Control League was there,
 |  which had long trumpeted the need for eugenical births --
 |  fewer births for parents with "inferior" bloodlines.
 |  Prescott's partner Tighe was a Connecticut director of the
 |  league, and the Connecticut league's medical advisor was the
 |  eugenics advocate, Dr. Winternitz of Yale Medical School.
 |
 |  Now in 1950, people who knew something about Prescott Bush
 |  knew that he had very unsavory roots in the eugenics
 |  movement. There were then, just after the anti-Hitler war,
 |  few open advocates of sterilization of "unfit" or
 |  "unnecessary" people. (That would be revived later, with the
 |  help of General Draper and his friend George Bush.) But the
 |  Birth Control League was public -- just about then it was
 |  changing its name to the euphemistic "Planned Parenthood."
 |
 |  Then, very late in the 1950 senatorial campaign, Prescott
 |  Bush was publicly exposed for being an activist in that
 |  section of the old fascist eugenics movement. Prescott Bush
 |  lost the election by about 1,000 out of 862,000 votes. He
 |  and his family blamed the defeat on the expose. The defeat
 |  was burned into the family's memory, leaving a bitterness
 |  and perhaps a desire for revenge.
 |
 |  In his foreword to a population control propaganda book,
 |  George Bush wrote about that 1950 election: "My own first
 |  awareness of birth control as a public policy issue came
 |  with a jolt in 1950 when my father was running for United
 |  States Senate in Connecticut. Drew Pearson, on the Sunday
 |  before Election day, 'revealed' that my father was involved
 |  with Planned Parenthod.... Many political observers felt a
 |  sufficient number of voters were swayed by his alleged
 |  contacts with the birth controllers to cost him the
 |  election...." [11] 
 |
 |  Prescott Bush gave a graphic description of these events in
 |  his "oral history" interview at Columbia University: "In the
 |  1950 campaign, when I ran against Benton, the very last
 |  week, Drew Pearson, famous columnist, was running a radio
 |  program at that time.... In this particular broadcast, just
 |  at the end of our campaign [Pearson said]: "I predict that
 |  Benton will retain his seat in the United States Senate,
 |  because it has just been made known that Prescott Bush, his
 |  opponent, is president of the Birth Control Society" or
 |  chairman, member of the board of directors, or something,
 |  "of the Birth Control Society. In this country, and of
 |  course with Connecticut's heavy Catholic population, and its
 |  laws against birth control ... this is going to be too much
 |  for Bush to rise above. Benton will be elected. I predict."
 |
 |  The next Sunday, they handed out, at these Catholic Churches
 |  in Waterbury and Torrington and Bridgeport, handbills,
 |  quoting Drew Pearson's statement on the radio about Prescott
 |  Bush, you see -- I predict. Well, my telephone started
 |  ringing that Sunday at home, and when I'd answer, or Dotty
 |  [Prescott's wife, George's mother] would answer -- "Is this
 |  true, what they say about Prescott Bush? This can't be true.
 |  Is it true?"
 |
 |  She'd say, "No, it isn't tru e." Of course, it wasn't true.
 |  But you never catch up with a thing like this -- the
 |  election's just day after tomorrow, you see? So there's no
 |  doubt, in the estimate of our political leaders, that this
 |  one thing cost me many thousand votes -- whether it was 1,
 |  3, 5 or 10 thousand we don't know, we  can't possibly tell,
 |  but it was enough. To have overcome that thousand vote, it
 |  would only have had to be 600 switch [sic].
 |
 |  [Mrs. Bush then corrected the timing in Prescott Bush's
 |  recollections.]
 |
 |  "I'd forgotten the exact sequence, but that was it.... The
 |  state then -- and I think still is -- probably about 55
 |  percent Catholic population, with all the Italian derivation
 |  people [sic], and Polish is very heavy, and the Catholic
 |  church is very dominant here, and the archbishop was death
 |  on this birth control thing. They fought repeal every time
 |  it came up in the legislature, and "we never did get rid of
 |  that prohibition until just a year or two ago," as I recall
 |  it [emphasis added]. [12] 
 |
 |  Prescott Bush was defeated, while the other Republican
 |  candidates fared well in Connecticut. He attributed his loss
 |  to the Catholic Church. After all, he had dependable friends
 |  in the news media. The "New York Times" loved him for his
 |  bland pleasantness. He just about owned CBS. Twenty years
 |  earlier, Prescott Bush had personally organized the credit
 |  to allow William S. Paley to buy the CBS (radio, later
 |  television) network outright. In return, Prescott was made a
 |  director and the financial leader of CBS; Paley himself
 |  became a devoted follower and servitor of Averell Harriman.
 |
 |  Well, when he tried again, Prescott Bush would not leave the
 |  outcome to the blind whims of the public.
 |
 |  Prescott Bush moved into action in 1952 as a national leader
 |  of the push to give the Republican presidential nomination
 |  to Gen. Dwight D. ("Ike") Eisenhower. Among the other team
 |  members were Bush's Hitler-era lawyer John Foster Dulles,
 |  and Jupiter Islander C. Douglas Dillon.
 |
 |  Dillon and his father were the pivots as the Harriman-Dulles
 |  combination readied Ike for the presidency. As a friend put
 |  it: "When the Dillons ... invited [Eisenhower] to dinner it
 |  was to introduce him to Wall Street bankers and lawyers."
 |  [13] 
 |
 |  Ike's higher level backers believed, correctly, that Ike
 |  would not interfere with even the dirtiest of their covert
 |  action programs. The bland, pleasant Prescott Bush was in
 |  from the beginning: a friend to Ike, and an original backer
 |  of his presidency.
 |
 |  On July 28, 1952, as the election approached, Connecticut's
 |  senior U.S. senator, James O'Brien McMahon, died at the age
 |  of 48. (McMahon had been Assistant U.S. Attorney General, in
 |  charge of the Criminal Division, from 1935 to 1939. Was
 |  there a chance he might someday speak out about the
 |  unpunished Nazi-era crimes of the wealthy and powerful?)
 |
 |  This was "extremely" convenient for Prescott. He got the
 |  Republican nomination for U.S. senator at a special
 |  delegated meeting, with backing by the Yale-dominated state
 |  party leadership. Now he would run in a special election for
 |  the suddenly vacant Senate seat. He could expect to be swept
 |  into office, since he would be on the same electoral ticket
 |  as the popular war hero, General Ike. By a technicality, he
 |  would instantly become Connecticut's senior senator, with
 |  extra power in Congress. And the next regularly scheduled
 |  senatorial race would be in 1956 (when McMahon's term would
 |  have ended), so Prescott could run again in that
 |  presidential election year ... once again on Ike's
 |  coattails!
 |
 |  With this arrangement, things worked out very smoothly. In
 |  Eisenhower's 1952 election victory, Ike won Connecticut by a
 |  margin of 129,507 votes out of 1,092,471. Prescott Bush came
 |  in last among the statewide Republicans, but managed to win
 |  by 30,373 out of 1,088,799, his margin nearly 100,000 behind
 |  Eisenhower. He took the traditionally Republican towns.
 |
 |  In Eisenhower's 1956 re-election, Ike won Connecticut by
 |  303,036 out of 1,114,954 votes, the largest presidential
 |  margin in Connecticut's history. Prescott Bush managed to
 |  win again, by 129,544 votes out of 1,085,206 -- his margin
 |  this time 290,082 smaller than Eisenhower's. [14] 
 |
 |  In January 1963, when this electoral strategy had been
 |  played out and his second term expired, Prescott Bush
 |  retired from government and returned to Brown Brothers
 |  Harriman.
 |
 |  The 1952 Eisenhower victory made John Foster Dulles
 |  Secretary of State, and his brother Allen Dulles head of the
 |  CIA. The reigning Dulles brothers were the "Republican"
 |  replacements for their client and business partner,
 |  "Democrat" Averell Harriman. Occasional public posturings
 |  aside, their strategic commitments were identical to his.
 |
 |  Undoubtedly the most important work accomplished by Prescott
 |  Bush in the new regime was on the golf links.
 |
 |  Those who remember the Eisenhower presidency know that Ike
 |  played ... quite a bit of golf! Democrats sneered at him for
 |  mindlessness, Republicans defended him for taking this
 |  healthy recreation. Golf was Ike's ruling passion. And there
 |  at his side was the loyal, bland, pleasant Senator Prescott
 |  Bush, former president of the U.S. Golf Association,
 |  son-in-law of the very man who had reformulated the rules of
 |  the game.
 |
 |  Prescott Bush was Dwight Eisenhower's favorite golf partner.
 |  Prescott could reassure Ike about his counselors, allay his
 |  concerns, and monitor his moods. Ike was very grateful to
 |  Prescott, who never revealed the President's scores.
 |
 |  The public image of his relationship to the President may be
 |  gleaned from a 1956 newspaper profile of Prescott Bush's
 |  role in the party. The "New York Times," which 11 years
 |  before had consciously protected him from public exposure as
 |  a Nazi banker, fawned over him in an article entitled, "His
 |  Platform: Eisenhower":"A tall, lean, well-dressed man who
 |  looks exactly like what he is -- a wealthy product of the
 |  Ivy League -- is chairman of the Republican Convention's
 |  platform committee. As such, Prescott Bush, Connecticut's
 |  senior United States Senator, has a difficult task: he has
 |  to take one word and expand it to about 5,000.
 |
 |  "The one word, of course, is 'Ike' -- but no party platform
 |  could ever be so simple and direct....
 |
 |  "Thus it is that Senator Bush and his fellow committee
 |  members ... find themselves confronted with the job of
 |  wrapping around the name Eisenhower sufficient verbiage to
 |  persuade the public that it is the principles of the party,
 |  and not the grin of the man at the head of it, which makes
 |  it worthy of endorsement in [the] November [election].
 |
 |  "For this task Prescott Bush, a singularly practical and
 |  direct conservative, may not be entirely fitted. It is
 |  likely that left to his own devices he would simply offer
 |  the country the one word and let it go at that.
 |
 |  "He is ... convinced that this would be enough to do the
 |  trick ... if only the game were played that way.
 |
 |  "Since it is not, he can be expected to preside with
 |  dignity, fairness and dispatch over the sessions that will
 |  prepare the party credo for the 1956 campaign.
 |
 |  "If by chance there should be any conflicts within the
 |  committee ... the Senator's past can offer a clue to his
 |  conduct.
 |
 |  "A former Yale Glee Club and second bass in the All-Time
 |  Whiffenpoofs Quartet, he is ... [called] 'the hottest
 |  close-harmony man at Yale in a span of twenty-five years.'
 |
 |  "Close harmony being a Republican specialty under President
 |  Eisenhower, the hottest close-harmony man at Yale in
 |  twenty-five years would seem to be an ideal choice for the
 |  convention job he holds at San Francisco....
 |
 |  "[In addition to his business background, he] also played
 |  golf, competing in a number of tournaments. For eight years
 |  he was a member of the executive committee of the United
 |  States Golf Association....
 |
 |  "As a Senator, Connecticut's senior spokeman in the upper
 |  house has followed conservative policies consistent with his
 |  business background.
 |
 |  He resigned all his corporate directorships, took a leave
 |  from Brown Brothers, Harriman, and proceeded to go down the
 |  line for the Eisenhower program....
 |
 |  "Around the Senate, he is known as a man who does his
 |  committee work faithfully, defends the Administration
 |  stoutly, and f its well into the clublike atmosphere of
 |  Capitol Hill...." [15] 
 |
 |  "To be continued."
 |
 |  Notes
 |
 |  1. Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, "The Wise Men": Six
 |  Friends and the World They Made -- Acheson, Bohlen,
 |  Harriman, Kennan, Lovett, McCloy" (New York: Simon and
 |  Schuster, 1986), p. 377.
 |
 |  2. Reed was better known in high society as a minor
 |  diplomat, the founder of the Triton Press and the president
 |  of the American Shakespeare Theater.
 |
 |  3. "Palm Beach Post," January 13, 1991.
 |
 |  4. For Lovett's residency there see Isaacson and Thomas,
 |  "op. cit.," p. 417. Some Jupiter Island residencies were
 |  verified by their inclusion in the 1947 membership list of
 |  the Hobe Sound Yacht Club, in the Harriman papers, Library
 |  of Congress; others were established from interviews with
 |  long-time Jupiter Islanders.
 |
 |  5. Arthur Burr Darling, "The Central Intelligence Agency: An
 |  Instrument of Government, to 1950", (College Station:
 |  Pennsylvania State University, 1990), p. 59.
 |
 |  6. The "Chicago Tribune", Feb 9, 1945, for example, warned
 |  of "Creation of an all-powerful intelligence service to spy
 |  on the postwar world and to pry into the lives of citizens
 |  at home. "Cf. Anthony Cave Brown, "Wild Bill Donovan: The
 |  Last Hero", (New York: Times Books, 1982), p. 625, on
 |  warnings to FDR about the British control of U.S.
 |  intelligence.
 |
 |  7. Dennis Eisenberg, Uri Dan, Eli Landau, "Meyer Lansky:
 |  Mogul of the Mob" (New York: Paddington Press, 1979) pp.
 |  227-28.
 |
 |  8. See John Ranelagh, "The Agency: The Rise and Decline of
 |  the CIA", (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), pp. 131-32.
 |
 |  9. Clark Clifford, "Counsel to the President" (New York:
 |  Random House, 1991).
 |
 |  10. Sidney Hyman, "The Life of William Benton" (Chicago: The
 |  University of Chicago Press, 1969), pp. 438-41.
 |
 |  11. Phyllis Tilson Piotrow, "World Population Crisis: The
 |  United States Response" (New York: Praeger Publishers,
 |  1973), "Forward" by George H.W. Bush, p. vii.
 |
 |  12. Interview with Prescott Bush in the Oral History
 |  Research Project conducted by Columbia University in 1966,
 |  Eisenhower Administration Part II; pp. 62-4.
 |
 |  13. Herbert S. Parmet, "Eisenhower and the American
 |  Crusades" (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1972), p. 14.
 |
 |  14. "New York Times", Sept. 6, 1952, Nov. 5, 1952, Nov. 7,
 |  1956.
 |
 |  15. "New York Times", Aug. 21, 1956.
 |
 |  Continuing CHAPTER 4: "THE CENTER OF POWER IS IN WASHINGTON"
 |
 |  Prescott Bush was a most elusive, secretive senator. By
 |  diligent research, his views on some issues may be traced:
 |  He was opposed to the development of public power projects
 |  like the Tennessee Valley Authority; he opposed the
 |  constitutional amendment introduced by Ohio Senator John W.
 |  Bricker, which would have required congressional approval of
 |  international agreements by the executive branch.
 |
 |  But Prescott Bush was essentially a covert operative in
 |  Washington.
 |
 |  In June 1954, Bush received a letter from Connecticut
 |  resident H. Smith Richardson, owner of Vick Chemical Company
 |  (cough drops, Vapo-Rub). It read, in part, "... At some time
 |  before Fall, Senator, I want to get your advice and counsel
 |  on a [new] subject -- namely what should be done with the
 |  income from a foundation which my brother and I set up, and
 |  which will begin its operation in 1956...." [16] 
 |
 |  This letter presages the establishment of the "H. Smith
 |  Richardson Foundation", a Bush family-dictated private slush
 |  fund which was to be utilized by the Central Intelligence
 |  Agency, and by Vice President Bush for the conduct of his
 |  Iran-Contra adventures.
 |
 |  The Bush family knew Richardson and his wife through their
 |  mutual friendship with Sears Roebuck's chairman, General
 |  Robert E. Wood. General Wood had been president of the
 |  America First organization, which had lobbied against war
 |  with Hitler's Germany. H. Smith Richardson had contributed
 |  the start-up money for America First and had spoken out
 |  against the United States "joining the Communists" by
 |  fighting Hitler. Richardson's wife was a proud relative of
 |  Nancy Langehorne from Virginia, who married Lord Astor and
 |  backed the Nazis from their Cliveden Estate.
 |
 |  General Wood's daughter Mary had married the son of Standard
 |  Oil president William Stamps Farish. The Bushes had stuck
 |  with the Farishes through their disastrous exposure during
 |  World War II (See Chapter 3). Young George Bush and his
 |  bride Barbara were especially close to Mary Farish, and to
 |  her son W.S. Farish III, who would be the great confidante
 |  of George's presidency.  [17] 
 |
 |  H. Smith Richardson was Connecticut's leading "McCarthyite."
 |  He planned an elaborate strategy for Joe McCarthy's
 |  intervention in Connecticut's November 1952 elections, to
 |  finally defeat Senator Benton. [18]  (Benton's 1950 victory
 |  over Prescott Bush was only for a two-year unexpired term.
 |  He was running in this election for a full term, at the same
 |  time that Prescott Bush was running to fill the seat left
 |  vacant by Senator McMahon's death). [18] 
 |
 |  The H. Smith Richardson Foundation was organized by Eugene
 |  Stetson, Jr., Richardson's son-in-law. Stetson (Skull and
 |  Bones, 1934) had worked for Prescott Bush as assistant
 |  manager of the New York branch of Brown Brothers Harriman.
 |
 |  In the late 1950s, the Smith Richardson Foundation took part
 |  in the "psychological warfare" of the CIA. This was not a
 |  foreign, but a domestic covert operation, carried out mainly
 |  against unwitting U.S. citizens. CIA director Allen Dulles
 |  and his British allies organized "MK-Ultra," the testing of
 |  psychotropic drugs including LSD on a very large scale,
 |  allegedly to evaluate "chemical warfare" possibilities.
 |
 |  In this period, the Richardson Foundation helped finance
 |  experiments at Bridgewater Hospital in Massachusetts, the
 |  center of some of the most brutal MK-Ultra tortures. These
 |  outrages have been graphically portrayed in the movie,
 |  "Titticut Follies."
 |
 |  During 1990, an investigator for this book toured H. Smith
 |  Richardson's "Center for Creative Leadership" just north of
 |  Greensboro, North Carolina. The tour guide said that in
 |  these rooms, agents of the Central Intelligence Agency and
 |  the Secret Service are trained. He demonstrated the two-way
 |  mirrors through which the government employees are watched,
 |  while they are put through mind-bending psychodramas. The
 |  guide explained that "virtually everyone who becomes a
 |  general" in the U.S. armed forces also goes through this
 |  "training" at the Richardson Center.
 |
 |  Another office of the Center for Creative Leadership is in
 |  Langley, Virginia, at the headquarters of the Central
 |  Intelligence Agency. Here also, Richardson's center trains
 |  leaders of the CIA.
 |
 |  The Smith Richardson Foundation will be seen in a later
 |  chapter, performing in the Iran-Contra drama around Vice
 |  President George Bush.
 |
 |  - * * * -
 |
 |  Prescott Bush worked throughout the Eisenhower years as a
 |  confidential ally of the Dulles brothers. In July 1956,
 |  Egypt's President Gamel Abdul Nasser announced he would
 |  accept the U.S. offer of a loan for the construction of the
 |  Aswan dam project. John Foster Dulles then prepared a
 |  statement telling the Egyptian ambassador that the U.S.A.
 |  had decided to retract its offer. Dulles gave the explosive
 |  statement in advance to Prescott Bush for his approval.
 |  Dulles also gave the statement to President Eisenhower, and
 |  to the British government. [19] 
 |
 |  Nasser reacted to the Dulles brush-off by nationalizing the
 |  Suez Canal to pay for the dam. Israel, then Britain and
 |  France, invaded Egypt to try to overthrow Nasser, leader of
 |  the anti-imperial Arab nationalists. However, Eisenhower
 |  refused (for once) to play the Dulles-British game, and the
 |  invaders had to leave Egypt when Britain was threatened with
 |  U.S. economic sanctions.
 |
 |  During 1956, Senator Prescott Bush's value to the
 |  Harriman-Dulles political group increased when he was put on
 |  the Senate Armed Services Committee. Bush toured U.S. and
 |  allied military bases throughout the world, and had
 |  increased access to the national security decision-making
 |  process.
 |
 |  In the later years of the Eisenhower presidency, Gordon Gray
 |  rejoined the government. As an intimate friend and golfing
 |  partner of Prescott Bush, Gray complemented the Bush
 |  influence on Ike. The Bus h-Gray family partnership in the
 |  "secret government" continues up through the George Bush
 |  presidency.
 |
 |  Gordon Gray had been appointed head of the new Psychological
 |  Strategy Board in 1951 under Averell Harriman's rule as
 |  assistant to President Truman for national security affairs.
 |  From 1958 to 1961 Gordon Gray held the identical post under
 |  President Eisenhower. Gray acted as Ike's intermediary,
 |  strategist and hand-holder, in the President's relations
 |  with the CIA and the U.S. and allied military forces.
 |
 |  Eisenhower did not oppose the CIA's covert action projects;
 |  he only wanted to be protected from the consequences of
 |  their failure or exposure. Gray's primary task, in the guise
 |  of "oversight" on all U.S. covert action, was to protect and
 |  hide the growing mass of CIA and related secret government
 |  activities.
 |
 |  It was not only covert "projects" which were developed by
 |  the Gray-Bush-Dulles combination; it was also new, hidden
 |  "structures" of the United States government.
 |
 |  Senator Henry Jackson challenged these arrangements in 1959
 |  and 1960. Jackson created a Subcommittee on National Policy
 |  Machinery of the Senate Committee on Governmental
 |  Operations, which investigated Gordon Gray's reign at the
 |  National Security Council. On January 26, 1960, Gordon Gray
 |  warned President Eisenhower that a document revealing the
 |  existence of a secret part of the U.S. government had
 |  somehow gotten into the bibliography being used by Senator
 |  Jackson. The unit was Gray's "5412 Group" within the
 |  administration, officially but secretly in charge of
 |  approving covert action. Under Gray's guidance, Ike "|'was
 |  clear and firm in his response' that Jackson's staff "not"
 |  be informed of the existence of this unit [emphasis in the
 |  original]." [20] 
 |
 |  On January 1, 1959, Fidel Castro took power in Cuba.
 |  Thereafter, in the last Eisenhower years, with Castro as a
 |  target and universal pretext, the fatal Cuban-vectored
 |  gangster section of the American government was assembled.
 |
 |  Several figures of the Eisenhower administration must be
 |  considered the fathers of this permanent Covert Action
 |  monolith, men who continued shepherding the monster after
 |  its birth in the Eisenhower era:
 |
 |     *  "Gordon Gray", the shadowy Assistant to the President
 |  for National Security Affairs, Prescott Bush's closest
 |  executive branch crony and golf partner along with
 |  Eisenhower. By 1959-60, Gray had Ike's total confidence and
 |  served as the Harrimanites' monitor on all U.S. military and
 |  non-military projects.
 |
 |  British intelligence agent Kim Philby defected to the
 |  Russians in 1963. Philby had gained virtually total access
 |  to U.S. intelligence activities beginning in 1949, as the
 |  British secret services' liaison to the Harriman-dominated
 |  CIA. After Philby's defection, it seemed obvious that the
 |  aristocratic British intelligence service was in fact a
 |  menace to the western cause. In the 1960s, a small team of
 |  U.S. counterintelligence specialists went to England to
 |  investigate the situation. They reported back that the
 |  British secret service could be thoroughly trusted. The
 |  leader of this "expert" team, Gordon Gray, was the head of
 |  the counterespionage section of the President's Foreign
 |  Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) for Presidents Kennedy
 |  through Ford.
 |
 |     *  "Robert Lovett," Bush's Jupiter Island neighbor and
 |  Brown Brothers Harriman partner, from 1956 on a member of
 |  the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Lovett
 |  later claimed to have criticized -- from the "inside" -- the
 |  plan to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. Lovett was asked to
 |  choose the cabinet for John Kennedy in 1961.
 |
 |     *  "CIA Director Allen Dulles," Bush's former
 |  international attorney. Kennedy fired Dulles after the Bay
 |  of Pigs invasion, but Dulles served on the Warren
 |  Commission, which whitewashed President Kennedy's murder.
 |
 |     *  "C. Douglas Dillon," neighbor of Bush on Jupiter
 |  Island, became undersecretary of state in 1958 after the
 |  death of John Foster Dulles. Dillon had been John Foster
 |  Dulles's ambassador to France (1953-57), coordinating the
 |  original U.S. covert backing for the French imperial effort
 |  in Vietnam, with catastrophic results for the world. Dillon
 |  was treasury secretary for both John Kennedy and Lyndon
 |  Johnson.
 |
 |     *  "Ambassador to Britain Jock Whitney," extended family
 |  member of the Harrimans and neighbor of Prescott Bush on
 |  Jupiter Island. Whitney set up a press service in London
 |  called Forum World Features, which published propaganda
 |  furnished directly by the CIA and the British intelligence
 |  services. Beginning in 1961, Whitney was chairman of the
 |  British Empire's "English Speaking Union."
 |
 |     *  "Senator Prescott Bush," friend and counselor of
 |  President Eisenhower.
 |
 |  Bush's term countinued on in the Senate after the Eisenhower
 |  years, throughout most of the aborted Kennedy presidency.
 |
 |  In 1962, the National Strategy Information Center was
 |  founded by Prescott Bush and his son Prescott, Jr., William
 |  Casey (the future CIA chief), and Leo Cherne. The center
 |  came to be directed by Frank Barnett, former program officer
 |  of the Bush family's Smith Richardson Foundation. The center
 |  conduited funds to the London-based Forum World Features,
 |  for the circulation of CIA-authored "news stories" to some
 |  300 newspapers internationally. [21] 
 |
 |  "Democrat" Averell Harriman rotated back into official
 |  government in the Kennedy administration. As assistant
 |  secretary and undersecretary of state, Harriman helped push
 |  the United States into the Vietnam War. Harriman had no post
 |  in the Eisenhower administration. Yet he was perhaps more
 |  than anyone the leader and the glue for the incredible evil
 |  that was hatched by the CIA in the final Eisenhower years: a
 |  half-public, half-private Harrimanite army, never since
 |  demobilized, and increasingly associated with the name of
 |  Bush.
 |
 |  Following the rise of Castro, the U.S. Central Intelligence
 |  Agency contracted with the organization of Mafia boss Meyer
 |  Lansky to organize and train assassination squads for use
 |  against the Cuban government. Among those employed were John
 |  Rosselli, Santos Trafficante, and Sam Giancana. Uncontested
 |  public documentation of these facts has been published by
 |  congressional bodies and by leading Establishment academics.
 |  [22] 
 |
 |  But the disturbing implications and later consequences of
 |  this engagement are a crucial matter for further study by
 |  the citizens of every nation. This much is established:
 |
 |  On August 18, 1960, President Eisenhower approved a $13
 |  million official budget for a secret CIA-run guerrilla war
 |  against Castro. It is known that Vice President Richard M.
 |  Nixon took a hand in the promotion of this initiative. The
 |  U.S. military was kept out of the covert action plans until
 |  very late in the game.
 |
 |  The first of eight admitted assassination attempts against
 |  Castro took place in 1960.
 |
 |  The program was, of course, a failure, if not a circus. The
 |  invasion of Cuba by the CIA's anti-Castro exiles was put off
 |  until after John Kennedy took over the presidency. As is
 |  well known, Kennedy balked at sending in U.S. air cover and
 |  Castro's forces easily prevailed. But the progam continued.
 |
 |  In 1960, Felix Rodriguez, Luis Posada Carriles, Rafael "Chi
 |  Chi" Quintero, Frank Sturgis (or "Frank Fiorini") and other
 |  Florida-based Cuban exiles were trained as killers and
 |  drug-traffickers in the Cuban initiative; their supervisor
 |  was E. Howard Hunt. Their overall CIA boss was Miami station
 |  chief Theodore G. Shackley, seconded by Thomas Clines. In
 |  later chapters we will follow the subsequent careers of
 |  these characters -- increasingly identified with George Bush
 |  -- through the Kennedy assassination, the Watergate coup,
 |  and the Iran-Contra scandal.
 |
 |
 |  Chapter 5
 |
 |  Poppy and Mommy
 |
 |  ""Oh Mother, Mother! What have you done? Behold! the heavens
 |  do ope. The gods look down, and this unnatural scene they
 |  laugh at." -- "Coriolanus," Shakespeare."
 |
 |  The Silver Spoon
 |
 |  George Herbert Walker Bush was born in Milton,
 |  Massachusetts, on June 12, 1924. During the next year the
 |  family moved to Greenwich, Connecticut, and established
 |  their permanent residency.
 |
 |  Prescott and Dorothy Walker Bush had had a son, Pre scott,
 |  Jr., before George. Later there was a little sister, Nancy,
 |  and another brother, Jonathan; a fourth son, William
 |  ("Bucky"), was born 14 years after George, in 1939.
 |
 |  George was named after his grandfather, George Herbert
 |  Walker. Since George's mother called Grandfather Walker
 |  "Pop," she began calling her son, his namesake, "little
 |  Pop," or "Poppy." Hence, Poppy Bush is the name the
 |  President's family friends have called him since his youth.
 |
 |  Prescott, Sr. joined W.A. Harriman & Co. May 1, 1926. With
 |  his family's lucrative totalitarian projects, George Bush's
 |  childhood began in comfort and advanced dramatically to
 |  luxury and elegance.
 |
 |  The Bushes had a large, dark-shingled house with "broad
 |  verandas and a portecochere" (originally a roofed structure
 |  extending out to the driveway to protect the gentry who
 |  arrived in coaches) on Grove Lane in the Deer Park section
 |  of Greenwich. [1] 
 |
 |  Here they were attended by four servants -- three maids, one
 |  of whom cooked, and a chauffeur.
 |
 |  The U.S.A. was plunged into the Great Depression beginning
 |  with the 1929-31 financial collapse. But George Bush and his
 |  family were totally insulated from this crisis. Before and
 |  after the crash, their lives were a frolic, sealed off from
 |  the concerns of the population at large.
 |
 |  During the summers, the Bushes stayed in a second home on
 |  the family's ten-acre spread at Walker's Point at
 |  Kennebunkport, Maine. Flush from the Soviet oil deals and
 |  the Thyssen-Nazi Party arrangements, Grandfather Walker had
 |  built a house there for Prescott and Dorothy. They and other
 |  well-to-do summer colonists used Kennebunkport's River Club
 |  for tennis and the club's yachting facilities.
 |
 |  In the winter season, they took the train to Grandfather
 |  Walker's plantation, called "Duncannon," near Barnwell,
 |  South Carolina. The novices were instructed in skeet
 |  shooting, then went out on horseback, following the hounds
 |  in pursuit of quail and dove. George's sister Nancy recalled
 |  "the care taken" by the servants "over the slightest things,
 |  like the trimmed edges of the grapefruit. We were waited on
 |  by the most wonderful black servants who would come into the
 |  bedrooms early in the morning and light those crackling
 |  pine-wood fires...." [2] 
 |
 |  The money poured in from the Hamburg-Amerika steamship line,
 |  its workforce crisply regulated by the Nazi Labor Front. The
 |  family took yet another house at Aiken, South Carolina.
 |  There the Bush children had socially acceptable "tennis and
 |  riding partners. Aiken was a southern capital of polo in
 |  those days, a winter resort of considerable distinction and
 |  serenity that attracted many Northerners, especially the
 |  equestrian oriented. The Bush children naturally rode there,
 |  too...." [3]  Averell Harriman, a world-class polo player,
 |  also frequented Aiken.
 |
 |  Poppy Bush's father and mother anxiously promoted the
 |  family's distinguished lineage, and its growing importance
 |  in the world. Prescott Bush claimed that he "could trace his
 |  family's roots back to England's King Henry III, making
 |  George a thirteenth cousin, twice removed of Queen
 |  Elizabeth." [4] 
 |
 |  This particular conceit may be a bad omen for President
 |  Bush. The cowardly, acid-tongued Henry III was defeated by
 |  France's Louis IX (Saint Louis) in Henry's grab for power
 |  over France and much of Europe. Henry's own barons at length
 |  revolted against his blundering arrogance, and his power was
 |  curbed.
 |
 |  As the 1930s economic crisis deepened, Americans experienced
 |  unprecedented hardship and fear. The Bush children were
 |  taught that those who suffered these problems had no one to
 |  blame but themselves.
 |
 |  A hack writer, hired to puff President Bush's "heroic
 |  military background," wrote these lines from material
 |  supplied by the White House:
 |
 |  "Prescott Bush was a thrifty man.... He had no sympathy for
 |  the nouveau riches who flaunted their wealth -- they were
 |  without class, he said. As a sage and strictly honest
 |  businessman, he had often turned failing companies around,
 |  making them profitable again, and he had scorn for people
 |  who went bankrupt because they mismanaged their money.
 |  Prescott's lessons were absorbed by young George...." [5] 
 |
 |  When he reached the age of five, George Bush joined his
 |  older brother Pres in attending the Greenwich Country Day
 |  School. The brothers' "lives were charted from birth. Their
 |  father had determined that his sons would be ... educated
 |  and trained to be members of America's elite.... Greenwich
 |  Country Day School [was] an exclusive all-male academy for
 |  youngsters slated for private secondary schools....
 |
 |  "Alec, the family chauffeur, drove the two boys to school
 |  every morning after dropping Prescott, Sr. at the railroad
 |  station for the morning commute to Manhattan. The Depression
 |  was nowhere in evidence as the boys glided in the family's
 |  black Oldsmobile past the stone fences, stables, and
 |  swimming pools of one of the wealthiest communities in
 |  America." [6] 
 |
 |  But though the young George Bush had no concerns about his
 |  material existence, one must not overlook the important,
 |  private anxiety gnawing at him from the direction of his
 |  mother.
 |
 |  The President's wife, Barbara, has put most succinctly the
 |  question of Dorothy Bush and her effect on George: ""His
 |  mother was the most competitive living human."" [7] 
 |
 |  If we look here in his mother's shadow, we may find
 |  something beyond the routine medical explanations for
 |  President Bush's "driven" states of rage, or hyperactivity.
 |
 |  Mother Bush was the best athlete in the family, the fastest
 |  runner. She was hard. She expected others to be hard. They
 |  must win, but they must always "appear" not to care about
 |  winning.
 |
 |  This is put politely, delicately, in a "biography" written
 |  by an admiring friend of the President: "She was with them
 |  day after day, ... often curbing their egos as only a marine
 |  drill instructor can. Once when ... George lost a tennis
 |  match, he explained to her that he had been off his game
 |  that morning. She retorted, 'You don't have a game.'|" [8] 
 |
 |  According to this account, Barbara was fascinated by her
 |  mother-in-law's continuing ferocity: "George, playing mixed
 |  doubles with Barbara on the Kennebunkport court, ran into a
 |  porch and injured his right shoulder blade. 'His mother said
 |  it was my ball to hit, and it happened because I didn't run
 |  for it. She was probably right,' Barbara told [an
 |  interviewer].... When a discussion of someone's game came
 |  up, as Barbara described it, 'if Mrs. Bush would say, "'She
 |  had some good shots," it meant she stank. That's just the
 |  way she got the message across. When one of the
 |  grandchildren brought this girl home, everybody said, "We
 |  think he's going to marry her," and she said, "Oh, no, she
 |  won't play net.'|" [9]  (I.e., she was not tough enough to
 |  stand unflinchingly and return balls hit to her at close
 |  range.)
 |
 |  A goad to "rapid motion" became embedded in his personality.
 |  It is observable throughout George Bush's life.
 |
 |  A companion trait was Poppy's uncanny urge, his master
 |  obsession with the need to "kiss up," to propitiate those
 |  who might in any way advance his interests. A life of such
 |  efforts could at some point reach a climax of released rage,
 |  where the triumphant one may finally say, "Now it is only I
 |  who must be feared."
 |
 |  This dangerous cycle began very early, a response to his
 |  mother's prodding and intimidation; it intensified as George
 |  became more able to calculate his advantage.
 |
 |  His mother says: "George was a most unselfish child. When he
 |  was only a little more than two years old ... we bought him
 |  one of those pedal cars you climb into and work with your
 |  feet.
 |
 |  "[His brother] Pres knew just how to work it, and George
 |  came running over and grabbed the wheel and told Pres he
 |  should 'have half,' meaning half of his new posession. 'Have
 |  half, have half,' he kept repeating, and for a while around
 |  the house we called him 'Have half.'|" [10] 
 |
 |  George "learned to ask for no more than what was due him.
 |  Although not the school's leading student, his report card
 |  was always good, and his mother was particularly pleased
 |  that he was always graded 'excellent' in one category she
 |  thought of great importance: 'Claims no more than his fa ir
 |  share of time and attention.' This consistent ranking led to
 |  a little family joke -- George always did best in 'Claims no
 |  more.'
 |
 |  "He was not a selfish child, did not even display the
 |  innocent possessiveness common to most children...." [11] 
 |
 |  At Andover
 |
 |  George Bush left Greenwich Country Day School in 1936. He
 |  joined his older brother at Phillips Academy in Andover,
 |  Massachusetts, 20  miles north of Boston. "Poppy" was 12
 |  years old, handsome, and rich. Though the U.S. economy took
 |  a savage turn for the worse the following year, George's
 |  father was piling up a fortune, arranging bond swindles for
 |  the Nazis with John Foster Dulles.
 |
 |  Only about one in 14 U.S. secondary school students could
 |  afford to be in private schools during George Bush's stay at
 |  Andover (1936-42). The New England preparatory or "prep"
 |  schools were the most exclusive. Their students were almost
 |  all rich white boys, many of them Episcopalians. And Andover
 |  was, in certain strange ways, the most exclusive of them
 |  all.
 |
 |  A 1980 campaign biography prepared by Bush's own staff
 |  concedes that "it was to New England that they returned to
 |  be educated at select schools that produce leaders with a
 |  patrician or aristocratic stamp -- adjectives, incidentally,
 |  which cause a collective wince among the Bushes.... At the
 |  close of the 1930s ... these schools ... brought the famous
 |  'old-boy networks' to the peak of their power." [12] 
 |
 |  These American institutions have been consciously modeled on
 |  England's elite private schools (confusingly called "public"
 |  schools because they were open to all English boys with
 |  sufficient money). The philosophy inculcated into the son of
 |  a British Lord Admiral or South African police chief, was to
 |  be imbibed by sons of the American republic.
 |
 |  George made some decisive moral choices about himself in
 |  these first years away from home. The institution which
 |  guided these choices, and helped shape the peculiar
 |  obsessions of the 41st President, was a pit of Anglophile
 |  aristocratic racialism when George Bush came on the scene.
 |
 |  "Andover was ... less dedicated to 'elitism' than some
 |  [schools].... There were even a couple of blacks in the
 |  classes, tokens of course, but this at a time when a black
 |  student at almost any other Northeastern prep school would
 |  have been unthinkable." [13] 
 |
 |  Andover had a vaunted "tradition," intermingled with the
 |  proud bloodlines of its students and alumni, that was
 |  supposed to reach back to the school's founding in 1778. But
 |  a closer examination reveals this "tradition" to be a fraud.
 |  It is part of a larger, highly significant historical
 |  fallacy perpetrated by the Anglo-Americans -- and curiously
 |  stressed by Bush's agents in foreign countries.
 |
 |  Thomas Cochran, a partner of the J.P. Morgan banking firm,
 |  donated considerable sums to construct swanky new Andover
 |  buildings in the 1920s. Among these were George Washington
 |  Hall and Paul Revere Hall, named for leaders of the American
 |  Revolution against the British Empire. These and similar
 |  "patriotic" trappings, with the allumni's old
 |  school-affiliated genealogies, might seem to indicate an
 |  unbroken line of racial imperialists like Cochran and his
 |  circle, reaching back to the heroes of the Revolution!
 |
 |  Let us briefly tour Andover's history, and then ponder
 |  whether General Washington would want to be identified with
 |  Poppy Bush's school.
 |
 |  Thirty years after Samuel Phillips founded the Academy at
 |  Andover, Massachusetts, the quiet little school became
 |  embroiled in a violent controversy. On one side were certain
 |  diehard pro-British families, known as Boston Brahmins, who
 |  had prospered in the ship transportation of rum and black
 |  slaves. They had regained power in Boston since their allies
 |  had lost the 1775-83 Revolutionary War.
 |
 |  In 1805 these cynical, neo-pagan, "Tory" families succeeded
 |  in placing their representative in the Hollis chair of
 |  Philosophy at Harvard College. The Tories, parading publicly
 |  as liberal religionists called Unitarians, were opposed by
 |  American nationalists led by the geographer-historian Rev.
 |  Jedidiah Morse (1761-1826). The nationalists rallied the
 |  Christian churches of the northeastern states behind a plan
 |  to establish, at Andover, a new religious institution which
 |  would counter the British spies, atheists, and criminals who
 |  had taken over Harvard.
 |
 |  British Empire political operatives Stephen Higginson, Jr.
 |  and John Lowell, Jr. published counterattacks against Rev.
 |  Morse, claiming he was trying to rouse the lower classes of
 |  citizens to hatred against the wealthy merchant families.
 |  Then the Tories played the "conservative" card.
 |  Ultra-orthodox Calvinists, actually business partners to the
 |  Harvard liberals, threatened to set up their own religious
 |  institution in Tory-dominated Newburyport. Their assertion,
 |  that Morse was not conservative enough, split the resources
 |  of the region's Christians, until the Morse group
 |  reluctantly brought the Newburyport ultras as partners into
 |  the management of the Andover Theological Seminary in 1808.
 |
 |  The new theological seminary and the adjacent boys' academy
 |  were now governed together under a common board of trustees
 |  (balanced between the Morse nationalists and the Newburyport
 |  anti-nationalists, the opposing wings of the old Federalist
 |  Party).
 |
 |  Jedidiah Morse made Andover the headquarters of a rather
 |  heroic, anti-racist, Christian missionary movement, bringing
 |  literacy, printing presses, medicine, and technological
 |  education to Southeast Asia and American Indians, notably
 |  the Georgia Cherokees. This activist Andover doctrine of
 |  racial equality and American Revolutionary spirit was
 |  despised and feared by British opium pushers in East Asia
 |  and by Boston's blueblood Anglophiles. Andover missionaries
 |  were eventually jailed in Georgia; their too-modern Cherokee
 |  allies were murdered and driven into exile by proslavery
 |  mobs.
 |
 |  When Jedidiah Morse's generation died out, the Andover
 |  missionary movement was crushed by New England's elite
 |  families -- who were then Britain's partners in the booming
 |  opium traffic. Andover was still formally Christian after
 |  1840; Boston's cynical Brahmins used Andover's orthodox
 |  Protestant board to prosecute various of their opponents as
 |  "heretics."
 |
 |  Neo-paganism and occult movements bloomed after the Civil
 |  War with Darwin's new materialist doctrines. In the 1870s,
 |  the death-worshipping Skull and Bones Society sent its
 |  alumni members back from Yale University, to organize
 |  aristocratic secret satanic societies for the teenagers at
 |  the Andover prep school. But these cults did not yet quite
 |  flourish. National power was still precariously balanced
 |  between the imperial Anglo-American financiers, and the
 |  old-line nationalists who built America's railroads, steel
 |  and electrical industries.
 |
 |  The New Age aristocrats proclaimed their victory under
 |  Theodore Roosevelt's presidency (1901-09). The Andover
 |  Theological Seminary wound up its affairs and moved out of
 |  town, to be merged with the Harvard Divinity School! Andover
 |  prep school was now largely free of the annoyance of
 |  religion, or any connection whatsoever with the American
 |  spirit. Secret societies for the school's children, modeled
 |  on the barbarian orders at Yale, were now established in
 |  permanent, incorporated headquarters buildings just off
 |  campus at Andover. Official school advisers were assigned to
 |  each secret society, who participated in their cruel and
 |  literally insane rituals.
 |
 |  When J.P. Morgan partner Thomas Cochran built Andover's
 |  luxurious modern campus for boys like Poppy Bush, the
 |  usurpers of America's name had cause to celebrate. Under
 |  their supervision, fascism was rising in Europe. The new
 |  campus library was named for Oliver Wendell Holmes, Andover
 |  class of 1825. This dreadful poet of the "leisure class," a
 |  tower of Boston blue-blooded conceit, was famous as the
 |  father of the twentieth century U.S. Supreme Court justice.
 |  His son, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., symbolized the
 |  arbitrary rule of the racial purity advocates, the usurpers,
 |  over American society.
 |
 |  The Secret Societies
 |
 |  Andover installed a new headmaster in 1933. Claude Moore
 |  Fuess (rhymes with fleece) replaced veteran headmaster
 |  Alfred E. Stear ns, whom the Brahmins saw as a
 |  dyed-in-the-wool reactionary. Stearns was forced out over a
 |  "scandal": a widower, he had married his housekeeper, who
 |  was beneath his social class.
 |
 |  The new headmaster was considered forward-looking and
 |  flexible, to meet the challenges of the world political
 |  crisis: for example, Fuess favored psychiatry for the boys,
 |  something Stearns wouldn't tolerate.
 |
 |  Claude Fuess had been an Andover history teacher since 1908,
 |  and gained fame as an historian. He was one of the most
 |  skillful liars of the modern age.
 |
 |  Fuess had married into the Boston Cushing family. He had
 |  written the family-authorized whitewash biography of his
 |  wife's relative, Caleb Cushing, a pro-slavery politician of
 |  the middle nineteenth century. The outlandish, widely known
 |  corruption of Cushing's career was matched by Fuess's bold,
 |  outrageous coverup. [14] 
 |
 |  During George Bush's years at Andover, his headmaster,
 |  Fuess, wrote an authorized biography of Calvin Coolidge, the
 |  late U.S. President. This work was celebrated in jest as a
 |  champion specimen of unwholesome flattery. In other books,
 |  also about the bluebloods, Fuess was simply given the family
 |  papers and designated the chief liar for the "Bostonian
 |  Race."
 |
 |  Both the Cushing and Coolidge families had made their
 |  fortunes in opium trafficking. Bush's headmaster named his
 |  son John Cushing Fuess, perhaps after the fabled nineteenth
 |  century dope kingpin who had made the Cushings rich. [15] 
 |
 |  Headmaster Fuess used to say to his staff, "I came to power
 |  with Hitler and Mussolini." [16]  This was not merely a
 |  pleasantry, referring to his appointment the year Hitler
 |  took over Germany.
 |
 |  In his 1939 memoirs, Headmaster Fuess expressed the
 |  philosophy which must guide the education of the well-born
 |  young gentlemen under his care:
 |
 |  "Our declining birth rate ... may perhaps indicate a step
 |  towards national deterioration. Among the so-called upper
 |  and leisure classes, noticeably among the university group,
 |  the present birth rate is strikingly low. Among the Slavonic
 |  and Latin immigrants, on the other hand, it is relatively
 |  high. We seem thus to be letting the best blood thin out and
 |  disappear; while at the same time our humanitarian efforts
 |  for the preservation of the less fit, those who for some
 |  reason are crippled and incapacitated, are being greatly
 |  stimulated. The effect on the race will not become apparent
 |  for some generations and certainly cannot now be accurately
 |  predicted; but the phenomenon must be mentioned if you are
 |  to have a true picture of what is going on in the United
 |  States." [17] 
 |
 |  Would George Bush adopt this anti-Christian outlook as his
 |  own? One can never know for sure how a young person will
 |  respond to the doctrines of his elders, no matter how
 |  cleverly presented. There is a much higher degree of
 |  certainty that he will conform to criminal expectations,
 |  however, if the student is brought to practice cruelty
 |  against other youngsters, and to degrade himself in order to
 |  get ahead. At Andover, this was where the secret societies
 |  came in.
 |
 |  Nothing like Andover's secret societies existed at any other
 |  American school. What were they all about?
 |
 |  Bush's friend Fitzhugh Greene wrote in 1989: "Robert L.
 |  'Tim' Ireland, Bush's longtime supporter [and Brown Brothers
 |  Harriman partner], who later served on the Andover board of
 |  trustees with him, said he believed [Bush] had been in AUV.
 |  'What's that?' I asked. 'Can't tell you,' laughed Ireland.
 |  'It's secret!' Both at Andover and Yale, such groups only
 |  bring in a small percentage of the total enrollment in any
 |  class. 'That's a bit cruel to those who don't make AU[V] or
 |  'Bones,'|" conceded Ireland. [18] 
 |
 |  A retired teacher, who was an advisor to one of the groups,
 |  cautiously disclosed in his bicentennial history of Andover,
 |  some aspects of the secret societies. The reader should keep
 |  in mind that this account was published by the school, to
 |  celebrate itself: "A charming account of the early days of
 |  K.O.A, the oldest of the Societies, was prepared by Jack
 |  [i.e. Claude Moore] Fuess, a member of the organization, on
 |  the occasion of their Fiftieth Anniversary. The Society was
 |  founded in ... 1874....
 |
 |  "[A] major concern of the membership was the initiation
 |  ceremony. In K.O.A. the ceremony involved visiting one of
 |  the local cemeteries at midnight, various kinds of tortures,
 |  running the gauntlet -- though the novice was apparrently
 |  punched rather than paddled, being baptized in a water tank,
 |  being hoisted in the air by a pulley, and finally being
 |  placed in a coffin, where he was cross-examined by the
 |  members.... K.O.A. was able to hold the loyalty of its
 |  members over the years to become a powerful institution at
 |  Phillips Academy and to erect a handsome pillared Society
 |  house on School Street.
 |
 |  "The second Society of the seven that would survive until
 |  1950 was A.U.V. [George Bush's group]. The letters stood for
 |  Auctoritas, Unitas, Veritas. [Authority, Unity, Truth]. This
 |  organization resulted from a merger of two ... earlier
 |  Societies ... in 1877. A new constitution was drawn up ...
 |  providing for four chief officers -- Imperator [commander],
 |  Vice Imperator [vice-commander], Scriptor [secretary], and
 |  Quaestor [magistrate or inquistor]....
 |
 |  "Like K.O.A, A.U.V. had an elaborate initiation ceremony.
 |  Once a pledge had been approved by the Faculty, he was given
 |  a letter with a list of rules he was to follow. He was to be
 |  in the cemetery every night from 12:30 to 5:00, deliver a
 |  morning paper to each member of the Society each morning,
 |  must not comb or brush his hair nor wash his face or hands,
 |  smoke nothing but a clay pipe with Lucky Strike tobacco, and
 |  not speak to any student except members of A.U.V.
 |
 |  "After the pledge had memorized these rules, his letter of
 |  instruction was burned. The pledge had now become a 'scut'
 |  and was compelled to learn many mottoes and incantations. On
 |  Friday night of initiation week the scut was taken to
 |  Hartigan's drugstore downtown and given a 'scut sundae,'
 |  which consisted of pepper, ice cream, oysters, and raw
 |  liver. Later that night he reported to the South Church
 |  cemetery, where he had to wait for two hours for the members
 |  to arrive. There followed the usual horseplay -- the scut
 |  was used as a tackling dummy, threats were made to lock him
 |  in a tomb, and various other ceremonies observed. On
 |  Saturday afternoon the scut was taken on a long walk around
 |  town, being forced to stop at some houses and ask for food,
 |  to urinate on a few porches, and generally to make a fool of
 |  himself. On Saturday night came the initiation proper. The
 |  scut was prepared by reporting to the cellar in his
 |  underwear and having dirt and flour smeared all over his
 |  body. He was finally cleaned up and brought to the
 |  initiation room, where a solemn ceremony followed, ending
 |  with the longed-for words 'Let him have light,' at which
 |  point his blindfold was removed, some oaths were
 |  administered, and the boy was finally a member...."
 |
 |  Notes for Chapter 4
 |
 |  16. Richardson to Prescott Bush, June 10, 1954, H. Smith
 |  Richardson Papers, University of North Carolina, Chapel
 |  Hill.
 |
 |  17. Wayne S. Cole, "America First: The Battle Against
 |  Intervention, 1940-1941" (Madison: the University of
 |  Wisconsin Press, 1953); Interviews with Richardson family
 |  employees; H. Smith Richardson Foundation annual reports;
 |  Richardson to Prescott Bush, March 26, 1954, Richardson
 |  Papers. "Washington Post", April 29, 1990.
 |
 |  18. Richardson to Chase Bank executive Cole Younger, Sept.
 |  17, 1952, H. Smith Richardson Papers, University of North
 |  Carolina, Chapel Hill.
 |
 |  19. Parmet, Herbert S., "Eisenhower and the American
 |  Crusades" (New York: MacMillan Company, 1972), p. 481.
 |
 |  20. John Prados, "Keepers of the Keys: A History of the
 |  National Security Council from Truman to Bush" (New York:
 |  William Morrow, 1991) pp. 92-95.
 |
 |  21. Robert Callaghan in "Covert Action", No. 33, Winter
 |  1990. Prescott, Jr. was a board member of the National
 |  Strategy Information Center as of 1991. Both Prescott Sr.
 |  and Jr. were deeply involved along with Casey in the circles
 |  of Pan American Airlines, Pan Am's owners the Grace family,
 |  and the CIA's Latin American a ffairs. The Center, based in
 |  Washington D.C., declines public inquiries about its
 |  founding.
 |
 |  See also "EIR Special Report", "American Leviathan:
 |  Administrative Fascism under the Bush Regime" (Wiesbaden,
 |  Germany: Executive Intelligence Review Nachrichtenagentur,
 |  April, 1990), p. 192.
 |
 |  22. For example, see Trumbull Higgins, "The Perfect Failure:
 |  Kennedy, Eisenhower, and the CIA at the Bay of Pigs" (New
 |  York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1987), pp.55-56, 89-90.
 |
 |  Unverified information on the squads is provided in the
 |  affidavit of Daniel P. Sheehan, attorney for the Christic
 |  Institute, reproduced in "EIR Special Report" "Project
 |  Democracy: The 'Parallel Government' behind the Iran Contra
 |  Affair" (Washington, D.C.: Executive Intelligence Review,
 |  1987), pp. 249-50.
 |
 |  Some of the hired assassins have published their memoirs.
 |  See, for example Felix Rodriguez and John Weisman, "Secret
 |  Warrior" (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989); and E. Howard
 |  Hunt, "Undercover: Memoirs of an American Secret Agent" (New
 |  York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1974).
 |
 |  Notes for Chapter 5
 |
 |  1. Nicholas King, "George Bush: A Biography" (New York:
 |  Dodd, Mead & Company, 1980), pp. 13-14.
 |
 |  2. "Ibid.," p. 19.
 |
 |  3. "Ibid."
 |
 |  4. Joe Hyams, "Flight of the Avenger: George Bush at War"
 |  (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovitch, 1991), p. 14.
 |
 |  5. "Ibid.," p. 17.
 |
 |  6. "Ibid.," pp. 16-17.
 |
 |  7. Donnie Radcliffe, "Simply Barbara Bush" (New York: Warner
 |  Books, 1989), p. 132.
 |
 |  8. Fitzhugh Green, "George Bush: An Intimate Portrait" (New
 |  York: Hippocrene Books, 1989), p. 16.
 |
 |  9. Radcliffe, "op. cit.," p. 133.
 |
 |  10. King, "op. cit," p. 14.
 |
 |  11. Hyams, "op. cit.," pp. 17-19.
 |
 |  12. King, "op. cit.," pp. 10, 20.
 |
 |  13. "Ibid.," p. 21.
 |
 |  14. Claude M. Fuess, "The Life of Caleb Cushing," 2 vols.
 |  (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1923).
 |
 |  15. John Perkins Cushing was a multi-millionaire opium
 |  smuggler who retired to Watertown, Massachusetts with
 |  servants dressed as in a Canton gangster carnival. See
 |  Vernon L. Briggs, "History and Genealogy of the Cabot
 |  Family, 1475-1927" (Boston: privately printed, 1927), Vol.
 |  II, pp. 558-559. John Murray Forbes, "Letters and
 |  Recollections", (reprinted New York: Arno Press, 1981), Vol.
 |  I, p. 62-63. Mary Caroline Crawford, "Famous Families of
 |  Massachusetts" (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1930), 2 vols.
 |
 |  16. Interview with a retired Andover teacher.
 |
 |  17. Claude M. Fuess, "Creed of a Schoolmaster" (reprinted
 |  Freeport, New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1970), pp.
 |  192-93.
 |
 |  18. Green, "op. cit.," p. 49.
 |
 |  19. Frederick S. Allis, "Youth from Every Quarter: A
 |  Bicentennial History of Phillips Academy, Andover" (Andover,
 |  Mass.: Phillips Academy, 1979), distributed by the
 |  University Press of New England, Hanvover, N.H.), pp. 505-7.
 |
 |  The hierarchical top banana of the AUV secret society in
 |  George's 1942 Andover class was Godfrey Anderson ("Rocky")
 |  Rockefeller. In the yearbook just above the AUV roster is a
 |  photograph of "Rocky Rockefeller" and "Lem [Lehman F.]
 |  Beardsley"; Rockefeller stands imperiously without a shirt,
 |  Beardsley scowls from behind sunglasses. Certainly the real
 |  monarch of George Bush's Andover secret society, and
 |  George's sponsor, was this "Rocky'|"s father, "Godfrey S.
 |  Rockefeller."
 |
 |  The latter gentleman had been on the staff of the Yale
 |  University establishment in China in 1921-22. Yale and the
 |  Rockefellers were breeding a grotesque communist insurgency
 |  with British Empire ideology; another Yale staffer there was
 |  Mao Zedong, later the communist dictator and mass murderer.
 |  While he was over in China, Papa Godfrey's cousin Isabel had
 |  been the bridesmaid at the wedding of George Bush's parents.
 |  His Uncle Percy had co-founded the Harriman bank with George
 |  Walker, and backed George Bush's father in several Nazi
 |  German enterprises. His grandfather had been the founding
 |  treasurer of the Standard Oil Company, and had made the
 |  Harrimans (and thus ultimately George Bush) rich.
 |
 |  Faculty adviser to AUV in those days was Norwood Penrose
 |  Hallowell; his father by the same name was chairman of Lee,
 |  Higginson & Co. private bankers, the chief financiers of
 |  Boston's extreme racialist political movements. The elder
 |  Hallowell was based in London throughout the 1930s, on
 |  intimate terms with Montagu Norman and his pro-Hitler
 |  American banking friends....
 |
 |  One of Poppy Bush's teachers at Andover, now in retirement,
 |  offered to an interviewer for this book, a striking picture
 |  of his former pupil. How was the President as a student?
 |
 |  "He never said a word in class. He was bored to death. And
 |  other teachers told me Bush was the worst English student
 |  ever in the school."
 |
 |  But was this teenager simply slow, or dull? On the contrary.
 |
 |  "He was the classic 'BMOC' (Big Man On Campus). A great
 |  glad-hander. Always smiling." [21] ....
 |
 |  George Bush was the most insistent self-promoter on the
 |  campus. He was able to pursue this career, being fortunately
 |  spared from the more mundane chores some other students had
 |  to do. For example, he mailed his dirty laundry home each
 |  week, to be done by the servants. It was mailed back to him
 |  clean and folded. [22] ....
 |
 |  One may ask, in what way are President Bush and his backers
 |  conscious of an oligarchical tradition? For a clue, let us
 |  look at the case of Arthur Burr Darling, George Bush's prep
 |  school history teacher.
 |
 |  Just after Claude Fuess "came into power with Hitler and
 |  Mussolini" in 1933, Fuess brought [Arthur Burr] Darling in
 |  to teach. Dr. Darling was head of the Andover history
 |  department from 1937 to 1956, and Faculty Guardian of one of
 |  the secret societies. His "Political Changes in
 |  Massachusetts, 1824 to 1848" covered the period of Andover's
 |  eclipse by Boston's aristocratic opium lords. Darling's book
 |  attacks Andover's greatest humanitarian, Jedidiah Morse, as
 |  a dangerous lunatic, because Morse warned about
 |  international criminal conspiracies involving these
 |  respectable Bostonians. The same book attacks President John
 |  Quincy Adams as a misguided troublemaker, responsible with
 |  Morse for the anti-freemasonic movement in the 1820s-30s.
 |
 |  Arthur Burr Darling, while still head of Andover's history
 |  department, was chosen by the Harrimanites to organize the
 |  historical files of the new Central Intelligence Agency, and
 |  to write the CIA's own official account of its creation and
 |  first years. Since this cynical project was secret,
 |  Darling's 1971 obituary did not reflect his CIA employment.
 |  [30] 
 |
 |  Darling's "The Central Intelligence Agency: An Instrument of
 |  Government, to 1950" was classified Secret on its completion
 |  in December 1953.... This mercenary work was finally
 |  declassified in 1989 and was published by Pennsylvania State
 |  University in 1990. Subsequent editions of "Who Was Who in
 |  America" were changed, in the fashion of Joe Stalin's
 |  "history revisers," to tell the latest, official version of
 |  what George Bush's history teacher had done with his
 |  life....
 |
 |  Secretary of War Henry Stimson, who was also the president
 |  of the board of Andover Prep, made a famous speech in June
 |  1942, to Poppy Bush and the other graduating Andover boys.
 |  Stimson told them the war would be long, and they, the
 |  elite, should go on to college.
 |
 |  But George Bush had some very complicated problems. The
 |  decision had already been made that he would join the
 |  service and get quite far away from where he had been. For
 |  reasons of family (which will be discussed in Chapter 7 on
 |  Skull and Bones) there was a very special niche waiting for
 |  him in naval aviation.
 |
 |  There was one serious hitch in this plan. It was illegal.
 |  Though he would be 18 years old on June 12, he would not
 |  have the two years of college the Navy required for its
 |  aviators.
 |
 |  Well, if you had an "urgent" problem, perhaps the law could
 |  be simply "set aside, for you and you alone," ahead of all
 |  the 5 million poor slobs who had to go in the mud with the
 |  infantry or swab some stinking deck -- especially if your
 |  private school's president was currently Secretary of War
 |  (Henry Stimson), if your father's banking partner was
 |  currently Assistant Secretary of War for Air (Robert
 |  Lovett), and if your father had launched the career of the
 |  current Assistant Navy Secretary for Air (Artemus Gates).
 |
 |  And it was done.
 |
 |  As a Bush-authorized version puts it, "One wonders why the
 |  Navy relaxed its two years of college requirement for flight
 |  training in George Bush's case. He had built an outstanding
 |  record at school as a scholar [sic], athlete and campus
 |  leader, but so had countless thousands of other youths.
 |
 |  "Yet it was George Bush who appeared to be the only
 |  beneficiary of this rule-waiving, and thus he eventually
 |  emerged as the youngest pilot in the Navy -- a  fact that he
 |  can still boast about and because of which he enjoyed a
 |  certain celebrity during the war." [34] 
 |
 |  Notes
 |
 |  21. Spoke on condition of non-attribution.
 |
 |  22. Hyams, "op. cit.," pp. 23-24.
 |
 |  30. See "New York Times," Nov. 29, 1971.
 |
 |  32. Allis, "op. cit.," p. 512.
 |
 |  33. "Newsweek," August 9, 1943; "Boston Globe," July 22,
 |  1943.
 |
 |  34. Green, "op. cit.," page 28.
 |
 |  "Plut aux dieux que ce fut le dernier de ses crimes!
 |
 |   -- Racine, "Britannicus"
 |
 |  George Bush has always traded shamelessly on his alleged
 |  record as a naval aviator during the Second World War in the
 |  Pacific theatre. During the 1964 Senate campaign in Texas
 |  against Senator Ralph Yarborough, Bush televised a grainy
 |  old film which depicted young George being rescued at sea by
 |  the crew of the submarine "USS Finnback" after his Avenger
 |  torpedo bomber was hit by Japanese anti-aircraft fire during
 |  a bombing raid on the island of Chichi Jima on September 2,
 |  1944. That film, retrieved from the Navy archives, backfired
 |  when it was put on the air too many times, eventually
 |  becoming something of a maladroit cliche.
 |
 |  Bush's campaign literature has always celebrated his alleged
 |  military exploits and the Distinguished Flying Cross he
 |  received. As we become increasingly familiar with the power
 |  of the Brown Brothers Harriman/Skull and Bones network
 |  working for Senator Prescott Bush, we will learn to become
 |  increasingly skeptical of such official accolades and of the
 |  official accounts on which they are premised.
 |
 |  During Bush's Gulf war adventure of 1990-91, the adulation
 |  of Bush's ostensible warrior prowess reached levels that
 |  were previously considered characteristic of openly
 |  totalitarian and militaristic regimes. Late in 1990, after
 |  Bush had committed himself irrevocably to his campaign of
 |  bombing and savagery against Iraq, hack writer Joe Hyams
 |  completed an authorized account of George Bush at war. This
 |  was entitled "Flight of the Avenger," and appeared during
 |  the time of the Middle East conflagration that was the
 |  product of Bush's obsessions.
 |
 |  Hyams's work had the unmistakeable imprimatur of the regime:
 |  Not just George, but also Barbara had been interviewed
 |  during its preparation, and its adulatory tone placed this
 |  squalid text squarely within the "red Studebaker" school of
 |  political hagiography.
 |
 |  The appearance of such a book at such a time is suggestive
 |  of the practice of the most infamous twentieth-century
 |  dictatorships, in which the figure of the strong man,
 |  Fuehrer, duce, or vozhd as he might be called, has been used
 |  for the transmission of symbolic-allegorical directives to
 |  the subject population. Was fascist Italy seeking to assert
 |  its economic autarky in food production in the face of trade
 |  sanctions by the League of Nations? Then a film would be
 |  produced by the MINCULPOP (the Ministry of Popular Culture,
 |  or propaganda) depicting Mussolini indefatigably harvesting
 |  grain. Was Nazi Germany in the final stages of preparation
 |  of a military campaign against a neighboring state? If so,
 |  Goebbels would orchestrate a cascade of magazine articles
 |  and best-selling pulp evoking the glories of Hitler in the
 |  trenches of 1914-18. Closer to our own time, Leonid Brezhnev
 |  sought to aliment his own personality cult with a little
 |  book called "Malaya Zemlya," an account of his war
 |  experiences which was used by his propagandists to motivate
 |  his promotion to Marshal of the U.S.S.R. and the erection of
 |  a statue in his honor during his own lifetime. This is the
 |  tradition to which "Flight of the Avenger" belongs.
 |
 |  Bush tells us in his campaign autobiography that he decided
 |  to enlist in the armed forces, specifically naval aviation,
 |  shortly after he heard of the Japanese attack on Pearl
 |  Harbor. About six months later, Bush graduated from Phillips
 |  Academy at Andover, and the commencement speaker was
 |  Secretary of War Henry Stimson, eminence grise of the U.S.
 |  ruling elite. Stimson was possibly mindful of the hecatomb
 |  of young members of the British ruling classes which had
 |  occurred in the trenches of World War I on the western
 |  front. In any event, Stimson's advice to the Andover
 |  graduates was that the war would go on for a long time, and
 |  that the best way of serving the country was to continue
 |  one's education in college. Prescott Bush supposedly asked
 |  his son if Stimson's recommendation had altered his plan to
 |  enlist. Young Bush answered that he was still committed to
 |  join the Navy.
 |
 |  Henry L. Stimson was certainly an authoritative spokesman
 |  for the Eastern Liberal Establishment, and Bushman
 |  propaganda has lately exalted him as one of the seminal
 |  influences on Bush's political outlook. Stimson had been
 |  educated at both Yale (where he had been tapped by Skull and
 |  Bones) and Harvard Law School. He became the law partner of
 |  Elihu Root, who was Theodore Roosevelt's Secretary of State.
 |  Stimson had been Theodore Roosevelt's anti-corruption,
 |  trust-busting U.S. Attorney in New York City during the
 |  first years of the FBI, then Taft's secretary of war, a
 |  colonel of artillery in World War I, governor general of the
 |  Philippines for Coolidge, secretary of state for Hoover, and
 |  enunciator of the "Stimson doctrine." This last was a piece
 |  of hypocritical posturing directed against Japan, asserting
 |  that changes in the international order brought about by
 |  force of arms (and thus in contravention of the
 |  Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928) should not be given diplomatic
 |  recognition. This amounted to a U.S. commitment to uphold
 |  the Versailles system, the same policy upheld by Baker,
 |  Eagleburger and Kissinger in the Serbian war on Slovenia and
 |  Croatia during 1991. Stimson, though a Republican, was
 |  brought into Roosevelt's war cabinet in 1940 in token of
 |  bipartisan intentions.
 |
 |  But in 1942, Bush was not buying Stimson's advice. It is
 |  doubtless significant that in the mind of young George Bush,
 |  World War II meant exclusively the war in the Pacific,
 |  against the Japanese. In the Bush-approved accounts of this
 |  period of his life, there is scarcely a mention of the
 |  European theatre, despite the fact that Roosevelt and the
 |  entire Anglo-American establishment had accorded strategic
 |  priority to the "Germany first" scenario. Young George, it
 |  would appear, had his heart set on becoming a Navy flier.
 |
 |  Rules Bent for Bush
 |
 |  Normally the Navy required two years of college from
 |  volunteers wishing to become naval aviators. But, for
 |  reasons which have never been satisfactorily explained,
 |  young George was exempted from this requirement. Had father
 |  Prescott's crony Artemus Gates, the assistant secretary of
 |  the navy for air, been instrumental in making the exception,
 |  which was the key to allowing George to become the youngest
 |  of all navy pilots?
 |
 |  On June 12, 1942, his eighteenth birthday, Bush joined the
 |  Navy in Boston as a seaman second class. [1]  He was ordered
 |  to report for active duty as an aviation cadet on August 6,
 |  1942. After a last date with Barbara, George was taken to
 |  Penn Station in New York City by father Prescott to board a
 |  troop train headed for Chapel Hill, North Carolina. At
 |  Chapel Hill Naval Air Station, one of Bush's fellow cadets
 |  was the well-known Boston Red Sox hitter Ted Williams, who
 |  would later join Bush on the campaign trail in his desperate
 |  fight in the New Hampshire primary in February 1988.
 |
 |  After preflight training at Chapel Hill, Bush moved on to
 |  Wold-Chamberlain Naval Airfield in Minneapolis, Minnesota,
 |  where he flew solo for the first time in November 1942. In
 |  February 1943 Bush moved on to Corpus Christi, Texas for
 |  further training. Bush received his commission as an ensign
 |  at Corpus Christi on June 9, 1943.
 |
 |  After this, Bush moved through a number of naval air bases
 |  over a period of almost a year for various types of advanced
 |  trai ning. In mid-June 1943, he was learning to fly the
 |  Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo-bomber at Fort Lauderdale,
 |  Florida. In August, he made landings on the "USS Sable," a
 |  paddle-wheel ship that was used as an aircraft carrier for
 |  training purposes. During the summer of 1943, Bush spent a
 |  couple of weeks of leave with Barbara at Walker's Point in
 |  Kennebunkport; their engagement was announced in the "New
 |  York Times" of December 12, 1943.
 |
 |  Later in the summer of 1943, Bush moved on to theNaval Air
 |  Base at Norfolk, Virginia. In September 1943 Bush's new
 |  squadron, called VT-51, moved on to the Naval Air Station at
 |  Chincoteague, Virginia, located on the Delmarva peninsula.
 |  On December 14, 1943 Bush and his squadron were brought to
 |  Philadelphia to attend the commissioning of the "USS San
 |  Jacinto" (CVL30), a light attack carrier built on a cruiser
 |  hull. Since the name of the ship recalled Sam Houston's
 |  defeat of the Mexican leader Santa Ana in 1836, and since
 |  the ship flew a Lone Star flag, Bushman propaganda has made
 |  much of these artifacts in an attempt to buttress
 |  "carpetbag" Bush's tenuous connections to the state of
 |  Texas. Bush's VF-51 squadron reported on board this ship for
 |  a shakedown cruise on February 6, 1944, and on March 25,
 |  1944 the "San Jacinto" left for San Diego by way of the
 |  Panama Canal. The "San Jacinto" reached Pearl Harbor on
 |  April 20, 1944, and was assigned to Admiral Marc A.
 |  Mitscher's Task Force 58/38, a group of fast carriers, on
 |  May 2, 1944.
 |
 |  Bush Bails Out
 |
 |  In June, Bush's ship joined battle with Japanese forces in
 |  the Marianas archipelago. Here Bush flew his first combat
 |  missions. On June 17, a loss of oil pressure forced Bush to
 |  make an emergency landing at sea. Bush, along with his two
 |  crew members, gunner Leo Nadeau and radioman-tail gunner
 |  John L. Delaney, were picked up by a U.S. destroyer after
 |  some hours in the water. Bush's first Avenger, named by him
 |  the Barbara, was lost.
 |
 |  During July 1944 Bush took part in 13 air strikes, many in
 |  connection with the U.S. Marines' landing on Guam. In
 |  August, Bush's ship proceeded to the area of Iwo Jima and
 |  Chichi Jima in the Bonin Islands for a new round of sorties.
 |
 |  On September 2, 1944 Bush and three other Avenger pilots,
 |  escorted by Hellcat fighter planes, were directed to attack
 |  a radio transmitter on Chichi Jima. Planes from the "USS
 |  Enterprise" would also join in the attack. On this mission
 |  Bush's rear-seat gunner would not be the usual Leo Nadeau,
 |  but rather Lt. Junior Grade William Gardner "Ted" White, the
 |  squadron ordnance officer of VT-51, already a Yale graduate
 |  and already a member of Skull and Bones. White's father had
 |  been a classmate of Prescott Bush. White took his place in
 |  the rear-facing machine gun turret of Bush's TBM Avenger,
 |  the Barbara II. The radioman-gunner was John L. Delaney, a
 |  regular member of Bush's crew.
 |
 |  What happened in the skies of Chichi Jima that day is a
 |  matter of lively controversy. Bush has presented several
 |  differing versions of his own story. In his campaign
 |  autobiography published in 1987 Bush gives the following
 |  account:
 |
 |  "The flak was the heaviest I'd ever flown into. The Japanese
 |  were ready and waiting: their anti-aircraft guns were set up
 |  to nail us as we pushed into our dives. By the time VT-51
 |  was ready to go in, the sky was thick with angry black
 |  clouds of exploding anti-aircraft fire.
 |
 |  "Don Melvin led the way, scoring hits on a radio tower. I
 |  followed, going into a thirty-five degree dive, an angle of
 |  attack that sounds shallow but in an Avenger felt as if you
 |  were headed straight down. The target map was strapped to my
 |  knee, and as I started into my dive, I'd already spotted the
 |  target area. Coming in, I was aware of black splotches of
 |  gunfire all around.
 |
 |  "Suddenly there was a jolt, as if a massive fist had
 |  crunched into the belly of the plane. Smoke poured into the
 |  cockpit, and I could see flames rippling across the crease
 |  of the wing, edging towards the fuel tanks. I stayed with
 |  the dive, homed in on the target, unloaded our four
 |  500-pound bombs, and pulled away, heading for the sea. Once
 |  over water, I leveled off and told Delaney and White to bail
 |  out, turning the plane to starboard to take the slipstream
 |  off the door near Delaney's station.
 |
 |  "Up to that point, except for the sting of dense smoke
 |  blurring my vision, I was in fair shape. But when I went to
 |  make my jump, trouble came in pairs." [2] 
 |
 |  In this account, there is no more mention of White and
 |  Delaney until Bush hit the water and began looking around
 |  for them. Bush says that it was only after having been
 |  rescued by the "USS Finnback," a submarine, that he "learned
 |  that neither Jack Delaney nor Ted White had survived. One
 |  went down with the plane; the other was seen jumping, but
 |  his parachute failed to open." The Hyams account of 1991 was
 |  written after an August 1988 interview with Chester
 |  Mierzejewski, another member of Bush's squadron, had raised
 |  important questions about the haste with which Bush bailed
 |  out, rather than attempting a water landing. Mierzejewski's
 |  account, which is summarized below, contradicted Bush's own
 |  version of these events, and hinted that Bush might have
 |  abandoned his two crew members to a horrible and needless
 |  death. The Hyams account, which is partly intended to refute
 |  Mierzejewski, develops as follows:
 |
 |  "... Bush was piloting the third plane over the target, with
 |  Moore flying on his wing. He nosed over into a thirty-degree
 |  glide, heading straight for the radio tower. Determined to
 |  finally destroy the tower, he used no evasive tactics and
 |  held the plane directly on target. His vision ahead was
 |  occasionally cancelled by bursts of black smoke from the
 |  Japanese antiaircraft guns. The plane was descending through
 |  thickening clouds of flak pierced by the flaming arc of
 |  tracers.
 |
 |  "There was a sudden flash of light followed by an explosion.
 |  'The plane was lifted forward, and we were enveloped in
 |  flames,' Bush recalls. 'I saw the flames running along the
 |  wings where the fuel tanks were and where the wings fold. I
 |  thought, This is really bad! It's hard to remember the
 |  details, but I looked at the instruments and couldn't see
 |  them for the smoke.'
 |
 |  "Don Melvin, circling above the action while waiting for his
 |  pilots to drop their bombs and get out, thought the Japanese
 |  shell had hit an oil line on Bush's Avenger. 'You could have
 |  seen that smoke for a hundred miles.'|"
 |
 |  Perhaps so, but it is difficult to understand why the smoke
 |  from Bush's plane was so distinctly visible in such a
 |  smoke-filled environment. Hyams goes on to describe Bush's
 |  completion of his bombing run. His account continues:
 |
 |  "By then the wings were covered in flames and smoke, and the
 |  engine was blazing. He considered making a water landing but
 |  realized it would not be possible. Bailing out was
 |  absolutely the last choice, but he had no other option. He
 |  got on the radio and notified squadron leader Melvin of his
 |  decision. Melvin radioed back, 'Received your message. Got
 |  you in sight. Will follow.'
 |
 |  "[...] Milt Moore, flying directly behind Bush, saw the
 |  Avenger going down smoking. 'I pulled up to him; then he
 |  lost power and I went sailing by him.'
 |
 |  "As soon as he was back over water, Bush shouted on the
 |  intercom for White and Delaney to 'hit the silk!' [...] Dick
 |  Gorman, Moore's radioman-gunner, remembers hearing someone
 |  on the intercom shout, 'Hit the silk!' and asking Moore, 'Is
 |  that you, Red?'
 |
 |  "|'No,' Moore replied. 'It's Bush, he's hit!'
 |
 |  "Other squadron members heard Bush repeating the command to
 |  bail out, over and over, on the radio.
 |
 |  "There was no response from either of Bush's crewmen and no
 |  way he could see them; a shield of armor plate between him
 |  and Lt. White blocked his view behind. He was certain that
 |  White and Delaney had bailed out the moment they got the
 |  order." [3] 
 |
 |  Hyams quotes a later entry by Melvin in the squadron log as
 |  to the fate of Bush's two crewmen: "At a point approximately
 |  nine miles bearing 045'T (degrees) from Minami Jima, Bush
 |  and one other person were seen to bail out from about 3,000
 |  feet. Bush's chute opened and he landed safely in the water,
 |  inflated his raft, and paddled farther away from Chichi
 |  Jima. The chute of th e other person who bailed out did not
 |  open. Bush has not yet been returned to the squadron ... so
 |  this information is incomplete. While Lt. junior grade White
 |  and J.L. Delaney are reported missing in action, it is
 |  believed that both were killed as a result of the above
 |  described action." [4] 
 |
 |  But it is interesting to note that this report, contrary to
 |  usual standard Navy practice, has no date. This should alert
 |  us to that tampering with public records, such as Bush's
 |  filings at the Securities and Exchange Commission during the
 |  1960s, which appears to be a specialty of the Brown Brothers
 |  Harriman/Skull and Bones network.
 |
 |  For comparison, let us now cite the cursory account of this
 |  same incident provided by Bush's authorized biographer in
 |  the candidate's 1980 presidential campaign biography:
 |
 |  "On a run toward the island, Bush's plane was struck by
 |  Japanese antiaircraft shells. One of his two crewmen was
 |  killed instantly and the aircraft was set on fire. Bush was
 |  able to score hits on the enemy installations with a couple
 |  of five-hundred pound bombs before he wriggled out of the
 |  smoking cockpit and floated towards the water. The other
 |  crewman also bailed out but died almost immediately
 |  thereafter because, as the fighter pilot behind Bush's plane
 |  was later to report, his parachute failed to open properly.
 |  Bush's own parachute became momentarily fouled on the tail
 |  of the plane after he hit the water." [5] 
 |
 |  King's account is interesting for its omission of any
 |  mention of Bush's injury in bailing out, a gashed forehead
 |  he got when he struck the tail assembly of the plane. This
 |  had to have occurred long before Bush had hit the water, so
 |  this account is garbled indeed.
 |
 |  Let us also cite parts of the account provided by Fitzhugh
 |  Green in his 1989 authorized biography. Green has Bush
 |  making his attack "at a 60-degree angle." "For his two crew
 |  members," notes Green, "life was about to end." His version
 |  goes on:
 |
 |  "Halfway through Bush's dive, the enemy found his range with
 |  one or more shells. Smoke filled his cabin; his plane
 |  controls weakened; the engine began coughing, and still he
 |  wasn't close enough to the target. He presumed the TBM to be
 |  terminally damaged. Fighting to stay on course, eyes
 |  smarting, Bush managed to launch his bombs at the last
 |  possible moment. He couldn't discern the result through
 |  black fumes. But a companion pilot affirmed later that the
 |  installation blew up, along with two other buildings. The
 |  Navy would decorate Bush for literally sticking to his guns
 |  until he completed his mission under ferocious enemy fire.
 |
 |  "Good! Now the trick was to keep the plane aloft long enough
 |  to accomplish two objectives: first, get far enough away
 |  from the island to allow rescue from the sea before capture
 |  or killing by the enemy; second, give his plane mates time
 |  to parachute out of the burning aircraft.
 |
 |  "The TBM sputtered on its last few hundred yards.
 |  Unbeknownst to Bush, one man freed himself. Neither fellow
 |  squadron pilots nor Bush ever were sure which crew member
 |  this was. As he jumped, however, his parachute snarled and
 |  failed to open." [6] 
 |
 |  Green writes that when Bush was swimming in the water, he
 |  realized that "his crew had disappeared" and that "the loss
 |  of the two men numbed Bush."
 |
 |  Still Another Story
 |
 |  For the 1992 presidential campaign, the Bushmen have readied
 |  yet another rehash of the adulatory "red Studebaker"
 |  printout in the form of a new biography by Richard Ben
 |  Cramer. This is distinguished as a literary effort above all
 |  by the artificial verbal pyrotechnics with which the author
 |  attempts to breathe new life into the dog-eared Bush
 |  canonical printout. For these, Cramer relies on a
 |  hyperkinetic style with non-verbal syntax, which to some
 |  degree echoes Bush's own disjointed manner of speaking. The
 |  resulting text may have found favor with Bush when he was
 |  gripped by his hyperthyroid rages during the buildup for the
 |  Gulf war. A part of this text has appeared in "Esquire"
 |  magazine. [7]  Here is Cramer's description of the critical
 |  phase of the incident:
 |
 |  "He felt a jarring lurch, a crunch, and his plane leaped
 |  forward, like a giant had struck it from below with a fist.
 |  Smoke started to fill the cockpit. He saw a tongue of flame
 |  streaming down the right wing toward the crease. Christ! The
 |  fuel tanks!
 |
 |  "He called to Delaney and White -- We've been hit! He was
 |  diving. Melvin hit the tower dead-on -- four five hundred
 |  pounders. West was on the same beam. Bush could have pulled
 |  out. Have to get rid of these bombs. Keep the dive.... A few
 |  seconds....
 |
 |  "He dropped on the target and let 'em fly. The bombs spun
 |  down, the plane shrugged with release, and Bush banked away
 |  hard to the east. No way he'd get to the rendezvous point
 |  with Melvin. The smoke was so bad he couldn't see the
 |  gauges. Was he climbing? Have to get to the water. They were
 |  dead if they bailed out over land. The Japs killed pilots.
 |  Gonna have to bail out. Bush radioed the skipper, called his
 |  crew. No answer. Does White know how to get to his chute?
 |  Bush looked back for an instant. God, was White hit? He was
 |  yelling the order to bail out, turning right rudder to take
 |  the slipstream off their hatch ... had to get himself out.
 |  He leveled off over water, only a few miles from the island
 |  ... more, ought to get out farther ... that's it, got to be
 |  now.... He flicked the red toggle switch on the dash -- the
 |  IFF, Identification Friend or Foe -- supposed to alert any
 |  U.S. ship, send a special frequency back to his own carrier
 |  ... no other way to communicate, had to get out now, had to
 |  be ... NOW."
 |
 |  It will be seen that these versions contain numerous
 |  internal contradictions, but that the hallmark of "red
 |  Studebaker" orthodoxy, especially after the appearance of
 |  the Mierzejewsky account, is that Bush's plane was on fire,
 |  with visible smoke and flames. The Bush propaganda machine
 |  needs the fire on board the Avenger in order to justify
 |  Bush's precipitous decision to bail out, leaving his two
 |  crew members to their fate, rather than attempting the water
 |  landing which might have saved them.
 |
 |  The only person who has ever claimed to have seen Bush's
 |  plane get hit, and to have seen it hit the water, is Chester
 |  Mierzejewski, who was the rear turret gunner in the aircraft
 |  flown by Squadron Commander Douglas Melvin. During 1987-88,
 |  Mierzejewski became increasingly indignant as he watched
 |  Bush repeat his canonical account of how he was shot down.
 |  Shortly before the Republican National Convention in 1988,
 |  Mierzejewski, by then a 68-year-old retired aircraft foreman
 |  living in Cheshire, Connecticut, decided to tell his story
 |  to Allan Wolper and Al Ellenberg of the "New York Post,"
 |  which printed it as a copyrighted article. [8] 
 |
 |  "That guy is not telling the truth," Mierzejewski said of
 |  Bush.
 |
 |  As the rear-looking turret gunner on Commander Melvin's
 |  plane, Mierzejewski had the most advantageous position for
 |  observing the events in question here. Since Melvin's plane
 |  flew directly ahead of Bush's, he had a direct and
 |  unobstructed view of what was happening aft of his own
 |  plane. When the "New York Post" reporters asked former Lt.
 |  Legare Hole, the executive officer of Bush's squadron, about
 |  who might have best observed the last minutes of the Barbara
 |  II, Hole replied: "The turret gunner in Melvin's plane would
 |  have had a good view. If the plane was on fire, there is a
 |  very good chance he would be able to see that. The pilot
 |  can't see everything that the gunner can, and he'd miss an
 |  awful lot," Hole told the "New York Post."
 |
 |  Gunner Lawrence Mueller of Milwaukee, another former member
 |  of Bush's squadron who flew on the Chichi Jima mission, when
 |  asked who would have had the best view, replied: "The turret
 |  gunner of Melvin's plane." Mierzejewski for his part said
 |  that his plane was flying about 100 feet ahead of Bush's
 |  plane during the incident -- so close that he could see into
 |  Bush's cockpit.
 |
 |  Mierzejewski, who is also a recipient of the Distinguished
 |  Flying Cross, told the "New York Post" that he saw "a puff
 |  of smoke" come out of Bush's plane and quickly dissipate. He
 |  asserted that after that there was no more smoke visible,
 |  that Bush's "plane was never on fire" and that "no smoke
 |  came out of his cockpit when he opened his canopy to bail
 |  out." Mierzejewski stated that only one man ever got out of
 |  the Barbara II, and that was Bush himself. "I was hoping I
 |  would see some other parachutes. I never did. I saw the
 |  plane go down. I knew the guys were still in it. It was a
 |  helpless feeling."
 |
 |  Mierzejewski has long been troubled by the notion that
 |  Bush's decision to parachute from his damaged aircraft might
 |  have cost the lives of Radioman second class John Delaney, a
 |  close  friend of Mierzejewski, as well as gunner Lt. junior
 |  grade William White. 'I think [Bush] could have saved those
 |  lives, if they were alive. I don't know that they were, but
 |  at least they had a chance if he had attempted a water
 |  landing," Mierzejewski told the "New York Post."
 |
 |  Former executive officer Legare Hole summed up the question
 |  for the "New York Post" reporters as follows: "If the plane
 |  is on fire, it hastens your decision to bail out. If it is
 |  not on fire, you make a water landing." The point is that a
 |  water landing held out more hope for all members of the
 |  crew. The Avenger had been designed to float for
 |  approximately two minutes, giving the tailgunner enough time
 |  to inflate a raft and giving everyone an extra margin of
 |  time to get free of the plane before it sank. Bush had
 |  carried out a water landing back in June when his plane had
 |  lost oil pressure.
 |
 |  The official -- but undated -- report on the incident among
 |  the squadron records was signed by Commander Melvin and an
 |  intelligence officer named Lt. Martin E. Kilpatrick.
 |  Kilpatrick is deceased, and Melvin in 1988 was hospitalized
 |  with Parkinson's disease and could not be interviewed.
 |  Mierzejewski in early August 1988 had never seen the undated
 |  intelligence report in question. "Kilpatrick was the first
 |  person I spoke to when we got back to the ship," he said. "I
 |  told him what I saw. I don't understand why it's not in the
 |  report."
 |
 |  Gunner Lawrence Mueller tended to corroborate Mierzejewski's
 |  account. Mueller had kept a log book of his own in which he
 |  made notations as the squadron was debriefed in the ready
 |  room after each mission. For September 2, 1944, Mueller's
 |  personal log had the following entry: "White and Delaney
 |  presumed to have gone down with plane." Mueller told the
 |  "New York Post" that "no parachute was sighted except Bush's
 |  when the plane went down." The "New York Post" reporters
 |  were specific that, according to Mueller, no one in the "San
 |  Jacinto" ready room during the debriefing had said anything
 |  about a fire on board Bush's plane. Mueller said: "I would
 |  have put it in my logbook if I had heard it."
 |
 |  According to this "New York Post" article, the report of
 |  Bush's debriefing aboard the submarine "Finnback" after his
 |  rescue makes no mention of any fire aboard the plane. When
 |  the "New York Post" reporters interviewed Thomas R. Keene,
 |  an airman from another carrier, who had been picked up by
 |  the "Finnback" a few days after Bush, they referred to the
 |  alleged fire on board Bush's plane and "Keene was surprised
 |  to hear" it. "|'Did he say that?,'|" Keene asked.
 |
 |  Leo Nadeau, Bush's usual rear turret gunner, who had been in
 |  contact with Bush during the 1980s, attempted to undercut
 |  Mierzejewski's credibility by stating that "Ski," as
 |  Mierzejewski was called, would have been "too busy shooting"
 |  to have been able to focus on the events involving Bush's
 |  plane. But even the pro-Bush accounts agree that the reason
 |  that White had been allowed to come aloft in the first place
 |  was the expectation that there would be no Japanese aircraft
 |  over the target, making a thoroughly trained and experienced
 |  gunner superfluous. Indeed, no account alleges that any
 |  Japanese aircraft appeared over Chichi Jima.
 |
 |  Bush and Mierzejewski met again on board the "San Jacinto"
 |  after the downed pilot was returned from the "Finnback"
 |  about a month after the loss of the Barbara II. According to
 |  the "New York Post" account, about a month after all these
 |  events Bush, clad in Red Cross pajamas, returned to the "San
 |  Jacinto." "He came into the ready room and sat down next to
 |  me," Mierzejewski recounted. "He [Bush] knew I saw the whole
 |  thing. He said, 'Ski, I'm sure those two men were dead. I
 |  called them on the radio three times. They were dead.' When
 |  he told me they were dead, I couldn't prove they weren't. He
 |  seemed distraught. He was trying to assure me he did the
 |  best he could. I'm thinking what am I going to say to him,"
 |  Mierzejewski commented in 1988.
 |
 |  Mierzejewski began to become concerned about Bush's
 |  presentation of his war record while watching Bush's
 |  December 1987 interview with David Frost, which was one of
 |  the candidate's most sanctimonious performances. In March
 |  1988, Mierzejewski wrote to Bush and told him that his
 |  recollections were very different from the Vice President's
 |  story. Mierzejewski's letter was not hostile in tone, but
 |  voiced concern that political opponents might come forward
 |  to dispute Bush. There was no reply to this letter, and
 |  Chester Mierzejewski ultimately elected to tell his own
 |  unique eye-witness version of the facts to the "New York
 |  Post." Certainly his authoritative, first-hand account
 |  places a large question mark over the events of September 2,
 |  1944, which Bush has so often sought to exploit for
 |  political gain.
 |
 |  Several days after Mierzejewski's interview was published,
 |  Bush's office obtained and released to the press a copy of
 |  the (undated) squadron log report. One Donald Rhodes of
 |  Bush's office called Mierzejewski to offer him a copy of the
 |  report.
 |
 |  It is typical of Joe Hyams's hack work for Bush in "The
 |  Flight of the Avenger" that he never mentions Mierzejewski's
 |  critical account, although he is obviously acutely aware of
 |  the objections raised by Mierzejewski and wants very much to
 |  discredit those objections. Indeed, Hyams totally ignores
 |  Mierzejewski as a source, and also studiously ignores the
 |  other witness who would have supported Mierzejewski, that is
 |  to say Mueller. Hyams had the support of Bush's White House
 |  staff in arranging interviews for his book, but somehow he
 |  never got around to talking to Mierzejewski and Mueller.
 |  This must increase our suspicion that Bush has some damning
 |  cicrumstance he wishes to hide.
 |
 |  Bush himself admits that he was in a big hurry to get out of
 |  his cockpit: "The wind was playing tricks, or more likely, I
 |  pulled the rip cord too soon." [9]  This caused his gashed
 |  forehead and damaged his parachute.
 |
 |  Concerning the ability of Brown Brothers Harriman to fix a
 |  combat report in naval aviation, it is clear that this could
 |  be accomplished as easily as fixing a parking ticket.
 |  Artemus Gates is someone who could have helped out. Other
 |  Brown Brothers Harriman assets in powerful posts included
 |  Secretary of War Stimson, Secretary of War for Air Robert
 |  Lovett, Special Envoy W. Averell Harriman, and even
 |  President Roosevelt's confidant and virtual alter ego, Harry
 |  Hopkins, an asset of the Harriman family.
 |
 |  Bush was very upset about what had happened to his two
 |  crewmen. Later, during one of his Skull and Bones "Life
 |  History" self-exposures, Bush referred to Lt. White, the
 |  Skull and Bones member who had gone to his death with the
 |  Barbara II: "I wish I hadn't let him go," said Bush,
 |  according to former Congressman Thomas W. L. (Lud) Ashley, a
 |  fellow Skull and Bones member and during 1991 one of the
 |  administrators of the Neil Bush legal defense fund.
 |  According to Ashley, "Bush was heartbroken. He had gone over
 |  it in his mind 100,000 times and concluded he couldn't have
 |  done anything.... He didn't feel guilty about anything that
 |  happened.... But the incident was a source of real grief to
 |  him. It tore him up, real anguish. It was so fresh in his
 |  mind. He had a real friendship with this man," said Ashley.
 |  [10] 
 |
 |  Bush later wrote letters to the families of the men who had
 |  died on his plane. He received a reply from Delaney's
 |  sister, Mary Jane Delaney. The letter read in part:
 |
 |  "You mention in your letter that you would like to help me
 |  in some way. There is a way, and that is to stop thinking
 |  you are in any way responsible for your plane accident and
 |  what has happened to your men. I might have thought you were
 |  if my br other Jack had not always spoken of you as the best
 |  pilot in the squadron." [11] 
 |
 |  Bush also wrote a letter to his parents in which he talked
 |  about White and Delaney: "I try to think about it as little
 |  as possible, yet I cannot get the thought of those two out
 |  of my mind. Oh, I'm OK -- I want to fly again and I won't be
 |  scared of it, but I know I won't be able to shake the memory
 |  of this incident and I don't believe I want to completely."
 |  [12] 
 |
 |  As Bush himself looked back on all these events from the
 |  threshold of his genocidal assault on Iraq, he complacently
 |  concluded that the pagan fates had preserved his life for
 |  some future purpose. He told Hyams:
 |
 |  "There wasn't a sudden revelation of what I wanted to do
 |  with the rest of my life, but there was an awakening.
 |  There's no question that underlying all that were my own
 |  religious beliefs. In my own view there's got to be some
 |  kind of destiny and I was being spared for something on
 |  earth." [13] 
 |
 |  After having deliberately ignored the relevant dissenting
 |  views about the heroism of his patron, Hyams chooses to
 |  conclude his book on the following disturbing note:
 |
 |  "When flying his Avenger off the deck of the San Jac, Bush
 |  was responsible for his own fate as well as his crewmen's.
 |  As President he is responsible for the fate of all Americans
 |  as well as that of much of the world."
 |
 |  And that is precisely the problem.
 |
 |  Notes
 |
 |  * Would to the gods that this be the last of his crimes!
 |
 |  1. For details of Bush's Navy career, see Joe Hyams, "Flight
 |  of the Avenger: George Bush at War" (New York: Harcourt,
 |  Brace, Jovanovitch, 1991), "passim."
 |
 |  2. George Bush and Victor Gold, "Looking Forward," (New
 |  York: Doubleday, 1987), p. 36.
 |
 |  3. Hyams, "op. cit.," pp. 106-7.
 |
 |  4. "Ibid.," p. 111.
 |
 |  5. Nicholas King, "George Bush: A Biography" (New York:
 |  Dodd, Mead & Company, 1980), pp. 30-31.
 |
 |  6. Fitzhugh Green, "George Bush: An Intimate Portrait" (New
 |  York: Hippocrene Books, 1989), pp. 36-37.
 |
 |  7. Richard Ben Cramer, "George Bush: How He Got Here,"
 |  "Esquire," June 1991.
 |
 |  8. Allan Wolper and Al Ellenberg, "The Day Bush Bailed Out,"
 |  "New York Post," August 12, 1988, p. 1 "ff."
 |
 |  9. Bush and Gold, "op. cit.," p. 36.
 |
 |  10. "Washington Post," August 7, 1988. For the Skull and
 |  Bones Society and its "life history" self-exposure, see
 |  Chapter 7.
 |
 |  11. Hyams, "op. cit.," p. 143.
 |
 |  12. Bush and Gold, "op. cit.," pp. 40-41.
 |
 |  13. Hyams, "op. cit.," p. 134.
 |
 |  Correction
 |
 |  Corrections to errors in Chapter 3, in volume 6, No. 1, Jan.
 |  6, 1992:
 |
 |  There was an extraneous footnote ("1") following the first
 |  paragraph, which might have made that quote appear to be
 |  from George Bush, rather than Hitler. Bush's (similar) quote
 |  in fact follows that one.
 |
 |  "After his 1948 graduation ... George Bush flew down to
 |  Texas on a corporate jet" should have read "on a corporate
 |  aircraft."
 |
 |  The U.S. Navy delivered George Bush back home for good on
 |  Christmas Eve 1944; the war in the Pacific raged on over the
 |  next half year, with Allied forces taking Southeast Asia,
 |  the Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia), and islands such as
 |  Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
 |
 |  Barbara Pierce quit Smith College in her sophomore year to
 |  marry George. Prescott and Mother Bush gave a splendid
 |  prenuptial dinner at the Greenwich Field Club. The wedding
 |  took place January 6, 1945, in the Rye, New York
 |  Presbyterian Church, as the U.S. Third Fleet bombarded the
 |  main Philippine island of Luzon in preparation for invasion.
 |  Afterwards there was a glamorous reception for 300 at
 |  Appawamis Country Club. The newlyweds honeymooned at The
 |  Cloisters, a five-star hotel on Sea Island, Georgia, with
 |  swimming, tennis, and golf....
 |
 |  Japan surrendered in August. That fall, George and Barbara
 |  Bush moved to New Haven where Bush entered Yale University.
 |  He and Barbara moved into an apartment at 37 Hillhouse
 |  Avenue, across the street from Yale President Charles
 |  Seymour.
 |
 |  College life was good to George, what he saw of it. A
 |  college career usually occupies four years. But we know that
 |  George Bush is a rapidly moving man. Thus he was pleased
 |  with the special arrangement made for veterans, by which
 |  Yale allowed him to get his degree after attending classes
 |  for only two and a half years....
 |
 |  In 1947, Barbara gave birth to George W. Bush, Jr.
 |
 |  By the time of his 1948 graduation, he had been elected to
 |  Phi Beta Kappa, an honor traditionally associated with
 |  academic achievement. Not a great deal is known about George
 |  Bush's career at Yale, especially the part about books and
 |  studies. Unfortunately for those who would wish to consider
 |  his intellectual accomplishment, everything about "that" has
 |  been sealed shut and is top secret. The Yale administration
 |  says they have turned over to the FBI custody of all of
 |  Bush's academic records, allegedly because the FBI needs
 |  such access to check the resumes of important office
 |  holders.
 |
 |  >From all available testimony, his mental life before
 |  college was anything but outstanding. His campaign
 |  literature claims that, as a veteran, Bush was "serious" at
 |  Yale. But we cannot check exactly how he achieved election
 |  to Phi Beta Kappa, in his abbreviated college experience.
 |  Without top secret clearance, we cannot consult his test
 |  results, read his essays, or learn much about his
 |  performance in class. We know that his father was a trustee
 |  of the university, in charge of "developmental" fundraising.
 |  And his family friends were in control of the U.S. secret
 |  services.
 |
 |  A great deal is known, however, about George Bush's "status"
 |  at Yale.
 |
 |  His fellow student John H. Chafee, later a U.S. senator from
 |  Rhode Island and secretary of the navy, declared: "We didn't
 |  see much of him because he was married, but I guess my first
 |  impression was that he was -- and I don't mean this in a
 |  derogatory fashion -- in the inner set, the movers and
 |  shakers, the establishment. I don't mean he put on airs or
 |  anything, but .. just everybody knew him."
 |
 |  Chafee, like Bush and Dan Quayle, was in the important
 |  national fraternity, Delta Kappa Epsilon (DKE or the
 |  "Dekes"). But Chafee says, "I never remember seeing him
 |  there. He wasn't one to hang around with the fellows."  [5] 
 |
 |  The Tomb
 |
 |  George Bush, in fact, passed his most important days and
 |  nights at Yale in the strange companionship of the
 |  senior-year Skull and Bones Society. [6] 
 |
 |  Out of those few who were chosen for Bones membership,
 |  George was the last one to be notified of his selection --
 |  this honor is traditionally reserved for the highest of the
 |  high and mighty.
 |
 |  His father, Prescott Bush, several other relatives and
 |  partners, and Roland and Averell Harriman, who sponsored the
 |  Bush family, were also members of this secret society....
 |
 |  The order was incorporated in 1856 under the name "Russell
 |  Trust Association." By special act of the state legislature
 |  in 1943, its trustees are exempted from the normal
 |  requirement of filing corporate reports with the Connecticut
 |  secretary of state.
 |
 |  As of 1978, all business of the Russell Trust [which founded
 |  Skull and Bones] was handled by its lone trustee, Brown
 |  Brothers Harriman partner John B. Madden, Jr. Madden started
 |  with Brown Brothers Harriman in 1946, under senior partner
 |  Prescott Bush, George Bush's father.
 |
 |  Each year, Skull and Bones members select ("tap") 15
 |  third-year Yale students to replace them in the senior group
 |  the following year. Graduating members are given a sizeable
 |  cash bonus to help them get started in life. Older graduate
 |  members, the so-called "Patriarchs," give special backing in
 |  business, politics, espionage and legal careers to graduate
 |  Bonesmen who exhibit talent or usefulness.
 |
 |  The home of Skull and Bones on the Yale campus is a stone
 |  building resembling a mausoleum, and known as "the Tomb."
 |  Initiations take place on Deer Island in the St. Lawrence
 |  River (an island owned by the Russell Trust Association),
 |  with regular reunions on Deer Island and at Yale. Initiation
 |  rites reportedly include strenuous and traumatic activities
 |  of the new member, while immersed naked in mud, and in a
 |  coffin. More important is the "sexual autobiography": The
 |  initiate tells the order all the sex secrets of his young
 |  life. Weakened mental defenses against manipulation, and the
 |  blackmail potential of such information, have obvious
 |  permanent uses in enforcing loyalty among members.
 |
 |  The loyalty is intense. One of Bush's former teachers, whose
 |  own father was a Skull and Bones member, told our
 |  interviewer that his father used to stab his little Skull
 |  and Bones pin into his skin to keep it in place when he took
 |  a bath.
 |
 |  Members continue throughout their lives to unburden
 |  themselves on their psycho-sexual thoughts to their Bones
 |  Brothers, even if they are no longer sitting in a coffin.
 |  This has been the case with President George Bush, for whom
 |  these ties are reported to have a deep personal meaning.
 |  Beyond the psychological manipulation associated with
 |  freemasonic mummery, there are very solid political reasons
 |  for Bush's strong identification with this cult....
 |
 |  Skull and Bones -- the Russell Trust Association -- was
 |  first established among the class graduating from Yale in
 |  1833. Its founder was William Huntington Russell of
 |  Middletown, Connecticut. The Russell family was the master
 |  of incalculable wealth derived from the largest U.S.
 |  criminal organization of the nineteenth century: Russell and
 |  Company, the great opium syndicate.
 |
 |  There was at that time a deep suspicion of, and national
 |  revulsion against, freemasonry and secret organizations in
 |  the United States, fostered in particular by the
 |  anti-masonic writings of former U.S. President John Quincy
 |  Adams. Adams stressed that those who take oaths to
 |  politically powerful international secret societies cannot
 |  be depended on for loyalty to a democratic republic.
 |
 |  But the Russells were protected as part of the multiply
 |  intermarried grouping of families then ruling Connecticut.
 |  The blood-proud members of the Russell, Pierpont, Edwards,
 |  Burr, Griswold, Day, Alsop, and Hubbard families were
 |  prominent in the pro-British party within the state. Many of
 |  their sons would be among the members chosen for the Skull
 |  and Bones Society over the years.
 |
 |  Opium and Empire
 |
 |  The background to Skull and Bones is a story of Opium and
 |  Empire, and a bitter struggle for political control over the
 |  new U.S. republic.
 |
 |  Samuel Russell, second cousin to Bones founder William H.,
 |  established Russell and Company in 1823. Its business was to
 |  acquire opium from Turkey and smuggle it into China, where
 |  it was strictly prohibited, under the armed protection of
 |  the British Empire.
 |
 |  The prior, predominant American gang in this field had been
 |  the syndicate created by Thomas Handasyd Perkins of
 |  Newburyport, Massachusetts, an aggregation of the
 |  self-styled "bluebloods" or Brahmins of Boston's north
 |  shore. Forced out of the lucrative African slave trade by
 |  U.S. law and Caribbean slave revolts, leaders of the Cabot,
 |  Lowell, Higginson, Forbes, Cushing, and Sturgis families had
 |  married Perkins siblings and children. The Perkins opium
 |  syndicate made the fortune and established the power of
 |  these families, under the direct protection of the British
 |  navy and British imperial finance. By the 1830s, the
 |  Russells had bought out the Perkins syndicate and made
 |  Connecticut the primary center of the U.S. opium racket.
 |  Massachusetts families (Coolidge, Sturgis, Forbes, and
 |  Delano) joined Connecticut (Alsop) and New York (Low)
 |  smuggler-millionaires under the Russell (and British)
 |  auspices....
 |
 |  Samuel and William Huntington Russell were quiet, wary
 |  builders of their faction's power. An intimate colleague of
 |  opium gangster Samuel Russell wrote this about him:
 |
 |  "While he lived no friend of his would venture to mention
 |  his name in print. While in China, he lived for about
 |  twenty-five years almost as a hermit, hardly known outside
 |  of his factory [the Canton warehouse compound] except by the
 |  chosen few who enjoyed his intimacy, and by his good friend,
 |  Hoqua [Chinese security director for the East India
 |  Company], but studying commerce in its broadest sense, as
 |  well as its minutest details. Returning home with
 |  well-earned wealth he lived hospitably in the midst of his
 |  family, and a small circle of intimates. Scorning words and
 |  pretensions from the bottom of his heart, he was the truest
 |  and staunchest of friends; hating notoriety, he could always
 |  be absolutely counted on for every good work which did not
 |  involve publicity."
 |
 |  The Russells' Skull and Bones Society was the most important
 |  of their domestic projects "which did not involve
 |  publicity."
 |
 |  ... Yale was the northern college favored by southern
 |  slaveowning would-be aristocrats. Among Yale's southern
 |  students were John C. Calhoun, later the famous South
 |  Carolina defender of slavery against nationalism, and Judah
 |  P. Benjamin, later secretary of state for the slaveowners'
 |  Confederacy....
 |
 |  In 1832-33, Skull and Bones was launched under the Russell
 |  pirate flag.
 |
 |  Among the early initiates of the order were Henry Rootes
 |  Jackson (S&B 1839), a leader of the 1861 "Georgia" Secession
 |  Convention and post-Civil War president of the Georgia
 |  Historical Society; ... John Perkins, Jr. (S&B 1840),
 |  chairman of the 1861 "Louisiana" Secession Convention;...
 |  and William Taylor Sullivan Barry (S&B 1841), a national
 |  leader of the secessionist wing of the Democratic Party
 |  during the 1850s, and chairman of the 1861 "Mississippi"
 |  Secession Convention.
 |
 |  Alphonso Taft was a Bonesman alongside William H. Russell in
 |  the Class of 1833. As U.S. attorney general in 1876-77,
 |  Alphonso Taft helped organize the backroom settlement of the
 |  deadlocked 1876 presidential election. The bargain gave
 |  Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency (1877-81) and withdrew
 |  the U.S. troops from the South, where they had been
 |  enforcing blacks' rights.
 |
 |  Alphonso's son, William Howard Taft (S&B 1878), was U.S.
 |  President from 1909 to 1913. President Taft's son, Robert
 |  Alphonso Taft (S&B 1910), was a leading U.S. senator after
 |  World War II; his family's Anglo-Saxon racial/ancestral
 |  preoccupation was the disease which crippled Robert Taft's
 |  leadership of American nationalist "conservatives."
 |
 |  Leading Bonesmen
 |
 |  Other pre-Civil War Bonesmen were:
 |
 |     *  ""William M. Evarts "(S&B 1837), Wall Street attorney
 |  for British and southern slaveowner projects, collaborator
 |  of Taft in the 1876 bargain, U.S. secretary of state
 |  1877-81;
 |
 |     *  "Morris R. Waite "(S&B 1837), chief justice of the
 |  U.S. Supreme Court 1874-88, whose rulings destroyed many
 |  rights of African-Americans gained in the Civil War; he
 |  helped his cohorts Taft and Evarts arrange the 1876
 |  presidential settlement scheme to pull the rights-enforcing
 |  U.S. troops out of the South;
 |
 |     *  "Daniel Coit Gilman "(S&B 1852), co-incorporator of
 |  the Russell Trust; founding president of Johns Hopkins
 |  University as a great center for the racialist eugenics
 |  movement;
 |
 |     *  "Andrew D. White "(S&B 1853), founding president of
 |  Cornell University; psychic researcher; and diplomatic
 |  cohort of the Venetian, Russian and British oligarchies;
 |
 |     *  "Chauncey M. Depew "(S&B 1856), general counsel for
 |  the Vanderbilt railroads, he helped the Harriman family to
 |  enter into high society....
 |
 |     *  "Irving Fisher "(S&B 1888) became the racialist high
 |  priest of the economics faculty (Yale professor 1896-1946),
 |  and a famous merchant of British Empire propaganda for free
 |  trade and reduction of the non-white population. Fisher was
 |  founding president of the American Eugenics Society under
 |  the financial largesse of Averell Harriman's mother.
 |
 |     *  "Gifford Pinchot "(S&B 1889) invented the aristocrats'
 |  "conservation" movement. He was President Theodore
 |  Roosevelt's chief forester, substituting federal
 |  land-control in place of Abraham Lincoln's
 |  free-land-to-families farm creation program. Pinchot's
 |  British Empire activism included the Psychical Research
 |  Society and his vice presidency of the first International
 |  Eugenics Congress in 1912....
 |
 |     *  "Frederick E. Weyerhaeuser "(S&B 1896), owner of vast
 |  tracts of American forest, was a follower of Pinchot's
 |  movement, while the Weyerhaeusers were active collaborators
 |  of British-South African super-racist Cecil Rhodes. This
 |  family's friendship with President George Bush is a factor
 |  in the present environmentalist movement.
 |
 |  "Henry L. Stimson" (S&B 1888) was President Taft's secretar
 |  y of war (1911-13), and President Herbert Hoover's secretary
 |  of state (1929-33). As secretary of war (1940-45), Stimson
 |  pressed President Truman to drop the atomic bomb on the
 |  Japanese. This decision involved much more than merely
 |  "pragmatic" military considerations. These Anglophiles, up
 |  through George Bush, have opposed the American republic's
 |  tradition of alliance with national aspirations in Asia. And
 |  they worried that the invention of nuclear energy would too
 |  powerfully unsettle the world's toleration for poverty and
 |  misery. Both the United States and the atom had better be
 |  dreaded, they thought.
 |
 |  The present century owes much of its record of horrors to
 |  certain Anglophile American families which have employed
 |  Skull and Bones as a political recruiting agency,
 |  particularly the Harrimans, Whitneys, Vanderbilts,
 |  Rockefellers and their lawyers, the Lords and Tafts and
 |  Bundys.
 |
 |  The politically aggressive Guaranty Trust Company, run
 |  almost entirely by Skull and Bones initiates, was a
 |  financial vehicle of these families in the early 1900s.
 |  Guaranty Trust's support for the Bolshevik and Nazi
 |  revolutions overlapped the more intense endeavors in these
 |  fields by the Harrimans, George Walker, and Prescott Bush a
 |  few blocks away, and in Berlin.
 |
 |  Skull and Bones was dominated from 1913 onward by the
 |  circles of Averell Harriman. They displaced remaining
 |  traditionalists such as Douglas MacArthur from power in the
 |  United States.
 |
 |  For George Bush, the Skull and Bones Society is more than
 |  simply the British, as opposed to the American, strategic
 |  tradition. It is merged in the family and personal network
 |  within which his whole life has been, in a sense, handed to
 |  him prepackaged.
 |
 |  Britain's Yale Flying Unit
 |
 |  During Prescott Bush's student days, the Harriman set at
 |  Yale decided that World War I was sufficiently amusing that
 |  they ought to get into it as recreation. They formed a
 |  special Yale Unit of the Naval Reserve Flying Corps, at the
 |  instigation of "F. Trubee Davison". Since the United States
 |  was not at war, and the Yale students were going to serve
 |  Britain, the Yale Unit was privately and lavishly financed
 |  by F. Trubee's father, Henry Davison, the senior managing
 |  partner at J.P. Morgan and Co. (the official financial
 |  agency for the British government in the United States). The
 |  Yale Unit's leader was amateur pilot Robert A. Lovett. They
 |  were based first on Long Island, New York, then in Palm
 |  Beach, Florida.
 |
 |  The Yale Unit has been described by Lovett's family and
 |  friends in a collective biography of the Harriman set:
 |
 |  "Training for the Yale Flying Unit was not exactly boot
 |  camp. Davison's father ... helped finance them royally, and
 |  newspapers of the day dubbed them "the millionaires' unit."
 |  They cut rakish figures, and knew it; though some dismissed
 |  them as diletantes, the hearts of young Long Island belles
 |  fluttered at the sight....
 |
 |  "[In] Palm Beach ... they ostentatiously pursued a relaxed
 |  style. 'They were rolled about in wheel chairs by African
 |  slaves amid tropical gardens and coconut palms,' wrote the
 |  unit's historian.... 'For light exercise, they learned to
 |  glance at their new wristwatches with an air of easy
 |  nonchalance'.... [Lovett] was made chief of the unit's
 |  private club, the Wags, whose members started their
 |  sentences, 'Being a Wag and therefore a superman'....
 |
 |  "Despite the snide comments of those who dismissed them as
 |  frivolous rich boys, Lovett's unit proved to be daring and
 |  imaginative warriors when they were dispatched for active
 |  duty in 1917 with Britain's Royal Naval Air Service." [7] 
 |
 |  Lovett was transferred to the U.S. Navy after the United
 |  States joined Britain in World War I.
 |
 |  The Yale Flying Unit was the glory of Skull and Bones.
 |  Roland Harriman, Prescott Bush, and their 1917 Bonesmates
 |  selected for 1918 membership in the secret order these Yale
 |  Flying Unit leaders: "Robert Lovett, F. Trubee Davison,
 |  Artemus Lamb Gates," and "John Martin Vorys." Unit flyers
 |  "David Sinton Ingalls" and F. Trubee's brother, "Harry P.
 |  Davison" (who became Morgan vice chairman), were tapped for
 |  the 1920 Skull and Bones.
 |
 |  Lovett did not actually have a senior year at Yale: "He was
 |  tapped for Skull and Bones not on the Old Campus but at a
 |  naval station in West Palm Beach; his initiation, instead of
 |  being conducted in the 'tomb' on High Street, occurred at
 |  the headquarters of the Navy's Northern Bombing Group
 |  between Dunkirk and Calais." [8] 
 |
 |  Some years later, Averell Harriman gathered Lovett, Prescott
 |  Bush, and other pets into the utopian oligarchs' community a
 |  few miles to the north of Palm Beach, called Jupiter Island.
 |
 |  British Empire loyalists flew right from the Yale Unit into
 |  U.S. strategy-making positions:
 |
 |     *  "F. Trubee Davison was assistant U.S. secretary of war
 |  for air from 1926 to 1933. David S. Ingalls (on the board of
 |  Jupiter Island's Pan American Airways) was meanwhile
 |  assistant secretary of the navy for aviation (1929-32).
 |  Following the American Museum of Natural History's Hitlerite
 |  1932 eugenics congress, Davison resigned his government Air
 |  post to become the museum's president. Then, under the
 |  Harriman-Lovett national security regime of the early 1950s,
 |  F. Trubee Davison became director of personnel for the new
 |  Central Intelligence Agency.
 |
 |     *  "Robert Lovett was assistant secretary of war for Air
 |  from 1941-45.
 |
 |     *  "Lovett's 1918 Bonesmate, Artemus Gates (chosen by
 |  Prescott and his fellows), became assistant navy secretary
 |  for air in 1941. Gates retained this post throughout the war
 |  until 1945. Having a man like Gates up there, who owed his
 |  position to Averell, Bob, Prescott, and their set, was quite
 |  reassuring to young naval aviator George Bush; especially
 |  so, when Bush would have to worry about the record being
 |  correct concerning his controversial fatal crash.
 |
 |  Other Important Bonesmen
 |
 |     *  ""Richard M. Bissell, Jr." was a very important man to
 |  the denizens of Jupiter Island.
 |
 |  He graduated from Yale in 1932, the year after the
 |  Harrimanites bought the island. Though not in Skull and
 |  Bones, Bissell was the younger brother of William Truesdale
 |  Bissell, a Bonesman from the class of 1925. Their father,
 |  Connecticut insurance executive Richard M. Bissell, Sr., was
 |  a powerful Yale alumnus, and the director of the
 |  Neuro-Psychiatric Institute of the Hartford Retreat for the
 |  Insane. There, in 1904, Yale graduate Clifford Beers
 |  underwent mind-destroying treatment which led this mental
 |  patient to found the Mental Hygiene Society, a Yale-based
 |  Skull and Bones project. This would evolve into the CIA's
 |  cultural engineering effort of the 1950s, the drugs and
 |  brainwashing adventure known as "MK-Ultra."
 |
 |  Richard M. Bissell, Jr. studied at the London School of
 |  Economics in 1932 and 1933, and taught at Yale from 1935 to
 |  1941. He worked as an assistant or adviser to Averell
 |  Harriman in various government posts between 1942 and 1952,
 |  participating in the Harriman clique's takeover of the
 |  Truman administration.
 |
 |  Bissell then joined F. Trubee Davison at the Central
 |  Intelligence Agency. When Allen Dulles became CIA director
 |  in 1953, Bissell was one of his three aides. The great
 |  anti-Castro covert initiative of 1959-61 was supervised by
 |  an awesome array of Harriman agents -- and the detailed
 |  management of the invasion of Cuba, and of the assassination
 |  planning, and the training of the squads for these jobs, was
 |  given into the hands of Richard M. Bissell, Jr.
 |
 |  This 1961 invasion failed. President Kennedy refused to give
 |  air cover at the Bay of Pigs. Fidel Castro survived the
 |  widely discussed assassination plots against him. But the
 |  initiative succeeded in what was probably its core purpose:
 |  to organize a force of multi-use professional assassins.
 |
 |  The Florida-trained killers stayed in business under the
 |  leadership of Ted Shackley. They were all around the
 |  assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. They kept going
 |  with the Operation Phoenix mass murder of Vietnamese
 |  civilians, with Middle East drug and terrorist programs, and
 |  with George Bush's Contra wars in Central America.
 |
 |     *  ""Harvey Hollister Bundy" (S&B 1909) was Henry L.
 |  Stimson's assistant secretary of state (1931-33); then he
 |  was Stimson's special assistant secretary of war, alongside
 |  Assistant Secretary Robert Lovett of Skull and Bones and
 |  Brown Brothers Harriman.
 |
 |  Harvey's son "William P. Bundy" (S&B 1939) was a CIA officer
 |  from 1951 to 1961; as a 1960s defense official, he pushed
 |  the Harriman-Dulles scheme for a Vietnam war. Harvey's other
 |  son, "McGeorge Bundy" (S&B 1940) coauthored Stimson's
 |  memoirs in 1948. As President John Kennedy's director of
 |  national security, McGeorge Bundy organized the whitewash of
 |  the Kennedy assassination, and immediately switched the U.S.
 |  policy away from the Kennedy pullout and back toward war in
 |  Vietnam.
 |
 |     *  "There was also "Henry Luce," a Bonesman of 1920 with
 |  David Ingalls and Harry Pomeroy. Luce published "Time"
 |  magazine, where his ironically named "American Century"
 |  blustering was straight British Empire doctrine: Bury the
 |  republics, hail the Anglo-Saxon conquerors.
 |
 |     *  ""William Sloane Coffin," tapped for 1949 Skull and
 |  Bones by George Bush and his Bone companions, was from a
 |  long line of Skull and Bones Coffins. William Sloane Coffin
 |  was famous in the Vietnam War protest days as a leader of
 |  the left protest against the war. Was the fact that he was
 |  an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency embarrassing to
 |  William Sloane?
 |
 |  This was no contradiction. His uncle, the Reverend Henry
 |  Sloane Coffin (S&B 1897), had also been a "peace" agitator,
 |  and an oligarchical agent. Uncle Henry was for 20 years
 |  president of the Union Theological Seminary, whose board
 |  chairman was Prescott Bush's partner Thatcher Brown. In
 |  1937, Henry Coffin and John Foster Dulles led the U.S.
 |  delegation to England to found the "World Council of
 |  Churches", as a "peace movement" guided by the pro-Hitler
 |  faction in England.
 |
 |  The Coffins have been mainstays of the liberal death lobby
 |  for euthanasia and eugenics. The Coffins outlasted Hitler,
 |  arriving into the CIA in 1950s.
 |
 |     *  "Amory Howe Bradford" (S&B 1934) married Carol Warburg
 |  Rothschild in 1941. Carol's mother, Carola, was the
 |  acknowledged head of the Warburg family in America after
 |  World War II. This family had assisted the Harrimans' rise
 |  into the world in the nineteenth and early twentieth
 |  centuries; in concert with the Sulzbergers at the "New York
 |  Times," they had used their American Jewish Committee and
 |  B'nai Brith to protect the Harriman-Bush deals with Hitler.
 |
 |  This made it nice for Averell Harriman, just like family,
 |  when Amory Howe worked on the Planning Group of Harriman's
 |  NATO secretariat in London, 1951-52. Howe was meanwhile
 |  assistant to the publisher of the "New York Times," and went
 |  on to become general manager of the "Times."
 |
 |  Thus, we could be assured of "responsible news coverage,"
 |  with due emphasis on the necessary role of "moderates" named
 |  Harriman and Bush.
 |
 |     *  Other modern Bonesmen have been closely tied to George
 |  Bush's career. "George Herbert Walker, Jr." (S&B 1927) was
 |  the President's uncle and financial angel. In the 1970s he
 |  sold G.H. Walker & Co. to White, Weld & Co. and became a
 |  vice president of White, Weld; company heir William Weld,
 |  the original federal prosecutor of Lyndon LaRouche and
 |  current Massachusetts governor, is an active Bush
 |  Republican.
 |
 |  Publisher "William F. Buckley" (S&B 1950) had a family oil
 |  business in Mexico. There, Buckley was a close ally to CIA
 |  assassinations manager E. Howard Hunt, whose lethal antics
 |  were performed under the eyes of Miami Station and Jupiter
 |  Island.
 |
 |  "David Lyle Boren" (S&B 1963) ... was elected to the U.S.
 |  Senate in 1979 and became chairman of the Senate
 |  Intelligence Committee.
 |
 |  Though a Democrat (who spoke knowingly of the "parallel
 |  government" operating in Iran-Contra), Boren's Intelligence
 |  Committee rulings have been (not unexpectedly) more and more
 |  favorable to his "Patriarch" in the White House.
 |
 |  Among the traditional artifacts the Skulland collected and
 |  maintained within the High Street Tomb are human remains of
 |  various derivations. The following concerns one such set of
 |  Skull and Bones.
 |
 |  Geronimo, an Apache faction leader and warrior, led a party
 |  of warriors on a raid in 1876, after Apaches were moved to
 |  the San Carlos Reservation in Arizona territory. He led
 |  other raids against U.S. and Mexican forces well into the
 |  1880s; he was captured and escaped many times.
 |
 |  Geronimo became a farmer and joined a Christian
 |  congregation. He died at the age of 79 years in 1909, and
 |  was buried at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Three-quarters of a
 |  century later, his tribesmen raised the question of getting
 |  their famous warrior reinterred back in Arizona.
 |
 |  Ned Anderson was Tribal Chairman of the San Carlos Apache
 |  Tribe from 1978 to 1986. This is the story he tells [9] :
 |
 |  Around the fall of 1983, the leader of an Apache group in
 |  another section of Arizona said he was interested in having
 |  the remains of Geronimo returned to his tribe's custody.
 |  Taking up this idea, Anderson said that the remains properly
 |  belonged to his group as much as to the other Apaches. After
 |  much discussion, several Apache groups met at a kind of
 |  summit meeting held at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. The army
 |  authorities were not favorable to the meeting, and it only
 |  occurred through the intervention of the office of the
 |  Governor of Oklahoma.
 |
 |  As a result of this meeting, Ned Anderson was written up in
 |  the newspapers as an articulate Apache activist. Soon
 |  afterwards, in late 1983 or early 1984, a Skull and Bones
 |  member contacted Anderson and leaked evidence that
 |  Geronimo's remains had long ago been pilfered -- by Prescott
 |  Bush, George's father. The informant said that in May of
 |  1918, Prescott Bush and five other officers at Fort Sill
 |  desecrated the grave of Geronimo. They took turns on guard
 |  while they robbed the grave, taking items including a skull,
 |  some other bones, a horse bit and straps. These prizes were
 |  taken back to the Tomb, the home of the Skull and Bones
 |  Society at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut. They were put
 |  into a display case, which members and visitors could easily
 |  view upon entry to the building.
 |
 |  The informant provided Anderson with photographs of the
 |  stolen remains, and a copy of a Skull and Bones log book in
 |  which the 1918 grave robbery had been recorded. "The
 |  informant said that Skull and Bones members used the
 |  pilfered remains in performing some of their Thursday and
 |  Sunday night rituals, with Geronimo's skull sitting out on a
 |  table in front of them"....
 |
 |  Through an attorney, Anderson asked the FBI to move into the
 |  case. The attorney conveyed to him the Bureau's response: If
 |  he would turn over every scrap of evidence to the FBI, and
 |  completely remove himself from the case, they would get
 |  involved. He rejected this bargain, since it did not seem
 |  likely to lead towards recovery of Geronimo's remains.
 |
 |  Due to his persistence, he was able to arrange a September,
 |  1986 Manhattan meeting with Jonathan Bush, George Bush's
 |  brother. Jonathan Bush vaguely assured Anderson that he
 |  would get what he had come after, and set a followup meeting
 |  for the next day. But Bush stalled -- Anderson believes this
 |  was to gain time to hide and secure the stolen remains
 |  against any possible rescue action.
 |
 |  The Skull and Bones attorney representing the Bush family
 |  and managing the case was Endicott Peabody Davison. His
 |  father was the F. Trubee Davison mentioned above, who had
 |  been president of New York's American Museum of Natural
 |  History, and personnel director for the Central Intelligence
 |  Agency. The attitude of this Museum crowd has long been that
 |  "Natives" should be stuffed and mounted for display to the
 |  Fashionable Set.
 |
 |  Finally, after about 11 days, another meeting occurred. A
 |  display case was produced, which did in fact match the one
 |  in the photograph the informant had given to Anderson. But
 |  the skull he was shown was that of a ten-year-old child, and
 |  Anderson refused to receive it or to sign a legal document
 |  promising to shut up about the matter.
 |
 |  Anderson took his complaint to Arizona Congressmen Morris
 |  Udall and John McCain III, but with no results. George Bush
 |  refused Congressman McCain's request that he meet with
 |  Anderson.
 |
 |  Anderson wrote to Udall, enclosing a photograph of the wall
 |  case and skull at the "Tomb," showing a bla ck and white
 |  photograph of the living Geronimo, which members of the
 |  Order had boastfully posted next to their display of his
 |  skull. Anderson quoted from a Skull and Bones Society
 |  internal history, entitled "Continuation of the History of
 |  Our Order for the Century Celebration, 17 June 1933, by The
 |  Little Devil of D'121."
 |
 |  "From the war days [W.W. I] also sprang the mad expedition
 |  from the School of Fire at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, that brought
 |  to the T[omb] its most spectacular 'crook,' the skull of
 |  Geronimo the terrible, the Indian Chief who had taken
 |  forty-nine white scalps. An expedition in late May, 1918, by
 |  members of four [graduating-class years of the Society], Xit
 |  D.114, Barebones, Caliban and Dingbat, D.115, S'Mike D.116,
 |  and Hellbender D.117, planned with great caution since in
 |  the words of one of them: 'Six army captains robbing a grave
 |  wouldn't look good in the papers.'
 |
 |  The stirring climax was recorded by Hellbender in the Black
 |  Book of D.117: '... The ring of pick on stone and thud of
 |  earth on earth alone disturbs the peace of the prairie. An
 |  axe pried open the iron door of the tomb, and Pat[riarch]
 |  Bush entered and started to dig. We dug in turn, each on
 |  relief taking a turn on the road as guards.... Finally
 |  Pat[riarch] Ellery James turned up a bridle, soon a saddle
 |  horn and rotten leathers followed, then wood and then, at
 |  the exact bottom of the small round hole, Pat[riarch] James
 |  dug deep and pried out the trophy itself....
 |
 |  We quickly closed the grave, shut the door and sped home to
 |  Pat[riarch] Mallon's room, where we cleaned the Bones.
 |  Pat[riarch] Mallon sat on the floor liberally applying
 |  carbolic acid. The Skull was fairly clean, having only some
 |  flesh inside and a little hair. I showered and hit the hay
 |  ... a happy man...." [10] 
 |
 |  The other grave robber whose name is given, Ellery James, we
 |  encountered in Chapter One -- he was to be an usher at
 |  Prescott's wedding three years later. And the fellow who
 |  applied acid to the stolen skull, burning off the flesh and
 |  hair, was "Neil Mallon." Years later, Prescott Bush and his
 |  partners chose Mallon as chairman of Dresser Industries;
 |  Mallon hired Prescott's son, George Bush, for George's first
 |  job; and George Bush named his son, "Neil Mallon Bush,"
 |  after the flesh-picker.
 |
 |  In 1988 the "Washington Post" ran an article entitled "Skull
 |  for Scandal: Did Bush's Father Rob Geronimo's Grave?" There
 |  was a small quote from the 1933 Skull and Bones "History of
 |  Our Order": "An axe pried open the iron door of the tomb,
 |  and ... Bush entered and started to dig...." and so forth,
 |  but neglected to include other names beside Bush.
 |
 |  According to the "Washington Post," the document which Bush
 |  attorney Davison tried to get the Apache leader to sign,
 |  stipulated that Anderson agreed it would be "inappropriate
 |  for you, me [Jonathan Bush] or anyone in association with us
 |  to make or permit any publication in connection with this
 |  transaction." Anderson called the document "very insulting
 |  to Indians." Davison claimed later that the Order's own
 |  history book is a hoax, but during the negotiations with
 |  Anderson, Bush's attorney demanded Anderson give up his copy
 |  of the book. [11] 
 |
 |  Bush crony Fitzhugh Green gives the view of the President's
 |  backers on this affair, and conveys the arrogant racial
 |  attitude typical of Skull and Bones:
 |
 |  "Prescott Bush had a colorful side. In 1988 the press
 |  revealed the complaint of an Apache leader about Bush. This
 |  was Ned Anderson of San Carlos, Oklahoma [sic], who charged
 |  that as a young army officer Bush stole the skull of Indian
 |  Chief [sic] Geronimo and had it hung on the wall of Yale's
 |  Skull and Bones Club. After exposure of 'true facts' by
 |  Anderson, and consideration by some representatives in
 |  Congress, the issue faded from public sight. Whether or not
 |  this alleged skullduggery actually occurred, "the mere idea
 |  casts the senior Bush in an adventurous light"" [12] 
 |  [emphasis added].
 |
 |  George Bush's crowning as a Bonesman was intensely,
 |  personally important to him....
 |
 |  Survivors of his 1948 Bones group were interviewed for a
 |  1988 "Washington Post" campaign profile of George Bush. The
 |  members described their continuing intimacy with and
 |  financial support for Bush up through his 1980s vice
 |  presidency. Their original sexual togetherness at Yale is
 |  stressed:
 |
 |  The relationships that were formed in the "Tomb" ... where
 |  the Society's meetings took place each Thursday and Sunday
 |  night during the academic year, have had a strong place in
 |  Bush's life, according to all 11 of his fellow Bonsemen who
 |  are still alive.
 |
 |  Several described in detail the ritual in the organization
 |  that builds the bonds. Before giving his life history, each
 |  memberhad to spend a Sunday night reviewing his sex life in
 |  a talk known in the Tomb as CB, or "connubial bliss"....
 |
 |  "The first time you review your sex life.... We went all the
 |  way around among the 15, said Lucius H. Biglow Jr., a
 |  retired Seattle attorney. "That way you get everybody
 |  committed to a certain extent.... It was a gradual way of
 |  building confidence."
 |
 |  The sexual histories helped break down the normal defenses
 |  of the members, according to several of the members from his
 |  class. William J. Connelly Jr. ... said, "In Skull and Bones
 |  we all stand together, 15 brothers under the skin. [It is]
 |  the greatest allegiance in the world.".... [13] 
 |
 |  - Notes -
 |
 |  5. Fitzhugh Green, "George Bush: An Intimate Portrait", (New
 |  York: Hippocrene Books, 1989), p. 48.
 |
 |  6. Among the sources used for this section are:
 |
 |  Skull and Bones membership list, 1833-1950, printed 1949 by
 |  the Russell Trust Association, New Haven Connecticut,
 |  available through the Yale University Library, New Haven.
 |
 |  Biographies of the Russells and related families, in the
 |  Yale University Library, New Haven, and in the Russell
 |  Library, Middletown, Connecticut.
 |
 |  Ron Chernow, "The House of Morgan: An American Banking
 |  Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance", (New York: Atlantic
 |  Monthly Press, 1990).
 |
 |  Anthony C. Sutton, "How the Order Creates War and
 |  Revolution", (Phoenix: Research Publications, Inc., 1984).
 |
 |  Anthony C. Sutton, "America's Secret Establishment: An
 |  Introduction to the Order of Skull and Bones", (Billings,
 |  Mt:, Liberty House Press, 1986).
 |
 |  Anton Chaitkin, "Treason in America: From Aaron Burr to
 |  Averell Harriman", second edition, (New York: New Benjamin
 |  Franklin House, 1985).
 |
 |  Anton Chaitkin, "Station Identification: Morgan, Hitler,
 |  NBC," "New Solidarity", Oct. 8, 1984.
 |
 |  Interviews with Bones members and their families.
 |
 |  7. Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, "The Wise Men: Six
 |  Friends and the World They Made -- Acheson, Bohlen,
 |  Harriman, Kennan, Lovett, McCloy", (New York: Simon and
 |  Schuster, 1986), p. 90-91.
 |
 |  8. "Ibid.", p. 93.
 |
 |  9. Interview with Ned Anderson, Nov. 6, 1991.
 |
 |  10. Quoted in Ned Anderson to Anton Chaitkin, Dec. 2, 1991,
 |  in possession of the present authors.
 |
 |  11. Article by Paul Brinkley-Rogers of the "Arizona
 |  Republic", in the "Washington Post", Oct. 1, 1988.
 |
 |  12. Green, "op. cit.", p. 50.
 |
 |  13. Bob Woodward and Walter Pincus, "Bush Opened Up To
 |  Secret Yale Society," "Washington Post", August 7, 1988.
 |
 |
 |  Chapter 8
 |
 |  THE PERMIAN BASIN GANG, 1948-59
 |
 |  Pecunia non olet. [Money doesn't smell.]
 |
 |   -- Vespasian During the years following the Second World
 |  War, the patrician families of the Eastern Anglophile
 |  Liberal Establishment sent numbers of their offspring to
 |  colonize those geographic regions of the United States
 |  which, the families estimated, were likely to prosper in the
 |  postwar period. On the surface, this appears as a simple
 |  reflex of greed: Cadet sons were dispatched to those areas
 |  of the provinces where their instinctive methods of
 |  speculation and usury could be employed to parasitize
 |  emerging wealth. More fundamentally, this migration of young
 |  patrician bankers answered the necessity of political
 |  control.
 |
 |  The Eastern Establishment, understood as an agglomeration of
 |  financier factions headquartered in Wall Street, had been
 |  the dominant force in American politics since J.P. Morgan
 |  had bailed out the Grover Cleveland regime in the 1890s.
 |  Since the assassination of William McKinley and the ad vent
 |  of Theodore Roosevelt, the power of the Wall Street group
 |  had grown continuously. The Eastern Establishment may have
 |  had its earliest roots north of Boston and in the Hudson
 |  River Valley, but it was determined to be, not a mere
 |  regional financier faction, but the undisputed ruling elite
 |  of the United States as a whole, from Boston to Bohemian
 |  Grove and from Palm Beach to the Pacific Northwest. It was
 |  thus imperative that the constant tendency toward the
 |  formation of regional factions be preempted by the pervasive
 |  presence of men bound by blood loyalty to the dominant
 |  cliques of Washington, New York, and the "mother country,"
 |  the City of Londo n.
 |
 |  If the Eastern Liberal Establishment were thought of as a
 |  cancer, then after 1945 that cancer went into a new phase of
 |  malignant metastasis, infecting every part of the American
 |  body politic. George Bush was one of those motile, malignant
 |  cells. He was not alone; Robert Mosbacher also made the
 |  journey from New York to Texas, in Mosbacher's case directly
 |  to Houston.
 |
 |  The various sycophant mythographers who have spun their
 |  yarns about the life of George Bush have always attempted to
 |  present this phase of Bush's life as the case of a fiercely
 |  independent young man who could have gone straight to the
 |  top in Wall Street by trading on father Prescott's name and
 |  connections, but who chose instead to strike out for the new
 |  frontier among the wildcatters and roughnecks of the west
 |  Texas oil fields and become a self-made man.
 |
 |  As George Bush himself recounted in a 1983 interview, "If I
 |  were a psychoanalyzer, I might conclude that I was trying
 |  to, not compete with my father, but do something on my own.
 |  My stay in Texas was no Horatio Alger thing, but moving from
 |  New Haven to Odessa just about the day I graduated was quite
 |  a shift in lifestyle." [1] 
 |
 |  These fairy tales from the "red Studebaker" school seek to
 |  obscure the facts: that Bush's transfer to Texas was
 |  arranged from the top by Prescott's Brown Brothers Harriman
 |  cronies, and that every step forward made by Bush in the oil
 |  business was assisted by the capital resources of our hero's
 |  maternal uncle, George Herbert Walker, Jr., "Uncle Herbie,"
 |  the boss of G.H. Walker & Co. investment firm of Wall
 |  Street. Uncle Herbie had graduated from Yale in 1927, where
 |  he had been a member of Skull and Bones. This is the Uncle
 |  Herbie who will show up as lead investor and member of the
 |  board of Bush-Overbey oil, of Zapata Petroleum, and of
 |  Zapata Offshore after 1959...
 |
 |  Father Prescott procured George not one job, but two, in
 |  each case contacting cronies who depended at least partially
 |  on Brown Brothers Harriman for business.
 |
 |  One crony contacted by father Prescott was "Ray Kravis," who
 |  was in the oil business in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Oklahoma had
 |  experienced a colossal oil boom between the two world wars,
 |  and Ray Kravis had cashed in, building up a personal fortune
 |  of some $25 million. Ray was the son of a British tailor
 |  whose father had come to America and set up a haberdashery
 |  in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Young Ray Kravis had arrived
 |  in Tulsa in 1925, in the midst of the oil boom that was
 |  making the colossal fortunes of men like J. Paul Getty. Ray
 |  Kravis was primarily a tax accountant, and he had invented a
 |  very special tax shelter which allowed oil properties to be
 |  "packaged" and sold in such a way as to reduce the tax on
 |  profits earned from the normal oil property rate of 81
 |  percent to a mere 15 percent. This meant that the national
 |  tax base was eroded, and each individual taxpayer bilked, in
 |  order to subsidize the formation of immense private
 |  fortunes; this will be found to be a constant theme among
 |  George Bush's business associates down to the present day.
 |
 |  Ray Kravis's dexterity in setting up these tax shelters
 |  attracted the attention of Joseph P. Kennedy, the
 |  bucaneering bootlegger, entrepreneur, political boss and
 |  patriarch of the Massachusetts Kennedy clan. For many years
 |  Ray Kravis functioned as the manager of the Kennedy family
 |  fortune (or fondo), the same job that later devolved to
 |  Stephen Smith. Ray Kravis and Joe Kennedy both wintered in
 |  Palm Beach, where they were sometimes golf partners. [2] 
 |
 |  In 1948-49, father Prescott was the managing partner of
 |  Brown Brothers Harriman. Prescott knew Ray Kravis as a local
 |  Tulsa finance mogul and wheeler-dealer, who was often called
 |  upon by Wall Street investment houses as a consultant to
 |  evaluate the oil reserves of various companies. The
 |  estimates that Ray Kravis provided often involved the amount
 |  of oil in the ground that these firms possessed, and these
 |  estimates went to the heart of the oil business as a
 |  ground-rent exploitation in which current oil production was
 |  far less important than the reserves still beneath the soil.
 |
 |  Such activity imparted the kind of primitive-accumulation
 |  mentality that was later seen to animate Ray Kravis's son
 |  Henry. During the 1980s, as we will see, Henry Kravis
 |  personally generated some $58 billion in debt for the
 |  purpose of acquiring 36 companies and assembling the largest
 |  corporate empire, in paper terms, of all time. Henry Kravis
 |  would be one of the leaders of the leveraged buyout gang
 |  which became a mainstay of the political machine of George
 |  Bush....
 |
 |  So father Prescott asked Ray if he had a job for young
 |  George. The answer was, of course he did.
 |
 |  But in the meantime, Prescott Bush had also been talking
 |  with another crony beholden to him, "Henry Neil Mallon," who
 |  was the president and chairman of the board of Dresser
 |  Industries, a leading manufacturer of drill bits and related
 |  oil well drilling equipment. Dresser had been incorporated
 |  in 1905 by Solomon R. Dresser, but had been bought up and
 |  reorganized by W.A. Harriman & Co. in 1928-29.
 |
 |  Henry Neil Mallon, for whom the infamous Neil Mallon Bush of
 |  Hinckley and Silverado fame is named, came from a Cincinnati
 |  family who were traditional retainers for the Taft clan, in
 |  the same way that the Bush-Walker family were retainers for
 |  the Harrimans. As a child, Neil Mallon had gone with his
 |  family to visit their close friends, President William
 |  Howard Taft and his family, at the White House. Mallon had
 |  then attended the Taft School in Watertown, Connecticut, and
 |  had gone on to Yale University in the fall of 1913, where he
 |  met Bunny Harriman, Prescott Bush, Knight Wooley, and the
 |  other Bonesmen.
 |
 |  As we recall from the previous chapter: the society's
 |  internal history boasted that in 1918, Mallon burned the
 |  flesh and hair off the skull of Geronimo, which Prescott
 |  Bush and his friends stole from the despoiled grave at Fort
 |  Sill, Oklahoma.
 |
 |  One day in December 1928, Bunny Harriman, father Prescott
 |  and Knight Wooley were sitting around the Harriman counting
 |  house discussing their reorganization of Dresser Industries.
 |  Mallon, who was returning to Ohio after six months spent
 |  mountaineering in the Alps, came by to visit. At a certain
 |  point in the conversation, Bunny pointed to Mallon and
 |  exclaimed, "Dresser! Dresser!" Mallon was subsequently
 |  interviewed by George Herbert Walker, the president of W.A.
 |  Harriman & Co. As a result of this interview, Mallon was
 |  immediately made president of Dresser, although he had no
 |  experience in the oil business. Mallon clearly owed the
 |  Walker-Bush clan some favors. [3] 
 |
 |  Prescott Bush had become a member of the board of directors
 |  of Dresser Industries in 1930, in the wake of the
 |  reorganization of the company, which he had personally
 |  helped to direct. Prescott Bush was destined to remain on
 |  the Dresser board for 22 years, until 1952, when he entered
 |  the United States Senate. Father Prescott was thus calling
 |  in a chit which procured George a second job offer, this
 |  time with Dresser Industries or one of its subsidiaries.
 |
 |  George Bush knew that the oil boom in Oklahoma had passed
 |  its peak, and that Tulsa would no longer offer the sterling
 |  opportunities for a fast buck it had presented 20 years
 |  earlier. Dresser, by contrast, was a vast international
 |  corporation, ideally suited to gaining a rapid overview of
 |  the oil industry and its looting practices. George Bush
 |  accordingly called Ray Kravis and, in the ingratiating tones
 |  he was wont to use as he clawed his way toward the top, said
 |  th at he wished respectfully to decline the job that Kravis
 |  had offered him in Tulsa. His first preference was to go to
 |  work for Dresser. Ray Kravis, who looked to Prescott for
 |  business, released him at once. "I know George Bush well,"
 |  said Ray Kravis years later. "I've known him since he got
 |  out of school. His father was a very good friend of mine."
 |  [4] 
 |
 |  Bush in Odessa
 |
 |  This is the magic moment in which all the official Bush
 |  biographies show our hero riding into Odessa, Texas in the
 |  legendary red Studebaker, to take up a post as an equipment
 |  clerk and trainee for the Dresser subsidiary IDECO
 |  (International Derrick and Equipment Company).
 |
 |  But the red Studebaker myth, as alreadynoted, misrepresents
 |  the facts. According to the semi-official history of Dresser
 |  Industries, George Bush was first employed by Dresser at
 |  their corporate headquarters in Cleveland, Ohio, where he
 |  worked for Dresser executive R.E. Reimer, an ally of Mallon.
 |   [5]  This stint in Cleveland is hardly mentioned by the
 |  pro-Bush biographers, making us wonder what is being covered
 |  up. On the same page that relates these interesting facts,
 |  there is a picture that shows father Prescott, Dorothy,
 |  Barbara Bush, and George holding his infant son George
 |  Walker Bush. Young George W. is wearing cowboy boots. They
 |  are all standing in front of a Dresser Industries executive
 |  airplane, apparently a DC-3. Could this be the way George
 |  really arrived in Odessa?
 |
 |  The Dresser history also has George Bush working for Pacific
 |  Pumps, another Dresser subsidiary, before finally joining
 |  IDECO. According to Bush's campaign autobiography, he had
 |  been with IDECO for a year in Odessa, Texas before being
 |  transferred to work for Pacific Pumps in Huntington Park and
 |  Bakersfield, California. Bush says he worked at Huntington
 |  Park as an assemblyman, and it was here that he claims to
 |  have joined the United Steelworkers Union, obtaining a union
 |  card that he will still pull out when confronted for his
 |  long history of union-busting, as for example when he was
 |  heckled at a shipyard in Portland, Oregon during the 1988
 |  campaign. Other accounts place Bush in Ventura, Compton and
 |  "Richard Nixon's home town of Whittier" during this same
 |  period. [6] 
 |
 |  If Bush actually went to California first and only later to
 |  Odessa, he may be lying in order to stress that he chose
 |  Texas as his first choice, a distortion that may have been
 |  concocted very early in his political career to defend
 |  himself against the constant charge that he was a
 |  carpetbagger.
 |
 |  Odessa, Texas, and the nearby city of Midland were both
 |  located in the geological formation known as the "Permian
 |  Basin," the scene of an oil boom that developed in the years
 |  after the Second World War. Odessa at this time was a
 |  complex of yards and warehouses, where oil drilling
 |  equipment was brought for distribution to the oil rigs that
 |  were drilling all over the landscape.
 |
 |  At IDECO, Bush worked for supervisor Bill Nelson, and had
 |  one Hugh Evans among his co-workers. Concerning this period,
 |  we are regaled with stories about how Bush and Barbara moved
 |  into a shotgun house, an apartment that had been divided by
 |  a partition down the middle, with a bathroom they shared
 |  with a mother and daughter prostitute team. There was a
 |  pervasive odor of gas, which came not from a leak in the
 |  oven, but from nearby oil wells where the gas was flared
 |  off. George and Barbara were to spend some time slumming in
 |  this setting. But Bush was anxious to ingratiate himself
 |  with the roughnecks and roustabouts; he began eating the
 |  standard Odessa diet of a bowl of chili with crackers and
 |  beer for lunch, and chicken-fried steak for dinner. Perhaps
 |  his affected liking for country and western music and pork
 |  rinds, and other public relations ploys go back to this
 |  time. Bush is also fond of recounting the story of how, on
 |  Christmas Eve, 1948, he got drunk during various IDECO
 |  customer receptions and passed out, dead drunk, on his own
 |  front lawn, where he was found by Barbara. George Bush, we
 |  can see, is "truly a regular guy."
 |
 |  According to the official Bush version of events, George and
 |  "Bar" peregrinated during 1949 far from their beloved Texas
 |  to various towns in California where Dresser had
 |  subsidiaries. Bush claims that he drove 1,000 miles a week
 |  through the Carrizo Plains and the Cuyama Valley. Some
 |  months later they moved to Midland, another tumbleweed town
 |  in west Texas. Midland offered the advantage of being the
 |  location of the west Texas headquarters of many of the oil
 |  companies that operated in Odessa and the surrounding
 |  area....
 |
 |  The Bush social circle in Odessa was hardly composed of oil
 |  field roughnecks. Rather, their peer group was composed more
 |  of the sorts of people they had known in New Haven: a clique
 |  of well-heeled recent graduates of prestigious eastern
 |  colleges who had been attracted to the Permian Basin in the
 |  same way that Stanford, Hopkins, Crocker and their ilk were
 |  attracted to San Francisco during the gold rush. Here were
 |  Toby Hilliard, John Ashmun, and Pomeroy Smith, all from
 |  Princeton. Earle Craig had been at Yale. Midland thus
 |  boasted a Yale Club and a Harvard Club and a Princeton Club.
 |  The natives referred to this clique as "the Yalies." Also
 |  present on the scene in Midland were J. Hugh Liedtke and
 |  William Liedtke, who had grown up in Oklahoma, but who had
 |  attended college at Amherst in Massachusetts.
 |
 |  Many of these individuals had access to patrician fortunes
 |  back East for the venture capital they mobilized behind
 |  their various deals. Toby Hilliard's full name was "Harry
 |  Talbot Hilliard" of Fox Chapel near Pittsburgh, where the
 |  Mellons had their palatial residence. "Earle Craig" was also
 |  hooked up to big money in the same area. The "Liedtke
 |  brothers," as we will see, had connections to the big oil
 |  money that had emerged around Tulsa. Many of these "Yalies"
 |  also lived in the Easter Egg Row neighborhood. A few houses
 |  away from George Bush there lived a certain "John Overbey."
 |  According to Overbey, the "people from the East and the
 |  people from Texas or Oklahoma all seemed to have two things
 |  in common. They all had a chance to be stockbrokers or
 |  investment bankers. And they all wanted to learn the oil
 |  business instead." [7] 
 |
 |  The Landman
 |
 |  Overbey made his living as a landman. Since George Bush
 |  would shortly also become a landman, it is worth
 |  investigating what this occupation actually entails; in
 |  doing so, we will gain a permanent insight into Bush's
 |  character. The role of the landman in the Texas oil industry
 |  was to try to identify properties where oil might be found,
 |  sometimes on the basis of leaked geological information,
 |  sometimes after observing that one of the major oil
 |  companies was drilling in the same locale. The landman would
 |  scout the property, and then attempt to get the owner of the
 |  land to sign away the mineral rights to the property in the
 |  form of a lease. If the property owner were well informed
 |  about the possibility that oil might in fact be found on his
 |  land, the price of the lease would obviously go up, because
 |  signing away the mineral rights meant that the income (or
 |  "royalties") from any oil that might be found would never go
 |  to the owner of the land.
 |
 |  A cunning landman would try to gather as much insider
 |  information as he could and keep the rancher as much in the
 |  dark as possible. In rural Texas in the 1940s, the role of
 |  the landman could rather easily degenerate into that of the
 |  ruthless, money-grubbing con artist, who would try to
 |  convince an ill-informed and possibly ignorant Texas dirt
 |  farmer, who was just coming up for air after the great
 |  depression, that the chances of finding oil on his land were
 |  just about zero, and that even a token fee for a lease on
 |  the mineral rights would be eminently worth taking.
 |
 |  Once the farmer or rancher had signed away his right to
 |  future oil royalties, the landman would turn around and
 |  attempt to "broker" the lease by selling it at an inflated
 |  price to a major oil company that might be interested in
 |  drilling, or to some other buyer. There was a lively market
 |  in such leases in the restaurant of the Scharbauer Hotel in
 |  Midland, where maps of the oil fields hung on the walls and
 |  oil leases coul d change hands repeatedly in the course of a
 |  single day. Sometimes, if a landman were forced to sell a
 |  lease to the mineral rights of land where he really thought
 |  there might be oil, he would seek to retain an override,
 |  perhaps amounting to a sixteenth or a thirty-second of the
 |  royalties from future production. But that would mean less
 |  cash or even no cash received now, and small-time operators
 |  like Overbey, who had no capital resources of their own,
 |  were always strapped for cash. Overbey was lucky if he could
 |  realize a profit of a few hundred dollars on the sale of a
 |  lease.
 |
 |  This form of activity clearly appealed to the mean-spirited
 |  and the greedy, to those who enjoyed rooking their
 |  fellowman. It was one thing for Overbey, who may have had no
 |  alternative to support his family. It was quite another
 |  thing for George Herbert Walker Bush, a young plutocrat out
 |  slumming. But Bush was drawn to the landman and royalty
 |  game, so much so that he offered to raise capital back East
 |  if Overbey would join him in a partnership. [8] 
 |
 |  Overbey accepted Bush's proposition that they capitalize a
 |  company that would trade in the vanished hopes of the
 |  ranchers and farmers of northwest Texas. Bush and Overbey
 |  flew back East to talk with Uncle Herbie in the oak-paneled
 |  board room of G.H. Walker & Co. in Wall
 |
 |  Street. According to "Newsweek," "Bush's partner, John
 |  Overbey, still remembers the dizzying whirl of a
 |  money-raising trip to the East with George and Uncle Herbie:
 |  lunch at New York's 21 Club, weekends at Kennebunkport where
 |  a bracing Sunday dip in the Atlantic off Walker's Point
 |  ended with a servant wrapping you in a large terry towel and
 |  handing you a martini." [9] 
 |
 |  The result of the odyssey back East was a capital of
 |  $300,000, much of it gathered from Uncle Herbie's clients in
 |  the City of London, who were of course delighted at the
 |  prospect of parasitizing Texas ranchers. One of those eager
 |  to cash in was "Jimmy Gammell" of Edinburgh, Scotland, whose
 |  Ivory and Sime counting house put up $50,000 from its
 |  Atlantic Asset Trust. Gammell's father had been head of the
 |  British military mission in Moscow in 1945, part of the
 |  Anglo-American core group there with U.S. Ambassador Averell
 |  Harriman. James Gammell is today the eminence grise of the
 |  Scottish investment community, and he has retained a close
 |  personal relation to Bush over the years. Mark this Gammell
 |  well; he will return to our narrative shortly.
 |
 |  "Eugene Meyer," the owner of the "Washington Post" and the
 |  father of that paper's present owner, Katharine Meyer
 |  Graham, anted up an investment of $50,000 on the basis of
 |  the tax-shelter capabilities promised by Bush-Overbey.
 |  Meyer, a president of the World Bank, also procured an
 |  investment from his son-in-law Phil Graham for the Bush
 |  venture. Father Prescott Bush was also counted in, to the
 |  tune of about $50,000. In the days of real money, these were
 |  considerable sums. The London investors got shares of stock
 |  in the new company, called Bush-Overbey, as well as
 |  Bush-Overbey bonded debt. Bush and Overbey moved into an
 |  office on the ground floor of the Petroleum Building in
 |  Midland.
 |
 |  The business of the landman, it has been pointed out, rested
 |  entirely on personal relations and schmooze. One had to be a
 |  dissembler and an intelligencer. One had to learn to
 |  cultivate friendships with the geologists, the scouts, the
 |  petty bureaucrats at the county court house where the land
 |  records were kept, the journalists at the local paper, and
 |  with one's own rivals, the other landmen, who might invite
 |  someone with some risk capital to come in on a deal.
 |  Community service was an excellent mode of ingratiation, and
 |  George Bush volunteered for the Community Chest, the YMCA,
 |  and the Chamber of Commerce. It meant small talk about wives
 |  and kids, attending church -- deception postures that in a
 |  small town had to pervade the smallest details of one's
 |  life.
 |
 |  It was at this time in his life that Bush seems to have
 |  acquired the habit of writing ingratiating little personal
 |  notes to people he had recently met, a habit that he would
 |  use over the years to cultivate and maintain his personal
 |  network. Out of all this ingratiating Babbitry and
 |  boosterism would come acquaintances and the bits of
 |  information that could lead to windfall profits.
 |
 |  There had been a boom in Scurry County, but that was
 |  subsiding. Bush drove to Pyote, to Snyder, to Sterling City,
 |  to Monahans, with Rattlesnake Air Force Base just outside of
 |  town. How many Texas ranchers can remember selling their
 |  mineral rights for a pittance to smiling George Bush, and
 |  then having oil discovered on the land, oil from which their
 |  family would never earn a penny?
 |
 |  Across the street from Bush-Overbey were the offices of
 |  Liedtke & Liedtke, Attorneys-at-law. "J. Hugh Liedtke" and
 |  "William Liedtke" were from Tulsa, Oklahoma, where they,
 |  like Bush, had grown up rich, as the sons of a local judge
 |  who had become one of the top corporate lawyers for Gulf
 |  Oil. The Liedtkes' grandfather had come from Prussia, but
 |  had served in the Confederate Army. J. Hugh Liedtke had
 |  found time along the way to acquire the notorious Harvard
 |  Master of Business Administration degree in one year. After
 |  service in the Navy during World War II, the Liedtkes
 |  obtained law degrees at the University of Texas law school,
 |  where they rented the servants' quarters of the home of U.S.
 |  Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, who was away in Washington most
 |  of the time...
 |
 |  The Liedtkes combined the raw, uncouth primitive
 |  accumulation mentality of the oil boom town with the refined
 |  arts of usury and speculation as Harvard taught them. Their
 |  law practice was such in name only; their primary and almost
 |  exclusive activity was buying up royalty leases on behalf of
 |  a moneybags in Tulsa who was a friend of their family...
 |
 |  Hugh Liedtke was always on the lookout for the Main Chance.
 |  Following in the footsteps of his fellow Tulsan Ray Kravis,
 |  Hugh Liedtke schemed and schemed until he had found a way to
 |  go beyond hustling for royalty leases: He concocted a method
 |  of trading oil-producing properties in such a way as to
 |  permit the eventual owner to defer all tax liabilities until
 |  the field was depleted. Sometimes Hugh Liedtke would commute
 |  between Midland and Tulsa on an almost daily basis. He would
 |  spend the daylight hours prowling the Permian Basin for a
 |  land deal, make the 13-hour drive to Tulsa overnight to
 |  convince his backers to ante up the cash, and then race back
 |  to Midland to close the deal before the sucker got away. It
 |  was during this phase that it occurred to Liedtke that he
 |  could save himself a lot of marathon commuter driving if he
 |  could put together a million dollars in venture capital and
 |  "inventory" the deals he was otherwise forced to make on a
 |  piecemeal, ad hoc basis. [10] 
 |
 |  Zapata Petroleum
 |
 |  The Liedtke brothers now wanted to go beyond royalty leases
 |  and land sale tax dodges, and begin large-scale drilling and
 |  production of oil. George Bush, by now well versed in the
 |  alphas and omegas of oil as ground rent, was thinking along
 |  the same lines. In a convergence that was full of ominous
 |  portent for the U.S. economy of the 1980s, the Liedtke
 |  brothers and George Bush decided to pool their capital and
 |  their rapacious talents by going into business together.
 |  Overbey was on board initially, but would soon fall away.
 |
 |  The year was 1953, and Uncle Herbie's G.H. Walker & Co.
 |  became the principal underwriter of the stock and
 |  convertible debentures that were to be offered to the
 |  public. Uncle Herbie would also purchase a large portion of
 |  the stock himself. When the new company required further
 |  infusions of capital, Uncle Herbie would float the necessary
 |  bonds. Jimmy Gammell remained a key participant and would
 |  find a seat on the board of directors of the new company.
 |  Another of the key investors was the Clark Family Estate,
 |  meaning the trustees who managed the Singer Sewing machine
 |  fortune.  [11]  Some other money came from various pension
 |  funds and endowments, sources that would become very popular
 |  during the leveraged buyout orgy Bush presided over in the
 |  1980s. Of the capital of the new Bush-Liedtke concern, about
 |  $500,000 would come from Tulsa cronies of the Liedtke
 |  brothers, and the other $500,000 from the circles of Uncle
 |  Herbie. The latter were referred to by Hugh Liedtke as "the
 |  New York guys."
 |
 |  The name chosen for the new concern was "Zapata Petroleum."
 |  According to Hugh Liedtke, the new entrepreneurs were
 |  attracted to the name when they saw it on a movie marquee,
 |  where the new release "Viva Zapata!," starring Marlon Brando
 |  as the Mexican revolutionary, was playing. Liedtke
 |  characteristically explains that part of the appeal of the
 |  name was the confusion as to whether Zapata had been a
 |  patriot or a bandit. [12] 
 |
 |  The Bush-Liedtke combination concentrated its attention on
 |  an oil property in Coke County called JamesonField, a barren
 |  expanse of prairie and sagebrush where six widely separated
 |  wells had been producing oil for some years. Hugh Liedtke
 |  was convinced that these six oil wells were tapping into a
 |  single underground pool of oil, and that dozens or even
 |  hundreds of new oil wells drilled into the same field would
 |  all prove to be gushers. In other words, Liedtke wanted to
 |  gamble the entire capital of the new firm on the hypothesis
 |  that the wells were, in oil parlance, "connected." One of
 |  Liedtke's Tulsa backers was supposedly unconvinced, and
 |  argued that the wells were too far apart; they could not
 |  possibly connect. "Goddamn, they do!" was Hugh Liedtke's
 |  rejoinder. He insisted on shooting the works in a
 |  "va-banque" operation. Uncle Herbie's circles were nervous:
 |  "The New York guys were just about to pee in their pants,"
 |  boasted Leidtke years later. Bush and Hugh Liedtke obviously
 |  had the better information: The wells were connected, and
 |  127 wells were drilled without encountering a single dry
 |  hole. As a result, the price of a share of stock in Zapata
 |  went up from seven cents a share to $23.
 |
 |  During this time, Hugh Liedtke collaborated on several small
 |  deals in the Midland area with a certain "T. Boone Pickens,"
 |  later one of the most notorious corporate raiders of the
 |  1980s, one of the originators of the "greenmail" strategy of
 |  extortion, by which a raider would accumulate part of the
 |  shares of a company and threaten to go all the way to a
 |  hostile takeover unless the management of the company agreed
 |  to buy back those shares at an outrageous premium. Pickens
 |  is the buccaneer who was self-righteously indignant when the
 |  Japanese business community attempted to prevent him from
 |  introducing these shameless looting practices into the
 |  Japanese economy.
 |
 |  Pickens, too, was a product of the Bush-Liedtke social
 |  circle of Midland. When he was just getting started in the
 |  mid-fifties, Pickens wanted to buy the Hugoton Production
 |  Company, which owned the Hugoton field, one of the world's
 |  great onshore deposits of natural gas. Pickens engineered
 |  the hostile takeover of Hugoton by turning to Hugh Liedtke
 |  to be introduced to the trustees of the Clark Family Estate,
 |  who, as we have just seen, had put up part of the capital
 |  for Zapata. Pickens promised the Clark trustees a higher
 |  return than was being provided by the current management,
 |  and this support proved to be decisive in permitting
 |  Pickens's Mesa Petroleum to take over Hugoton, launching
 |  this corsair on a career of looting and pillage that still
 |  continues. In 1988, George Bush would give an interview to a
 |  magazine owned by Pickens in which the Vice President would
 |  defend hostile leveraged buyouts as necessary to the
 |  interests of the shareholders.
 |
 |  In the meantime, after two to three years of operations, the
 |  oil flow out of Zapata's key Jameson field had begun to slow
 |  down. Although there was still abundant oil in the ground,
 |  the natural pressure had been rapidly depleted, so Bush and
 |  the Liedtkes had to begin resorting to stratagems in order
 |  to bring the oil to the surface. They began pumping water
 |  into the underground formations in order to force the oil to
 |  the surface. From then on, "enhanced recovery" techniques
 |  were necessary to keep the Jameson field on line.
 |
 |  During 1955 and 1956, Zapata was able to report a small
 |  profit. In 1957, the year of the incipient Eisenhower
 |  recession, this turned into a loss of $155,183, as the oil
 |  from the Jameson field began to slow down. In 1958, the loss
 |  was $427,752, and in 1959, there was $207,742 of red ink.
 |  1960 (after Bush had departed from the scene) brought
 |  another loss, this time of $372,258. It was not until 1961
 |  that Zapata was able to post a small profit of $50,482. [13]
 |   Despite the fact that Bush and the Liedtkes all became
 |  millionaires through the increased value of their shares, it
 |  was not exactly an enviable record; without the deep pockets
 |  of Bush's Uncle Herbie Walker and his British backers, the
 |  entire venture might have foundered at an early date.
 |
 |  Bush and the Liedtkes had been very lucky with the Jameson
 |  field, but they could hardly expect such results to be
 |  repeated indefinitely. In addition, they were now posting
 |  losses, and the value of Zapata stock had gone into a
 |  decline. Bush and the Liedtke brothers now concluded that
 |  the epoch in which large oil fields could be discovered
 |  within the continental United States was over. Mammoth new
 |  oil fields, they believed, could only be found offshore,
 |  located under hundreds of feet of water on the continental
 |  shelves, or in shallow seas like the Gulf of Mexico and the
 |  Caribbean.
 |
 |  By a happy coincidence, in 1954 the U.S. federal government
 |  was just beginning to auction the mineral rights for these
 |  offshore areas. With father Prescott Bush directing his
 |  potent Brown Brothers Harriman/Skull and Bones network from
 |  the U.S. Senate while regularly hob-nobbing with President
 |  Eisenhower on the golf links, George Bush could be confident
 |  of receiving special privileged treatment when it came to
 |  these mineral rights. Bush and his partners therefore judged
 |  the moment ripe for launching a for-hire drilling company,
 |  Zapata Offshore, a Delaware corporation that would offer its
 |  services to the companies making up the Seven Sisters
 |  international oil cartel in drilling underwater wells. Forty
 |  percent of the offshore company's stock would be owned by
 |  the original Zapata firm. The new company would also be a
 |  buyer of offshore royalty leases. Uncle Herbie helped
 |  arrange a new issue of stock for this Zapata offshoot. The
 |  shares were easy to unload because of the 1954 boom in the
 |  New York stock market. "The stock market lent itself to
 |  speculation," Bush would explain years later, "and you could
 |  get equity capital for new ventures." [1]  [4] 
 |
 |  1954 was also the year that the CIA overthrew the government
 |  of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala. This was the beginning of a
 |  dense flurry of U.S. covert operations in Central America
 |  and the Caribbean, featuring especially Cuba.
 |
 |  The first asset of Zapata Offshore was the SCORPION, a $3.5
 |  million deep-sea drilling rig that was financed by $1.5
 |  million from the initial stock sale plus another $2 million
 |  from bonds marketed with the help of Uncle Herbie. The
 |  SCORPION was the first three-legged, self-elevating mobile
 |  drilling barge, and it was built by R. G. LeTourneau, Inc.
 |  of Vicksburg, Mississippi. The platform weighed some 9
 |  million pounds and measured 180 by 150 feet, and the three
 |  legs were 140 feet long when fully extended. The rig was
 |  floated into the desired drilling position before the legs
 |  were extended, and the main body was then pushed up above
 |  the waves by electric motors. The SCORPION was delivered
 |  early in 1956, was commissioned at Galveston in March, 1956
 |  and was put to work at exploratory drilling in the Gulf of
 |  Mexico during the rest of the year.
 |
 |  During 1956, the Zapata Petroleum officers included J. Hugh
 |  Liedtke as president, George H.W. Bush as vice president,
 |  and William Brumley of Midland, Texas, as treasurer. The
 |  board of directors lined up as follows:
 |
 |     *  George H.W. Bush, Midland, Texas;
 |
 |     *  J.G.S. Gammell, Edinburgh, Scotland, manager of
 |  British Assets Trust, Ltd.;
 |
 |     *  J. Hugh Liedtke, Midland, Texas;
 |
 |     *  William C. Liedtke, independent oil operator, Midland,
 |  Texas;
 |
 |     *  Arthur E. Palmer, Jr., New York, N.Y., a partner in
 |  Winthrop, Stimson, Putnam, and Roberts;
 |
 |     *  G.H. Walker, Jr. (Uncle Herbie), managing partner of
 |  G.H. Walker and Co., New York, N.Y.;
 |
 |     *  Howard J. Whitehill, independent oil producer, Tulsa,
 |  Oklahoma;
 |
 |     *  Eugene F. Williams, Jr., secretary of the St. Louis
 |  Union Trust Company of St. Louis, Missouri; fellow member
 |  with "Poppy" Bush in the class of 1942 AUV secret society at
 |  Andover prep, later chairman of the Andover board;
 |
 |     *  D.D. Bovaird, president of the Bovaird Supply Co. of
 |  Tulsa, Oklahoma, and chairman of the board of the Oklahoma
 |  City branch of the Tenth Federal District of the Federal
 |  Reserve Board; and
 |
 |     *  George L. Coleman, investments, Miami, Oklahoma.
 |
 |  An interim director that year had been Richard E. Fleming of
 |  Robert Fleming and Co., London, England. Counsel were listed
 |  as Baker, Botts, Andrews & Shepherd of Houston, Texas;
 |  auditors were Arthur Andersen in Houston, and transfer
 |  agents were J.P. Morgan & Co., Inc., of New York City and
 |  the First National Bank and Trust Company of Tulsa. [15] 
 |
 |  George Bush personally was much more involved with the
 |  financial management of the company than with its actual
 |  oil-field operations. His main activity was not finding oil
 |  or drilling wells but, as he himself put it, "stretching
 |  paper" -- rolling over debt and making new financial
 |  arrangements with the creditors. [16] 
 |
 |  During 1956, despite continuing losses and thanks again to
 |  Uncle Herbie, Zapata was able to float yet another offering,
 |  this time a convertible debenture for $2.15 million, for the
 |  purchase of a second Le Tourneau drilling platform, the
 |  VINEGAROON, named after a west Texas stinging insect. The
 |  VINEGAROON was delivered during 1957, and soon scored a
 |  "lucky" hit drilling in block 86 off Vermilion Parish,
 |  Louisiana. This was a combination of gas and oil, and one
 |  well was rated at 113 barrels of distillate and 3.6 million
 |  cubic feet of gas per day. [17]  This was especially
 |  remunerative, because Zapata had acquired a half-interest in
 |  the royalties from any oil or gas that might be found.
 |  VINEGAROON then continued to drill offshore from Vermilion
 |  Parish, Louisiana, on a farmout from Continental Oil.
 |
 |  As for the SCORPION, during part of 1957 it was under
 |  contract to the Bahama-California Oil Company, drilling
 |  between Florida and Cuba. It was then leased by Gulf Oil and
 |  Standard Oil of California, on whose behalf it started
 |  drilling during 1958 at a position on the Cay Sal Bank, 131
 |  miles south of Miami, Florida, and just 54 miles north of
 |  Isabela, Cuba. Cuba was an interesting place just then; the
 |  U.S.-backed insurgency of Fidel Castro was rapidly
 |  undermining the older U.S.-imposed regime of Fulgencio
 |  Batista. That meant that SCORPION was located at a hot
 |  corner. We note that Allen Dulles, then director of the
 |  Central Intelligence Agency, had previously been legal
 |  counsel to Gulf Oil for Latin American operations, and
 |  counsel to George Bush's father at Brown Brothers Harriman
 |  for eastern Europe.
 |
 |  During 1957 a certain divergence began to appear between
 |  Uncle Herbie Walker, Bush, and the "New York guys" on the
 |  one hand, and the Liedtke brothers and their Tulsa backers
 |  on the other. As the annual report for that year noted,
 |  "There is no doubt that the drilling business in the Gulf of
 |  Mexico has become far more competitive in the last six
 |  months than it has been at any time in the past." Despite
 |  that, Bush, Walker and the New York investors wanted to push
 |  forward into the offshore drilling and drilling services
 |  business, while the Liedtkes and the Tulsa group wanted to
 |  concentrate on acquiring oil in the ground and natural gas
 |  deposits.
 |
 |  The 1958 annual report notes that, with no major discoveries
 |  made, 1958 had been "a difficult year." It was, of course,
 |  the year of the brutal Eisenhower recession. SCORPION,
 |  VINEGAROON, and NOLA I, the offshore company's three
 |  drilling rigs, could not be kept fully occupied in the Gulf
 |  of Mexico during the whole year, and so Zapata Offshore had
 |  lost $524,441, more than Zapata Petroleum's own loss of
 |  $427,752 for that year. The Liedtke viewpoint was reflected
 |  in the notation that "disposing of the offshore business had
 |  been considered." The great tycoon Bush conceded in the
 |  Zapata Offshore annual report for 1958: "We erroneously
 |  predicted that most major [oil] companies would have active
 |  drilling programs for 1958. These drilling programs simply
 |  did not materialize...." In 1990, Bush denied for months
 |  that there was a recession, and through 1991 claimed that
 |  the recession had ended, when it had, in fact, long since
 |  turned into a depression. His current blindness about
 |  economic conjunctures would appear to be nothing new.
 |
 |  By 1959, there were reports of increasing personal tensions
 |  between the domineering and abrasive J. Hugh Liedtke, on the
 |  one hand, and Bush's Uncle Herbie Walker on the other.
 |  Liedtke was obsessed with his plan for creating a new major
 |  oil company, the boundless ambition that would propel him
 |  down a path littered with asset-stripped corporations into
 |  the devastating Pennzoil-Getty-Texaco wars of a
 |  quarter-century later. During the course of this year, the
 |  two groups of investors arrived at a separation that was
 |  billed as "amicable," and which in any case never
 |  interrupted the close cooperation among Bush and the Liedtke
 |  brothers. The solution was that the ever-present Uncle
 |  Herbie would buy out the Liedtke-Tulsa 40 percent stake in
 |  Zapata Offshore, while the Liedtke backers would buy out the
 |  Bush-Walker interest in Zapata Petroleum.
 |
 |  For this to be accomplished, George Bush would require yet
 |  another large infusion of capital. Uncle Herbie now raised
 |  yet another tranche for George, this time over $800,000. The
 |  money allegedly came from Bush-Walker friends and relatives.
 |  [18]  Even if the faithful efforts of Uncle Herbie are taken
 |  into account, it is still puzzling to see a series of large
 |  infusions of cash into a poorly managed small company that
 |  had posted a series of substantial losses and whose future
 |  prospects were anything but rosy. At this point it is
 |  therefore legitimate to pose the question: Was Zapata
 |  Offshore an intelligence community front at its foundation
 |  in 1954, or did it become one in 1959, or perhaps at some
 |  later point? This question cannot be answered with finality,
 |  but some relevant evidence will be discussed in the
 |  following chapter.
 |
 |  George Bush was now the president of his own company, the
 |  undisputed boss of Zapata Offshore. Although the company was
 |  falling behind the rest of the offshore drilling industry,
 |  Bush made a desultory attempt at expansion through
 |  diversification, investing in a plastics machinery company
 |  in New Jersey, a Texas pipe lining company, and a gas
 |  transmission company; none of these investments proved to be
 |  remunerative.
 |
 |  Notes
 |
 |  1. Harry Hurt III, "George Bush, Plucky Lad," "Texas
 |  Monthly," June 1983.
 |
 |  2. See Sarah Bartlett, "The Money Machine: How KKR
 |  Manufactured Power and Profits" (New York, 1991), pp. 9-12.
 |
 |  3. Darwin Payne, "Initiative in Energy: Dresser Industries,
 |  Inc., 1880-1978" (New York: Simon and Schuster, ca. 1979),
 |  p. 232 "ff."
 |
 |  4. Bartlett, "op. cit.," p. 268.
 |
 |  5. Darwin Payne, "op. cit.," p. 232-33.
 |
 |  6. Hurt, "op. cit."
 |
 |  7. "Ibid."
 |
 |  8. "Bush Battles the 'Wimp Factor'," "Newsweek," Oct. 19,
 |  1987.
 |
 |  9. See Richard Ben Kramer, "How He Got Here," "Esquire,"
 |  June 1991.
 |
 |  10. See Thomas Petzinger, Jr., "Oil and Honor: The
 |  Texaco-Pennzoil Wars" (New York, 1987), p. 37 "ff."
 |
 |  11. "Ibid.," p. 93.
 |
 |  12. "Ibid.," p. 40.
 |
 |  13. See Zapata Petroleum annual reports, Library of Congress
 |  Microform Reading Room.
 |
 |  14. Petzinger, "op. cit.," p. 41.
 |
 |  15. See Zapata Petroleum Corporation Annual Report for 1956,
 |  Library of Congress, Microform Reading Room.
 |
 |  16. Hurt, "op. cit.," p. 194.
 |
 |  17. "Zapata Petroleum Corp.," "Fortune," April 1958.
 |
 |  18. Walter Pincus and Bob Woodward, "Doing Well With Help
 |  From Family, Friends," "Washington Post," Aug. 11, 1988.
 |
 |
 |  CHAPTER 9
 |
 |  THE BAY OF PIGS AND THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION
 |
 |  "JM/WAVE ... proliferated across [Florida] in preparation
 |  for the Bay of Pigs invasion. A subculture of fronts,
 |  proprietaries, suppliers, transfer agents, conduits, dummy
 |  corporations, blind drops, detective agencies, law firms,
 |  electronic firms, shopping centers, airlines, radio
 |  stations, the mob and the church and the banks: a false and
 |  secret nervous system twitching to stimuli supplied by the
 |  cortex in Clandestine Services in Langley. After defeat on
 |  the beach in Cuba, JM/WAVE became a continuing and extended
 |  Miami Station, CIA's largest in the continental United
 |  States. A large sign in front of the ... building complex
 |  reads: U.S. GOVERNMENT REGULATIONS PROHIBIT DISCUSSION OF
 |  THIS ORGANIZATION OR FACILITY."
 |
 |   -- Donald Freed, "Death in Washington" (Westport,
 |  Connecticut, 1980), p. 141.
 |
 |  The review offered so far of George Bush's activities during
 |  the late 1950s and early 1960s is almost certainly
 |  incomplete in very important respects. There is good reason
 |  to believe that Bush was engaged in something more than just
 |  the oil business during those years. Starting about the time
 |  of the Bay of Pigs invasion in the spring of 1961, we have
 |  the first hints that Bush, in addition to working for Zapata
 |  Offshore, may also have been a participant in certain covert
 |  operations of the U.S. intelligence community.
 |
 |  Such participation would certainly be coherent with George's
 |  role in the Prescott Bush, Skull and Bones, and Brown
 |  Brothers Harriman networks. During the twentieth century,
 |  the Skull and Bones/Harriman circles have always maintained
 |  a sizeable and often decisive presence inside the
 |  intelligence organizations of the State Department, the
 |  Treasury Department, the Office of Naval Intelligence, the
 |  Office of Strategic Services, and the Central Intelligence
 |  Agency.
 |
 |  A body of leads has been assembled which suggests that
 |  George Bush may have been associated with the CIA at some
 |  time before the autumn of 1963. According to Joseph McBride
 |  of "The Nation," "a source with close connections to the
 |  intelligence community confirms that Bush started working
 |  for the agency in 1960 or 1961, using his oil business as a
 |  cover for clandestine activities." [1]  By the time of the
 |  Kennedy assassination, we have an official FBI document
 |  which refers to "Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence
 |  Agency," and despite official disclaimers, there is every
 |  reason to think that this is indeed the man in the White
 |  House today.
 |
 |  The mystery of George Bush as a possible covert operator
 |  hinges on four points, each one of which represents one of
 |  the great political and espionage scandals of postwar
 |  American history. These four cardinal points are:
 |
 |  1. The abortive Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, launched on
 |  April 16-17, 1961, prepared with the assistance of the CIA's
 |  "Miami Station" (also known under the code name JM/WAVE).
 |  After the failure of the amphibious landings of Brigade
 |  2506, Miami station, under the leadership of Theodore
 |  Shackley, became the focus for Operation Mongoose, a series
 |  of covert operations directed against Castro, Cuba, and
 |  possibly other targets.
 |
 |  2. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas
 |  on November 22, 1963, and the coverup of those responsible
 |  for this crime.
 |
 |  3. The Watergate scandal, beginning with an April 1971 visit
 |  to Miami, Florida by E. Howard Hunt on the tenth anniversary
 |  of the Bay of Pigs invasion to recruit operatives for the
 |  White House Special Investigations Unit (the "Plumbers" and
 |  later Watergate burglars) from among Cuban-American Bay of
 |  Pigs veterans.
 |
 |  4. The Iran-Contra affair, which became a public scandal
 |  during October-November 1986, several of whose central
 |  figures, such as Felix Rodriguez, were also veterans of the
 |  Bay of Pigs.
 |
 |  George Bush's role in both Watergate and the October
 |  Surprise/Iran-Contra complex will be treated in detail at
 |  later points in this book. Right now, it is important to see
 |  that thirty years of covert operations, in many respects,
 |  form a single continuous whole. This is especially true in
 |  regard to the "dramatis personae." Georgie Anne Geyer points
 |  to the obvious in a recent book: " ... an entire new Cuban
 |  cadre now emerged from the Bay of Pigs. The names Howard
 |  Hunt, Bernard Barker, Rolando Martinez, Felix Rodriguez and
 |  Eugenio Martinez would, in the next quarter century, pop up,
 |  often decisively, over and over again in the most dangerous
 |  American foreign policy crises. There were Cubans flying
 |  missions for the CIA in the Congo and even for the
 |  Portuguese in Africa; Cubans were the burglars of Watergate;
 |  Cubans played key roles in Nicaragua, in Irangate, in the
 |  American move into the Persian Gulf." [2]  Felix Rodriguez
 |  tells us that he was infiltrated into Cuba with the other
 |  members of the "Grey Team" in conjunction with the Bay of
 |  Pigs landings; this is the same man we will find directing
 |  the Contra supply effort in Central America during the
 |  1980s, working under the direct supervision of Don Gregg and
 |  George Bush. [3]  Theodore Shackley, the JM/WAVE station
 |  chief, will later show up in Bush's 1979-80 presidential
 |  campaign.
 |
 |  To a very large degree, such covert operations have drawn
 |  upon the same pool of personnel. They are to a significant
 |  extent the handiwork of the same crowd. It is therefore
 |  revealing to extrapolate forward and backward in time the
 |  individuals and groups of individuals who appear as the cast
 |  of characters in one scandal, and compare them with the cast
 |  of characters for the other scandals, including the
 |  secondary ones that have not been enumerated here. E. Howard
 |  Hunt, for example, shows up as a confirmed part of the
 |  overthrow of the Guatemalan government of Jacopo Arbenz in
 |  1954, as an important part of the chain of command in the
 |  Bay of Pigs, as a person repeatedly accused of having been
 |  in Dallas on the day Kennedy was shot, and as one of the
 |  central figures of Watergate.
 |
 |  George Bush is demonstrably one of the most important
 |  protagonists of the Watergate scandal, and was the overall
 |  director of Iran-Contra. Since he appears especially in
 |  Iran-Contra in close proximity to Bay of Pigs holdovers, it
 |  is surely legitimate to wonder when his association with
 |  those Bay of Pigs Cubans might have started.
 |
 |  1959 was the year that Bush started operating out of his
 |  Zapata Offshore headquarters in Houston; it was also the
 |  year that Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba. Officially, as
 |  we have seen, George was now a businessman whose work took
 |  him at times to Louisiana, where Zapata had offshore
 |  drilling operations. George must have been a frequent
 |  visitor to New Orleans. Because of his family's estate on
 |  Jupiter Island, he would also have been a frequent visitor
 |  to the Hobe Sound area. And then, there were Zapata Offshore
 |  drilling operations in the Florida strait.
 |
 |  The Jupiter Island connection and father Prescott's Brown
 |  Brothers Harriman/Skull and Bones networks are doubtless the
 |  key. Jupiter Island meant Averell Harriman, Robert Lovett,
 |  C. Douglas Dillon and other Anglophile financiers who had
 |  directed the U.S. intelligence community long before there
 |  had been a CIA at all. And, in the backyard of the Jupiter
 |  Island Olympians, and under their direction, a powerful
 |  covert operations base was now being assembled, in which
 |  George Bush would have been present at the creation as a
 |  matter of birthright.
 |
 |  Operation Zapata
 |
 |  During 1959-60, Allen Dulles and the Eisenhower
 |  administration began to assemble in south Florida the
 |  infrastructure for covert action against Cuba. This was the
 |  JM/WAVE capability, later formally constituted as the CIA
 |  Miami station. JM/WAVE was an operational center for the
 |  Eisenhower regime's project of staging an invasion of Cuba
 |  using a secret army of anti-Castro Cuban exiles, organized,
 |  armed, trained, transported, and directed by the CIA. The
 |  Cubans, called Brigade 2506, were trained in secret camps in
 |  Guatemala, and they had air support from B-26 bombers based
 |  in Nicaragua. This invasion was crushed by Castro's
 |  defending forces in less than three days.
 |
 |  Before going along with the plan so eagerly touted by Allen
 |  Dulles, Kennedy had established the precondition that under
 |  no circumstances whatsoever would there be direct
 |  intervention by U.S. military forces against Cuba. On the
 |  one hand, Dulles had assured Kennedy that the news of the
 |  invasion would trigger an insurrection which would sweep
 |  Castro and his regime aw ay. On the other, Kennedy had to be
 |  concerned about provoking a global thermonuclear
 |  confrontation with the U.S.S.R., in the eventuality that
 |  Nikita Khrushchev decided to respond to a U.S. Cuban gambit
 |  by, for example, cutting off U.S. access to Berlin.
 |
 |  Hints of the covert presence of George Bush are scattered
 |  here and there around the Bay of Pigs invasion. According to
 |  some accounts, the code name for the Bay of Pigs was
 |  Operation Pluto. [4]  But Bay of Pigs veteran E. Howard Hunt
 |  scornfully denies that this was the code name used by
 |  JM/WAVE personnel; Hunt writes: "So perhaps the Pentagon
 |  referred to the Brigade invasion as Pluto. CIA did not." [5]
 |   But Hunt does not tell us what the CIA code name was, and
 |  the contents of Hunt's Watergate-era White House safe, which
 |  might have told us the answer, were, of course, "deep-sixed"
 |  by FBI Director Patrick Gray.
 |
 |  According to reliable sources and published accounts, the
 |  CIA code name for the Bay of Pigs invasion was Operation
 |  Zapata, and the plan was so referred to by Richard Bissell
 |  of the CIA, one of the plan's promoters, in a briefing to
 |  President Kennedy in the Cabinet Room on March 29, 1961. [6]
 |   Does Operation Zapata have anything to do with Zapata
 |  Offshore? The run-of-the-mill Bushman might respond that
 |  Emiliano Zapata, after all, had been a public figure in his
 |  own right, and the subject of a recent Hollywood movie
 |  starring Marlon Brando. A more knowledgeable Bushman might
 |  argue that the main landing beach, the Playa Giron, is
 |  located south of the city of Cienfuegos on the Zapata
 |  Peninsula, on the south coast of Cuba.
 |
 |  Then there is the question of the Brigade 2506 landing
 |  fleet, which was composed of five older freighters bought or
 |  chartered from the Garcia Steamship Lines, bearing the names
 |  of "Houston," "Rio Escondido," "Caribe," "Atlantic," and
 |  "Lake Charles." In addition to these vessels, which were
 |  outfitted as transport ships, there were two somewhat better
 |  armed fire support ships, the "Blagar" and the "Barbara."
 |  (In some sources "Barbara J.") [7]  The "Barbara" was
 |  originally an LCI (Landing Craft Infantry) of earlier
 |  vintage. Our attention is attracted at once to the "Barbara"
 |  and the "Houston," in the first case because we have seen
 |  George Bush's habit of naming his combat aircraft after his
 |  wife, and, in the second case, because Bush was at this time
 |  a resident and Republican activist of Houston, Texas. But of
 |  course, the appearance of names like "Zapata," "Barbara,"
 |  and "Houston" can by itself only arouse suspicion, and
 |  proves nothing.
 |
 |  After the ignominious defeat of the Bay of Pigs invasion,
 |  there was great animosity against Kennedy among the
 |  survivors of Brigade 2506, some of whom eventually made
 |  their way back to Miami after being released from Castro's
 |  prisoner of war camps. There was also great animosity
 |  against Kennedy on the part of the JM/WAVE personnel.
 |
 |  During the early 1950s, E. Howard Hunt had been the CIA
 |  station chief in Mexico City. As David Atlee Phillips
 |  (another embittered JM/WAVE veteran) tells us in his
 |  autobiographical account, "The Night Watch," E. Howard Hunt
 |  had been the immediate superior of a young CIA recruit named
 |  William F. Buckley, the Yale graduate and Skull and Bones
 |  member who later founded the "National Review." In his
 |  autobiographical account written during the days of the
 |  Watergate scandal, Hunt includes the following tirade about
 |  the Bay of Pigs:
 |
 |  "No event since the communization of China in 1949 has had
 |  such a profound effect on the United States and its allies
 |  as the defeat of the U.S.-trained Cuban invasion brigade at
 |  the Bay of Pigs in April 1961.
 |
 |  "Out of that humiliation grew the Berlin Wall, the missile
 |  crisis, guerrilla warfare throughout Latin America and
 |  Africa, and our Dominican Republic intervention. Castro's
 |  beachhead triumph opened a bottomless Pandora's box of
 |  difficulties that affected not only the United States, but
 |  most of its allies in the Free World.
 |
 |  "These bloody and subversive events would not have taken
 |  place had Castro been toppled. Instead of standing firm, our
 |  government pyramided crucially wrong decisions and allowed
 |  Brigade 2506 to be destroyed. The Kennedy administration
 |  yielded Castro all the excuse he needed to gain a tighter
 |  grip on the island of Jose Marti, then moved shamefacedly
 |  into the shadows and hoped the Cuban issue would simply melt
 |  away." [8] 
 |
 |  Kennedy and MacArthur
 |
 |  Hunt was typical of the opinion that the debacle had been
 |  Kennedy's fault, and not the responsibility of men like
 |  Allen Dulles and Richard Bissell, who had designed it and
 |  recommended it. After the embarrassing failure of the
 |  invasion, which never evoked the hoped-for spontaneous
 |  anti-Castro insurrection, Kennedy fired Allen Dulles, his
 |  Harrimanite deputy Bissell, and CIA Deputy Director Charles
 |  Cabell (whose brother was the mayor of Dallas at the time
 |  Kennedy was shot).
 |
 |  During the days after the Bay of Pigs debacle, Kennedy was
 |  deeply suspicious of the intelligence community and of
 |  proposals for military escalation in general, including in
 |  places like South Vietnam. Kennedy sought to procure an
 |  outside, expert opinion on military matters. For this he
 |  turned to the former commander in chief of the Southwest
 |  Pacific Theatre during World War II, General Douglas
 |  MacArthur. Almost ten years ago, a reliable source shared
 |  with one of the authors an account of a meeting between
 |  Kennedy and MacArthur in which the veteran general warned
 |  the young President that there were elements inside the U.S.
 |  government who emphatically did not share his patriotic
 |  motives, and who were seeking to destroy his administration
 |  from within. MacArthur warned that the forces bent on
 |  destroying Kennedy were centered in the Wall Street
 |  financial community and its various tentacles in the
 |  intelligence community.
 |
 |  It is a matter of public record that Kennedy met with
 |  MacArthur in the latter part of April 1961, after the Bay of
 |  Pigs. According to Kennedy aide Theodore Sorenson, MacArthur
 |  told Kennedy, "The chickens are coming home to roost, and
 |  you happen to have just moved into the chicken house." [9] 
 |  At the same meeting, according to Sorenson, MacArthur
 |  "warned [Kennedy] against the commitment of American foot
 |  soldiers on the Asian mainland, and the President never
 |  forgot this advice." [10]  This point is grudgingly
 |  confirmed by Arthur M. Schlesinger, a Kennedy aide who had a
 |  vested interest in vilifying MacArthur, who wrote that
 |  "MacArthur expressed his old view that anyone wanting to
 |  commit American ground forces to the mainland [of Asia]
 |  should have his head examined." [11]  MacArthur restated
 |  this advice during a second meeting with Kennedy when the
 |  General returned from his last trip to the Far East in July
 |  1961.
 |
 |  Kennedy valued MacArthur's professional military opinion
 |  highly, and used it to keep at arms length those advisers
 |  who were arguing for escalation in Laos, Vietnam, and
 |  elsewhere. He repeatedly invited those who proposed to send
 |  land forces to Asia to convince MacArthur that this was a
 |  good idea. If they could convince MacArthur, then he,
 |  Kennedy, might also go along.
 |
 |  At this time, the group proposing escalation in Vietnam (as
 |  well as preparing the assassination of President Diem) had a
 |  heavy Brown Brothers Harriman/Skull and Bones overtone: The
 |  hawks of 1961-63 were Harriman, McGeorge Bundy, William
 |  Bundy, Henry Cabot Lodge, and some key London oligarchs and
 |  theoreticians of counterinsurgency wars. And of course,
 |  George Bush during these years was calling for escalation in
 |  Vietnam and challenging Kennedy to "muster the courage" to
 |  try a second invasion of Cuba.
 |
 |  In the meantime, the JM/WAVE-Miami station complex was
 |  growing rapidly to become the largest of Langley's many
 |  satellites. During the years after the failure of the Bay of
 |  Pigs, this complex had as many as 3,000 Cuban agents and
 |  subagents, with a small army of case officers to direct and
 |  look after each one. According to one account, there were at
 |  least 55 dummy corporations to provide employment, cover,
 |  and commercial disguise for all these operatives. There were
 |  detective bureaus, gun stores, real estate b rokerages, boat
 |  repair shops, and party boats for fishing and other
 |  entertainments. There was the clandestine Radio Swan, later
 |  renamed Radio Americas. There were fleets of specially
 |  modified boats based at Homestead Marina, and at other
 |  marinas throughout the Florida Keys. Agents were assigned to
 |  the University of Miami and other educational institutions.
 |
 |  The raison d'etre of the massive capability commanded by
 |  Theodore Shackley was now Operation Mongoose, a program for
 |  sabotage raids and assassinations to be conducted on Cuban
 |  territory, with a special effort to eliminate Fidel Castro
 |  personally. In order to run these operations from U.S.
 |  territory, flagrant and extensive violation of federal and
 |  state laws was the order of the day. Documents regarding the
 |  incorporation of businesses were falsified. Income tax
 |  returns were faked. FAA regulations were violated by planes
 |  taking off for Cuba or for forward bases in the Bahamas and
 |  elsewhere. Explosives moved across highways that were full
 |  of civilian traffic. The Munitions Act, the Neutrality Act,
 |  the customs and immigrations laws were routinely flaunted.
 |  [12] 
 |
 |  Above all, the drug laws were massively violated as the
 |  gallant anticommunist fighters filled their planes and boats
 |  with illegal narcotics to be smuggled back into the United
 |  States when they returned from their missions. By 1963, the
 |  drug-running activities of the covert operatives were
 |  beginning to attract attention. JM/WAVE, in sum, accelerated
 |  the slide of south Florida towards the status of drug and
 |  murder capital of the United States it achieved during the
 |  1980s.
 |
 |  The Kennedy Assassination
 |
 |  It cannot be the task of this study even to begin to treat
 |  the reasons for which certain leading elements of the
 |  Anglo-American financial oligarchy, perhaps acting with
 |  certain kinds of support from continental European
 |  aristocratic and neofascist networks, ordered the murder of
 |  John F. Kennedy. The British and the Harrimanites wanted
 |  escalation in Vietnam; by the time of his assassination
 |  Kennedy was committed to a pullout of U.S. forces. Kennedy,
 |  as shown by his American University speech of 1963, was also
 |  interested in seeking a more stable path of war avoidance
 |  with the Soviets, using the U.S. military superiority
 |  demonstrated during the Cuban missile crisis to convince
 |  Moscow to accept a policy of world peace through economic
 |  development. Kennedy was interested in the possibilities of
 |  anti-missile strategic defense to put an end to that
 |  nightmare of Mutually Assured Destruction which appealed to
 |  Henry Kissinger, a disgruntled former employee of the
 |  Kennedy administration whom the President had denounced as a
 |  madman.
 |
 |  Kennedy was also considering moves to limit or perhaps
 |  abolish the usurpation of authority over the national
 |  currency by the Wall Street and London interests controlling
 |  the Federal Reserve System. If elected to a second term,
 |  Kennedy was likely to reassert presidential control, as
 |  distinct from Wall Street control, over the intelligence
 |  community. There is good reason to believe that Kennedy
 |  would have ousted J. Edgar Hoover from his purported life
 |  tenure at the FBI, subjecting that agency to presidential
 |  control for the first time in many years. Kennedy was
 |  committed to a vigorous expansion of the space program, the
 |  cultural impact of which was beginning to alarm the finance
 |  oligarchs.
 |
 |  Above all, Kennedy was acting like a man who thought he was
 |  President of the United States, violating the collegiality
 |  of oligarchical trusteeship of that office that had been in
 |  force since the final days of Roosevelt. Kennedy furthermore
 |  had two younger brothers who might succeed him, putting a
 |  strong presidency beyond the control of the the Eastern
 |  Anglophile Liberal Establishment for decades. George Bush
 |  joined in the Harrimanite opposition to Kennedy on all of
 |  these points.
 |
 |  After Kennedy was killed in Dallas on November 22, 1963, it
 |  was alleged that E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis had both
 |  been present, possibly together, in Dallas on the day of the
 |  shooting, although the truth of these allegations has never
 |  been finally established. Both Hunt and Sturgis were of
 |  course Bay of Pigs veterans who would later appear center
 |  stage in Watergate. There were also allegations that Hunt
 |  and Sturgis were among a group of six to eight derelicts who
 |  were found in boxcars sitting on the railroad tracks behind
 |  the grassy knoll near Dealey Plaza, and who were rounded up
 |  and taken in for questioning by the Dallas police on the day
 |  of the assassination. Some suspected that Hunt and Sturgis
 |  had participated in the assassination. Some of these
 |  allegations were at the center of the celebrated 1985
 |  defamation case of "Hunt v. Liberty Lobby," in which a
 |  Florida federal jury found against Hunt. But, since the
 |  Dallas Police Department and County Sheriff never
 |  photographed or fingerprinted the "derelicts" in question,
 |  it has so far proven impossible definitively to resolve this
 |  question. But these allegations and theories about the
 |  possible presence and activities of Hunt and Sturgis in
 |  Dallas were sufficiently widespread as to compel the
 |  Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States (the
 |  Rockefeller Commission) to attempt to refute them in its
 |  1975 report. [13] 
 |
 |  According to George Bush's official biography, he was during
 |  1963 a well-to-do businessman residing in Houston, the busy
 |  president of Zapata Offshore and the chairman of the Harris
 |  County Republican Organization, supporting Barry Goldwater
 |  as the GOP's 1964 presidential candidate, while at the same
 |  time actively preparing his own 1964 bid for the U.S.
 |  Senate. But during that same period of time, Bush may have
 |  shared some common acquaintances with Lee Harvey Oswald.
 |
 |  The De Mohrenschildt Connection
 |
 |  Between October 1962 and April 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald and
 |  his Russian wife Marina were in frequent contact with a
 |  Russian emigre couple living in Dallas: These were George de
 |  Mohrenschildt and his wife Jeanne. During the Warren
 |  Commission investigation of the Kennedy assassination, De
 |  Mohrenschildt was interviewed at length about his contacts
 |  with Oswald. When, in the spring of 1977, the discrediting
 |  of the Warren Commission report as a blatant coverup had
 |  made public pressure for a new investigation of the Kennedy
 |  assassination irresistible, the House Assassinations
 |  Committee planned to interview De Mohrenschildt once again.
 |  But in March 1977, just before de Mohrenschildt was
 |  scheduled to be interviewed by Gaeton Fonzi of the House
 |  committee's staff, he was found dead in Palm Beach, Florida.
 |  His death was quickly ruled a suicide. One of the last
 |  people to see him alive was Edward Jay Epstein, who was also
 |  interviewing De Mohrenschildt about the Kennedy
 |  assassination for an upcoming book. Epstein is one of the
 |  writers on the Kennedy assassination who enjoyed excellent
 |  relations with the late James Angleton of the CIA. If de
 |  Mohrenschildt were alive today, he might be able to
 |  enlighten us about his relations with George Bush, and
 |  perhaps afford us some insight into Bush's activities during
 |  this epoch.
 |
 |  Jeanne De Mohrenschildt rejected the finding of suicide in
 |  her husband's death. "He was eliminated before he got to
 |  that committee," the widow told a journalist in 1978,
 |  "because someone did not want him to get to it." She also
 |  maintained that George de Mohrenschildt had been
 |  surreptitiously injected with mind-altering drugs. [14] 
 |
 |  After De Mohrenschildt's death, his personal address book
 |  was located, and it contained this entry: "Bush, George H.W.
 |  (Poppy) 1412 W. Ohio also Zapata Petroleum Midland." There
 |  is of course the problem of dating this reference. George
 |  Bush had moved his office and home from Midland to Houston
 |  in 1959, when Zapata Offshore was constituted, so perhaps
 |  this reference goes back to some time before 1959. There is
 |  also the number: "4-6355." There are, of course, numerous
 |  other entries, including one W.F. Buckley of the Buckley
 |  brothers of New York City, William S. Paley of CBS, plus
 |  many oil men, stockbrokers, and the like. [15] 
 |
 |  George De Mohrenschildt recounted a number of different
 |  versions of his li fe, so it is very difficult to establish
 |  the facts about him. According to one version, he was the
 |  Russian Count Sergei De Mohrenschildt, but when he arrived
 |  in the United States in 1938 he carried a Polish passport
 |  identifying him as Jerzy Sergius von Mohrenschildt, born in
 |  Mozyr, Russia in 1911. He may in fact have been a Polish
 |  officer, or a correspondent for the Polish News Service, or
 |  none of these. He worked for a time for the Polish Embassy
 |  in Washington, D.C. Some say that de Mohrenschildt met the
 |  chairman of Humble Oil, Blaffer, and that Blaffer procured
 |  him a job. Other sources say that during this time De
 |  Mohrenschildt was affiliated with the War Department.
 |  According to some accounts, he later went to work for the
 |  French Deuxieme Bureau, which wanted to know about petroleum
 |  exports from the United States to Europe.
 |
 |  De Mohrenschildt in 1941 became associated with a certain
 |  Baron Konstantin von Maydell in a public affairs venture
 |  called "Facts and Film." Maydell was considered a Nazi agent
 |  by the FBI, and in September 1942 he was sent to North
 |  Dakota for an internment that would last four years. De
 |  Mohenschildt was also reportedly in contact with Japanese
 |  networks at this time. In June 1941, De Mohrenschildt was
 |  questioned by police at Port Arthur, Texas, on the suspicion
 |  of espionage after he was found making sketches of port
 |  facilities. During 1941, De Mohrenschildt applied for a post
 |  in the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS). According to
 |  the official account, he was not hired. Soon after he made
 |  the application, he went to Mexico where he stayed until
 |  1944. In the latter year, he began study for a master's
 |  degree in petroleum engineering at the University of Texas.
 |  According to some accounts, during this period De
 |  Mohrenschildt was investigated by the Office of Naval
 |  Intelligence because of alleged communist sympathies.
 |
 |  After the war, De Mohrenschildt worked as a petroleum
 |  engineer in Cuba and Venezuela, and in Caracas he had
 |  several meetings with the Soviet ambassador. During the
 |  postwar years, he also worked in the Rangely oil field in
 |  Colorado. During the 1950s, after having married Winifred
 |  Sharpless, the daughter of an oil millionaire, de
 |  Mohrenschildt was active as an independent oil entrepreneur.
 |
 |  In 1957, De Mohrenschildt was approved by the CIA Office of
 |  Security to be hired as a U.S. government geologist for a
 |  mission to Yugoslavia. Upon his return he was interviewed by
 |  one J. Walter Moore of the CIA's Domestic Contact Service,
 |  with whom he remained in contact. During 1958, de
 |  Mohrenschildt visited Ghana, Togo, and Dahomey (now Benin);
 |  during 1959, he visited Africa again and returned by way of
 |  Poland. In 1959, he married Jeanne, his fourth wife, a
 |  former ballet dancer and dress designer who had been born in
 |  Manchuria, where her father had been one of the directors of
 |  the Chinese Eastern Railroad.
 |
 |  During the summer of 1960, George and Jeanne De
 |  Mohrenschildt told their friends that they were going to
 |  embark on a walking tour of 11,000 miles along Indian trails
 |  from Mexico to Central America. One of their principal
 |  destinations was Guatemala City, where they were staying at
 |  the time of the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961, after
 |  which they made their way home by way of Panama and Haiti.
 |  After two months in Haiti, the De Mohrenschildts returned to
 |  Dallas, where they came into contact with Lee Harvey Oswald,
 |  who had come back to the United States from his sojourn in
 |  the Soviet Union in June 1962. By this time, de
 |  Mohrenschildt was also in frequent contact with Admiral
 |  Henry C. Bruton and his wife, to whom he introduced the
 |  Oswalds. Admiral Bruton was the former director of naval
 |  communications.
 |
 |  It is established that between October 1962 and late April
 |  1963, de Mohrenschildt was a very important figure in the
 |  life of Oswald and his Russian wife. Despite Oswald's lack
 |  of social graces, De Mohrenschildt introduced him into
 |  Dallas society, took him to parties, assisted him in finding
 |  employment and much more. It was through De Mohrenschildt
 |  that Oswald met a certain Volkmar Schmidt, a young German
 |  geologist who had studied with Professor Wilhelm Kuetemeyer,
 |  an expert in psychosomatic medicine and religious philosophy
 |  at the University of Heidelberg, who compiled a detailed
 |  psychological profile of Oswald. Jeanne and George helped
 |  Marina move her belongings during one of her many
 |  estrangements from Oswald. According to some accounts, De
 |  Mohrenschildt's influence on Oswald was so great during this
 |  period that he could virtually dictate important decisions
 |  to the young ex-Marine simply by making suggestions.
 |
 |  According to some versions, de Mohrenschildt was aware of
 |  Oswald's alleged April 10, 1963 attempt to assassinate the
 |  well-known right-wing General Edwin Walker. According to
 |  Marina, De Mohrenschildt once asked Oswald, "Lee, how did
 |  you miss General Walker?" On April 19, George and Jeanne De
 |  Mohrenschildt went to New York City, and on April 29, the
 |  CIA Office of Security found that it had no objection to De
 |  Mohrenschildt's acceptance of a contract with the Duvalier
 |  regime of Haiti in the field of natural resource
 |  development. De Mohrenschildt appears to have departed for
 |  Haiti on May 1, 1963. In the meantime, Oswald had left
 |  Dallas and traveled to New Orleans.
 |
 |  According to Mark Lane, "there is evidence that De
 |  Mohrenschildt served as a CIA control officer who directed
 |  Oswald's actions." Much of the extensive published
 |  literature on de Mohrenschildt converges on the idea that he
 |  was a control agent for Oswald on behalf of some
 |  intelligence agency. [16] 
 |
 |  It is therefore highly interesting that George Bush's name
 |  turns up in the personal address book of George de
 |  Mohrenschildt.
 |
 |  The Warren Commission went to absurd lengths to cover up the
 |  fact that George De Mohrenschildt was a denizen of the world
 |  of the intelligence agencies. This included ignoring the
 |  well-developed paper trail on De Mohrenschildt as Nazi and
 |  communist sympathizer, and later as a U.S. asset abroad. The
 |  Warren Commission concluded:
 |
 |  "The Commission's investigation has developed no signs of
 |  subversive or disloyal conduct on the part of either of the
 |  de Mohrenschildts. Neither the FBI, CIA, nor any witnesses
 |  contacted by the Commission has provided any information
 |  linking the De Mohrenschildts to subversive or extremist
 |  organizations. Nor has there been any evidence linking them
 |  in any way with the assassination of President Kennedy."
 |  [17] 
 |
 |  Bush, the CIA, and Kennedy
 |
 |  On the day of the Kennedy assassination, FBI records show
 |  George Bush as reporting a right-wing member of the Houston
 |  Young Republicans for making threatening comments about
 |  President Kennedy. According to FBI documents released under
 |  the Freedom of Information Act,
 |
 |  "On November 22, 1963 Mr. GEORGE H.W. BUSH, 5525 Briar,
 |  Houston, Texas, telephonically advised that he wanted to
 |  relate some hear say that he had heard in recent weeks, date
 |  and source unknown. He advised that one JAMES PARROTT had
 |  been talking of killing the President when he comes to
 |  Houston.
 |
 |  "PARROTT is possibly a student at the University of Houston
 |  and is active in politics in the Houston area."
 |
 |  According to related FBI documentation, "a check with Secret
 |  Service at Houston, Texas revealed that agency had a report
 |  that PARROTT stated in 1961 he would kill President Kennedy
 |  if he got near him." Here Bush is described as "a reputable
 |  businessman." FBI agents were sent to interrogate Parrott's
 |  mother, and later James Milton Parrott himself. Parrott had
 |  been discharged from the U.S. Air Force for psychiatric
 |  reasons in 1959. Parrott had an alibi for the time of the
 |  Dallas shootings; he had been in the company of another
 |  Republican activist. According to press accounts, Parrott
 |  was a member of the right-wing faction of the Houston GOP,
 |  which was oriented toward the John Birch Society and which
 |  opposed Bush's chairmanship. [18]  According to the "San
 |  Francisco Examiner," Bush's press office in August 1988
 |  first said that Bush had not made any such call, and
 |  challenged the authenticity of the FBI documents. Several
 |  days later Bush's spokesman said that the candi date "does
 |  not recall" placing the call.
 |
 |  One day after he reported Parrott to the FBI, Bush received
 |  a highly sensitive, high-level briefing from the Bureau:
 |
 |  "Date: November 29, 1963
 |
 |  "To: Director of Intelligence and Research Department of
 |  State
 |
 |  "From: John Edgar Hoover, Director
 |
 |  "Subject: ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY,
 |  NOVEMBER 22, 1963
 |
 |  "Our Miami, Florida Office on November 23, 1963 advised that
 |  the Office of Coordinator of Cuban Affairs in Miami advised
 |  that the Department of State feels some misguided
 |  anti-Castro group might capitalize on the present situation
 |  and undertake an unauthorized raid against Cuba, believing
 |  that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy might
 |  herald a change in U.S. policy, which is not true.
 |
 |  "Our sources and informants familiar with Cuban matters in
 |  the Miami area advise that the general feeling in the
 |  anti-Castro Cuban community is one of stunned disbelief and,
 |  even among those who did not entirely agree with the
 |  President's policy concerning Cuba, the feeling is that the
 |  President's death represents a great loss not only to the
 |  U.S. but to all Latin America. These sources know of no
 |  plans for unauthorized action against Cuba.
 |
 |  "An informant who has furnished reliable information in the
 |  past and who is close to a small pro-Castro group in Miami
 |  has advised that those individuals are afraid that the
 |  assassination of the President may result in strong
 |  repressive measures being taken against them and, although
 |  pro-Castro in their feelings, regret the assassination.
 |
 |  "The substance of the foregoing information was orally
 |  furnished to Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence
 |  Agency and Captain William Edwards of the Defense
 |  Intelligence Agency on November 23, 1963, by Mr. W.T.
 |  Forsyth of this Bureau."
 |
 |  William T. Forsyth, since deceased, was an official of the
 |  FBI's Washington headquarters; during the time he was
 |  attached to the bureau's subversive control section, he ran
 |  the investigation of Dr. Martin Luther King. Was he also a
 |  part of the FBI's harassment of Dr. King?
 |
 |  The efforts of journalists to locate Captain Edwards have
 |  not been successful.
 |
 |  This FBI document identifying George Bush as a CIA agent in
 |  November 1963 was first published by Joseph McBride in "The
 |  Nation" in July 1988, just before Bush received the
 |  Republican nomination for President. McBride's source
 |  observed: "I know [Bush] was involved in the Caribbean. I
 |  know he was involved in the suppression of things after the
 |  Kennedy assassination. There was a very definite worry that
 |  some Cuban groups were going to move against Castro and
 |  attempt to blame it on the CIA." [19]  When pressed for
 |  confirmation or denial, Bush's spokesman Stephen Hart
 |  commented: "Must be another George Bush."
 |
 |  Within a short time, the CIA itself would peddle the same
 |  damage control line. On July 19, 1988, in the wake of wide
 |  public attention to the report published in "The Nation,"
 |  CIA spokeswoman Sharron Basso departed from the normal CIA
 |  policy of refusing to confirm or deny reports that any
 |  person is or was a CIA employee. CIA spokeswoman Basso told
 |  the Associated Press that the CIA believed that "the record
 |  should be clarified." She said that the FBI document
 |  "apparently" referred to a George William Bush who had
 |  worked in 1963 on the night shift at CIA headquarters, and
 |  that "would have been the appropriate place to have received
 |  such an FBI report." According to her account, the George
 |  William Bush in question had left the CIA to join the
 |  Defense Intelligence Agency in 1964.
 |
 |  For the CIA to volunteer the name of one of its former
 |  employees to the press was a shocking violation of
 |  traditional methods, which are supposedly designed to keep
 |  such names a closely guarded secret. This revelation may
 |  have constituted a violation of federal law. But no
 |  exertions were too great when it came to damage control for
 |  George Bush.
 |
 |  George William Bush had indeed worked for the CIA, the DIA,
 |  and the Alexandria, Virginia Department of Public Welfare
 |  before joining the Social Security Administration, in whose
 |  Arlington, Virginia office he was employed as a claims
 |  representative in 1988. George William Bush told "The
 |  Nation" that while at the CIA he was "just a lowly
 |  researcher and analyst" who worked with documents and photos
 |  and never received interagency briefings. He had never met
 |  Forsyth of the FBI or Captain Edwards of the DIA. "So it
 |  wasn't me," said George William Bush. [20] 
 |
 |  Later, George William Bush formalized his denial in a sworn
 |  statement to a federal court in Washington, D.C. The
 |  affidavit acknowledges that while working at CIA
 |  headquarters between September 1963 and February 1964,
 |  George William Bush was the junior person on a three- to
 |  four-man watch which was on duty when Kennedy was shot. But,
 |  as George William Bush goes on to say, "have
 |  carefullyreviewed the FBI memorandum to the Director, Bureau
 |  of Intelligence and Research, Department of State dated
 |  November 29, 1963 which mentions a Mr. George Bush of the
 |  Central Intelligence Agency.... I do not recognize the
 |  contents of the memorandum as information furnished to me
 |  orally or otherwise during the time I was at the CIA. In
 |  fact, during my time at the CIA, I did not receive any oral
 |  communications from any government agency of any nature
 |  whatsoever. I did not receive any information relating to
 |  the Kennedy assassination during my time at the CIA from the
 |  FBI.
 |
 |  "Based on the above, it is my conclusion that I am not the
 |  Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency referred
 |  to in the memorandum." [21] 
 |
 |  So we are left with the strong suspicion that the "Mr.
 |  George Bush of the CIA" referred to by the FBI is our own
 |  George Herbert Walker Bush, who, in addition to his possible
 |  contact with Lee Harvey Oswald's controller, may thus also
 |  join the ranks of the Kennedy assassination coverup. It
 |  makes perfect sense for George Bush to be called in on a
 |  matter involving the Cuban community in Miami, since that is
 |  a place where George has traditionally had a constituency.
 |  George inherited it from his father, Prescott Bush of
 |  Jupiter Island, and later passed it on to his own son, Jeb.
 |
 |  Notes to Chapter 9
 |
 |  1. Joseph McBride, "|'George Bush,' C.I.A. Operative," "The
 |  Nation" July 16, 1988.
 |
 |  2. Georgie Anne Geyer, "Guerrilla Prince" (Boston: Little,
 |  Brown, 1991).
 |
 |  3. Felix Rodriguez, "Shadow Warrior" (New York: Simon and
 |  Schuster, 1989).
 |
 |  4. On Pluto, see the East German study by Guenter
 |  Schumacher, "Operation Pluto" (Berlin, Deutscher
 |  Militarverlag, 1966).
 |
 |  5. E. Howard Hunt, "Give Us This Day" (New Rochelle:
 |  Arlington House, 1973), p. 214.
 |
 |  6. For Operation Zapata, see Michael R. Beschloss, "The
 |  Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev, 1960-63" (New York:
 |  Edward Burlingame Books, 1991), p. 89.
 |
 |  7. For the names of the ships at the Bay of Pigs, see
 |  Quintin Pino Machado, "La Batalla de Giron" (La Habana:
 |  Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1983), pp. 79-80. This
 |  source quotes one ship as the "Barbara J." See also
 |  Schumacher, "Operation Pluto," pp. 98-99. See also Peter
 |  Wyden, "Bay of Pigs, The Untold Story" (New York: Simon and
 |  Schuster, 1979), which also has the "Barbara J." According
 |  to Quintin Pino Machado, the "Houston" had been given the
 |  new name of "Aguja" (Swordfish) and the "Barbara" that of
 |  "Barracuda" for the purposes of this operation.
 |
 |  8. E. Howard Hunt, "op. cit.," pp. 13-14.
 |
 |  9. Theodore Sorenson, "Kennedy" (New York: Bantam, 1966), p.
 |  329.
 |
 |  10. "Ibid.," p. 723.
 |
 |  11. Arthur M. Schlesinger, "A Thousand Days" (Boston, 1965),
 |  p. 339.
 |
 |  12. See Warren Hinckle and William W. Turner, "The Fish is
 |  Red" (New York: Harper and Row, 1981), pp. 112 ff.
 |
 |  13. "Report to the President by the Commission on CIA
 |  Activities Within the United States" (Washington: U.S.
 |  Government Printing Office, 1975), pp. 251-267.
 |
 |  14. Jim Marrs, "Widow disputes suicide," "Fort Worth Evening
 |  Star-Telegram," May 11, 1978.
 |
 |  15. A photocopy of George de Mohrenschildt's personal
 |  address book is preserved at the Assassination Archives and
 |  Research Center, Washington, D.C. The Bush entry is also
 |  cited in Mark Lane, "Plausible Denial" (New York: Thunder's
 |  Mou th Press, 1991), p. 332.
 |
 |  16. For De Mohrenschildt, see Mark Lane, "op. cit."; Edward
 |  Jay Epstein, "Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald"
 |  (London: Hutchinson, 1978); C. Robert Blakey and Richard N.
 |  Billings, "The Plot to Kill the President" (New York: Times
 |  Books, 1981); and Robert Sam Anson, ""They've Killed The
 |  President!"" (New York: Bantam, 1975).
 |
 |  17. "Report of the Warren Commission on the Assassination of
 |  President Kennedy" (New York: Bantam, 1964), p. 262.
 |
 |  18. Miguel Acoca, "FBI: 'Bush' called about JFK killing,"
 |  "San Francisco Examiner," Aug. 25, 1988.
 |
 |  19. Joseph McBride, "|'George Bush,' CIA Operative," "The
 |  Nation," July 16/23, 1988, p. 42.
 |
 |  20. Joseph McBride, "Where "Was" George?" "The Nation," Aug.
 |  13/20, 1988, p. 117.
 |
 |  21. United States District Court for the District of
 |  Columbia, Civil Action 88-2600 GHR, Assassination Archives
 |  and Research Center v. Central Intelligence Agency,
 |  Affidavit of George William Bush, Sept. 21, 1988.
 |
 |
 |  CHAPTER 10
 |
 |  Part I
 |
 |  The Senate Race
 |
 |  Bush's unsuccessful attempt in 1964 to unseat Texas
 |  Democratic "Senator Ralph Yarborough" is a matter of
 |  fundamental interest to anyone seeking to probe the
 |  wellsprings of Bush's actual political thinking. In a
 |  society which knows nothing of its own recent history, the
 |  events of a quarter-century ago might be classed as remote
 |  and irrelevant. But as we review the profile of the Bush
 |  Senate campaign of 1964, what we see coming alive is the
 |  characteristic mentality that rules the Oval Office today.
 |  The main traits are all there: the overriding obsession with
 |  the race issue, exemplified in Bush's bitter rejection of
 |  the civil rights bill before the Congress during those
 |  months; the genocidal bluster in foreign affairs, with
 |  proposals for nuclear bombardment of Vietnam, an invasion of
 |  Cuba, and a rejection of negotiations for the return of the
 |  Panama Canal; the autonomic reflex for union-busting
 |  expressed in the rhetoric of "right to work"; the paean to
 |  free enterprise at the expense of farmers and the
 |  disadvantaged, with all of this packaged in a slick,
 |  demagogic television and advertising effort....
 |
 |  Bush's opponent, Senator Ralph Webster Yarborough, had been
 |  born in Chandler, Texas in 1903 as the seventh of 11
 |  children. After graduating from Tyler High School as
 |  Salutatorian, he received an appointment to the U.S.
 |  Military Academy at West Point, which he attended for one
 |  year. After working in the wheat fields of Oklahoma and a
 |  six-month stint teaching in a small rural school, he went on
 |  to Sam Houston State Teachers College for two terms. He was
 |  a member of the 36th Division of the Texas National Guard,
 |  in which he advanced from private to sergeant. After World
 |  War I, he worked a passage to Europe on board a freighter,
 |  and found a job in Germany working in the offices of the
 |  American Chamber of Commerce in Berlin. He also pursued
 |  studies in Stendahl, Germany. He returned to the United
 |  States to earn a law degree at the University of Texas in
 |  1927, and worked as a lawyer in El Paso.... Yarborough
 |  entered public service as an assistant attorney general of
 |  Texas from 1931 to 1934. After that, he was a founding
 |  director of the Lower Colorado River Authority, a major
 |  water project in central Texas, and was then elected as a
 |  district judge in Austin.
 |
 |  Yarborough served in the U.S. Army ground forces during
 |  World War II, and was a member of the only division which
 |  took part in the postwar occupation of Germany as well as in
 |  MacArthur's administration of Japan. When he left the
 |  military in 1946, he had attained the rank of lieutenant
 |  colonel. It is clear from an overview of Yarborough's career
 |  that his victories and defeats were essentially his own,
 |  that for him there was no Prescott Bush to secure lines of
 |  credit or to procure important posts by telephone calls to
 |  bigwigs in freemasonic networks.
 |
 |  Yarborough had challenged Allan Shivers in the governor's
 |  contest of 1952, and had gone down to defeat. Successive
 |  bids for the state house in Austin by Yarborough were turned
 |  back in 1954 and 1956. Then, when Senator (and former
 |  Governor) Price Daniel resigned his seat, Yarborough was
 |  finally victorious in a special election. He had then been
 |  reelected to the Senate for a full term in 1958.
 |
 |  Yarborough in the Senate
 |
 |  Yarborough was distinguished first of all for his voting
 |  record on civil rights. Just months after he had entered the
 |  Senate, he was one of only five southern senators (including
 |  LBJ) to vote for the watershed Civil Rights Act of 1957. In
 |  1960, Yarborough was one of four southern senators -- again
 |  including LBJ -- who cast votes in favor of the Civil Rights
 |  Act of 1960. Yarborough would be the lone senator from the
 |  11 states formerly comprising the Confederate States of
 |  America to vote for the 1964 Civil Rights Bill, the most
 |  sweeping since Reconstruction. This is the bill which, as we
 |  will see, provided Bush with the ammunition for one of the
 |  principal themes of his 1964 election attacks. Later,
 |  Yarborough would be one of only three southern senators
 |  supporting the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and one of four
 |  supporting the 1968 open housing bill. [5] 
 |
 |  ... Yarborough had become the chairman of the Senate
 |  Committee on Labor and Public Welfare. Here his lodestar was
 |  infrastructure: infrastructure in the form of education and
 |  infrastructure in the form of physical improvements.
 |
 |  In education, Yarborough was either the author or a leading
 |  supporter of virtually every important piece of legislation
 |  to become law between 1958 and 1971, including some nine
 |  major bills. As a freshman senator, Yarborough was the
 |  co-author of the National Defense Education Act of 1958,
 |  which was the basis for federal aid to education,
 |  particularly to higher education. Under the provisions of
 |  NDEA, a quarter of a million students were at any given time
 |  enabled to pursue undergraduate training with low-cost loans
 |  and other benefits. For graduate students, there were
 |  three-year fellowships that paid tuition and fees plus
 |  grants for living expenses in the amount of $2200, $2400 and
 |  $2600 over the three years -- an ample sum in those days.
 |  Yarborough also sponsored bills for medical education,
 |  college classroom construction, vocational education, aid to
 |  the mentally retarded, and library facilities. Yarborough's
 |  Bilingual Education Bill provided special federal funding
 |  for schools with large numbers of students from non-English
 |  speaking backgrounds. Some of these points were outlined by
 |  Yarborough during a campaign speech of September 18, 1964,
 |  with the title "Higher Education As It Relates To Our
 |  National Purpose."
 |
 |  As chairman of the veterans subcommittee, Yarborough
 |  authored the Cold War G.I. Bill, which sought to extend the
 |  benefits accorded veterans of World War II and Korea, and
 |  which was to apply to servicemen on duty between January
 |  1955 and July 1, 1965. For these veterans, Yarborough
 |  proposed readjustment assistance, educational and vocational
 |  training, and loan assistance, to allow veterans to purchase
 |  homes and farms at a maximum interest rate of 5.25 percent
 |  per annum. This bill was finally passed after years of
 |  dogged effort by Yarborough against the opposition of
 |  Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson. Yarborough was
 |  instrumental in obtaining a five-year extension of the
 |  Hill-Burton Act, which provided 4,000 additional beds in
 |  Veterans Administration hospitals.
 |
 |  In physical improvements, Yarborough supported
 |  appropriations for coastal navigation. He fought for $29
 |  million for the Rural Electrification Administration for
 |  counties in the Corpus Christi area alone. In 11 counties in
 |  that part of Texas, Yarborough had helped obtain federal
 |  grants of $4.5 million and loans of $640,000 under the
 |  Kennedy administration accelerated public works projects
 |  program, to provide clean water and sewage for towns and
 |  cities which could not otherwise afford them. Concerning his
 |  commitment to this type of infrastructure, Yarborough
 |  commented to a dinner in Corpus Christi:
 |
 |  "These are the projects, along with ship channels, dams and
 |  reservoirs, water research programs, hurricane and flood
 |  control programs, that bring delegations of city officials,
 |  me mbers of county courts, members of river and watershed
 |  authorities, co-op delegations, into my office literally by
 |  the thousands year after year for aid, which is always
 |  given, never refused." Yarborough went on: "While our
 |  efforts and achievements are largely unpublicized .. there
 |  is satisfaction beyond acclaim when a small town without a
 |  water system is enabled to provide its people for the first
 |  time with water and sewerage ... when the course of a river
 |  is shored up a little to save a farmer's crops, when a
 |  freeway opens up new avenues of commerce." [6]  In the area
 |  of oil policy, always vital in Texas, Yarborough strained to
 |  give the industry everything it could reasonably expect, and
 |  more. Despite this, he was implacably hated by many business
 |  circles.
 |
 |  In short, Ralph Yarborough had a real commitment to racial
 |  and economicjustice, and was, all in all, among the best
 |  that the post-New Deal Democratic Party had to offer.
 |  Certainly there were weaknesses: One of the principal ones
 |  was to veer in the direction of environmentalism. Here
 |  Yarborough was the prime mover behind the Endangered Species
 |  Act.
 |
 |  Climbing the Republican Ladder
 |
 |  Bush moved to Houston in 1959, bringing the corporate
 |  headquarters of Zapata Offshore with him. Houston was by far
 |  the biggest city in Texas, a center of the corporate
 |  bureaucracies of firms doing business in the oil patch.
 |  There was also the Baker and Botts law firm, which would
 |  function in effect as part of the Bush family network, since
 |  Baker and Botts were the lawyers who had been handling the
 |  affairs of the Harriman railroad interests in the Southwest.
 |
 |  One prominent lawyer in Houston at the time was "James Baker
 |  III," a scion of the family enshrined in the Baker and Botts
 |  name, but himself a partner in another, satellite firm,
 |  because of the so-called anti-nepotism rule that prevented
 |  the children of Baker and Botts partners from joining the
 |  firm themselves. Soon Bush would be hob-nobbing with Baker
 |  and other representatives of the Houston oligarchy, of the
 |  Hobby and Cullen families, at the Petroleum Club and at
 |  garden parties in the hot, humid, subtropical summers.
 |  George, Barbara and their children moved into a new home on
 |  Briar Drive....
 |
 |  Before long, Bush became active in the Harris County
 |  Republican Party, which was in the process of becoming one
 |  of the GOP strongpoints in the statewide apparatus then
 |  being assembled by Peter O'Donnell, the Republican state
 |  chairman, and his associate Thad Hutcheson. By now, George
 |  Bush claimed to have become a millionaire in his own right,
 |  and given his impeccable Wall Street connections, it was not
 |  surprising to find him on the Harris County GOP finance
 |  committee, a function that he had undertaken in Midland for
 |  the Eisenhower-Nixon tickets in 1952 and 1956. He was also a
 |  member of the candidates committee.
 |
 |  In 1962, the Democrats were preparing to nominate John
 |  Connally for governor, and the Texas GOP under O'Donnell was
 |  able to mount a more formidable bid than previously for the
 |  state house in Austin. The Republican candidate was Jack
 |  Cox, a party activist with a right-wing profile. Bush agreed
 |  to serve as the Harris County co-chairman of the Jack Cox
 |  for Governor finance committee. In the gubernatorial
 |  election of 1962, Cox received 710,000 votes, a surprisingly
 |  large result. Connally won the governorship, and it was in
 |  that capacity that he was present in the Kennedy motorcade
 |  in Dallas on November 22, 1963.
 |
 |  During these years, a significant influence was exercised in
 |  the Texas GOP by the John Birch Society, which had grown up
 |  during the 1950s through the leadership and financing of
 |  Robert Welch. Grist for the Birch mill was abundantly
 |  provided by the liberal Republicanism of the Eisenhower
 |  administration, which counted Prescott Bush, Nelson
 |  Rockefeller, Gordon Gray and Robert Keith Gray among its
 |  most influential figures. In reaction against this Wall
 |  Street liberalism, the Birchers offered an ideology of
 |  impotent negative protest based on self-righteous chauvinism
 |  in foreign affairs and the mystifications of the free market
 |  at home. But they were highly suspicious of the financier
 |  cliques of lower Manhattan, and to that extent they had
 |  George Bush's number.
 |
 |  Bush is still complaining about the indignities he suffered
 |  at the hands of these Birchers, with whom he was straining
 |  to have as much as possible in common. But he met with
 |  repeated frustration, because his Eastern Liberal
 |  Establishment pedigree was always there. In his campaign
 |  autobiography, Bush laments that many Texans thought that
 |  "Redbook Magazine," published by his father-in-law, Marvin
 |  Pierce of the McCall Corporation, was an official
 |  publication of the Communist Party.
 |
 |  Bush recounts a campaign trip with his aide Roy Goodearle to
 |  the Texas panhandle, during which he was working a crowd at
 |  one of his typical free food, free beer "political
 |  barbecues." Bush gave one of his palm cards to a man who
 |  conceded that he had heard of Bush, but quickly added that
 |  he could never support him. Bush thought this was because he
 |  was running as a Republican. "But," [Bush] then realized,
 |  "my being a Republican wasn't the thing bothering the guy.
 |  It was something worse than that." Bush's interlocutor was
 |  upset over the fact that Zapata Offshore had eastern
 |  investors. When Bush whined that all oil companies had
 |  eastern investors, for such was the nature of the business,
 |  his tormentor pointed out that one of Bush's main campaign
 |  contributors, a prominent Houston attorney, was not just a
 |  "sonofabitch," but also a member of the New York Council on
 |  Foreign Relations.
 |
 |  Bush explains, with the whine in his larynx in overdrive:
 |  "The lesson was that in the minds of some voters the Council
 |  on Foreign Relations was nothing more than a One World tool
 |  of the Communist-Wall Street internationalist conspiracy,
 |  and to make matters worse, the Houston lawyer had also
 |  worked for President Eisenhower -- a known tool of the
 |  Communists, in the eyes of some John Birch members." Further
 |  elucidation is then added in a footnote: "A decade and a
 |  half later, running for President, I ran into some of the
 |  same political types on the campaign trail. By then, they'd
 |  uncovered an international conspiracy even more sinister
 |  than the Council on Foreign Relations -- the Trilateral
 |  Commission, a group that President Reagan received at the
 |  White House in 1981." [7] 
 |
 |  This, as we shall see, is a reference to Lyndon LaRouche's
 |  New Hampshire primary campaign of 1979-80, which included
 |  the exposure of Bush's membership not just in David
 |  Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission, but also in Skull and
 |  Bones, about which Bush always refuses to comment. When
 |  Ronald Reagan and other candidates took up this issue, Bush
 |  ended up losing the New Hampshire primary, and with it, his
 |  best hope of capturing the presidency in 1980. Bush, in
 |  short, has been aware since the early sixties that serious
 |  attention to his oligarchical pedigree causes him to lose
 |  elections. His response has been to seek to declare these
 |  very relevant matters off limits, and to order dirty tricks
 |  and covert operations against those who persist in making
 |  this an issue, most clearly in the case of LaRouche.
 |
 |  Part of the influence of the Birch Society in those days was
 |  due to the support and financing afforded by the Hunt
 |  dynasty of Dallas. In particular, the fabulously wealthy
 |  oilman "H.L. Hunt," one of the richest men in the world, was
 |  an avid sponsor of rightwing propaganda which he put out
 |  under the name of LIFE LINE. On at least one occasion, Hunt
 |  called Bush to Dallas for a meeting during one of the
 |  latter's Texas political campaigns. "There's something I'd
 |  like to give you," Hunt told Bush. Bush appeared with
 |  remarkable alacrity, and Hunt engaged him in a long
 |  conversation about many things, but mentioned neither
 |  politics nor money. Finally, as Bush was getting ready to
 |  leave, Hunt handed him a thick brown envelope. Bush eagerly
 |  opened the envelope in the firm expectation that it would
 |  contain a large sum in cash. What he found instead was a
 |  thick wad of LIFE LINE literature for his ideological
 |  reformation. [8] 
 |
 |  It was in this context that George Bush, medio cre oilman,
 |  fortified by his Wall Street and Skull and Bones
 |  connections, but with almost no visible qualifications, and
 |  scarcely known in Texas outside of Odessa, Midland and
 |  Houston, decided that he had attained senatorial caliber. In
 |  the Roman Empire, membership in the Senate was an hereditary
 |  attribute of patrician family rank. Prescott Bush had left
 |  the Senate in early January of 1963. Before the year was
 |  out, George Bush would make his claim. As Senator Yarborough
 |  later commented, it would turn out to be an act of temerity.
 |
 |  Harris County Chair
 |
 |  During the spring of 1963, Bush set about assembling an
 |  institutional base for his campaign. The chosen vehicle
 |  would be the Republican chairmanship of Harris County, the
 |  area around Houston, a bulwark of the Texas GOP. Bush had
 |  been participating in the Harris County organization since
 |  1960.
 |
 |  One Sunday morning, Bush invited some county Republican
 |  activists to his home on Briar Drive. Present were "Roy
 |  Goodearle," a young independent oil man who, before Barbara
 |  Bush appropriated it, was given the nickname of "the Silver
 |  Fox" in the Washington scene. Also present were Jack Steel,
 |  Tom and Nancy Thawley, and some others.
 |
 |  Goodearle, presumably acting as the lawyer for the Bush
 |  faction, addressed the meeting on the dangers posed by the
 |  sectarians of the John Birch Society to the prospects of the
 |  GOP in Houston and elsewhere. Over lunch prepared by Barbara
 |  Bush, Goodearle outlined the tactical situation in the
 |  Harris County organization: A Birchite faction under the
 |  leadership of state senator Walter Mengdon, although still a
 |  minority, was emerging as a powerful inner-party opposition
 |  against the liberals and moderates. In the last vote for GOP
 |  county leader, the Birch candidate had been narrowly
 |  defeated. Now, after three years in office, the more
 |  moderate county chairman, James A. Bertron, would announce
 |  on February 8, 1963 that he could no longer serve as
 |  chairman of the Harris County Republican Executive
 |  Committee. His resignation, he would state, was
 |  "necessitated by neglect of my personal business due to my
 |  political activities." [9]  This was doubtless very
 |  convenient in the light of what Bush had been planning.
 |
 |  Bertron was quitting to move to Florida. In 1961, Bertron
 |  had been attending a Republican fundraising gathering in
 |  Washington, D.C., when he was accosted by none other than
 |  Senator Prescott Bush. Bush took Bertron aside and demanded:
 |  "Jimmy, when are you going to get George involved?"
 |  "Senator, I'm trying," Bertron replied, evidently with some
 |  vexation. "We're all trying." [10]  In 1961 or at any other
 |  time, it is doubtful that George Bush could have found his
 |  way to the men's room without the help of a paid informant
 |  sent by Senator Prescott Bush.
 |
 |  Goodearle went on to tell the assembled Republicans that
 |  unless a "strong candidate" now entered the race, a Bircher
 |  was likely to win the post of county chairman. But in order
 |  to defeat the well-organized and zealous Birchers, said
 |  Goodearle, an anti-Bircher would have to undertake a
 |  grueling campaign, touring the county and making speeches to
 |  the Republican faithful every night for several weeks. Then,
 |  under the urging of Goodearle, the assembled group turned to
 |  Bush: Could he be prevailed on to put his hat in the ring?
 |  Bush, by his own account, needed no time to think it over,
 |  and accepted on the spot.
 |
 |  With that, George and Barbara were on the road in their
 |  first campaign in what Bush later called "another
 |  apprenticeship." While Barbara busied herself with
 |  needlepoint in order to stay awake through a speech she had
 |  heard repeatedly, George churned out a pitch on the virtues
 |  of the two-party system and the advantages of having a
 |  Republican alternative to the entrenched Houston
 |  establishment. In effect, his platform was the Southern
 |  Strategy "avant la lettre." Local observers soon noticed
 |  that Barbara Bush was able to gain acceptance as a campaign
 |  comrade for Republican volunteers, in addition to being
 |  esteemed as the wealthy candidate's wife.
 |
 |  When the vote for county chairman came, the candidate
 |  opposing Bush, Russell Prior, pulled out of the race for
 |  reasons that have not been satisfactorily explained, thus
 |  permitting Bush to be elected unanimously by the executive
 |  committee. Henceforth, winning unopposed has been Bush's
 |  taste in elections: This is how he was returned to the House
 |  for his second term in 1968, and Bush propagandists flirted
 |  with a similar approach to the 1992 presidential contest.
 |
 |  As chairman, Bush was free to appoint the officers of the
 |  county GOP. Some of these choices are not without relevance
 |  for the future course of world history. For the post of
 |  party counsel, Bush appointed William B. Cassin of Baker and
 |  Botts, Shepherd and Coates law firm. For his assistant
 |  county chairmen, Bush tapped Anthony Farris, Gene Crossman
 |  and Roy Goodearle; and for executive director, William R.
 |  Simmons.
 |
 |  Not to be overloooked is the choice of Anthony J.P. "Tough
 |  Tony" Farris. He had been a Marine gunner aboard dive
 |  bombers and torpedo bombers during the war, and had later
 |  graduated from the University of Houston law school,
 |  subsequently setting up a general law practice in the
 |  Sterling Building in downtown Houston. The "P" stood for
 |  Perez, and Farris was a wheelhorse in the Mexican-American
 |  community with the "Amigos for Bush" in a number of
 |  campaigns. Farris was an unsuccessful congressional
 |  candidate, but was later rewarded by the Nixon
 |  administration with the post of United States Attorney in
 |  Houston. Then Farris was elected to the Harris County bench
 |  in 1980. When George Bush's former business partner and
 |  constant crony, J. Hugh Liedtke of Pennzoil, sued Texaco for
 |  damages in the celebrated Getty Oil case of 1985, it was
 |  Judge "Tough Tony" Farris who presided over most of the
 |  trial and made the key rulings on the way to the granting of
 |  the biggest damage award in history, an unbelievable
 |  $11,120,976,110.83, all for the benefit of Bush's good
 |  friend J. Hugh Liedtke. [12] 
 |
 |  ... At the same time that he was inveighing against
 |  extremism, Bush was dragooning his party apparatus to mount
 |  the Houston Draft Goldwater drive. The goal of this effort
 |  was to procure 100,000 signatures for Goldwater, with each
 |  signer also plunking down a dollar to fill the GOP coffers.
 |  "An excellent way for those who support Goldwater -- like me
 |  -- to make it known," opined Chairman George. Bush fostered
 |  a partisan -- one might say vindictive -- mood at the county
 |  GOP headquarters: The "Houston Chronicle" of June 6, 1963
 |  reports that GOP activists were amusing themselves by
 |  tossing darts at balloons suspended in front of a photograph
 |  of President Johnson. Bush told the "Chronicle": "I saw the
 |  incident and it did not offend me. It was just a gag."
 |
 |  But Bush's pro-Goldwater efforts were not universally
 |  appreciated. In early July, Craig Peper, the current
 |  chairman of the party finance committee, stood up in a party
 |  gathering and attacked the leaders of the Draft Goldwater
 |  movement, including Bush as "right wing extremists." Bush
 |  had not been purging any Birchers, but he was not willing to
 |  permit such attacks from his left. Bush accordingly purged
 |  Peper, demanding his resignation after a pro-Goldwater
 |  meeting at which Bush had boasted that he was "100 percent
 |  for the draft Goldwater move."
 |
 |  A few weeks after ousting Peper, Bush contributed one of his
 |  first public political statements as an op ed in the
 |  "Houston Chronicle" of July 28, 1963. Concerning the recent
 |  organizational problems, he whined that the county
 |  organization was "afflicted with some dry-martini critics
 |  who talk and don't work." Then, in conformity with his
 |  family doctrine and his own dominant obsession, Bush turned
 |  to the issue of race. As a conservative, he had to lament
 |  that fact that "Negroes" "think that conservatism means
 |  segregation." Nothing could be further from the truth. This
 |  was rather the result of slanderous propaganda which
 |  Republican public relations men had not sufficiently
 |  refuted: "First, they attempt to present us as racists. The
 |  Republican party of Harris County is not a racist party. We
 |  have not present ed our story to the Negroes in the county.
 |  Our failure to attract the Negro voter has not been because
 |  of a racist philosophy; rather, it has been a product of our
 |  not having had the organization to tackle all parts of the
 |  county." What then was the GOP line on the race question?
 |  "We believe in the basic premise that the individual Negro
 |  surrenders the very dignity and freedom he is struggling for
 |  when he accepts money for his vote or when he goes along
 |  with the block vote dictates of some Democratic boss who
 |  couldn't care less about the quality of the candidates he is
 |  pushing." So the GOP would try to separate the black voter
 |  from the Democrats. Bush conceded: "We have a tough row to
 |  hoe here."
 |
 |  After these pronouncements on race, Bush then went on to the
 |  trade union front. Yarborough's labor backing was
 |  exceedingly strong, and Bush lost no time in assailing
 |  thestate AFL-CIO and  its Committee on Political Education
 |  (COPE) for gearing up to help Yarborough in his race. For
 |  Bush, this meant that the AFL-CIO was not supporting the
 |  "two-party system." "A strong pitch is being made to dun the
 |  [union] membership to help elect Yarborough," he charged,
 |  "long before Yarborough's opponent is even known."
 |
 |  Bush also spoke out during this period on foreign affairs.
 |  He demanded that President Kennedy "muster the courage" to
 |  undertake a new attack on Cuba. [13] 
 |
 |  Before announcing his bid for the senate, Bush decided to
 |  take out what would appear in retrospect to be a very
 |  important insurance policy for his future political career.
 |  On April 22, Bush, with the support of Republican state
 |  chairman Peter O'Donnell, filed a suit in federal court,
 |  calling for the reapportionment of the congressional
 |  districts in the Houston area. The suit argued that the
 |  urban voters of Harris County were being partially
 |  disenfranchised by a system that favored rural voters, and
 |  demanded as a remedy that a new congressional district be
 |  drawn in the area. "This is not a partisan matter,"
 |  commented the civic-minded Bush. "This is something of
 |  concern to all Harris County citizens." Bush would later win
 |  this suit, and that would lead to a court-ordered
 |  redistricting, which would create the Seventh Congressional
 |  District, primarily out of those precincts which Bush
 |  managed to carry in the 1964 Senate race. Was this the
 |  invisible hand of Skull and Bones? This would also mean that
 |  there would be no entrenched incumbent, no incumbent of any
 |  kind in that Seventh District, when Bush got around to
 |  making his bid there in 1966. But for now, this was all
 |  still in the future.
 |
 |  The Senate Race
 |
 |  On September 10, 1963, Bush announced his campaign for the
 |  U.S. Senate. He was fully endorsed by the state Republican
 |  organization and its chairman, Peter O'Donnell, who,
 |  according to some accounts, had encouraged Bush to run. By
 |  December 5, Bush had further announced that he was planning
 |  to step down as Harris County chairman and devote himself to
 |  full-time, statewide campaigning starting early in 1964.
 |
 |  At this point, Bush's foremost strategic concern appears to
 |  have been money -- big money. On October 19, the "Houston
 |  Chronicle" carried his comment that ousting Yarborough would
 |  require nearly $2 million, "if you want to do it right."
 |  Much of this would go to the Brown and Snyder advertising
 |  agency in Houston for television and billboards. In 1963,
 |  this was a considerable sum, but Bush's crony C. Fred
 |  Chambers, also an oilman, was committed to raising it.
 |  During these years, Chambers appears to have been one of
 |  Bush's closest friends, and he received the ultimate
 |  apotheosis of having one of the Bush family dogs named in
 |  his honor. [14] 
 |
 |  It is impossible to establish in retrospect how much Bush
 |  spent in this campaign. State campaign finance filings do
 |  exist, but they are fragmentary and grossly underestimate
 |  the money that was actually committed.
 |
 |  In terms of the tradeoffs of the campaign, Bush and his
 |  handlers were confronted with the following configuration:
 |  There were three competitors for the Republican senatorial
 |  nomination. The most formidable competition came from Jack
 |  Cox, the Houston oilman who had run for governor against
 |  Connally in 1962, and whose statewide recognition was much
 |  higher than Bush's. Cox would position himself to the right
 |  of Bush, and would receive the endorsement of General Edwin
 |  Walker, who had been forced to resign his infantry command
 |  in Germany because of his radical speeches to the troops. A
 |  former Democrat, Cox was reported to have financial backing
 |  from the Hunts of Dallas. Cox campaigned against medicare,
 |  federal aid to education, the war on poverty, and the loss
 |  of U.S. sovereignty to the U.N.
 |
 |  Competing with Cox was Dr. Milton Davis, a thoracic surgeon
 |  from Dallas, who was expected to be the weakest candidate
 |  but whose positions were perhaps the most distinctive:
 |  Morris was for "no treaties with Russia," the repeal of the
 |  federal income tax, and the "selling off of excess
 |  government industrial property such as TVA and REA" -- what
 |  the Reagan-Bush administrations would later call
 |  privatization.
 |
 |  Competing with Bush for the less militant conservatives was
 |  Dallas lawyer Robert Morris, who recommended depriving the
 |  U.S. Supreme Court of appellate jurisdiction in school
 |  prayer cases. [15]  In order to avoid a humiliating
 |  second-round runoff in the primary, Bush would need to score
 |  an absolute majority the first time around. To do that he
 |  would have to first compete with Cox on a right-wing
 |  terrain, and then move to the center after the primary, in
 |  order to take votes from Yarborough there.
 |
 |  But there was also primary competition on the Democratic
 |  side for Yarborough. This was Gordon McLendon, the owner of
 |  a radio network, the Liberty Broadcasting System, that was
 |  loaded with debt. Liberty Broadcasting's top creditor was
 |  Houston banker Roy Cullen, a Bush crony. Roy Cullen's name
 |  appears, for example, along with such died-in-the wool
 |  Bushmen as W.S. Farish III, James A. Baker III, C. Fred
 |  Chambers, Robert Mosbacher, William C. Liedtke, Jr., Joseph
 |  R. Neuhaus and William B. Cassin, in a Bush campaign ad in
 |  the "Houston Chronicle" of late April, 1964. When McLendon
 |  finally went bankrupt, it was found that he owed Roy Cullen
 |  more than a million dollars. So perhaps it is not surprising
 |  that McLendon's campaign functioned as an auxiliary to
 |  Bush's own efforts. McLendon specialized in smearing
 |  Yarborough with the Billie Sol Estes issue, and it was to
 |  this that McLendon devoted most of his speaking time and
 |  media budget.
 |
 |  Billie Sol Estes in those days was notorious for his
 |  conviction for defrauding the U.S. government of large sums
 |  of money in a scam involving the storage of chemicals that
 |  turned out not to exist. Billie Sol was part of the LBJ
 |  political milieu. As the Estes scandal developed, a report
 |  emerged that he had given Yarborough a payment of $50,000 on
 |  Nov. 6, 1960. But later, after a thorough investigation, the
 |  Department of Justice had issued a statement declaring that
 |  the charges involving Yarborough were "without any
 |  foundation in fact and unsupported by credible testimony."
 |  "The case is closed," said the Justice Department. But this
 |  did not stop Bush from using the issue to the hilt: "I don't
 |  intend to mud-sling with [Yarborough] about such matters as
 |  the Billie Sol Estes case since Yarborough's connections
 |  with Estes are a simple matter of record which any one can
 |  check," said Bush. "[Yarborough is] going to have to prove
 |  to the Texas voters that his connections with Billie Sol
 |  Estes were as casual as he claims they were." [16]  In a
 |  release issued on April 24, Bush "said he welcomes the
 |  assistance of Gordon McLendon, Yarborough's primary
 |  opponent, in trying to force the incumbent Senator to
 |  answer." Bush added that he planned to "hammer at Yarborough
 |  every step of the way ... until I get some sort of answer."
 |
 |  The other accusation that was used against Yarborough during
 |  the campaign was advanced most notably in an article
 |  published in the September 1964 issue of "Reader's Digest."
 |  The story was that Yarborough had facilitated backing and
 |  subsidies through the Texas Area Reconstructio n
 |  Administration for an industrial development project in
 |  Crockett, Texas, only to have the project fail owing to the
 |  inability of the company involved to build the factory that
 |  was planned. The accusation was that Audio Electronics, the
 |  prospective factory builders, had received a state loan of
 |  $383,000 to build the plant, while townspeople had raised
 |  some $60,000 to buy the plant site, before the entire deal
 |  fell through.
 |
 |  The "Reader's Digest" told disapprovingly of Yarborough
 |  addressing a group of 35 Crockett residents on a telephone
 |  squawk box in March, 1963, telling them that he was
 |  authorized by the White House to announce "that you are
 |  going to gain a fine new industry -- one that will provide
 |  new jobs for 180 people, add new strength to your area."
 |
 |  The "Reader's Digest" article left the distinct impression
 |  that the $60,000 invested by local residents had been lost.
 |  "Because people believed that their Senator's 'White House
 |  announcment' of the ARA loan to Audio guaranteed the firm's
 |  soundness, several Texans invested in it and lost all. One
 |  man dropped $40,000. A retired Air Force officer plowed in
 |  $7000." It turned out in reality that those who had invested
 |  in the real estate for the plant site had lost nothing, but
 |  had rather been made an offer for their land that
 |  represented a profit of one-third on the original
 |  investment, and thus stood to gain substantially.
 |
 |  Bush campaign headquarters immediately got into the act with
 |  a statement that "it is a shame" that Texans had to pick up
 |  the "Reader's Digest" and find their Senator "holding the
 |  hand of scandal.... The citizens of the area raised $60,000
 |  in cash, invested it in the company, and lost it because the
 |  project was a fraud and never started."
 |
 |  Yarborough shot back with a statement of his own, pointing
 |  out that Bush's claims were "basely false," and adding that
 |  the "reckless, irresponsible, false charges by my opponent
 |  further demonstrate his untruthfulness and unfitness for the
 |  office of U.S. Senator." Most telling was Yarborough's
 |  charge on how the "Reader's Digest" got interested in
 |  Crockett, Texas, in the first place: "The fact that my
 |  opponent's multi-millionaire father's Wall Street investment
 |  banking connections enable the planting of false and
 |  libelous articles about me in a national magazine like the
 |  "Reader's Digest" will not enable the Connecticut candidate
 |  to buy a Texas seat in the U.S. Senate." (This was not mere
 |  rhetoric: "Reader's Digest General Manager Albert Cole was
 |  Prescott Bush's neighbor and fellow member of the Harrimans'
 |  secret enclave on Jupiter Island, Florida.) Yarborough's
 |  shot was on target, it hurt. Bush whined in response that it
 |  was Yarborough's statement which was "false, libelous, and
 |  hogwash," and challenged the Senator to prove it or retract
 |  it. [17] 
 |
 |  Racial Theme
 |
 |  Beyond these attempts to smear Yarborough, it is once again
 |  characteristic that the principal issue around which Bush
 |  built his campaign was racism, expressed this time as
 |  opposition to the civil rights bill that was before the
 |  Congress during 1964. Bush did this certainly in order to
 |  conform to his pro-Goldwater ideological profile, and in
 |  order to garner votes (especially in the Republican primary)
 |  using racist and states' rights backlash, but most of all in
 |  order to express the deepest tenets of the philosophical
 |  world-outlook of himself and his oligarchical family.
 |
 |  Very early in the campaign, Bush issued a statement saying:
 |  "I am opposed to the Civil Rights bill now before the
 |  Senate." Not content with that, Bush proceeded immediately
 |  to tap the wellsprings of nullification and interposition:
 |  "Texas has a comparably good record in civil rights," he
 |  argued, "and I'm opposed to the Federal Government
 |  intervening further into State affairs and individual
 |  rights." At this point Bush claimed that his quarrel was not
 |  with the entire bill, but rather with two specific
 |  provisions, which he claimed had not been a part of the
 |  original draft, but which he hinted had been added to
 |  placate violent black extremists. According to his statement
 |  of March 17, "Bush pointed out that the original Kennedy
 |  Civil Rights bill in 1962 did not contain provisions either
 |  for a public accommodations section or a Fair Employment
 |  Practices Commission (FEPC) section." "Then, after the hot,
 |  turbulent summer of 1962, when it became apparent that in
 |  order to get the Civil Rights leaders' support and votes in
 |  the 1964 election something more must be done, these two bad
 |  sections were added to the bill," according to Bush. "I
 |  suggest that these two provisions of the bill -- which I
 |  most heatedly oppose -- were politically motivated and are
 |  cynical in their approach to a most serious problem."
 |
 |  But Bush soon abandoned this hair-splitting approach, and on
 |  March 25 he told the Jaycees of Tyler, "I oppose the entire
 |  bill." Bush explained later that beyond the public
 |  accommodations section and the Fair Employment Practices
 |  Committee, he found that "the most dangerous portions of the
 |  bill are those which make the Department of Justice the most
 |  powerful police force in the Nation and the Attorney General
 |  the Nation's most powerful police chief."
 |
 |  When Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts delivered his maiden
 |  speech to the Senate in April of 1964, he included a passage
 |  referring to the late John F. Kennedy, saying that the dead
 |  President had believed that "we should not hate, but love
 |  one another." Bush lashed out at Kennedy for what he called
 |  "unfair criticism of those who oppose the Civil Rights
 |  bill." In Bush's interpretation, "Kennedy's dramatic, almost
 |  tearful plea for passage of the bill presented all those who
 |  disagree with it as hate mongers." "The inference is clear,"
 |  Bush said. "In other words, Ted Kennedy was saying that any
 |  one who opposes the present Civil Rights bill does so
 |  because there is hate in his heart. Nothing could be further
 |  from the truth. This is not a question of hate or love, but
 |  of Constitutionality." Bush "and other responsible
 |  conservatives" simply think that the bill is politically
 |  inspired. "This bill," Bush said, "would make further
 |  inroads into the rights of individuals and the States, and
 |  even provide for the ultimate destruction of our trial by
 |  jury system. We simply feel that this type of class
 |  legislation, based on further federal control and
 |  intervention, is bad for the nation." Bush said "the Civil
 |  Rights problem is basically a local problem, best left to
 |  the States to handle." Here surely was a
 |  respectable-sounding racism for the era of Selma and Bull
 |  Connor.
 |
 |  Bush was provided with new rhetorical ammunition when
 |  Alabama Governor George Wallace ventured into the
 |  presidential primaries of that year and demonstrated
 |  unexpected vote-getting power in certain northern states,
 |  using a pitch that included overtly racist appeals. In the
 |  wake of one such result in Wisconsin, the Bush campaign
 |  issued a release quoting the candidate as being "sure that a
 |  majority of Americans are opposed to the Civil Rights bill
 |  now being debated in the Senate." "Bush called attention to
 |  the surprising 25 percent of the Wisconsin primary vote
 |  received by Governor George C. Wallace of Alabama," said the
 |  release. In Bush's view, "you can be sure this big vote was
 |  not cast for Wallace himself, but was used as a means of
 |  showing public opposition to the Civil Rights Bill." "If a
 |  flamboyant Governor Wallace can get that kind of a vote in a
 |  northern state such as Wisconsin, it indicates to me that
 |  there must be general concern from many responsible people
 |  over the Civil Rights bill all over the nation," Bush said
 |  in Houston. "If I were a member of the Senate today, I would
 |  vote against this bill in its entirety."
 |
 |  Footnotes
 |
 |  5. For a profile of Yarborough's voting record on this and
 |  other issues, see Chandler Davidson, "Race and Class in
 |  Texas Politics" (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
 |  1990), pp. 29 ff.
 |
 |  6. For Yarborough's Senate achievements up to 1964, see
 |  Ronnie Dugger, "The Substance of the Senate Contest," in
 |  "The Texas Observer," Sept. 18, 1964.
 |
 |  7. Bush and Gold, "op. cit.," p. 77 "ff."
 |
 |  8. See Harry Hurt III, "Texas Rich" (New York: Putnam,
 |  1987), p. 191.
 |
 |  9. On Bush's drive t o become Harris County chairman, it is
 |  instructive to compare his "Looking Forward" with the
 |  clippings from the "Houston Chronicle" of those days,
 |  preserved on microfiche in the Texas Historical Society in
 |  Houston. Bush says that he decided to run for the post in
 |  the sping of 1962, but the Houston press clearly situates
 |  the campaign in the spring of 1963. Bush also claims to have
 |  been county chairman for two years, whereas the Houston
 |  papers show that he served from February 20, 1963 to around
 |  December 5 1963, less than one year.
 |
 |  10. Harry Hurt III, "George Bush, Plucky Lad," "Texas
 |  Monthly," June 1983, p. 196....
 |
 |  12. For Anthony Farris in the Pennzoil vs. Texaco case, see
 |  below and also Thomas Petzinger, Jr., "Oil and Honor" (New
 |  York: Putnam, 1987), "passim."
 |
 |  13. "Boston Globe," June 12, 1988, cited in Michael R.
 |  Beschloss, "The Crisis Years" (New York: Edward Burlingame
 |  Books, 1991), p. 581.
 |
 |  14. See Barbara Bush, "C. Fred's Story" (New York:
 |  Doubleday, 1984), p. 2. This is an example of Mrs. Bush's
 |  singular habit of composing books in which she speaks
 |  through a canine persona, a feat she has repeated for the
 |  current family pet and public relations ploy, Millie. In her
 |  account of how C. Fred the dog got his name, George Bush is
 |  heard ruling out usual dog names with the comment: "Not at
 |  all. We Bushes have always named our children after people
 |  we loved." So, writes C. Fred, "I am named after George
 |  Bush's best friend, C. Fred Chambers of Houston, Texas. I
 |  have met him many times and he doesn't really seem to
 |  appreciate the great honor that the Bushes bestowed upon
 |  him."
 |
 |  15. See Ronnie Dugger, "The Four Republicans," in "The Texas
 |  Observer," April 17, 1964.
 |
 |  16. Quotations from Bush and Yarborough campaign material,
 |  except as otherwise indicated, are from Senator Yarborough's
 |  papers on deposit in the Eugene C. Barker Texas History
 |  Center at the University of Texas in Austin.
 |
 |  17. See Ronnie Dugger, "The Substance of the Senate
 |  Contest," in "The Texas Observer," Sept. 18, 1964.
 |
 |
 |  CHAPTER 10
 |
 |  Part II
 |
 |  The Senate Race
 |
 |  Bush was described in the Texas press as attempting a
 |  melange of "Goldwater's policies, Kennedy's style." [18] 
 |  This coverage reveals traits of the narcissistic macho in
 |  the 40-year old plutocrat: "He is the sort of fellow the
 |  ladies turn their heads to see at the country club charity
 |  ball." Abundant campaign financing allowed Bush "to attract
 |  extra people to rallies with free barbecue, free drinks, and
 |  musical entertainers." These were billed by the Bush
 |  campaign as a return to the "old fashioned political rally,"
 |  and featured such musical groups as the Black Mountain Boys
 |  and the Bluebonnet Belles. At Garcia's Restaurant in Austin,
 |  Bush encountered a group of two dozen or so sporty young
 |  Republican women holding Bush campaign placards. "Oh girls!"
 |  crooned the candidate. "Y'all look great! You look terrific.
 |  All dolled up." The women "were ga-ga about him in return,"
 |  wrote political reporter Ronnie Dugger in the "Texas
 |  Observer," adding that Bush's "campaign to become this
 |  state's second Republican senator gets a lot of energy and
 |  sparkle from the young Republican matrons who are
 |  enthusiastic about him personally and have plenty of money
 |  for baby sitters and nothing much to do with their time."
 |  But in exhortations for militaristic adventurism abroad, the
 |  substance was indeed pure Goldwater.
 |
 |  As could be expected from the man who had so recently
 |  challenged John F. Kennedy to "muster the courage" to attack
 |  Cuba, some of Bush's most vehement pronouncements concerned
 |  Castro and Havana, and were doubtless much appreciated by
 |  the survivors of Brigade 2506 and the Miami Cubans. Bush
 |  started off with what passed for a moderate position in
 |  Texas Goldwater circles: "I advocate recognition of a Cuban
 |  government in exile and would encourage this government
 |  every way to reclaim its country. This means financial and
 |  military assistance." "I think we should not be found
 |  wanting in courage to help them liberate their country,"
 |  said Bush. Candidate Morris had a similar position, but both
 |  Cox and Davis called for an immediate restoration of the
 |  naval blockade of Cuba.
 |
 |  Bush therefore went them one up, and endorsed a new invasion
 |  of Cuba. A Bush for Senate campaign brochure depicted a
 |  number of newspaper articles about the candidate. The
 |  headline of one of these, from an unidentified newspaper,
 |  reads as follows: ""Cuba Invasion Urged by GOP Candidate.""
 |  The subtitle reads: "George Bush, Houston oilman,
 |  campaigning for the Republican nomination to the U.S. Senate
 |  called for a new government-in-exile invasion of Cuba, no
 |  negotiation of the Panama Canal treaty, and a freedom
 |  package in Austin." Other campaign flyers state that "Cuba
 |  ... under Castro is a menace to our national security. I
 |  advocate recognition of a Cuban government in exile and
 |  support of this government to reclaim its country. We must
 |  reaffirm the Monroe Doctrine." Another campaign handout
 |  characterizes Cuba as "an unredeemed diplomatic disaster
 |  abetted by a lack of a firm Cuban policy."
 |
 |  What Bush was proposing would have amounted to a vast and
 |  well-funded program for arming and financing anti-Castro
 |  Cuban exiles in Miami, and putting the United States
 |  government at the service of their adventures -- presumably
 |  far in excess of the substantial programs that were already
 |  being funded. Beneficiaries would have included Theodore
 |  Shackley, who was by now the station chief at CIA Miami
 |  station, Felix Rodriguez, Chi Chi Quintero, and the rest of
 |  the boys from the Enterprise.
 |
 |  Bush attacked Senator J. William Fulbright, Democrat of
 |  Arkansas, for the latter's call in a speech for a more
 |  conciliatory policy toward Cuba, ending the U.S. economic
 |  boycott. "I view the speech with great suspicion," said
 |  Bush. "I feel this is a trial balloon on the part of the
 |  State Department to see whether the American people will buy
 |  another step in a disastrous, soft foreign policy." Bush
 |  called on Secretary of State Dean Rusk, a leading hawk, to
 |  hold firm against the policy shift that Fulbright was
 |  proposing. "Fulbright says Cuba is a 'distasteful nuisance',
 |  but I believe that Castro's Communist regime 90 miles from
 |  our shores is an intolerable nuisance. I am in favor only of
 |  total liberation of Cuba," proclaimed Bush, "and I believe
 |  this can only be achieved by recognition of a Cuban
 |  government in exile, backed up to the fullest by the United
 |  States and the Organization of American States."
 |
 |  In the middle of April, a Republican policy forum held in
 |  Miami heard a report from a Cuban exile leader that the
 |  Soviets had positioned missiles on the ocean floor off Cuba,
 |  with the missiles pointed at the United States, and that
 |  this had been confirmed by diplomatic sources in Havana.
 |  This would appear in retrospect to have been a planted
 |  story. For Bush it was obvious grist for his campaign mill.
 |  Bush, speaking in Amarillo, called the report "the most
 |  alarming news in this hemisphere in two years." He called
 |  for efforts to "drive the Communists out of Cuba."
 |
 |  But, in keeping with the times, Bush's most genocidal
 |  campaign statements were made in regard to Vietnam. Here
 |  Bush managed to identify himself with the war, with its
 |  escalation, and with the use of nuclear weapons.
 |
 |  Senator Goldwater had recently raised the possibility of
 |  using tactical nuclear weapons as the most effective
 |  defoliants to strip away the triple canopy jungle of
 |  Vietnam. In a response to this, an Associated Press story
 |  quoted Bush as saying that he was in favor of anything that
 |  could be done safely toward finishing the fighting in
 |  Southeast Asia. "Bush said he favors a limited extension of
 |  the war in Viet Nam, including restricted use of nuclear
 |  weapons if 'militarily prudent,'|" according to the AP
 |  release.  [19]  A Bush campaign release of June 1 has him
 |  saying he favors a "cautious, judicious, and militarily
 |  sound extension of the war in Vietnam." This was all before
 |  the Gulf of Tonkin incident and well before U.S. ground
 |  troops were committed to Vietnam.
 |
 |  Bush had several other notes to sound concerning the looming
 |  war in Southeast Asia. In May, he attacked the State
 |  Department for "dawdling" in Vietnam, a policy which he said
 |  had "cost the lives of so many young Americans." He further
 |  charged that the U.S. troops in Vietnam were being issued
 |  "shoddy war material." Responding to a prediction from
 |  Defense Secretary McNamara that the war might last ten
 |  years, Bush retorted: "This would not be the case if we had
 |  developed a winning policy from the start of this dangerous
 |  brush fire." Also in May, Bush responded to a Pathet Lao
 |  offensive in Laos as follows: "This should be a warning to
 |  us in Vietnam. Whenever the Communist world -- either
 |  Russian or Chinese -- sign a treaty, or any other agreement,
 |  with a nation of the free world, that treaty isn't worth the
 |  paper it's written on."
 |
 |  Bush pugnaciously took issue with those who wanted to
 |  disengage from the Vietnam quagmire before the bulk of the
 |  war's human losses had occurred. He made this part of his
 |  "Freedom Package," which was a kindof manifesto for a 
 |  worldwide U.S. imperialist and colonialist offensive -- a
 |  precursor of the new world order "ante litteram." A March 30
 |  campaign release proclaims the "Freedom Package" in these
 |  terms: "|'I do not want to continue to live in a world where
 |  there is no hope for a real and lasting peace,' Bush said.
 |  He decried 'withdrawal symptoms' propounded by U.N.
 |  Ambassador Adlai Stevenson and Senators William Fulbright
 |  and Mike Mansfield. 'Adlai has proposed we
 |  [inter]nationalize the Panama Canal,' Bush pointed out,
 |  'Fulbright asks us to accommodate Red Cuba and renegotiate
 |  our Panama treaty, and Mansfield suggests we withdraw from
 |  the Viet Nam struggle. This is the kind of retreatism we
 |  have grown accustomed to among our supposed world leaders
 |  and it is just what the Kremlin ordered.'|"
 |
 |  Nor did Bush's obsession with Panama and the Panama Canal
 |  begin with Noriega. In his campaign literature, Bush printed
 |  his basic position that the "Panama Canal ... is ours by
 |  right of treaty and historical circumstance. The Canal is
 |  critical to our domestic security and U.S. sovereignty over
 |  the Canal must be maintained." What is meant by the right of
 |  historical circumstance? "I am opposed to further
 |  negotiation in Panama," Bush stated repeatedly in his
 |  campaign speeches and releases....
 |
 |  Unbridled Free Enterprise
 |
 |  In economic policy, Bush's starting point was always
 |  "unbridled free enterprise," as he stressed in a statement
 |  on unemployment on March 16: "Only unbridled free enterprise
 |  can cure unemployment. But, I don't believe the federal
 |  government has given the private sector of our economy a
 |  genuine opportunity to relieve this unemployment. For
 |  example, the [Johnson war on poverty program] contains a new
 |  version of the CCC, a Domestic Peace Corps, and various and
 |  sundry half-baked pies in the sky." Bush's printed campaign
 |  literature stated, under the heading of "federal economy,"
 |  that "the free enterprise system must be unfettered. A
 |  strong economy means jobs, opportunity, and prosperity. A
 |  controlled economy means loss of freedom and bureaucratic
 |  bungling." On April 21, Bush told the voters: "We must begin
 |  a phase of re-emphasizing the private sector of our economy,
 |  instead of the public sector."
 |
 |  By April 15, Bush had been informed that there were some 33
 |  million Americans living in poverty, to which he replied: "I
 |  cannot see how draping a socialistic medi-care program
 |  around the sagging neck of our social security program will
 |  be a blow to poverty. And I can see only one answer to [the
 |  problem of poverty]: Let us turn our free enterprise system
 |  loose from government control." Otherwise, Bush held it "the
 |  responsibility of the local government first to assume the
 |  burden of relieving poverty wherever its exists, and I know
 |  of many communities that are more than capable of working
 |  with this problem."
 |
 |  Bush's approach to farm policy was along similar lines,
 |  combining the rhetoric of Adam Smith with intransigent
 |  defense of the food cartels. In his campaign brochure he
 |  opined that "Agriculture ... must be restored to a free
 |  market economy, subject to the basic laws of supply and
 |  demand." On April 9 in Waco, Bush assailed the Wheat-Cotton
 |  subsidy bill which had just received the approval of the
 |  House. "If I am elected to the Senate," said Bush, I will
 |  judge each agricultural measure on the basis of whether it
 |  gets the Government further into, or out of, private
 |  business." Bush added that farm subsidies are among "our
 |  most expensive federal programs."
 |
 |  Another of Bush's recurrent obsessions was his desire to
 |  break the labor movement. During the 1960s, he expressed
 |  this in the context of campaigns to prevent the repeal of
 |  section 14 (b) of the Taft-Hartley law, which permitted the
 |  states to outlaw the closed shop and union shop, and thus to
 |  protect state laws guaranteeing the so-called open shop or
 |  "right to work," a device which in practice prevented the
 |  organization of large sectors of the working population of
 |  these states into unions. Bush's editorializing takes him
 |  back to the era when the Sherman Antitrust Act was still
 |  being use d against labor unions.
 |
 |  "I believe in the right-to-work laws," said Bush to a group
 |  of prominent Austin businessmen at a luncheon in the
 |  Commodore Perry Hotel on March 5. "At every opportunity, I
 |  urge union members to resist payment of political
 |  assessments. If there's only one in 100 who thinks for
 |  himself and votes for himself, then he should not be
 |  assessed by COPE."
 |
 |  On March 19, Bush asserted that "labor's blatant attack on
 |  right-to-work laws is open admission that labor does have a
 |  monopoly and will take any step to make this monopoly. Union
 |  demands are a direct cause of the inflationary spiral
 |  lowering the real income of workers and increasing the costs
 |  of production." This is, from the point of scientific
 |  economics, an absurdity. But four days later Bush returned
 |  to the topic, attacking United Auto Workers President Walter
 |  Reuther, a figure whom Bush repeatedly sought to identify
 |  with Yarborough, for demands which "will only cause the
 |  extinction of free enterprise in America. A perfect example
 |  of labor's pricing a product out of existence is found in
 |  West Virginia. John L. Lewis's excessive demands on the coal
 |  industry raised the price of coal, forced the consumer to
 |  use a substitute cheaper product, killed the coal industry
 |  and now West Virginia has an excessive rate of
 |  unemployment."
 |
 |  On Labor Day, Bush spoke to a rally in the courthouse square
 |  of Quanah, and called for "protection of the rights of the
 |  individual laborer through the state rather than the federal
 |  government. The individual laboring man is being forgotten
 |  by the Walter Reuthers and Ralph Yarboroughs, and it's up to
 |  the business community to protect our country's valuable
 |  labor resources from exploitation by these left-wing labor
 |  leaders," said Bush, who might just as well have suggested
 |  that the fox be allowed to guard the chicken coop.
 |
 |  East Texas was an area of unusually high racial tension, and
 |  Bush spent most of his time there attacking the civil rights
 |  bill. But the alliance between Yarborough and big labor was
 |  one of his favorite themes. The standard pitch went
 |  something like this, as before the Austin businessmen.
 |  Yarborough, he would start off saying, "more nearly
 |  represents the state of Michigan than he does Texas." This,
 |  as we will see, was partly an attempted, lame rebuttal of
 |  Yarborough's charge that Bush was a northeastern
 |  carpetbagger. Bush would then continue: "One of the main
 |  reasons Yarborough represents Texas so badly is that he's
 |  spending most of his time representing labor interests in
 |  Detroit. His voting record makes men like Walter Reuther and
 |  James Hoffa very happy. This man has voted for every special
 |  interest bill, for every big spending measure that's come to
 |  his attention."
 |
 |  During this period Camco, an oilfield equipment company of
 |  which Bush was a director, was embroiled in some bitter
 |  labor disputes. The regional office of the National Labor
 |  Relations Board sought a federal injunction against Camco in
 |  order to force the firm to re-hire four union organizers who
 |  had been illegally fired. Officials of the Machinists Union,
 |  which was trying to organize Camco, also accused Bush of
 |  being complicit in what they said was Camco's illegal
 |  failure to carry out a 1962 NLRB order directing Camco to
 |  re-hire 11 workers, fired because they had attended a union
 |  meeting. Bush answered that he was not going to be
 |  intimidated by labor. "As everybody knows, the union bosses
 |  are all-out for Sen. Ralph Yarborough," countered Bush, and
 |  he had been too busy with Zapata to pay attention to Camco
 |  anyway. [20]  According to Roy Evans, the
 |  secretary-treasurer of the Texas AFL-CIO, Bush was "a member
 |  of the dinosaur wing of the Republican Party." Evans called
 |  Bush "the Houston throwback," and maintained that Bush had
 |  "lost touch with anyone in Texas except the radicals of the
 |  right."
 |
 |  Back in February, Yarborough had remarked in his typical
 |  populist vein that his legislative approach was to "put the
 |  jam on the lower shelf so the little man can get his hand
 |  in." This scandalized Bush, who countered on February 27
 |  that "it's a cynical attitude and one that tends to set the
 |  so-called little man apart from the rest of his countrymen."
 |  For Bush, the jam would always remain under lock and key,
 |  except for the chosen few of Wall Street. A few days later,
 |  on March 5, Bush elaborated that he was "opposed to special
 |  interest legislation because it tends to hyphenate
 |  Americans. I don't think we can afford to have
 |  veteran-Americans, Negro-Americans, Latin-Americans and
 |  labor-Americans these days." Here is Bush as political
 |  philosopher, maintaining that the power of the authoritarian
 |  state must confront its citizens in a wholly atomized form,
 |  not organized into interest groups capable of defending
 |  themselves.
 |
 |  Bush was especially irate about Yarborough's Cold War G.I.
 |  Bill, which he branded the Senator's "pet project."
 |  "Fortunately," said Bush, "he has been unable to cram his
 |  Cold War G.I. Bill down Congress' throat. It's bad
 |  legislation and special interest legislation which will
 |  erode our American way of life. I have four sons, and I'd
 |  sure hate to think that any of them would measure their
 |  devotion and service to their country by what special
 |  benefits Uncle Sam could give them." Neil Bush would
 |  certainly never do that! Anyway, the Cold War G.I. Bill was
 |  nothing but a "cynical effort to get votes," Bush concluded.
 |
 |  The Oil Cartel's Candidate
 |
 |  There was a soft spot in Bush's heart for at least a few
 |  special interests, however. He was a devoted supporter of
 |  the "time-proven" 27.5 percent oil depletion allowance, a
 |  tax write-off which allowed the seven sisters oil cartel to
 |  escape a significant portion of what they otherwise would
 |  have paid in taxes. Public pressure to reduce this allowance
 |  was increasing, and the oil cartel was preparing to concede
 |  a minor adjustment, in the hope that this would neutralize
 |  attempts to get the depletion allowance abolished entirely.
 |  Bush also called for what he described as a "meaningful oil
 |  import program, one which would restrict imports at a level
 |  that will not be harmful to our domestic oil industry." "I
 |  know what it is to earn a paycheck in the oil business," he
 |  boasted. Bush also told Texas farmers that he wanted to
 |  limit the imports of foreign beef so as to protect their
 |  domestic markets.
 |
 |  Yarborough's counterattack on this issue is of great
 |  relevance to understanding why Bush was so fanatically
 |  committed to wage war in the Gulf to restore the degenerate,
 |  slaveholding Emir of Kuwait. Yarborough pointed out that
 |  Bush's company, Zapata Offshore, was drilling for oil in
 |  Kuwait, the Persian Gulf, Borneo, and Trinidad. "Every
 |  producing oil well drilled in foreign countries by American
 |  companies means more cheap foreign oil in American ports,
 |  fewer acres of Texas land under oil and gas lease, less
 |  income to Texas farmers and ranchers," Yarborough stated.
 |  "This issue is clear-cut in this campaign -- a Democratic
 |  senator who is fighting for the life of the free enterprise
 |  system as exemplified by the independent oil and gas
 |  producers in Texas, and a Republican candidate who is the
 |  contractual driller for the international oil cartel."
 |
 |  In those days, the oil cartel did not deal mildly with those
 |  who attacked it in public. One thinks again of the Italian
 |  oilman Enrico Mattei. For Bush, these cartel interests would
 |  always be sacrosanct. On April 1, Bush talked of the
 |  geopolitics of oil: "I was in London at the time of the Suez
 |  crisis and I quickly saw how the rest of the free world can
 |  become completely dependent on American oil. When the Canal
 |  was shut down, free nations all over the world immediately
 |  started crying for Texas oil."
 |
 |  Later in the campaign, Yarborough visited the town of
 |  Gladewater in East Texas. There, standing in view of the oil
 |  derricks, Yarborough talked about Bush's ownership of
 |  Pennzoil stock, and about Pennzoil's quota of 1,690 barrels
 |  per day of imported oil, charging that Bush was undermining
 |  the Texas producers by importing cheap foreign oil.
 |
 |  Then, according to a newspaper account, "the senator spiced
 |  his charge with a reference to the 'Sheik of Kuwait and his
 |  four wives and 100 concubines,' who, he said, are living in
 |  luxury off the oil from Bush-drilled wells in the Persian
 |  Gulf and sold at cut-rate prices in the United States. He
 |  said that imported oil sells for $1.25 a barrel while Texas
 |  oil, selling at $3, pays school, city, county, and federal
 |  taxes and keeps payrolls going. Yarborough began his day of
 |  campaigning at a breakfast with supporters in Longview.
 |  Later, in Gladewater, he said he had seen a 'Bush for
 |  Senator' bumper sticker on a car in Longview. 'Isn't that a
 |  come-down for an East Texan to be a strap-hanger for a
 |  carpetbagger from Connecticut who is drilling oil for the
 |  Sheik of Kuwait to help keep that harem going?'|" [21] 
 |
 |  Yarborough challenged Bush repeatedly to release more
 |  details about his overseas drilling and producing interests.
 |  He spoke of Bush's "S.A. corporations drilling in the
 |  Persian Gulf in Asia." He charged that Bush had "gone to
 |  Latin America to incorporate two of his companies to drill
 |  in the Far East, instead of incorporating them in the United
 |  States." That in turn, thought Yarborough, "raises questions
 |  of tax avoidance." "Tell them, George," he jeered, "what
 |  your 'S.A.' companies, financed with American dollars,
 |  American capital, American resources, are doing about
 |  American income taxes." Bush protested that "every single
 |  tax dollar due by any company that I own an interest in has
 |  been paid." [22] 
 |
 |  Forced into a Runoff
 |
 |  As the Republican senatorial primary approached, Bush
 |  declared that he was confident that he could win an absolute
 |  majority and avoid a runoff. On April 30, he predicted that
 |  Hill Rise would win the Kentucky Derby without a runoff, and
 |  that he would also carry the day on the first round. There
 |  was no runoff in the Kentucky Derby, but Bush fell short of
 |  his goal. Bush did come in first with about 44 percent of
 |  the vote or 62,579 votes, while Jack Cox was second with
 |  44,079, with Morris third and Davis fourth. The total number
 |  of votes cast was 142,961, so a second round was required.
 |
 |  Cox, who had attracted 710,000 votes in his 1962 race
 |  against Connally for the governorship, was at this point far
 |  better known around the state than Bush. Cox had the backing
 |  of Gen. Edwin Walker, who had made a bid for the Democratic
 |  gubernatorial nomination in 1962 himself and gotten some
 |  138,000 votes. Cox also had the backing of H.L. Hunt.
 |
 |  Morris had carried Dallas County, and he urged his
 |  supporters to vote against Bush. Morris told the "Dallas
 |  Morning News" of May 5 that Bush was "too liberal" and that
 |  Bush's strength in the primary was due to "liberal"
 |  Republican support.
 |
 |  Between early May and the runoff election of June 6, Cox
 |  mounted a vigorous campaign of denunciation and exposure of
 |  Bush as a creature of the Eastern Liberal Establishment,
 |  Wall Street banking interests, and of Goldwater's principal
 |  antagonist for the GOP presidential nomination, the hated
 |  Gov. Nelson Rockefeller of New York. According to a story
 |  filed by Stuart Long of the Long News Service in Austin on
 |  May 25, and preserved among the Yarborough papers in the
 |  Barker Texas History Center in Austin, Cox's supporters
 |  circulated letters pointing to Prescott Bush's role as a
 |  partner in Brown Brothers Harriman as the basis for the
 |  charge that George Bush was the tool of "Liberal Eastern
 |  Kingmakers." According to Long, the letters also include
 |  references to the New York Council on Foreign Relations,
 |  which he described as a "black-tie dinner group." [23]  The
 |  pro-Cox letters also asserted that Bush's Zapata Offshore
 |  Company had a history of bidding on drilling contracts for
 |  Rockefeller's Standard Oil of New Jersey.
 |
 |  One anti-Bush brochure, preserved among the Yarborough
 |  papers at the Barker Center in Austin, is entitled "Who's
 |  Behind the Bush?" published by the Coalition of
 |  Conservatives to Beat the Bushes, with one Harold Deyo of
 |  Dallas listed as chairman. The attack on Bush here centers
 |  on the Council on Foreign Relations, of which Bush was not
 |  at that time a public member. The brochure lists a number of
 |  Bush campaign contributors and then identifies these as
 |  members of the CFR. These include Dillon Anderson and J.C.
 |  Hutcheson III of Baker and Botts, Andrews and Shepherd;
 |  Leland Anderson of Anderson, Clayton and Company; Lawrence
 |  S. Reed of Texas Gulf Producing; Frank Michaux; and W.A.
 |  Kirkland of the board of First City National Bank. The
 |  brochure then focuses on Prescott Bush, identified as a
 |  "partner with Averell Harriman in Brown Brothers, Harriman,
 |  and Company." Averell Harriman is listed as a member of the
 |  Council on Foreign Relations. "Could it be that Prescott S.
 |  Bush, in concert with his Eastern CFR friends, is raising
 |  all those 'Yankee Dollars' that are flowing into George's
 |  campaign? It is reliably reported that Mr. George Bush has
 |  contracted for extensive and expensive television time for
 |  the last week of the Runoff." The brochure also targets Paul
 |  Kayser of Anderson, Clayton, Bush's Harris County campaign
 |  chairman. Five officers of this company, named as W.L.
 |  Clayton, L. Fleming, Maurice McAshan, Leland Anderson and
 |  Sydnor Oden, are said to be members of the CFR.
 |
 |  On the CFR itself, the brochure quotes from Helen P.
 |  Lasell's study, entitled "Power Behind Government Today,"
 |  which found that the CFR "from its inception has had an
 |  important part in planning the whole diabolical scheme of
 |  creating a ONE WORLD FEDERATION of socialist states under
 |  the United Nations.... These carefully worked out, detailed
 |  plans, in connection with the WORLD BANK and the use of
 |  billions of tax-exempt foundation dollars, were carried out
 |  secretively over a period of years. Their fruition could
 |  mean not only the absolute destruction of our form of
 |  government, national independence and sovereignty, but to a
 |  degree at least, that of every nation in the world." The New
 |  World Order, we see, is really nothing new. The brochure
 |  further accuses one Mrs. M. S. Acherman, a leading Bush
 |  supporter in Houston, of having promoted a write-in campaign
 |  for liberal, Boston Brahmin former Senator Henry Cabot Lodge
 |  of Massachusetts in the Texas presidential primary. Lodge
 |  had won the 1964 New Hampshire primary, prompting Bush to
 |  announce that this was merely a regional phenomenon and that
 |  he was "still for Goldwater."
 |
 |  As the runoff vote approached, Cox focused especially on the
 |  eastern financing that Bush was receiving. On May 25 in
 |  Abilene, Cox assailed Bush for having mounted "one of the
 |  greatest spending sprees ever seen in any political
 |  campaign." Cox said that he could not hope to match this
 |  funding, "because Jack Cox is not, nor will ever be,
 |  connected in any manner with the Eastern kingmakers who seek
 |  to control political candidates. Conservatives of Texas will
 |  serve notice on June 6 that just as surely as Rockefeller's
 |  millions can't buy presidential nomination, the millions at
 |  George Bush's disposal can't buy him a senate nomination."
 |  Cox claimed that all of his contributions had come from
 |  inside Texas.
 |
 |  O'Donnell's Texas Republican organization was overwhelmingly
 |  mobilized in favor of Bush. Bush had the endorsement of the
 |  state's leading newspapers. When the runoff finally came,
 |  Bush was the winner with some 62 percent of the votes cast.
 |  Yarborough commented that Bush "smothered Jack Cox in
 |  greenbacks."
 |
 |  Gordon McLendon, true to form, had used his own pre-primary
 |  television broadcast to rehash the Billie Sol Estes charges
 |  against Yarborough. Yarborough nevertheless defeated
 |  McLendon in the Democratic senatorial primary with almost 57
 |  percent of the vote. Given the lopsided Texas Democratic
 |  advantage in registered voters, and given LBJ's imposing
 |  lead over Goldwater at the top of the Democratic ticket, it
 |  might have appeared that Yarborough's victory was now a
 |  foregone conclusion. That this was not so was due to the
 |  internal divisions within the Texas Democratic ranks.
 |
 |  Senate Seat Can't Be Bought
 |
 |  First were the Democrats who came out openly for Bush. The
 |  vehicle for this defection was called Conservative Democrats
 |  for Bush, chaired by Ed Drake, the former leader of the
 |  state's Democrats for Eisenhower in 1952. Drake was joined
 |  by former Governor Allan Shivers, who had also backed Ike
 |  and Dick in 1952 and 1956. Then there was the "East Texas
 |  Democrats for George Bush Committee," chaired by E.B.
 |  Germany, the former state Democratic leader, a leader of
 |  Scottish Rite Freemasons in Texas and in 1964 the chairman
 |  of the board of Lone Star Steel.
 |
 |  Then there were various forms of covert support for Bush.
 |  Millionaire Houston oil man Lloyd Bentsen, who had been in
 |  Congress back in the late 1940s, had been in discussion as a
 |  possible Senate candidate. Bush's basic contention was that
 |  LBJ had interfered in Texas politics to tell Bentsen to stay
 |  out of the Senate race, thus avoiding a more formidable
 |  primary challenge to Yarborough. On April 24, Bush stated
 |  that Bentsen was a "good conservative" who had been kept out
 |  of the race by "Yarborough's bleeding heart act." This and
 |  other indications point to a covert political entente
 |  between Bush and Bentsen, which reappeared during the 1988
 |  presidential campaign.
 |
 |  Then there were the forces associated with Governor "Big
 |  John" Connally. Yarborough later confided that Connally had
 |  done everything in his power to wreck his campaign, subject
 |  only to certain restraints imposed by LBJ. Even these
 |  limitations did not amount to real support for Yarborough on
 |  the part of LBJ, but were rather attributable to LBJ's
 |  desire to avoid the embarrassment of seeing his native state
 |  represented by two Republican senators during his own tenure
 |  in the White House. But Connally still sabotaged Yarborough
 |  as much as LBJ would let him get away with. [24] 
 |
 |  Bush and Connally have had a complex political relationship,
 |  with points of convergence and many points of divergence.
 |  Back in 1956, a lobbyist working for Texas oilman Sid
 |  Richardson had threatened to "run [Bush's] ass out of the
 |  offshore drilling business" unless Prescott Bush voted for
 |  gas deregulation in the Senate. [25]  Connally later became
 |  the trustee for some of Richardson's interests. While
 |  visiting Dallas on March 19, Bush issued a statement saying
 |  that he agreed with Connally in his criticisms of attorney
 |  Melvin Belli, who had condemned the District Court in Dallas
 |  when his client, Jack Ruby, was given the death sentence for
 |  having slain Lee Harvey Oswald the previous November.
 |
 |  In public, LBJ was for Yarborough, although he could not
 |  wholly pass over the frictions between the two. Speaking at
 |  Stonewall after the Democratic national convention, LBJ had
 |  commented: "You have heard and you have read that Sen.
 |  Yarborough and I have had differences at times. I have read
 |  a good deal more about them than I was ever aware of. But I
 |  do want to say this, that I don't think that Texas has had a
 |  senator during my lifetime whose record I am more familiar
 |  with than Sen. Yarborough's. And I don't think Texas has had
 |  a senator that voted for the people more than Sen.
 |  Yarborough has voted for them. And no member of the U.S.
 |  Senate has stood up and fought for me or fought for the
 |  people more since I became President than Ralph Yarborough."
 |  For his part, Bush, years later, quoted a "Time" magazine
 |  analysis of the 1964 senate race which concluded that "if
 |  Lyndon would stay out of it, Republican Bush would have a
 |  cha nce. But Johnson is not about to stay out of it, which
 |  makes Bush the underdog." [26] 
 |
 |  Yarborough, for his part, had referred to LBJ as a
 |  "power-mad Texas politician," and had called on President
 |  Kennedy to keep LBJ out of Texas politics. Yarborough's
 |  attacks on Connally were even more explicit and colorful: He
 |  accused Connally of acting like a "viceroy, and we got rid
 |  of those in Texas when Mexico took over from Spain."
 |  According to Yarborough, "Texas had not had a progressive
 |  governor since Jimmy Allred," who had held office from 1935
 |  to 1939. Bush took pains to spell out that this was an
 |  attack on Democrats W. Lee O'Daniel, Coke Stevenson, Buford
 |  H. Jester, Allan Shivers, Price Daniel, and John Connally.
 |
 |  Yarborough also criticized the right-wing oligarchs of the
 |  Dallas area for having transformed that city from a
 |  democratic town to a "citadel of reaction." For Yarborough,
 |  the "Fort Worth Star-Telegram" was"worse than Pravda."
 |
 |  Yarborough's strategy in the November election centered on
 |  identifying Bush with Goldwater in the minds of voters,
 |  since the Arizona Republican's warlike rhetoric was now
 |  dragging him down to certain defeat. Yarborough's first
 |  instinct had been to run a substantive campaign, stressing
 |  issues and his own legislative accomplishments. Yarborough
 |  in 1988 told Bush biographer Fitzhugh Green: "When I started
 |  my campaign for re-election I was touting my record of six
 |  years in the Senate. But my speech advisers said, all you
 |  have to do is quote Bush, who had already called himself 100
 |  per cent for Goldwater and the Vietnam war. So that's what I
 |  did, and it worked very well." [27] 
 |
 |  Campaigning in Port Arthur on October 30, a part of the
 |  state where his labor support loomed large, Yarborough
 |  repeatedly attacked Bush as "more extreme than Barry
 |  Goldwater." According to Yarborough, even after Barry
 |  Goldwater had repudiated the support of the John Birch
 |  Society, Bush said that he "welcomed support of the Birch
 |  Society and embraced it." "Let's you elect a senator from
 |  Texas, and not the Connecticut investment bankers with their
 |  $2,500,000," Yarborough urged the voters. [28] 
 |
 |  These attacks were highly effective, and Bush's response was
 |  to mobilize his media budget for more screenings of his
 |  World War II "Flight of the Avenger" television spot, while
 |  he prepared a last-minute television dirty trick. There was
 |  to be no debate between Bush and Yarborough, but this did
 |  not prevent Bush from staging a televised "empty chair"
 |  debate, which was aired on more than a dozen stations around
 |  the state on October 27. The Bush campaign staff scripted a
 |  debate in which Bush answered doctored quotes from audio
 |  tapes of Yarborough speaking, with the sentences often cut
 |  in half, taken out of context, and otherwise distorted.
 |  Yarborough responded by saying: "The sneaky trick my
 |  opponent is trying to pull on me tonight of pulling
 |  sentences of mine out of context with my recorded voice and
 |  playing my voice as a part of his broadcast is illegal under
 |  the law, and a discredit to anyone who aspires to be a U.S.
 |  Senator. I intend to protest this illegal trick to the
 |  Federal Communications Commission." Bush's method was to
 |  "cut my statements in half, then let his Madison Avenue
 |  speech writers answer those single sentences.... My opponent
 |  is an exponent of extremism, peddling smear and fear
 |  wherever he goes.... His conduct looks more like John Birch
 |  Society conduct than United States Senate conduct,"
 |  Yarborough added. Bush also distorted the sound of
 |  Yarborough's voice almost beyond recognition.
 |
 |  Yarborough protested to the FCC in Washington, alleging that
 |  Bush had violated section 315 of the Federal Communications
 |  Act as it then stood, because Yarborough's remarks were
 |  pre-censored and used without his permission. Yarborough
 |  also accused Bush of violation of section 325 of the same
 |  act, since it appeared that parts of the "empty chair"
 |  broadcast were material that had been previously broadcast
 |  elsewhere, and which could not be re-used without
 |  permission. The FCC responded by saying that the tapes used
 |  had been made in halls where Yarborough was speaking.
 |
 |  All during the campaign, Yarborough had been talking about
 |  the dangers of electronic eavesdropping. He had pointed out
 |  that "anybody can be an eavesdropper, a wiretapper, a
 |  bugger, who has a few dollars for the cheaper devices on the
 |  market. Tiny recorders and microphones are now made to
 |  resemble lapel buttons or tie clasps.... Recorders can also
 |  be found the size of a book or a cigarette pack. There is a
 |  briefcase available with a microphone built into the lock,
 |  and many available recorders may be carried in briefcases,
 |  while the wrist-watch microphone is no longer a product used
 |  by Dick Tracy -- it can actually be bought for $37.50."
 |  Yarborough charged during the primary campaign period that
 |  his Washington office had been wiretapped, and years later
 |  indicated that the CIA had been bugging all of Capitol Hill
 |  during those years. [29]  Had the James McCords or other
 |  plumbers been lending Bush a hand?
 |
 |  Bush was also smarting under Yarborough's repeated
 |  references to his New England birth and background. Bush
 |  claimed that he was no carpetbagger, but a Texan by choice,
 |  and compared himself in that regard to Sam Rayburn, Sam
 |  Houston, Stephen Austin, Colonel Bill Travis, Davy Crockett,
 |  Jim Bowie and other heroes of the Alamo. Bush was not
 |  hobbled by any false modesty. At least, Bush asserted
 |  lamely, he was not as big a carpetbagger as Bobby Kennedy,
 |  who could not even vote in New York State, where he was
 |  making a successful bid for election to the Senate. It
 |  "depends on whose bag is being carpeted," Bush whined.
 |
 |  In the last days of the campaign, Allan Duckworth of the
 |  pro-Bush "Dallas Morning News" was trying to convince his
 |  readers that the race was heading for a "photo finish." But
 |  in the end, Prescott's networks, the millions of dollars,
 |  the recordings, and the endorsements of 36 newspapers were
 |  of no avail for Bush. Yarborough defeated Bush by a margin
 |  of 1,463,958 to 1,134,337. Within the context of the LBJ
 |  landslide victory over Goldwater, Bush had done somewhat
 |  better than his party's standard bearer: LBJ beat Goldwater
 |  in Texas by 1,663,185 to 958,566. Yarborough, thanks in part
 |  to his vote in favor of the Civil Rights Act, won a strong
 |  majority of the black districts, and also ran well ahead
 |  among Latinos. Bush won the usual Republican counties,
 |  including the pockets of GOP support in the Houston area.
 |
 |  Yarborough would continue for one more term in the Senate,
 |  vocally opposing the war in Vietnam. In the closing days of
 |  the campaign he had spoken of Bush and his retinue as
 |  harbingers of a "time and society when nobody speaks for the
 |  working man." George Bush, defeated though he was, would now
 |  redouble his struggle to make such a world a reality.
 |
 |  Footnotes
 |
 |  18. See "The Historic Texas Senate Race," in "The Texas
 |  Observer," Oct. 30, 1964.
 |
 |  19. Cited in Ronnie Dugger, "op. cit."
 |
 |  20. "Ibid."
 |
 |  21. "Dallas News," Oct. 24, 1964.
 |
 |  22. "Dallas News," Oct. 3, 1964.
 |
 |  23. An untitled report among the Yarborough papers in the
 |  Barker Texas History Center refers to "Senator Bush's
 |  affiliation in a New York knife-and-fork-club type of
 |  organization called, 'The Council on Foreign Relations.' In
 |  a general smear -- mainly via the 'I happen to know' letter
 |  chain of communication -- the elder Bush was frequently
 |  attacked, and the younger Bushes were greatly relieved when
 |  Barry Goldwater volunteered words of affectionate praise for
 |  his former colleague during a $100-a-plate Dallas dinner."
 |
 |  24. Just how far these efforts might have gone is a matter
 |  of speculation. Douglas Caddy in his book, "The Hundred
 |  Million Dollar Payoff" (New Rochelle), p. 300, reprints an
 |  internal memorandum of the Machinists Non-Partisan Political
 |  League which expresses alarm about the election outlook for
 |  Yarborough, who is described as "the last stand-up
 |  Democratic liberal we have in the South." The memo, from
 |  Jack O'Brien to A.J. Hayes, is dated October 27, 1964, and
 |  cites reports from various labor operatives to the effect
 |  that "the 'fix is in' to defeat Ralph Yarbor ough and to
 |  replace him with a Republican, Bush, the son of Prescott
 |  Bush of Connecticut. The only question at issue is whether
 |  this 'fix' is a product of Governor Connally alone or is the
 |  product of a joint effort between Connally and President
 |  Johnson." According to the memo, "Walter Reuther called
 |  Lyndon Johnson to express his concern with the failure to
 |  invite Mrs. Yarborough to accompany" LBJ's plane through
 |  Texas. Labor leaders were trying to help raise money for
 |  last-minute television broadcasts by Yarborough, and also to
 |  extract more vocal support for the senator from LBJ.
 |
 |  25. See Bush and Gold, "op. cit.," p. 82.
 |
 |  26. "Ibid.," p. 87.
 |
 |  27. Fitzhugh Green, "George Bush: An Intimate Portrait" (New
 |  York: Hippocrene Books, 1989), p. 85.
 |
 |  28. "Dallas News," Oct. 31, 1964.
 |
 |  29. Ronnie Dugger, "Goldwater's Policies, Kennedy's Style"
 |  in "Texas Observer," Oct. 30, 1964.
 |
 |
 |  CHAPTER 11
 |
 |  Part 1
 |
 |  Rubbers Goes to Congress
 |
 |  During the heat of the Senate campaign, Bush's redistricting
 |  lawsuit had progressed in a way that must have provided him
 |  much solace amidst the bitterness of his defeat. First, Bush
 |  won his suit in the Houston federal district court, and
 |  there was a loud squawk from Governor John Connally, who
 |  called that august tribunal a "Republican court." Bush
 |  whined that Connally was being "vitriolic." Then, during
 |  Bush's primary campaign, a three-judge panel of the federal
 |  circuit court of appeals also ruled that the state of Texas
 |  must be redistricted. Bush called that result "a real
 |  victory for all the people of Texas." By March, Bush's
 |  redistricting suit had received favorable action by the U.S.
 |  Supreme Court. This meant that the way was clear to create a
 |  no-incumbent, designer district for George in a masterpiece
 |  of gerrymandering that would make him an elected official,
 |  the first Republican congressman in the recent history of
 |  the Houston area.
 |
 |  The new Seventh District was drawn to create a liberal
 |  Republican seat, carefully taking into account which areas
 |  Bush had succeeded in carrying in the Senate race. What
 |  emerged was for the most part a lily-white, silk-stocking
 |  district of the affluent upper-middle class and upper crust.
 |  There were also small black and Hispanic enclaves. In the
 |  precinct boxes of the new district, Bush had rolled up an
 |  eight-to-five margin over Yarborough. [1] 
 |
 |  But before gearing up a congressional campaign in the
 |  Seventh District in 1966, Bush first had to jettison some of
 |  the useless ideological ballast he had taken on for his 1964
 |  Goldwater profile. During the 1964 campaign, Bush had spoken
 |  out more frankly and more bluntly on a series of political
 |  issues than ever before or since. Apart from the Goldwater
 |  coloration, one comes away with the impression that much of
 |  the time the speeches were not just inventions, but often
 |  reflected his own oligarchical instincts and deeply rooted
 |  obsessions. In late 1964 and early 1965, Bush was afflicted
 |  by a hangover induced by what for him had been an
 |  unprecedented orgy of self-revelation.
 |
 |  The 1965-66 model George Bush would become a moderate,
 |  abandoning the shrillest notes of the 1964 conservative
 |  crusade.
 |
 |  First came an Episcopalian "mea culpa." As Bush's admirer
 |  Fitzhugh Green reports, "one of his first steps was to shuck
 |  off a bothersome trace from his 1964 campaign. He had
 |  espoused some conservative ideas that didn't jibe with his
 |  own moderate attitude." Previous statements were becoming
 |  inoperative, one gathers, when Bush discussed the matter
 |  with his Anglican pastor, John Stevens. "You know, John,"
 |  said Bush, "I took some of the far right positions to get
 |  elected. I hope I never do it again. I regret it." His
 |  radical stance on the civil rights bill was allegedly a big
 |  part of his "regret." Stevens later commented: "I suspect
 |  that his goal on civil rights was the same as mine: It's
 |  just that he wanted to go through the existing authorities
 |  to attain it. In that way nothing would get done. Still, he
 |  represents about the best of noblesse oblige." [2] 
 |
 |  Purge of County GOP
 |
 |  It was characteristically through an attempted purge in the
 |  Harris County GOP organization that Bush signaled that he
 |  was reversing his field. His gambit here was to call on
 |  party activists to take an "anti-extremist and
 |  anti-intolerance pledge," as the "Houston Chronicle"
 |  reported on May 26, 1965. [3]  Bush attacked unnamed
 |  apostles of "guilt by association" and "far-out fear
 |  psychology," and his pronouncements touched off a bitter and
 |  protracted row in the Houston GOP. Bush made clear that he
 |  was targeting the John Birch Society, whose activists he had
 |  been eager to lure into his own 1964 effort. Now Bush beat
 |  up on the Birchers as a way to correct his right-wing
 |  profile from the year before. Bush said, with his usual
 |  tortured syntax, that Birch members claim to "abhor smear
 |  and slander and guilt by association, but how many of them
 |  speak out against it publicly?"
 |
 |  This was soon followed by a Bush-inspired move to oust Bob
 |  Gilbert, who had been Bush's successor as the GOP county
 |  chairman during the Goldwater period. Bush's retainers put
 |  out the line that the "extremists" had been gaining too much
 |  power under Gilbert, and that he therefore must go. By June
 |  12, 1965, the Bush faction had enough clout to oust Gilbert.
 |  The eminence grise of the right-wing faction, State Senator
 |  Walter Mengdon, told the press that the ouster of Gilbert
 |  had been dictated by Bush. Bush whined in response that he
 |  was very disappointed with Mengdon. "I have stayed out of
 |  county politics. I believed all Republicans had backed my
 |  campaign," Bush told the "Houston Chronicle" on the day
 |  Gilbert fell.
 |
 |  On July 1, the Houston papers reported the election of a
 |  new, "anti-extremist" Republican county leader. This was
 |  James M. Mayor, who defeated James Bowers by a margin of 95
 |  votes against 80 in the county executive committee. Mayor
 |  was endorsed by Bush, as well as by Senator Tower. Bowers
 |  was an auctioneer, who called for a return to the Goldwater
 |  "magic." GOP state chair O'Donnell hoped that the new
 |  chairman would be able to put an end to "the great deal of
 |  dissension within the party in Harris County for several
 |  years." Despite this pious wish, acrimonious faction
 |  fighting tore the county organization to pieces over the
 |  next several years.
 |
 |  But at the same time, Bush took care to police his left
 |  flank, distancing himself from the beginnings of the
 |  movement against the war in Vietnam, which had been visible
 |  by the middle of 1965. A remarkable document of this
 |  maneuver is the text of the debate between Bush and Ronnie
 |  Dugger, the writer and editor of the "Texas Observer." [4] 
 |  The debate was held July 1, 1965 before the Junior Bar of
 |  Texas convention in Fort Worth. Dugger had endorsed Bush --
 |  in a way Dugger said was "not without whimsical intent" in
 |  the GOP Senate primary the year before. Dugger was no
 |  radical; at this point he was not really against the Vietnam
 |  War; and he actually endorsed the policy of LBJ, saying that
 |  the President had "no easy way out of Vietnam, but he is
 |  seeking and seeking hard for an honorable way out."
 |  Nevertheless, Dugger found that LBJ had made a series of
 |  mistakes in the implementation of his policy. Dugger also
 |  embraced the provisos advanced by Senator Fulbright to the
 |  effect that "seeking a complete military victory would cost
 |  more than the requirements of our interest and honor." So
 |  Dugger argued against any further escalation, and argued
 |  that anti-war demonstrations and civil disobedience could be
 |  beneficial.
 |
 |  Bush's first real cause for alarm was seeing "the civil
 |  rights movement being made over into a massive vehicle with
 |  which to attack the President's foreign policy in Vietnam."
 |  He started by attacking Conrad Lynn, a "Negro lawyer" who
 |  had told students at "my old university -- Yale University,"
 |  that "the United States white supremacists' army has been
 |  sent to suppress the non-white people of the world."
 |  According to Bush, "The "Yale Daily News" reported that the
 |  audience applauded when [Lynn] announced that several
 |  Negroes had gone to Asia to enlist in the North Viet Nam
 |  army to fight against the United States." Then Bush turned
 |  to his real target, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. King, he
 |  said, who is "identified with the freedom of the Negro
 |  cause, says in Boston the other day that he doesn't want to
 |  sit at a segregated lunch counter where you have strontium
 |  90 in the milk, overlooking the fact that it's the
 |  communists who are testing in the atmosphere today, the Red
 |  Chinese. It's not the United States." Then there was Bayard
 |  Rustin, "a leading individual in the Negro struggle for
 |  freedom, [who] calls for withdrawal from Viet Nam." This is
 |  all hypocritical in Bush's view, since "they talk about
 |  civil rights in this country, but they are willing to
 |  sacrifice the individual rights in the communist countries."
 |
 |  Bush was equally riled up over anti-war demonstrations,
 |  since they were peopled by what he called "extremists": "I
 |  am sure you know what an extremist is. That's a guy who
 |  takes a good idea and carries it to simply preposterous
 |  ends. And that's what's happened. Of course, the
 |  re-emergence of the political beatnik  is causing me
 |  personally a good deal of pleasure. Many conservatives
 |  winced during 1964 as we were labeled extremists of the
 |  right. And certainly we were embarrassed by the booing of
 |  Nelson Rockefeller at the convention, and some of the
 |  comments that referred to the smell of fascism in the air at
 |  the Republican convention, and things like this, and we
 |  winced."
 |
 |  Warming to the subject, Bush continued: "Let me give you
 |  some examples of this kind of left-wing extremism. Averell
 |  Harriman -- surely not known for his reactionary views --
 |  speaking at Cornell University, talking about Viet Nam
 |  before a crowd that calls 'Liar!' [They] booed him to the
 |  state he could hardly finish, and finally he got so
 |  frustrated he asked, 'How many in the audience are
 |  communists?' And a bunch of people there -- small I will
 |  admit -- held up their hands."
 |
 |  So extremists, for Bush, were those who assailed Rockefeller
 |  and Harriman.
 |
 |  Bush defended the House Committee on Un-American Activities
 |  against the demonstrations organized by James Foreman and
 |  SNCC, commiserated with a State Department official who had
 |  been branded a fascist at Iowa State, and went on to assail
 |  the Berkeley "filthy speech" movement. As an example of the
 |  "pure naivete" of civil rights leaders, he cited Coretta
 |  Scott King, who "managed to link global peace and civil
 |  rights, somehow managed to tie these two things together
 |  philosophically" -- which Bush professed not to fathom. "If
 |  we can be non-violent in Selma, why can't we be non-violent
 |  in Viet Nam," Ossie Davis had said, and Bush proposed he be
 |  awarded the "green Wiener" for his "absurd theory," for
 |  "what's got to be the fuzziest thinking of the year."
 |
 |  Beyond this inevitable obsession with race, Bush was frankly
 |  a hawk, frankly for escalation, opening the door to nuclear
 |  weapons in Vietnam only a little more subtly than he had the
 |  year before: "And so I stand here as one who says I will
 |  back up the President and military leaders no matter what
 |  weapons they use in Southeast Asia."
 |
 |  Congress in his Sights
 |
 |  As the 1966 congressional election approached, Bush was
 |  optimistic about his chances of finally getting elected.
 |  This time, instead of swimming against the tide of the
 |  Goldwater cataclysm, Bush would be favored by the classic
 |  mid-term election reflex which almost always helps the
 |  congressional candidates of the party out of power. And LBJ
 |  in the White House was vulnerable on a number of points,
 |  from the escalation of the Vietnam War to "stagflation"
 |  (stagnation + inflation). The designer gerrymandering of the
 |  new Houston congressional district had functioned perfectly,
 |  and so had his demagogic shift toward the "vital center" of
 |  moderate conservatism. Because the district was newly drawn,
 |  there would be no well-known incumbent to contend with. And
 |  now, by one of the convenient coincidences that seem to be
 |  strewn through Bush's life, the only obstacle between him
 |  and election was a troglodyte Democratic conservative of an
 |  ugly and vindictive type, the sort of figure who would make
 |  even Bush look reasonable.
 |
 |  The Democrat in question was Frank Briscoe, a former
 |  district attorney. According to the "Texas Observer," "Frank
 |  Briscoe was one of the most vicious prosecutors in Houston's
 |  history. He actually maintained a 'ten most wanted
 |  convictions list' by which he kept the public advised of how
 |  much luck he had getting convictions against his chosen
 |  defendants then being held in custody. Now, as a candidate
 |  for Congress, Briscoe is running red-eyed for the right-wing
 |  in Houston. He is anti-Democratic; anti-civil rights;
 |  anti-foreign aid; anti-war on poverty. The fact that he
 |  calls himself a Democrat is utterly irrelevant." By
 |  contrast, from the point of view of the "Texas Observer":
 |  "His opponent, George Bush, is a conservative man. He favors
 |  the war in Vietnam; he was for Goldwater, although probably
 |  reluctantly; he is nobody's firebrand. Yet Bush is simply
 |  civilized in race relations, and he is now openly rejecting
 |  the support of the John Birch Society. This is one case
 |  where electing a Republican to Congress would help preserve
 |  the two-party balance of the country and at the same time
 |  spare Texas the embarrassment" of having somebody like
 |  Briscoe go to Washington. [5]  Bush's ideological
 |  face-lifting was working. "I want conservatism to be
 |  sensitive and dynamic, not scared and reactionary," Bush
 |  told the "Wall Street Journal."
 |
 |  Briscoe appears in retrospect as a candidate made to order
 |  for Bush's new moderate profile, and there are indications
 |  that is just what he was. Sources in Houston recall that in
 |  1966 there was another Democratic candidate for the new
 |  congressional seat, a moderate and attractive Democrat named
 |  Wildenthal. These sources say that Bush's backers provided
 |  large-scale financial support for Briscoe in the Democratic
 |  primary campaign, with the result that Wildenthal lost out
 |  to Briscoe, setting up the race that Bush found to his
 |  advantage. A designer district was not enough for George; he
 |  also required a designer opponent if he was to prevail -- a
 |  fact which may be relevant to the final evaluation of what
 |  happened in 1988.
 |
 |  One of the key points of differentiation between Bush and
 |  Briscoe was on race. The district had about 15 percent black
 |  population, but making some inroads here among registered
 |  Democrats would be of decisive importance for the GOP side.
 |  Bush made sure that he was seen sponsoring a black baseball
 |  team, and talked a lot about his work for the United Negro
 |  College Fund when he had been at Yale. He told the press
 |  that "black power" agitators were not a problem among the
 |  more responsible blacks in Houston. "I think the day is
 |  past," Bush noted, "when we can afford to have a lily-white
 |  district. I will not attempt to appeal to the white
 |  backlash. I am in step with the 1960s." Bush even took up a
 |  position in the Office of Economic Opportunity anti-poverty
 |  apparatus in the city. He supported Project Head Start. By
 |  contrast, Briscoe "accused" Bush of courting black support,
 |  and reminded Bush that other Texas congressmen had been
 |  voting against civil rights legislation when it came up in
 |  Congress. Briscoe had antagonized parts of the black
 |  community by his relentless pursuit of the death penalty in
 |  cases involving black capital defendants. According to the
 |  "New York Times," "Negro leaders have mounted a quiet
 |  campaign to get Negroes to vote for [Bush]."
 |
 |  Briscoe's campaign ads stressed that he was a right-winger
 |  and a Texan, and accused Bush of being "the darling of the
 |  Lindsey [sic] -Javits crowd," endorsed by labor unions,
 |  liberal professors, liberal Republicans and liberal
 |  syndicated columnists. Briscoe was proud of his endorsements
 |  from Gov. John Connally and the Conservative Action
 |  Committee, a local right-wing group. One endorsement for
 |  Bush that caused Briscoe some difficulty was that of Bush
 |  mentor Richard M. Nixon. By 1966, Nixon was on the comeback
 |  trail, having withstood the virtual nervous breakdown he had
 |  undergone after losing his bid for the governorship of
 |  California in 1962. Nixon was now in the course of
 |  assembling the delegates that would give him the GOP
 |  presidential nomination in Miami in 1968. Nixon came to
 |  Houston and made campaign appearances for Bush, as he had in
 |  1964.
 |
 |  Bush had brought in a new group of handlers and
 |  image-mongers for this 1966 race. His campaign manager was
 |  Jim Allison from Midland. Harry Treleaven was brought in to
 |  design Bush's propaganda.
 |
 |  Treleaven had been working at the J. Walter Thompson
 |  Advertising Agency in New York City, but he took a leave of
 |  absence from J. Walter to come to work for Bush in Texas. At
 |  J. Walter Thompson, Treleaven had sold the products of Pan
 |  American, RCA, Ford, and Lark cigarettes. He was attracted
 |  to Bush because Bush had plenty of money and was willing to
 |  spend it liberally. After the campaign was over, Treleaven
 |  wrote a long memo about what he had done. He called it
 |  "Upset: The Story of a Modern Political Campaign." One of
 |  the basic points in Treleaven's selling of Bush was that
 |  issues would play no role. "Most national issues today are
 |  so complicated, so difficult to understand, and have
 |  opinions on[,] that they either intimidate or,  more often,
 |  bore the average voter.... Few politicians recognize this
 |  fact." In his memo, Treleaven describes how he walked around
 |  Houston in the hot August of 1966 and asked people what they
 |  thought of George Bush. He found that many considered Bush
 |  to be "an extremely likeable person," but that "there was a
 |  haziness about exactly where he stood politically."
 |
 |  For Treleaven, this was an ideal situation. "There'll be few
 |  opportunities for logical persuasion, which is all right --
 |  because probably more people vote for irrational, emotional
 |  reasons than professional politicians suspect." Treleaven's
 |  approach was that "politicians are celebrities." Treleaven
 |  put 85 percent of Bush's hefty campaign budget into
 |  advertising, and 59 percent of that was for television.
 |  Newspaper ads got 3 percent. Treleaven knew that Bush was
 |  behind in the polls. "We can turn this into an advantage,"
 |  he wrote, "by creating a 'fighting underdog' image. Bush
 |  must convince voters that he really wants to be elected and
 |  is working hard to earn their vote. People sympathize with a
 |  man who tries hard: they are also flattered that anyone
 |  would really exert himself to get their vote. Bush,
 |  therefore, must be shown as a man who's working his heart
 |  out to win."
 |
 |  As Joe McGinnis summed up the television ads that resulted:
 |  "Over and over, on every television set in Houston, George
 |  Bush was seen with his coat slung over a shoulder; his
 |  sleeves rolled up; walking the streets of his district;
 |  grinning, gripping, sweating, letting the voter know he
 |  cared. About what, was never made clear." [6] 
 |
 |  Coached by these professional spin doctors, Bush was acting
 |  as mainstream, fair and conciliatory as could be. In an
 |  exchange with Briscoe in the "Houston Chronicle" a few days
 |  before the election, he came out for "a man's right to join
 |  a union and his right to strike, but I additionally would
 |  favor fair legislation to see that no strike can cripple
 |  this nation and endanger the general welfare." But he was
 |  still for the Texas right to work law. Bush supported LBJ's
 |  "present Vietnam position.... I would like to see an
 |  All-Asian Conference convened to attempt to settle this
 |  horrible war. The Republican leadership, President Johnson,
 |  and Secretary Rusk and almost all but the real 'doves'
 |  endorse this." Bush was against "sweeping gun control."
 |  Briscoe wanted to cut "extravagant domestic spending," and
 |  thought that money might be found by forcing France and the
 |  U.S.S.R. to finally pay up their war debts from the two
 |  world wars!
 |
 |  When it came to urban renewal, Bush spoke up for the Charles
 |  Percy National Home Ownership Foundation, which carried the
 |  name of a leading liberal Republican senator. Bush wanted to
 |  place the federal emphasis on such things as "rehabilitating
 |  old homes." "I favor the concept of local option on urban
 |  renewal. Let the people decide," he said, with a slight nod
 |  in the direction of the emerging New Left.
 |
 |  In Bush's campaign ads he invited the voters to "take a
 |  couple of minutes and see if you don't agree with me on six
 |  important points," including Vietnam, inflation, civil
 |  disobedience, jobs, voting rights and "extremism" (Bush was
 |  against the far right and the far left). And there was
 |  George, billed as "successful businessman ... civic leader
 |  ... world traveler ... war hero," bareheaded in a white
 |  shirt and tie, with his jacket slung over his shoulder in
 |  the post-Kennedy fashion.
 |
 |  In the context of a pro-GOP trend that brought 59 freshmen
 |  Republican congressmen into the House, the biggest influx in
 |  two decades, Bush's calculated approach worked. Bush got
 |  about 35 percent of the black vote, 44 percent of the
 |  usually yellow-dog Democrat rural vote, and 70 percent in
 |  the exclusive River Oaks suburb. Still, his margin was not
 |  large: Bush got 58 percent of the votes in the district. Bob
 |  Gray, the candidate of the Constitution Party, got less than
 |  1 percent.
 |
 |  Despite the role of black voters in his narrow victory, Bush
 |  could not refrain from whining. "If there was a
 |  disappointing aspect in the vote, it was my being swamped in
 |  the black precincts, despite our making an all-out effort to
 |  attract black voters. It was both puzzling and frustrating,"
 |  Bush observed in his 1987 campaign autobiography. [7]  After
 |  all, Bush complained, he had put the GOP's funds in a
 |  black-owned bank when he was party chairman; he had opened a
 |  party office with full-time staff near Texas Southern, a
 |  black college; he had worked closely with Bill Trent of the
 |  United Negro College Fund, all with scant payoff as Bush saw
 |  it. Many black voters had not been prepared to reward Bush's
 |  noblesse oblige, and that threw him into a rage state,
 |  whether or not his thyroid was already working overtime in
 |  1966.
 |
 |  Bush in Washington
 |
 |  When Bush got to Washington in January 1967, the Brown
 |  Brothers Harriman networks delivered: Bush became the first
 |  freshman member of the House of either party since 1904 to
 |  be given a seat on the Ways and Means Committee. And he did
 |  this, it must be recalled, as a member of the minority
 |  party, and in an era when the freshman congressman was
 |  supposed to be seen and not heard. The Ways and Means
 |  Committee in those years was still a real center of power,
 |  one of the most strategic points in the House along with the
 |  Rules Committee and a few others. By constitutional
 |  provision, all tax legislation had to originate in the House
 |  of Representatives, and given the traditions of committee
 |  organization, all tax bills had to originate in the Ways and
 |  Means Committee. In addition to the national importance of
 |  such a committee assignment, Ways and Means oversaw the
 |  legislation touching such vital Texas and district concerns
 |  as oil and gas depletion allowances and the like.
 |
 |  Later writers have marveled at Bush's achievement in getting
 |  a seat on Ways and Means. For John R. Knaggs, this reflected
 |  "the great potential national Republicans held for George
 |  Bush." The "Houston Chronicle," which had supported Briscoe
 |  in the election, found that with this appointment "the GOP
 |  was able to point up to the state one benefit of a two-party
 |  system." [8] 
 |
 |  In this case, unlike so many others, we are able to
 |  establish how the invisible hand of Skull and Bones actually
 |  worked to procure Bush this important political plum. This
 |  is due to the indiscretion of the man who was chairman of
 |  Ways and Means for many years, Democratic Congressman Wilbur
 |  D. Mills of Arkansas. Mills was hounded out of office
 |  because of an alcoholism problem, and later found work as an
 |  attorney for a tax law firm. Asked about the Bush
 |  appointment to the committee he controlled back in 1967,
 |  Mills said: "I put him on. I got a phone call from his
 |  father telling me how much it mattered to him. I told him I
 |  was a Democrat and the Republicans had to decide; and he
 |  said the Republicans would do it if I just asked Gerry
 |  Ford." Mills said that he had asked Ford and John W. Byrnes
 |  of Wisconsin, who was the ranking Republican on Ways and
 |  Means, and Bush was in, thanks once again to Daddy Warbucks,
 |  Prescott Bush. [9] 
 |
 |  Wilbur Mills may have let himself in for a lot of trouble in
 |  later years by not always treating George with due respect.
 |  Because of Bush's o bsession with birth control for the
 |  lower orders, Mills gave Bush the nickname "Rubbers," which
 |  stuck with him during his years in Congress. [10]  Poppy
 |  Bush was not amused. One day Mills might ponder in
 |  retrospect, as so many others have, on Bush's
 |  vindictiveness.
 |
 |  Uprooting Western Values
 |
 |  In January 1968, LBJ delivered his State of the Union
 |  message to Congress, even as the Viet Cong's Tet offensive
 |  was making a shambles of his Vietnam War policy. The
 |  Republican reply came in a series of short statements by
 |  former President Eisenhower, House Minority leader Gerry
 |  Ford, Rep. Melvin Laird, Senator Howard Baker and other
 |  members of Congress. Another tribute to the efforts of the
 |  Prescott Bush-Skull and Bones networks was the fact that
 |  amid this parade of Republican worthies there appeared, with
 |  tense jaw and fist clenched to pound on the table, Rep.
 |  George Bush.
 |
 |  The Johnson administration had claimed that austerity
 |  measures were not necessary during the time that the war in
 |  Vietnam was being prosecuted. LBJ had promised the people
 |  "guns and butter," but now the economy was beginning to go
 |  into decline. Bush's overall public rhetorical stance during
 |  these years was to demand that the Democratic administration
 |  impose specific austerity measures and replace big-spending
 |  programs with appropriate deficit-cutting rigor. Here is
 |  what Bush told a nationwide network television audience on
 |  January 23, 1968:
 |
 |  "The nation faces this year just as it did last a tremendous
 |  deficit in the federal budget, but in the President's
 |  message there was no sense of sacrifice on the part of the
 |  government, no assignment of priorities, no hint of the need
 |  to put first things first. And this reckless policy has
 |  imposed the cruel tax of rising prices on the people, pushed
 |  interest rates to their highest levels in 100 years, sharply
 |  reduced the rate of real economic growth and saddled every
 |  man and woman and child in American with the largest tax
 |  burden in our history.
 |
 |  "And what does the President say? He says we must pay still
 |  more taxes and he proposes drastic restrictions on the
 |  rights of Americans to invest and travel abroad. If the
 |  President wants to control inflation, he's got to cut back
 |  on federal spending and the best way, the best way to stop
 |  the gold drain is to live within our means in this country."
 |  [11] 
 |
 |  Those who wanted to read Bush's lips at a distance back in
 |  those days found that he was indeed committed to a kind of
 |  austerity. In May of 1968, with Johnson already a lame duck,
 |  the Ways and Means Committee approved what was dubbed on
 |  Capitol Hill the "10-8-4" deficit control package. This
 |  mandated a tax increase of $10 billion per year, coupled
 |  with a $4 billion cut in expenditures. Bush joined with four
 |  Ways and Means Republicans (the others were Conable,
 |  Schneebeli and Battin) to approve the measure. [12] 
 |
 |  But the principal focus of Bush's activity during his tenure
 |  in the House of Representatives centered on a project that
 |  was much more sinister and far-reaching than the mere
 |  imposition of budget austerity, destructive as that demand
 |  was at the time. With a will informed by the ideas about
 |  population, race and economic development that we have seen
 |  current in Prescott Bush's circles at Brown Brothers
 |  Harriman, George Bush would now become a protagonist of a
 |  series of institutional changes which would contribute to
 |  that overall degradation of the cultural paradigm of Western
 |  civilization which was emergent at the end of the 1960s.
 |
 |  In 1969, Bush told the House of Representatives that, unless
 |  the menace of human population growth were "recognized and
 |  made manageable, starvation, pestilence and war will solve
 |  it for us." Bush repeatedly compared population growth to a
 |  disease. [13]  In remarks to the House July 30, 1969, he
 |  likened the fight against the polio virus to the crusade to
 |  reduce the world's population. Urging the federal government
 |  to step up population control efforts, he said: "We have a
 |  clear precedent: When the Salk vaccine was discovered,
 |  large-scale programs were undertaken to distribute it. I see
 |  no reason why similar programs of education and family
 |  planning assistance should not be instituted in the United
 |  States on a massive scope."
 |
 |  As Jessica Mathews, vice president of one of Washington's
 |  most influential zero-growth outfits, the World Resources
 |  Institute, later wrote of Bush in those years: "In the 1960s
 |  and '70s, Bush had not only embraced the cause of domestic
 |  and international family planning, he had aggressively
 |  sought to be its champion.... As a member of the Ways and
 |  Means Committee, Rep. Bush shepherded the first major
 |  breakthrough in domestic family planning legislation in
 |  1967," and "later co-authored the legislation commonly known
 |  as Title X, which created the first federal family planning
 |  program...."
 |
 |  "On the international front," Mathews wrote, Bush
 |  "recommended that the U.S. support the United Nations
 |  Population Fund.... He urged, in the strongest words, that
 |  the U.S. and European countries make modern contraceptives
 |  available 'on a massive scale,' to all those around the
 |  world who wanted them."
 |
 |  Bush belonged to a small group of congressmen who
 |  successfully conspired to force a profound shift in the
 |  official U.S. attitude and policy toward population
 |  expansion. Embracing the "limits to growth" ideology with a
 |  vengeance, Bush and his coterie, which included such
 |  ultraliberal Democrats as then-Senator Walter Mondale
 |  (Minn.) and Rep. James Scheuer (N.Y.), labored to enact
 |  legislation which institutionalized population control as
 |  U.S. domestic and foreign policy.
 |
 |  Bush began his Malthusian activism in the House in 1968, the
 |  year that Pope Paul VI issued his enyclical "Humanae Vitae,"
 |  with its prophetic warning of the danger of coercion by
 |  governments for the purpose of population control. The Pope
 |  wrote: "Let it be considered also that a dangerous weapon
 |  would be placed in the hands of those public authorities who
 |  place no heed of moral exigencies.... Who will stop rulers
 |  from favoring, from even imposing upon their people, the
 |  method of contraception which they judge to be most
 |  efficacious?" For poorer countries with a high population
 |  rate, the encyclical identified the only rational and humane
 |  policy: "No solution to these difficulties is acceptable
 |  which does violence to man's essential dignity.... The only
 |  possible solution ... is one which envisages the social and
 |  economic progress both of individuals and of the whole of
 |  human society...."
 |
 |  This was a direct challenge to the cultural paradigm
 |  transformation which Bush and other exponents of the
 |  oligarchical world outlook were promoting. Not for the first
 |  time nor for the last, Bush issued a direct attack on the
 |  Holy See. Just days after "Humanae Vitae" was issued, Bush
 |  declared: "I have decided to give my vigorous support for
 |  population control in both the United States and the world."
 |  He continued, "For those of us who who feel so strongly on
 |  this issue, the recent enyclical was most discouraging."
 |
 |  Population Control Leader
 |
 |  During his four years in Congress, Bush not only introduced
 |  key pieces of legislation to enforce population control both
 |  at home and abroad. He also continuously introduced into the
 |  congressional debate reams of propaganda about the threat of
 |  population growth and the inferiority of blacks, and he set
 |  up a special Republican task force which functioned as a
 |  forum for the most rabid Malthusian ideologues.
 |
 |  "Bush was really out front on the population issue," a
 |  population-control activist recently said of this period of
 |  1967-71. "He was saying things that even we were reluctant
 |  to talk about publicly."
 |
 |  Bush's open public advocacy of government measures tending
 |  towards zero population growth was a radical departure from
 |  the policies built into the federal bureaucracy up until
 |  that time. The climate of opinion just a few years earlier,
 |  in December 1959, is illustrated by the comments of
 |  President Eisenhower, who had said, "birth control is not
 |  our business. I cannot imagine anything more emphatically a
 |  subject that is not a proper political or governmental
 |  activity . .. or responsibility."
 |
 |  As a congressman, Bush played an absolutely pivotal role in
 |  this shift. Shortly after arriving in Washington, he teamed
 |  up with fellow Republican Herman Schneebeli to offer a
 |  series of amendments to the Social Security Act to place
 |  priority emphasis on what was euphemistically called "family
 |  planning services." The avowed goal was to reduce the number
 |  of children born to women on welfare.
 |
 |  Bush's and Schneebeli's amendments reflected the
 |  Malthusian-genocidalist views of Dr. Alan Guttmacher, then
 |  president of Planned Parenthood, and a protege of its
 |  founder, Margaret Sanger. In the years before the grisly
 |  outcome of the Nazi cult of race science and eugenics had
 |  inhibited public calls for defense of the "gene pool,"
 |  Sanger had demanded the weeding out of the "unfit" and the
 |  "inferior races," and had campaigned vigorously for
 |  sterilization, infanticide and abortion, in the name of
 |  "race betterment."
 |
 |  Although Planned Parenthood was forced, during the fascist
 |  era and immediately thereafter, to tone down Sanger's racist
 |  rhetoric from "race betterment" to "family planning" for the
 |  benefit of the poor and blacks, the organization's basic
 |  goal of curbing the population growth rate among
 |  "undesirables" never really changed. Bush publicly asserted
 |  that he agreed "1,000 percent" with Planned Parenthood.
 |
 |  During hearings on the Social Security amendments, Bush and
 |  witness Alan Guttmacher had the following colloquy:
 |
 |  "Bush": Is there any [opposition to Planned Parenthood] from
 |  any other organizations or groups, civil rights groups?
 |
 |  "Guttmacher": We do have problems. We are in a sensitive
 |  area in regard particularly to the Negro. There are some
 |  elements in the Negro group that feel we are trying to keep
 |  down the numbers. We are very sensitive to this. We have a
 |  community relations department headed by a most capable
 |  Negro social worker to try to handle that part of the
 |  problem. This does, of course, cause us a good bit of
 |  concern.
 |
 |  "Bush": I appreciate that. For the record, I would like to
 |  say I am 1,000 percent in accord with the goals of your
 |  organization. I think perhaps more than any other type of
 |  organization you can do more in the field of poverty and
 |  mental health and everything else than any other group that
 |  I can think of. I commend you.
 |
 |  Like his father before him, Bush supported Planned
 |  Parenthood at every opportunity. Time after time, he rose on
 |  the floor of the House to praise Planned Parenthood's work.
 |  In 1967, Bush called for "having the government agencies
 |  work even more closely with going private agencies such as
 |  Planned Parenthood." A year later, he urged those interested
 |  in "advancing the cause of family planning," to "call your
 |  local Planned Parenthood Center" to offer "help and
 |  support."
 |
 |  The Bush-Schneebeli amendments were aimed at reducing the
 |  number of children born to blacks and poor whites. The
 |  legislation required all welfare recipients, including
 |  mothers of young children, to seek work, and barred
 |  increases in federal aid to states where the proportion of
 |  dependent children on welfare increased.
 |
 |  Reducing the welfare rolls was a prime Bush concern. He
 |  frequently motivated his population-control crusade with
 |  thinly veiled appeals to racism, as in his infamous Willie
 |  Horton ads during the 1988 presidential campaign. Talking
 |  about the rise in the welfare rolls in a July 1968
 |  statement, Bush lamented that "our national welfare costs
 |  are rising phenomenally." Worse, he warned, there were far
 |  too many children being born to welfare mothers: "The
 |  fastest-growing part of the relief rolls everywhere is Aid
 |  For Dependent Children [sic] -- AFDC. At the end of the 1968
 |  fiscal year, a little over $2 billion will be spent for
 |  AFDC, but by fiscal 1972 this will increase by over 75
 |  percent."
 |
 |  Bush emphasized that more children are born into non-white
 |  poor families than to white ones. Blacks must recognize, he
 |  said, "that they cannot hope to acquire a larger share of
 |  American prosperity without cutting down on births...."
 |
 |  Forcing mothers on welfare to work was believed to be an
 |  effective means of reducing the number of black children
 |  born, and Bush sponsored a number of measures to do just
 |  that. In 1970, he helped lead the fight on the Hill for
 |  President Nixon's notorious welfare bill, the Family
 |  Assistance Program, known as FAP. Billed as a boon to the
 |  poor because it provided an income floor, the measure called
 |  on every able-bodied welfare recipient, except mothers with
 |  children under six, to take a job. This soon became known as
 |  Nixon's "workfare" slave-labor bill. Monetarist
 |  theoreticians of economic austerity were quick to see that
 |  forced labor by welfare recipients could be used to break
 |  the unions where they existed, while lowering wages and
 |  worsening working conditions for the entire labor force.
 |  Welfare recipients could even be hired as scabs to replace
 |  workers being paid according to normal pay scales. Those
 |  workers, after they had been fired, would themselves end up
 |  destitute and on welfare, and could then be forced to take
 |  workfare for even lower wages than those who had been on
 |  welfare at the outset of the process. This was known as
 |  "recycling."
 |
 |  Critics of the Nixon workfare bill pointed out that it
 |  contained no minimum standards regarding the kinds of jobs
 |  or the level of wages which would be forced upon welfare
 |  recipients, and that it contradicted the original purpose of
 |  welfare, which was to allow mothers to stay home with their
 |  children. Further, it would set up a pool of virtual slave
 |  labor, which could be used to replace workers earning higher
 |  wages.
 |
 |  But Bush thought these tough measures were exactly what the
 |  explosion of the welfare rolls demanded. During House debate
 |  on the measure April 15, 1970, Bush said he favored FAP
 |  because it would force the lazy to work: "The family
 |  assistance plan ... is oriented toward work," he said. "The
 |  present federal-state welfare system encourages idleness by
 |  making it more profitable to be on welfare than to work, and
 |  provides no method by which the State may limit the number
 |  of individuals added to the rolls."
 |
 |  Bush had only "one major worry, and that is that the work
 |  incentive provisions will not be enforced.... [It] is
 |  essential that the program be administered as visualized by
 |  the Ways and Means Committee; namely, if an individual does
 |  not work, he will not receive funds." The Manchester
 |  School's Iron Law of Wages as expounded by George Bush,
 |  self-styled expert in the dismal science....
 |
 |  In 1967, Bush joined with Rep. James Scheuer (D-N.Y.), to
 |  successfully sponsor legislation that removed prohibitions
 |  against mailing and importing contraceptive devices. More
 |  than opening the door to French-made condoms, Bush's goal
 |  here was a kind of ideological "succes de scandale." The
 |  zero-growth lobby deemed this a major breakthrough in making
 |  the paraphernalia for domestic population control
 |  accessible.
 |
 |  In rapid succession, Bush introduced legislation to create a
 |  National Center for Population and Family Planning and
 |  Welfare, and to redesignate the Department of the Interior
 |  as the Department of Resources, Environment and Population.
 |
 |  On the foreign policy front, he helped shift U.S. foreign
 |  assistance away from funding development projects to grapple
 |  with the problem of hunger in the world, to underwriting
 |  population control. "I propose that we totally revamp our
 |  foreign aid program to give primary emphasis to population
 |  control," he stated in the summer of 1968, adding: "In my
 |  opinion, we have made a mistake in our foreign aid by
 |  concentrating on building huge steel mills and concrete
 |  plants in underdeveloped nations...."
 |
 |  Notes
 |
 |  1. See Fitzhugh Green, "George Bush: A Biography" (New York:
 |  Dodd, Mead & Company, 1980), p. 92, and George Bush and
 |  Victor Gold, "Looking Forward" (New York: Doubleday, 1987),
 |  p. 90.
 |
 |  2. Stevens's remarks were part of a Public Broadcasting
 |  System "Frontline" documentary program entitled "Campaign:
 |  The Choice," Nov. 24, 1988. Cited by Fitzhugh Green, "op.
 |  cit.," p. 91.
 |
 |  3. For the chronicles of the Harris County GOP, see local
 |  press articles available on microfiche at the Texas
 |  Historical Society in Houston.
 |
 |  4. "Geor ge Bush vs. Observer Editor," "Texas Observer,"
 |  July 23, 1965.
 |
 |  5. "Texas Observer," Oct. 14, 1966.
 |
 |  6. Joe McGinniss, "The Selling of the President 1968" (New
 |  York: Penguin Books, 1968), pp. 42-45.
 |
 |  7. Bush and Gold, "op. cit.," p. 91.
 |
 |  8. See John R. Knaggs, "Two-Party Texas" (Austin: Eakin
 |  Press, 1985), p. 111.
 |
 |  9. "Congressional Quarterly," "President Bush: The Challenge
 |  Ahead" (Washington, 1989), p. 94.
 |
 |  10. Harry Hurt III, "George Bush, Plucky Lad," in "Texas
 |  Monthly," June 1983.
 |
 |  11. "New York Times," Jan. 24, 1968.
 |
 |  12. "New York Times," May 7, 1968.
 |
 |  13. The following account of Bush's congressional record on
 |  population and related issues is derived from the
 |  ground-breaking research of Kathleen Klenetsky, to whom the
 |  authors acknowledge their indebtedness. The material that
 |  follows incorporates sections of Kathleen Klenetsky, "Bush
 |  Backed Nazi 'Race Science,'|" "New Federalist", Vol 5, No.
 |  16, April 29, 1991.
 |
 |  Chapter 11
 |
 |  Part 2 Rubbers Goes to Congress
 |
 |  One of Bush's more important initiatives on the domestic
 |  side was his sponsorhip of the Family Planning Services and
 |  Population Research Act of 1970, brainchild of Sen. Joseph
 |  Tydings of Maryland. Signed into law by President Nixon on
 |  December 24, 1970, the Tydings-Bush bill drastically
 |  increased the federal financial commitment to population
 |  control, authorizing an initial $382 million for family
 |  planning sevices, population research, population education
 |  and information through 1973. Much of this money was
 |  funnelled through private institutions, particularly local
 |  clinics run by Bush's beloved Planned Parenthood. The
 |  Tydings-Bush measure mandated the notorious Title X, which
 |  explicitly provided "family planning assistance" to the
 |  poor. Bush and his zero-growth cohorts talked constantly
 |  about the importance of disseminating birth control to the
 |  poor. They claimed that there were over 5 million poor women
 |  who wanted to limit their families, but could not afford to
 |  do so.
 |
 |  On October 23, 1969, Bush praised the Office of Economic
 |  Opportunity for carrying out some of the "most successful"
 |  family planning projects, and said he was "pleased" that the
 |  Nixon administration "is giving them additional financial
 |  muscle by increasing their funds 50 percent -- from $15
 |  million to $22 million."
 |
 |  This increased effort he attributed to the Nixon
 |  administration's "goal to reach in the next five years the 5
 |  million women in need of these services" -- all of them
 |  poor, many of them from racial or ethnic minorities. He
 |  added: "One needs only to look quickly at the report
 |  prepared by the Planned Parenthood-World Population Research
 |  Department to see how ineffective federal, state, and local
 |  governments have been in providing such necessary services.
 |  There is certainly nothing new about the fact that unwanted
 |  pregnancies of our poor and near-poor women keep the
 |  incidence of infant mortality and mental retardation in
 |  America at one of the highest levels of all the developed
 |  countries."
 |
 |  The rates of infant mortality and mental retardation Bush
 |  was so concerned about, could have been significantly
 |  reduced, had the government provided sufficient financing to
 |  pre-natal care, nutrition, and other factors contributing to
 |  the health of infants and children. On the same day he
 |  signed the Tydings-Bush bill, Nixon vetoed -- with Bush's
 |  support -- legislation that would have set up a three-year,
 |  $225 million program to train family doctors.
 |
 |  Bush seemed to be convinced that mental retardation, in
 |  particular, was a matter of heredity. The eugenicists of the
 |  1920s had spun their pseudoscientific theories around
 |  "hereditary feeble-mindedness," and claimed that the
 |  "Kallikaks and the Jukes," by reproducing successive
 |  "feeble-minded" generations, had cost New York state tens of
 |  millions of dollars over decades. But what about learning
 |  disorders like dyslexia, which has been known to afflict
 |  oligarchical families Bush would consider wealthy,
 |  well-bred, and able? Nelson Rockefeller had dyslexia, a
 |  reading disorder, and both Bush's friend Nick Brady, and
 |  Bush's own son Neal suffer from it. But these oligarchs are
 |  not likely to fall victim to the involuntary sterilization
 |  as "mental defectives" which they wish to inflict on those
 |  they term the lower orders.
 |
 |  In introducing the House version of the Tydings bill on
 |  behalf of himself and Bush, Rep. James Scheuer (D-N.Y.)
 |  ranted that while middle-class women "have been limiting the
 |  number of offspring for years ... women of low-income
 |  families" did not. "If poverty and family size are so
 |  closely related we ask, 'Why don't poor women stop having
 |  babies?'|" The Bush-Tydings bill took a giant step toward
 |  forcing them to do so.
 |
 |  Population Task Force
 |
 |  Among Bush's most important contributions to the
 |  neo-Malthusian cause while in Congress was his role in the
 |  Republican Task Force on Earth Resources and Population. The
 |  task force, which Bush helped found and then chaired,
 |  churned out a steady stream of propaganda claiming that the
 |  world was already seriously overpopulated; that there was a
 |  fixed limit to natural resources and that this limit was
 |  rapidly being reached; and that the environment and natural
 |  species were being sacrificed to human progress. Bush's task
 |  force sought to accredit the idea that the human race was
 |  being "down bred," or reduced in genetic qualities by the
 |  population growth among blacks and other non-white and hence
 |  allegedly inferior races at a time when the Anglo-Saxons
 |  were hardly able to prevent their numbers from shrinking.
 |
 |  Comprised of over 20 Republican Congressmen, Bush's Task
 |  Force was a kind of Malthusian vanguard organization which
 |  heard testimony from assorted "race scientists," sponsored
 |  legislation and otherwise propagandized the zero-growth
 |  outlook. In its 50-odd hearings during these years, the task
 |  force provided a public forum to nearly every well-known
 |  zero-growth fanatic, from Paul Ehrlich, founder of Zero
 |  Population Growth (ZPG), to race scientist William Shockley,
 |  to the key zero-growth advocates infesting the federal
 |  bureaucracy.
 |
 |  Giving a prestigious congressional platform to a discredited
 |  racist charlatan like William Shockley in the year after the
 |  assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, points up the
 |  arrogance of Bush's commitment to eugenics. Shockley, like
 |  his co-thinker Arthur Jensen, had caused a furor during the
 |  1960s by advancing his thesis, already repeatedly disproven,
 |  that blacks were genetically inferior to whites in cognitive
 |  faculties and intelligence. In the same year in which Bush
 |  invited him to appear before the GOP task force, Shockley
 |  had written: "Our nobly intended welfare programs may be
 |  encouraging dysgenics -- retrogressive evolution through
 |  disproportionate reproduction of the genetically
 |  disadvantaged.... We fear that 'fatuous beliefs' in the
 |  power of welfare money, unaided by eugenic foresight, may
 |  contribute to a decline of human quality for all segments of
 |  society."
 |
 |  To halt what he saw as pervasive down-breeding of the
 |  quality of the U.S. gene pool, Shockley advocated a program
 |  of mass sterilization of the unfit and mentally defective,
 |  which he called his "Bonus Sterilization Plan." Money
 |  bonuses for allowing oneself to be sterilized would be paid
 |  to any person not paying income tax who had a genetic
 |  deficiency or chronic disease, such as diabetes or epilepsy,
 |  or who could be shown to be a drug addict. "If [the
 |  government paid] a bonus rate of $1,000 for each point below
 |  100 IQ, $30,000 put in trust for some 70 IQ moron of
 |  20-child potential, it might return $250,000 to taxpayers in
 |  reduced cost of mental retardation care," Shockley said.
 |
 |  The special target of Shockley's prescriptions for mass
 |  sterilizations were African-Americans, whom he saw as
 |  reproducing too fast. "If those blacks with the least amount
 |  of Caucasian genes are in fact the most prolific and the
 |  least intelligent, then genetic enslavement will be the
 |  destiny of their next generation," he wrote. Looking at the
 |  recent past, Shockley said in 1967: "The lesson to be drawn
 |  from Nazi history is the value of free speech, not that
 |  eugenics is intolerable."
 |
 |  As for Paul Ehrlich, his program for genocide included a
 |  call to the U .S. government to prepare "the addition of ...
 |  mass sterilization agents" to the U.S. food and water
 |  supply, and a "tough foreign policy" including termination
 |  of food aid to starving nations. As radical as Ehrlich might
 |  have sounded then, this latter point has become a staple of
 |  foreign policy under the Bush administration (witness the
 |  embargo against Iraq and Haiti).
 |
 |  On July 24, 1969, the task force heard from Gen. William H.
 |  Draper, Jr., then national chairman of the Population Crisis
 |  Committee. Gen. Draper was a close friend of Bush's father,
 |  having served with the elder Bush as banker to Thyssen and
 |  the Nazi Steel Trust. According to Bush's resume of his
 |  family friend's testimony, Draper warned that the population
 |  explosion was like a "rising tide," and asserted that "our
 |  strivings for the individual good will become a scourge to
 |  the community unless we use our God-given brain power to
 |  bring back a balance between the birth rate and the death
 |  rate." Draper lashed out at the Catholic Church, charging
 |  that its opposition to contraception and sterilization was
 |  frustrating population-control efforts in Latin America.
 |
 |  A week later, Bush invited Oscar Harkavy, chief of the Ford
 |  Foundation's population program, to testify. In summarizing
 |  Harkavy's remarks for the August 4 "Congressional Record,"
 |  Bush commented: "The population explosion is commonly
 |  recognized as one of the most serious problems now facing
 |  the nation and the world. Mr. Harkavy suggested, therefore,
 |  that we more adequately fund population research. It seems
 |  inconsistent that cancer research funds total $250-275
 |  million annually, more than eight times the amount spent on
 |  reproductive biology research."
 |
 |  In reporting on testimony by Dr. William McElroy of the
 |  National Science Foundation, Bush stressed that "One of the
 |  crises the world will face as a result of present population
 |  growth rates is that, assuming the world population
 |  increases 2 percent annually, urban population will increase
 |  by 6 percent, and ghetto population will increase by 12
 |  percent."
 |
 |  In February 1969, Bush and other members proposed
 |  legislation to establish a Select Joint Committee on
 |  Population and Family Planning, that would, Bush said, "seek
 |  to focus national attention on the domestic and foreign need
 |  for family planning. We need to make population and family
 |  planning household words," Bush told his House colleagues.
 |  "We need to take the sensationalism out of this topic so
 |  that it can no longer be used by militants who have no real
 |  knowledge of the voluntary nature of the program but,
 |  rather, are using it as a political steppingstone.... A
 |  thorough investigation into birth control and a collection
 |  of data which would give the Congress the criteria to
 |  determine the effectiveness of its programs must come
 |  swiftly to stave off the number of future mouths which will
 |  feed on an ever-decreasing proportion of food," Bush
 |  continued. "We need an emphasis on this critical problem ...
 |  we need a massive program in Congress with hearings to
 |  emphasize the problem, and earmarked appropriations to do
 |  something about it. We need massive cooperation from the
 |  White House like we have never had before and we need a
 |  determination by the executive branch that these funds will
 |  be spent as earmarked."
 |
 |  On August 6, 1969, Bush's GOP task force introduced a bill
 |  to create a Commission on Population and the American Future
 |  which, Bush said, would "allow the leadership of this
 |  country to properly establish criteria which can be the
 |  basis for a national policy on population." The move came in
 |  response to President Nixon's call of July 18 to create a
 |  blue-ribbon commission to draft a U.S. population policy.
 |  Bush was triumphant over this development, having repeatedly
 |  urged such a step at various points in the preceeding few
 |  years. On July 21, he made a statement on the floor of the
 |  House to "commend the President" for his action. "We now
 |  know," he intoned, "that the fantastic rate of population
 |  growth we have witnessed these past 20 years continues with
 |  no letup in sight. If this growth rate is not checked now --
 |  in this next decade -- we face a danger that is as
 |  defenseless as nuclear war."
 |
 |  Headed by John D. Rockefeller III, the commission
 |  represented a radical, government-sanctioned attack on human
 |  life. Its final report, issued in 1972, asserted that "the
 |  time has come to challenge the tradition that population
 |  growth is desirable: What was unintended may turn out to be
 |  unwanted, in the society as in the family." Not only did the
 |  commission demand an end to population growth and economic
 |  progress, it also attacked the foundations of Western
 |  civilization by insisting that man's reason had become a
 |  major impediment to right living. "Mass urban industrialism
 |  is based on science and technology, efficiency, acquisition,
 |  and domination through rationality," raved the commission's
 |  report. "The exercise of these same values now contain [sic]
 |  the potential for the destruction of our humanity. Man is
 |  losing that balance with nature which is an essential
 |  condition of human existence."
 |
 |  The commission's principal conclusion was that "there are no
 |  substantial benefits to be gained from continued population
 |  growth," Chairman Rockefeller explained to the Senate
 |  Appropriations Committee. The commission made a host of
 |  recommendations to curb both population expansion and
 |  economic growth. These included: liberalizing laws
 |  restricting abortion and sterilization; having the
 |  government fund abortions; and providing birth control to
 |  teenagers. The commission had a profound impact on American
 |  attitudes toward the population issue, and helped accelerate
 |  the plunge into outright genocide. Commission Executive
 |  Director Charles Westoff wrote in 1975 that the group
 |  "represented an important effort by an advanced country to
 |  develop a national population policy -- the basic thrust of
 |  which was to slow growth in order to maximize the 'quality
 |  of life.'|"
 |
 |  The collapse of the traditional family-centered form of
 |  society during the 1970s and 1980s was but one consequence
 |  of such recommendations. It also is widely acknowledged that
 |  the commission Bush fought so long and so hard to create
 |  broke down the last barriers to legalized abortion on
 |  demand. Indeed, just one year after the commission's final
 |  report was issued, the Supreme Court delivered the Roe v.
 |  Wade decision which did just that.
 |
 |  Aware that many blacks and other minorities had noticed that
 |  the population control movement was a genocide program aimed
 |  at reducing their numbers, the commission went out of its
 |  way to cover its real intent by stipulating that all races
 |  should cut back on their birth rates. But the racist animus
 |  of their conclusions could not be hidden. Commission
 |  Executive Director Westoff, who owed his job and his funding
 |  to Bush, gave a hint of this in a book he had written in
 |  1966, before joining the commission staff, which was
 |  entitled "From Now to Zero", and in which he bemoaned the
 |  fact that the black fertility rate was so much higher than
 |  the white.
 |
 |  The population control or zero population growth movement,
 |  which grew rapidly in the late 1960s thanks to free media
 |  exposure and foundation grants for a stream of
 |  pseudoscientific propaganda about the alleged "population
 |  bomb" and the "limits to growth," was a continuation of the
 |  old prewar, protofascist eugenics movement, which had been
 |  forced to go into temporary eclipse when the world recoiled
 |  in horror at the atrocities committed by the Nazis in the
 |  name of eugenics. By the mid-1960s, the same old crackpot
 |  eugenicists had resurrected themselves as the
 |  population-control and environmentalist movement. Planned
 |  Parenthood was a perfect example of the transmogrification.
 |  Now, instead of demanding the sterilization of the inferior
 |  races, the newly-packaged eugenicists talked about the
 |  population bomb, giving the poor "equal access" to birth
 |  contol, and "freedom of choice."
 |
 |  But nothing had substantively changed -- including the use
 |  of coercion. While Bush and other advocates of government
 |  "family planning" programs insisted these were strictly
 |  voluntary, the reality was far different. By the mid-1970s,
 |  the number of involun tary sterilizations carried out by
 |  programs which Bush helped bring into being, had reached
 |  huge proportions. Within the black and minority communities,
 |  where most of the sterilizations were being done, protests
 |  arose which culminated in litigation at the federal level.
 |
 |  In his 1974 ruling on this suit, Federal District Judge
 |  Gerhard Gesell found that, "Over the last few years, an
 |  estimated 100,000 to 150,000 low-income persons have been
 |  sterilized annually under federally funded programs.
 |  Although Congress has been insistent that all family
 |  planning programs function on a purely voluntary basis,"
 |  Judge Gesell wrote, "there is uncontroverted evidence ...
 |  that an indefinite number of poor people have been
 |  improperly coerced into accepting a sterilization operation
 |  under the threat that various federally supported welfare
 |  benefits would be withdrawn unless they submitted to
 |  irreversible sterilization." Gesell concluded from the
 |  evidence that the "dividing line between family planning and
 |  eugenics is murky."
 |
 |  As we have seen, George Bush inherited his obsession with
 |  population control and racial "down-breeding" from his
 |  father, Prescott, who staunchly supported Planned Parenthood
 |  dating back at least to the 1940s. In fact, Prescott's
 |  affiliation with Margaret Sanger's organization cost him the
 |  Senate race in 1950, as we have seen, a defeat his son has
 |  always blamed on the Catholic Church, and which is at the
 |  root of George's lifelong vendetta against the Papacy.
 |
 |  Prescott's 1950 defeat still rankled, as shown by Bush's
 |  extraordinary gesture in evoking it during testimony he gave
 |  on Capitol Hill before Senator Gruening's subcommittee of
 |  the Senate Government Operations Committee on November 2,
 |  1967. Bush's vengeful tirade is worth quoting at length:
 |
 |  "I get the feeling that it is a little less unfashionable to
 |  be in favor of birth control and planned parenthood today
 |  than it used to be. If you will excuse one personal
 |  reference here: My father, when he ran for the U.S. Senate
 |  in 1950, was defeated by 600 or 700 votes. On the steps of
 |  several Catholic Churches in Connecticut, the Sunday before
 |  the election, people stood there passing out pamphlets
 |  saying, 'Listen to what this commentator has to say tonight.
 |  Listen to what this commentator has to say.' That night on
 |  the radio, the commentator came on and said, 'Of interest to
 |  voters in Connecticut, Prescott Bush is head of the Planned
 |  Parenthood Birth Control League,' or something like this.
 |  Well, he lost by about 600 votes and there are some of us
 |  who feel that this had something to do with it. I do not
 |  think that anybody can get away with that type of thing any
 |  more."
 |
 |  Bush and Draper
 |
 |  As we saw in Chapter 3, Gen. William H. Draper, Jr. had been
 |  director and vice president of the German Credit and
 |  Investment Corp., serving short-term credit to the Nazi
 |  Party's financiers from offices in the U.S.A and Berlin.
 |  Draper became one of the most influential crusaders for
 |  radical population control measures. He campaigned endlessly
 |  for zero population growth, and praised the Chinese
 |  Communists for their "innovative" methods of achieving that
 |  goal. Draper's most influential outlet was the Population
 |  Crisis Committee (PCC)-Draper Fund, which he founded in the
 |  1960s.
 |
 |  In 1967-68, a PCC-Draper Fund offshoot, the Campaign to
 |  Check the Population Explosion, ran a nationwide advertising
 |  campaign hyping the population explosion fraud, and
 |  attacking those -- particularly at the Vatican -- who stood
 |  in the way of radical population control.
 |
 |  In a 1971 article, Draper likened the developing nations to
 |  an "animal reserve," where, when the animals become too
 |  numerous, the park rangers "arbitrarily reduce one or
 |  another species as necessary to preserve the balanced
 |  environment for all other animals.... But who will be the
 |  park ranger for the human race?," he asked. "Who will cull
 |  out the surplus in this country or that country when the
 |  pressure of too many people and too few resources increases
 |  beyond endurance? Will the death-dealing Horsemen of the
 |  Apocalypse -- war in its modern nuclear dress, hunger
 |  haunting half the human race, and disease -- will the gaunt
 |  and forbidding Horsemen become Park Ranger for the
 |  two-legged animal called man?"
 |
 |  Draper collaborated closely with George Bush during the
 |  latter's congressional career. As noted above, Bush invited
 |  Draper to testify to his Task Force on Earth Resources and
 |  Population; reportedly, Draper helped draft the Bush-Tydings
 |  bill.
 |
 |  Bush felt an overwhelming affinity for the bestial and
 |  degraded image of man reflected in the raving statements of
 |  Draper. In September 1969, Bush gave a glowing tribute to
 |  Draper that was published in the "Congressional Record." "I
 |  wish to pay tribute to a great American," said Bush. "I am
 |  very much aware of the significant leadership that General
 |  Draper has executed throughout the world in assisting
 |  governments in their efforts to solve the awesome problems
 |  of rapid population growth. No other person in the past five
 |  years has shown more initiative in creating the awareness of
 |  the world's leaders in recognizing the economic consequences
 |  of our population explosion."
 |
 |  In a 1973 publication, Bush praised the PCC itself for
 |  having played a "major role in assisting government policy
 |  makers and in mobilizing the United States' response to the
 |  world population challenge...." The PCC made no bones about
 |  its admiration for Bush; its newsletters from the late
 |  1960s-early 1970s feature numerous articles highlighting
 |  Bush's role in the congressional population-control
 |  campaign. In a 1979 report assessing the history of
 |  congressional action on population control, the PCC/Draper
 |  Fund placed Bush squarely with the "most conspicuous
 |  activists" on population-control issues, and lauded him for
 |  "proposing all of the major or controversial
 |  recommendations" in this arena which came before the U.S.
 |  Congress in the late 1960s.
 |
 |  Draper's son, William III, has enthusiastically carried out
 |  his father's genocidal legacy -- frequently with the help of
 |  Bush. In 1980, Draper, an enthusiastic backer of the Carter
 |  administration's notorious "Global 2000" report, served as
 |  national chairman of the Bush presidential campaign's
 |  finance committee; in early 1981, Bush convinced Reagan to
 |  appoint Draper to head the U.S. Export-Import Bank. At the
 |  time, a Draper aide, Sharon Camp, disclosed that Draper
 |  intended to reorient the bank's functions toward emphasizing
 |  population control projects.
 |
 |  In 1987, again at Bush's behest, Draper was named by Reagan
 |  as administrator of the United Nations Development Program,
 |  which functions as an adjunct of the World Bank, and has
 |  historically pushed population reduction among Third World
 |  nations. In late January of 1991, Draper gave a speech to a
 |  conference in Washington, in which he stated that the core
 |  of Bush's "new world order" should be population reduction.
 |
 |  The Nixon Touch
 |
 |  Nixon, it will be recalled, had campaigned for Bush in 1964
 |  and 1966, and would do so also in 1970. During these years,
 |  Bush's positions came to be almost perfectly aligned with
 |  the the line of the Imperial Presidency. And, thanks in
 |  large part to the workings of his father's Brown Brothers
 |  Harriman networks -- Prescott had been a fixture in the
 |  Eisenhower White House where Nixon worked, and in the Senate
 |  over which Nixon from time to time presided -- Bush became a
 |  Nixon ally and crony. Bush's Nixon connection, which
 |  pro-Bush propaganda tends to minimize, was in fact the key
 |  to Bush's career choices in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
 |
 |  Bush's intimate relations with Nixon are best illustrated in
 |  Bush's close brush with the 1968 GOP vice-presidential
 |  nomination at the Miami convention of that year.
 |
 |  Richard Nixon came into Miami ahead of New York Governor
 |  Nelson Rockefeller and California Governor Ronald Reagan in
 |  the delegate count, but just before the convention, Reagan,
 |  encouraged by his growing support, announced that he was
 |  switching from being a favorite son of California to the
 |  status of an all-out candidate for the presidential
 |  nomination. Reagan attempted to convince many conservative
 |  southern delegations to switch from Nixon to himself, since
 |  he was the purer ideological conservative and better loved
 |  in the South than the new (or old) Nixon.
 |
 |  Nixon's defense of his southern delegate base was
 |  spearheaded by South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, who
 |  kept the vast majority of the delegates in line, sometimes
 |  with the help of the unit rule. "Thurmond's point of
 |  reasoning with Southern delegates was that Nixon was the
 |  best conservative they could get and still win, and that he
 |  had obtained assurances from Nixon that no vice-presidential
 |  candidate intolerable to the South would be selected," wrote
 |  one observer of the Miami convention. [14]  With the
 |  southern conservatives guaranteed a veto power over the
 |  second spot on the ticket, Thurmond's efforts were
 |  successful; a leader of the Louisiana caucus was heard to
 |  remark: "It breaks my heart that we can't get behind a fine
 |  man like Governor Reagan, but Mr. Nixon is deserving of our
 |  choice, and he must receive it."
 |
 |  These were the circumstances in which Nixon, having won the
 |  nomination on the first ballot, met with his advisers amidst
 |  the grotesque architecture of the fifteenth floor of the
 |  Miami Plaza-Hilton in the early morning of August 9, 1968.
 |  The way Nixon tells the story in his memoirs, he had already
 |  pretty much settled on Gov. Spiro Agnew of Maryland,
 |  reasoning that "with George Wallace in the race, I could not
 |  hope to sweep the South. It was absolutely necessary,
 |  therefore, to win the entire rimland of the South -- the
 |  border states -- as well as the major states of the Midwest
 |  and West." Therefore, says Nixon, he let his advisors
 |  mention names without telling them what he had already
 |  largely decided. "The names most mentioned by those
 |  attending were the familiar ones: Romney, Reagan, John
 |  Lindsay, Percy, Mark Hatfield, John Tower, George Bush, John
 |  Volpe, Rockefeller, with only an occasional mention of
 |  Agnew, sometimes along with Governors John Love of Colorado
 |  and Daniel Evans of Washington." [15]  Nixon also says that
 |  he offered the vice presidency to his close friends Robert
 |  Finch and Rogers Morton, and then told his people that he
 |  wanted Agnew.
 |
 |  But this account disingenuously underestimates how close
 |  Bush came to the vice-presidency in 1968. According to a
 |  well-informed, but favorable, short biography of Bush
 |  published as he was about to take over the presidency, "at
 |  the 1968 GOP convention that nominated Nixon for President,
 |  Bush was said to be on the four-name short list for Vice
 |  President. He attributed that to the campaigning of his
 |  friends, but the seriousness of Nixon's consideration was
 |  widely attested. Certainly Nixon wanted to promote Bush in
 |  one way or another." [16]  Theodore H. White puts Bush on
 |  Nixon's conservative list along with Tower and Howard Baker,
 |  with a separate category of liberals and also "political
 |  eunuchs" like Agnew and Massachusetts Governor John Volpe.
 |  [17]  Jules Witcover thought the reason that Bush had been
 |  eliminated was that he "was too young, only a House member,
 |  and his selection would cause trouble with John Tower," who
 |  was also an aspirant. [18]  The accepted wisdom is that
 |  Nixon decided not to choose Bush because, after all, he was
 |  only a one-term congressman. Most likely, Nixon was
 |  concerned with comparisons that could be drawn with Barry
 |  Goldwater's 1964 choice of New York Congressman Bill Miller
 |  for his running mate. Nixon feared that if he, only four
 |  years later, were to choose a Congressman without a national
 |  profile, the hostile press would compare him to Goldwater
 |  and brand him as yet another Republican loser.
 |
 |  Later in August, Bush traveled to Nixon's beachfront motel
 |  suite at Mission Bay, California to discuss campaign
 |  strategy. It was decided that Bush, Howard Baker, Rep. Clark
 |  MacGregor of Minnesota and Governor Volpe would all function
 |  as "surrogate candidates," campaigning and standing in for
 |  Nixon at engagements Nixon could not fill. And there is
 |  George, in a picture on the top of the front page of the
 |  "New York Times" of August 17, 1968, joining with the other
 |  three to slap a grinning and euphoric Nixon on the back and
 |  shake his hand before they went forth to the hustings.
 |
 |  Bush had no problems of his own with the 1968 election,
 |  since he was running unopposed -- a neat trick for a
 |  Republican in Houston, even taking the designer
 |  gerrymandering into account. Running unopposed seems to be
 |  Bush's idea of an ideal election. According to the "Houston
 |  Chronicle", "Bush ha[d] become so politically formidable
 |  nobody cared to take him on," which should have become
 |  required reading for Gary Hart some years later. Bush had
 |  great hopes that he could help deliver the Texas electoral
 |  votes into the Nixon column. The GOP was counting on further
 |  open warfare between Yarborough and Connally, but these
 |  divisions proved to be insufficient to prevent Hubert
 |  Humphrey, the Democratic nominee, from carrying Texas as he
 |  went down to defeat. As one account of the 1968 vote puts
 |  it: Texas "is a large and exhausting state to campaign in,
 |  but here special emphasis was laid on 'surrogate
 |  candidates': notably Congressman George Bush, a fit-looking
 |  fellow of excellent birth who represented the space-town
 |  suburbs of Houston and was not opposed in his district -- an
 |  indication of the strength of the Republican technocracy in
 |  Texas." (Perhaps, if technocracy is a synonym for
 |  "plumbers.") Winning a second term was no problem; Bush was,
 |  however, mightily embarrassed by his inability to deliver
 |  Texas for Nixon. "|'I don't know what went wrong,' Bush
 |  muttered when interviewed in December. 'There was a hell of
 |  a lot of money spent,'|" much of it coming from the
 |  predecessor organizations to the CREEP. [19] 
 |
 |  When in 1974 Bush briefly appeared to be the front-runner to
 |  be chosen for the vice presidency by the new President
 |  Gerald Ford, the "Washington Post" pointed out that although
 |  Bush was making a serious bid, he had almost no
 |  qualifications for the post. That criticism applied even
 |  more in 1968: For most people, Bush was a rather obscure
 |  Texas pol, and he had lost one statewide race previous to
 |  the election that got him into Congress. The fact that he
 |  made it into the final round at the Miami Hilton was another
 |  tribute to the network mobilizing power of Prescott Bush,
 |  Brown Brothers Harriman, and Skull and Bones.
 |
 |  As the 1970 election approached, Nixon made Bush an
 |  attractive offer. If Bush were willing to give up his
 |  apparently safe congressional seat and his place on the Ways
 |  and Means Committee, Nixon would be happy to help finance
 |  the Senate race. If Bush won a Senate seat, he would be a
 |  front-runner to replace Spiro Agnew in the vice-presidential
 |  spot for 1972. If Bush were to lose the election, he would
 |  then be in line for an appointment to an important post in
 |  the executive branch, most likely a cabinet position. This
 |  deal was enough of an open secret to be discussed in the
 |  Texas press during the fall of 1970: At the time, the
 |  "Houston Post" quoted Bush in response to persistent
 |  Washington newspaper reports that Bush would replace Agnew
 |  on the 1972 ticket. Bush said that was "the most wildly
 |  speculative piece I've seen in a long time." "I hate to
 |  waste time talking about such wild speculation," Bush said
 |  in Austin. "I ought to be out there shaking hands with those
 |  people who stood in the rain to support me." [20] 
 |
 |  In September, the "New York Times" reported that Nixon was
 |  actively recruiting Republican candidates for the Senate.
 |  "Implies He Will Participate in Their Campaigns and Offer
 |  Jobs to Losers"; "Financial Aid is Hinted," said the
 |  subtitles. [21]  It was more than hinted, and the article
 |  listed George Bush as first on the list. As it turned out,
 |  Bush's Senate race was the single most important focus of
 |  Nixon's efforts in the entire country, with both the
 |  President and Agnew actively engaged on the ground. Bush
 |  would receive money from a Nixon slush fund called the
 |  "Townhouse" fund, an operation in the CREEP orbit. Bush was
 |  also the recipient of the largesse of W. Clement Stone, a
 |  Chicago insurance tycoon who had donated heavily to Nixon's
 |  1968 campaign. Bush's friend Tower was the chairman of the
 |  GOP Senatorial Campaign Committee, and Bush's former
 |  campaign aide, Jim Allison, was now the deputy chairman of
 |  the Republican National Committee.
 |
 |  Losing Again
 |
 |  Bush himself was ensconced in the coils of the GOP
 |  fundraising bureaucracy. When in May, 1969, Nixon's crony
 |  Robert Finch, the Secretary of Health, Education and
 |  Welfare, met with members of the Republican Boosters Club,
 |  1969, Bush was with him, along with Tower, Rogers Morton,
 |  and Congressman Bob Wilson of California. The Boosters alone
 |  were estimated to be good for about $1 million in funding
 |  for GOP candidates in 1970. [22] 
 |
 |  By December of 1969, it was clear to all that Bush would get
 |  almost all of the cash in the Texas GOP coffers, and that
 |  Eggers, the party's candidate for governor, would get short
 |  shrift indeed. On December 29, the "Houston Chronicle" front
 |  page opined: "GOP Money To Back Bush, Not Eggers." The
 |  Democratic Senate candidate would later accuse Nixon's crowd
 |  of "trying to buy" the Senate election for Bush: "Washington
 |  has been shovelling so much money into the George Bush
 |  campaign that now other Republican candidates around the
 |  country are demanding an accounting," said Bush's opponent.
 |  [23] 
 |
 |  But that opponent was Lloyd Bentsen, not Ralph Yarborough.
 |  All calculations about the 1970 Senate race had been upset
 |  when, at a relatively late hour, Bentsen, urged on by John
 |  Connally, announced his candidacy in the Democratic primary.
 |  Yarborough, busy with his work as chairman of the Senate
 |  Labor Committee, started his campaigning late. Bentsen's
 |  pitch was to attack anti-war protesters and radicals,
 |  portraying Yarborough as being a ringleader of the
 |  extremists.
 |
 |  Yarborough had lost some of his vim over the years since
 |  1964, and had veered into support for more ecological
 |  legislation and even for some of the anti-human "population
 |  planning" measures that Bush and his circles had been
 |  proposing. But he fought back gamely against Bentsen. When
 |  Bentsen boasted of having done a lot for the Chicanos of the
 |  Rio Grande Valley, Yarborough countered: "What has Lloyd
 |  Bentsen ever done for the valley? The valley is not for
 |  sale. You can't buy people. I never heard of him doing
 |  anything for migrant labor. All I ever heard about was his
 |  father working these wetbacks. All I ever heard was them
 |  exploiting wetbacks," said Yarborough. When Bentsen boasted
 |  of his record of experience, Yarborough counterattacked:
 |  "The only experience that my opponents have had is in
 |  representing the financial interest of big business. They
 |  have both shown marked insensitivity to the needs of the
 |  average citizen of our state."
 |
 |  But, on May 2, Bentsen defeated Yarborough, and an era came
 |  to an end in Texas politics. Bush's 10 to 1 win in his own
 |  primary over his old rival from 1964, Robert Morris, was
 |  scant consolation. Whereas it had been clear how Bush would
 |  have run against Yarborough, it was not at all clear how he
 |  could differentiate himself from Bentsen. Indeed, to many
 |  people the two seemed to be twins: Each was a plutocrat
 |  oilman from Houston, each one was aggressively Anglo-Saxon,
 |  each one had been in the House of Representatives, each one
 |  flaunted a record as a World War II airman. In fact, all
 |  Bentsen needed to do for the rest of the race was to appear
 |  plausible and polite, and let the overwhelming Democratic
 |  advantage in registered voters, especially in the yellow-dog
 |  Democrat rural areas, do his work for him. This Bentsen
 |  posture was punctuated from time to time by appeals to
 |  conservatives who thought that Bush was too liberal for
 |  their tastes.
 |
 |  Bush hoped for a time that his slick television packaging
 |  could save him. His man Harry Treleaven was once more
 |  brought in. Bush paid more than half a million dollars, a
 |  tidy sum at that time, to Glenn Advertising for a series of
 |  Kennedyesque "natural look" campaign spots. Soon Bush was
 |  cavorting on the tube in all of his arid vapidity, jogging
 |  across the street, trotting down the steps, bounding around
 |  Washington and playing touch football, always filled with
 |  youth, vigor, action and thyroxin. The Plain Folks praised
 |  Bush as "just fantastic" in these spots. Suffering the
 |  voters to come unto him, Bush responded to all comers that
 |  he "understands," with the shot fading out before he could
 |  say what it was he understood or what he might propose to
 |  do. [24]  "Sure, it's tough to be up against the machine,
 |  the big boys," said the Skull and Bones candidate in these
 |  spots; Bush actually had more money to spend than even the
 |  well-heeled Bentsen. The unifying slogan for imparting the
 |  proper spin to Bush was "He can do more." "He can do more"
 |  had problems that were evident even to some of the 1970
 |  Bushmen: "A few in the Bush camp questioned that general
 |  approach because once advertising programs are set into
 |  motion they are extremely difficult to change and there was
 |  the concern that if Nixon should be unpopular at campaign's
 |  end, the theme line would become, 'He can do more for
 |  Nixon,' with obvious downsides." [25]  Although Bentsen's
 |  spots were said to give him "all the animation of a
 |  cadaver," he was more substantive than Bush, and he was
 |  moving ahead.
 |
 |  Were there issues that could help George? His ads put his
 |  opposition to school busing to achieve racial balance at the
 |  top of the list, but this wedge-mongerging got him nowhere.
 |  Because of his servility to Nixon, Bush had to support the
 |  buzz-word of a "guaranteed annual income," which was the
 |  label under which Nixon was marketing the workfare
 |  slave-labor program already described; but to many in Texas
 |  that sounded like a new give-away, and Bentsen was quick to
 |  take advantage. Bush bragged that he had been one of the
 |  original sponsors of the bill that had just semi-privatized
 |  the U.S. Post Office Department as the Postal Service -- not
 |  exactly a success story in retrospect. Bush came on as a
 |  "fiscal conservative," but this also was of little help
 |  against Bentsen.
 |
 |  In an interview on women's issues, Bush first joked that
 |  there really was no consensus among women -- "the concept of
 |  a women's movement is unreal -- you can't get two women to
 |  agree on anything." On abortion he commented: "I realize
 |  this is a politically sensitive area. But I believe in a
 |  woman's right to choose. It should be an individual matter.
 |  I think ultimately it will be a constitutional question. I
 |  don't favor a federal abortion law as such." After 1980, for
 |  those who choose to believe him, this changed to strong
 |  opposition to abortion. ...
 |
 |  Could Nixon and Agnew help Bush? Agnew's message fell flat
 |  in Texas, since he knew it was too dangerous to try to get
 |  to the right of Bentsen and attack him from there. Instead,
 |  Agnew went through the follwing contortion: A vote for
 |  Bentsen, Agnew told audiences in Lubbock and Amarillo, "is a
 |  vote to keep William Fulbright chairman of the Senate
 |  Foreign Relations Committee," and that was not what "Texans
 |  want at all." Agnew tried to put Bentsen in the same boat
 |  with "radical liberals" like Yarborough, Fulbright, McGovern
 |  and Kennedy. Bentsen invited Agnew to move on to Arkansas
 |  and fight it out with Fulbright, and that was that.
 |
 |  Could Nixon himself help Bush? Nixon did campaign in the
 |  state. Bentsen then told a group of "Anglo-American"
 |  businessmen: Texans want "a man who can stand alone without
 |  being propped up by the White House."
 |
 |  In the end, Bentsen defeated Bush by a vote of 1,197,726 to
 |  Bush's 1,035,794, about 53 percent to 47 percent. The
 |  official Bushman explanation was that there were two
 |  proposed amendments to the Texas constitution on the ballot,
 |  one to allow saloons, and one to allow all undeveloped land
 |  to be taxed at the same rate as farmland. According to
 |  Bushman apologetics, these two propositions attracted so
 |  much interest among "yellow dog" rural conservatives that
 |  300,000 extra voters came out, and this gave Bentsen his
 |  critical margin of victory. There was also speculation that
 |  Nixon and Agnew had attracted so much attention that more
 |  voters had come out, but many of these were Bentsen
 |  supporters. On the night of the election, Bush said that he
 |  "felt like General Custer. They asked him why he had lost
 |  and he said 'There were too many Indians. All I can say at
 |  this point is that there were too many Democrats,'|" said
 |  the fresh two-time loser. Bentsen suggested that it was time
 |  for Bush to be appointed to a high position in the
 |  government. [26] 
 |
 |  Bush's other consolation was a telegram dated November 5,
 |  1970: "From personal experience I know the disappointment
 |  that you and your family must feel at this time. I am sure,
 |  however, that you will not allow this defeat to discourage
 |  you in your efforts to continue to provide leadership for
 |  our party and the nation. Richard Nixon.
 |
 |  This was Nixon's euphemistic way of reassuring Bush that
 |  they still had a deal. [27] 
 |
 |  Footnotes
 |
 |  14. Norman Mailer, "Miami and the Siege of Chicago" (New
 |  York: D.I. Fine, 1968), pp. 72-73.
 |
 |  15. Richard Nixon, "RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon" (New
 |  York: Warner Books, 1978), p. 312.
 |
 |  16. "Congressional Quarterly," "President Bush,"
 |  (Washington: 1989) p. 94.
 |
 |  17. Theodore H. White, "The Making of the President 1968"
 |  (New York: Atheneum Publishers, 1969),p. 251.
 |
 |  18. Jules Witcover, "The Resurrection of Richard Nixon" (New
 |  York: Putnam, 1970), p. 352.
 |
 |  19. Lewis Chester et al., "An American Melodrama: the
 |  Presidential Campaign of 1968" (London: Deutch, 1969), p.
 |  622.
 |
 |  20. "Houston Post," Oct. 29, 1970.
 |
 |  21. "New York Times," Sept. 27, 1969.
 |
 |  22. "New York Times," May 13, 1969.
 |
 |  23. "Houston Chronicle," Oct. 6, 1970.
 |
 |  24. See "Tubing with Lloyd/George," "Texas Observer," Oct.
 |  30, 1970.
 |
 |  25. Knaggs, "op. cit.," p. 148.
 |
 |  26. "Houston Post," Nov. 5, 1970.
 |
 |  27. Bush and Gold, "op. cit.," p. 102.
 |
 |
 |  CHAPTER 12
 |
 |  UNITED NATIONS AMBASSADOR, KISSINGER CLONE
 |
 |  At this point in his career, George Bush entered into a
 |  phase of close association with both Richard Nixon and Henry
 |  Kissinger. As we will see, Bush was a member of the Nixon
 |  cabinet from the spring of 1971 until the day that Nixon
 |  resigned. We will see Bush on a number of important
 |  occasions literally acting as Nixon's speaking tube,
 |  especially in international crisis situations. During these
 |  years, Nixon was Bush's patron, providing him with
 |  appointments and urging him to look forward to bigger things
 |  in the future. On certain occasions, however, Bush was
 |  upstaged by others in his quest for Nixon's favor. Then
 |  there was Kissinger, far and away the most powerful figure
 |  in the Washington regime of those days, who became Bush's
 |  boss when the latter became the U.S. ambassador to the
 |  United Nations in New York City. Later, on the campaign
 |  trail in 1980, Bush would offer to make Kissinger secretary
 |  of state in his administration.
 |
 |  Bush was now listing a net worth of over $1.3 million [1] ,
 |  but the fact is that he was now unemployed, but anxious to
 |  assume the next official post, to take the next step of what
 |  in the career of a Roman Senator was called the "cursus
 |  honorum," the patrician career, for this is what he felt the
 |  world owed him.
 |
 |  Nixon had promised Bush an attractive and prestigious
 |  political plum in the executive branch, and it was now time
 |  for Nixon to deliver. Bush's problem was that in late 1970
 |  Nixon was more interested in what another Texan could
 |  contribute to his administration. That other Texan was John
 |  Connally, who had played the role of Bush's nemesis in the
 |  elections just concluded, by virtue of the encouragement and
 |  decisive support which Connally had given to the Bentsen
 |  candidacy. Nixon was now fascinated by the prospect of
 |  including the right-wing Democrat Connally in his cabinet in
 |  order to provide himself with a patina of bipartisanship,
 |  while emphasizing the dissension among the Democrats,
 |  strengthening Nixon's chances of successfully executing his
 |  Southern Strategy a second time during the 1972 elections.
 |
 |  The word among Nixon's inner circle of this period was "The
 |  Boss is in love," and the object of his affections was Big
 |  Jawn. Nixon claimed that he was not happy with the stature
 |  of his current cabinet, telling his domestic policy advisor
 |  John Ehrlichman in the fall of 1970 that "Every cabinet
 |  should have at least one potential President in it. Mine
 |  doesn't." Nixon had tried to recruit leading Democrats
 |  before, asking Senator Henry Jackson to be secretary of
 |  defense and offering the post of United Nations ambassador
 |  to Hubert Humphrey.
 |
 |  Within hours after the polls had closed in the Texas Senate
 |  race, Bush received a call from Charles Bartlett, a
 |  Washington columnist who was part of the Prescott Bush
 |  network. Bartlett tipped Bush to the fact that Treasury
 |  Secretary David Kennedy was leaving, and urged him to make a
 |  grab for the job. Bush called Nixon and put in his request.
 |  After that, he waited by the telephone. But it soon became
 |  clear that Nixon was about to recruit John Connally, and
 |  with him, perhaps, the important Texas electoral votes in
 |  1972. Secretary of the Treasury! One of the three or four
 |  top posts in the cabinet! And that before Bush had been
 |  given anything for all of his useless slogging through the
 |  1970 campaign! But the job was about to go to Connally. Over
 |  two decades, one can almost hear Bush's whining complaint.
 |
 |  This move was not totally unprepared. During the fall of
 |  1970, when Connally was campaigning for Bentsen against
 |  Bush, Connally had been invited to participate in the Ash
 |  Commission, a study group on government re-organization
 |  chaired by Roy Ash. "This White House access was dangerously
 |  undermining George Bush," complained Texas GOP chairman
 |  O'Donnell. A personal friend of Bush on the White House
 |  staff named Peter Flanigan, generated a memo to White House
 |  Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman with the notation: "Connally is
 |  an implacable enemy of the Republican party in Texas, and,
 |  therefore, attractive as he may be to the President, we
 |  should avoid using him again." Nixon found Connally an
 |  attractive political property, and had soon appointed him to
 |  the main White House panel for intelligence evaluations: "On
 |  November 30, when Connally's appointment to the Foreign
 |  Intelligence Advisory Board was announced, the senior
 |  Senator from Texas, John Tower, and George Bush were
 |  instantly in touch with the White House to express their
 |  'extreme' distress over the appointment. [2]  Tower was
 |  indignant because he had been promised by Ehrlichman some
 |  time before that Connally was not going to receive an
 |  important post. Bush's personal plight was even more
 |  poignant: "He was out of work, and he wanted a job. As a
 |  defeated senatorial candidate, he hoped and fully expected
 |  to get a major job in the administration. Yet the
 |  administration seemed to be paying more attention to the
 |  very Democrat who had put him on the job market. What gives?
 |  Bush was justified in asking." [3] 
 |
 |  The appointment of Connally to replace David Kennedy as
 |  secretary of the Treasury was concluded during the first
 |  week of December 1970. But it could not be announced without
 |  causing an upheaval among the Texas Republicans until
 |  something had been done for lame duck George. On December 7,
 |  Nixon retainer H.R. Haldeman was writing memos to himself in
 |  the White House. The first was: "Connally set." Then came:
 |  "Have to do something for Bush right away." Could Bush
 |  become the director of NASA? How about the Small Business
 |  Administration? Or the Republican National Committee? Or
 |  then again, he might like to be White House congressional
 |  liaison, or perhaps undersecretary of commerce. As one
 |  account puts it, "since no job immediately came to mind,
 |  Bush was assured that he would come to the White House as a
 |  top presidential adviser on something or other, until
 |  another fitting job opened up."
 |
 |  Bush was called to the White House on December 9, 1970 to
 |  meet with Nixon and talk about a post as assistant to the
 |  President "with a wide range of unspecified general
 |  responsibilities," according to a White House memo initialed
 |  by H.R. Haldeman. Bush accepted such a post at one point in
 |  his haggling with the Nixon White House. But Bush also
 |  sought the U.N. job, arguing that there "was a dirth [sic]
 |  of Nixon advocacy in New York City and the general New York
 |  area that he could fill that need in the New York social
 |  circles he would be moving in as ambassador. [4]  Nix on's
 |  U.N. ambassador had been Charles Yost, a Democrat who was
 |  now leaving. But the White House had already offered that
 |  job to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who had accepted.
 |
 |  But then Moynihan decided that he did not want the U.N.
 |  ambassador post after all, and, with a sigh of relief, the
 |  White House offered it to Bush. Bush's appointment was
 |  announced on December 11, Connally's on December 14.  [5] 
 |  In offering the post to Bush, Haldeman had been brutally
 |  frank, telling him that the job, although of cabinet rank,
 |  would have no power attached to it. Bush, stressed Haldeman,
 |  would be taking orders directly from Kissinger. Bush says he
 |  replied, "even if somebody who took the job didn't
 |  understand that, Henry Kissinger would give him a
 |  twenty-four hour crash course on the subject." [6] 
 |
 |  Nixon told his cabinet and the Republican congressional
 |  leadership on December 14, 1970 what had been in the works
 |  for some time: that Connally was "coming not only as a
 |  Democrat but as Secretary of the Treasury for the next two
 |  full years." Even more humiliating for Bush wasthe fact that
 |  our hero had been on the receiving end of Connally's
 |  assistance. As Nixon told the cabinet: "Connally said he
 |  wouldn't take it until George Bush got whatever he was
 |  entitled to. I don't know why George wanted the U.N.
 |  appointment, but he wanted it so he got it." Only this
 |  precondition from Connally, by implication, had finally
 |  prompted Nixon to take care of poor George. Nixon turned to
 |  Senator Tower, who was in the meeting: "This is hard for
 |  you. I am for every Republican running. We need John Tower
 |  back in 1972." Tower replied: "I'm a pragmatic man. John
 |  Connally is philosophically attuned to you. He is articulate
 |  and persuasive. I for one will defend him against those in
 |  our own party who may not like him." [7] 
 |
 |  There is evidence that Nixon considered Connally to be a
 |  possible successor in the presidency. Connally's approach to
 |  the international monetary crisis then unfolding was that
 |  "all foreigners are out to screw us and it's our job to
 |  screw them first," as he told C. Fred Bergsten of
 |  Kissinger's National Security Council staff. Nixon's
 |  bumbling management of the international monetary crisis was
 |  one of the reasons why he was Watergated, and Big Jawn was
 |  certainly seen by the financiers as a big part of the
 |  problem. Bush was humiliated in this episode, but that is
 |  nothing compared to what later happened to both Connally and
 |  Nixon. Connally would be indicted while Bush was in Beijing,
 |  and later he would face the further humilation of personal
 |  bankruptcy. In the view of James Reston, Jr., "George Bush
 |  was to maintain a smoldering, visceral dislike of Connally,
 |  one that lasted well into the 1980s." [8]  As others
 |  discovered during the Gulf war, Bush is vindictive.
 |
 |  Confirmed by the Senate
 |
 |  Bush appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
 |  for his pro forma and perfunctory confirmation hearings on
 |  February 8, 1971. It was a free ride. Many of the Senators
 |  had known Prescott Bush, and several were still Prescott's
 |  friends. Acting like friends of the family, they gave Bush
 |  friendly advice with a tone that was congratulatory and
 |  warm, and avoided any tough questions. Stuart Symington
 |  warned Bush that he would have to deal with the "duality of
 |  authority" between his nominal boss, Secretary of State
 |  William Rogers, and his real boss, NSC chief Kissinger.
 |  There was only passing reference to Bush's service of the
 |  oil cartel during his time in the House, and Bush vehemently
 |  denied that he had ever tried to "placate" the "oil
 |  interests." Claiborne Pell said that Bush would enhance the
 |  luster of the U.N. post.
 |
 |  On policy matters, Bush said that it would "make sense" for
 |  the U.N. Security Council to conduct a debate on the wars in
 |  Laos and Cambodia, which was something that the United
 |  States had been attempting to procure for some time. Bush
 |  thought that such a debate could be used as a forum to
 |  expose the aggressive activities of the North Vietnamese. No
 |  senator asked Bush about China, but Bush told journalists
 |  waiting in the hall that the question of China was now under
 |  intensive study. The "Washington Post" was impressed by
 |  Bush's "lithe and youthful good looks." Bush was easily
 |  confirmed.
 |
 |  At Bush's swearing-in later in February, Nixon, probably
 |  anxious to calm Bush down after the strains of the Connally
 |  affair, had recalled that President William McKinley had
 |  lost an election in Ohio, but neverthless gone on to become
 |  President. "But I'm not suggesting what office you should
 |  seek and at what time," said Nixon. The day before, Senator
 |  Adlai Stevenson III of Illinois had told the press that Bush
 |  was "totally unqualified" and that his appointment had been
 |  "an insult" to the U.N. Bush presented his credentials on
 |  March 1.
 |
 |  Then Bush, "handsome and trim" at 47, moved into a suite at
 |  the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan, and settled into his
 |  usual hyperkinetic, thyroid-driven lifestyle. The
 |  "Washington Post" marveled at his "whirlwind schedule" which
 |  seemed more suitable for a "political aspirant than one
 |  usually associated with a diplomat." He rose every morning
 |  at 7:00 A.M., and then mountedhis exercycle for a
 |  twelve-minute workout while taking in a television news
 |  program that also lasted exactly twelve minutes. He ate a
 |  small breakfast and left the Waldorf at 8:00, to be driven
 |  to the U.S. mission to the U.N. at Turtle Bay where he
 |  generally arrived at 8:10. Then he would get the overnight
 |  cable traffic from his secretary, Mrs. Aleene Smith, and
 |  then went into a conference with his executive assistant,
 |  Tom Lais. Later there would be meetings with his two
 |  deputies, Ambassadors Christopher Phillips and W. Tapley
 |  Bennett of the State Department. Pete Roussel was also still
 |  with him as publicity man.
 |
 |  For Bush, a 16-hour work day was more the rule than the
 |  exception. His days were packed with one appointment after
 |  another, luncheon engagements, receptions, formal dinners --
 |  at least one reception and one dinner per day. Sometimes
 |  there were three receptions per day -- quite an opportunity
 |  for networking with like-minded freemasons from all over the
 |  world. Bush also traveled to Washington for cabinet
 |  meetings, and still did speaking engagements around the
 |  country, especially for Republican candidates. "I try to get
 |  to bed by 11:30 if possible, " said Bush in 1971, "but often
 |  my calendar is so filled that I fall behind in my work and
 |  have to take it home with me." Bush bragged that he was
 |  still a "pretty tough" doubles player in tennis, good enough
 |  to team up with the pros. But he claimed to love baseball
 |  most. He joked about questions on his ping pong skills,
 |  since these were the months of ping pong diplomacy, when the
 |  invitation for a U.S. ping pong team to visit Beijing became
 |  a part of the preparation for Kissinger's China card.
 |
 |  Mainly, Bush came on as an ultra-orthodox Nixon loyalist.
 |  Was he a liberal conservative? asked a reporter. "People in
 |  Texas used to ask me that in the campaigns," replied Bush.
 |  "Some even called me a right-wing reactionary. I like to
 |  think of myself as a pragmatist, but I have learned to defy
 |  being labeled.... What I can say is that I am a strong
 |  supporter of the President. If you can tell me what he is, I
 |  can tell you what I am." Barbara liked the Waldorf suite,
 |  and was an enthusiastic hostess.
 |
 |  Soon after taking up his U.N. posting, Bush received a phone
 |  call from Assistant Secretary of State for Middle Eastern
 |  Affairs Joseph Sisco, one of Kissinger's principal henchmen.
 |  Sisco had been angered by some comments Bush had made about
 |  the Middle East situation in a press conference after
 |  presenting his credentials. Despite the fact that Bush, as a
 |  cabinet officer, ranked several levels above Sisco, Sisco
 |  was in effect the voice of Kissinger. Sisco told Bush that
 |  it was Sisco who spoke for the United States government on
 |  the Middle East, and that he would do both the on-the-record
 |  talking and the leaking about that area. Bush knuckled
 |  under, for these were the realities of the Kissinger years.
 |
 |  Kissinger's Clone
 |
 |  Henry Kissinger was now Bush's boss even more than Nixon
 |  was, and later, as the Watergate scandal progres sed into
 |  1973, the dominion of Kissinger would become even more
 |  absolute. During these years Bush, serving his
 |  apprenticeship in diplomacy and world strategy under
 |  Kissinger, became a virtual Kissinger clone in two senses.
 |  First, to a significant degree, Kissinger's networks and
 |  connections merged together with Bush's own, foreshadowing a
 |  1989 administration in which the NSC director and the number
 |  two man in the State Department were both Kissinger's
 |  business partners from his consulting and influence-peddling
 |  firm, Kissinger Associates. Secondly, Bush assimilated
 |  Kissinger's characteristic British-style geopolitical
 |  mentality and approach to problems, and this is now the
 |  epistemology that dictates Bush's own dealing with the main
 |  questions of world politics.
 |
 |  The most essential level of Kissinger was the British one.
 |  [9]  This meant that U.S. foreign policy was to be guided by
 |  British imperial geopolitics, in particular the notion of
 |  the balance of power: The United States must always ally
 |  with the second strongest land power in the world (Red
 |  China) against the strongest land power (the U.S.S.R.) in
 |  order to preserve the balance of power. This was expressed
 |  in the 1971-72 Nixon-Kissinger opening to Beijing, to which
 |  Bush would contribute from his U.N. post. The balance of
 |  power, since it rules out a positive engagement for the
 |  economic progress of the international community as a whole,
 |  has always been a recipe for new wars. Kissinger was in
 |  constant contact with British foreign policy operatives like
 |  Sir Eric Roll of S.G. Warburg in London, Lord Victor
 |  Rothschild, the Barings bank and others.
 |
 |  On May 10, 1982, in a speech entitled "Reflections on a
 |  Partnership" given at the Royal Institute of International
 |  Affairs at Chatham House in London, Henry Kissinger openly
 |  expounded his role and philosophy as a British
 |  agent-of-influence within the U.S. government during the
 |  Nixon and Ford years:
 |
 |  "The British were so matter-of-factly helpful that they
 |  became a participant in internal American deliberations, to
 |  a degree probably never before practiced between sovereign
 |  nations. In my period in office, the British played a
 |  seminal part in certain American bilateral negotiations with
 |  the Soviet Union -- indeed, they helped draft the key
 |  document. In my White House incarnation then, I kept the
 |  British Foreign Office better informed and more closely
 |  engaged than I did the American State Department.... In my
 |  negotiations over Rhodesia I worked from a British draft
 |  with British spelling even when I did not fully grasp the
 |  distinction between a working paper and a Cabinet-approved
 |  document."
 |
 |  Kissinger was also careful to point out that the United
 |  States must support colonial and neo-colonial strategies
 |  against the developing sector:
 |
 |  "Americans from Franklin Roosevelt onward believed that the
 |  United States, with its 'revolutionary' heritage, was the
 |  natural ally of people struggling against colonialism; we
 |  could win the allegiance of these new nations by opposing
 |  and occasionally undermining our European allies in the
 |  areas of their colonial dominance. Churchill, of course,
 |  resisted these American pressures.... In this context, the
 |  experience of Suez is instructive.... Our humiliation of
 |  Britain and France over Suez was a shattering blow to these
 |  countries' role as world powers. It accelerated their
 |  shedding of international responsibilities, some of the
 |  consequences of which we saw in succeeding decades when
 |  reality forced us to step into their shoes -- in the Persian
 |  Gulf, to take one notable example. Suez thus added
 |  enormously to America's burdens."
 |
 |  Kissinger was the high priest of imperialism and
 |  neocolonialism, animated by an instinctive hatred for Indira
 |  Gandhi, Aldo Moro, Ali Bhutto, and other nationalist world
 |  leaders. Kissinger's British geopolitics simply accentuated
 |  Bush's own fanatically Anglophile point of view, which he
 |  had acquired from father Prescott and imbibed from the
 |  atmosphere of the family firm, Brown Brothers Harriman,
 |  originally the U.S. branch of a British counting house.
 |
 |  Kissinger was also a Zionist, dedicated to economic,
 |  diplomatic, and military support of Israeli aggression and
 |  expansionism to keep the Middle East in turmoil, so as to
 |  prevent Arab unity and Arab economic development while using
 |  the region to mount challenges to the Soviets. In this he
 |  was a follower of British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli
 |  and Lord Balfour. In the 1973 Middle East war which he had
 |  connived to unleash, Kissinger would mastermind the U.S.
 |  resupply of Israel and would declare a U.S.-worldwide
 |  thermonuclear alert. In later years, Kissinger would enrich
 |  himself through speculative real estate purchases on the
 |  West bank of the Jordan, buying up land and buildings that
 |  had been virtually confiscated from defenseless Palestinian
 |  Arabs.
 |
 |  Kissinger was also Soviet in a sense that went far beyond
 |  his sponsorship of the 1970s detente, SALT I, and the ABM
 |  treaty with Moscow. Polish KGB agent Michael Goleniewski is
 |  widely reported to have told the British government in 1972
 |  that he had seen KGB documents in Poland before his 1959
 |  defection which established that Kissinger was a Soviet
 |  asset. According to Goleniewski, Kissinger had been
 |  recruited by the Soviets during his Army service in Germany
 |  after the end of World War II, when he had worked as a
 |  humble chauffeur.
 |
 |  Kissinger had allegedly been recruited to an espionage cell
 |  called ODRA, where he received the code name of "BOR" or
 |  "COLONEL BOR." Some versions of this story also specify that
 |  this cell had been largely composed of homosexuals, and that
 |  homosexuality had been an important part of the way that
 |  Kissinger had been picked up by the KGB. These reports were
 |  reportedly partly supported by Golitsyn, another Soviet
 |  defector. The late James Jesus Angleton, the CIA
 |  counterintelligence director for 20 years up to 1973, was
 |  said to have been the U.S. official who was handed
 |  Goleniewski's report by the British. Angleton later talked a
 |  lot about Kissinger being "objectively a Soviet agent." It
 |  has not been established that Angleton ever ordered an
 |  active investigation of Kissinger or ever assigned his case
 |  a codename. [10] 
 |
 |  Kissinger's Chinese side was very much in evidence during
 |  1971-73 and beyond; during these years he was obsessed with
 |  anything remotely connected with China and sought to
 |  monopolize decisions and contacts with the highest levels of
 |  the Chinese leadership. This attitude was dictated most of
 |  all by the British mentality and geopolitical considerations
 |  indicated above, but it is also unquestionable that
 |  Kissinger felt a strong personal affinity for Zhou Enlai,
 |  Mao Zedong, and the other Chinese leaders, who had been
 |  responsible for the genocide of 100 million of their own
 |  people after 1949.
 |
 |  Kissinger possessed other dimensions in addition to these,
 |  including close links to the Zionist underworld. These will
 |  also loom large in George Bush's career.
 |
 |  For all of these Kissingerian enormities, Bush now became
 |  the principal spokesman. In the process, he was to become a
 |  Kissinger clone.
 |
 |  The China Card
 |
 |  The defining events in the first year of Bush's U.N. tenure
 |  reflected Kissinger's geoplitical obsession with his China
 |  card. Remember that in his 1964 campaign, Bush had stated
 |  that Red China must never be admitted to the U.N. and that
 |  if Beijing ever obtained the Chinese seat on the Security
 |  Council, the U.S.A. must depart forthwith from the world
 |  body. This statement came back to haunt him once or twice.
 |  His stock answer went like this: "That was 1964, a long time
 |  ago. There's been an awful lot changed since.... A person
 |  who is unwilling to admit that changes have taken place is
 |  out of things these days. President Nixon is not being naive
 |  in his China policy. He is recognizing the realities of
 |  today, not the realities of seven years ago."
 |
 |  One of the realities of 1971 was that the bankrupt British
 |  had declared themselves to be financially unable to maintain
 |  their military presence in the Indian Ocean and the Far
 |  East, in the area "East of Suez." Part of the timing of the
 |  Kissinger China card was dictated by the British desire to
 |  acquire China as a c ounterweight to India in this vast area
 |  of the world, and also to insure a U.S. military presence in
 |  the Indian Ocean, as seen later in the U.S. development of
 |  an important base on the island of Diego Garcia.
 |
 |  On a world tour during 1969, Nixon had told President Yahya
 |  Khan, the dictator of Pakistan, that his administration
 |  wanted to normalize relations with Red China and wanted the
 |  help of the Pakistani government in exchanging messages.
 |  Regular meetings between the United States and Beijing had
 |  gone on for many years in Warsaw, but what Nixon was talking
 |  about was a total reversal of U.S. China policy. Up until
 |  1971, the U.S.A. had recognized the government of the
 |  Republic of China on Taiwan as the sole sovereign and
 |  legitimate authority over China. The United States, unlike
 |  Britain, France, and many other Western countries, had no
 |  diplomatic relations with the Beijing Communist regime.
 |
 |  The Chinese seat among the five permanent members of the
 |  United Nations Security Council was held by the government
 |  in Taipei. Every year in the early autumn there was an
 |  attempt by the non-alignedbloc to oust Taipei from the
 |  Security Council and replace them with Beijing, but so far
 |  this vote had always failed because of U.S. arm-twisting in
 |  Latin America and the rest of the Third World. One of the
 |  reasons that this arrangement had endured so long was the
 |  immense prestige of R.O.C. President Chiang Kai-shek and the
 |  sentimental popularity of the Kuomintang with the American
 |  electorate. There still was a very powerful China lobby,
 |  which was especially strong among right-wing Republicans of
 |  what had been the Taft and Knowland factions of the party,
 |  and which Goldwater continued. Now, in the midst of the
 |  Vietnam War, with U.S. strategic and economic power in
 |  decline, the Anglo-American elite decided in favor of a
 |  geopolitical alliance with China against the Soviets for the
 |  foreseeable future. This meant that the honor of U.S.
 |  commitments to the R.O.C. had to be dumped overboard as so
 |  much useless ballast, whatever the domestic political
 |  consequences might be. This was the task given to Kissinger,
 |  Nixon, and George Bush.
 |
 |  The maneuver on the agenda for 1971 was to oust the R.O.C.
 |  from the U.N. Security Council and assign their seat to
 |  Beijing. Kissinger and Nixon calculated that duplicity would
 |  insulate them from domestic political damage: While they
 |  were opening to Beijing, they would call for a "two Chinas"
 |  policy, under which both Beijing and Taipei would be
 |  represented at the U.N., at least in the General Assembly,
 |  despite the fact that this was an alternative that both
 |  Chinese governments vehemently rejected. The U.S.A. would
 |  pretend to be fighting to keep Taipei in the U.N., with
 |  George Bush leading the fake charge, but this effort would
 |  be defeated. Then the Nixon administration could claim that
 |  the vote in the U.N. was beyond its control, comfortably
 |  resign itself to Beijing in the Security Council, and pursue
 |  the China card. What was called for was a cynical,
 |  duplicitous diplomatic charade in which Bush would have the
 |  leading part.
 |
 |  This scenario was complicated by the rivalry between
 |  Secretary of State Rogers and NSC boss Kissinger. Rogers was
 |  an old friend of Nixon, but it was of course Kissinger who
 |  made foreign policy for Nixon and the rest of the
 |  government, and Kissinger who was incomparably the greater
 |  evil. Between Rogers and Kissinger, Bush was unhesitatingly
 |  on the side of Kissinger. In later congressional testimony,
 |  former CIA official Ray Cline tried to argue that Rogers and
 |  Bush were kept in the dark by Nixon and Kissinger about the
 |  real nature of the U.S. China policy. The implication is
 |  that Bush's efforts to keep Taiwan at the U.N. were in good
 |  faith. According to Cline's fantastic account, "Nixon and
 |  Kissinger actually 'undermined' the department's efforts in
 |  1971 to save Taiwan." [11]  Rogers may have believed that
 |  helping Taiwan was U.S. policy, but Bush did not. Cline's
 |  version of these events is an insult to the intelligence of
 |  any serious person.
 |
 |  The Nixon-era China card took shape during July 1971 with
 |  Kissinger's "Operation Marco Polo I," his secret first trip
 |  to Beijing. Kissinger says in his memoirs that Bush was
 |  considered a candidate to make this journey, along with
 |  David Bruce, Elliot Richardson, Nelson Rockefeller, and Al
 |  Haig.  [12]  Kissinger first journeyed to India, and then to
 |  Pakistan. From there, with the help of Yahya Khan, Kissinger
 |  went on to Beijing for meetings with Zhou Enlai and other
 |  Chinese officals. He returned by way of Paris, where he met
 |  with North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho at the Paris
 |  talks on Indo-China. Returning to Washington, Kissinger
 |  briefed Nixon on his understanding with Zhou. On July 15,
 |  1971 Nixon announced to a huge television and radio audience
 |  that he had accepted "with pleasure" an invitation to visit
 |  China at some occasion before May of 1972. He lamely assured
 |  "old friends" (meaning Chiang Kai-shek and the R.O.C.
 |  government on Taiwan) that their interests would not be
 |  sacrificed. Later in the same year, between October 16 and
 |  26, Kissinger undertook operation "Polo II," a second,
 |  public visit with Zhou in Beijing to decide the details of
 |  Nixon's visit and hammer out what was to become the
 |  U.S.-P.R.C. Shanghai Communique, the joint statement issued
 |  during Nixon's stay. During this visit, Zhou cautioned
 |  Kissinger not to be disoriented by the hostile Beijing
 |  propaganda line against the U.S.A., manifestations of which
 |  were everywhere to be seen. Anti-U.S. slogans on the walls,
 |  said Zhou, were meaningless, like "firing an empty cannon."
 |  Nixon and Kissinger eventually journeyed to Beijing in
 |  February 1972.
 |
 |  U.N. 'Two Chinas' Farce
 |
 |  It was before this backdrop that Bush waged his farcical
 |  campaign to keep Taiwan in the U.N. The State Department had
 |  stated through the mouth of Rogers on August 2 that the
 |  United States would support the admission of Red China to
 |  the U.N., but would oppose the expulsion of Taiwan. This was
 |  the so-called "two Chinas" policy. In an August 12
 |  interview, Bush told the "Washington Post" that he was
 |  working hard to line up the votes to keep Taiwan as a U.N.
 |  member when the time to vote came in the fall. Responding to
 |  the obvious impression that this was a fraud for domestic
 |  political purposes only, Bush pledged his honor on Nixon's
 |  commitment to "two Chinas." "I know for a fact that the
 |  President wants to see the policy implemented," said Bush,
 |  apparently with a straight face, adding that he had
 |  discussed the matter with Nixon and Kissinger at the White
 |  House only a few days before. Bush said that he and other
 |  members of his mission had lobbied 66 countries so far, and
 |  that this figure was likely to rise to 80 by the following
 |  week. Ultimately Bush would claim to have talked personlly
 |  with 94 delegations to get them to let Taiwan stay, which a
 |  fellow diplomat called "a quantitative track record."
 |
 |  Diplomatic observers noted that the U.S. activity was
 |  entirely confined to the high-profile "glass palace" of the
 |  U.N., and that virtually nothing was being done by U.S.
 |  ambassadors in capitals around the world. But Bush countered
 |  that if it were just a question of going through the motions
 |  as a gesture for Taiwan, he would not be devoting so much of
 |  his time and energy to the cause. The main effort was at the
 |  U.N. because "this is what the U.N. is for," he commented.
 |  Bush said that his optimism about keeping the Taiwan
 |  membership had increased over the past three weeks. [13] 
 |
 |  By late September, Bush was saying that he saw a better than
 |  50-50 chance that the U.N. General Assembly would seat both
 |  Chinese governments. By this time, the official U.S.
 |  position as enunciated by Bush was that the Security Council
 |  seat should go to Beijing, but that Taipei ought to be
 |  allowed to remain in the General Assembly. Since 1961, the
 |  U.S. strategy for blocking the admission of Beijing had
 |  depended on a procedural defense, obtaining a simple
 |  majority of the General Assembly for a resolution defining
 |  the seating of Beijing as an Important Question, which
 |  required a two-thirds majority in order to be implemented.
 |  Thus, if the U.S .A. could get a simple majority on the
 |  procedural vote, one-third plus one would suffice to defeat
 |  Beijing on the second vote.
 |
 |  The General Assembly convened on September 21. Bush and his
 |  aides were running a ludicrous full-court press on scores of
 |  delegations. Twice a day, there was a State Department
 |  briefing on the vote tally. "Yes, Burundi is with us....
 |  About Argentina we're not sure," etc. All this attention got
 |  Bush an appearance on "Face the Nation," where he said that
 |  the two-Chinas policy should be approved regardless of the
 |  fact that both Beijing and Taipei rejected it. "I don't
 |  think we have to go through the agony of whether the
 |  Republic of China will accept or whether Beijing will
 |  accept," Bush told the interviewers. "Let the United Nations
 |  for a change do something that really does face up to
 |  reality and then let that decision be made by the parties
 |  involved," said Bush with his usual inimitable rhetorical
 |  flair.
 |
 |  The U.N. debate on the China seat was scheduled to open on
 |  October 18; on October 12, Nixon gave a press conference in
 |  which he totally ignored the subject, and made no appeal for
 |  support for Taiwan. On October 16, Kissinger departed with
 |  great fanfare for Beijing. Kissinger says in his memoirs
 |  that he had been encouraged to go to Beijing by Bush, who
 |  assured him that a highly publicized Kissinger trip to
 |  Beijing would have no impact whatever on the U.N. vote. On
 |  October 25, the General Assembly defeated the U.S.
 |  resolution to make the China seat an Important Question by a
 |  vote of 59 to 54, with 15 abstentions. Ninety minutes later
 |  came the vote on the Albanian resolution to seat Beijing and
 |  expel Taipei, which passed by a vote of 76 to 35. Bush then
 |  cast the U.S. vote to seat Beijing, and then hurried to
 |  escort the R.O.C. delegate, Liu Chieh, out of the hall for
 |  the last time. The General Assembly was the scene of a
 |  jubilant demonstration led by Third World delegates over the
 |  fact that Red China had been admitted, and even more so that
 |  the United States had been defeated. The Tanzanian delegate
 |  danced a jig in the aisle. Henry Kissinger, flying back from
 |  Beijing, got the news on his teletype and praised Bush's
 |  "valiant efforts."
 |
 |  Having connived in selling Taiwan down the river, it was now
 |  an easy matter for the Nixon regime to fake a great deal of
 |  indignation for domestic political consumption about what
 |  had happened. Nixon's spokesman Ron Ziegler declared that
 |  Nixon had been outraged by the "spectacle" of the "cheering,
 |  handclapping, and dancing" delegates after the vote, which
 |  Nixon had seen as a "shocking demonstration" of "undisguised
 |  glee" and "personal animosity." Notice that Ziegler had
 |  nothing to say against the vote, or against Beijing, but
 |  concentrated the fire on the Third World delegates, who were
 |  also threatened with a cutoff of U.S. foreign aid.
 |
 |  This was the line that Bush would slavishly follow. On the
 |  last day of October, the papers quoted him saying that the
 |  demonstration after the vote was "something ugly, something
 |  harsh that transcended normal disappointment or elation." "I
 |  really thought we were going to win," said Bush, still with
 |  a straight face. "I'm so ... disappointed." "There wasn't
 |  just clapping and enthusiasm" after the vote, he whined.
 |  "When I went up to speak I was hissed and booed. I don't
 |  think it's good for the United Nations and that's the point
 |  I feel very strongly about." In the view of a "Washington
 |  Post" staff writer, "the boyish looking U.S. ambassador to
 |  the United Nations looked considerably the worse for wear.
 |  But he still conveys the impression of an earnest fellow
 |  trying to be the class valedictorian, as he once was
 |  described." [14] 
 |
 |  Bush expected the Beijing delegation to arrive in new York
 |  soon, because they probably wanted to take over the
 |  presidency of the Security Council, which rotated on a
 |  monthly basis. "But why anybody would want an early case of
 |  chicken pox, I don't know," said Bush.
 |
 |  When the Beijing delegation did arrive, Chinese Deputy
 |  Foreign Minister Ch'aio Kuan-hua delivered a maiden speech
 |  full of ideological bombast along the lines of passages
 |  Kissinger had convinced Zhou to cut out of the draft text of
 |  the Shanghai communique some days before. Kissinger then
 |  telephoned Bush to say in his own speech that the United
 |  States regretted that the Chinese had elected to inaugurate
 |  their participation in the U.N. by "firing these empty
 |  cannons of rhetoric." Bush, like a ventriloquist's dummy,
 |  obediently mouthed Kissinger's one-liner as a kind of coded
 |  message to Beijing that all the public bluster meant nothing
 |  between the two secret and increasingly public allies.
 |
 |  Notes
 |
 |  1. In 1970, Bush's portfolio included 29 companies in which
 |  he had an interest of more than $4,000. He had 10,000 shares
 |  of American General Insurance Co., 5,500 shares of American
 |  Standard, 200 shares of AT&T, 832 shares of CBS, and 581
 |  shares of Industries Exchange Fund. He also held stock in
 |  the Kroger Company, Simplex Wire and Cable Co. (25,000
 |  shares), IBM, and Allied Chemical. In addition, he had
 |  created a trust fund for his children.
 |
 |  2. James Reston, Jr., "The Lone Star: The Life of John
 |  Connally" (New York: Harper & Row, 1989), p. 380.
 |
 |  3. William Safire, "Before the Fall" (New York: Doubleday,
 |  1977), p. 646.
 |
 |  4. Walter Pincus and Bob Woodward, "Presidential Posts and
 |  Dashed Hopes," "Washington Post," Aug. 9, 1988.
 |
 |  5. Reston, "op. cit.," p. 382.
 |
 |  6. George Bush and Victor Gold, "Looking Forward" (New York:
 |  Doubleday, 1987), p. 110.
 |
 |  7. For the Nixon side of the Bush U.N. appointment, see
 |  William Safire, "op. cit.," especially "The President Falls
 |  in Love," pp. 642 "ff."
 |
 |  8. Reston, "op. cit.," p. 382. Reston (pp. 586-87) tells the
 |  story of how, years later in the 1980 Iowa caucuses campaign
 |  when both Bush and Connally were in the race, Bush was
 |  enraged by Connally's denigration of his manhood in remarks
 |  to Texans that Bush was 'all hat and no cattle.' Bush was
 |  walking by a television set in the Hotel Fort Des Moines
 |  when Connally came on the screen. Bush reached out toward
 |  Connally's image on the screen as if to shake hands. Then
 |  Bush screamed, "Thank you, sir, for all the kind things you
 |  and your friends have been saying about me!" Then Bush
 |  slammed his fist on the top of the set, yelling "That
 |  prick!"
 |
 |  9. On Kissinger, see Scott Thompson and Joseph Brewda,
 |  "Kissinger Associates: Two Birds in the Bush," "Executive
 |  Intelligence Review," March 3, 1989.
 |
 |  10. Tom Mangold, "Cold Warrior", (New York: Simon &
 |  Schuster, 1991), p. 305.
 |
 |  11. See Tad Szulc, "The Illusion of Peace" (New York: Viking
 |  Press, 1978), p. 498.
 |
 |  12. Henry Kissinger, "White House Years" (Boston: Little,
 |  Brown, 1979), p. 715.
 |
 |  13. Szulc, "op. cit.," p. 500, and "Washington Post," Aug.
 |  12, 1971.
 |
 |  14. "Washington Post," Oct. 31, 1971.
 |
 |
 |  CHAPTER 12
 |
 |  UNITED NATIONS AMBASSADOR, KISSINGER CLONE
 |
 |  The farce of Bush's pantomime in support of the Kissinger
 |  China card very nearly turned into the tragedy of general
 |  war later in 1971. This involved the December 1971 war
 |  between India and Pakistan, which led to the creation of an
 |  independent state of Bangladesh, and which must be counted
 |  as one of the least-known thermonuclear confrontations of
 |  the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. For Kissinger and Bush, what was at
 |  stake in this crisis was the consolidation of the China
 |  card.
 |
 |  In 1970, Yahya Khan, the British-connected,
 |  Sandhurst-educated dictator of Pakistan, was forced to
 |  announce that elections would be held in the entire country.
 |  It will be recalled that Pakistan was at that time two
 |  separate regions, east and west, with India in between. In
 |  East Pakistan or Bengal, the Awami League of Sheik Mujibur
 |  Rahman campaigned on a platform of autonomy for Bengal,
 |  accusing the central government in far-off Islamabad of
 |  ineptitude and exploitation. The resentment in East Pakistan
 |  was made more acute by the fact that Bengal had just been
 |  hit by a typhoon, which had caused extensive flooding and
 |  devastation, and by the failure of the government in West
 |  Pakistan to organize an effective relief effort. In the
 |  elections, the Awami League won 167 out of 169 seats in the
 |  East. Yahya Khan delayed the seating of the new nationa l
 |  assembly and on the evening of March 25 ordered the
 |  Pakistani Army to arrest Mujibur and to wipe out his
 |  organization in East Pakistan.
 |
 |  Genocide in East Pakistan
 |
 |  The army proceeded to launch a campaign of political
 |  genocide in East Pakistan. Estimates of the number of
 |  victims range from 500,000 to 3 million dead. All members of
 |  the Awami League, all Hindus, all students and intellectuals
 |  were in danger of execution by roving army patrols. A senior
 |  U.S. Foreign Service officer sent home a dispatch in which
 |  he told of West Pakistani soldiers setting fire to a women's
 |  dormitory at the University of Dacca and then
 |  machine-gunning the women when they were forced by the
 |  flames to run out. This campaign of killing went on until
 |  December, and it generated an estimated 10 million refugees,
 |  most of whom fled across the nearby borders to India, which
 |  had territory all around East Pakistan. The arrival of 10
 |  million refugees caused indescribable chaos in India, whose
 |  government was unable to prevent untold numbers from
 |  starving to death. [15] 
 |
 |  >From the very beginning of this monumental genocide,
 |  Kissinger and Nixon made it clear that they would not
 |  condemn Yahya Khan, whom Nixon considered a personal friend.
 |  Kissinger referred merely to the "strong-arm tactics of the
 |  Pakistani military," and Nixon circulated a memo in his own
 |  handwriting saying, "To all hands. Don't squeeze Yahya at
 |  this time. RN" Nixon stressed repeatedly that he wanted to
 |  "tilt" in favor of Pakistan in the crisis.
 |
 |  One level of explanation for this active complicity in
 |  genocide was that Kissinger and Nixon regarded Yahya Khan as
 |  their indispensable back channel to Peking. But Kissinger
 |  could soon go to Peking any time he wanted, and soon he
 |  could talk to the Chinese U.N. delegate in a New York safe
 |  house. The essence of the support for the butcher Yahya Khan
 |  was this: In 1962, India and China had engaged in a brief
 |  border war, and the Peking leaders regarded India as their
 |  geopolitical enemy. In order to ingratiate himself with Zhou
 |  and Mao, Kissinger wanted to take a position in favor of
 |  Pakistan, and therefore of Pakistan's ally China, and
 |  against India and against India's ally, the U.S.S.R.
 |  (Shortly after Kissinger's trip to China had taken place and
 |  Nixon had announced his intention to go to Peking, India and
 |  the U.S.S.R. had signed a 20-year friendship treaty.)
 |
 |  In Kissinger's view, the Indo-Pakistani conflict over Bengal
 |  was sure to become a Sino-Soviet clash by proxy, and he
 |  wanted the United States aligned with China in order to
 |  impress Peking with the vast benefits to be derived from the
 |  U.S.-P.R.C. strategic alliance under the heading of the
 |  "China card."
 |
 |  Kissinger and Nixon were isolated within the Washington
 |  bureaucracy on this issue. Secretary of State Rogers was
 |  very reluctant to go on supporting Pakistan, and this was
 |  the prevalent view in Foggy Bottom and in the embassies
 |  around the world. Nixon and Kissinger were isolated from the
 |  vast majority of congressional opinion, which expressed
 |  horror and outrage over the extent of the carnage being
 |  carried out week after week, month after month, by Yahya
 |  Khan's armed forces. Even the media and U.S. public opinion
 |  could not find any reason for the friendly "tilt" in favor
 |  of Yahya Khan. On July 31, Kissinger exploded at a meeting
 |  of the Senior Review Group when a proposal was made that the
 |  Pakistani army could be removed from Bengal. "Why is it our
 |  business how they govern themselves?" Kissinger raged. "The
 |  President always says to tilt to Pakistan, but every
 |  proposal I get [from inside the U.S. government] is in the
 |  opposite direction. Sometimes I think I am in a nut house."
 |  This went on for months. On December 3, at a meeting of
 |  Kissinger's Washington Special Action Group, Kissinger
 |  exploded again, exclaiming, "I've been catching unshirted
 |  hell every half-hour from the president who says we're not
 |  tough enough. He really doesn't believe we're carrying out
 |  his wishes. He wants to tilt toward Pakistan and he believes
 |  that every briefing or statement is going the other way."
 |  [16] 
 |
 |  But no matter what Rogers, the State Department and the rest
 |  of the Washington bureaucracy might do, Kissinger knew that
 |  George Bush at the U.N. would play along with the
 |  pro-Pakistan tilt. "And I knew that George Bush, our able
 |  U.N. ambassador, would carry out the President's policy,"
 |  wrote Kissinger in his memoirs, in describing his decision
 |  to drop U.S. opposition to a Security Council debate on the
 |  subcontinent. This made Bush one of the most degraded and
 |  servile U.S. officials of the era.
 |
 |  Indira Gandhi had come to Washington in November to attempt
 |  a peaceful settlement to the crisis, but was crudely snubbed
 |  by Nixon and Kissinger. The chronology of the acute final
 |  phase of the crisis can be summed up as follows:
 |
 |  "December 3, 1971": Yahya Khan ordered the Pakistani Air
 |  Force to carry out a series of surprise air raids on Indian
 |  air bases in the north and west of India. These raids were
 |  not effective in destroying the Indian Air Force on the
 |  ground, which had been Yahya Khan's intent, but Yahya Khan's
 |  aggression did precipitate the feared Indo-Pakistani war.
 |  The Indian Army made rapid ad vances against the Pakistani
 |  forces in Bengal, while the Indian Navy blockaded Pakistan's
 |  ports. At this time, the biggest-ever buildup in the Soviet
 |  naval forces in the Indian Ocean also began.
 |
 |  "December 4": At the U.N. Security Council, George Bush
 |  delivered a speech in which his main thrust was to accuse
 |  India of repeated incursions into East Pakistan, and
 |  challenging the legitimacy of India's resort to arms, in
 |  spite of the plain evidence that Pakistan had struck first.
 |  Bush introduced a draft resolution which called on India and
 |  Pakistan immediately to cease all hostilities. Bush's
 |  resolution also mandated the immediate withdrawal of all
 |  Indian and Pakistani armed forces back to their own
 |  territory, meaning in effect that India should pull back
 |  from East Pakistan and let Yahya Khan's forces there get
 |  back to their mission of genocide against the local
 |  population. Observers were to be placed along the
 |  Indo-Pakistani borders by the U.N. secretary general.
 |
 |  Bush's resolution also contained a grotesque call on India
 |  and Pakistan to "exert their best efforts toward the
 |  creation of a climate conducive to the voluntary return of
 |  refugees to East Pakistan." Ths resolution was out of touch
 |  with the two realities: that Yahya Khan had started the
 |  genocide in East Pakistan back in March, and that Yahya had
 |  now launched aggression against India with his air raids.
 |  Bush's resolution was vetoed by the Soviet representative,
 |  Yakov Malik.
 |
 |  "December 6": The Indian government extended diplomatic
 |  recognition to the independent state of Bangladesh. Indian
 |  troops made continued progress against the Pakistani Army in
 |  Bengal.
 |
 |  On the same day, an NBC camera team filmed much of Nixon's
 |  day inside the White House. Part of what was recorded, and
 |  later broadcast, was a telephone call from Nixon to George
 |  Bush at the United Nations, giving Bush his instructions on
 |  how to handle the India-Pakistan crisis. "Some, all over the
 |  world, will try to make this basically a political issue,"
 |  said Nixon to Bush. "You've got to do what you can. More
 |  important than anything else now is to get the facts out
 |  with regard to what we have done, that we have worked for a
 |  political settlement, what we have done for the refugees and
 |  so forth and so on. If you see that some here in the Senate
 |  and House, for whatever reason, get out and misrepresent our
 |  opinions, I want you to hit it frontally, strongly, and
 |  toughly; is that clear? Just take the gloves off and crack
 |  it, because you know exactly what we have done, OK?" [17] 
 |
 |  "December 7": George Bush at the U.N. made a further step
 |  forward toward global confrontation by branding India as the
 |  aggressor in the crisis, as Kissinger approvingly notes in
 |  his memoirs. Bush's draft resolution, described above, which
 |  had been vetoed by Malik in the Security Council, was
 |  approved by the General Assembly by a non-binding vote of
 |  104 to 11, which Kissinger considered a triumph for Bush.
 |  But on the same day, Yahya Khan informed the government in
 |  Washington that his military forces in East Pakistan were
 |  rapidly disintegrating. Kissinger and Nixon seized on a
 |  dubious report from an alleged U.S. agent at a high level in
 |  the Indian government which purported to summarize recent
 |  remarks of Indira Gandhi to her cabinet. According to this
 |  report, which may have come from the later Prime Minister
 |  Moraji Desai, Mrs. Gandhi had pledged to conquer the
 |  southern part of Pakistani-held Kashmir. If the Chinese
 |  "rattled the sword," the report quoted Mrs. Gandhi as
 |  saying, the Soviets would respond. This unreliable report
 |  became one of the pillars for further actions by Nixon,
 |  Kissinger and Bush.
 |
 |  "December 8": By this time, the Soviet Navy had some 21
 |  ships either in or approaching the Indian Ocean, in contrast
 |  to a pre-crisis level of three ships. At this point, with
 |  the Vietnam War raging unabated, the U.S.A. had a total of
 |  three ships in the Indian Ocean -- two old destroyers and a
 |  seaplane tender. The last squadron of the British Navy was
 |  departing from the region in the framework of the British
 |  pullout from east of Suez.
 |
 |  In the evening, Nixon suggested to Kissinger that the
 |  scheduled Moscow summit might be canceled. Kissinger raved
 |  that India wanted to detach not just Bengal, but Kashmir
 |  also, leading to the further secession of Baluchistan and
 |  the total dismemberment of Pakistan. "Fundamentally," wrote
 |  Kissinger of this moment, "our only card left was to raise
 |  the risks for the Soviets to a level where Moscow would see
 |  larger interests jeopardized" by its support of India, which
 |  had been lukewarm so far.
 |
 |  "December 9": The State Department and other agencies were
 |  showing signs of being almost human, seeking to undermine
 |  the Nixon-Kissinger-Bush policy through damaging leaks and
 |  bureaucratic obstructionism. Nixon, "beside himself" over
 |  the damaging leaks, called in the principal officers of the
 |  Washington Special Action Group and told them that while he
 |  did not insist on their being loyal to the President, they
 |  ought at least to be loyal to the United States. Among those
 |  Nixon insulted was Undersecretary of State U. Alexis
 |  Johnson. But the leaks only increased.
 |
 |  "December 10:" Kissinger ordered the U.S. Navy to create
 |  Task Force 74, consisting of the nuclear aircraft carrier
 |  "Enterprise", with escort and supply ships, and to have
 |  these ships proceed from their post at Yankee Station in the
 |  Gulf of Tonkin off Vietnam to Singapore. [18] 
 |
 |  In Dacca, East Pakistan, Major General Rao Farman Ali Khan,
 |  the commander of Pakistani forces in Bengal, asked the
 |  United Nations representative to help arrange a cease-fire,
 |  followed by the transfer of power in East Pakistan to the
 |  elected representatives of the Awami League and the
 |  "repatriation with honor" of his forces back to West
 |  Pakistan. At first it appeared that this de facto surrender
 |  had been approved by Yahya Khan. But when Yahya Khan heard
 |  that the U.S. fleet had been ordered into the Indian Ocean,
 |  he was so encouraged that he junked the idea of a surrender
 |  and ordered Gen. Ali Khan to resume fighting, which he did.
 |
 |  Colonel Melvin Holst, the U.S. military attache in Katmandu,
 |  Nepal, a small country sandwiched between India and China in
 |  the Himalayas, received a call from the Indian military
 |  attache, who asked whether the American had any knowledge of
 |  a Chinese military buildup in Tibet. "The Indian high
 |  command had some sort of information that military action
 |  was increasing in Tibet," said Holst in his cable to
 |  Washington. The same evening, Col. Holst received a call
 |  from the Soviet military attache, Loginov, who also asked
 |  about Chinese military activity. Loginov said that he had
 |  spoken over the last day or two with the Chinese military
 |  attache, Zhao Kuang-chih, "advising Zhao that the P.R.C.
 |  should not get too serious about intervention because
 |  U.S.S.R. would react, had many missiles, etc." [19] 
 |
 |  At the moment, the Himalaya mountain passes, the corridor
 |  for any Chinese troop movement, were all open and free from
 |  snow. The CIA had noted "war preparations" in Tibet over the
 |  months since the Bengal crisis had begun. Nikolai Pegov, the
 |  Soviet ambassador to New Dehli, had assured the Indian
 |  government that in the eventuality of a Chinese attack on
 |  India, the Soviets would mount a "diversionary action in
 |  Sinkiang."
 |
 |  "December 11": Kissinger had been in town the previous day,
 |  meeting the Chinese U.N. delegate. Today Kissinger would
 |  meet with the Pakistani Deputy Prime Minister Ali Bhutto, in
 |  Bush's suite at the Waldorf-Astoria. Huang Hua, the Chinese
 |  delegate, made remarks which Kissinger chose to interpret as
 |  meaning that the "Chinese might intervene militarily even at
 |  this late stage."
 |
 |  "December 12:" Nixon, Kissinger and Haig met in the Oval
 |  Office early Sunday morning in a council of war. Kissinger
 |  later described this as a crucial meeting, where, as it
 |  turned out, "the first decision to risk war in the
 |  triangular Soviet-Chinese-American" geopolitical
 |  relationship was taken. [20] 
 |
 |  During Nixon's 1975 secret grand jury testimony to the
 |  Watergate Special Prosecution Force, the former President
 |  insisted that the United States had come "close to nuclear
 |  war" during the Indo-Pakistani conflict. According to one
 |  attorney who heard Nixon's testimony in 1975, Nixon had
 |  stated that "we had threatened to go to nuclear war with the
 |  Russians." [21]  These remarks most probably refer to this
 |  December 12 meeting, and the actions it set into motion.
 |
 |  Navy Task Force 74 was ordered to proceed through the
 |  Straits of Malacca and into the Indian Ocean, and it
 |  attracted the attention of the world media in so doing the
 |  following day. Task Force 74 was now on wartime alert.
 |
 |  At 11:30 a.m. local time, Kissinger and Haig sent the
 |  Kremlin a message over the Hot Line. This was the first use
 |  of the Hot Line during the Nixon administration, and
 |  apparently the only time it was used during the Nixon years,
 |  with the exception of the October 1973 Middle East War.
 |  According to Kissinger, this Hot Line message contained the
 |  ultimatum that the Soviets respond to earlier American
 |  demands; otherwise Nixon would order Bush to "set in train
 |  certain moves" in the U.N. Security Council that would be
 |  irreversible. But is this all the message said? Kissinger
 |  comments in his memoirs a few pages later: "Our fleet passed
 |  through the Strait of Malacca into the Bay of Bengal and
 |  attracted much media attention. Were we threatening India?
 |  Were we seeking to defend East Pakistan? Had we lost our
 |  minds? It was in fact sober calculation. We had some
 |  seventy-two hours to bring the war to a conclusion before
 |  West Pakistan would be swept into the maelstrom. It would
 |  take India that long to shift its forces and mount an
 |  assault. Once Pakistan's air force and army were destroyed,
 |  its impotence would guarantee the country's eventual
 |  disintegration.... We had to give the Soviets a warning that
 |  matters might get out of control on our side too. We had to
 |  be ready to back up the Chinese if at the last moment they
 |  came in after all, our U.N. initiative having failed. [...]
 |  However unlikely an American military move against India,
 |  the other side could not be sure; it might not be willing to
 |  accept even the minor risk that we might act irrationally."
 |  [22] 
 |
 |  These comments by Kissinger led to the conclusion that the
 |  Hot Line message of December 12 was part of a calculated
 |  exercise in thermonuclear blackmail and brinksmanship.
 |  Kissinger's reference to acting irrationally recalls the
 |  infamous RAND Corporation theories of thermonculear
 |  confrontations as chicken games in which it is useful to
 |  hint to the opposition that one is insane. If your adversary
 |  thinks you are crazy, then he is more likely to back down,
 |  the argument goes. Whatever threats were made by Kissinger
 |  and Haig that day in their Hot Line message are likely to
 |  have been of that variety. All evidence points to the
 |  conclusion that on December 12, 1971, the world was indeed
 |  close to the brink of thermonuclear confrontation.
 |
 |  Where Was George?
 |
 |  And where was George? He was acting as the willing
 |  mouthpiece for madmen. Late in the evening December 12, Bush
 |  delivered the following remarks to the Security Council,
 |  which are recorded in Kissinger's memoirs:
 |
 |  "The question now arises as to India's further intentions.
 |  For example, does India intend to use the present situation
 |  to destroy the Pakistan army in the West? Does India intend
 |  to use as a pretext the Pakistani counterattacks in the West
 |  to annex territory in West Pakistan? Is its aim to take
 |  parts of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir contrary to the
 |  Security Council resolutions of 1948, 1949, and 1950? If
 |  this is not India's intention, then a prompt disavowal is
 |  required. The world has a right to know: What are India's
 |  intentions? Pakistan's aims have become clear: It has
 |  accepted the General Assembly's resolution passed by a vote
 |  of 104 to 11. My government has asked this question of the
 |  Indian Government several times in the last week. I regret
 |  to inform the Council that India's replies have been
 |  unsatisfactory and not reassuring.
 |
 |  "In view of India's defiance of world opinion expressed by
 |  such an overwhelming majority, the United States is now
 |  returning the issue to the Security Council. With East
 |  Pakistan virtually occupied by Indian troops, a continuation
 |  of the war would take on increasingly the character of armed
 |  attack on the very existence of a Member State of the United
 |  Nations." [23] 
 |
 |  Bush introduced another draft resolution of pro-Pakistan
 |  tilt, which called on the governments of India and Pakistan
 |  to take measures for an immediate cease-fire and withdrawal
 |  of troops, and for measures to help the refugees. This
 |  resolution was also vetoed by the U.S.S.R.
 |
 |  "December 14": Kissinger shocked U.S. public opinion by
 |  stating off the record to journalists in a plane returning
 |  from a meeting with French President Georges Pompidou in the
 |  Azores, that if Soviet conduct continued in the present
 |  mode, the U.S. was "prepared to reevaluate our entire
 |  relationship, including the summit."
 |
 |  "December 15:" The Pakistani commander in East Pakistan,
 |  after five additional days of pointless killing, again
 |  offered a cease-fire. Kissinger claimed that the five
 |  intervening days had allowed the United States to increase
 |  the pressure on India and prevent the Indian forces from
 |  turning on West Pakistan.
 |
 |  "December 16:" Mrs. Gandhi offered an unconditional
 |  cease-fire in the west, which Pakistan immediately accepted.
 |  Kissinger opined that this decision to end all fighting had
 |  been "reluctant" on the part of India, and had been made
 |  possible through Soviet pressure generated by U.S. threats.
 |  Zhou Enlai also said later that the United States had saved
 |  West Pakistan. Kissinger praised Nixon's "courage and
 |  patriotism" and his commitment to "preserve the balance of
 |  power for the ultimate safety of all free people."
 |  Apprentice geopolitician George Bush had carried out yeoman
 |  service in that immoral cause.
 |
 |  After a self-serving and false description of the
 |  Indo-Pakistani crisis of 1971, Kissinger pontificates in his
 |  memoirs about the necessary priority of geopolitical
 |  machinations: "There is in America an idealistic tradition
 |  that sees foreign policy as a context between evil and good.
 |  There is a pragmatic tradition that seeks to solve
 |  'problems' as they arise. There is a legalistic tradition
 |  that treats international issues as juridical cases. There
 |  is no geopolitical tradition." In their stubborn pursuit of
 |  an alliance with the second strongest land power at the
 |  expense of all other considerations, Kissinger, Nixon and
 |  Bush were following the dictates of classic geopolitics.
 |  This is the school in which Bush was trained, and this is
 |  how he has reacted to every international crisis down
 |  through the Gulf war, which was originally conceived in
 |  London as a "geopolitical" adjustment in favor of the
 |  Anglo-Saxons against Germany, Japan, the Arabs, the
 |  developing sector and the rest of the world.
 |
 |  Genocide in Vietnam
 |
 |  1972 was the second year of Bush's U.N. tenure, and it was
 |  during this time that he distinguished himself as a
 |  shameless apologist for the genocidal and vindictive
 |  Kissinger policy of prolonging and escalating the war in
 |  Vietnam. During most of his first term, Nixon pursued a
 |  policy he called the "Vietnamization" of the war. This meant
 |  that U.S. land forces were progressively withdrawn, while
 |  the South Vietnamese Army was ostensibly built up so that it
 |  could bear the battle against the Viet Cong and the North
 |  Vietnamese regulars. This policy went into crisis in March
 |  1972 when the North Vietnamese launched a 12-division
 |  assault across the Demilitarized Zone against the south. On
 |  May 8, 1972, Nixon announced that the full-scale bombing of
 |  the north, which had been suspended since the spring of
 |  1968, would be resumed with a vengeance: Nixon ordered the
 |  bombing of Hanoi and the mining of Haiphong harbor, and the
 |  savaging of transportation lines and military installations
 |  all over the country.
 |
 |  This mining had always been rejected as a tactic during the
 |  previous conduct of the war because of the possibility that
 |  bombing and mining the harbors might hit Soviet, Chinese,
 |  and other foreign ships, killing the crews and creating the
 |  risk of retaliation by these countries against the U.S.A.
 |  Now, before the 1972 elections, Kissinger and Nixon were
 |  determined to "go ape," discarding their previous limits on
 |  offensive action and risking whatever China and the U.S.S.R.
 |  might do. It was another gesture of reckless confrontation,
 |  fraught with incalculable consequences. Later in the same
 |  year, in December, Nixon would respond to a breakdown in the
 |  Paris talks with the Hanoi government by ordering the
 |  infamous Christmastide B-52 attacks on the north.
 |
 |  It was George Bush who officially informed the international
 |  diplomatic community of Nixon's March decisions. Bush
 |  addressed a letter to the Presidency of the U.N. Security
 |  Council in which he outlined what Nixon had set into motion:
 |
 |  "The President directed that the entrances to the ports of
 |  North Vietnam be mined and that the delivery of seaborne
 |  supplies to North Vietnam be prevented. These measures of
 |  collective self-defense are hereby being reported to the
 |  United Nations Security Council as required by Article 51 of
 |  the United Nations Charter."
 |
 |  Bush went on to characterize the North Vietnamese actions.
 |  He spoke of "the massive invasion across the demilitarized
 |  zone and international boundaries by the forces of North
 |  Vietnam and the continuing aggression" of Hanoi. He accused
 |  the north of "blatant violation of the understandings
 |  negotiated in 1968 in connection with the cessation of the
 |  bombing of the territory of North Vietnam.... The extent of
 |  this renewed aggression and the manner in which it has been
 |  directed and supported demonstrate with great clarity that
 |  North Vietnam has embarked on an all-out attempt to take
 |  over South Vietnam by military force and to disrupt the
 |  orderly withdrawal of United States forces." Bush further
 |  accused the north of refusing to negotiate in good faith to
 |  end the war.
 |
 |  The guts of Bush's message, the part that was read with
 |  greatest attention in Moscow, Peking and elsewhere, was
 |  contained in the following summary of the way in which
 |  Haiphong and the other harbors had been mined:
 |
 |  "Accordingly, as the minimum actions necessary to meet this
 |  threat, the Republic of Vietnam and the United States of
 |  America have jointly decided to take the following measures
 |  of collective self-defense: The entrances to the ports of
 |  North Vietnam are being mined, commencing 0900 Saigon time
 |  May 9, and the mines are set to activate automatically
 |  beginning 1900 hours Saigon time May 11. This will permit
 |  vessels of other countries presently in North Vietnamese
 |  ports three daylight periods to depart safely." In a long
 |  circumlocution, Bush also conveyed that all shipping might
 |  also be the target of indiscriminate bombing. Bush called
 |  these measures "restricted in extent and purpose." The U.S.
 |  was willing to sign a cease-fire ending all acts of war in
 |  Indochina (thus including Cambodia, which had been invaded
 |  in 1970, and Laos, which had been invaded in 1971, as well
 |  as the Vietnams) and bring all U.S. troops home within four
 |  months.
 |
 |  There was no bipartisan supp ort for the bombing and mining
 |  policy Bush announced. Senator Mike Mansfield pointed out
 |  that the decision would only protract the war. Senator
 |  Proxmire called it "reckless and wrong." Four Soviet ships
 |  were damaged by these U.S. actions. There was a lively
 |  debate within the Soviet Politburo on how to respond to
 |  this, with a faction around Shelest demanding that Nixon's
 |  invitation to the upcoming Moscow superpower summit be
 |  rescinded. But Shelest was ousted by Brezhnev, and the
 |  summit went forward at the end of May. The "China card"
 |  theoreticians congratulated themselves that the Soviets had
 |  been paralyzed by fear of what Peking might do if Moscow
 |  became embroiled with Peking's new de facto ally, the United
 |  States.
 |
 |  Bombing Civilian Targets
 |
 |  In July 1972, reports emerged in the international press of
 |  charges by Hanoi that the U.S.A. had been deliberately
 |  bombing the dams and dikes, which were the irrigation and
 |  flood control system around Vietnam's Red River. Once again
 |  it was Bush who came forward as the apologist for Nixon's
 |  "mad bomber" foreign policy. Bush appeared on the NBC
 |  Televison "Today" show to assure the U.S. public that the
 |  U.S. bombing had created only "the most incidental and minor
 |  impact" on North Vietnam's dike system. This, of course,
 |  amounted to a backhanded confirmation that such bombing had
 |  been done, and damage wrought in the process. Bush was in
 |  his typical whining mode in defending the U.S. policy
 |  against worldwide criticism of war measures that seemed
 |  designed to inflict widespread flooding and death on North
 |  Vietnamese civilians. According to North Vietnamese
 |  statistics, more than half of the north's 20 million people
 |  lived in areas near the Red River that would be flooded if
 |  the dike system were breached. An article which appeared in
 |  a Hanoi publication had stated that at flood crest many
 |  rivers rise to "six or seven meters above the surrounding
 |  fields" and that because of this situation "any dike break,
 |  especially in the Red River delta, is a disaster with
 |  incalculable consequences."
 |
 |  Bush had never seen an opportunity for genocide he did not
 |  like. "I believe we are being set up by a massive propaganda
 |  campaign by the North Vietnamese in the event that there is
 |  the same kind of flooding this year -- to attribute it to
 |  bombs whereas last year it happened just out of lack of
 |  maintenance," Bush argued.
 |
 |  "There's been a study made that I hope will be released
 |  shortly that will clarify this whole question," he went on.
 |  The study "would be very helpful because I think it will
 |  show what the North Vietnamese are up to in where they place
 |  strategic targets." What Bush was driving at here was an
 |  allegation that Hanoi customarily placed strategic assets
 |  near the dikes in order to be able to accuse the U.S. of
 |  genocide if air attacks breached the dikes and caused
 |  flooding. Bush's military spokesmen used similar arguments
 |  during the Gulf war, when Iraq was accused of placing
 |  military equipment in the midst of civilian residential
 |  areas.
 |
 |  "I think you would have to recognize," retorted Bush, "that
 |  if there was any intention" of breaching the dikes, "it
 |  would be very, very simple to do exactly what we are accused
 |  of -- and that is what we are not doing." [24] 
 |
 |  The bombing of the north continued and reached a final
 |  paroxysm at Christmas, when B-52s made unrestricted terror
 |  bombing raids against Hanoi and other cities. The Christmas
 |  bombing was widely condemned, even by the U.S. press: "New
 |  Madness in Vietnam" was the headline of the "St. Louis
 |  Post-Dispatch" on Dec. 19; "Terror from the Skies" that of
 |  the "New York Times" Dec. 22; "Terror Bombing in the Name of
 |  Peace" of the "Washington Post" Dec. 28; and "Beyond All
 |  Reason" of the "Los Angeles Times" of Dec. 28.
 |
 |  More Zionist than Israelis
 |
 |  Bush's activity at the U.N. also coincided with Kissinger's
 |  preparation of the October 1973 Middle East war. During the
 |  1980s, Bush attempted to cultivate a public image as a U.S.
 |  politician who, although oriented toward close relations
 |  with Israel, would not slavishly appease every demand of the
 |  Israelis and the Zionist lobby in the United States, but
 |  would take an independent position designed to foster U.S.
 |  national interests. From time to time, Bush snubbed the
 |  Israelis by hinting that they held hostages of their own,
 |  and that the Israeli annexation of Jerusalem would not be
 |  accepted by the United States. For some, these delusions
 |  have survived even a refutation so categoric as the events
 |  of the Kuwait crisis of 1990-91.
 |
 |  Bush would be more accurately designated as a Zionist, whose
 |  differences with an Israeli leader like Shamir are less
 |  significant than the differences between Shamir and other
 |  Israeli politicians. Bush's fanatically pro-Israeli
 |  ideological-political track record was already massive
 |  during the U.N. years.
 |
 |  In September 1972, Palestinian terrorists describing
 |  themselves as the "Black September" organization attacked
 |  the quarters of the Israeli Olympic team present in Munich
 |  for the Olympic games of that year, killing a number of the
 |  Israeli athletes. The Israeli government seized on these
 |  events as carte blanche to launch a series of air attacks
 |  against Syria and Lebanon, arguing that these countries
 |  could be held responsible for what had happened in Munich.
 |  Somalia, Greece and Guinea came forward with a resolution in
 |  the Security Council which simply called for the immediate
 |  cessation of "all military operations." The Arab states
 |  argued that the Israeli air attacks were totally without
 |  provocation or justification, and had killed numerous
 |  civilians who had nothing whatever to do with the terrorist
 |  actions in Munich.
 |
 |  The Nixon regime, with one eye on the autumn 1972 elections
 |  and the need to mobilize the Zionist lobby in support of a
 |  second term, wanted to find a way to oppose this resolution,
 |  since it did not sufficiently acknowledge the unique
 |  righteousness of the Israeli cause and Israel's inherent
 |  right to commit acts of war against its neighbors. It was
 |  Bush who authored a competing resolution, which called on
 |  all interested parties "to take all measures for the
 |  immediate cessation and prevention of all military
 |  operations and terrorist activities." It was Bush who dished
 |  up the rationalizations for U.S. rejection of the first
 |  resolution. That resolution was no good, Bush argued,
 |  because it did not reflect the fact that "the fabric of
 |  violence in the Middle East in inextricably interwoven with
 |  the massacre in Munich.... By our silence on the terror in
 |  Munich are we indeed inviting more Munichs?" he asked.
 |  Justifying the Israeli air raids on Syria and Lebanon, Bush
 |  maintained that certain governments "cannot be absolved of
 |  responsibility for the cycle of violence" because of their
 |  words and deeds, or because of their tacit acquiescence.
 |  Slightly later, after the vote had taken place, Bush argued
 |  that "by adopting this resolution, the council would have
 |  ignored reality, would have spoken to one form of violence
 |  but not another, would have looked to the effect but not the
 |  cause."
 |
 |  When the resolution was put to a vote, Bush made front-page
 |  headlines around the world by casting the U.S. veto, a veto
 |  that had been cast only once before in the entire history of
 |  the U.N. The vote was 13 to 1, with the U.S. casting the
 |  sole negative vote. Panama was the lone abstention. The only
 |  other time the U.S. veto had been used had been in 1970, on
 |  a resolution involving Rhodesia.
 |
 |  The Israeli U.N. ambassador, Yosef Tekoah, did not attend
 |  the debate because of the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah.
 |  But Israel's cause was well defended -- by Bush. According
 |  to an Israeli journalist observing the proceedings who was
 |  quoted by the "Washington Post," "Bush sounds more
 |  pro-Israeli than Tekoah would have." [25] 
 |
 |  Later in 1972, attempts were made by non-aligned states and
 |  the U.N. Secretariat to arrange the indispensable basis for
 |  a Middle East peace settlement -- the withdrawal of Israel
 |  from the territories occupied during the 1967 war. Once
 |  again, Bush was more Zionist than the Israelis.
 |
 |  In February of 1972, the U.N.'s Middle East mediator, Gunnar
 |  Jarring of Norway, had asked that the Security Council
 |  reaffirm the original contents of Resolution 242 of 1967 by
 |  reiterating that Israel should surrender Arab territory
 |  seized in 1967. "Land for peace" was anathema to the Israeli
 |  government then as now. Bush undertook to blunt this
 |  non-aligned peace bid.
 |
 |  Late in 1972, the non-aligned group proposed a resolution in
 |  the General Assembly which called for "immediate and
 |  unconditional" Israeli withdrawal from the occupied
 |  territories while inviting other countries to withold
 |  assistance that would help Israel to sustain its occupation
 |  of the Arab land. Bush quickly rose to assail this text.
 |
 |  In a speech to the General Assembly in December 1972, Bush
 |  warned the assembly that the original text of Resolution 242
 |  was "the essential agreed basis for U.N. peace efforts and
 |  this body and all its members should be mindful of the need
 |  to preserve the negotiating asset that it represents." "The
 |  assembly," Bush went on, "cannot seek to impose courses of
 |  action on the countries directly concerned, either by making
 |  new demands or favoring the proposals or positions of one
 |  side over the other." Never, never would George Bush ever
 |  take sides or accept a double standard of this type.
 |
 |  Bush in Africa
 |
 |  >From January 28 through February 4, 1972, the Security
 |  Council held its first meeting in twenty years outside of
 |  New York City. The venue chosen was Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
 |  Bush made this the occasion for a trip through the Sudan,
 |  Kenya, Zambia, Zaire, Gabon, Nigeria, Chad and Botswana.
 |  Bush later told a House subcommittee hearing that this was
 |  his second trip to Africa, with the preceding one having
 |  been a junket to Egypt and Libya "in 1963 or 1964." [26] 
 |  During this trip, Bush met with seven chiefs of state,
 |  including President Mobutu of Zaire, Emperor Haile Selassie
 |  of Ethiopia, President Tombalbaye of Chad, and President
 |  Numayri of the Sudan.
 |
 |  At a press conference in Addis Ababa, African journalists
 |  destabilized Bush with aggressive questions about the U.S.
 |  policy of ignoring mandatory U.N. economic sanctions against
 |  the racist, white supremacist Ian Smith regime in Rhodesia.
 |  The Security Council had imposed the mandatory sanctions,
 |  but later the U.S. Congress had passed, and Nixon had signed
 |  into law, legislation incorporating the so-called Byrd
 |  amendment, which allowed the U.S.A. to import chrome from
 |  Rhodesia in the event of shortages of that strategic raw
 |  material. Chrome was readily available on the world market,
 |  especially from the U.S.S.R., although the Soviet chrome was
 |  more expensive than the Rhodesian chrome. In his
 |  congressional testimony, Bush whined at length about the
 |  extensive criticism of this declared U.S. policy of
 |  breaching the Rhodesian sanctions on the part of "those who
 |  are just using this to really hammer us from a propaganda
 |  standpoint.... We have taken the rap on this thing,"
 |  complained Bush. "We have taken the heat on it.... We have
 |  taken a great deal of abuse from those who wanted to
 |  embarrass us in Africa, to emphasize the negative and not
 |  the positive in the United Nations." Bush talked of his own
 |  efforts at damage control on the issue of U.S. support for
 |  the racist Rhodesian regime: "... what we are trying to do
 |  is to restrict any hypocrisy we are accused of.... I
 |  certainly don't think the U.S. position should be that the
 |  Congress was trying to further colonialism and racism in
 |  this action it took," Bush told the congressmen. "In the
 |  U.N., I get the feeling we are categorized as imperialists
 |  and colonialists, and I make clear this is not what America
 |  stands for, but nevertheless it is repeated over and over
 |  and over again," he whined. [27] 
 |
 |  On the problems of Africa in general, Bush, ever true to
 |  Malthusian form, stressed above all the overpopulation of
 |  the continent. As he told the congressmen: "Population was
 |  one of the things I worked on when I was in the Congress
 |  with many people here in this room. It is something that the
 |  U.N. should do. It is something where we are better served
 |  to use a multilateral channel, but it has got to be done
 |  efficiently and effectively. There has [sic] to be some
 |  delivery systems. It should not be studied to death if the
 |  American people are going to see that we are better off to
 |  use a multilateral channel and I am convinced we are. We
 |  don't want to be imposing American standards of rate of
 |  growth on some country, but we are saying that if an
 |  international community decides it is worth while to have
 |  these programs and education, we want to strongly support
 |  it." [28] 
 |
 |  Mouthpiece for Kissinger
 |
 |  Bush spent just under two years at the U.N. His tenure
 |  coincided with some of the most monstrous crimes against
 |  humanity of the Nixon-Kissinger team, for whom Bush
 |  functioned as an international spokesman, and to whom no
 |  Kissinger policy was too odious to be enthusiatically
 |  proclaimed before the international community and world
 |  public opinion. Through this doggedly loyal service, Bush
 |  forged a link with Nixon that would be ephemeral but vital
 |  for his career, while it lasted, and a link with Kissinger
 |  that would be decisive in shaping Bush's own administration
 |  in 1988-89.
 |
 |  The way in which Bush set about organizing the anti-Iraq
 |  coalition of 1990-91 was decisively shaped by his United
 |  Nations experience. His initial approach to the Security
 |  Council, the types of resolutions that were put forward by
 |  the United States, and the alternation of military
 |  escalation with consultations among the five permanent
 |  members of the Security Council -- all this harkened back to
 |  the experience Bush acquired as Kissinger's envoy to the
 |  world body.
 |
 |  Notes
 |
 |  15. See Seymour M. Hersh, "The Price of Power" (New York:
 |  Summit Books, 1983), pp. 444 ff.
 |
 |  16. Henry Kissinger, "op. cit.," p. 897. The general
 |  outlines of these remarks were first published in Jack
 |  Anderson's syndicated column, and reprinted in Jack
 |  Anderson, "The Anderson Papers" (New York: Random House,
 |  1973).
 |
 |  17. Anderson, "op. cit.," p. 226.
 |
 |  18. Elmo Zumwalt, "On Watch" (New York: Quadrangle/New York
 |  Times Book Co., 1976), p. 367.
 |
 |  19. Anderson, "op. cit.," pp. 260-61.
 |
 |  20. Kissinger, "op. cit.," p. 909.
 |
 |  21. Hersh, "op. cit.," p. 457.
 |
 |  22. Kissinger, "op. cit.," pp. 911-12.
 |
 |  23. See R.C. Gupta, "U.S. Policy Toward India and Pakistan"
 |  (Delhi: B.R. Publishing Corp., 1977), pp. 84 "ff."
 |
 |  24. "Washington Post," July 27, 1972.
 |
 |  25. "Washington Post," Sept. 11, 1972.
 |
 |  26. U.S. House of Representatives, Joint Hearing Before the
 |  Subcommittee on Africa and the Subcommittee on International
 |  Organizations and Movements of the Committee on Foreign
 |  Affairs, Ninety-Second Congress, Second Session, March 1,
 |  1972, (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972),
 |  p. 12.
 |
 |  27. House of Representatives, Joint Hearing, pp. 7, 10-11.
 |
 |  28. House of Representatives, Joint Hearing, pp. 7-8.
 |
 |
 |  CHAPTER 13, Part I
 |
 |  CHAIRMAN GEORGE IN WATERGATE
 |
 |  In November 1972, Bush's "most influential patron," Richard
 |  Nixon, [1]  won reelection to the White House for a second
 |  term in a landslide victory over the McGovern-Shriver
 |  Democratic ticket. Nixon's election victory had proceeded in
 |  spite of the arrest of five White House-linked burglars in
 |  the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the
 |  Watergate building in Washington, early on June 17 of the
 |  same year. This was the beginning of the infamous Watergate
 |  scandal, which would overshadow and ultimately terminate
 |  Nixon's second term in 1974.
 |
 |  After the election, Bush received a telephone call informing
 |  him that Nixon wanted to talk to him at the Camp David
 |  retreat in the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland. Bush had been
 |  looking to Washington for the inevitable personnel changes
 |  that would be made in preparation for Nixon's second term.
 |  Bush tells us that he was aware of Nixon's plan to
 |  reorganize his cabinet around the idea of a "super cabinet"
 |  of top-level, inner cabinet ministers or "super secretaries"
 |  who would work closely with the White House while relegating
 |  the day-to-day functioning of their executive departments to
 |  sub-cabinet deputies. One of the big winners under this plan
 |  was scheduled to be George Shultz, the former Labor
 |  Secretary, who was now supposed to become "S uper" Secretary
 |  of the Treasury. Shultz was a Bechtel executive who went on
 |  to be Reagan's second Secretary of State after Al Haig. Bush
 |  and Shultz were future members of the Bohemian Club of San
 |  Francisco and of the Bohemian Grove summer gathering.
 |
 |  Bush says he received a call from Nixon's top domestic aide,
 |  John Ehrlichman. Ehrlichman told Bush that George Shultz
 |  wanted to see him before he went on to meet with Nixon at
 |  Camp David. As it turned out, Shultz wanted to offer Bush
 |  the post of undersecretary of the treasury, which would
 |  amount to "de facto" administrative control over the
 |  department while Shultz concentrated on his projected super
 |  secretary policy functions.
 |
 |  Bush says he thanked Shultz for his "flattering" offer, took
 |  it under consideration, and then pressed on to Camp David.
 |  [2] 
 |
 |  Bush Takes RNC Chair
 |
 |  At Camp David, Bush says that Nixon talked to him in the
 |  following terms: "George, I know that Shultz has talked to
 |  you about the Treasury job, and if that's what you'd like,
 |  that's fine with me. However, the job I really want you to
 |  do, the place I really need you, is over at the National
 |  Committee running things. This is an important time forthe
 |  Republican Party,  George. We have a chance to build a new
 |  coalition in the next four years, and you're the one who can
 |  do it." [3] 
 |
 |  But this was not the job that George really wanted. He
 |  wanted to be promoted, but he wanted to continue in the
 |  personal retinue of Henry Kissinger. "At first Bush tried to
 |  persuade the President to give him, instead, the number-two
 |  job at the State Department, as deputy to Secretary Henry
 |  Kissinger. Foreign affairs was his top priority, he said.
 |  Nixon was cool to this idea, and Bush capitulated." [4] 
 |
 |  According to Bush's own account, he asked Nixon for some
 |  time to ponder the offer of the RNC chairmanship. Among
 |  those whom Bush said he consulted on whether or not to
 |  accept was Rogers C.B. Morton, the former congressman whom
 |  Nixon had made Secretary of Commerce. Morton suggested that
 |  if Bush wanted to accept, he insist that he continue as a
 |  member of the Nixon cabinet, where, it should be recalled,
 |  he had been sitting since he was named ambassador to the
 |  United Nations. Pennsylvania Senator Hugh Scott, one of the
 |  Republican congressional leaders, also advised Bush to
 |  demand to continue on in the cabinet: "Insist on it," Bush
 |  recalls him saying. Bush also consulted Barbara. The story
 |  goes that Bar had demanded that George pledge that the one
 |  job he would never take was the RNC post. But now he wanted
 |  to take precisely that post, which appeared to be a
 |  political graveyard. George explained his wimpish obedience
 |  to Nixon: "Boy, you can't turn a President down." [5]  Bush
 |  then told Ehrlichman that he would accept, if he could stay
 |  on in the cabinet. Nixon approved this condition, and the
 |  era of Chairman George had begun.
 |
 |  Of course, making the chairman of the Republican Party an
 |  ex-officio member of the President's cabinet seems to imply
 |  something resembling a one-party state. But George was not
 |  deterred by such difficulties.
 |
 |  While he was at the U.N., Bush had kept his eyes open for
 |  the next post on the way up his personal "cursus honorum."
 |  In November of 1971 there was a boomlet for Bush among Texas
 |  Republican leaders who were looking for a candidate to run
 |  for governor. [6] 
 |
 |  Nixon's choice of Bush to head the RNC was announced on
 |  December 11, 1972. The outgoing RNC Chairman was Senator Bob
 |  Dole of Kansas, an asset of the grain cartel, but, in that
 |  period, not totally devoid of human qualities. According to
 |  press reports, Nixon palace guard heavies like Haldeman and
 |  Charles W. Colson, later a central Watergate figure, were
 |  not happy with Dole because he would not take orders from
 |  the White House. Dole also tended to function as a conduit
 |  for grassroots resistance to White House directives. In the
 |  context of the 1972 campaign, "White House" means
 |  specifically Clark MacGregor's Committee to Re-Elect the
 |  President (CREEP), one of the protagonists of the Watergate
 |  scandal. [7]  Dole was considered remarkable for his
 |  "irreverence" for Nixon: "[H]e joked about the Watergate
 |  issue, about the White House staff and about the management
 |  of the Republican convention with its 'spontaneous
 |  demonstrations that will last precisely ten minutes.'|" [8] 
 |
 |  Bush's own account of how he got the RNC post ignores Dole,
 |  who was Bush's most serious rival for the 1988 Republican
 |  presidential nomination. According to Dole's version, he
 |  conferred with Nixon about the RNC post on November 28, and
 |  told the President that he would have to quit the RNC in
 |  1973 in order to get ready to run for reelection in 1974.
 |  According to Dole, it was he who recommended Bush to Nixon.
 |  Dole even said that he had gone to New York to convince Bush
 |  to accept the post. Dole sought to remove any implication
 |  that he had been fired by Nixon, and contradicted
 |  "speculation that I went to the mountaintop to be pushed
 |  off." What was clear was that Nixon and his retainers had
 |  chosen a replacement for Dole, whom they expected to be more
 |  obedient to the commands of the White House palace guard.
 |
 |  Bush assumed his new post in January 1973, in the midst of
 |  the trial of the Watergate burglars. He sought at once to
 |  convey the image of a pragmatic technocrat. "There's kind of
 |  a narrow line between standing for nothing and imposing
 |  one's views," Bush told the press. He stressed that the RNC
 |  would have a lot of money to spend for recruiting
 |  candidates, and that he would personally control this money.
 |  "The White House is simply not going to control the budget,"
 |  said Bush. "I believe in the importance of this job and I
 |  have confidence I can do it," he added. "I couldn't do it if
 |  I were some reluctant dragon being dragged away from a
 |  three-wine luncheon." [9] 
 |
 |  Bush inaugurated his new post with a pledge that the
 |  Republican Party, from President Nixon on down, would do
 |  "everything we possibly can" to make sure that the GOP was
 |  not involved in political dirty tricks in the future. "I
 |  don't think it is good for politics in this country and I am
 |  sure I am reflecting the President's views on that as head
 |  of the party," intoned Bush in an appearance on "Issues and
 |  Answers." [11] 
 |
 |  Whether or not Bush lived up to that pledge during his
 |  months at the RNC, and indeed during his later political
 |  career, will be sufficiently answered during the following
 |  pages. But now Chairman George, sitting in Nixon's cabinet
 |  with such men as John Mitchell, his eyes fixed on Henry
 |  Kissinger as his lodestar, is about to set sail on the
 |  turbulent seas of the Watergate typhoon. Before we accompany
 |  him, we must briefly review the complex of events lumped
 |  together under the heading of "Watergate," so that we may
 |  then situate Bush's remarkable and bizarre behavior between
 |  January 1973 and August of 1974, when Nixon's fall became
 |  the occasion for yet another Bush attempt to seize the
 |  vice-presidency.
 |
 |  The Watergate Coup
 |
 |  By the beginning of the 1990s, it has become something of a
 |  commonplace to refer to the complex of events surrounding
 |  the fall of Nixon as a coup d'etat. [12]  It was, to be
 |  sure, a coup d'etat, but one whose organizers and
 |  beneficiaries most commentators and historians are reluctant
 |  to name, much less to confront. Broadly speaking, Watergate
 |  was a coup d'etat which was instrumental in laying the basis
 |  for the specific new type of authoritarian-totalitarian
 |  regime which now rules the United States. The purpose of the
 |  coup was to rearrange the dominant institutions of the U.S.
 |  government so as to enhance their ability to carry out
 |  policies agreeable to the increasingly urgent dictates of
 |  the Morgan-Rockefeller-Mellon-Harriman financier faction.
 |  The immediate beneficiaries of the coup have been that class
 |  of technocratic administrators who have held the highest
 |  public offices since the days of the Watergate scandal. It
 |  is obvious that George Bush himself is one of the most
 |  prominent of such beneficiaries. As the Roman playwright
 |  Seneca warns us, the one who derives advantage from the
 |  crime is the one most likely to have committed it.
 |
 |  The policies of th e Wall Street investment banking
 |  interests named are those of usury and Malthusianism,
 |  stressing the decline of a productive industrial economy in
 |  favor of savage Third World looting and anti-population
 |  measures. The changes subsumed by Watergate included the
 |  abolition of government's function as a means to distribute
 |  the rewards and benefits of economic progress among the
 |  principal constituency groups, upon whose support the
 |  shifting political coalitions depended for their success.
 |  Henceforth, government would appear as the means by which
 |  the sacrifices and penalties of austerity and declining
 |  standards of living would be imposed on a passive and
 |  stupefied population. The constitutional office of the
 |  President was to be virtually destroyed, and the power of
 |  the usurious banking elites above and behind the presidency
 |  was to be radically enhanced.
 |
 |  The reason why the Watergate scandal escalated into the
 |  overthrow of Nixon has to do with the international monetary
 |  crisis of those years, and with Nixon's inability to manage
 |  the collapse of the Bretton Woods system and the U.S. dollar
 |  in a way satisfactory to the Anglo-American financial elite.
 |  One real-time observer of the events of these years who
 |  emphasized the intimate relation between the international
 |  monetary upheavals on the one hand and the "peripetea" of
 |  Nixon on the other was Lyndon LaRouche. The following
 |  comments by LaRouche are excerpted from a July 1973
 |  commentary on the conjuncture of a revaluation of the
 |  deutschemark with John Dean's testimony before Senator Sam
 |  Ervin's Watergate investigating committee: "Last week's
 |  newest up-valuation of the West German D-Mark pushed the
 |  inflation-soaked Nixon Administration one very large step
 |  closer toward 'Watergate' impeachment. Broad bi-partisan
 |  support and press enthusiasm for the televised Senate Select
 |  Committee airing of wide-ranging revelations coincides with
 |  surging contempt for the government's handling of
 |  international and domestic financial problems over the past
 |  six months."
 |
 |  LaRouche went on to point out why the same financiers and
 |  news media who had encouraged a coverup of the Watergate
 |  scandal during 1972 had decided during 1973 to use the
 |  break-in and coverup as a means of overthrowing Nixon: "Then
 |  came the January [1973] Paris meeting of the International
 |  Monetary Fund. The world monetary system was glutted with
 |  over $60 billions of inconvertible reserves. The world
 |  economy was technically bankrupt. It was kept out of actual
 |  bankruptcy proceedings throughout 1972 solely by the
 |  commitment of the U.S.A. to agree to some January, 1973 plan
 |  by which most of these $60 billions would begin to become
 |  convertible. The leading suggestion was that the excess
 |  dollars would be gradually sopped in exchange for IMF
 |  Special Drawing Rights (SDRs). With some such White House
 |  IMF action promised for January, 1973, the financial world
 |  had kept itself more or less wired together by sheer
 |  political will throughout 1972.
 |
 |  "Then, into the delicate January Paris IMF sessions stepped
 |  Mr. Nixon's representatives. His delegates proceeded to
 |  break up the meeting with demands for trade and tariff
 |  concessions -- a virtual declaration of trade war.
 |
 |  "Promptly, the financial markets registered their reaction
 |  to Mr. Nixon's bungling by plunging into crisis.
 |
 |  "To this, Mr. Nixon shortly responded with devaluation of
 |  the dollar, a temporary expedient giving a very brief
 |  breathing-space to get back to the work of establishing
 |  dollar convertibility. Nixon continued his bungling,
 |  suggesting that this devaluation made conditions more
 |  favorable for negotiating trade and tariff concessions --
 |  more trade war.
 |
 |  "The financiers of the world weighed Mr. Nixon's wisdom, and
 |  began selling the dollar at still-greater discounts. Through
 |  successive crises, Mr. Nixon continued to speak only of John
 |  Connally's Holy Remedies of trade and tariff concessions.
 |  Financiers thereupon rushed substantially out of all
 |  currencies into such hedges as world-wide commodity
 |  speculation on a scale unprecedented in modern history.
 |  Still, Mr. Nixon had nothing to propose on dollar
 |  convertibility -- only trade wars. The U.S. domestic economy
 |  exploded into Latin American style inflation.
 |
 |  "General commodity speculation, reflecting a total loss of
 |  confidence in all currencies, seized upon basic agricultural
 |  commodities -- among others. Feed prices soared, driving
 |  meat, poultry, and produce costs and prices toward the
 |  stratosphere.
 |
 |  "It was during this period, as Nixon's credibility seemed so
 |  much less important than during late 1972, that a sudden
 |  rush of enthusiasm developed for the moral sensibilities of
 |  Chairman Sam Ervin's Senate Select Committee." [13] 
 |
 |  As LaRouche points out, it was the leading Anglo-American
 |  financier factions which decided to dump Nixon, and availed
 |  themselves of the preexisting Watergate affair in order to
 |  reach their goal. The financiers were able to implement
 |  their decision all the more easily, thanks to the numerous
 |  operatives of the intelligence community who had been
 |  embedded within the Plumbers from the moment of their
 |  creation in response to an explicit demand coming from
 |  George Bush's personal mentor, Henry Kissinger.
 |
 |  Watergate included the option of rapid steps in the
 |  direction of a dictatorship, not so much of the military as
 |  of the intelligence community and the law enforcement
 |  agencies, acting as executors of the will of the Wall Street
 |  circles indicated. We must recall that the backdrop for
 |  Watergate had been provided first of all by the collapse of
 |  the international monetary system, as made official by
 |  Nixon's austerity decrees imposing a wage and price freeze
 |  starting on the fateful day of August 15, 1971. What
 |  followed was an attempt to run the entire U.S. economy under
 |  the top-down diktat of the Pay Board and the Price
 |  Commission.
 |
 |  This economic state of emergency was then compounded by the
 |  artificial oil shortages orchestrated by the companies of
 |  the international oil cartel during late 1973 and 1974, all
 |  in the wake of Kissinger's October 1973 Middle East War and
 |  the Arab oil boycott.
 |
 |  In August 1974, when Gerald Ford decided to make Nelson
 |  Rockefeller, and not George Bush, his vice
 |  president-designate, he was actively considering further
 |  executive orders to declare a new economic state of
 |  emergency. Such colossal economic dislocations had impelled
 |  the new Trilateral Commission and such theorists as Samuel
 |  Huntington to contemplate the inherent ungovernability of
 |  democracy and the necessity of beginning a transition toward
 |  forms that would prove more durable under conditions of
 |  aggravated economic breakdown. Ultimately, much to the
 |  disappointment of George Bush, whose timetable of boundless
 |  personal ambition and greed for power had once again surged
 |  ahead of what his peers of the ruling elite were prepared to
 |  accept, the perspectives for a more overtly dictatorial form
 |  of regime came to be embodied in the figure of Vice
 |  President Nelson Rockefeller. Skeptics will point to the
 |  humiliating announcement, made by President Ford within the
 |  context of his 1975 "Halloween massacre" reshuffle of key
 |  posts, that Rockefeller would not be considered for the 1976
 |  vice-presidential nomination. But Rockefeller, thanks to the
 |  efforts of Sarah Jane Moore and Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme,
 |  each of whom attempted to assassinate Ford, had already come
 |  very close to the Oval Office on two separate occasions.
 |
 |  Ford himself was reputedly one of the most exalted
 |  freemasons ever to occupy the presidency. Preponderant power
 |  during the last years of Nixon and during the Ford years was
 |  in any case exercised by Henry Kissinger, the de facto
 |  President. The preserving of constitutional form and ritual
 |  as a hollow facade behind which to realize practices more
 |  and more dictatorial in their substance was a typical
 |  pragmatic adaptation made possible by the ability of the
 |  financiers to engineer the slow and gradual decline of the
 |  economy, avoiding upheavals of popular protest.
 |
 |  But in retrospect, there can be no doubt that Watergate was
 |  a coup d'etat, a creeping and muffled cold coup in the
 |  institutions which has extended its consequences over almost
 |  two dec ades. Among contemporary observers, the one who
 |  grasped this significance most lucidly in the midst of the
 |  events themselves was Lyndon LaRouche, who produced a wealth
 |  of journalistic and analytical material during 1973 and
 |  1974. The roots of the administrative fascism of the Reagan
 |  and Bush years are to be found in the institutional tremors
 |  and changed power relations set off by the banal farce of
 |  the Watergate break-in.
 |
 |  Hollywood's Watergate
 |
 |  In the view of the dominant school of pro-regime journalism,
 |  the essence of the Watergate scandal lies in the illegal
 |  espionage and surveillance activity of the White House
 |  covert operations team, the so-called Plumbers, who are
 |  alleged to have been caught during an attempt to burglarize
 |  the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the
 |  Watergate office building near the Potomac. The supposed
 |  goal of the break-in was to filch information and documents
 |  while planting bugs. According to the official legend of the
 |  "Washington Post" and Hollywood, Nixon and his retainers
 |  responded to the arrest of the burglars by compounding their
 |  original crime with obstruction of justice and all of the
 |  abuses of a coverup. Then, the "Washington Post" journalists
 |  Bob Woodward and CarlBernstein, dedicated partisans of the
 |  truth, blew the story open with the help of Woodward's
 |  mysterious source, Deep Throat, setting into motion the
 |  investigation of the Senate committee under Sam Ervin,
 |  leading to impeachment proceedings by Rep. Peter Rodino's
 |  House Judiciary Committee which ultimately forced Nixon to
 |  resign.
 |
 |  The received interpretation of the salient facts of the
 |  Watergate episode is a fantastic and grotesque distortion of
 |  historical truth. Even the kind of cursory examination of
 |  the facts in Watergate which we can permit ourselves within
 |  the context of a biography of Watergate figure George Bush
 |  will reveal that the actions which caused the fall of Nixon
 |  cannot be reduced to the simplistic account just summarized.
 |  There is, for example, the question of the infiltration of
 |  the White House staff and of the Plumbers themselves by
 |  members and assets of the intelligence community whose
 |  loyalty was not to Nixon, but to the Anglo-American
 |  financier elite. This includes the presence among the
 |  Plumbers of numerous assets of the Central Intelligence
 |  Agency, and specifically of the CIA bureaus traditionally
 |  linked to George Bush, such as the Office of
 |  Security-Security Research Staff and the Miami Station with
 |  its pool of Cuban operatives.
 |
 |  Who Paid the Plumbers?
 |
 |  The Plumbers were created at the demand of Henry Kissinger,
 |  who told Nixon that something had to be done to stop leaks
 |  in the wake of the "Pentagon Papers" affair of 1971. But if
 |  the Plumbers were called into existence by Kissinger, they
 |  were funded through a mechanism set up by Kissinger clone
 |  George Bush. A salient fact about the White House Special
 |  Investigations Unit (or Plumbers) of 1971-72 is that the
 |  money used to finance it was provided by George Bush's
 |  business partner and lifelong intimate friend, Bill Liedtke,
 |  the president of Pennzoil. Bill Liedtke was a regional
 |  finance chairman for the Nixon campaigns of 1968 and 1972,
 |  and he was one of the most successful. Liedtke says that he
 |  accepted this post as a personal favor to George Bush. In
 |  1972, Bill Liedtke raised $700,000 in anonymous
 |  contributions, including what appears to have been a single
 |  contribution of $100,000 that was laundered through a bank
 |  account in Mexico. According to Harry Hurt, part of this
 |  money came from Bush's bosom crony Robert Mosbacher, now
 |  Secretary of Commerce. According to one account, "two days
 |  before a new law was scheduled to begin making anonymous
 |  donations illegal, the $700,000 in cash, checks, and
 |  securities was loaded into a briefcase at Pennzoil
 |  headquarters and picked up by a company vice president, who
 |  boarded a Washington-bound Pennzoil jet and delivered the
 |  funds to the Committee to Re-Elect the President at ten
 |  o'clock that night." [14] 
 |
 |  These Mexican checks were turned over first to Maurice Stans
 |  of the CREEP, who transferred them in turn to Watergate
 |  burglar Gordon Liddy. Liddy passed them on to Bernard
 |  Barker, one of the Miami station Cubans arrested on the
 |  night of the final Watergate break-in. Barker was actually
 |  carrying some of the cash left over from these checks when
 |  he was apprehended. When Barker was arrested, his bank
 |  records were subpoenaed by the Dade County, Florida district
 |  attorney, Richard E. Gerstein, and were obtained by
 |  Gerstein's chief investigator, Martin Dardis. As Dardis told
 |  Carl Bernstein of the "Washington Post," about $100,000 in
 |  four cashier's checks had been issued in Mexico City by
 |  Manuel Ogarrio Daguerre, a prominent lawyer who handled
 |  Stans's money-laundering operation there. [15]  Liedtke
 |  eventually appeared before three grand juries investigating
 |  the different aspects of the Watergate affair, but neither
 |  he nor Pennzoil was ever brought to trial for the CREEP
 |  contributions. But it is a matter of more than passing
 |  interest that the money for the Plumbers came from one of
 |  Bush's intimates and, at the request of Bush, a member of
 |  the Nixon cabinet from February 1971 on.
 |
 |  The U.S. House of Representatives Banking and Currency
 |  Committee, chaired by Texas Democrat WrightPatman, soon
 |  began a vigorous investigation of the money financing the
 |  break-in, large amounts of which were found as cash in the
 |  pockets of the burglars.
 |
 |  Patman confirmed that the largest amount of the funds going
 |  into the Miami bank account of Watergate burglar Bernard
 |  Barker, a CIA operative since the Bay of Pigs invasion, was
 |  the $100,000 sent in by Texas CREEP chairman William
 |  Liedtke, longtime business partner of George Bush. The money
 |  was sent from Houston down to Mexico, where it was
 |  "laundered" to eliminate its accounting trail. It then came
 |  back to Barker's account as four checks totaling $89,000 and
 |  $11,000 in cash. A smaller amount, an anonymous $25,000
 |  contribution, was sent in by Minnesota CREEP officer Kenneth
 |  Dahlberg in the form of a cashier's check.
 |
 |  Patman relentlessly pursued the true sources of this money,
 |  as the best route to the truth about who ran the break-in,
 |  and for what purpose. CREEP National Chairman Maurice Stans
 |  later described the situation just after the burglars were
 |  arrested as made dangerous by "... Congressman Wright Patman
 |  and several of his political hatchet men working on the
 |  staff of the House Banking and Currency Committee. Without
 |  specific authorization by his committee, Patman announced
 |  that he was going to investigate the Watergate matter, using
 |  as his entry the banking transactions of the Dahlberg and
 |  Mexican checks. In the guise of covering that ground, he
 |  obviously intended to roam widely, and he almost did, but
 |  his own committee, despite its Democratic majority,
 |  eventually stopped him."
 |
 |  These are the facts that Patman had established -- before
 |  "his own committee ... stopped him."
 |
 |  The anonymous Minnesota $25,000 had in fact been provided to
 |  Dahlberg by Dwayne Andreas, chief executive of the Archer
 |  Daniels Midland grain trading company.
 |
 |  The Texas $100,000, sent by Liedtke, in fact came from
 |  Robert H. Allen, a mysterious nuclear weapons materials
 |  executive. Allen was chairman of Gulf Resources and Chemical
 |  Corporation in Houston. His company controlled half the
 |  world's supply of lithium, an essential component of
 |  hydrogen bombs.
 |
 |  On April 3, 1972 (75 days before the Watergate arrests),
 |  $100,000 was transferred by telephone from a bank account of
 |  Gulf Resources and Chemical Corp. into a Mexico City account
 |  of an officially defunct subsidiary of Gulf Resources. Gulf
 |  Resources' Mexican lawyer, Manuel Ogarrio Daguerre, withdrew
 |  it and sent back to Houston the package of four checks and
 |  cash, which Liedtke forwarded for the CIA burglars. [16] 
 |
 |  Robert H. Allen was Texas CREEP's chief financial officer,
 |  while Bush partner William Liedtke was overall chairman. But
 |  what did Allen represent?
 |
 |  In keeping with its strategic nuclear holdings, Allen's Gulf
 |  Resources was a kind of committee of the main components of
 |  the London-New York oligarchy. Formed in the late 1960s,
 |  Gulf Resources had taken over the New York-based Lithium
 |  Corporation of America. The president of this subsidiary was
 |  Gulf Resources Executive Vice President Harry D.
 |  Feltenstein, Jr. John Roger Menke, a director of both Gulf
 |  Resources and Lithium Corp., was also a consultant and
 |  director of the United Nuclear Corporation, and a director
 |  of the Hebrew Technical Institute. The ethnic background of
 |  the Lithium subsidiary is of interest due to Israel's known
 |  preoccupation with developing a nuclear weapons arsenal.
 |
 |  Another Gulf Resources and Lithium Corp. director was
 |  Minnesotan Samuel H. Rogers, who was also a director of
 |  Dwayne Andreas's Archer Daniels Midland Corp. Andreas was a
 |  large financial backer of the "Zionist lobby" through the
 |  Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'nith.
 |
 |  Gulf Resources Chairman Robert H. Allen received the "Torch
 |  of Liberty" award of the Anti-Defamation League in 1982.
 |  Allen was a white Anglo-Saxon conservative. No credible
 |  reason for this award was supplied to the press, and the ADL
 |  stated their satisfaction that Mr. Allen's financing of the
 |  Watergate break-in was simply a mistake, now in the distant
 |  past.
 |
 |  >From the beginning of Gulf Resources, there was always a
 |  representative on its board of New York's Bear Stearns firm,
 |  >whose partner Jerome Kohlberg, Jr., pioneered leveraged
 |  buyouts and merged with Bush's Henry Kravis.
 |
 |  The most prestigious board member of Allen's Gulf Resources
 |  was George A. Butler, otherwise the chairman of Houston's
 |  Post Oak Bank. Butler represented the ultra-secretive W. S.
 |  ("Auschwitz") Farish III, confidant of George Bush and U.S.
 |  host of Queen Elizabeth. Farish was the founder and
 |  controlling owner of Butler's Post Oak Bank, and was
 |  chairman of the bank's executive committee as of 1988. [17] 
 |
 |  A decade after Watergate, it was revealed that the Hunt
 |  family had controlled about 15 percent of Gulf Resources
 |  shares. This Texas oil family hired George Bush in 1977 to
 |  be the executive committee chairman of their family
 |  enterprise, the First International Bank in Houston. In the
 |  1980s, Ray Hunt secured a massive oil contract with the
 |  ruler of North Yemen under the sponsorship of then-Vice
 |  President Bush. Ray Hunt continues in the 1991-92
 |  presidential campaign as George Bush's biggest Texas
 |  financial angel.
 |
 |  Here, in this one powerful Houston corporation, we see early
 |  indications of the alliance of George Bush with the "Zionist
 |  lobby" -- an alliance which for political reasons the Bush
 |  camp wishes to keep covert.
 |
 |  These, then, are the Anglo-American moguls whose money paid
 |  for the burglary of the Watergate Hotel. It was their money
 |  that Richard Nixon was talking about on the famous "smoking
 |  gun" tape which lost him the presidency.
 |
 |  The Investigation Is Derailed
 |
 |  On Oct. 3, 1972, the House Banking and Currency Committee
 |  voted 20-15 against Chairman Wright Patman's investigation.
 |  The vote prevented the issuance of 23 subpoenas for CREEP
 |  officials to come to Congress to testify.
 |
 |  The margin of protection to the moguls was provided by six
 |  Democratic members of the committee who voted with the
 |  Republicans against Chairman Patman. As CREEP Chairman
 |  Maurice Stans put it, "There were ... indirect approaches to
 |  Democratic [committee] members. An all-out campaign was
 |  conducted to see that the investigation was killed off, as
 |  it successfully was." [18] 
 |
 |  Certain elements of this infamous "campaign" are known.
 |
 |  Banking Committee member Frank Brasco, a liberal Democratic
 |  congressman from New York, voted to stop the probe. New York
 |  Governor Nelson Rockefeller had arranged a meeting between
 |  Brasco and U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell. Brasco had
 |  been a target of a Justice Department investigation for
 |  alleged fraud and bribery since 1970, and Mitchell
 |  successfully warned Brasco not to back Patman. Later, in
 |  1974, Brasco was convicted of bribery.
 |
 |  Before Watergate, both John Mitchell and Henry Kissinger had
 |  FBI reports implicating California Congressman Richard Hanna
 |  in the receipt of illegal campaign contributions from the
 |  Korean Central Intelligence Agency. Hanna surprised Patman
 |  by voting against the investigation. Hanna was later (1978)
 |  convicted for his role in the Koreagate scandal in 1978.
 |
 |  The secretary of Congressman William Chappell complained in
 |  1969 that the Florida Democrat had forced her to kick back
 |  some of her salary. The Justice Department, holding this
 |  information, had declined to prosecute. Chappell, a member
 |  of the Banking Committee, voted to stop Patman's
 |  investigation.
 |
 |  Kentucky Democratic Congressman William Curlin, Jr. revealed
 |  in 1973 that "certain members of the committee were reminded
 |  of various past political indiscretions, or of relatives who
 |  might suffer as a result of [a] pro-subpoena vote."
 |
 |  The Justice Department worked overtime to smear Patman,
 |  including an attempt to link him to "Communist agents" in
 |  Greece. [19] 
 |
 |  The day before the committee vote, the Justice Department
 |  released a letter to Patman claiming that any congressional
 |  investigation would compromise the rights of the accused
 |  Watergate burglars before their trial.
 |
 |  House Republican leader Gerald Ford led the attack on Patman
 |  from within the Congress. Though he later stated his regrets
 |  for this vicious campaign, his eventual reward was the U.S.
 |  presidency.
 |
 |  Canceling the Patman probe meant that there would be no
 |  investigation of Watergate before the 1972 presidential
 |  election. The "Washington Post" virtually ended reference to
 |  the Watergate affair, and spoke of Nixon's opponent, George
 |  McGovern, as unqualified for the presidency.
 |
 |  The Republican Party was handed another four-year
 |  administration. Bush, Kissinger, Rockefeller and Ford were
 |  the gainers.
 |
 |  But then Richard Nixon became the focus of all Establishment
 |  attacks for Watergate, while the money trail that Patman had
 |  pursued was forgotten. Wright Patman was forced out of his
 |  committee chairmanship in 1974. On the day Nixon resigned
 |  the presidency, Patman wrote to Peter Rodino, chairman of
 |  the House Judiciary Committee, asking him not to stop
 |  investigating Watergate. Though Patman died in 1976, his
 |  advice still holds good.
 |
 |  The CIA Plumbers
 |
 |  As the late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover told the journalist
 |  Andrew Tully in the days before June 1972, "By God, he's
 |  [Nixon's] got some former CIA men working for him that I'd
 |  kick out of my office. Someday, that bunch will serve him up
 |  a fine mess." [20]  The CIA men in question were among the
 |  Plumbers, a unit allegedly created in the first place to
 |  stanch the flow of leaks, including the Jack Anderson
 |  material about such episodes as the December 1971 brush with
 |  nuclear war discussed above. Leading Plumbers included
 |  retired high officials of the CIA. Plumber and Watergate
 |  burglar E. Howard Hunt had been a GS-15 CIA staff officer;
 |  he had played a role in the 1954 toppling of Guatemalan
 |  President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, and later had been one of
 |  the planners in the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961. After the
 |  failure of the Bay of Pigs, Hunt is thought to have been a
 |  part of the continuing CIA attempts to assassinate Castro,
 |  code-named Operation Mongoose, ongoing at the time of the
 |  Kennedy assassination. All of this puts him in the thick of
 |  the CIA Miami station. One of Hunt's close personal friends
 |  was Howard Osborne, an official of the CIA Office of
 |  Security who was the immediate superior of James McCord. In
 |  the spring of 1971 Hunt went to Miami to recruit from among
 |  the Cubans the contingent of Watergate burglars, including
 |  Bernard Barker, Eugenio Martinez, and the rest. This was two
 |  months before the publication of the "Pentagon Papers,"
 |  leaked by Daniel Ellsberg, provided Kissinger with the
 |  pretext he needed to get Nixon to initiate what would
 |  shortly become the Plumbers.
 |
 |  Another leading Watergate burglar was James McCord, a former
 |  top official of the CIA Office of Security, the agency
 |  bureau which is supposed to maintain contacts with U.S.
 |  police agencies in order to facilitate its basic task of
 |  providing security for CIA installations and personnel. The
 |  Office of Security was thus heavily implicated in the CIA's
 |  illegal domestic operations, including "Cointelpro"
 |  operations against political dissidents and groups, and was
 |  the vehicle for such mind-control experiments as Operations
 |  Bluebird, Artichoke, and MK-Ultra. The Office of Security
 |  also utilized male and female prostitutes and other sex
 |  operatives for purposes of compromising and blackmailing
 |  public figures, information gathering, and control.
 |  According to Hougan, the Office of Security maintained a
 |  "fag file" of some 300,000 U.S. citizens, with heavy stress
 |  on homosexuals. The Office of Security also had
 |  responsibility for Soviet and other defectors. James McCord
 |  was at one time responsible for the physical security of all
 |  CIA premises in the U.S. McCord was also a close friend of
 |  CIA Counterintelligence Director James Jesus Angleton.
 |  McCord was anxious to cover the CIA's role; at one point he
 |  wrote to his superior, General Gaynor, urging him to "flood
 |  the newspapers with leaks or anonymous letters" to discredit
 |  those who wanted to establish the responsibility of "the
 |  company." [21]  But according to one of McCord's own police
 |  contacts, Garey Bittenbender of the Washington, D.C. Police
 |  Intelligence Division, who recognized him after his arrest,
 |  McCord had averred to him that the Watergate break-ins had
 |  been "a CIA operation," an account which McCord heatedly
 |  denied later. [22] 
 |
 |  The third leader of the Watergate burglars, G. Gordon Liddy,
 |  had worked for the FBI and the Treasury. Liddy's
 |  autobiography, "Will," published in 1980, and various
 |  statements show that Liddy's world outlook had a number of
 |  similarities with that of George Bush: He was, for example,
 |  obsessed with the maintenance and transmission of his
 |  "family gene pool."
 |
 |  Another key member of the Plumbers unit was John Paisley,
 |  who functioned as the official CIA liaison to the White
 |  House investigative unit. It was Paisley who assumed
 |  responsibility for the overall "leak analysis," that is to
 |  say, for defining the problem of unauthorized divulging of
 |  classified material which the Plumbers were supposed to
 |  combat. Paisley, along with Howard Osborne of the Office of
 |  Security, met with the Plumbers, led by Kissinger operative
 |  David Young, at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia on
 |  August 9, 1971. Paisley's important place on the Plumbers'
 |  roster is most revealing, since Paisley was later to become
 |  an important appointee of CIA Director George Bush. In the
 |  middle of 1976, Bush decided to authorize a group of
 |  experts, ostensibly from outside the CIA, to produce an
 |  analysis which would be compared with the CIA's own National
 |  Intelligence Estimates on Soviet capabilities and
 |  intentions. The panel of outside experts was given the
 |  designation of "Team B." Bush chose Paisley to be the CIA's
 |  "coordinator" of the three subdivisions of Team B. Paisley
 |  would later disappear while sailing on Chesapeake Bay in
 |  September of 1978.
 |
 |  In a White House memorandum by David Young summarizing the
 |  August 9, 1971 meeting between the Plumbers and the official
 |  CIA leaders, we find that Young "met with Howard Osborn and
 |  a Mr. Paisley to review what it was that we wanted CIA to do
 |  in connection with their files on leaks from January 1969 to
 |  the present." There then follows a 14-point list of leaks
 |  and their classification, including the frequency of leaks
 |  associated with certain journalists, the gravity of the
 |  leaks, and so forth. A data base was called for, and "it was
 |  decided that Mr. Paisley would get this done by next Monday,
 |  August 16, 1971." On areas where more clarification was
 |  needed, the memo noted, "the above questions should be
 |  reviewed with Paisley within the next two days." [23] 
 |
 |  The lesser Watergate burglars came from the ranks of the CIA
 |  Miami station Cubans: Bernard Barker, Eugenio Martinez,
 |  Felipe de Diego, Frank Surgis, Virgilio Gonzalez and
 |  Reinaldo Pico. Once they had started working for Hunt,
 |  Martinez asked the Miami station chief, Jake Esterline, if
 |  he was familiar with the activities now being carried out
 |  under White House cover. Esterline in turn asked Langley for
 |  its opinion of Hunt's White House position. A reply was
 |  written by Cord Meyer, later openly profiled as a Bush
 |  admirer, to Deputy Director for Plans (that is to say,
 |  covert operations) Thomas Karamessines. The import of
 |  Meyer's directions to Esterline was that the latter should
 |  "not ... concern himself with the travels of Hunt in Miami,
 |  that Hunt was on domestic White House business of an unknown
 |  nature and that the Chief of Station should 'cool it.'|"
 |  [24] 
 |
 |  Notes for Chapter 13
 |
 |  1. Fitzhugh Green, "George Bush: An Intimate Portrait" (New
 |  York: Hippocrene Books, 1989), p. 137.
 |
 |  2. George Bush and Victor Gold, "Looking Forward" (New York:
 |  Doubleday, 1987), pp. 120-21.
 |
 |  3. "Ibid.," p. 121.
 |
 |  4. Green, "op. cit.," p. 129.
 |
 |  5. Harry Hurt III, "George Bush, Plucky Lad," in "Texas
 |  Monthly," June 1983.
 |
 |  6. "Dallas Morning News," Nov. 25, 1971.
 |
 |  7. "Washington Post," Dec. 12, 1972.
 |
 |  8. "Ibid."
 |
 |  9. "Washington Post," Jan. 22, 1973.
 |
 |  11. "Washington Post," Jan. 22, 1973.
 |
 |  12. See for example Len Cholodny and Robert Gettlin, "Silent
 |  Coup" (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991).
 |
 |  13. Lyn Marcus, "Up-Valuation of German Mark Fuels Watergate
 |  Attack on Nixon," "New Solidarity," July 9-13, 1973, pp.
 |  10-11.
 |
 |  14. See Thomas Petzinger, "Oil and Honor" (New York: Putnam,
 |  1987), pp. 64-65. See also Harry Hurt's article mentioned
 |  above. Wright Patman's House Banking Committee revealed part
 |  of the activities of Bill Liedtke and Mosbacher during the
 |  Watergate era.
 |
 |  15. Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, "All the President's
 |  Men" (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), present the
 |  checks received by Barker as one of the ways they breached
 |  the wall of secrecy around the CREEP, with the aid of their
 |  anonymous source "Bookkeeper." But neither in this book nor
 |  in "The Final Days" (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976), do
 |  "Woodstein" get around to mentioning that the Mexico City
 |  money came from Bill Liedtke. This marked pattern of silence
 |  and reticence on matters pertaining to George Bush,
 |  certainly one of the most prominent of the President's men,
 |  is a characteristic of Watergate journalism in general.
 |
 |  For more information regarding William Liedtke's role in
 |  financing the CREEP, see Hearings Before the Select
 |  Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, 93rd
 |  Congress, including testimony by Hugh Sloan, June 6, 1973;
 |  and by Maurice Stans, June 12, 1973; see also the Final
 |  Report of the committee, issued in June, 1974. Relevant
 |  press coverage from the period includes "Stans Scathes
 |  Report," by Woodward and Bernstein, "Washington Post," Sept.
 |  14, 1972; and "Liedtke Linked to FPC Choice," United Press
 |  International, June 26, 1973. Liedtke also influenced Nixon
 |  appointments in areas of interest to himself.
 |
 |  16. "New York Times," Aug. 26, 1972 and Nov. 1, 1972.
 |
 |  17. Interview with a Post Oak Bank executive, Nov. 21, 1991.
 |  See also "Houston Post," Dec. 27, 1988.
 |
 |  18. Maurice H. Stans, "The Terrors of Justice: The Untold
 |  Side of Watergate" (New York: Everest, 1978).
 |
 |  19. Stanley L. Kutler, "The Wars of Watergate: The Last
 |  Crisis of Richard Nixon" (New York: Knopf, distributed by
 |  Random House, 1990), pp. 229-33.
 |
 |  20. See Jim Hougan, "Secret Agenda" (New York: Random House,
 |  1984), p. 92.
 |
 |  21. Ervin Committee Hearings, Book 9, pp. 3441-46, and
 |  Report of the Nedzi Committee of the House of
 |  Representatives, p. 201, cited by Hougan, "op. cit.," p.
 |  318.
 |
 |  22. Nezdi Committee Report, pp. 442-43, quoted in Hougan,
 |  "op. cit.," p. 261.
 |
 |  23. Hougan, "op. cit.," pp. 46-47.
 |
 |  24. Ervin Committee Final Report, pp. 1146-49, and Hougan,
 |  "op. cit.," pp. 131-32.
 |
 |
 |  Chapter 13
 |
 |  Part 2
 |
 |  CHAIRMAN GEORGE IN WATERGATE
 |
 |  During the spring of 1973, George Bush was no longer simply
 |  a long-standing member of the Nixon cabinet. He was also, de
 |  facto, a White House official, operating out of the same Old
 |  Executive Office Building, which is adjacent to the
 |  Executive Mansion and forms part of the same security
 |  compound. As we read in the Jack Anderson column for March
 |  10, 1973, in the "Washington Post": "Republican National
 |  Chairman George Bush, as befitting the head of a party whose
 |  coffers are overflowing, has been provided with a plush
 |  office in the new Eisenhower Building here. He spends much
 |  of his time, however, in a government office next to the
 |  White House. When we asked how a party official rated a
 |  government office, a GOP spokesman explained that the office
 |  wasn't assigned to him but was merely a visitor's office.
 |  The spokesman admitted, however, that Bush spends a lot of
 |  time there." This means that Bush's principal office was in
 |  the building where Nixon most liked to work; Nixon had what
 |  was called his "hideaway" office in the Old Executive Office
 |  Building.
 |
 |  As to the state of George's relations with Nixon at this
 |  time, we have the testimony of a "Yankee Republican" who had
 |  known and liked father Prescott, as cited by journalist Al
 |  Reinert: "I can't think of a man I've ever known for whom I
 |  have greater respect than Pres Bush ... I've always been
 |  kind of sorry his son turned out to be such a jerk. George
 |  has been kissing Nixon's ass ever since he came up here."
 |  [25]  Reinert comments that "when Nixon became president,
 |  Bush became a teacher's pet," "a presidential favorite,
 |  described in the press as one of 'Nixon's men.'|"
 |
 |  Bush's Role
 |
 |  On the surface, George was an ingratiating sycophant. But he
 |  dissembled. The Nixon White House would seem to have
 |  included at least one highly placed official who betrayed
 |  his President to Bob Woodward of the "Washington Post,"
 |  making it possible for that newspaper to repeatedly outflank
 |  Nixon's attempts at stonewalling. This was the celebrated,
 |  and still anonymous, source Woodward called "Deep Throat."
 |
 |  Al Haig has often been accused of having been the figure of
 |  the Nixon White House who provided Woodward and Bernstein
 |  with their leads. If there is any consensus about the true
 |  identity of Deep Throat, it would appear to be that Al Haig
 |  is the prime suspect. However, there is no conclusive
 |  evidence about the true identity of the person or persons
 |  called Deep Throat, assuming that such a phenomenon ever
 |  existed. As soon as Haig is named, we must become
 |  suspicious: The propaganda of the Bush networks has never
 |  been kind to Haig. Haig and Bush, as leading clones of Henry
 |  Kissinger, were locked on a number of occasions into a kind
 |  of sibling rivalry. On the one hand, it cannot be proven
 |  that Haig was Deep Throat. On the other hand, George Bush
 |  has frequently escaped any scrutiny in this regard. It may
 |  therefore be useful, as a kind of "reductio ad absurdum"
 |  permitting us a fresh approach to certain long-standing
 |  Watergate enigmas, to ask the question:
 |
 |  Could Bush have been Deep Throat?
 |
 |  Or, could Bush have been one part of a composite of sources
 |  which Woodward has chosen to popularize as his legendary
 |  Deep Throat? Or, could Bush have been a source who chose to
 |  use Deep Throat as his cut-out?
 |
 |  The novelty of Bush as Deep Throat is not due to any
 |  objective circumstance, but rather to the selective
 |  omissions of sources, journalists, press organs, publishers,
 |  and editors, none of whom is immune to the influence of the
 |  Skull and Bones/Brown Brothers, Harriman powerhouse we have
 |  already seen in action so many times. Some years after
 |  Nixon's fall, "Time" magazine listed what it considered to
 |  be the possible sources for the leaks attributed by
 |  "Woodstein" to Deep Throat. These were: Richard Nixon, Rose
 |  Mary Woods, Alexander Haig, Charles Colson, Stephen Bull,
 |  Fred Buzhardt, Leonard Garment, and Samuel Powers. [26] 
 |  Woodward and Bernstein do not list Bush among the Cast of
 |  Characters in "All the President's Men," although he was a
 |  member of the Nixon cabinet. In these authors' later book,
 |  "The Final Days," he does appear. But the exclusion of Bush
 |  from the list of suspects is arbitrary and highly
 |  suspicious, especially on the part of "Time" magazine,
 |  founded by Henry Luce of Skull and Bones.
 |
 |  Discounting the coverups, both crude and sophisticated, we
 |  can state that Bush is a plausible candidate to be Deep
 |  Throat, or to be one of his voices if these should prove to
 |  be multiple. What intimate of Nixon, what cabinet member and
 |  quasi-White House official had a better line of
 |  communication to the Wall Street investment banking circles
 |  who were the prime movers of the overthrow of Nixon? Who had
 |  a better working relationship with Henry Kissinger, the
 |  chief immediate beneficiary of Nixon's downfall? Who had
 |  links to the dirty tricks and black operations divisions of
 |  the CIA, especially to the Miami station? Whose business
 |  partner and cronies had financed the CREEP? And who could
 |  count on the loyalty of a far-flung freemasonic network
 |  ensconced in positions of power in the media, the courts,
 |  the executive branch, the Congress, and law enforcement
 |  agencies? Surely Bush is more than a plausible candidate; by
 |  any realistic reckoning, he is a formidable candidate.
 |
 |  In terms of the immediate tactical mechanics of the
 |  Watergate scandal, Bush possessed undeniable trump cards.
 |  The first was his long-standing family and business
 |  relationship with the owners of the "Washington Post," the
 |  flagship news organ of the scandal. The paper was controlled
 |  by Katherine Meyer Graham, and both her father, Eugene
 |  Meyer, and her late husband, Philip Graham, had been among
 |  the investers of the Bush-Overbey oil firm in 1951-52. With
 |  Eugene Meyer, Bush says, he "had other oil-business dealings
 |  over the years, most of them profitable, all enjoyable."
 |  [27]  In addition, there are a few details of the personal
 |  background of reporter Bob Woodward which may suggest a
 |  covert link to Chairman George. Woodward was a naval
 |  intelligence officer with a government security clearance of
 |  the highest level ("top secret crypto"). He was specifically
 |  one of the briefers sent by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to
 |  provide verbal intelligence and operational summaries for
 |  top officials, including those of the National Security
 |  Council. Woodward was also, like Bush, a graduate of Yale,
 |  where he took his degree in 1965. Also like Bush, Woodward
 |  had been a member of a Yale secret society. Woodward had not
 |  been tapped for Skull and Bones, however; he had joined Book
 |  and Snake, thought to be among the four most prestigious of
 |  these masonic institutions. Book and Snake, like Scroll and
 |  Key and Wolf's Head, functions as a satellite of Skull and
 |  Bones, receiving as members the best young oligarchs not
 |  culled by Skull and Bones. Dean Acheson, of Wolf's Head, for
 |  example, was an asset of the political-financial faction
 |  headed up by Averell Harriman of Skull and Bones.
 |
 |  Some delving into the details of the Deep Throat-Woodward
 |  relationship may further substantiate the Bush candidacy. If
 |  we wish literally to believe what Woodward recounts, we
 |  obtain the following picture of his contacts with Deep
 |  Throat. First we have a series of telephone contacts between
 |  June 19 and October 8, 1972. Even if we posit that Bush was
 |  busily fulfilling his diplomatic commitments in New York
 |  City on the days when he was not attending cabinet meetings
 |  in Washington, there is no practical reason why Bush could
 |  not have provided the tips Woodward describes. Then we have
 |  the legendary late-night garage meetings, starting Monday,
 |  October 9, 1972, and repeated on Saturday, October 21, and
 |  Friday, October 27, with a further likely garage meeting in
 |  late December. Since all of these but the first were on
 |  weekends, there is no reason to conclude that they could not
 |  have been accommodated within Bush's U.N. schedule. Any time
 |  after December 12, 1972 (the date Bush's GOP appointment was
 |  announced), his presence in Washington would have fit easily
 |  into the reorientation of his work schedule toward his new
 |  job at the White House. A garage meeting in January 1973, a
 |  bar meeting in February, phone calls in April, another
 |  garage meeting in May, and a further one in November -- none
 |  of this would have presented any difficulty.
 |
 |  What does Woodward tell us about Deep Throat? "The man's
 |  position in the Executive Branch was extremely sensitive."
 |  "Deep Throat had access to information from the White House,
 |  Justice, the FBI and CRP. What he knew represented an
 |  aggregate of hard information flowing in and out of many
 |  stations." He was someone whom Woodward had known for some
 |  time : "His friendship with Deep Throat was genuine, not
 |  cultivated. Long before Watergate, they had spent many
 |  evenings talking about Washington, the government, power."
 |  [28]  Deep Throat was a man who "could be rowdy, drink too
 |  much, overreach. He was not good at concealing his feelings,
 |  hardly ideal for a man in his position." Could this be the
 |  precursor of the Bush of Panama, the Gulf, and civil rights
 |  controversies, unable to suppress periodic episodes of
 |  public rage? Perhaps. We also learn from Woodward that Deep
 |  Throat was "an incurable gossip." Perhaps this can be
 |  related to Bush's talent as a mimic, described by Fitzhugh
 |  Green. [29] 
 |
 |  It was on May 16, 1973 Deep Throat told Woodward:
 |  "Everyone's life is in danger." He added that "electronic
 |  surveillance is going on and we had better watch it." Who is
 |  doing it? Bernstein asked. "CIA," was Woodward's reply.
 |  Woodward typed a summary of Deep Throat's further remarks,
 |  including these comments: "The covert activities involve the
 |  whole U.S. intelligence community and are incredible. Deep
 |  Throat refused to give specifics because it is against the
 |  law. The cover-up had little to do with the Watergate, but
 |  was mainly to protect the covert operations." [30]  Butwh at
 |  were the covert operations to which Deep Throat so
 |  dramatically refers?
 |
 |  Enter Lou Russell
 |
 |  One of the major sub-plots of Watergate, and one that will
 |  eventually lead us back to the documented public record of
 |  George Bush, is the relation of the various activities of
 |  the Plumbers to the wiretapping of a group of prostitutes
 |  who operated out of a brothel in the Columbia Plaza
 |  Apartments, located in the immediate vicinity of the
 |  Watergate buildings. [31]  Among the customers of the
 |  prostitutes there appear to have been a U.S. Senator, an
 |  astronaut, A Saudi prince (the Embassy of Saudi Arabia is
 |  nearby), U.S. and South Korean intelligence officials, and
 |  above all, numerous Democratic Party leaders whose presence
 |  can be partially explained by the propinquity of the
 |  Democratic National Committe offices in the Watergate. The
 |  Columbia Plaza Apartments brothel was under intense CIA
 |  surveillance by the Office of Security/Security Research
 |  Staff through one of their assets, an aging private
 |  detective out of the pages of Damon Runyon who went by the
 |  name of Louis James Russell. Russell was, according to
 |  Hougan, especially interested in bugging a hotline phone
 |  that linked the DNC with the nearby brothel. During the
 |  Watergate break-ins, James McCord's recruit to the Plumbers,
 |  Alfred C. Baldwin, would appear to have been bugging the
 |  telephones of the Columbia Plaza brothel.
 |
 |  Lou Russell, in the period between June 20 and July 2, 1973,
 |  was working for a detective agency that was helping George
 |  Bush prepare for an upcoming press conference. In this
 |  sense, Russell was working for Bush.
 |
 |  Russell is relevant because he seems (although he denied it)
 |  to have been the fabled sixth man of the Watergate break-in,
 |  the burglar who got away. He may also have been the burglar
 |  who tipped off the police, if indeed anyone did. Russell was
 |  a harlequin who had been the servant of many masters. Lou
 |  Russell had once been the chief investigator for the House
 |  Committee on Un-American Activities. He had worked for the
 |  FBI. He had been a stringer for Jack Anderson, the
 |  columnist. In December 1971, he had been an employee of
 |  General Security Services, the company that provided the
 |  guards who protected the Watergate buildings. In March of
 |  1972, Russell had gone to work for James McCord and McCord
 |  Associates, whose client was the CREEP. Later, after the
 |  scandal had broken, Russell worked for McCord's new and more
 |  successful firm, Security Associates. Russell had also
 |  worked directly for the CREEP as a night watchman. Russell
 |  had also worked for John Leon of Allied Investigators, Inc.,
 |  a company that later went to work for George Bush and the
 |  Republican National Committee. Still later, Russell found a
 |  job with the headquarters of the McGovern for President
 |  campaign. Russell's lawyer was Bud Fensterwald, and
 |  sometimes Russell performed investigative services for
 |  Fensterwald and for Fensterwald's Committee to Investigate
 |  Assassinations. In September 1972, well after the scandal
 |  had become notorious, Russell seems to have joined with one
 |  Nick Beltrante in carrying out electronic countermeasures
 |  sweeps of the DNC headquarters, and during one of these he
 |  appears to have planted an electronic eavesdropping device
 |  in the phone of DNC worker Spencer Oliver which, when it was
 |  discovered, refocused public attention on the Watergate
 |  scandal at the end of the summer of 1972.
 |
 |  Russell was well acquainted with Carmine Bellino, the chief
 |  investigator on the staff of Sam Ervin's Senate Select
 |  Committee on Presidential Campaign Practices. Bellino was a
 |  Kennedy operative who had superintended the seamy side of
 |  the JFK White House, including such figures as Judith Exner,
 |  the President's alleged paramour. Later, Bellino would
 |  become the target of George Bush's most revealing public
 |  action during the Watergate period. Bellino's friend,
 |  William Birely, later provided Russell with an apartment in
 |  Silver Spring, Maryland, a new car, and sums of money.
 |
 |  Russell had been a heavy drinker, and his social circle was
 |  that of the prostitutes, whom he sometimes patronized and
 |  sometimes served as a bouncer and goon. His familiarity with
 |  the brothel milieu facilitated his service for the Office of
 |  Security, which was to oversee the bugging and other
 |  surveillance of Columbia Plaza and other locations.
 |
 |  Lou Russell was incontestably one of the most fascinating
 |  figures of Watergate. How remarkable, then, that the
 |  indefatigable ferrets Woodward and Bernstein devoted so
 |  little attention to him, deeming him worthy of mention in
 |  neither of their two books. Woodward and Bernstein met with
 |  Russell, but had ostensibly decided that there was "nothing
 |  to the story." Woodward claims to have seen nothing in
 |  Russell beyond the obvious "old drunk." [32] 
 |
 |  The FBI had questioned Russell after the DNC break-ins,
 |  probing his whereabouts on June 16-17 with the suspicion
 |  that he had indeed been one of the burglars. But this
 |  questioning led to nothing. Instead, Russell was contacted
 |  by Carmine Bellino, and later by Bellino's broker Birely,
 |  who set Russell up in the new apartment (or safe house)
 |  already mentioned, where one of the Columbia Plaza
 |  prostitutes moved in with him.
 |
 |  By 1973, minority Republican staffers at the Ervin committee
 |  began to realize the importance of Russell to a revisionist
 |  account of the scandal that might exonerate Nixon to some
 |  extent by shifting the burden of guilt elsewhere. On May 9,
 |  1973, the Ervin committee accordingly subpoenaed Russell's
 |  telephone, job, and bank records. Two days later, Russell
 |  replied to the committee that he had no job records or
 |  diaries, had no bank account, made long-distance calls only
 |  to his daughter, and could do nothing for the committee.
 |
 |  On May 16-17, Deep Throat warned Woodward that "everybody's
 |  life is in danger." On May 18, while the staff of the Ervin
 |  committee were pondering their next move vis-a-vis Russell,
 |  Russell suffered a massive heart attack. This was the same
 |  day that McCord, advised by his lawyer and Russell's,
 |  Fensterwald, began his public testimony to the Ervin
 |  committee on the coverup. Russell was taken to Washington
 |  Adventist Hospital, where he recovered to some degree and
 |  convalesced until June 20. Russell was convinced that he had
 |  been the victim of an attempted assassination. He told his
 |  daughter after leaving the hospital that he believed that he
 |  had been poisoned, that someone had entered his apartment
 |  and "switched pills on me." [33] 
 |
 |  Leaving the hospital on June 20, Russell was still very weak
 |  and pale. But now, although he remained on the payroll of
 |  James McCord, he also accepted a retainer from his friend
 |  John Leon, who had been engaged by the Republicans to carry
 |  out a counterinvestigation of the Watergate affair. Leon was
 |  in contact with Jerris Leonard, a lawyer associated with
 |  Nixon, the GOP, the Republican National Committee, and with
 |  Chairman Ge orge Bush. Leonard was a former assistant
 |  attorney general for civil rights in the Nixon
 |  administration. Leonard had stepped down as head of the Law
 |  Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) on March 17,
 |  1973. In June 1973, Leonard was special counsel to George
 |  Bush personally, hired by Bush and not by the RNC. Leonard
 |  says today that his job consisted in helping to keep the
 |  Republican Party separate from Watergate, deflecting
 |  Watergate from the party "so it would not be a party thing."
 |  [34]  As Hougan tells it, "Leon was convinced that Watergate
 |  was a set-up, that prostitution was at the heart of the
 |  affair, and that the Watergate arrests had taken place
 |  following a tip-off to the police; in other words, the June
 |  17 burglary had been sabotaged from within, Leon believed,
 |  and he intended to prove it." [35]  "Integral to Leon's
 |  theory of the affair was Russell's relationship to the Ervin
 |  committee's chief investigator, Carmine Bellino, and the
 |  circumstances surrounding Russell's relocation to Silver
 |  Spring in the immediate aftermath of the Watergate arrests.
 |  In an investigative memorandum submitted to GOP lawyer
 |  Jerris Leonard, Leon described what he hoped to prove: that
 |  Russell, reporting to Bellino, had been a spy for the
 |  Democrats within the CRP,and that Russell had tipped off
 |  Bellino (and the police) to the June 17 break-in. The man
 |  who knew most about this was Leon's new employee, Lou
 |  Russell."
 |
 |  Is it possible that Jerris Leonard communicated the contents
 |  of Leon's memorandum to the RNC and to its chairman George
 |  Bush during the days after he received it? It is possible.
 |  But for Russell, the game was over: On July 2, 1973, barely
 |  two weeks after his release from the hospital, Russell
 |  suffered a second heart attack, which killed him. He was
 |  buried with quite suspicious haste the following day. The
 |  potential witness with perhaps the largest number of
 |  personal ties to Watergate protagonists, and the witness who
 |  might have redirected the scandal, not just toward Bellino,
 |  but toward the prime movers behind and above McCord and Hunt
 |  and Paisley, had perished in a way that recalls the fate of
 |  so many knowledgeable Iran-Contra figures.
 |
 |  With Russell silenced forever, Leon appears to have turned
 |  his attention to targeting Bellino, perhaps with a view to
 |  forcing him to submit to questioning about his relationship
 |  to Russell. Leon, who had been convicted in 1964 of
 |  wiretapping in a case involving El Paso Gas Co. and
 |  Tennessee Gas Co., had weapons in his own possession that
 |  could be used against Bellino. During the time that Russell
 |  was still in the hospital, on June 8, Leon had signed an
 |  affidavit for Jerris Leonard in which he stated that he had
 |  been hired by Democratic operative Bellino during the 1960
 |  presidential campaign to "infiltrate the operations" of
 |  Albert B. "Ab" Hermann, a staff member of the Republican
 |  National Committee. Leon asserted in the affidavit that
 |  although he had not been able to infiltrate Hermann's
 |  office, he observed the office with field glasses and
 |  employed "an electronic device known as 'the big ear' aimed
 |  at Mr. Hermann's window." Leon recounted that he had been
 |  assisted by former CIA officer John Frank, Oliver W.
 |  Angelone and former congressional investigator Ed Jones in
 |  the anti-Nixon 1960 operations.
 |
 |  Leon collected other sworn statements that all went in the
 |  same direction, portraying Bellino as a Democratic dirty
 |  tricks operative unleashed by the Kennedy faction against
 |  Nixon. Joseph Shimon, who had been an inspector for the
 |  Washington Police Department, told of how he had been
 |  approached by Kennedy operative Oliver W. Angelone, who
 |  alleged that he was working for Bellino, with a request to
 |  help Angelone gain access to the two top floors of the
 |  Wardman Park Hotel just before they were occupied by Nixon
 |  on the eve of the Nixon-Kennedy television debate. Edward
 |  Murray Jones, then living in the Philippines, said in his
 |  affidavit that he had been assigned by Bellino to tail
 |  individuals at Washington National Airport and in downtown
 |  Washington. [36]  According to Hougan, "these sensational
 |  allegations were provided by Leon to Republican attorneys on
 |  July 10, 1973, exactly a week after Russell's funeral.
 |  Immediately, attorney Jerris Leonard conferred with RNC
 |  Chairman George Bush. It appeared to both men that a way had
 |  been found to place the Watergate affair in a new
 |  perspective, and, perhaps, to turn the tide. A statement was
 |  prepared and a press conference scheduled at which Leon was
 |  to be the star witness, or speaker. Before the press
 |  conference could be held, however, Leon suffered a heart
 |  attack on July 13, 1973, and died the same day." [37] 
 |
 |  Two important witnesses, each of whom represented a threat
 |  to reopen the most basic questions of Watergate, dead in
 |  little more than a week! Bush is likely to have known of the
 |  import of Russell's testimony, and he is proven to have
 |  known of the content of Leon's. Jerris Leonard later told
 |  Hougan that the death of John Leon "came as a complete
 |  shock. It was ... well, to be honest with you, it was
 |  frightening. It was only a week after Russell's death, or
 |  something like that, and it happened on the very eve of the
 |  press conference. We didn't know what was going on. We were
 |  scared." [38]  Hougan comments: "With the principal witness
 |  against Bellino no longer available, and with Russell dead
 |  as well, Nixon's last hope of diverting attention from
 |  Watergate -- slim from the beginning -- was laid to rest
 |  forever."
 |
 |  Diversion and Damage Control
 |
 |  But George Bush went ahead with the press conference that
 |  had been announced, even if John Leon, the principal
 |  speaker, was now dead. According to Nixon, Bush had been
 |  "privately pleading for some action that would get us off
 |  the defensive" since back in the springtime. [39]  On July
 |  24, 1973, Bush made public the affidavits by Leon, Jones,
 |  and Shimon which charged that the Ervin committee chief
 |  investigator Carmine Bellino had recruited spies to help
 |  defeat Nixon back in 1960. "I cannot and do not vouch for
 |  the veracity of the statements contained in the affidavits,"
 |  said Bush, "but I do believe that this matter is serious
 |  enough to concern the Senate Watergate committee, and
 |  particularly since its chief investigator is the subject of
 |  the charges contained in the affidavits. If these charges
 |  are true, a taint would most certainly be attached to some
 |  of the committee's work."
 |
 |  Bush specified that on the basis of the Shimon and Leon
 |  affidavits, he was "confident" that Jones and Angelone "had
 |  bugged the Nixon space or tapped his phones prior to the
 |  television debate." He conceded that "there was corruption"
 |  in the ranks of the GOP. "But now I have presented some
 |  serious allegations that if true could well have affected
 |  the outcome of the 1960 presidential race. The Nixon-Kennedy
 |  election was a real cliff-hanger, and the debates bore
 |  heavily on the outcome of the people's decision." Bush
 |  rejected any charge that he was releasing the affidavits in
 |  a bid to "justify Watergate." He asserted that he was acting
 |  in the interest of "fair play."
 |
 |  Bush said that he had taken the affidavits to Sen. Sam
 |  Ervin, the chairman of the Senate Watergate Committee, and
 |  to GOP Sen. Howard Baker, that committee's ranking
 |  Republican, but that the committee had failed to act so far.
 |  "I haven't seen much action on it," Bush added. When the
 |  accuracy of the affidavits was challenged, Bush replied,
 |  "We've heard a lot more hearsay bandied about the
 |  [Watergate] committee than is presented here. I'd like to
 |  know how serious it is. I'd like to see it looked into,"
 |  said Bush. He called on Sam Ervin and his committee to probe
 |  all the charges forthwith. Bush was "convinced that there is
 |  in fact substance to the allegations."
 |
 |  In 1991, the Bush damage control line is that events
 |  relating to the "October Surprise" deal of the Reagan-Bush
 |  campaign with the Khomeini mullahs of Iran to block the
 |  freeing of the U.S. hostages are so remote in the past that
 |  nobody is interested in them anymore. But in 1973, Bush
 |  thought that events of 1960 were highly relevant to
 |  Watergate.
 |
 |  Bellino lab eled Bush's charges "absolutely false." "I
 |  categorically and unequivocally deny that I have ever
 |  ordered, requested, directed, or participated in any
 |  electronic surveillance whatsoever in connection with any
 |  political campaign," said Bellino. "By attacking me on the
 |  basis of such false and malicious lies, Mr. Bush has
 |  attempted to distract me from carrying out what I consider
 |  one of the most important assignments of my life. I shall
 |  continue to exert all my efforts to ascertain the facts and
 |  the truth pertinent to this investigation."
 |
 |  Here Bush was operating on several levels of reality at
 |  once. The implications of the Russell-Leon interstices would
 |  be suspected only in retrospect. What appeared on the
 |  surface was a loyal Republican mounting a diversionary
 |  attack in succor of his embattled President. At deeper
 |  levels, the reality might be the reverse: the stiffing of
 |  Nixon in order to defend the forces behind the break-in and
 |  the scandal.
 |
 |  Back in April, as the Ervin committee was preparing to go
 |  into action against the White House, Bush had participated
 |  in the argument about whether the committee sessions should
 |  be televised or not. Bush discussed this issue with Senators
 |  Baker and Brock, both Republicans who wanted the hearings to
 |  be televised -- in Baker's case, so that he could beon
 |  television himself as the ranking Republican on the panel.
 |  Ehrlichman, to whom Bush reported in the White House,
 |  mindful of the obvious potential damage to the
 |  administration, wanted the hearings not televised, not even
 |  public, but in executive session with a sanitized transcript
 |  handed out later. So Bush, having no firm convictions of his
 |  own, but always looking for his own advantage, told
 |  Ehrlichman he sympathized with both sides of the argument,
 |  and was "sitting happily on the middle of the fence with a
 |  picket sticking up my you know what. I'll see you." [40] 
 |  But Nixon's damage control interest had been sacrificed by
 |  Bush's vacillating advocacy....
 |
 |  Bush had talked in public about the Ervin committee during a
 |  visit to Seattle on June 29 in response to speculation that
 |  Nixon might be called to testify. Bush argued that the
 |  presidency would be diminished if Nixon were to appear. Bush
 |  was adamant that Nixon could not be subpoenaed and that he
 |  should not testify voluntarily. Shortly thereafter, Bush had
 |  demanded that the Ervin committee wrap up its proceedings to
 |  "end the speculation" about Nixon's role in the coverup.
 |  "Let's get all the facts out, let's get the whole thing over
 |  with, get all the people up there before the Watergate
 |  committee. I don't believe John Dean's testimony." [41] 
 |
 |  Senator Sam Ervin placed Bush's intervention against Carmine
 |  Bellino in the context of other diversionary efforts
 |  launched by the RNC. Ervin, along with Democratic Senators
 |  Talmadge and Inouye were targeted by a campaign inspired by
 |  Bush's RNC which alleged that they had tried to prevent a
 |  full probe of LBJ intimate Bobby Baker back in 1963. Later,
 |  speaking on the Senate floor on October 9, 1973, Ervin
 |  commented: "One can but admire the zeal exhibited by the
 |  Republican National Committee and its journalistic allies in
 |  their desperate effort to invent a red herring to drag
 |  across the trail which leads to the truth concerning
 |  Watergate." [42] 
 |
 |  But Ervin saw Bush's Bellino material as a more serious
 |  assault. "Bush's charge distressed me very much for two
 |  reasons. First, I deemed it unjust to Bellino, who denied it
 |  and whom I had known for many years to be an honorable man
 |  and a faithful public servant; and, second, it was out of
 |  character with the high opinion I entertained of Bush.
 |  Copies of the affidavits had been privately submitted to me
 |  before the news conference, and I had expressed my opinion
 |  that there was not a scintilla of competent or credible
 |  evidence in them to sustain the charges against Bellino."
 |  [43] 
 |
 |  Sam Dash, the chief counsel to the Ervin committee, had a
 |  darker and more detailed view of Bush's actions: "In the
 |  midst of the pressure to complete a shortened witness list
 |  by the beginning of August, a nasty incident occurred that
 |  was clearly meant to sidetrack the committee and destroy or
 |  immobilize one of my most valuable staff assistants --
 |  Carmine Bellino, my chief investigator. On July 24, 1973,
 |  the day after the committee subpoena for the White House
 |  tapes was served on the President, the Republican national
 |  chairman, George Bush, called a press conference.... Three
 |  days later, as if carefully orchestrated, twenty-two
 |  Republican senators signed a letter to Senator Ervin, urging
 |  the Senate Watergate Committee to investigate Bush's charges
 |  and calling for Bellino's suspension pending the outcome of
 |  the investigation. Ervin was forced into a corner, and on
 |  August 3 he appointed a subcommittee consisting of Senators
 |  Talmadge, Inouye, and Gurney to investigate the charges. The
 |  White House knew that Carmine Bellino, a wizard at
 |  reconstructing the receipts and expenditures of funds
 |  despite laundering techniques and the destruction of
 |  records, was hot on the trail of Herbert Kalmbach and Bebe
 |  Rebozo. Bellino's diligent, meticulous work would ultimately
 |  disclose Kalmbach's funding scheme for the White House's
 |  dirty tricks campaign and unravel a substantial segment of
 |  Rebozo's secret cash transactions on behalf of Nixon." [44] 
 |
 |  Dash writes that Bellino was devastated by Bush's attacks,
 |  "rendered emotionally unable to work because of the
 |  charges."
 |
 |  The mechanism targeted by Bellino is of course relevant to
 |  Bill Liedtke's funding of the CREEP described above. Perhaps
 |  Bush was in fact seeking to shut down Bellino solely to
 |  defend only himself and his confederates.
 |
 |  Members of Dash's staff soon realized that there had been
 |  another participant in the process of assembling the
 |  material that Bush had presented. According to Dash, "the
 |  charges became even murkier when our staff discovered that
 |  the person who had put them together was a man named Jack
 |  Buckley. In their dirty tricks investigation of the 1972
 |  presidential campaign, Terry Lenzner and his staff had
 |  identified Buckley as the Republican spy, known as Fat Jack,
 |  who had intercepted and photographed Muskie's mail between
 |  his campaign and Senate offices as part of Ruby I (a project
 |  code named in Liddy's Gemstone political espionage plan)."
 |  It would appear that Fat Jack Buckley was now working for
 |  George Bush. Ervin then found that Senators Gurney and
 |  Baker, both Republicans, might be willing to listen to
 |  additional charges made by Buckley against Bellino. Dash
 |  says he "smelled the ugly odor of blackmail on the part of
 |  somebody and I did not like it." Later, Senators Talmadge
 |  and Inouye filed a report completely exonerating Bellino,
 |  while Gurney conceded that there was no direct evidence
 |  against Bellino, but that there was some conflicting
 |  testimony that ought to be noted. Dash sums up that in late
 |  November 1973, "the matter ended with little fanfare and
 |  almost no newspaper comment. The reputation of a public
 |  official with many years' service as a dedicated and
 |  incorruptible investigator had been deeply wounded and
 |  tarnished, and Bellino would retire from federal service
 |  believing -- rightly -- that he had not been given the
 |  fullest opportunity he deserved to clear his good name."
 |
 |  Another Bush concern during the summer of 1973 was his
 |  desire to liquidate the CREEP, not out of moralistic
 |  motives, but because of his desire to seize the CREEP's $4
 |  millon-plus cash surplus. During the middle of 1973, some of
 |  this money had already been used to pay the legal fees of
 |  Watergate conspirators, as in the case of Maurice Stans.
 |  [45] 
 |
 |  During August, Bush went into an offensive of sanctimonious
 |  moralizing. Bush appears to have concluded that Nixon was
 |  doomed, and that it was imperative to distance himself and
 |  his operation from Nixon's impending downfall. On the NBC
 |  "Today" show, Bush objected to John D. Ehrlichman's defense
 |  before the Ervin committee of the campaign practice of
 |  probing the sex and drinking habits of political opponents.
 |  "Crawling around in the gutter to find some weakness of a
 |  man, I don't think we need that," said Bush. "I think
 |  opponent research is valid. I think if an opponent is
 |  thought to have done something horrendous or thought to be
 |  unfit to serve, research is valid. But the idea of just kind
 |  of digging up dirt with the purpose of blackmail or
 |  embarrassing somebody so he'd lose, I don't think that is a
 |  legitimate purpose," postured Bush. By this time Ehrlichman,
 |  who had hired retired cops to dig up such dirt, had been
 |  thrown to the wolves.  [46] 
 |
 |  A couple of days later, Bush delivered a speech to the
 |  American Bar Association on "The Role and Responsibility of
 |  the Political Candidate." His theme was that restoring
 |  public trust in the political system would require
 |  candidates who would set a higher moral tone for their
 |  campaigns. "A candidate is responsible for organizing his
 |  campaign well -- that is, picking people whom he trusts,
 |  picking the right people." This was an oblique but clear
 |  attack on Nixon, who had clearly picked the wrong people in
 |  addition to whatever else he did. Bush was for stricter
 |  rules, but even more for "old-fashioned conscience" as the
 |  best way to keep politics clean. He again criticized the
 |  approach which set out to "get dirt" on political
 |  adversaries -- again a swipe at Nixon's notorious "enemies
 |  list" practices. Bush said that there were "gray areas in
 |  determining what was in good taste." Bush has never been
 |  noted for his sense of self-irony, and it appears that he
 |  was not aware of his own punning reference to L. Patrick
 |  Gray, the acting FBI Director who had "deep-sixed" Howard
 |  Hunt's incriminating records and who had then been left by
 |  Ehrlichman to "hang there" and to "twist slowly, slowly in
 |  the wind." Bush actually commented that Ehrlichman's
 |  comments on Gray had been in questionable taste. [47] 
 |
 |  The next day Bush was at it again, announcing that he was
 |  reopening an investigation into alleged courses in dirty
 |  tricks taught by the GOP to college Republicans in weekend
 |  seminars during 1971 and 1972. Bush pledged to "get to the
 |  bottom" of charges that the College Republican National
 |  Committee, with 1,000 campus clubs and 100,000 members
 |  listed had provided instruction in dirty tricks. "I'm a
 |  little less relaxed and more concerned than when you first
 |  brought it to our attention," Bush told journalists. [48] 
 |
 |  Bush had clearly distanced himself from the fate of the
 |  Nixon White House. By the time Spiro Agnew resigned as Vice
 |  President on October 10, 1973, Bush praised Agnew for his
 |  "great personal courage" while endorsing the resignation as
 |  "in the best interest of the country." [49] 
 |
 |  Later the same month came Nixon's "Saturday night massacre,"
 |  the firing of Special Prosecutor Cox and the resignation of
 |  Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy, William
 |  Ruckelshaus. To placate public opinion, Nixon agreed to obey
 |  a court order compelling him to hand over his White House
 |  tapes. Bush had said that Nixon was suffering from a
 |  "confidence crisis" about the tapes, but now commented that
 |  what Nixon had done "will have a soothing effect. Clearly it
 |  will help politically.... Hopefully, his move will cool the
 |  emotions and permit the President to deal with matters of
 |  enormous domestic and international concern." [50] 
 |
 |  Later, in November, Bush bowed out of a possible candidacy
 |  in the 1974 Texas gubernatorial race. Speculation was that
 |  "the specter of Watergate" would have been used against him,
 |  but Bush preferred sanctimonious explanations. "Very
 |  candidly," he said, "being governor of Texas has enormous
 |  appeal to me, but our political system is under fire and I
 |  have an overriding sense of responsibility that compels me
 |  to remain in my present job." Bush said that Watergate was
 |  "really almost ... nonexistent" as an issue in the Texas
 |  race. "Corruption and clean government didn't show up very
 |  high at all," he concluded. [51] 
 |
 |  In May of 1974, after a meeting of the Republican
 |  congressional leadership with Nixon, Bush told his friend
 |  Congressman Barber Conable that he was considering resigning
 |  from the RNC. A few days later, John Rhodes, who had
 |  replaced Gerald Ford as House Minority Leader when Ford was
 |  tapped by Nixon for the vice-presidency, told a meeting of
 |  House Republicans that Bush was getting ready to resign, and
 |  if he did so, it would be impossible for the White House to
 |  "get anybody of stature to take his place." [52] 
 |
 |  But even in the midst of the final collapse, Bush still made
 |  occasional ingratiating gestures to Nixon. Nixon
 |  pathetically recounts how Bush made him an encouraging offer
 |  in July 1974, about a month before the end: "There were
 |  other signs of the sort that political pros might be
 |  expected to appreciate: NC Chairman George Bush called the
 |  White House to say that he would like to have me appear on a
 |  fund-raising telethon." [53]  This is what Bush was telling
 |  Nixon. But during this same period, Father John McLaughlin
 |  of the Nixon staff asked Bush for RNC lists of GOP diehards
 |  across the country for the purpose of generating support
 |  statements for Nixon. Bush refused to provide them. [54] 
 |
 |  The Smoking Gun
 |
 |  On August 5, 1974, the White House released the transcript
 |  of the celebrated "smoking gun" taped conversation of June
 |  23, 1972 in which Nixon discussed ways to frustrate the
 |  investigation of the Watergate break-ins. Chairman George
 |  was one of the leading Nixon administration figures
 |  consulting with Al Haig in the course of the morning. When
 |  Bush heard the news, he was very upset, undoubtedly
 |  concerned about all the very negative publicity that he
 |  himself was destined to receive in the blowback of Nixon's
 |  now-imminent downfall. Then, after a while, he calmed down
 |  somewhat. One account describes Bush as "somewhat relieved"
 |  by the news that the tape was going to be made public.
 |  "Finally there was some one thing the national chairman
 |  could see clearly. The ambiguities in the evidence had been
 |  tearing the party apart, Bush thought." [55]  At this point,
 |  Bush became the most outspoken and militant organizer of
 |  Nixon's resignation, a Cassius of the Imperial Presidency.
 |
 |  A little later, White House Congressional liaison William
 |  Timmons wanted to make sure that everyone had been fully
 |  briefed about the transcripts going out, and he turned to
 |  Nixon's political counselor Dean Burch. "Dean, does Bush
 |  know about the transcript yet?" Timmons asked. Burch
 |  replied, "Yes." "Well, what did he do?" Timmons asked.
 |
 |  "He broke out in assholes and shit himself to death," was
 |  Burch's answer. [56] 
 |
 |  Notes for Chapter 13
 |
 |  25. Al Reinert, "Bob and George Go to Washington or The
 |  Post-Watergate Scramble," "Texas Monthly," April 1974.
 |
 |  26. "Deep Throat: Narrowing the Field," "Time," May 3, 1976,
 |  pp. 17-18.
 |
 |  27. Bush and Gold, "op. cit.," pp. 65-66.
 |
 |  28. Bernstein and Woodward, "All the President's Men" (New
 |  York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), pp. 72, 130-31.
 |
 |  29. Green, "op. cit.," p. 80.
 |
 |  30. Bernstein and Woodward, "All the President's Men," p.
 |  318.
 |
 |  31. The question of the Columbia Plaza Apartments is a
 |  central theme of Jim Hougan's "Secret Agenda, op. cit." We
 |  have also relied on Hougan's version of the
 |  Russell-Leon-Bellino subplot described below.
 |
 |  32. Hougan, "op. cit.," pp. 324.
 |
 |  33. "Ibid.," p. 370.
 |
 |  34. Interview of Jerris Leonard with Anton Chaitkin, Aug.
 |  26, 1991.
 |
 |  35. Hougan, "op. cit.," p. 374-75.
 |
 |  36. See Jules Witcover, "Political Spies Accuse Committee
 |  Investigator," "Washington Post," July 25, 1973, and John
 |  Geddie, "Bush Alleges Bugs," "Dallas News," July 25, 1973.
 |  See also Victor Lasky, "It Didn't Start with Watergate" (New
 |  York: Dial Press, 1977), pp. 41-55.
 |
 |  37. Hougan, "op. cit.," p. 376. Notice that the day of
 |  Leon's death was also the day that White House staffer
 |  Butterfield told congressional investigators of the
 |  existence of Nixon's taping system.
 |
 |  38. "Ibid."
 |
 |  39. Richard Nixon, "The Memoirs of Richard Nixon" (New York:
 |  Warner Books, 1979), p. 811.
 |
 |  40. Walter Pincus and Bob Woodward, "Presidential Posts and
 |  Dashed Hopes," "Washington Post," Aug. 9, 1988.
 |
 |  41. "Washington Post," July 12, 1973.
 |
 |  42. Sam J. Ervin, Jr., "The Whole Truth" ( New York: Random
 |  House, 1980), p. 28.
 |
 |  43. "Ibid.," p. 29.
 |
 |  44. Samuel Dash, "Chief Counsel" (New York: Random House,
 |  1976), p. 192.
 |
 |  45. Evans and Novak, July 11, 1973.
 |
 |  46. "Washington Post," Aug. 7, 1973.
 |
 |  47. "Washington Post," Aug. 9, 1973.
 |
 |  48. "Washington Post," Aug. 10, 1973.
 |
 |  49. "Washington Post," Oct. 11, 1973.
 |
 |  50. "Washington Post," Oct. 24, 1973.
 |
 |  51. "Washington Post," Nov. 17, 1973.
 |
 |  52. Bernstein and Woodward, "The Final Days," pp. 159, 176.
 |
 |  53. Nixon, "op. cit.," p. 1042.
 |
 |  54. Green, "op cit.," p. 135.
 |
 |  55. Bernstein and Woodward, "The Final Days," p. 368.
 |
 |  56. "Ibid.," p. 369.
 |
 |
 |  CHAPTER 13
 |
 |  CHAIRMAN GEORGE IN WATERGATE
 |
 |  Why should Bush be so distraught over the release to the
 |  press of the transcript of the notorious White House meeting
 |  of June 23, 1972? As we have seen, there is plenty of
 |  evidence that the final fall of Nixon was just the
 |  denouement that Bush wanted. The answer is that Bush was
 |  upset about the fabulous "smoking gun" tape because his
 |  friend Mosbacher, his business partner Bill Liedtke, and
 |  himself were referred to in the most sensitive passages.
 |  Yes, a generation of Americans has grown up recalling
 |  something about a "smoking gun" tape, but not many now
 |  recall that when Nixon referred to "the Texans," he meant
 |  George Bush.
 |
 |  The open secret of the "smoking gun" tape is that it refers
 |  to Nixon's desire to mobilize the CIA to halt the FBI
 |  investigation of the Watergate burglars on the grounds that
 |  money can be traced from donors in Texas and elsewhere to
 |  the coffers of the CREEP, and thence to the pockets of
 |  Bernard Barker and the other Cubans arrested. The money
 |  referred to, of course, is part of Bill Liedtke's $700,000
 |  discussed above. A first crucial passage of the "smoking
 |  gun" tape goes as follows, with the first speaker being
 |  Haldeman:
 |
 |  "H: Now, on the investigation, you know the Democratic
 |  break-in thing, we're back in the problem area because the
 |  FBI is not under control, because [FBI chief] Gray doesn't
 |  exactly know how to control it and they have -- their
 |  investigation is leading into some productive areas because
 |  they've been able to trace the money -- not through the
 |  money itself -- but through the bank sources -- the banker.
 |  And, and it goes in some directions we don't want it to go.
 |  Ah, also there have been some things -- like an informant
 |  came in off the street to the FBI in Miami who was a
 |  photographer or has a friend who was a photographer who
 |  developed some films through this guy Barker and the films
 |  had pictures of Democratic National Committee letterhead
 |  documents and things. So it's things like that that are
 |  filtering in. Mitchell came up with yesterday, and John Dean
 |  analyzed very carefully last night and concludes, concurs
 |  now with Mitchell's recommendation that the only way to
 |  solve this, and we're set up beautifully to do it, ah, in
 |  that and that -- the only network that paid any attention to
 |  it last night was NBC -- they did a massive story on the
 |  Cuban thing.
 |
 |  "P: [Nixon] That's right.
 |
 |  "H: That the way to handle this now is for us to have [CIA
 |  Deputy Director Vernon] Walters call Pat Gray and just say
 |  'Stay the hell out of this -- this is ah, business here we
 |  don't want you to go any further on it.' That's not an
 |  unusal development, and ah, that would take care of it.
 |
 |  "P: What about Pat Gray -- you mean Pat Gray doesn't want
 |  to?
 |
 |  "H: Pat does want to. He doesn't know how to, and he doesn't
 |  have, he doesn't have any basis for doing it. Given this, he
 |  will then have the basis. He'll call Mark Felt in, and the
 |  two of them -- and Mark Felt wants to cooperate because he's
 |  ambitious --
 |
 |  "P: Yeah
 |
 |  "H: He'll call him in and say, 'We've got the signal from
 |  across the river to put the hold on this.' And that will fit
 |  rather well because the FBI agents who are working the case,
 |  at this point, feel that's what it is.
 |
 |  "P: This is CIA? They've traced the money? Who'd they trace
 |  it to?
 |
 |  "H: Well they've traced it to a name, but they haven't
 |  gotten to the guy yet.
 |
 |  "P: Would it be somebody here?
 |
 |  "H: Ken Dahlberg.
 |
 |  "P: Who the hell is Ken Dahlberg?
 |
 |  "H: He gave $25,000 in Minnesota and, ah, the check went
 |  directly to this guy Barker.
 |
 |  "P: It isn't from the committee though, from Stans?
 |
 |  "H: Yeah. It is. It's directly traceable and there's some
 |  more through some Texas people that went to the Mexican bank
 |  which can also be traced to the Mexican bank -- they'll get
 |  their names today. And (pause)
 |
 |  "P: Well, I mean, there's no way -- I'm just thinking if
 |  they don't cooperate, what do they say? That they were
 |  approached by the Cubans. That's what Dahlberg has to say,
 |  the Texans too, that they --
 |
 |  "H: Well, if they will. But then we're relying on more and
 |  more people all the time. That's the problem, and they'll
 |  stop if we could take this other route.
 |
 |  "P: All right.
 |
 |  "H: And you seem to think the thing to do is get them to
 |  stop?
 |
 |  "P: Right, fine."
 |
 |  Kenneth Dahlberg was a front man for Dwayne Andreas of
 |  Archer Daniels Midland. Nixon wanted to protect himself, of
 |  course, but there is no doubt that he is talking about
 |  Liedtke, Pennzoil, Robert Mosbacher -- his Bush-league Texas
 |  money-raising squad. With that comment, Nixon had dug his
 |  own grave with what was widely viewed as a "prima facie"
 |  case of obstruction of justice when this tape was released
 |  on August 5. But Nixon and Haldeman had a few other
 |  interesting things to say to each other that day, several of
 |  which evoke associations redolent of Bush.
 |
 |  Shortly after the excerpts provided above, Nixon himself
 |  sums up why the CIA ought to have its own interest in
 |  putting a lid on the Watergate affair:
 |
 |  "P: Of course, this Hunt .. will uncover a lot of things.
 |  You open that scab there's a hell of a lot of things and we
 |  just feel that it would be very detrimental to have this
 |  thing go any further. This involves these Cubans, Hunt, and
 |  a lot of hanky-panky that we have nothing to do with
 |  ourselves. Well what the hell, did Mitchell know about this?
 |
 |  "H: I think so. I don't think he knew the details, but I
 |  think he knew.
 |
 |  "P: He didn't know how it was going to be handled through --
 |  with Dahlberg and the Texans and so forth? Well who was the
 |  asshole that did? Is it Liddy? Is that the fellow? He must
 |  be a little nuts!"
 |
 |  Shortly after this, the conversation turned to Bus
 |  Mosbacher, who was resigning as the chief of protocol. Nixon
 |  joked that while Mosbacher was escorting the visiting
 |  dignitaries, bachelor Henry Kissinger always ended up
 |  escorting Mosbacher's wife. But before too long Nixon was
 |  back to the CIA again:
 |
 |  "P: When you get in -- when you get in (unintelligible)
 |  people, say, "Look the whole problem is that this will open
 |  the whole, the whole Bay of Pigs thing and the President
 |  just feels that ah, without going into the details -- don't,
 |  don't lie to them to the extent to say there is no
 |  involvement, but just say this is a comedy of errors,
 |  without getting into it, the President believes that it is
 |  going to open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up again. And, ah,
 |  because these people are plugging for (unintelligible) and
 |  that they should call the FBI in and (unintelligible) don't
 |  go any further into this case period! (inaudible) our
 |  cause."
 |
 |  It would also appear that Nixon's references to Howard Hunt
 |  and the Bay of Pigs are an oblique allusion to the Kennedy
 |  assassination, about which Nixon may have known more than he
 |  has ever told. Later the same day Haldeman reported back to
 |  Nixon about his meeting with Walters:
 |
 |  "H: Well, it was kind of interesting. Walters made the point
 |  and I didn't mention Hunt. I just said that the thing was
 |  leading into directions that were going to create potential
 |  problems because they were exploring leads that led back
 |  into areas that would be harmful to the CIA and harmful to
 |  the government (unintelligible) didn't have anything to do
 |  (unintelligible)."
 |
 |  Later, Haldeman returned to this same theme:
 |
 |  "H: Gray called Helms and said I think we've run right into
 |  the middle of a CIA covert operation.
 |
 |  "P: Gray said that?
 |
 |  "H: Yeah. And (unintelligible) said nothing we've done at
 |  this point and ah (unintellibible) says well it sure looks
 |  to me like it is (unintelligible) and ah, that was the end
 |  of that conversation (unintelligible) the problem is it
 |  tracks back to the Bay of Pigs and it tracks back to some
 |  other the leads run out to people who had no involvement in
 |  this, except by contracts and connection, but it gets to
 |  areas that are liable to be raised? The whole problem
 |  (unintelligible) Hunt. So at that point he kind of got the
 |  picture. He said, he said we'll be very happy to be helpful
 |  (unintelligible) handle anything you want. I would like to
 |  know the reason for being helpful, and I made it clear to
 |  him he wasn't going to get explicit (unintelligible)
 |  generality, and he said fine. And Walters (unintelligible),
 |  Walters is going to make a call to Gray. That's the way we
 |  put it and that's the way it was left.
 |
 |  "P: How does that work though, how they've got to
 |  (unintelligible) somebody from the Miami bank.
 |
 |  "H: (Unintelligible) The point John makes -- the Bureau is
 |  going on this because they don't know what they are
 |  uncovering (unintelligible) continue to pursue it. They
 |  don't need to because they already have their case as far as
 |  the charges against these men (unintelligible) One thing
 |  Helms did raise. He said. Gray -- he asked Gray why they
 |  thought they had run into a CIA thing and Gray said because
 |  of the amount of money involved, a lot of dough
 |  (unintelligible) and ah (unintelligible)
 |
 |  "P: (Unintelligible)
 |
 |  "H: Well, I think they will. If it runs (unintelligible)
 |  what the hell, who knows (unintelligible) contributed CIA.
 |
 |  "H: Ya, it's money CIA gets money (unintelligible) I mean
 |  their money moves in a lot of different ways, too." [57] 
 |
 |  Nixon's train of associations takes him from the
 |  Pennzoil-Liedtke Mosbacher-Bush slush fund operation to
 |  Howard Hunt and the Bay of Pigs and "a lot of hanky-panky"
 |  and then back to Bus Mosbacher, Robert's elder brother.
 |  Later on, Haldeman stresses that the FBI, discovering a
 |  large money laundering operation between Pennzoil and Bill
 |  Liedtke in Houston, Mexico City, Maurice Stans and the CREEP
 |  in Washington, and some CIA Miami station Cubans, simply
 |  concluded that this was all a CIA covert operation.
 |
 |  As Haldeman himself later summed it up: "If the Mexican bank
 |  connection was actually a CIA operation all along, unknown
 |  to Nixon; and Nixon was destroyed for asking the FBI to stop
 |  investigating the bank because it might uncover a CIA
 |  operation (which the Helms memo seems to indicate it
 |  actually was after all) the multiple layers of deception by
 |  the CIA are astounding." [58] 
 |
 |  Moves for Impeachment
 |
 |  Later, on Nixon's last Monday, Bush joined White House
 |  Counsel J. Fred Buzhardt and Dean Burch on a visit to
 |  Congressman Rhodes, and showed him the transcript of the
 |  smoking gun tape. "This means that there's just no chance in
 |  the world that he's not going to be impeached," said Rhodes.
 |  "In fact, there's no chance in the world that I won't vote
 |  to impeach him." Bush must have heaved a sigh of relief,
 |  since this is what he had wanted Rhodes to tell Nixon to get
 |  him to quit. "Rhodes later let it be known that he was
 |  offended that Bush had been briefed before he was," but of
 |  course, Bush was a top official of the Nixon White House.
 |  [59] 
 |
 |  But Nixon still refused to quit, raising the prospect of a
 |  trial before the Senate that could be damaging to many
 |  besides Nixon. The next day, Tuesday, August 6, 1974, saw
 |  the last meeting of the Nixon cabinet, with Chairman George
 |  in attendance. Nixon's opening statement was: "I would like
 |  to discuss the most important issue confronting this nation,
 |  and confronting us internationally too -- inflation." Nixon
 |  then argued adamantly for some minutes that he had examined
 |  the course of events over the recent past and that he had
 |  "not found an impeachable offense, and therefore resignation
 |  is not an acceptable course." Vice President Ford predicted
 |  that there would be certain impeachment by the House, but
 |  that the outcome in the Senate could not be predicted. Ford
 |  then said he was an interested party on the resignation
 |  issue and would make no further comment.
 |
 |  Nixon then wanted to talk about the budget again, and about
 |  an upcoming summit conference on the economy. Attorney
 |  General Saxbe interrupted him. "Mr. President, I don't think
 |  we ought to have a summit conference. We ought to make sure
 |  you have the ability to govern." Nixon quietly assured Saxbe
 |  that he had the ability to govern. Then Chairman George
 |  piped up, in support of Saxbe. The President's ability to
 |  govern was impaired, said George. Watergate had to be
 |  brought to an end expeditiously, Bush argued. >From his
 |  vantage point at Nixon's right elbow, Kissinger could see
 |  that Bush was advancing toward the conclusion that Nixon had
 |  to resign. "It was cruel. And it was necessary," thought
 |  Kissinger. "More than enough had been said," was the
 |  Secretary of State's impression. Kissinger was seeking to
 |  avoid backing Nixon into a corner where he would become more
 |  stubborn and more resistant to the idea of resignation,
 |  making that dreaded Senate trial more likely. And this was
 |  the likely consequence of Bush's line of argument.
 |
 |  "Mr. President, can't we just wait a week or two and see
 |  what happens?" asked Saxbe. Bush started to support Saxbe
 |  again, but now Nixon was getting more angry. Nixon glared at
 |  Bush and Saxbe, the open advocates of his resignation. "No,"
 |  he snapped. "This is too important to wait."
 |
 |  Now the senior cabinet officer decided he had to take the
 |  floor to avoid a total confrontation that would leave Nixon
 |  besieged but still holding the Oval Office. Kissinger's
 |  guttural accents were heard in the cabinet room: "We are not
 |  here to offer excuses for what we cannot do. We are here to
 |  do the nation's business. This is a very difficult time for
 |  our country. Our duty is to show confidence. It is essential
 |  that we show it is not safe for any country to take a run at
 |  us. For the sake of foreign policy we must act with
 |  assurance and total unity. If we can do that, we can
 |  vindicate the structure of peace." The main purpose of this
 |  pompous tirade had been to bring the meeting to a rapid end,
 |  and it worked. "There was a moment of embarrassed silence
 |  around the table," recalls Nixon, and after a few more
 |  remarks on the economy, the meeting broke up.
 |
 |  Kissinger stayed behind with Nixon to urge him to resign,
 |  which Nixon now said he felt compelled to do. Bush sought
 |  out Al Haig to ponder how Nixon might be forced out. "What
 |  are we going to do?" asked Bush. Haig told Bush to calm
 |  down, explaining: "We get him up to the mountaintop, then he
 |  comes down again, then we get him up again." [60]  Kissinger
 |  walked back to his office in the West Wing and met Gen.
 |  Brent Scowcroft, the NSC director. Kissinger told Scowcroft
 |  that "there was precious little support" for the President.
 |  Kissinger, no mean hypocrite in his own right, thought that
 |  Saxbe had been "weak-livered." Bush and Saxbe had both been
 |  petty and insensitive, Kissinger thought. He compared Bush
 |  and Saxbe and the rest to a seventeenth-century royal court
 |  with the courtiers scurrying about, concerned with
 |  themselves rather than with their country.
 |
 |  During this cabinet meeting, Bush was already carrying a
 |  letter to Nixon that would soon become the unkindest cut of
 |  all for Chairman George's wretched patron. This letter was
 |  delivered to Nixon on August 7. It read as follows:
 |
 |  Dear Mr. President,
 |
 |  It is my considered judgment that you should now resign. I
 |  expect in your lonely embattled position this would seem to
 |  you as an act of disloyalty from one you have supported and
 |  helped in so many ways. My own view is that I would now ill
 |  serve a President whose massive accomplishments I will
 |  always respect and whose family I love, if I did not now
 |  give you my judgment. Until this moment resignation has been
 |  no answer at all, but given the impact of the latest
 |  development, and it will be a lasting one, I now firmly feel
 |  resignation is best for the country, best for this
 |  President. I believe this view is held by most Republican
 |  leaders across the country. This letter is much more
 |  difficult because of the gratitude I will always have for
 |  you. If you do leave office history will properly record
 |  your achievements with a la sting respect. [61] 
 |
 |  The next day, August 8, 1974, Nixon delivered his
 |  resignation to Henry Kissinger. Kissinger could now look
 |  forward to exercising the powers of the presidency at least
 |  until January 1977, and perhaps well beyond.
 |
 |  For a final evaluation of Bush in Watergate, we may refer to
 |  a sketch of his role during those times provided by Bush's
 |  friend Maurice Stans, the finance director of the CREEP.
 |  This is how Stans sizes up Bush as a Watergate player:
 |  "George Bush, former member of Congress and former
 |  Ambassador to the United Nations. Bush, who proved he was
 |  one of the bravest men in Washington in agreeing to head the
 |  Republican National Committee during the 1973-74 phase of
 |  Watergate, kept the party organization together and its
 |  morale high, despite massive difficulties of press criticism
 |  and growing public disaffection with the administration.
 |  Totally without information as to what had gone on in
 |  Watergate behind the scenes, he was unable to respond
 |  knowledgeably to questions and because of that unjustly
 |  became the personal target of continuing sarcasm and
 |  cynicism from the media." [62] 
 |
 |  But there are many indications that Bush was in reality
 |  someone who, while taking part in the fray, actually helped
 |  to steer Watergate toward the strategic outcome desired by
 |  the dominant financier faction, the one associated with
 |  Brown Brothers Harriman and with London. As with so much in
 |  the life of this personage, much of Bush's real role in
 |  Watergate remains to be unearthed. To borrow a phrase from
 |  James McCord's defense of his boss, Richard Helms, we must
 |  see to it that "every tree in the forest will fall."
 |
 |  Notes for Chapter 13
 |
 |  57. For the "smoking gun" transcript of June 23, 1972, see
 |  "Washington Post," Aug. 6, 1974.
 |
 |  58. H.R. Haldeman, "The Ends of Power" (New York: Times
 |  Books, 1978), p. 64.
 |
 |  59. Bernstein and Woodward, "The Final Days," p. 374.
 |
 |  60. Available accounts of Nixon's last cabinet meeting are
 |  fragmentary, but see: "The Memoirs of Richard Nixon," p.
 |  1066; "The Final Days," pp. 386-89; Theodore H. White,
 |  "Breach of Faith: The Fall of Richard Nixon" (New York:
 |  Atheneum Publishers, 1975), p. 24; Henry Kissinger, "Years
 |  of Upheaval" (Boston: Little, Brown, 1982), pp. 1202-3; J.
 |  Anthony Lukas, "Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years"
 |  (New York: Viking Press, 1976), pp. 558-59.
 |
 |  61. The ostensible full text of this letter is found in
 |  Nicholas King, "George Bush: A Biography" (New York: Dodd,
 |  Mead & Company, 1980), p. 87.
 |
 |  62. Maurice H. Stans, "The Terrors of Justice: The Untold
 |  Side of Watergate" (New York: Everest, 1978), p. 66.
 |
 |  insert chapter subhead here
 |
 |
 |  Chapter 14
 |
 |  1974: Bush Attempts the Vice-Presidency
 |
 |  Those who betray their benefactors are seldom highly
 |  regarded. In Dante's "Divine Comedy," traitors to
 |  benefactors and to the established authorities are consigned
 |  to the ninth circle of the Inferno, where their souls are
 |  suspended, like insects in amber, in the frozen River
 |  Cocytus. This is the Giudecca, where the three arch-traitors
 |  -- Judas Iscariot, Brutus and Cassius -- are chewed for all
 |  eternity in the three mouths of Lucifer. The crimes of Nixon
 |  were monstrous, especially in Vietnam and in the
 |  India-Pakistan war, but in these Bush had been an
 |  enthusiastic participant. Now Bush's dagger, among others,
 |  had found its target; Nixon was gone. In the depths of his
 |  Inferno, Dante relates the story of Frate Alberigo to
 |  illustrate the belief that in cases of the most heinous
 |  treachery, the soul of the offender plunges at once into
 |  hell, leaving the body to live out its physical existence
 |  under the control of a demon. Perhaps the story of old Frate
 |  Alberigo will illuminate us as we follow the further career
 |  of George Bush.
 |
 |  As Nixon left the White House for his home in San Clemente,
 |  California, in the early afternoon of August 9, 1974,
 |  Chairman George was already plotting how to scale still
 |  further up the dizzy heights of state. Ford was now
 |  President, and the vice presidency was vacant. According to
 |  the 25th Amendment, it was now up to Ford to designate a
 |  Vice President who would then require a majority vote of
 |  both houses of Congress to be confirmed. Seeing a golden
 |  opportunity to seize an office that he had long regarded as
 |  the final stepping stone to his ultimate goal of the White
 |  House, Bush immediately mobilized his extensive Brown
 |  Brothers, Harriman/Skull and Bones network, including as
 |  many Zionist lobby auxiliaries as he could muster.
 |
 |  One of the first steps was to set up a boiler shop operation
 |  in a suite of rooms at the Statler Hilton Hotel in
 |  Washington. Here Richard L. Herman, the Nebraska GOP
 |  national committeeman, and two assistants began churning out
 |  a cascade of calls to Republicans and others around the
 |  country, urging, threatening, cajoling, calling in chits,
 |  promising future favors if Chairman George were to become
 |  Vice President George. [1] 
 |
 |  There were other, formidable candidates, but none was so
 |  aggressive as Chairman George. Nelson Rockefeller, who had
 |  resigned as governor of New York some months before to
 |  devote more time to his own consuming ambition and to his
 |  Commission on Critical Choices, was in many ways the front
 |  runner. But Nelson was the incarnation of the Eastern
 |  Liberal Establishment internationalists against whom
 |  Goldwater had campaigned so hard in 1964. His support was
 |  considerable, but he had more active opposition than any
 |  other candidate. This meant that Ford had to hesitate in
 |  choosing Nelson because of what the blowback might mean for
 |  a probable Ford candidacy in 1976.
 |
 |  The conservative Republicans all regarded Goldwater as their
 |  sentimental favorite, but they also knew that Ford would be
 |  reluctant to select him because of a different set of
 |  implications for 1976. Beyond Rockefeller and Goldwater,
 |  each a leader of a wing of the party, the names multiplied:
 |  Senator Howard Baker, Elliot Richardson, Governor William
 |  Scranton, Melvin Laird, Senator Bill Brock, Governor Dan
 |  Evans, Donald Rumsfeld and many others. Bush knew that if he
 |  could get Goldwater to show him some support, the Goldwater
 |  conservatives could be motivated to make their influence
 |  felt for Bush, and this might conceivably put him over the
 |  top.
 |
 |  First, Chairman George had to put on the mask of
 |  conciliation and moderation. As Nixon was preparing his
 |  departure speech, Bush lost no time in meeting with Ford,
 |  now less than 24 hours away from being sworn in as
 |  President. Bush told the press that Ford had "said he'd be
 |  pleased if I stayed on" at the RNC, but had to concede that
 |  Ford had given no indication as to his choice for the Vice
 |  President. Bush's network in the House of Representatives
 |  was now fully mobilized, with "a showing of significant
 |  support in the House and among GOP officials" for Bush on
 |  the day before Nixon left town. Bush also put out a
 |  statement from the RNC, saying, "The battle is over. Now is
 |  the time for kindness.... Let us all try now to restore to
 |  our society a climate of civility." But despite the
 |  hypocritical kinder and gentler rhetoric, Chairman George's
 |  struggle for power was just beginning. [2] 
 |
 |  Melvin Laird soon came out for Rockefeller, and there were
 |  sentimental displays for Goldwater in many quarters. With
 |  Bush's network in full gear, he was beginning to attract
 |  favorable mention from the columnists. Evans and Novak on
 |  August 11 claimed that "as the new President was sworn in,
 |  Rockefeller had become a considerably less likely prospect
 |  than either Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee or George
 |  Bush, the gregarious patrician and transplanted Texan who
 |  heads the Republican National Committee."
 |
 |  On August 10, Ford announced that he would poll Republicans
 |  at all levels across the country. Some expressed their
 |  preferences directly to the White House, but the Republican
 |  National Committee members had to report their choices
 |  through Chairman George. Many of them, fearing the price
 |  they might have to pay for lese majeste, indicated Bush as
 |  their first choice. This matter was the subject of a
 |  complaint by Tom Evans of the RNC, who talked to the press
 |  and also wrote letters to the Ford White House, as we will
 |  see.
 |
 |  By August 14, the "Washington Post" was reporting a "full
 |  scale campaign" on behalf of Bush, with an "impressive array
 |  of support" against Rockefeller. Bush's campaign manager and
 |  chief boiler room operator, Richard L. Herman of Nebraska,
 |  summed up his talking points: Bush, said Herman, "is the
 |  only one in the race with no opposition. He may not be the
 |  first choice in all cases, but he's not lower than second
 |  with anyone." Herman said he was "assisting" a broader
 |  organization on the Hill and of course at the RNC itself
 |  that was mobilized for Bush. Bush "can do more to help the
 |  Republican Party than anyone else and is totally acceptable
 |  throughout the country," blathered Herman. Bush was
 |  "obviously aware of what we're doing," said Herman.
 |
 |  Support for Goldwater was apt to turn into support for Bush
 |  at any time, so Bush was gaining mightily, running second to
 |  Rocky alone. Taking note of the situation, even Bush's old
 |  allies at the "Washington Post" had to register some qualms.
 |  In an editorial published on August 15, 1974 on the subject
 |  of "The Vice Presidency," "Post" commentators quoted the
 |  ubiquitous Richard Herman on Bush's qualifications. The
 |  "Post" found that Bush's "background and abilities would
 |  appear to qualify him for the vice-presidency in just about
 |  all respects, except for the one that seems to us to really
 |  matter: What is conspicuously lacking is any compelling or
 |  demonstrable evidence that he is qualified to be President."
 |
 |  But despite these darts, Chairman George continued to surge
 |  ahead. The big break came when Barry Goldwater, speaking in
 |  Columbia, South Carolina, told a Republican fundraiser that
 |  he had a "gut feeling" that Ford was going to select Bush
 |  for the vice presidency. On August 15, a source close to
 |  Ford told David Broder and Lou Cannon that Bush now had the
 |  "inside track" for the vice-presidency. Rockefeller's
 |  spokesman Hugh Morrow retorted that "we're not running a
 |  boiler shop or calling anyone or doing anything," unlike the
 |  strong-arm Bush team. [3] 
 |
 |  Inside the Ford White House, responses to Ford's solicitaton
 |  were coming in. Among the top White House counselors, Bush
 |  got the support of Kenneth Rush, who had almost become
 |  Nixon's Secretary of State and who asserted that Bush "would
 |  have a broader appeal to all segments of the political
 |  spectrum than any other qualified choice." Dean Burch wrote
 |  a memo to Ford pointing out that among the prominent
 |  candidates, "only a few have a post-1980 political future."
 |  "My own choice," Burch told Ford, "would be a Vice President
 |  with a long term political future -- a potential candidate,
 |  at least, for the Presidency in his own right." In Burch's
 |  conclusion, "Still operating on this assumption, my personal
 |  choice is George Bush." [4] .
 |
 |  The cabinet showed more sentiment for Rockefeller. Rogers
 |  Morton of the Interior, Weinberger of HEW, James Lynn of
 |  HUD, Frederick Dent of Commerce, and Attorney General Saxbe
 |  were all for Rocky. Earl Butz of Agriculture was for
 |  Goldwater, and James R. Schlesinger of Defense was for
 |  Elliot Richardson. No written opinion by Henry Kissinger
 |  appears extant at the Ford Library.
 |
 |  Then the White House staff was polled. Pat Buchanan advised
 |  Ford to avoid all the younger men, including Bush, and told
 |  the president that Rockefeller would "regrettably" have to
 |  be his choice. John McLaughlin also told Ford to go for
 |  Rocky, although he mentioned that Bush "would also be a fine
 |  vice president." [5]  Richard A. Moore was for Bush based on
 |  his economic credentials, asserting that Bush's "father and
 |  gradfather were both highly respected investment bankers in
 |  New York." In the White House staff, Bush won out over
 |  Rockefeller and Scranton. Among personal friends of Ford,
 |  Bush won out over Rocky by a four to three margin.
 |
 |  Among Republican governors, there was significant resistance
 |  to Bush. Former Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton, who
 |  had been considered of presidential caliber, wrote to Ford
 |  aide Phillip Buchen of Bush: "Quite frankly, in my
 |  experience with him his one drawback is a limitation of his
 |  administrative ability." [6] 
 |
 |  Among the Republican Senators, Bush had intense competition,
 |  but the Prescott Bush network proved it could hold its own.
 |  Howard Baker put Bush second, while Henry Bellmon and Dewey
 |  Bartlett sent in a joint letter in support of Bush. Bob Dole
 |  put Chairman George last among his list of preferences,
 |  commenting that the choice of Bush would be widely regarded
 |  as "totally partisan." Pete Dominici put Bush as his first
 |  choice, but also conceded that he would be seen as a
 |  partisan pick. Roth of Delaware had Bush in third place
 |  after John J. Williams and Rocky. Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania
 |  wanted Rocky or Goldwater, but put Bush in third place.
 |  James Pearson of Kansas had Bush as first choice. Jesse
 |  Helms mentioned Bush, but in fifth place after Goldwater,
 |  Harry Byrd, Reagan and James Buckley. [7]  In the final
 |  tally, Rocky edged out Bush with 14 choices to Bush's 12,
 |  followed by Goldwater with 11.
 |
 |  Bush was stronger in the House, where many members had
 |  served side by side with their old friend Rubbers. Bush was
 |  the first choice of Bill Archer of Texas (who had inherited
 |  Bush's old district, and who praised Bush for having "led
 |  the fight in Congress for disclosure and reform"), Skip
 |  Bafalis of Florida, William G. Bray of Indiana, Dan Brotzman
 |  of Colorado, Joe Broyhill of Virginia, John Buchanan of
 |  Alabama, Charles Chamberlain of Michigan, Donald Clancy of
 |  Ohio, Del Dawson of California, and Thad Cochran of
 |  Mississippi. William Armstrong of Colorado struck a
 |  discordant note by urging Ford to pick "a person who has
 |  extensive experience in "elected" public office." William S.
 |  Cohen of Maine found that Bush did "not have quite the range
 |  of experience of Richardson or Rockefeller." James Collins
 |  favored Bush "as a Texan." Glenn Davis of Wisconsin,
 |  Derwinksi of Illinois (a long-term ally who eventually rose
 |  to the Bush cabinet after having served with Bush at the
 |  U.N. mission in New York), Sam Devine of Ohio, and Pierre S.
 |  Du Pont IV of Delaware -- all for Bush. William Dickinson of
 |  Alabama found Bush "physically attractive" with "no
 |  political scars I am aware of" and "personally very
 |  popular." But then came John J. Duncan of Tennessee, who
 |  told Ford that he could not "support any of the fifteen or
 |  so mentioned in the news media."
 |
 |  Marvin Esch of Michigan was for Bush, as was Peter
 |  Frelinghuysen of New Jersey. Edwin D. Eshelman told Ford to
 |  go for Bush "if you want a moderate." The Bush brigade went
 |  on with Charles Gubser of California, and Hammerschmidt of
 |  Arkansas, still very close to Bush today. John Heinz of
 |  Pennsylvania was having none of Bush, but urged Ford to take
 |  Rockefeller, Scranton or Richardson, in that order. John
 |  Erlenborn of Illinois was more than captivated by Bush,
 |  writing Ford that Bush "is attractive personally -- people
 |  tend to like him on sight." Why, "he has almost no political
 |  enemies" that Erlenborn knew of. Bud Hillis of Indiana,
 |  Andrew Hinshar of California, Marjorie Holt -- for Bush.
 |  Lawrence Hogan of Maryland was so "disturbed" about the
 |  prospect of Rockefeller that he was for Bush, too. Hudnut of
 |  Indiana put Bush as his second choice after favorite son
 |  Gov. Otis Bowen because Bush was "fine, clean."
 |
 |  Jack Kemp of New York, now in the Bush cabinet, was for Bush
 |  way back then. Lagomarsino of California put Bush third,
 |  Latta of Ohio put him second only to Rocky. Trent Lott of
 |  Mississippi, who has since moved up to the Senate, told Ford
 |  that he needed somebody "young and clean" and that "perhaps
 |  George Bush fits that position." Manuel Lujan of New Mexico,
 |  who also made the Bush cabinet, was a solid Bush rooter, as
 |  was Wiley Mayne of Iowa. Pete McCloskey put Bush second to
 |  Richardson, but ahead of Rocky. John McCollister of Nebraska
 |  deluded himself that Bush could be confirmed without too
 |  much trouble: McCollister was for Bush because "I believe he
 |  could pass the Judiciary Committee's stern test" because "he
 |  had no policy-making role in the sad days now ended," but
 |  perhaps Ford knew better on that one.
 |
 |  Clarence Miller of Ohio was for Bush. Congressman Bob
 |  Michel, ever climbing in the House GOP hierarchy, ha d
 |  long-winded arguments for Bush. Rocky, he thought, could
 |  "help most" over the remainder of Ford's term, but Bush
 |  would be a trump card for 1976. "George Bush would not
 |  command all the immediate adulation simply because he hasn't
 |  had as long a proven track record in the business and
 |  industrial community, but his credentials are good," wrote
 |  Michel. "He is young and he would work day and night and he
 |  would never attempt to 'upstage the boss.' Aside from
 |  projecting a 'straight arrow image,' he would be acceptable
 |  to the more conservative element in the party that would be
 |  offended by the appointment of Rockefeller." In addition,
 |  assured Michel, Bush enjoyed support among Democrats "from
 |  quarters I would not have believed possible, ... and they
 |  are indeed influential Democrats.... Over and above this, we
 |  may be giving one of our own a good opportunity to follow on
 |  after a six-year Ford administration," Michel concluded.
 |
 |  Donald Mitchell of New York was for Bush because of his
 |  "rich background," which presumably meant money. Ancher
 |  Nelson thought Bush had "charisma," and he was for him. But
 |  George O'Brien of Illinois was also there with that
 |  bothersome request for "someone who was elected and was
 |  serving in a federal position." Stan Parris of Alexandria,
 |  Virginia, a faithful yes-man for Bush until his defeat in
 |  1990, was for Bush -- of course. Jerry Pettis o f California
 |  was for  Bush. Bob Price of Texas urged Ford to tap Bush, in
 |  part because of his "excellent" ties to the Senate, which
 |  were "due to his own efforts and the friendships of his
 |  father." Albert Quie of Minnesota had some support of his
 |  own for the nod, but he talked favorably about Bush, whom he
 |  also found "handsome." "He has only one handicap," thought
 |  Quie, "and that is, he lost an election for the Senate."
 |  Make that two handicaps. Score J. Kenneth Robinson of
 |  Virginia for Bush, along with Philip Ruppe of Michigan, who
 |  lauded Bush's "human warmth." Earl Ruth of northern
 |  California and William Steigler of Wisconsin for Bush. Steve
 |  Symms of Idaho, later a Senator, wanted "a Goldwater man"
 |  like Reagan, or Williams of Delaware. But, Symms added, "I
 |  would accept our National Chairman Bush." Guy Vander Jagt of
 |  Michigan confided to his former colleague Ford that "my
 |  personal recommendation is George Bush." John H. Ware broke
 |  a lance for Chairman George, and then came the endorsement
 |  of G. William Whitehurst of Virginia. According to
 |  Whitehurst, Bush demonstrates "those special characteristics
 |  that qualify a man for the highest office if fate so
 |  designates." Bob Wilson of California was for Bush, also
 |  considering the long term perspectives; he liked Bush's
 |  youthful enthusiasm and saw him as "a real leader for
 |  moderation." Larr Winn of Kansas, Wendell Wyatt of Oregon,
 |  Bill Young of Florida, Don Young of Alaska, Roger Zion of
 |  Indiana -- all listed Bush as their prime choice. The
 |  Republican House Steering Committee went for Bush because of
 |  his "general acceptance." [8] 
 |
 |  When Ford's staff tabulated the House results, Bush's
 |  combined total of 101 first, second and third choice
 |  mentions put him in the lead, over Rocky at 68 and Reagan at
 |  23. Among all the Republican elected and appointed officials
 |  who had expressed an opinion, Bush took first place with 255
 |  points, with Rockefeller second with 181, Goldwater third
 |  with 83, Reagan with 52, followed by Richardson, Melvin
 |  Laird and the rest. It was a surprise to no one that Bush
 |  was the clear winner among the Republican National Committee
 |  respondents. But all in all it was truly a monument to the
 |  Bush network, achieved for a candidate with no
 |  qualifications who had very much participated in the sleaze
 |  of the Nixon era.
 |
 |  The vox populi saw things slightly differently. In the
 |  number of telegrams received by the White House, Goldwater
 |  was way ahead with 2,280 in his favor, and only 102 against.
 |  Bush had 887 for him and 92 against. Rocky had 544 in favor,
 |  and a whopping 3,202 against. [9] 
 |
 |  But even here, the Bush network had been totally mobilized,
 |  with a very large effort in the Dallas business community,
 |  among black Republicans, and by law firms with links to the
 |  Zionist lobby. Ward Lay of Frito-Lay joined with Herman W.
 |  Lay to support Bush. The law firm of McKenzie and Baer of
 |  Dallas assured Ford that Bush was "Mr. Clean."
 |
 |  Bad Blood
 |
 |  The full court press applied by the Bush machine also
 |  generated bad blood. Rockefeller supporter Tom Evans, a
 |  former RNC co-chair, wrote to Ford with the observation that
 |  "no one should campaign for the position and I offer these
 |  thoughts only because of an active campaign that is being
 |  conducted on George Bush's behalf which I do not believe
 |  properly reflects Republican opinion." Evans was more
 |  substantive than most recommendations: "Certainly one of the
 |  major issues confronting our country at this time is the
 |  economy and the related problems of inflation, unemployment,
 |  and high interest rates. I respectfully suggest that you
 |  need someone who can help substantively in these areas.
 |  George is great at PR but he is not as good in substantive
 |  matters. This opinion can be confirmed by individuals who
 |  held key positions at the National Committee." Evans also
 |  argued that Bush should have put greater distance between
 |  the GOP and Nixon sooner than he did. [10] 
 |
 |  So Nelson's networks were not going to take the Bush
 |  strong-arm approach lying down. Bush's most obvious
 |  vulnerability was his close relationship to Nixon, plus the
 |  factthat he had been up to his neck in Watergate. It was
 |  lawful that Bush's ties to one of Nixon's slush funds came
 |  back to haunt him. This was the "Townhouse" fund again, the
 |  one managed by Jack A. Gleason and California attorney
 |  Herbert W. Kalmbach, Nixon's personal lawyer, who had gained
 |  quite some personal notoriety during the Watergate years.
 |  These two had both pleaded guilty earlier in 1974 to running
 |  an illegal campaign fundraising operation.
 |
 |  On August 19, the eve of Ford's expected announcement, the
 |  "Washington Post" reported that unnamed White House sources
 |  were telling "Newsweek" magazine that Bush's
 |  vice-presidential bid "had slipped badly because of alleged
 |  irregularities in the financing of his 1970 Senate race in
 |  Texas." "Newsweek" quoted White House sources that "there
 |  was potential embarrassment in reports that the Nixon White
 |  House had funneled about $100,000 from a secret fund called
 |  the "Townhouse Operation" into Bush's losing Senate campaign
 |  against Democrat Lloyd Bentsen four years ago." "Newsweek"
 |  also added that $40,000 of this money may not have been
 |  properly reported under the election laws.
 |
 |  Bush's special treatment during the 1970 campaign was a
 |  subject of acute resentment, especially among Senate
 |  Republicans Ford needed to keep on board. Back in 1970,
 |  Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon had demanded to know why
 |  John Tower had given Bush nearly twice as much money as any
 |  other Senate Republican. Senator Tower had tried to deny
 |  favoritism, but Hatfield and Edward Brooke of Massachusetts
 |  had not been placated. Now there was the threat that if Bush
 |  had to go through lengthy confirmation hearings in the
 |  Congress, the entire Townhouse affair might be dredged up
 |  once again. According to some accounts, there were as many
 |  as 18 Republican Senators who had gotten money from
 |  Townhouse, but whose names had not been divulged.  [11]  Any
 |  attempt to force Bush through as Vice President might lead
 |  to the fingering of these Senators, and perhaps others,
 |  mightily antagonizing those who had figured they were
 |  getting off with a whole coat. Ripping off the scabs of
 |  Watergate wounds in this way conflicted with Ford's "healing
 |  time" strategy, which was designed to put a hermetic lid on
 |  the festering mass of Watergate. Bush was too dangerous to
 |  Ford. Bush could not be chosen.
 |
 |  Because he was so redolent of Nixonian sleaze, Bush's
 |  maximum exertions for the vice-presidency were a failure.
 |  Ford announced his choice of Nelson Rockefeller on August
 |  20, 1974. It was nevertheless astounding that Bush had come
 |  so close. He was defeated for the moment, but he had
 |  established a claim on the office of the vice-presidency
 |  that he would not relinquish. Despite his hollow, arrogant
 |  ambition and total incompetence for the office, he would
 |  automatically be considered for the vice-presidency in 1976
 |  and then again in 1980. For George Bush was an aristocrat of
 |  senatorial rank, although denied the Senate, and his conduct
 |  betrayed the conviction that he was owed not just a place at
 |  the public trough, but the accolade of national political
 |  office.
 |
 |  Notes for Chapter 14
 |
 |  1. "Washington Post," Aug. 16, 1974.
 |
 |  2. "Washington Post," Aug. 9, 1974.
 |
 |  3. "Washington Post," Aug. 16, 1974.
 |
 |  4. Gerald R. Ford Library, Robert T. Hartman Files, Box 21.
 |
 |  5. Hartman Files, Box 19.
 |
 |  6. Philip Buchen Files, Box 63.
 |
 |  7. Hartman Files, Box 21.
 |
 |  8. Hartman Files, Boxes 19 and 20.
 |
 |  9. Hartman Files, Box 21.
 |
 |  10. Hartman Files, Box 20.
 |
 |  11. Walter Pincus and Bob Woodward, "Presidential Posts and
 |  Dashed Hopes," "Washington Post," Aug. 9, 1988.
 |
 |  XV: Bush in Beijing
 |
 |  ""Whatever benign star it is that tends George Bush's
 |  destiny, lights his ambition, it was early on trapped in the
 |  flawed orbit of Richard Nixon. Bush's meteoric ascent, in a
 |  decade's time, from county GOP chairman to national
 |  chairman, including his prestigious ambassadorship to the
 |  United Nations, was due largely to the strong tug of
 |  Nixonian gravity. Likewise, his blunted hopes and dimmed
 |  future, like the Comet Kohoutek, result from the too-close
 |  approach to a fatal sun."" [1] 
 |
 |  Several minutes before President Ford appeared for the first
 |  time before the television cameras with Nelson Rockefeller,
 |  his Vice President designate, he had placed a call to Bush
 |  to inform him that he had not been chosen, and to reassure
 |  him that he would be offered an important post as a
 |  consolation. Two days later, Bush met Ford at the White
 |  House. Bush claims that Ford told him that he could choose
 |  between a future as U.S. envoy to the Court of St. James in
 |  London, or presenting his credentials to the Elysee Palace
 |  in Paris. Bush would have us believe that he then told Ford
 |  that he wanted neither London nor Paris, but Beijing. Bush's
 |  accounts then portray Ford, never the quickest, as tapping
 |  his pipe, scratching his head, and asking, "Why Beijing?"
 |  Here Bush is lying once again. Ford was certainly no genius,
 |  but no one was better situated than he to know that it would
 |  have been utter folly to propose Bush for an ambassadorship
 |  that had to be approved by the Senate.
 |
 |  Why Beijing? The first consideration, and it was an
 |  imperative one, was that under no circumstances could Bush
 |  face Senate confirmation hearings for any executive branch
 |  appointment for at least one to two years. There would have
 |  been questions about the Townhouse slush fund, about his
 |  intervention on Carmine Bellino, perhaps about Leon and
 |  Russell, and about many other acutely embarrassing themes.
 |  After Watergate, Bush's name was just too smelly to send up
 |  to the Hill for any reason.
 |
 |  As Bush himself slyly notes: "The United States didn't
 |  maintain formal diplomatic relations with the People's
 |  Republic at the time, so my appointment wouldn't need Senate
 |  confirmation." An asterisk sends us to the additional fact
 |  that "because I'd been ambassador to the United Nations I
 |  carried the title 'ambassador' to China." The person that
 |  would have to be convinced, Bush correctly noted, was Henry
 |  Kissinger, who monopolized all decisions on his prized China
 |  card. [2]  But George was right about the confirmation. In
 |  1974, what Bush was asking for was the U.S. Liaison Office
 |  (USLO), which did not have the official status of an
 |  embassy. The chief of that office was the President's
 |  personal representative in China, but it was a post that did
 |  not require Senate confirmation.
 |
 |  Bush's notorious crony Robert Mosbacher was
 |  uncharacteristically close to the heart of the matter when
 |  he opined that Bush "wanted to get as far away from the
 |  stench [of Watergate] as possible." [3]  His own story that
 |  Beijing would be a "challenge, a journey into the unknown"
 |  is pure tripe. The truth is that with Washington teeming
 |  with congressional committees, special prosecutors and grand
 |  juries, Bush wanted to get as far away as he could, and
 |  Beijing was ideal.
 |
 |  Otherwise, serving in Beijing meant further close
 |  subordination to Henry Kissinger. Kissinger told Bush before
 |  he left that policy would be implemented directly by
 |  Kissinger himself, in contact with the Chinese liaison in
 |  Washington and the Chinese representative at the United
 |  Nations.
 |
 |  Finally, anyone who has observed Bush's stubborn, obsessive,
 |  morally insane support for Deng Xiaoping, Li Peng, and Yang
 |  Shankun during the aftermath of the Tiananmen massacre of
 |  June 1989 is driven toward the conclusion that Bush
 |  gravitated toward China because of an elective affinity,
 |  because of a profound attraction for the methods and outlook
 |  of Chinese leaders like Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and Deng,
 |  for whom Bush has manifested a steadfast and unshakeable
 |  devotion in the face of heinous crimes and significant
 |  political pressure to repudiate them.
 |
 |  Bush's staff in Beijing included Deputy Chief of Mission
 |  John Holdridge, Don Anderson, Herbert Horowitz, Bill Thomas
 |  and Bush's "executive assistant," Jennifer Fitzgerald, who
 |  has remained very close to Bush, and who has sometimes been
 |  rumored to be his mistress. Jennifer Fitzgerald in 1991 was
 |  the deputy chief of protocol in the White House; when German
 |  Chancellor Kohl visited Bush in the sping of 1991, he was
 |  greeted on the White House steps by Jennifer Fitzgerald.
 |
 |  Bush's closest contacts among Chinese officialdom included
 |  Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Qiao Guanhua and his wife
 |  Zhang Hanzhi, also a top official of the foreign ministry.
 |  This is the same Qiao who is repeatedly mentioned in
 |  Kissinger's memoirs as one of his most important Red Chinese
 |  diplomatic interlocutors. This is the "Lord Qiao"
 |  enigmatically mentioned by Mao during Kissinger's meeting
 |  with Mao and Zhou Enlai on November 12, 1973. Qiao and Zhang
 |  later lost power because they sided with the left extremist
 |  Gang of Four after the death of Mao in 1976, Bush tells us.
 |  But in 1974-75, the power of the proto-Gang of Four faction
 |  was at its height, and it was toward this group that Bush
 |  quickly gravitated.
 |
 |  When Bush had been in Beijing for about a month, Henry
 |  Kissinger arrived for one of his periodic visits to discuss
 |  current business with the Beijing leadership. Kissinger
 |  arrived with his usual army of retainers and Secret Service
 |  guards. During this visit, Bush went with Kissinger to see
 |  Vice-Premier Deng Xiaoping and Foreign Minister Qiao. This
 |  was one of three reported visits by Kissinger that would
 |  punctuate Bush's stay.
 |
 |  Bush's tenure in Beijing must be understood in the context
 |  of the Malthusian and frankly genocidal policies of the
 |  Kissinger White House. These are aptly summed up for
 |  reference in the recently declassified National Security
 |  Study Memorandum 200, "Implications of Worldwide Population
 |  Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests," dated
 |  December 10, 1974. [6]  NSSM 200, a joint effort by
 |  Kissinger and his deputy, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, provided a
 |  hit list of 13 developing countries for which the NSC
 |  posited a "special U.S. political and strategic interest" in
 |  population reduction or limitation. The list included India,
 |  Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil,
 |  the Philippines, Thailand, Egypt, Turkey, Ethiopia and
 |  Colombia. Demographic growth in these and other Third World
 |  nations was to be halted and if possible reversed for the
 |  brutal reason that population growth represented increased
 |  strategic, and military power for the countries in question.
 |  Population growth, argues NSSM 200, will also increase
 |  pressure for the economic and industrial development of
 |  these countries, an eventuality which the study sees as a
 |  threat to the United States. In addition, bigger populations
 |  in the Third World are alleged to lead to higher prices and
 |  greater scarcity of strategic raw materials. As Kissinger
 |  summed up: "Development of a worldwide political and popular
 |  commitment to population stabilization is fundamental to any
 |  effective strategy.... The U.S. should encourage LDC leaders
 |  to take the lead in advancing family planning." When NSSM
 |  200 goes on to ask, "would food be considered an instrument
 |  of national power?" it is clear to all that active measures
 |  of genocide are at the heart of the policy being propounded.
 |  A later Kissinger report praises the Chinese Communist
 |  leadership for their commitment to population control.
 |  During 1975, these Chinese Communists, Henry Kissinger and
 |  George Bush were to team up to create a demonstration model
 |  of the NSSM 200 policy: the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia.
 |
 |  Target Cambodia
 |
 |  One of the gambits used by Kissinger to demonstrate to the
 |  Beijing Communist leaders the utility of rapprochement with
 |  the U.S.A. has to do with the unhappy nation of Cambodia.
 |  The pro-U.S. government of Cambodia was headed by Marshal
 |  Lon Nol, who had taken power in 1970, the year of the public
 |  and massive U.S. ground incursion into the country. By the
 |  spring of 1975, while the North Vietnamese advanced on
 |  Saigon, the Lon Nol government was fighting for its life
 |  against the armed insurrection of the Cambodian Communist
 |  Party or Khmer Rouge guerrillas, who were supported by
 |  mainland China. Kissinger was as anxious as usual to serve
 |  the interests of Beijing, and now even more so, because of
 |  the alleged need to increase the power of the Chinese and
 |  their assets, the Khmer Rouge, against the triumphant North
 |  Vietnamese. The most important consideration remained to
 |  ally with China, the second strongest land power, against
 |  the U.S.S.R. Secondarily, it was important to maintain the
 |  balance of power in Southeast Asia as the U.S. policy
 |  collapsed. Kissinger's policy was therefore to jettison the
 |  Lon Nol government, and to replace it with the Khmer Rouge.
 |  George Bush, as Kissinger's liaison man in Beijing, was one
 |  of the instruments through which this policy was executed.
 |  Bush did his part, and the result is known to world history
 |  under the heading of the Pol Pot regime, which committed a
 |  genocide against its own population proportionally greater
 |  than any other in recent world history.
 |
 |  Until 1970, the government of Cambodia was led by Prince
 |  Sihanouk, a former king who had stepped down from the throne
 |  to become Prime Minister. Under Sihanouk, Cambodia had
 |  maintained a measure of stability and had above all managed
 |  to avoid being completely engulfed by the swirling maelstrom
 |  of the wars in Laos and in Vietnam. But during 1969, Nixon
 |  and Kissinger had ordered a secret bombing campaign against
 |  North Vietnamese troop concentrations on Cambodian territory
 |  under the code name of "Menu." This bombing would have
 |  provided real and substantive grounds for the impeachment of
 |  Nixon, and it did constitute the fourth proposed article of
 |  impeachment against Nixon submitted to the House Judiciary
 |  Committee on July 30, 1974. But after three articles of
 |  impeachment having to do with the Watergate break-ins and
 |  subsequent coverup were approved by the committee, the most
 |  important article, the one on genocide in Cambodia, was
 |  defeated by a vote of 26 to 12.
 |
 |  Cambodia was dragged into the Indo-China war by the
 |  U.S.-sponsored coup d'etat in Phnom Penh in March 1970,
 |  which ousted Sihanouk in favor of Marshal Lon Nol of the
 |  Cambodian Army, whose regime was never able to achieve even
 |  a modicum of stability. Shortly thereafter, at the end of
 |  April 1970, Nixon and Kissinger launched a large-scale U.S.
 |  military invasion of Cambodia, citing the use of Cambodian
 |  territory by the North Vietnamese armed forces for their "Ho
 |  Chi Minh trail" supply line to sustain their forces deployed
 |  in South Vietnam. The "parrot's beak" area of Cambodia,
 |  which extended deep into South Vietnam, was occupied.
 |
 |  Prince Sihanouk, who described himself as a neutralist,
 |  established himself in Beijing after the seizure of power by
 |  Lon Nol. In May of 1970, he became the titular leader and
 |  head of state of a Cambodian government in exile, the
 |  Gouvernement Royal d'Union Nationale du Kampuchea, or GRUNK.
 |  The GRUNK was in essence a united front between Sihanouk and
 |  the Khmer Rouge, with the latter exercising most of the real
 |  power and commanding the armed forces and secret police.
 |  Sihanouk was merely a figurehead, and he knew it.
 |
 |  During these years, the Khmer Rouge, which had launched a
 |  small guerrilla insurrection during 1968, was a negligible
 |  military factor in Cambodia, fielding only a very few
 |  thousand guerrilla fighters. One of its leaders was Saloth
 |  Sar, who had studied in Paris, and who had then sojourned at
 |  length in Red China at the height of the Red Guards'
 |  agitation. Saloth Sar was one of the most important leaders
 |  of the Khmer Rouge, and would later become infamous under
 |  his nom de guerre of Pol Pot. Decisive support for Pol Pot
 |  and for the later genocidal policies of the Khmer Rouge
 |  always came from Beijing, despite the attempts of misguided
 |  or lying commentators (like Henry Kissinger) to depict the
 |  Khmer Rouge as a creation of Hanoi.
 |
 |  But in the years after 1970, the Khmer Rouge, who were
 |  determined immediately to transform Cambodia into a
 |  Communist "utopia" beyond the dreams even of the wildest
 |  Maoist Red Guards, made rapid gains. The most important
 |  single ingredient in the rise of the Khmer Rouge was
 |  provided by Kissinger and Nixon, through their systematic
 |  campaign of terror bombing against Cambodian territory
 |  during 1973. This was called Arclight, and began shortly
 |  after the January 1973 Paris Accords on Vietnam. With the
 |  pretext of halting a Khmer Rouge attack on Phnom Penh, U.S.
 |  forces carried out 79,959 officially confirmed sorties with
 |  B-52 and F-111 bombers against targets inside Cambodia,
 |  dropping 539,129 tons of explosives. Many of these bombs
 |  fell upon the most densely populated sections of Cambodia,
 |  including the countryside around Phnom Penh. The number of
 |  deaths caused by this genocidal campaign has been estimated
 |  at between 30,000 and 500,000. [7]  Accounts of the
 |  devastating impact of this mass terror-bombing leave no
 |  doubt that it shattered most of what remained of Cambodian
 |  society and provided ideal preconditions for the further
 |  expansion of the Khmer Rouge insurgency.
 |
 |  During 1974, the Khmer Rouge consolidated their hold over
 |  parts of Cambodia. In these enclaves, they showed their
 |  characteristic methods of genocide, dispersing the
 |  inhabitants of the cities into the countryside, while
 |  executing teachers, civil servants, intellectuals --
 |  sometimes all those who could read and write. This policy
 |  was remarkably similar to the one being carried out by the
 |  United States under Theodore Shackley's Operation Phoenix in
 |  neighboring South Vietnam, and Kissinger and other officials
 |  began to see the potential of the Khmer Rouge for
 |  implementing the genocidal population reductions that had
 |  now been made the official doctrine of the U.S. regime.
 |
 |  Support for the Khmer Rouge was even more attractive to
 |  Kissinger and Nixon because it provided an opportunity for
 |  the geopolitical propitiation of the Maoist regime in China.
 |  Indeed, in the development of the China card between 1973
 |  and 1975, during most of Bush's stay in Beijing, Cambodia
 |  loomed very large as the single most important bilateral
 |  issue between the U.S.A. and Red China. Already, in November
 |  1972, Kissinger told Bush's later prime contact, Qiao
 |  Guanhua, that the United States would have no real objection
 |  to a Sihanouk-Khmer Rouge government of the type that later
 |  emerged: "Whoever can best preserve it [Cambodia] as an
 |  independent neutral country, is consistent with our policy,
 |  and we believe with yours," said Kissinger. [8] 
 |
 |  When Bush's predecessor David Bruce arrived in Beijing to
 |  open the new U.S. Liaison Office in the spring of 1973, he
 |  sought contact with Zhou Enlai. On May 18, 1973, Zhou
 |  stressed that the only solution for Cambodia would be for
 |  North Vietnamese forces to leave that country entirely. A
 |  few days later, Kissinger told Chinese delegate Huang Hua in
 |  New York that U.S. and Red Chinese interests in Cambodia
 |  were compatible, since both sought to avoid "a bloc which
 |  could support the hegemonial objectives of outside powers,"
 |  meaning North Vietnam and Hanoi's backers in Moscow. The
 |  genocidal terror-bombing of Cambodia was ordered by
 |  Kissinger during this period. Kissinger was apoplectic over
 |  the move by the U.S. Congress to prohib it further bombing
 |  of Cambodia after August 15, 1973, which he called "a
 |  totally unpredictable and senseless event." [9]  Kissinger
 |  always pretends that the Khmer Rouge were a tool of Hanoi,
 |  and in his memoirs he spins out an absurd theory that the
 |  weakening of Zhou and the ascendancy of the Gang of Four was
 |  caused by Kissinger's own inability to keep bombing
 |  Cambodia. In reality, Beijing was backing its own allies,
 |  the Khmer Rouge, as is obvious from the account that
 |  Kissinger himself provides of his meeting with Bush's friend
 |  Qiao in October 1973. [10] 
 |
 |  Starting in the second half of 1974, George Bush was heavily
 |  engaged on this Sino-Cambodian front, particularly in his
 |  contacts with his main negotiating partner, Qiao. Bush had
 |  the advantage that secret diplomacy carried on with the Red
 |  Chinese regime during those days was subject to very little
 |  public scrutiny. The summaries of Bush's dealings with the
 |  Red Chinese now await the liberation of the files of the
 |  foreign ministry in Beijing or of the State Department in
 |  Washington, whichever comes first. Bush's involvement on the
 |  Cambodian question has been established by later interviews
 |  with Prince Sihanouk's chef de cabinet, Pung Peng Cheng, as
 |  well as with French and U.S. officials knowledgeable about
 |  Bush's activities in Beijing during that time. What we have
 |  here is admittedly the tip of the iceberg, the merest hints
 |  of the monstrous iniquity yet to be unearthed. [11] 
 |
 |  The Khmer Rouge launched a dry-season offensive against
 |  Phnom Penh in early 1974, which fell short of its goal. They
 |  tried again the following year with a dry-season offensive
 |  launched on January 1, 1975. Soon supplies to Phnom Penh
 |  were cut off, both on the land and along the Mekong River.
 |  Units of Lon Nol's forces fought the battle of the Phnom
 |  Penh perimeter through March. On April 1, 1975, President
 |  Lon Nol resigned and fled the country under the pressure of
 |  the U.S. embassy, who wanted him out as quickly as possible
 |  as part of the program to appease Beijing. [12] 
 |
 |  When Lon Nol had left the country, Kissinger became
 |  concerned that the open conquest of Phnom Penh by the Khmer
 |  Rouge Communist guerrillas would create public relations and
 |  political problems for the shaky Ford regime in the United
 |  States. Kissinger accordingly became interested in having
 |  Prince Sihanouk, the titular head of the insurgent coalition
 |  of which the Khmer Rouge was the leading part, travel from
 |  Beijing to Phnom Penh so that the new government in Cambodia
 |  could be portrayed more as a neutralist-nationalist, and
 |  less as a frankly Communist, regime. This turns out to be
 |  the episode of the Cambodian tragedy in which George Bush's
 |  personal involvement is most readily demonstrated.
 |
 |  Prince Sihanouk had repeatedly sought direct contacts with
 |  Kissinger. At the end of March 1975, he tried again to open
 |  a channel to Washington, this time with the help of the
 |  French embassy in Beijing. Sihanouk's chef de cabinet, Pung
 |  Peng Chen, requested a meeting with John Holdridge, Bush's
 |  deputy station chief. This meeting was held at the French
 |  Embassy. Pung told Holdridge that Prince Sihanouk had a
 |  favor to ask of President Ford: "[I]n [Sihanouk's] old home
 |  in Phnom Penh were copies of the films of Cambodia he had
 |  made in the sixties when he had been an enthusiastic
 |  cineast. They constituted a unique cultural record of a
 |  Cambodia that was gone forever: would the Americans please
 |  rescue them? Kissinger ordered Dean [the U.S. ambassador in
 |  Cambodia] to find the films and also instructed Bush to seek
 |  a meeting with Sihanouk. The Prince refused, and during the
 |  first ten days of April, as the noose around Phnom Penh
 |  tightened, he continued his public tirades" against the
 |  United States and its Cambodian puppets. [13] 
 |
 |  On the same day, April 11, Ford announced that he would not
 |  request any further aid for Cambodia from the U.S. Congress,
 |  since any aid for Cambodia approved now would be "too late"
 |  anyway. Ford had originally been asking for $333 million to
 |  save the government of Cambodia. Several days later, Ford
 |  would reverse himself and renew his request for the aid, but
 |  by that time it was really too late.
 |
 |  On April 11, the U.S. embassy was preparing a dramatic
 |  evacuation, but the embassy was being kept open as part of
 |  Kissinger's effort to bring Prince Sihanouk back to Phnom
 |  Penh. "It was now, on April 11, 1975, as Dean was telling
 |  government leaders he might soon be leaving, that Kissinger
 |  decided that Sihanouk should be brought back to Cambodia. In
 |  Peking, George Bush was ordered to seek another meeting;
 |  that afternoon John Holdridge met once more with Pung Peng
 |  Cheng at the French embassy. The American diplomat explained
 |  that Dr. Kissinger and President Ford were now convinced
 |  that only the Prince could end the crisis. Would he please
 |  ask the Chinese for an aircraft to fly him straight back to
 |  Phnomn Penh? The United States would guarantee to remain
 |  there until he arrived. Dr. Kissinger wished to impose no
 |  conditions.... On April 12, at 5 a.m. Peking time, Holdridge
 |  again met with Pung. He told him that the Phnom Penh
 |  perimeter was degenerating so fast that the Americans were
 |  pulling out at once. Sihanouk had already issued a statement
 |  rejecting and denouncing Kissinger's invitation." [14] 
 |
 |  Sihanouk had a certain following among liberal members of
 |  the U.S. Senate, and his presence in Phnom Penh in the midst
 |  of the debacle of the old Lon Nol forces would doubtless
 |  have been reassuring for U.S. public opinion. But Sihanouk
 |  at this time had no ability to act independently of the
 |  Khmer Rouge leaders, who were hostile to him and who held
 |  the real power, including the inside track to the Red
 |  Chinese. Prince Sihanouk did return to Phnom Penh later in
 |  1975, and his strained relations with Pol Pot and his
 |  colleagues soon became evident. Early in 1976, Sihanouk was
 |  placed under house arrest by the Khmer Rouge, who appear to
 |  have intended to execute him. Sihanouk remained under
 |  detention until the North Vietnamese drove Pol Pot and his
 |  forces out of Phnom Penh in 1978 and set up their own
 |  government there.
 |
 |  In following the Kissinger-Bush machinations to bring Prince
 |  Sihanouk back to Cambodia in mid-April 1975, one is also
 |  suspicious that an included option was to increase the
 |  likelihood that Sihanouk might be liquidated by the Khmer
 |  Rouge. When the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh, they
 |  immediately carried out a massacre on a grand scale, slaying
 |  any members of the Lon Nol and Long Boret cabinets they
 |  could get their hands on. There were mass executions of
 |  teachers and government officials, and all of the 2.5
 |  million residents of Phnom Penh were driven into the
 |  countryside, including seriously ill hospital patients.
 |  Under these circumstances, it would have been relatively
 |  easy to assassinate Sihanouk amidst the general orgy of
 |  slaughter. Such an eventuality was explicitly referred to in
 |  a Kissinger NSC briefing paper circulated in March 1975, in
 |  which Sihanouk was quoted as follows in remarks made
 |  December 10, 1971: "If I go on as chief of state after
 |  victory, I run the risk of being pushed out the window by
 |  the Communists, like Masaryk, or that I might be imprisoned
 |  for revisionism or deviationism."
 |
 |  More than 2 million Cambodians out of an estimated total
 |  population of slightly more than 7 million perished under
 |  the Khmer Rouge; according to some estimates, the genocide
 |  killed 32 percent of the total population. [15]  The United
 |  States and Red China, acting together under the Kissinger
 |  "China card" policy, had liquidated one Cambodian
 |  government, destroyed the fabric of civil society in the
 |  country, ousted a pro-U.S. government, and installed a new
 |  regime they knew to be genocidal in its intentions. For
 |  Kissinger, it was the exemplification of the new U.S.
 |  strategic doctrine contained in NSSM 200. For George Bush,
 |  it was the fulfillment of his family's fanatically held
 |  belief in the need for genocide to prevent the more
 |  prolific, but "inferior," races of the earth, in this case
 |  those with yellow skins, from "out-breeding" the imperial
 |  Anglo-Saxon racial stock.
 |
 |  Making Mon ey in Beijing
 |
 |  In addition to opportunities to promote genocide, Bush's
 |  tenure in Beijing presented him with numerous occasions to
 |  exploit public office for the private gain of financiers and
 |  businessmen who were a part of his network. In September
 |  1975, as Ford was preparing for a year-end visit to China,
 |  Kissinger organized a presidential reception at the White
 |  House for a delegation from the Beijing China Council for
 |  the Promotion of International Trade. The meeting was
 |  carefully choreographed by Kissinger and Scowcroft. The Ford
 |  Library has preserved a supplementary memo to Scowcroft, at
 |  that time the NSC chief, from Richard H. Solomon of the NSC
 |  staff, which reads as follows: "Regarding the President's
 |  meeting with the Chinese trade group, State has called me
 |  requesting that Ambassador Bush and [Kissinger henchman]
 |  Phil Habib attend the meeting. You will recall having
 |  approved Bush's sitting in on the President's meeting with
 |  the Congressional delegation that recently returned from
 |  China. Hence, Bush will be floating around the White House
 |  at this period of time anyway. I personally think it would
 |  be useful to have Bush and Habib sit in. The Cabinet Room
 |  should be able to hold them. Win[ston] Lord is someone else
 |  who might be invited." This meeting was eventually held on
 |  September 8, 1975.
 |
 |  A little earlier, Bush, en route to Washington, had sent a
 |  hand-written note to Scowcroft dated August29, 1975. This
 |  missive urged Scowcroft to grant a request from Codel
 |  Anderson, who had just completed a visit to China complete
 |  with a meeting with Deng Xiaoping, to be allowed to report
 |  back to Ford personally.
 |
 |  These were the type of contacts which later paid off for
 |  Bush's cronies. During 1977, Bush returned to China as a
 |  private citizen, taking with him his former Zapata business
 |  partner, J. Hugh Liedtke. In January 1978, Liedtke was on
 |  hand when the Chinese oil minister was Bush's guest for
 |  dinner at his home in Houston. In May 1978, Liedtke and
 |  Pennzoil were at the top of the Chinese government's list of
 |  U.S. oil firms competing to be accorded contracts for
 |  drilling in China. Then, in the late summer of 1978, J. Hugh
 |  Liedtke of Pennzoil made another trip to China, during which
 |  he was allowed to view geological studies which had
 |  previously been held as state secrets by Beijing. Pennzoil
 |  was in the lead for a contract to begin oil drilling in the
 |  South China Sea. [16] 
 |
 |  Kissinger made four visits to Beijing during Bush's tenure
 |  there. On October 19, 1975, Kissinger arrived in Beijing to
 |  prepare for Ford's visit, set for December. There were talks
 |  between Kissinger and Deng Xiaoping, with Bush, Habib,
 |  Winston Lord and Foreign Minister Qiao taking part. It was
 |  during this visit that, Bush would have us believe, he had
 |  his first face-to-face meeting with Mao Zedong, the leader
 |  of a Communist revolution which had claimed the lives of
 |  some 100 million Chinese since the end of the Second World
 |  War.
 |
 |  Meeting of the Monsters
 |
 |  Mao, one of the greatest monsters of the twentieth century,
 |  was 81 years old at that time. He was in very bad health;
 |  when he opened his mouth to meet Kissinger, "only guttural
 |  noises emerged." Mao's study contained tables covered with
 |  tubes and medical apparatus, and a small oxygen tank. Mao
 |  was unable to speak coherently, but had to write Chinese
 |  characters and an occasional word in English on a note pad
 |  which he showed to his interpreters. Kissinger inquired as
 |  to Mao's health. Mao pointed to his head saying, "This part
 |  works well. I can eat and sleep." Then Mao tapped his legs:
 |  "These parts do not work well. They are not strong when I
 |  walk. I also have some trouble with my lungs. In a word, I
 |  am not well. I am a showcase for visitors," Mao summed up.
 |  The croaking, guttural voice continued: "I am going to
 |  heaven soon. I have already received an invitation from
 |  God."
 |
 |  If Mao was a basso profondo of guttural croaking, then
 |  Kissinger was at least a bass-baritone: "Don't accept it too
 |  soon," he replied. "I accept the orders of the Doctor,"
 |  wrote Mao on his note pad. Mao at this point had slightly
 |  less than a year to live. Bush provided counterpoint to
 |  these lower registers with his own whining tenor.
 |
 |  Bush was much impressed by Mao's rustic background and
 |  repertoire of Chinese barnyard expressions. Referring to a
 |  certain problem in Sino-American relations, Mao dismissed it
 |  as no more important than a "fang go pi," no more important
 |  than a dog fart.
 |
 |  Mao went on, commenting about U.S. military superiority, and
 |  then saying: "God blesses you, not us. God does not like us
 |  because I am a militant warlord, also a Communist. No, he
 |  doesn't like me. He likes you three." Mao pointed to
 |  Kissinger, Bush and Winston Lord.
 |
 |  Toward the end of the encounter, this lugubrious monster
 |  singled out Bush for special attention. Mao turned to
 |  Winston Lord. "This ambassador," said Mao while gesturing
 |  toward Bush, "is in a plight. Why don't you come visit?" "I
 |  would be honored," Bush replied according to his own
 |  account, "but I'm afraid you're very busy." "Oh, I'm not
 |  busy," said Mao. "I don't look after internal affairs. I
 |  only read the international news. You should really come
 |  visit."
 |
 |  Bush claims [17]  that he never accepted Chairman Mao's
 |  invitation to come around for private talks. Bush says that
 |  he was convinced by members of his own staff that Mao did
 |  not really mean to invite him, but was only being polite.
 |  Was Bush really so reticent, or is this another one of the
 |  falsifications with which his official biographies are
 |  studded? The world must await the opening of the Beijing and
 |  Foggy Bottom archives. In the meantime, we must take a
 |  moment to contemplate that gathering of October 1975 in
 |  Chairman Mao's private villa, secluded behind many
 |  courtyards and screens in the Chungnanhai enclave of Chinese
 |  rulers not far from the Great Hall of the People and
 |  Tiananmen, where less than a year later an initial round of
 |  pro-democracy demonstrations would be put down in blood in
 |  the wake of the funeral of Zhou Enlai.
 |
 |  Mao, Kissinger, and Bush: Has history ever seen a
 |  tete-a-tete of such mass murderers? Mao, identifying himself
 |  with Chin Shih Huang, the first Emperor of all of China and
 |  founder of the Chin dynasty, who had built the Great Wall,
 |  burned the books, and killed the Confucian scholars -- this
 |  Mao had massacred ten percent of his own people, ravaged
 |  Korea, strangled Tibet. Kissinger's crimes were endless,
 |  from the Middle East to Vietnam, from the oil crisis of
 |  1973-74, with the endless death in the Sahel, to
 |  India-Pakistan, Chile and many more. Kissinger, Mao and Bush
 |  had collaborated to install the Pol Pot Khmer Rouge regime
 |  in Cambodia, which was now approaching the zenith of its
 |  genocidal career. Compared to the other two, Bush may have
 |  appeared as an apprentice of genocide: He had done some
 |  filibustering in the Caribbean, had been part of the
 |  cheering section for the Indonesia massacres of 1965, and
 |  then he had become a part of the Kissinger apparatus,
 |  sharing in the responsibility for India-Pakistan, the Middle
 |  East, Cambodia. But as Bush advanced through his personal
 |  "cursus honorum," his power and his genocidal dexterity were
 |  growing, foreshadowing such future triumphs as the
 |  devastation of El Chorillo in Panama in December 1989, and
 |  his later masterwork of savagery, the Gulf war of 1991. By
 |  the time of Bush's own administration, Anglo-American
 |  finance and the International Monetary Fund were averaging
 |  some 50 million needless deaths per year in the developing
 |  sector.
 |
 |  But Mao, Kissinger and Bush exchanged pleasantries that day
 |  in Mao's sitting room in Chungnanhai. If the shades of
 |  Hitler or Stalin had sought admission to that murderers
 |  colloquium, they might have been denied entrance as pikers.
 |
 |  Later, in early December, Gerald Ford, accompanied by his
 |  hapless wife and daughter, came to see the moribund Mao for
 |  what amounted to a photo opportunity with a living cadaver.
 |  The Associated Press wire issued that day hyped the fact
 |  that Mao had talked with Ford for one hour and 50 minutes,
 |  nearly twice as long as the Great Steersman had given to
 |  Nixon in 1972. Participants in this meeting included
 |  Kissinge r, Bush, Scowcroft and Winston Lord. Bush was now
 |  truly a leading Kissinger clone. A joint communique issued
 |  after this session said that Mao and Ford had had "earnest
 |  and significant discussions ... on wide-ranging issues in a
 |  friendly atmosphere." At this meeting, Chairman Mao greeted
 |  Bush with the words, "You've been promoted." Mao turned to
 |  Ford, and added: "We hate to see him go." At a private lunch
 |  with Vice Premier Deng Xiao-ping, the rising star of the
 |  post-Mao succession, Deng assured Bush that he was
 |  considered a friend of the Chinese Communist hierarchy who
 |  would always be welcome in China, "even as head of the CIA."
 |  For, as we will see, this was to be the next stop on Bush's
 |  "cursus honorum."
 |
 |  Later, Kissinger and Bush also met with Qiao Guanhua, still
 |  the Foreign Minister. According to newspaper accounts, the
 |  phraseology of the joint communique suggested that the
 |  meeting had been more than usually cordial. There had also
 |  been a two-hour meeting with Deng Xiaoping reported by the
 |  Ford White House as "a constructive exchange of views on a
 |  wide range of international issues." At a banquet, Deng used
 |  a toast for an anti-Soviet tirade which the Soviet news
 |  agency TASS criticized as "vicious attacks." [18] 
 |
 |  Ford thought, probably because he had been told by
 |  Kissinger, that the fact that Mao had accompanied him to the
 |  door of his villa after the meeting was a special honor, but
 |  he was disabused by Beijing-based correspondents who told
 |  him that this was Mao's customary practice. Ford's daughter
 |  Susan was sporting a full-length muskrat coat for her trip
 |  to the Great Wall. "It's more than I ever expected," she
 |  gushed. "I feel like I'm in a fantasy. It's a whole other
 |  world."
 |
 |  The Next Step
 |
 |  Days after Ford departed from Beijing, Bush also left the
 |  Chinese capital. It was time for a new step in his imperial
 |  "cursus honorum." During his entire stay in Beijing, Bush
 |  had never stopped scheming for new paths of personal
 |  advancement toward the very apex of power.
 |
 |  Before Bush went to Beijing, he had talked to his network
 |  asset and crony Rogers C.B. Morton about his favorite topic,
 |  his own prospects for future career aggrandizement. Morton
 |  at that time was Secretary of Commerce, but he was planning
 |  to step down before much longer. Morton told Bush: "What you
 |  ought to think about is coming back to Washington to replace
 |  me when I leave. It's a perfect springboard for a place on
 |  the ticket."
 |
 |  This idea is the theme of a Ford White House memo preserved
 |  in the Jack Marsh Files at the Ford Library in Ann Arbor.
 |  The memo is addressed to Jack Marsh, counselor to the
 |  President, by Russell Rourke of Marsh's staff. The memo,
 |  which is dated March 20, 1975, reads as follows: "|'It's my
 |  impression and partial understanding that George Bush has
 |  probably had enough of egg rolls and Peking by now (and has
 |  probably gotten over his lost V.P. opportunity). He's one
 |  hell of a Presidential surrogate, and would be an
 |  outstanding spokesman for the White House between now and
 |  November '76. Don't you think he would make an outstanding
 |  candidate for Secretary of Commerce or a similar post
 |  sometime during the next six months?'|"
 |
 |  Bush was now obsessed with the idea that he had a right to
 |  become Vice President in 1976. As a member of the senatorial
 |  caste, he had a right to enter the Senate, and if the
 |  plebeians with their changeable humors barred the elective
 |  route, then the only answer was to be appointed to the
 |  second spot on the ticket and enter the Senate as its
 |  presiding officer. As Bush wrote in his campaign
 |  autobiography: "Having lost out to Rockefeller as Ford's
 |  vice-presidential choice in 1974, I might be considered by
 |  some as a leading contender for the number two spot in
 |  Kansas City...." [19] 
 |
 |  Bush possessed a remarkable capability for the blackmailing
 |  of Ford: He could enter the 1976 Republican presidential
 |  primaries as a candidate in his own right, and could
 |  occasion a hemorrhaging of liberal Republican support that
 |  might otherwise have gone to Ford. Ford, the second
 |  non-elected President [Andrew Johnson was the first], was
 |  the weakest of all incumbents, and he was already preparing
 |  to face a powerful challenge from his right mounted by the
 |  Ronald Reagan camp. The presence of an additional rival with
 |  Bush's networks among liberal and moderate Republican layers
 |  might constitute a fatal impediment to Ford's prospects for
 |  getting himself elected to a term of his own.
 |
 |  Accordingly, when Kissinger visited Bush in Beijing in
 |  October 1975, he pointedly inquired as to whether Bush
 |  intended to enter any of the Republican presidential
 |  primaries during the 1976 season. This was the principal
 |  question that Ford had directed Kissinger to ask of Bush.
 |
 |  Bush's exit from Beijing occurred within the context of
 |  Ford's celebrated "Halloween massacre" of early November
 |  1975. This "massacre," reminiscent of Nixon's cabinet purge
 |  of 1973 ("the Saturday night massacre"), was a number of
 |  firings and transfers of high officials at the top of the
 |  executive branch, through which Ford sought to figure forth
 |  the political profile which he intended to carry into the
 |  primaries and, if he were successful in the winter and
 |  spring, into the Republican convention and, beyond that,
 |  into the fall campaign. So each of these changes had a
 |  purpose that was ultimately rooted in electioneering.
 |
 |  In the Halloween massacre, it was announced that Vice
 |  President Nelson Rockefeller would under no circumstances be
 |  a candidate to continue in that office. Nelson's negatives
 |  were simply too high, owing in part to a vigorous campaign
 |  directed against him by Lyndon LaRouche. James "Rodney the
 |  Robot" Schlesinger was summarily ousted as the Secretary of
 |  Defense; Schlesinger's "Dr. Strangelove" overtones were
 |  judged not presentable during an election year. To replace
 |  Schlesinger, Ford's White House chief of staff, Donald
 |  Rumsfeld, was given the Pentagon. Henry Kissinger, who up to
 |  this moment had been running the administration from two
 |  posts, NSC Director and Secretary of State, had to give up
 |  his White House office and was obliged to direct the
 |  business of the government from Foggy Bottom. In consolation
 |  to him, the NSC job was assigned to his devoted clone and
 |  later business associate, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Brent
 |  Scowcroft, a Mormon who would later play the role of
 |  exterminating demon during Bush's Gulf war adventure. At the
 |  Department of Commerce, the secretary's post that had been
 |  so highly touted to Bush was being vacated by Rogers Morton.
 |  Finally, William Colby, his public reputation thoroughly
 |  dilapidated as a result of the revelations made during the
 |  Church Committee and Pike Committee investigations of the
 |  abuses and crimes of the CIA, especially within the U.S.
 |  domestic sphere, was canned as Director of Central
 |  Intelligence.
 |
 |  Could this elaborate reshuffle be made to yield a job for
 |  Bush? It was anything but guaranteed. The post of CIA
 |  Director was offered to Washington lawyer and influence
 |  broker Edward Bennett Williams. But he turned it down.
 |
 |  Then there was the post at Commerce. This was one that Bush
 |  came very close to getting. In the Jack Marsh files at the
 |  Gerald Ford Library there is a draft marked "Suggested cable
 |  to George Bush," but which is undated. The telegram begins:
 |  "Congratulations on your selection by the President as
 |  Secretary of Commerce." The job title is crossed out, and
 |  "Director of the Central Intelligence Agency" is penciled
 |  in.
 |
 |  So Bush almost went to Commerce, but then was proposed for
 |  Langley instead. Bush in his campaign autobiography suggests
 |  that the CIA appointment was a tactical defeat, the one new
 |  job that was more or less guaranteed to keep him off the GOP
 |  ticket in 1976. As CIA Director, if he got that far, he
 |  would have to spend "the next six months serving as point
 |  man for a controversial agency being investigated by two
 |  major Congressional committees. The scars left by that
 |  experience would put me out of contention, leaving the spot
 |  open for others." [20]  Bush suggests that "the Langley
 |  thing" was the handiwork of Donald Rumsfeld, who had a
 |  leading role in designing the reshuffle. (Some time later,
 |  Fo rd's Secretary of the Treasury William Simon confided
 |  privately that he himself had been targeted for proscription
 |  by "Rummy," who was more interested in taking the Treasury
 |  than he was in the Pentagon.)
 |
 |  On All Saints' Day, November 1, 1975, Bush received a
 |  telegram from Kissinger informing him that "the President is
 |  planning to announce some major personnel shifts on Monday,
 |  November 3, at 7:30 PM, Washington time. Among those shifts
 |  will be the transfer of Bill Colby from CIA. The President
 |  asks that you consent to his nominating you as the new
 |  Director of the Central Intelligence Agency." [21] 
 |
 |  Bush promptly accepted.
 |
 |  Notes for Chapter 15
 |
 |  1. Al Reinert, "Bob and George Go to Washington or The
 |  Post-Watergate Scramble," in "Texas Monthly," April 1974.
 |
 |  2. George Bush and Victor Gold, "Looking Forward" (New York:
 |  Doubleday, 1987), p. 130.
 |
 |  3. Walter Pincus and Bob Woodward, "Presidential Posts and
 |  Dashed Hopes," "Washington Post," Aug. 9, 1988.
 |
 |  6. See Hassan Ahmed and Joseph Brewda, "Kissinger,
 |  Scowcroft, Bush Plotted Third World Genocide," "Executive
 |  Intelligence Review," May 3, 1991, pp. 26-30.
 |
 |  7. Russell R. Ross ed., "Cambodia: A Country Study"
 |  (Washington: U.S. G.P.O., 1990), p. 46.
 |
 |  8. Henry Kissinger, "Years of Upheaval" (Boston: Little,
 |  Brown, 1982), p. 341.
 |
 |  9. "Ibid.," p. 367.
 |
 |  10. "Ibid.," p. 681.
 |
 |  11. See William Shawcross, "Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and
 |  the Destruction of Cambodia" (New York: Simon and Schuster,
 |  1987), pp. 360-61.
 |
 |  12. See Sutsakhan's "The Khmer Republic at War and the Final
 |  Collapse" (Washington: U.S. Army Center of Military History,
 |  1980) pp. 163, 166.
 |
 |  13. Shawcross, "op. cit.," p. 360.
 |
 |  14. "Ibid.," p. 361.
 |
 |  15. Ross, "op. cit.," p. 51.
 |
 |  16. "Forbes," Sept. 4, 1978.
 |
 |  17. See Bush and Gold, "op. cit.," pp. 145-49 for Bush's
 |  account of his alleged first meeting with Mao.
 |
 |  18. "New Orleans Times-Picayune," Dec. 3, 1975.
 |
 |  19. Bush and Gold, "op. cit.," p. 157.
 |
 |  20. "Ibid.," pp. 157-58.
 |
 |  21. "Ibid.," p. 153.
 |
 |  "XVI: CIA Director"
 |
 |  In late 1975, as a result in particular of his role in
 |  Watergate, Bush's confirmation as CIA director was not
 |  automatic. And though the debate at his confirmation was
 |  superficial, some senators, including in particular the late
 |  Frank Church of Idaho, made some observations about the
 |  dangers inherent in the Bush nomination that have turned out
 |  in retrospect to be useful.
 |
 |  The political scene on the home front, from which Bush had
 |  been so anxious to be absent during 1975, was the so-called
 |  "Year of Intelligence," in that it had been a year of
 |  intense scrutiny of the illegal activities and abuses of the
 |  intelligence community, including CIA domestic and covert
 |  operations. On December 22, 1974, the "New York Times"
 |  published the first of a series of articles by Seymour M.
 |  Hersh, which relied on leaked reports of CIA activities
 |  assembled by Director James Rodney Schlesinger to expose
 |  alleged misdeeds by the agency.
 |
 |  It was widely recognized at the time that the Hersh articles
 |  were a self-exposure by the CIA that was designed to set the
 |  agenda for the Ford-appointed Rockefeller Commission, which
 |  was set up a few days later, on January 4. The Rockefeller
 |  Commission was supposed to examine the malfeasance of the
 |  intelligence agencies and make recommendations about how
 |  they could be reorganized and reformed. In reality, the
 |  Rockefeller Commission proposals would reflect the
 |  transition of the structures of the 1970s toward the growing
 |  totalitarian tendencies of the 1980s.
 |
 |  While the Rockefeller Commission was a tightly controlled
 |  vehicle of the Eastern Anglophile Liberal Establishment,
 |  congressional investigating committees were impaneled during
 |  1975 whose proceedings were somewhat less rigidly
 |  controlled. These included the Senate Intelligence
 |  Committee, known as the Church Committee, and the
 |  corresponding House committee, first chaired by Rep. Lucien
 |  Nedzi (who had previously chaired one of the principal
 |  Watergate-era probes), and then (after July) by Rep. Otis
 |  Pike. One example was the Pike Committee's issuance of a
 |  contempt of Congress citation against Henry Kissinger for
 |  his refusal to provide documentation of covert operations in
 |  November 1975. Another was Church's role in leading the
 |  opposition to the Bush nomination.
 |
 |  The Church Committee launched an investigation of the use of
 |  covert operations for the purpose of assassinating foreign
 |  leaders. By the nature of things, this probe was led to
 |  grapple with the problem of whether covert operations
 |  sanctioned to eliminate foreign leaders had been re-targeted
 |  against domestic political figures. The obvious case was the
 |  Kennedy assassination.
 |
 |  Frank Church -- who, we must keep in mind, was himself an
 |  ambitious politician -- was especially diligent in attacking
 |  CIA covert operations, which Bush would be anxious to
 |  defend. The CIA's covert branch, Church thought, was a
 |  "self-serving apparatus." "It's a bureaucracy which feeds on
 |  itself, and those involved are constantly sitting around
 |  thinking up schemes for [foreign] intervention which will
 |  win them promotions and justify further additions to the
 |  staff.... It self-generates interventions that otherwise
 |  never would be thought of, let alone authorized." [1] 
 |
 |  It will be seen that, at the beginning of Bush's tenure at
 |  the CIA, the congressional committees were on the offensive
 |  against the intelligence agencies. By the time that Bush
 |  departed Langley, the tables were turned, and it was the
 |  Congress which was the focus of scandals, including
 |  Koreagate. Soon thereafter, the Congress would undergo the
 |  assault of Abscam.
 |
 |  Preparation for what was to become the "Halloween massacre"
 |  began in the Ford White House during the summer of 1975. The
 |  Ford Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan preserves a memo from
 |  Donald Rumsfeld to Ford dated July 10, 1975, which deals
 |  with an array of possible choices for CIA director. Rumsfeld
 |  had polled a number of White House and administration
 |  officials and asked them to express preferences among
 |  "outsiders to the CIA." [2] 
 |
 |  Dick Cheney of the White House staff proposed Robert Bork,
 |  followed by Bush and Lee Iacocca. Among the officials polled
 |  by Cheney was Henry Kissinger, who suggested C. Douglas
 |  Dillon, Howard Baker and Robert Roosa. Nelson Rockefeller
 |  was also for C. Douglas Dillon, followed by Howard Baker,
 |  and James R. Schlesinger. Rumsfeld himself listed Bork,
 |  Dillon, Stanley Resor, Lee Iacocca and Walter Wriston, but
 |  not Bush. The only officials putting Bush on their
 |  "possible" lists, other than Cheney, were Jack O. Marsh, a
 |  White House counselor to Ford, and David Packard. When it
 |  came time for Rumsfeld to sum up the aggregate number of
 |  times each person was mentioned, minus one point for each
 |  time a person had been recommended against, among the names
 |  on the final list were the following: Robert Bork (rejected
 |  in 1987 for the Supreme Court), John S. Foster of PFIAB
 |  (formerly of the Department of Defense), C. Douglas Dillon,
 |  Stanley Resor, and Robert Roosa.
 |
 |  It will be seen that Bush was not among the leading
 |  candidates, perhaps because his networks were convinced that
 |  he was going to make another attempt for the vice-presidency
 |  and that therefore the Commerce Department or some similar
 |  post would be more suitable. The summary profile of Bush
 |  sent to Ford by Rumsfeld found that Bush had "experience in
 |  government and diplomacy" and was "generally familiar with
 |  components of the intelligence community and their missions"
 |  while having management experience. Under "Cons" Rumsfeld
 |  noted: "RNC post lends undesirable political cast."
 |
 |  As we have seen, the CIA post was finally offered by Ford to
 |  Edward Bennett Williams, perhaps with an eye on building a
 |  bipartisan bridge toward a powerful faction of the
 |  intelligence community. But Williams did not want the job.
 |  Bush, originally slated for the Department of Commerce, was
 |  given the CIA appointment.
 |
 |  The announcement of Bush's nomination occasioned a storm of
 |  criticism, whose themes included the inadvisability of
 |  choosing a Watergate figure for such a sensitive post so
 |  soon after that scandal had finally begun to subside.
 |  References were made to Bush's receipt of financial largesse
 |  fr om Nixon's Townhouse fund and related operations. There
 |  was also the question of whether the domestic CIA apparatus
 |  would get mixed up in Bush's expected campaign for the
 |  vice-presidency. These themes were developed in editorials
 |  during the month of November 1976, while Bush was kept in
 |  Beijing by the requirements of preparing the Ford-Mao
 |  meetings of early December. To some degree, Bush was just
 |  hanging there and slowly, slowly twisting in the wind. The
 |  slow-witted Ford soon realized that he had been inept in
 |  summarily firing William Colby, since Bush would have to
 |  remain in China for some weeks and then return to face
 |  confirmation hearings. Ford had to ask Colby to stay on in a
 |  caretaker capacity until Bush took office. The delay allowed
 |  opposition against Bush to crystallize to some degree, but
 |  his own network was also quick to spring to his defense.
 |
 |  Former CIA officer Tom Braden, writing in the "Fort
 |  Lauderdale News", noted that the Bush appointment to the CIA
 |  looked bad, and looked bad at a time when public confidence
 |  in the CIA was so low that everything about the agency
 |  desperately needed to look good. Braden's column was
 |  entitled "George Bush, Bad Choice for CIA Job."
 |
 |  Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, writing in the "Washington
 |  Post", commented that "the Bush nomination is regarded by
 |  some intelligence experts as another grave morale deflator.
 |  They reason that any identified politician, no matter how
 |  resolved to be politically pure, would aggravate the CIA's
 |  credibility gap. Instead of an identified politician like
 |  Bush ... what is needed, they feel, is a respected
 |  non-politician, perhaps from business or the academic
 |  world."
 |
 |  The "Washington Post" came out against Bush in an editorial
 |  entitled "The Bush Appointment." Here the reasoning was that
 |  this position "should not be regarded as a political parking
 |  spot," and that public confidence in the CIA had to be
 |  restored after the recent revelations of wrongdoing.
 |
 |  After a long-winded argument, the conservative columnist
 |  George Will came to the conclusion that Ambassador Bush at
 |  the CIA would be "the wrong kind of guy at the wrong place
 |  at the worst possible time."
 |
 |  Senator Church viewed the Bush appointment in the context of
 |  a letter sent to him by Ford on October 31, 1975, demanding
 |  that the committee's report on U.S. assassination plots
 |  against foreign leaders be kept secret. In Church's opinion,
 |  these two developments were part of a pattern, and amounted
 |  to a new stonewalling defense by what Church had called "the
 |  rogue elephant." Church issued a press statement in response
 |  to Ford's letter attempting to impose a blackout on the
 |  assassination report. "I am astonished that President Ford
 |  wants to suppress the committee's report on assassination
 |  and keep it concealed from the American people," said
 |  Church. Then, on November 3, Church was approached by
 |  reporters outside of his Senate hearing room and asked by
 |  Daniel Schorr about the firing of Colby and his likely
 |  replacement by Bush. Church responded with a voice that was
 |  trembling with anger. "There is no question in my mind but
 |  that concealment is the new order of the day," he said.
 |  "Hiding evil is the trademark of a totalitarian government."
 |  [3] 
 |
 |  The following day, November 4, Church read Leslie Gelb's
 |  column in the "New York Times" suggesting that Colby had
 |  been fired, among other things, "for not doing a good job
 |  containing the congressional investigations." George Bush,
 |  Gelb thought, "would be able to go to Congress and ask for a
 |  grace period before pressing their investigations further."
 |  A "Washington Star" headline of this period summed up this
 |  argument: "CIA Needs Bush's PR Talent." Church talked with
 |  his staff that day about what he saw as an ominous pattern
 |  of events. He told reporters: "First came the very
 |  determined administration effort to prevent any revelations
 |  concerning NSA, their stonewalling of public hearings. Then
 |  came the president's letter. Now comes the firing of Colby,
 |  Mr. Schlesinger, and the general belief that Secretary
 |  Kissinger is behind these latest developments." For Church,
 |  "clearly a pattern has emerged now to try and disrupt this
 |  [Senate Intelligence Committee] investigation. As far as I'm
 |  concerned, it won't be disrupted," said Church grimly.
 |
 |  One of Church's former aides, speech writer Loch K. Johnson,
 |  describes how he worked with Church to prepare a speech
 |  scheduled for delivery on November 11, 1975, in which Church
 |  would stake out a position opposing the Bush nomination:
 |  "The nomination of George Bush to succeed Colby disturbed
 |  him and he wanted to wind up the speech by opposing the
 |  nomination.... He hoped to influence Senate opinion on the
 |  nomination on the eve of Armed Services Committee hearings
 |  to confirm Bush.
 |
 |  "I rapidly jotted down notes as Church discussed the lines
 |  he would like to take against the nomination. 'Once they
 |  used to give former national party chairmen [as Bush had
 |  been under President Nixon] postmaster generalships -- the
 |  most political and least sensitive job in government,' he
 |  said. 'Now they have given this former party chairman the
 |  most sensitive and least political agency.' Church wanted me
 |  to stress how Bush 'might compromise the independence of the
 |  CIA -- the agency could be politicized.'|"
 |
 |  Some days later, Church appeared on the CBS program "Face
 |  the Nation." He was asked by George Herman if his opposition
 |  to Bush would mean that anyone with political experience
 |  would be "a priori" unacceptable for such a post. Church
 |  replied: "I think that whoever is chosen should be one who
 |  has demonstrated a capacity for independence, who has shown
 |  that he can stand up to the many pressures." Church hinted
 |  that Bush had never stood up for principle at the cost of
 |  political office. Moreover, "a man whose background is as
 |  partisan as a past chairman of the Republican Party does
 |  serious damage to the agency and its intended purposes." [4]
 |
 |
 |  The Brown Brothers Harriman/Skull and Bones crowd
 |  counterattacked in favor of Bush, mobilizing some
 |  significant resources. One was none other than Leon
 |  Jaworski, the former Watergate special prosecutor.
 |  Jaworski's mission for the Bush network appears to have been
 |  to get the Townhouse and related Nixon slush fund issues off
 |  the table of the public debate and confirmation hearings.
 |  Jaworski, speaking at a convention of former FBI special
 |  agents meeting in Houston, defended Bush against charges
 |  that he had accepted illegal or improper payments from Nixon
 |  and CREEP operatives. "This was investigated by me when I
 |  served as Watergate special prosecutor. I found no
 |  involvement of George Bush and gave him full clearance. I
 |  hope that in the interest of fairness, the matter will not
 |  be bandied about unless something new has appeared on the
 |  horizon."
 |
 |  More Opposition
 |
 |  Negative mail from both houses of Congress was also coming
 |  in to the White House. On November 12, GOP Congressman James
 |  M. Collins of Dallas, Texas wrote to Ford: "I hope you will
 |  reconsider the appointment of George Bush to the CIA. At
 |  this time it seems to me that it would be a greater service
 |  for the country for George to continue his service in China.
 |  He is not the right man for the CIA."
 |
 |  There was also a letter to Ford from Democratic Congressman
 |  Lucien Nedzi of Michigan, who had been the chairman of one
 |  of the principal House Watergate investigating committees.
 |  Nedzi wrote as follows: "The purpose of my letter is to
 |  express deep concern over the announced appointment of
 |  George Bush as the new Director of the Central Intelligence
 |  Agency.
 |
 |  "... [H]is proposed appointment would bring with it
 |  inevitable complications for the intelligence community. Mr.
 |  Bush is a man with a recent partisan political past and a
 |  probable near-term partisan political future. This is a
 |  burden neither the Agency, nor the legislative oversight
 |  committee, nor the Executive should have to bear as the CIA
 |  enters perhaps the most difficult period of its history.
 |
 |  "Accordingly, I respectfully urge that you reconsider your
 |  appointment of Mr. Bush to this most sensitive of
 |  positions." [5] 
 |
 |  Within just a couple of days of making Bush's nomination
 |  public, the Ford White House was aware tha t it had a
 |  significant public relations problem. To get reelected, Ford
 |  had to appear as a reformer, breaking decisively with the
 |  bad old days of Nixon and the Plumbers. But with the Bush
 |  nomination, Ford was putting a former party chairman and
 |  future candidate for national office at the head of the
 |  entire intelligence community.
 |
 |  Ford's staff began to marshal attempted rebuttals for the
 |  attacks on Bush. On November 5, Jim Connor of Ford's staff
 |  had some trite boiler-plate inserted into Ford's Briefing
 |  Book in case he were asked if the advent of Bush represented
 |  a move to obstruct the Church and Pike Committees. Ford was
 |  told to answer that he "has asked Director Colby to
 |  cooperate fully with the Committee" and "expects Ambassador
 |  Bush to do likewise once he becomes Director. As you are
 |  aware, the work of both the Church and Pike Committees is
 |  slated to wind up shortly." [6]  In case he were asked about
 |  Bush politicizing the CIA, Ford was to answer: "I believe
 |  that Republicans and Democrats who know George Bush and have
 |  worked with him know that he does not let politics and
 |  partisanship interfere with the performance of public duty."
 |  That was a mouthful. "Nearly all of the men and women in
 |  this and preceding administrations have had partisan
 |  identities and have held partisan party posts.... George
 |  Bush is a part of that American tradition and he will
 |  demonstrate this when he assumes his new duties."
 |
 |  But when Ford, in an appearance on a Sunday talk show, was
 |  asked if he were ready to exclude Bush as a possible
 |  vice-presidential candidate, he refused to do so, answering,
 |  "I don't think people of talent ought to be excluded from
 |  any field of public service." At a press conference, Ford
 |  said, "I don't think he's eliminated from consideration by
 |  anybody, the delegates or the convention or myself."
 |
 |  Confirmation Hearings
 |
 |  Bush's confirmation hearings got under way on December 15,
 |  1975. Even judged by Bush's standards of today, they
 |  constitute a landmark exercise in sanctimonious hypocrisy so
 |  astounding as to defy comprehension.
 |
 |  Bush's sponsor was GOP Senator Strom Thurmond of South
 |  Carolina, the ranking Republican on Senator John Stennis's
 |  Senate Armed Services Committee. Thurmond unloaded a mawkish
 |  panegyric in favor of Bush: "I think all of this shows an
 |  interest on your part in humanity, in civic development,
 |  love of your country, and willingness to serve your fellow
 |  man."
 |
 |  Bush's opening statement was also in the main a tissue of
 |  banality and cliches. He indicated his support for the
 |  Rockefeller Commission report without having mastered its
 |  contents in detail. He pointed out that he had attended
 |  cabinet meetings from 1971 to 1974, without mentioning who
 |  the President was in those days. Everybody was waiting for
 |  this consummate pontificator to get to the issue of whether
 |  he was going to attempt the vice-presidency in 1976. Readers
 |  of Bush's propaganda biographies know that he never decides
 |  on his own to run for office, but always responds to the
 |  urging of his friends. Within those limits, his answer was
 |  that he was available for the second spot on the ticket.
 |  More remarkably, he indicated that he had a hereditary right
 |  to it -- it was, as he said, his "birthright."
 |
 |  Would Bush accept a draft? "I cannot in all honesty tell you
 |  that I would not accept, and I do not think, gentlemen, that
 |  any American should be asked to say he would not accept, and
 |  to my knowledge, no one in the history of this Republic has
 |  been asked to renounce his political birthright as the price
 |  of confirmation for any office. And I can tell you that I
 |  will not seek any office while I hold the job of CIA
 |  Director. I will put politics wholly out of my sphere of
 |  activities." Even more, Bush argued, his willingness to
 |  serve at the CIA reflected his sense of noblesse oblige.
 |  Friends had asked him why he wanted to go to Langley at all,
 |  "with all the controversy swirling around the CIA, with its
 |  obvious barriers to political future?"
 |
 |  Magnanimously, Bush replied to his own rhetorical question:
 |  "My answer is simple. First, the work is desperately
 |  important to the survival of this country, and to the
 |  survival of freedom around the world. And second, old
 |  fashioned as it may seem to some, it is my duty to serve my
 |  country. And I did not seek this job but I want to do it and
 |  I will do my very best." [7] 
 |
 |  Stennis responded with a joke that sounds eerie in
 |  retrospect: "If I thought that you were seeking the Vice
 |  Presidential nomination or Presidential nomination by way of
 |  the route of being Director of the CIA, I would question
 |  your judgment most severely." There was laughter in the
 |  committee room.
 |
 |  Senators Barry Goldwater and Stuart Symington made clear
 |  that they would give Bush a free ride not only out of
 |  deference to Ford, but also out of regard for the late
 |  Prescott Bush, with whom they had both started out in the
 |  Senate in 1952. Senator Thomas McIntyre was more demanding,
 |  and raised the issue of enemies list operations, a notorious
 |  abuse of the Nixon (and subsequent) administrations:
 |
 |  "What if you get a call from the President, next July or
 |  August, saying 'George, I would like to see you.' You go in
 |  the White House. He takes you over in the corner and says,
 |  'Look, things are not going too well in my campaign. This
 |  Reagan is gaining on me all the time. Now, he is a movie
 |  star of some renown and has traveled with the fast set. He
 |  was a Hollywood star. I want you to get any dirt you can on
 |  this guy because I need it.'|"
 |
 |  What would Bush do? "I do not think that is difficult, sir,"
 |  intoned Bush. "I would simply say that it gets back to
 |  character and it gets back to integrity; and furthermore, I
 |  cannot conceive of the incumbent doing that sort of thing.
 |  But if I were put into that kind of position where you had a
 |  clear moral issue, I would simply say 'no,' because you see
 |  I think, and maybe -- I have the advantages as everyone on
 |  this committee of 20-20 hindsight, that this agency must
 |  stay in the foreign intelligence business and must not
 |  harass American citizens, like in Operation Chaos, and that
 |  these kinds of things have no business in the foreign
 |  intelligence business." This was the same Bush whose 1980
 |  campaign was heavily staffed by CIA veterans, some retired,
 |  some on active service and in flagrant violation of the
 |  Hatch Act. This is the Vice President who ran Iran-Contra
 |  out of his own private office, and so forth.
 |
 |  Gary Hart also had a few questions. How did Bush feel about
 |  assassinations? Bush "found them morally offensive and I am
 |  pleased the President has made that position very, very
 |  clear to the Intelligence Committee...." How about "coups
 |  d'etat in various countries around the world," Hart wanted
 |  to know.
 |
 |  "You mean in the covert field?" replied Bush. "Yes." "I
 |  would want to have full benefit of all the intelligence. I
 |  would want to have full benefit of how these matters were
 |  taking place but I cannot tell you, and I do not think I
 |  should, that there would never be any support for a coup
 |  d'etat; in other words, I cannot tell you I cannot conceive
 |  of a situation where I would not support such action." In
 |  retrospect, this was a moment of refreshing candor.
 |
 |  Gary Hart knew where at least one of Bush's bodies was
 |  buried:
 |
 |  Senator Hart: You raised the question of getting the CIA out
 |  of domestic areas totally. Let us hypothesize a situation
 |  where a President has stepped over the bounds. Let us say
 |  the FBI is investigating some people who are involved, and
 |  they go right to the White House. There is some possible CIA
 |  interest. The President calls you and says, I want you as
 |  Director of the CIA to call the Director of the FBI to tell
 |  him to call off this operation because it may jeopardize
 |  some CIA activities.
 |
 |  Mr. Bush: Well, generally speaking, and I think you are
 |  hypothecating a case without spelling it out in enough
 |  detail to know if there is any real legitimate foreign
 |  intelligence aspect....
 |
 |  There it was: the smoking gun tape again, the notorious
 |  Bush-Liedtke-Mosbacher-Pennzoil contribution to the CREEP
 |  again, the money that had been found in the pockets of
 |  Bernard Barker and the Plumbers after the Watergate
 |  break-in. But Hart did not mention it overtly, only in this
 |  oblique, Byzantine manner. Hart went on:
 |
 |  I am hypothesizing a case that actually happened in June
 |  1972. There might have been some tangential CIA interest in
 |  something in Mexico. Funds were laundered and so forth.
 |
 |  Mr. Bush: Using a 50-50 hindsight on that case, I hope I
 |  would have said the CIA is not going to get involved in that
 |  if we are talking about the same one.
 |
 |  Senator Hart: We are.
 |
 |  Senator [Patrick] Leahy: Are there others?
 |
 |  Bush was on the edge of having his entire Watergate past
 |  come out in the wash, but the liberal Democrats were already
 |  far too devoted to the one-party state to grill Bush
 |  seriously. In a few seconds, responding to another question
 |  from Hart, Bush was off the hook, droning on about plausible
 |  deniability, of all things.
 |
 |  The next day, December 16, 1975, Church, appearing as a
 |  witness, delivered his philippic against Bush. After citing
 |  evidence of widespread public concern about the renewed
 |  intrusion of the CIA in domestic politics under Bush, Church
 |  reviewed the situation: "So here we stand. Need we find or
 |  look to higher places than the Presidency and the nominee
 |  himself to confirm the fact that this door [of the Vice
 |  Presidency in 1976] is left open and that he remains under
 |  active consideration for the ticket in 1976? We stand in
 |  this position in the close wake of Watergate, and this
 |  committee has before it a candidate for Director of the CIA,
 |  a man of strong partisan political background and a
 |  beckoning political future.
 |
 |  "Under these circumstances I find the appointment
 |  astonishing. Now, as never before, the Director of the CIA
 |  must be completely above political suspicion. At the very
 |  least this committee, I believe, should insist that the
 |  nominee disavow any place on the 1976 Presidential
 |  ticket.... Otherwise his position as CIA Director would be
 |  hopelessly compromised.....
 |
 |  "If Ambassador Bush wants to be Director of the CIA, he
 |  should seek that position. If he wants to be Vice President,
 |  then that ought to be his goal. It is wrong for him to want
 |  both positions, even in a Bicentennial year."
 |
 |  It was an argument that conceded far too much to Bush in the
 |  effort to be fair. Bush was incompetent for the post, and
 |  the argument should have ended there. Church's unwillingness
 |  to demand the unqualified rejection of such a nominee no
 |  matter what future goodies he was willing temporarily to
 |  renounce has cast long shadows over subsequent American
 |  history. But even so, Bush was in trouble.
 |
 |  Church was at his ironic best when he compared Bush to a
 |  recent chairman of the Democratic National Committee: "...
 |  [I]f a Democrat were President, Mr. Larry O'Brien ought not
 |  to be nominated to be Director of the CIA. Of all times to
 |  do it, this is the worst, right at a time when it is obvious
 |  that public confidence needs to be restored in the
 |  professional, impartial, and nonpolitical character of the
 |  agency. So, we have the worst of all possible worlds."
 |  Church tellingly underlined that "Bush's birthright does not
 |  include being Director of the CIA. It includes the right to
 |  run for public office, to be sure, but that is quite a
 |  different matter than confirming him now for this particular
 |  position."
 |
 |  Church said he would under no circumstance vote for Bush,
 |  but that if the latter renounced the '76 ticket, he would
 |  refrain from attempting to canvass other votes against Bush.
 |  It was an ambiguous position.
 |
 |  Bush came back to the witness chair in an unmistakably
 |  whining mood. He was offended above all by the comparison of
 |  his august self to the upstart Larry O'Brien: "I think there
 |  is some difference in the qualifications," said Bush in a
 |  hyperthyroid rage. "Larry O'Brien did not serve in the
 |  Congress of the United States for four years. Larry O'Brien
 |  did not serve, with no partisanship, at the United Nations
 |  for two years. Larry O'Brien did not serve as the Chief of
 |  the U.S. Liaison Office in the People's Republic of China."
 |  Not only Bush but his whole "cursus honorum" was insulted!
 |  "I will never apologize," said Bush a few seconds later,
 |  referring to his own record. Then Bush pulled out his "you
 |  must resign" letter to Nixon: "Now, I submit that for the
 |  record that that is demonstrable independence. I did not do
 |  it by calling the newspapers and saying, 'Look, I am having
 |  a press conference. Here is a sensational statement to make
 |  me, to separate me from a President in great agony.'|"
 |
 |  The Ford Letter
 |
 |  Bush had been savaged in the hearings, and his nomination
 |  was now in grave danger of being rejected by the committee,
 |  and then by the full Senate. Later in the afternoon of
 |  November 16, a damage control party met at the White House
 |  to assess the situation for Ford. [8]  According to Patrick
 |  O'Donnell of Ford's Congressional Relations Office, the most
 |  Bush could hope for was a bare majority of 9 out of 16 votes
 |  on the Stennis Committee.
 |
 |  Ford was inclined to give the senators what they wanted, and
 |  exclude Bush "a priori" from the vice-presidential contest.
 |  When Ford called George over to the Oval Office on December
 |  18, he already had the text of a letter to Stennis
 |  announcing that Bush was summarily ruled off the ticket if
 |  Ford were the candidate (which was anything but certain).
 |  Ford showed Bush the letter. We do not know what whining may
 |  have been heard in the White House that day from a
 |  senatorial patrician deprived (for the moment) of his
 |  birthright. Ford could not yield; it would have thrown his
 |  entire election campaign into acute embarrassment just as he
 |  was trying to get it off the ground. When George saw that
 |  Ford was obdurate, heproposed that the letter be amended to
 |  make it look as if the initiative to rule him out as a
 |  running mate had originated with Bush. The fateful letter
 |  read:
 |
 |  Dear Mr. Chairman:
 |
 |  As we both know, the nation must have a strong and effective
 |  foreign intelligence capability. Just over two weeks ago, on
 |  December 7 while in Pearl Harbor, I said that we must never
 |  drop our guard nor unilaterally dismantle our defenses. The
 |  Central Intelligence Agency is essential to maintaining our
 |  national security.
 |
 |  I nominated Ambassador George Bush to be CIA Director so we
 |  can now get on with appropriate decisions concerning the
 |  intelligence community. I need -- and the nation needs --
 |  his leadership at CIA as we rebuild and strengthen the
 |  foreign intelligence community in a manner which earns the
 |  confidence of the American people.
 |
 |  Ambassador Bush and I agree that the Nation's immediate
 |  foreign intelligence needs must take precedence over other
 |  considerations and there should be continuity in his CIA
 |  leadership. Therefore, if Ambassador Bush is confirmed by
 |  the Senate as Director of Central Intelligence, I will not
 |  consider him as my Vice Presidential running mate in 1976.
 |
 |  He and I have discussed this in detail. In fact, he urged
 |  that I make this decision. This says something about the man
 |  and about his desire to do this job for the nation....
 |
 |  On December 19, this letter was received by Stennis, who
 |  announced its contents to his committee. The committee
 |  promptly approved the Bush appointment by a vote of 12 to 4,
 |  with Gary Hart, Leahy, Culver and McIntyre voting against
 |  him. Bush's name could now be sent to the floor, where a
 |  recrudescence of anti-Bush sentiment was not likely, but
 |  could not be ruled out.
 |
 |  Then, two days before Christmas, the CIA chief in Athens,
 |  Richard Welch, was gunned down in front of his home by
 |  masked assassins as he returned home with his wife from a
 |  Christmas party. A group calling itself the "November 19
 |  Organization" later claimed credit for the killing.
 |
 |  Certain networks immediately began to use the Welch
 |  assassination as a bludgeon against the Church and Pike
 |  Committees. An example came from columnist Charles Bartlett,
 |  writing in the now-defunct "Washington Star": "The
 |  assassination of the CIA Station Chief, Richard Welch, in
 |  Athens is a direct consequence of the stagy hearings of the
 |  Church Committee. Spies traditionally function in a gray
 |  world of immunity from such crudities. But the Committee's
 |  prolonged focus on CIA activities in Greece left agents
 |  there exposed to random vengeance." [9]  Staffers of the
 |  Church Committee point ed out that the Church Committee had
 |  never said a word about Greece or mentioned the name of
 |  Welch.
 |
 |  CIA Director Colby first blamed the death of Welch on
 |  "Counterspy" magazine, which had published the name of Welch
 |  some months before. The next day, Colby backed off, blaming
 |  a more general climate of hysteria regarding the CIA which
 |  had led to the assassination of Richard Welch. In his book,
 |  "Honorable Men", published some years later, Colby continued
 |  to attribute the killing to the "sensational and hysterical
 |  way the CIA investigations had been handled and trumpeted
 |  around the world."
 |
 |  The Ford White House resolved to exploit this tragic
 |  incident to the limit. Liberals raised a hue and cry in
 |  response. Les Aspin later recalled that "the air transport
 |  plane carrying [Welch's] body circled Andrews Air Force Base
 |  for three-quarters of an hour in order to land live on the
 |  "Today Show."" Ford waived restrictions in order to allow
 |  interment at Arlington Cemetery. The funeral on January 7
 |  was described by the "Washington Post" as "a show of pomp
 |  usually reserved for the nation's most renowned military
 |  heroes." Anthony Lewis of the "New York Times" described the
 |  funeral as "a political device" with ceremonies "being
 |  manipulated in order to arouse a political backlash against
 |  legitimate criticism." Norman Kempster in the "Washington
 |  Star" found that "only a few hours after the CIA's Athens
 |  station chief was gunned down in front of his home, the
 |  agency began a subtle campaign intended to persuade
 |  Americans that his death was the indirect result of
 |  congressional investigations and the direct result of an
 |  article in an obscure magazine." Here, in the words of a
 |  "Washington Star" headline, was "one CIA effort that
 |  worked."
 |
 |  Bush and the ADL
 |
 |  Between Christmas and New Year's in Kennebunkport, looking
 |  forward to the decisive floor vote on his confirmation, Bush
 |  was at work tending and mobilizing key parts of his network.
 |  One of these was a certain Leo Cherne.
 |
 |  Leo Cherne is not a household word, but he has been a
 |  powerful figure in the U.S. intelligence community over the
 |  period since World War II. Leo Cherne was to be one of
 |  Bush's most important allies when he was CIA Director and
 |  throughout Bush's subsequent career.
 |
 |  Cherne has been a part of B'nai B'rith all his life. He was
 |  (and still is) an ardent Zionist. He is typical to that
 |  extent of the so-called "neoconservatives" who have been
 |  prominent in government and policy circles under
 |  Reagan-Bush, and Bush. Cherne was the founder of the
 |  International Rescue Committee (IRC), a conduit for
 |  neo-Bukharinite operations between East and West in the Cold
 |  War, and it was also reputedly a CIA front organization.
 |
 |  Cherne was a close friend of William Casey, who was working
 |  in the Nixon administration as undersecretary of state for
 |  economic affairs in mid-1973. That was when Cherne was named
 |  to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board
 |  (PFIAB) by Nixon. On March 15, 1976, Cherne became the
 |  chairman of this body, which specializes in conduiting the
 |  demands of financier and related interests into the
 |  intelligence community. Cherne, as we will see, would be,
 |  along with Bush, a leading beneficiary of Ford's spring 1976
 |  intelligence reorganization.
 |
 |  Bush's correspondence with Cherne leaves no doubt that
 |  theirs was a very special relationship. Cherne represented
 |  for Bush a strengthening of his links to the
 |  Zionist-neoconservative milieu, with options for
 |  backchanneling into the Soviet bloc. Bush wrote to Cherne:
 |  "I read your testimony with keen interest and appreciation.
 |  I am really looking forward to meeting you and working with
 |  you in connection with your PFIAB chores. Have a wonderful
 |  1976," Bush wrote.
 |
 |  January 1976 was not auspicious for Bush. He had to wait
 |  until almost the end of the month for his confirmation vote,
 |  hanging there, slowly twisting in the wind. In the meantime,
 |  the Pike Committee report was approaching completion, after
 |  months of probing and haggling, and was sent to the
 |  Government Printing Office on January 23, despite continuing
 |  arguments from the White House and from the GOP that the
 |  committee could not reveal confidential and secret material
 |  provided by the executive branch. On Sunday, January 25, a
 |  copy of the report was leaked to Daniel Schorr of CBS News,
 |  and was exhibited on television that evening. The following
 |  morning, the "New York Times" published an extensive summary
 |  of the entire Pike Committee report.
 |
 |  Despite all this exposure, the House voted on January 29
 |  that the Pike Committee report could not be released. A few
 |  days later, it was published in full in the "Village Voice",
 |  and CBS correspondent Daniel Schorr was held responsible for
 |  its appearance. The Pike Committee report attacked Henry
 |  Kissinger, "whose comments," it said, "are at variance with
 |  the facts." In the midst of his imperial regency over the
 |  United States, an unamused Kissinger responded that "we are
 |  facing a new version of McCarthyism." A few days later,
 |  Kissinger said of the Pike Committee: "I think they have
 |  used classified information in a reckless way, and the
 |  version of covert operations they have leaked to the press
 |  has the cumulative effect of being totally untrue and
 |  damaging to the nation." [10] 
 |
 |  Thus, as Bush's confirmation vote approached, the Ford White
 |  House, on the one hand, and the Pike and Church Committees
 |  on the other, were close to "open political warfare," as the
 |  "Washington Post" put it at the time. One explanation of the
 |  leaking of the Pike report was offered by Otis Pike himself
 |  on February 11: "A copy was sent to the CIA. It would be to
 |  their advantage to leak it for publication." By now, Ford
 |  was raving about mobilizing the FBI to find out how the
 |  report had been leaked.
 |
 |  On January 19, George Bush was present in the Executive
 |  Gallery of the House of Representatives, seated close to the
 |  unfortunate Betty Ford, for the President's State of the
 |  Union Address. This was a photo opportunity so that Ford's
 |  CIA candidate could get on television for a cameo appearance
 |  that might boost his standing on the eve of confirmation.
 |
 |  Confirmed, at Last
 |
 |  Senate floor debate was underway on January 26, and Senator
 |  McIntyre lashed out at the Bush nomination as "an
 |  insensitive affront to the American people."
 |
 |  In further debate on the day of the vote, January 27,
 |  Senator Joseph Biden joined other Democrats in assailing
 |  Bush as "the wrong appointment for the wrong job at the
 |  wrong time." Church appealed to the Senate to reject Bush, a
 |  man "too deeply embroiled in partisan politics and too
 |  intertwined with the political destiny of the President
 |  himself" to be able to lead the CIA. Goldwater, Tower,
 |  Percy, Howard Baker and Clifford Case all spoke up for Bush.
 |  Bush's floor leader was Strom Thurmond, who supported Bush
 |  by attacking the Church and Pike Committees.
 |
 |  Finally it came to a roll call and Bush passed by a vote of
 |  64-27, with Lowell Weicker of Connecticut voting present.
 |  Church's staff felt they had failed lamentably, having
 |  gotten only liberal Democrats and the single Republican vote
 |  of Jesse Helms. [11] 
 |
 |  It was the day after Bush's confirmation that the House
 |  Rules Committee voted 9 to 7 to block the publication of the
 |  Pike Committee report. The issue then went to the full House
 |  on January 29, which voted, 146 to 124, that the Pike
 |  Committee must submit its report to censorship by the White
 |  House and thus by the CIA. At almost the same time, Senator
 |  Howard Baker joined Tower and Goldwater in opposing the
 |  principal final recommendation of the Church Committee, such
 |  as it was -- the establishment of a permanent intelligence
 |  oversight committee.
 |
 |  Pike found that the attempt to censor his report had made "a
 |  complete travesty of the whole doctrine of separation of
 |  powers." In the view of a staffer of the Church Committee,
 |  "all within two days, the House Intelligence Committee had
 |  ground to a halt, and the Senate Intelligence Committee had
 |  split asunder over the centerpiece of its recommendations.
 |  The White House must have rejoiced; the Welch death and
 |  leaks from the Pike Committee report had produced, at last,
 |  a backlash against the congressional inv estigations." [12] 
 |
 |  Riding the crest of that wave of backlash was George Bush.
 |  The constellation of events around his confirmation
 |  prefigures the wretched state of Congress today: a rubber
 |  stamp parliament in a totalitarian state, incapable of
 |  overriding even one of Bush's 22 vetoes.
 |
 |  On Friday, January 30, Ford and Bush were joined at the CIA
 |  auditorium for Bush's swearing-in ceremony before a large
 |  gathering of agency employees. Colby was also there: Some
 |  said he had been fired primarily because Kissinger thought
 |  that he was divulging too much to the congressional
 |  committees, but Kissinger later told Colby that the latter's
 |  stratagems had been correct.
 |
 |  Colby opened the ceremony with a few brief words: "Mr.
 |  President, and Mr. Bush, I have the great honor to present
 |  you to an organization of dedicated professionals. Despite
 |  the turmoil and tumult of the last year, they continue to
 |  produce the best intelligence in the world." This was met by
 |  a burst of applause. [13]  Ford's line was: "We cannot
 |  improve this agency by destroying it." Bush promised to make
 |  the "CIA an instrument of peace and an object of pride for
 |  all our people."
 |
 |  Notes for Chapter 16
 |
 |  1. Nathan Miller, "Spying for America" (New York: Paragon
 |  House, 1989), p. 399.
 |
 |  2. Gerald R. Ford Library, Richard B. Cheney Files, Box 5.
 |
 |  3. See Loch K. Johnson, "A Season of Inquiry: The Senate
 |  Intelligence Investigation" (University Press of Kentucky,
 |  1985), pp. 108-9.
 |
 |  4. "Ibid.", pp. 115-16.
 |
 |  5. Nedzi to Ford, Dec. 12, 1975,  Ford Library, John O.
 |  Marsh Files, Box 1.
 |
 |  6. "Ibid."
 |
 |  7. U.S. Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Nomination of
 |  George Bush to be Director of Central Intelligence, Dec.
 |  15-16, 1975, p. 10.
 |
 |  8. Memo of Dec. 16, 1975 from O'Donnell to Marsh through
 |  Friedersdorf on the likely vote in the Stennis Senate Armed
 |  Services Committee. Ford Library, William T. Kendall Files,
 |  Box 7.
 |
 |  9. For an account of the exploitation of the Welch incident
 |  by the Ford administration, see Johnson, "op. cit.", pp.
 |  161-62.
 |
 |  10. For an account of the leaking of the Pike Committee
 |  Report and the situation in late Jan. and Feb. 1976, see
 |  Daniel Schorr, "Clearing the Air" (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
 |  1977) especially pp. 179-207, and Johnson, "op. cit.", pp.
 |  172-91.
 |
 |  11. Johnson, "op. cit.", p. 180.
 |
 |  12. "Ibid.", p. 182.
 |
 |  13. Thomas Powers, "The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard
 |  Helms and the CIA" (New York: Knopf, 1979), p. 12.
 |
 |  When Bush became director of Central Intelligence (DCI), the
 |  incumbent principal deputy director was Gen. Vernon Walters,
 |  a former Army lieutenant general. This is the same Gen.
 |  Vernon Walters who was mentioned by Haldeman and Nixon in
 |  the notorious "smoking gun" tape already discussed, but who
 |  of course denied that he ever did any of the things that
 |  Haldeman and Ehrlichman said that he had promised to do.
 |  Walters had been at the CIA since May 1972 -- a Nixon
 |  appointee who had been with Nixon when the then-Vice
 |  President's car was stoned in Caracas, Venezuela. Ever since
 |  then, Nixon had seen him as part of the old guard. Walters
 |  left to become a private consultant in July 1976.
 |
 |  To replace Walters, Bush picked Enno Henry Knoche, who had
 |  joined the CIA in 1953 as an intelligence analyst
 |  specializing in Far Eastern political and military affairs.
 |  Knoche came from the Navy and knew Chinese. From 1962 to
 |  1967, he had been the chief of the National Photographic
 |  Interpretation Center. In 1969, he had become deputy
 |  director of planning and budgeting, and chaired the internal
 |  CIA committee in charge of computerization. Next, Knoche was
 |  deputy director of the Office of Current Intelligence, which
 |  produces ongoing assessments of international events for the
 |  President and the National Security Council. After 1972,
 |  Knoche headed the Intelligence Directorate's Office of
 |  Strategic Research, charged with evaluating strategic
 |  threats to the U.S. In 1975, Knoche had been a special
 |  liaison between Colby and the Rockefeller Commission, as
 |  well as with the Church and Pike Committees. This was a very
 |  sensitive post, and Bush clearly looked to Knoche to help
 |  him deal with continuing challenges coming from the
 |  Congress. In the fall of 1975, Knoche had become number two
 |  on Colby's staff for the coordination and management of the
 |  intelligence community. According to some, Knoche was to
 |  function as Bush's "Indian guide" through the secrets of
 |  Langley; he knew "where the bodies were buried."
 |
 |  Knoche was highly critical of Colby's policy of handing over
 |  limited amounts of classified material to the Pike and
 |  Church committees, while fighting to save the core of covert
 |  operations. Knoche told a group of friends during this
 |  period: "There is no counterintelligence any more." This
 |  implies a condemnation of the congressional committees with
 |  whom Knoche had served as liaison, and can also be read as a
 |  lament for the ousting of James Jesus Angleton, chief of the
 |  CIA's counterintelligence operations until 1975 and director
 |  of the mail-opening operation that had been exposed by
 |  various probers. [14] 
 |
 |  Adm. Daniel J. Murphy was Bush's deputy director for the
 |  intelligence community, and later became Bush's chief of
 |  staff during his first term as vice president. Much later,
 |  in November 1987, Murphy visited Panama in the company of
 |  South Korean businessman and intelligence operative Tongsun
 |  Park, and met with Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega. Murphy was
 |  later obliged to testify to the Senate Foreign Relations
 |  Committee about his meeting with Noriega. Murphy claimed
 |  that he was only in Panama to "make a buck," but there are
 |  indications that he was carrying messages to Noriega from
 |  Bush. Tongsun Park, Murphy's ostensible business associate,
 |  will soon turn out to have been the central figure of the
 |  Koreagate scandal of 1976, a very important development on
 |  Bush's CIA watch. [15] 
 |
 |  Other names on the Bush flow chart included holdover Edward
 |  Proctor, followed by Bush appointee Sayre Stevens in the
 |  slot of deputy director for intelligence; holdover Carl
 |  Duckett, followed by Bush appointee Leslie Dirks as deputy
 |  director for science and technology; John Blake, holdover as
 |  deputy director for administration; and holdover William
 |  Nelson, followed by Bush appointee William Wells, deputy
 |  director for operations.
 |
 |  William Wells as deputy director for operations was a very
 |  significant choice. He was a career covert operations
 |  specialist who had graduated from Yale a few years before
 |  Bush. Wells soon acquired his own deputy, recommended by him
 |  and approved by Bush: This was the infamous Theodore
 |  Shackley, whose title thus became associate deputy director
 |  for covert operations. Shackley later emerged as one of the
 |  central figures of the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s. He
 |  is reputedly one of the dominant personalities of a CIA old
 |  boys' network known as The Enterprise, which was at the
 |  heart of Iran-Contra and the other illegal covert operations
 |  of the Reagan-Bush years.
 |
 |  During the early 1960s, after the Bay of Pigs, Theodore
 |  Shackley had been the head of the CIA Miami Station during
 |  the years in which Operation Mongoose was at its peak. This
 |  was the E. Howard Hunt and Watergate Cubans crowd, circles
 |  familiar to Felix Rodriguez (Max Gomez), who in the 1980s
 |  ran Contra gun-running and drug-running out of Bush's
 |  vice-presidential office.
 |
 |  Later, Shackley was reportedly the chief of the CIA station
 |  in Vientiane, Laos, between July 1966 and December 1968.
 |  Some time after that, he moved on to become the CIA station
 |  chief in Saigon, where he directed the implementation of the
 |  Civilian Operations and Rural Development Support (CORDS)
 |  program, better known as Operation Phoenix, a genocidal
 |  crime against humanity which killed tens of thousands of
 |  Vietnamese civilians because they were suspected of working
 |  for the Vietcong, or sometimes simply because they were able
 |  to read and write. As for Shackley, there are also reports
 |  that he worked for a time in the late 1960s in Rome, during
 |  the period when the CIA's GLADIO capabilities were being
 |  used to launch a wave of terrorism in that country that went
 |  on for well over a decade. Such was the man whom Bush chose
 |  to appoint to a position of responsibility in the CIA.
 |  Later, Shackley will turn up as a "speechwriter" for Bush
 |  during the 1979-80 campaign.
 |
 |  Along with Shackley came his associate and former Miami
 |  Station second in command, Thomas Clines, a partner of Gen.
 |  Richard Secord and Albert Hakim during the Iran-Contra
 |  operation, convicted in September 1990 on four felony tax
 |  counts for not reporting his ill-gotten gains, and sentenced
 |  to 16 months in prison and a fine of $40,000.
 |
 |  Another career covert operations man, John Waller, became
 |  the inspector general, the officer who was supposed to keep
 |  track of illegal operations. For legal advice, Bush turned
 |  first to holdover General Counsel Mitchell Rogovin, who had
 |  in December 1975 theorized that intelligence activities
 |  belonged to the "inherent powers" of the presidency, and
 |  that no special congressional legislation was required to
 |  permit such things as covert operations to go on. Later,
 |  Bush appointed Anthony Lapham, Yale '58, as CIA general
 |  counsel. Lapham was the scion of an old San Francisco
 |  banking family, and his brother was Lewis Lapham, the editor
 |  of "Harper's" magazine. Lapham would take a leading role in
 |  the CIA coverup of the Letelier assassination case. [16] 
 |
 |  Typical of the broad section of CIA officers who were
 |  delighted with their new boss from Brown Brothers
 |  Harriman/Skull and Bones was Cord Meyer, who had most
 |  recently been the station chief in London from 1973 on, a
 |  wild and woolly time in the tight little island, as we will
 |  see. Meyer, a covert action veteran and Watergate operative,
 |  writes at length in his autobiography about his enthusiasm
 |  for the Bush regime at CIA, which induced him to prolong his
 |  own career there. [17] 
 |
 |  And what did other CIA officers, such as intelligence
 |  analysts, think of Bush? A common impression is that he was
 |  a superficial lightweight with no serious interest in
 |  intelligence. Deputy Director for Science and Technology
 |  Carl Duckett, who was ousted by Bush after three months,
 |  commented that he "never saw George Bush feel he had to
 |  understand the depth of something.... [He] is not a man
 |  tremendously dedicated to a cause or ideas. He's not
 |  fervent. He goes with the flow, looking for how it will play
 |  politically." According to Maurice Ernst, the head of the
 |  CIA's Office of Economic Research from 1970 to 1980, "George
 |  Bush doesn't like to get into the middle of an intellectual
 |  debate .. he liked to delegate it. I never really had a
 |  serious discussion with him on economics." Hans Heymann was
 |  Bush's national intelligence officer for economics, and he
 |  remembers having been impressed by Bush's Phi Beta Kappa
 |  Yale degree in economics. As Heymann later recalled Bush's
 |  response, "He looked at me in horror and said, 'I don't
 |  remember a thing. It was so long ago, so I'm going to have
 |  to rely on you.'|" [18] 
 |
 |  Intelligence Czar
 |
 |  During the first few weeks of Bush's tenure, the Ford
 |  administration was gripped by a "first strike" psychosis.
 |  This had nothing to do with the Soviet Union, but was rather
 |  Ford's desire to preempt any proposals for reform of the
 |  intelligence agencies coming out of the Pike or Church
 |  Committees with a pseudo-reform of his own, premised on his
 |  own in-house study, the Rockefeller report, which
 |  recommended an increase of secrecy for covert operations and
 |  classified information. Since about the time of the Bush
 |  nomination, an interagency task force armed with the
 |  Rockefeller Commission recommendations had been meeting
 |  under the chairmanship of Ford's counselor Jack O. Marsh.
 |  This was the Intelligence Coordinating Group, which included
 |  delegates of the intelligence agencies, plus NSC, Office of
 |  Management and the Budget (OMB), and others. This group
 |  worked up a series of final recommendations that were given
 |  to Ford to study on his Christmas vacation in Vail,
 |  Colorado. At this point, Ford was inclined to "go slow and
 |  work with Congress."
 |
 |  But on January 10, Marsh and the intelligence agency bosses
 |  met again with Ford, and the strategy began to shift toward
 |  preempting Congress. On January 30, Ford and Bush came back
 |  from their appearance at the CIA auditorium swearing-in
 |  session and met with other officials in the Cabinet Room.
 |  Attending besides Ford and Bush were Secretary of State
 |  Kissinger, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney
 |  General Edward Levi, Jack Marsh, Philip Buchen, Brent
 |  Scowcroft, Mike Duval, and Peter Wallison representing Vice
 |  President Rockefeller, who was out of town that day. [19] 
 |  Here Ford presented his tentative conclusions for further
 |  discussion. The general line was to preempt the Congress,
 |  not to cooperate with it, to increase secrecy, and to
 |  increase authoritarian tendencies.
 |
 |  Ford scheduled a White House press conference for the
 |  evening of February 17.
 |
 |  In his press conference of February 17, Ford scooped the
 |  Congress and touted his bureaucratic reshuffle of the
 |  intelligence agencies as the most sweeping reform and
 |  reorganization of the United States' intelligence agencies
 |  since the passage of the National Security Act of 1947. "I
 |  will not be a party to the dismantling of the CIA or other
 |  intelligence agencies," he intoned. He repeated that the
 |  intelligence community had to function under the direction
 |  of the National Security Council, as if that were something
 |  earth-shaking and new; from the perspective of Oliver North
 |  and Admiral Poindexter we can see in retrospect that it
 |  guaranteed nothing. A new NSC committee chaired by Bush was
 |  entrusted with the task of giving greater central
 |  coordination to the intelligence community as a whole. This
 |  committee was to consist of Bush, Kissinger clone William
 |  Hyland of the National Security Council staff, and Robert
 |  Ellsworth, the assistant secretary of defense for
 |  intelligence. This committee was jointly to formulate the
 |  budget of the intelligence community and allocate its
 |  resources to the various tasks.
 |
 |  The 40 Committee, which had overseen covert operations, was
 |  now to be called the Operations Advisory Group, with its
 |  membership reshuffled to include Scowcroft of NSC,
 |  Kissinger, Rumsfeld, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
 |  George Brown, plus observers from the attorney general and
 |  OMB.
 |
 |  An innovation was the creation of the Intelligence Oversight
 |  Board (in addition to the President's Foreign Intelligence
 |  Advisory Board), which was chaired by Ambassador Robert D.
 |  Murphy, the old adversary of Charles de Gaulle during World
 |  War II. The IOB was supposed to be a watchdog to prevent new
 |  abuses from coming out of the intelligence community. Also
 |  on this board were Stephen Ailes, who had been
 |  undersecretary of defense for Kennedy and secretary of the
 |  Army for LBJ. The third figure on this IOB was Leo Cherne,
 |  who was soon to be promoted to chairman of PFIAB as well.
 |  The increasingly complicit relationship of Cherne to Bush
 |  meant that all alleged oversight by the IOB was a mockery.
 |
 |  Ford also wanted a version of the Official Secrets Act,
 |  which we have seen Bush supporting: He called for "special
 |  legislation to guard critical intelligence secrets. This
 |  legislation would make it a crime for a government employee
 |  who has access to certain highly classified information to
 |  reveal that information improperly" -- which would have made
 |  the Washington leak game rather more dicey than it is at
 |  present.
 |
 |  The Official Secrets Act would have to be passed by
 |  Congress, but most of the rest of what Ford announced was
 |  embodied in Executive Order 11905. Church thought that this
 |  was overreaching, since it amounted to changing some
 |  provisions of the National Security Act by presidential
 |  fiat. But this was now the new temper of the times.
 |
 |  As for the CIA, Executive Order 11905 authorized it "to
 |  conduct foreign counterintelligence activities .. in the
 |  United States," which opened the door to many things. Apart
 |  from restrictions on physical searches and electronic
 |  bugging, it was still open season on Americans abroad. The
 |  FBI was promised the Levi guidelines, and other agencies
 |  would get charters written for them. In the interim, the
 |  power of the FBI to combat various "subversive" activities
 |  was reaffirmed. Political assassination was ban ned, but
 |  there were no limitations or regulations placed on covert
 |  operations, and there was nothing about measures to improve
 |  the intelligence and analytical product of the agencies.
 |
 |  In the view of the "New York Times", the big winner was
 |  Bush: "From a management point of view, Mr. Ford tonight
 |  centralized more power in the hands of the director of
 |  Central Intelligence than any had had since the creation of
 |  the CIA. The director has always been the nominal head of
 |  the intelligence community, but in fact has had little power
 |  over the other agencies, particularly the Department of
 |  Defense." Bush was now de facto intelligence czar. [20] 
 |
 |  Congressman Pike said that Ford's reorganization was bent
 |  "largely on preserving all of the secrets in the executive
 |  branch and very little on guaranteeing a lack of any further
 |  abuses." Church commented that what Ford was really after
 |  was "to give the CIA a bigger shield and a longer sword with
 |  which to stab about."
 |
 |  The Bush-Kissinger-Ford counteroffensive against the
 |  congressional committees went forward. On March 5, the CIA
 |  leaked the story that the Pike Committee had lost more than
 |  232 secret documents which had been turned over from the
 |  files of the executive branch. Pike said that this was
 |  another classic CIA provocation designed to discredit his
 |  committee, which had ceased its activity. Bush denied that
 |  he had engineered the leak.
 |
 |  By September, Bush could boast in public that he had won the
 |  immediate engagement: His adversaries in the congressional
 |  investigating committees were defeated. "The CIA," Bush
 |  announced, "has weathered the storm.... The mood in Congress
 |  has changed," he crowed. "No one is campaigning against
 |  strong intelligence. The adversary thing, how we can ferret
 |  out corruption, has given way to the more serious question
 |  how we can have better intelligence."
 |
 |  Such was the public profile of Bush's CIA tenure up until
 |  about the time of the November 1976 elections. If this had
 |  been the whole story, then we might accept the usual talk
 |  about Bush's period of uneventful rebuilding and morale
 |  boosting while he was at Langley.
 |
 |  Bush's Real Agenda
 |
 |  Reality was different. The administration Bush served had
 |  Ford as its titular head, but most of the real power,
 |  especially in foreign affairs, was in the hands of
 |  Kissinger. Bush was more than willing to play along with the
 |  Kissinger agenda.
 |
 |  The first priority was to put an end to such episodes as
 |  contempt citations for Henry Kissinger. Thanks to the
 |  presence of Don Gregg as CIA station chief in Seoul, South
 |  Korea, that was easy to arrange. This was the same Don Gregg
 |  of the CIA who would later serve as Bush's national security
 |  adviser during the second vice-presidential term, and who
 |  would manage decisive parts of the Iran-Contra operations
 |  from Bush's own office. Gregg knew of an agent of the Korean
 |  CIA, Tongsun Park, who had for a number of years been making
 |  large payments to members of Congress, above all to
 |  Democratic members of the House of Representatives, in order
 |  to secure their support for legislation that was of interest
 |  to Park Chung Hee, the South Korean leader. It was therefore
 |  a simple matter to blow the lid off this story, causing a
 |  wave of hysteria among the literally hundreds of members of
 |  Congress who had attended parties organized by Tongsun Park.
 |
 |  The Koreagate headlines began to appear a few days after
 |  Bush had taken over at Langley. In February, there was a
 |  story by Maxine Cheshire of the "Washington Post" reporting
 |  that the Department of Justice was investigating Congressmen
 |  Bob Leggett and Joseph Addabbo for allegedly accepting
 |  bribes from the Korean government. Both men were linked to
 |  Suzi Park Thomson, who had been hosting parties of the
 |  Korean embassy. Later, it turned out that Speaker of the
 |  House Carl Albert had kept Suzi Park Thomson on his payroll
 |  for all of the six years that he had been speaker. The "New
 |  York Times" estimated that as many as 115 Congressmen were
 |  involved.
 |
 |  In reality the number was much lower, but former Watergate
 |  Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski was brought back from
 |  Houston to become special prosecutor for this case as well.
 |  This underlined the press line that "the Democrats'
 |  Watergate" had finally arrived. It was embarrassing to the
 |  Bush CIA when Tongsun Park's official agency file
 |  disappeared for several months, and finally turned up shorn
 |  of key information on the CIA officers who had been working
 |  most closely with Park.
 |
 |  With "Koreagate," the Congress was terrorized and brought to
 |  heel. In this atmosphere, Bush moved to reach a secret
 |  foreign policy consensus with key congressional leaders of
 |  both parties of the one-party state. According to two senior
 |  government officials involved, limited covert operations in
 |  such places as Angola were continued under the pretext that
 |  they were necessary for phasing out the earlier, larger, and
 |  more expensive operations. Bush's secret deal was especially
 |  successful with the post-Church Senate Intelligence
 |  Committee. Because of the climate of restoration that
 |  prevailed, a number of Democrats on this committee concluded
 |  that they must break off their aggressive inquiries and make
 |  peace with Bush, according to reports of remarks by two
 |  senior members of the committee staff. The result was an
 |  interregnum during which the Senate committee would neither
 |  set specific reporting requirements, nor attempt to pass any
 |  binding legislation to restrict CIA covert and related
 |  activity. In return, Bush would pretend to make a few
 |  disclosures to create a veneer of cooperation.  [21] 
 |
 |  The Letelier Affair
 |
 |  One of the most spectacular scandals of Bush's tenure at the
 |  CIA was the assassination in Washington, D.C. of Orlando
 |  Letelier, the Chilean exile leader. Letelier had been a
 |  minister in the Allende government, which had been
 |  overthrown by Kissinger in 1973. Letelier, along with Ronnie
 |  Moffitt of the Washington Institute for Policy Studies, died
 |  on September 21, 1976 in the explosion of a car bomb on
 |  Sheridan Circle, in the heart of Washington's Embassy Row
 |  district along Massachusetts Avenue.
 |
 |  Relatively few cases of international terrorism have taken
 |  place on the territory of the United States, but this was
 |  certainly an exception. Bush's activities before and after
 |  this assassination amount to one of the most bizarre
 |  episodes in the annals of secret intelligence operations.
 |
 |  One of the assassins of Letelier was unquestionably one
 |  Michael Vernon Townley, a CIA agent who had worked for David
 |  Atlee Phillips in Chile. Phillips had become the director of
 |  the CIA's Western Hemisphere operations after the overthrow
 |  of Allende and the advent of the dictatorship of Augusto
 |  Pinochet Ugarte, and its Milton Friedman/Chicago School
 |  economic policies. In 1975, Phillips founded AFIO, the
 |  Association of Former Intelligence Officers, which has
 |  supported George Bush in every campaign he has ever waged
 |  since that time. Townley, as a "former" CIA agent, had gone
 |  to work for the DINA, the Chilean secret police, and had
 |  been assigned by the DINA as its liaison man with a group
 |  called CORU. CORU was the acronym for Command of United
 |  Revolutionary Organizations, a united front of four
 |  anti-Castro Cuban organizations based primarily in the
 |  neighborhood of Miami called Little Havana. With CORU, we
 |  are back in the milieu of Miami anti-Castro Cubans, whose
 |  political godfather George Bush had been since very early in
 |  the 1960s.
 |
 |  It was under these circumstances that the U.S. ambassador to
 |  Chile, George Landau, sent a cable to the State Department
 |  with the singular request that two agents of the DINA be
 |  allowed to enter the United States with Paraguayan
 |  passports. One of these agents is likely to have been
 |  Townley. The cable also indicated that the two DINA agents
 |  also wanted to meet with Gen. Vernon Walters, the outgoing
 |  deputy director of central intelligence, and so the cable
 |  also went to Langley. Here, the cable was read by Walters,
 |  and also passed into the hands of Director George Bush. Bush
 |  not only had this cable in his hands; Bush and Walters
 |  discussed the contents of the cable and what to do about it,
 |  including whether Walters ought to meet with th e DINA
 |  agents. The cable also reached the desk of Henry Kissinger.
 |  One of Landau's questions appears to have been whether the
 |  mission of the DINA men had been approved in advance by
 |  Langley; his cable was accompanied by photocopies of the
 |  Paraguayan passports. (Later on, in 1980, Bush denied that
 |  he had ever seen this cable; he had not just been out of the
 |  loop, he claims; he had been in China.) The red Studebaker
 |  hacks, including Bush himself in his campaign autobiography,
 |  do not bother denying anything about the Letelier case; they
 |  simply omit it. [22] 
 |
 |  On August 4, on the basis of the conversations between Bush
 |  and Vernon Walters, the CIA sent a reply from Walters to
 |  Landau, stating that the former "was unaware of the visit
 |  and that his Agency did not desire to have any contact with
 |  the Chileans." Ambassador Landau responded by revoking the
 |  visas that he had already granted and telling the
 |  Immigration and Naturalization Service to put the two DINA
 |  men on their watch list to be picked up if they tried to
 |  enter the United States. The two DINA men entered the United
 |  States anyway on August 22, with no apparent difficulty. The
 |  DINA men reached Washington, and it is clear that they were
 |  hardly traveling incognito: They appear to have asked a
 |  Chilean embassy official to call the CIA to repeat their
 |  request for a meeting.
 |
 |  According to other reports, the DINA men met with New York
 |  Senator James Buckley, the brother of conservative columnist
 |  William Buckley of Skull and Bones. It is also said that the
 |  DINA men met with Frank Terpil,  a close associate of Ed
 |  Wilson, and no stranger to the operations of the
 |  Shackley-Clines Enterprise. According to one such version,
 |  "Townley met with Frank Terpil one week before the Letelier
 |  murder, on the same day that he met with Senator James
 |  Buckley and aides in New York City. The explosives sent to
 |  the United States on Chilean airlines were to replace
 |  explosives supplied by Edwin Wilson, according to a source
 |  close to the office of Assistant U.S. Attorney Lawrence
 |  Barcella." [23]  The bomb that killed Letelier and Moffitt
 |  was of the same type that the FBI believed that Ed Wilson
 |  was selling, with the same timer mechanism.
 |
 |  Bush therefore had plenty of warning that a DINA operation
 |  was about to take place in Washington, and it was no secret
 |  that it would be wetwork. As authors John Dinges and Saul
 |  Landau point out, when the DINA hitmen arrived in Washington
 |  they "alerted the CIA by having a Chilean embassy employee
 |  call General Walters' office at the CIA's Langley
 |  headquarters. It is quite beyond belief that the CIA is so
 |  lax in its counterespionage functions that it would simply
 |  have ignored a clandestine operation by a foreign
 |  intelligence service in Washington, D.C., or anywhere in the
 |  United States. It is equally implausible that Bush, Walters,
 |  [Ambassador George] Landau and other officials were unaware
 |  of the chain of international assassinations that had been
 |  attributed to DINA." [24] 
 |
 |  Bush's complicity deepens when we turn to the
 |  post-assassination coverup. The prosecutor in the
 |  Letelier-Moffitt murders was Assistant U.S. Attorney Eugene
 |  M. Propper. Nine days after the assassinations, Propper was
 |  trying without success to get some cooperation from the CIA,
 |  since it was obvious enough to anyone that the Chilean
 |  regime was the prime suspect in the killing of one of its
 |  most prominent political opponents. The CIA had been crudely
 |  stonewalling Propper. He had even been unable to secure the
 |  requisite security clearance to see documents in the case.
 |  Then Propper received a telephone call from Stanley
 |  Pottinger, assistant attorney general in charge of the Civil
 |  Rights Division of the Justice Department. Pottinger said
 |  that he had been in contact with members of the Institute
 |  for Policy Studies, who had argued that the Civil Rights
 |  Division ought to take over the Letelier case because of its
 |  clear political implications. Propper argued that he should
 |  keep control of the case since the Protection of Foreign
 |  Officials Act gave him jurisdiction. Pottinger agreed that
 |  Propper was right, and that he ought to keep the case. When
 |  Pottinger offered to be of help in any possible way, Propper
 |  asked if Pottinger could expedite cooperation with the CIA.
 |
 |  As Propper later recounted this conversation: "Instant, warm
 |  confidence shot through the telephone line. The assistant
 |  attorney general replied that he happened to be a personal
 |  friend of the CIA Director himself, George Bush. Pottinger
 |  called him 'George.' For him, the CIA Director was only a
 |  phone call away. Would Propper like an appointment? By that
 |  afternoon he [an FBI agent working on the case] and
 |  Pottinger were scheduled for lunch with Director Bush at CIA
 |  headquarters on Monday. A Justice Department limousine would
 |  pick them up at noon. Propper whistled to himself. This was
 |  known in Washington as access." [25] 
 |
 |  At CIA headquarters, Pottinger introduced Propper to
 |  Director Bush, and Bush introduced the two lawyers to Tony
 |  Lapham, his general counsel. There was some polite
 |  conversation. Then, "when finally called on to state his
 |  business, Propper said that the Letelier-Moffitt murders
 |  were more than likely political assassinations, and that the
 |  investigation would probably move outside the United States
 |  into the Agency's realm of foreign intelligence. Therefore,
 |  Propper wanted CIA cooperation in the form of reports from
 |  within Chile, reports on assassins, reports on foreign
 |  operatives entering the United States, and the like. He
 |  wanted anything he could get that might bear upon the
 |  murders."
 |
 |  If Bush had wanted to be candid, he could have informed
 |  Propper that he had been informed of the coming of the DINA
 |  team twice, once before they left South America and once
 |  when they had arrived in Washington. But Bush never
 |  volunteered this highly pertinent information. Instead, he
 |  went into a sophisticated stonewall routine: "|'Look,' said
 |  Bush, 'I'm appalled by the bombing. Obviously we can't allow
 |  people to come right here into the capital and kill foreign
 |  diplomats and American citizens like this. It would be a
 |  hideous precedent. So, as director, I want to help you. As
 |  an American citizen, I want to help. But, as director, I
 |  also know that the Agency can't help in a lot of situations
 |  like this. We've got some problems. Tony, tell him what they
 |  are.'|"
 |
 |  Lapham launched into a consummate Aristotelian obfuscation,
 |  recounted in Lapham and Propper's "Labyrinth". Lapham and
 |  Propper finally agreed that they could handle the matter
 |  best through an exchange of letters between the CIA Director
 |  and Attorney General Levi. George Bush summed up: "If you
 |  two come up with something that Tony thinks will protect us,
 |  we'll be all right." The date was October 4, 1976.
 |
 |  Contrary to that pledge, Bush and the CIA began actively to
 |  sabotage Propper's investigation in public as well as behind
 |  the scenes. By Saturday, the "Washington Post" was reporting
 |  many details of Propper's arrangement with the CIA. Even
 |  more interesting was the following item in the "Periscope"
 |  column of "Newsweek" magazine of October 11: "After studying
 |  FBI and other field investigations, the CIA has concluded
 |  that the Chilean secret police were not involved in the
 |  death of Orlando Letelier.... The agency reached its
 |  decision because the bomb was too crude to be the work of
 |  experts and because the murder, coming while Chile's rulers
 |  were wooing U.S. support, could only damage the Santiago
 |  regime."
 |
 |  On November 1, the "Washington Post" reported a leak from
 |  Bush personally: "CIA officials say ... they believe that
 |  operatives of the present Chilean military junta did not
 |  take part in Letelier's killing. According to informed
 |  sources, CIA Director Bush expressed this view in a
 |  conversation last week with Secretary of State Kissinger,
 |  the sources said. What evidence the CIA has obtained to
 |  support this initial conclusion was not disclosed."
 |
 |  Most remarkably, Bush is reported to have flown to Miami on
 |  November 8 with the purpose or pretext of taking "a walking
 |  tour of little Havana." As author Donald Freed tells it,
 |  "Actually [Bush] met with the Miami FBI Spec ial Agent in
 |  Charge Julius Matson and the chief of the anti-Castro
 |  terrorism squad. According to a source close to the meeting,
 |  Bush warned the FBI against allowing the investigation to go
 |  any further than the lowest level Cubans." [26] 
 |
 |  In a meeting presided over by Pottinger, Propper was only
 |  able to get Lapham to agree that the Justice Department
 |  could ask the CIA to report any information on the Letelier
 |  murder that might relate to the security of the United
 |  States against foreign intervention. It was two years before
 |  any word of the July-August cables was divulged.
 |
 |  Ultimately, some low-level Cubans were convicted in a trial
 |  that saw Townley plea bargain and get off with a lighter
 |  sentence than the rest. Material about Townley under his
 |  various aliases strangely disappeared from the Immigration
 |  and Naturalization Service files, and records of the
 |  July-August cable traffic with Vernon Walters (and Bush)
 |  were expunged. No doubt there had been obstruction of
 |  justice; no doubt there had been a coverup.
 |
 |  Team A and Team B
 |
 |  Now, what about the intelligence product of the CIA, in
 |  particular the National Intelligence Estimates that are the
 |  centerpiece of the CIA's work? Here Bush was to oversee a
 |  maneuver to markedly enhance the influence of the
 |  pro-Zionist wing of the intelligence community.
 |
 |  In June 1976, Bush accepted a proposal from Leo Cherne to
 |  carry out an experiment in "competitive analysis" in the
 |  area of National Intelligence Estimates of Soviet air
 |  defenses, Soviet missile accuracy, and overall Soviet
 |  strategic objectives. Bush and Cherne decided to conduct the
 |  competitive analysis by commissioning two separate groups,
 |  each of which would present and argue for its own
 |  conclusions. On the one, Team A would be the CIA's own
 |  National Intelligence Officers and their staffs. But there
 |  would also be a separate Team B, a group of ostensibly
 |  independent outside experts.
 |
 |  The group leader of Team B was Harvard history professor
 |  Richard Pipes, who was working in the British Museum in
 |  London when he was appointed by Bush and Cherne.
 |
 |  The liaison between Pipes's Team B and Team A, the official
 |  CIA, was provided by John Paisley, who had earlier served as
 |  the liaison between Langley and the McCord-Hunt-Liddy
 |  Plumbers. In this sense, Paisley served as the staff
 |  director of the Team A-Team B experiment.
 |
 |  Team B's basic conclusion was that the Soviet military
 |  preparations were not exclusively defensive, but rather
 |  represented the attempt to acquire a first-strike capability
 |  that would allow the U.S.S.R. to unleash and prevail in
 |  thermonuclear war. The U.S. would face a window of
 |  vulnerability during the 1980s. But it is clear from Pipes's
 |  own discussion of the debate, [27]  that Team B was less
 |  interested in the Soviet Union and its capabilities than in
 |  seizing hegemony in the intelligence and think-tank
 |  community in preparation for seizing the key posts in the
 |  Republican administration that might follow Carter in 1980.
 |  The argument in Team B quarters was that, since the Soviets
 |  were turning aggressive once again, the U.S.A. must do
 |  everything possible to strengthen the only staunch and
 |  reliable American ally in the Middle East or possibly
 |  anywhere in the world, Israel. This meant not just that
 |  Israel had to be financed without stint, but that Israel had
 |  to be brought into Central America, the Far East, and
 |  Africa. There was even a design for a new NATO, constructed
 |  around Israel, while junking the old NATO because it was
 |  absorbing vital U.S. resources needed by Israel.
 |
 |  By contrast, Team B supporters like Richard Perle, who
 |  served as assistant secretary of defense under Reagan, were
 |  bitterly hostile to the Strategic Defense Initiative, which
 |  was plainly the only rational response to the Soviet
 |  buildup, which was very real indeed. The "window of
 |  vulnerability" argument had merit, but the policy
 |  conclusions favored by Team B had none, since their idea of
 |  responding to the Soviet threat was, once again, to
 |  subordinate everything to Israeli demands.
 |
 |  Team A and Team B were supposed to be secret, but leaks
 |  appeared in the "Boston Globe" in October. Pipes was
 |  surprised to find an even more detailed account of Team B
 |  and its grim estimate of Soviet intent in the "New York
 |  Times" shortly after Christmas, but Paisley told him that
 |  Bush and CIA official Richard Lehman had already been
 |  talking to the press, and urged Pipes to begin to offer some
 |  interviews of his own. [28] 
 |
 |  Typically enough, Bush appeared on "Face the Nation" early
 |  in the new year, before the inauguration of the new
 |  President, Jimmy Carter, to say that he was "appalled" by
 |  the leaks of Team B's conclusions. Bush confessed that
 |  "outside expertise has enormous appeal to me." He refused to
 |  discuss the Team B conclusions themselves, but did say that
 |  he wanted to "gun down" speculation that the CIA had leaked
 |  a tough estimate of the Soviet Union's military buildup in
 |  order to stop Carter from cutting the defense budget.
 |
 |  After the Team B conclusions had been bruited around the
 |  world, Pipes became a leading member of the Committee on the
 |  Present Danger, where his fellow Team B veteran, Paul Nitze,
 |  was already ensconced, along with Eugene V. Rostow, Dean
 |  Rusk, Lane Kirkland, Max Kampelman, Richard Allen, David
 |  Packard and Henry Fowler. About 30 members of the Committee
 |  on the Present Danger went on to become high officials of
 |  the Reagan administration.
 |
 |  Ronald Reagan himself embraced the "window of vulnerability"
 |  thesis, which worked as well for him as the bomber gap and
 |  missile gap arguments had worked in previous elections. When
 |  the Reagan administration wasbeing assembled, Bush and James
 |  Baker had a lot to say about who got what appointments. Bush
 |  was the founder of Team B, and that is the fundamental
 |  reason why such pro-Zionist neoconservatives as Max
 |  Kampelman, Richard Perle, Steven Bryen, Noel Koch, Paul
 |  Wolfowitz and Dov Zakem showed up in the Reagan
 |  administration.
 |
 |  In a grim postlude to the Team B exercise, Bush's
 |  hand-picked staff director for the operation, John Paisley,
 |  the Soviet analyst (Paisley was the former deputy director
 |  of the CIA's Office of Strategic Research) and CIA liaison
 |  to the Plumbers, disappeared on September 24, 1978 while
 |  sailing on Chesapeake Bay in his sloop, the "Brillig."
 |  Several days later, a body was found floating in the bay in
 |  an advanced state of decomposition, and with a gunshot wound
 |  behind the left ear. The corpse was weighted down by two
 |  sets of ponderous diving belts. The body was four inches
 |  shorter than Paisley's own height, and Paisley's wife later
 |  asserted that the body found was not that of her husband.
 |  Despite all this, the body was positively identified as
 |  Paisley's, the death summarily ruled a suicide, and the body
 |  quickly cremated at a funeral home approved by the Office of
 |  Security.
 |
 |  Parting Shots
 |
 |  As he managed the formidable world-wide capabilities of the
 |  CIA during 1976, Bush was laying the groundwork for his
 |  personal advancement to higher office and greater power in
 |  the 1980s. As we have seen, there was some intermittent
 |  speculation during the year that, in spite of what Ford had
 |  promised the Senate, Bush might show up as Ford's running
 |  mate after all. But, at the Republican convention, Ford
 |  chose Kansas Senator Bob Dole for Vice President. If Ford
 |  had won the election, Bush would certainly have attempted to
 |  secure a further promotion, perhaps to secretary of state,
 |  defense, or treasury as a springboard for a new presidential
 |  bid of his own in 1980. But if Carter won the election, Bush
 |  would attempt to raise the banner of the non-political
 |  status of the CIA in order to convince Carter to let him
 |  stay at Langley during the period 1977-81 as a
 |  "non-partisan" administrator.
 |
 |  In the close 1976 election, Carter prevailed by vote fraud
 |  in New York, Ohio, and other states, but Ford was convinced
 |  by William Nelson and Happy Rockefeller, as well as by his
 |  own distraught wife Betty, that he must concede in order to
 |  preserve the work of "healing" that he had accomplished
 |  since Watergate. Carter would therefore enter the White
 |  House.
 |
 |  Bush prepared to make his bid for continuity at the CI A.
 |  Shortly after the election, he was scheduled to journey to
 |  Plains to brief Carter with the help of his deputy Henry
 |  Knoche. The critical meeting with Carter went very badly
 |  indeed. Bush took Carter aside and argued that in 1960 and
 |  1968, CIA directors were retained during presidential
 |  transitions, and that it would make Carter look good if he
 |  did the same. Carter signaled that he wasn't interested.
 |  Then Bush lamely stammered that if Carter wanted his own man
 |  in Langley, Bush would be willing to resign, which is of
 |  course standard procedure for all agency heads when a new
 |  President takes office. Carter said that that was indeed
 |  exactly what he wanted, and that he would have his own new
 |  DCI ready by January 21, 1977. Bush and Knoche then briefed
 |  Carter and his people for some six hours. Carter insiders
 |  told the press that Bush's briefing had been a "disaster."
 |  "Jimmy just wasn't impressed with Bush," said a key Carter
 |  staffer. [29] 
 |
 |  Bush and Knoche then flew back to Washington, and on the
 |  plane Bush wrote a memo for Henry Kissinger describing his
 |  exchanges with Carter. At midnight, Bush drove to
 |  Kissinger's home and briefed him for an hour.
 |
 |  Bush left Langley with Carter's inauguration, leaving Knoche
 |  to serve a couple of months as acting DCI. George Bush now
 |  turned to his family business of international banking.
 |
 |  Notes for Chapter XVI
 |
 |  14. William Colby, "Honorable Men" (New York: Simon and
 |  Schuster, 1978), p. 452.
 |
 |  15. On Murphy and Noriega, see Frank McNeil, "War and Peace
 |  in Central America" (New York: Scribners, 1988), p.278.
 |
 |  16. See John Prados, "Presidents' Secret Wars" (New York:
 |  William Morrow, 1986); Powers, "op. cit."; and John
 |  Ranelagh, "The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA" (New
 |  York: Simon and Schuster, 1987).
 |
 |  17. Cord Meyer, "Facing Reality: >From World Federalism to
 |  the CIA" (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America,
 |  1982), pp. 225-26.
 |
 |  18. "Washington Post", Aug. 10, 1988.
 |
 |  19. Ford Library, Philip W. Buchen Files, Box 2.
 |
 |  20. For Ford's reorganization, see Johnson, "op. cit.", pp.
 |  194-97, and "New York Times", Feb. 18, 1976.
 |
 |  21. Scott Armstrong and Jeff Nason, "Company Man," "Mother
 |  Jones", October 1988.
 |
 |  22. See Armstrong and Nason, "op. cit.", p. 43.
 |
 |  23. Freed, "op. cit.", p. 174.
 |
 |  24. Dinges and Landau, "op. cit.", p. 384.
 |
 |  25. Taylor Branch and Eugene M. Propper, "Labyrinth" (New
 |  York: Viking Press, 1982), p. 72.
 |
 |  26. Freed, "op. cit.", p. 174.
 |
 |  27. Richard Pipes, "Team B: The Reality Behind the Myth,"
 |  "Commentary", Oct. 1986.
 |
 |  28. "Ibid.", p. 34. Pipes makes clear that it was Bush and
 |  Richard Lehman who both leaked to David Binder of the "New
 |  York Times." Lehman also encouraged Pipes to leak. The
 |  version offered by William R. Corson, Susan B. Trento and
 |  Joseph J. Trento in "Widows" (New York: Crown, 1989), namely
 |  that Paisley did the leaking, may also be true, but will not
 |  exonerate Bush.
 |
 |  29. Evans and Novak column, "Houston Post", Dec. 1, 1976.
 |  For the pro-Bush account of these events, see Nicholas King,
 |  "George Bush: A Biography" (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company,
 |  1980), pp. 109-10.
 |
 |  "XVII: Campaign 1980"
 |
 |  Shortly after leaving Langley, Bush asserted his birthright
 |  as an international financier, that is to say, he became a
 |  member of the board of directors of a large bank. On
 |  February 22, 1977, Robert H. Stewart III, the chairman of
 |  the holding company for First International Bankshares of
 |  Dallas, announced that Bush would become the chairman of the
 |  executive committee of First International Bank of Houston,
 |  and would simultaneously become a director of First
 |  International Bankshares Ltd. of London, a merchant bank
 |  owned by First International Bankshares, Inc. Bush also
 |  became a director of First International Bankshares, Inc.
 |  ("Interfirst"), which was the Dallas-based holding company
 |  for the entire international group.
 |
 |  During the 1988 campaign, Bush gave the implacable stonewall
 |  to any questions about the services he performed for the
 |  First International Bankshares group or about any other
 |  aspects of his business activities during the pre-1980
 |  interlude.
 |
 |  Later, after the Reagan-Bush orgy of speculation and usury
 |  had ruined the Texas economy, the Texas commercial banks
 |  began to collapse into bankruptcy. Interfirst merged with
 |  RepublicBank during 1987 to form First RepublicBank, which
 |  became the biggest commercial bank in Texas. Bankruptcy
 |  overtook the new colossus just a few months later, but
 |  federal regulators delayed their inevitable intervention
 |  until after the Texas primary, in the spring of 1988, in
 |  order to avoid a potentially acute embarrassment for Bush.
 |  Once Bush had the presidential nomination locked up, the
 |  Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, with the connivance
 |  of the IRS, awarded the assets of First RepublicBank to the
 |  North Carolina National Bank in exchange for no payment
 |  whatsoever on the part of NCNB (now NationsBank).
 |
 |  During the heady days of Bush's directorship at Interfirst,
 |  the bank retained a law firm in which one Lawrence Gibbs was
 |  a partner.
 |
 |  Gibbs, a clear Bush asset, was made commissioner of the
 |  Internal Revenue Service on August 4, 1986. Here, he
 |  engineered the sweetheart deal for NCNB by decreeing $1.6
 |  billion in tax breaks for this bank. This is typical of the
 |  massive favors and graft for pro-Bush financier interests at
 |  the expense of the taxpayer which are the hallmark of the
 |  Bush machine. Lawrence Gibbs also approved IRS participation
 |  in the October 6, 1986 federal-state police raid against
 |  premises and persons associated with the political movement
 |  of Lyndon H. LaRouche in Leesburg, Virginia. This raid was a
 |  leading part of the Bush machine's long term effort to
 |  eliminate centers of political opposition to Bush's 1988
 |  presidential bid. And LaRouche had been a key adversary of
 |  Bush dating back to the 1979-80 New Hampshire primary
 |  campaign, as we will shortly document.
 |
 |  Bush also joined the board of Purolator Oil Company in
 |  Rahway, New Jersey, where his crony, Wall Street raider
 |  Nicholas Brady (later Bush's Secretary of the Treasury) was
 |  the chairman. Bush also joined the board of Eli Lilly & Co.,
 |  a very large and very sinister pharmaceutical company. The
 |  third board Bush joined was that of Texas Gulf, Inc. Bush's
 |  total 1977 rakeoff from the four companies with which he was
 |  involved was $112,000, according to Bush's 1977 tax return.
 |
 |  Bush also found time to line his pockets in a series of
 |  high-yield deals that begin to give us some flavor of what
 |  would later be described as the "financial excesses of the
 |  1980s," in which Bush's circle was to play a decisive role.
 |
 |  A typical Bush venture of this period was Ponderosa Forest
 |  Apartments, a highly remunerative speculative play in real
 |  estate. Ponderosa bought up a 180-unit apartment complex
 |  near Houston that was in financial trouble, gentrified the
 |  interiors, and hiked the rents. Horace T. Ardinger, a Dallas
 |  real estate man who was among Bush's partners in this deal,
 |  described the transaction as "a good tax gimmick ... and a
 |  typical Texas joint venture offering."
 |
 |  According to Bush's tax returns from 1977 through 1985, the
 |  Ponderosa partnership accrued to Bush a paper loss of
 |  $225,160, which allowed him to avoid payment of some
 |  $100,000 in federal taxes alone, plus a direct profit of
 |  over $14,000 and a capital gain of $217,278. This type of
 |  windfall represents precisely the form of real estate
 |  swindle that contributed to the Texas real estate and
 |  banking crisis of the mid-1980s. The deal illustrates one of
 |  the important ways in which the federal tax base has been
 |  eroded through real estate scams. We also see why it is no
 |  surprise that the one fiscal innovation which has earned
 |  Bush's sustained attention is the idea of a reduction in the
 |  capital gains tax to allow those who engage in swindles like
 |  these to pay an even smaller federal tax bite.
 |
 |  But Bush's main preoccupation during these years was to
 |  assemble a political machine with which he could bludgeon
 |  his way to power. After his numerous frustrations of the
 |  past, Bush was resolved to organize a campaign that would go
 |  far beyond the innocuous exercise of appealing for citizens'
 |  votes. If such a machine were actually to succeed in seizin
 |  g power in Washington, tendencies toward the creation of an
 |  authoritarian police state would inevitably increase.
 |
 |  The Spook Campaign Machine
 |
 |  Bush assembled quite a campaign machine.
 |
 |  One of the central figures of the Bush effort would be James
 |  Baker III, Bush's friend of ten years' standing. Baker's
 |  power base derived first of all from his family's Houston
 |  law firm, Baker & Botts, which was founded just after the
 |  end of the Civil War by defeated partizans of the
 |  Confederate cause.
 |
 |  Baker & Botts founder Peter Gray had been assistant
 |  treasurer of the Confederate States of America and financial
 |  supervisor of the CSA's "Trans-Mississippi Department."
 |  Gray, acting on orders of Confederate Secretary of State
 |  Robert Toombs, financed the subversive work of Confederate
 |  Gen. Albert Pike among the Indian tribes of the Southwest.
 |  The close of the war in 1865 had found Pike hiding in
 |  Canada, and Toombs in exile in England. Pike was excluded
 |  from the general U.S. amnesty for rebels because he was
 |  thought to have induced Indians to commit massacres and war
 |  crimes.
 |
 |  Pike and Toombs reestablished the "Southern Jurisdiction" of
 |  the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, of which Pike had been the
 |  leader in the slave states before the Civil War. Pike's
 |  deputy, one Phillip C. Tucker, returned from Scottish Rite
 |  indoctrination in Great Britain to set up a Scottish Rite
 |  lodge in Houston in the spring of 1867. Tucker designated
 |  Walter Browne Botts and his relative Benjamin Botts as the
 |  leaders of this new Scottish Rite lodge. [1]  The policy of
 |  the Scottish Rite was to regroupunrecon structed
 |  Confederates to secure the disenfranchisement of black
 |  citizens and to promote Anglophile domination of finance and
 |  business.
 |
 |  By the beginning of the twentieth century, there were two
 |  great powers dominating Texas: On the one hand, the railroad
 |  empire of E.H. Harriman, served by the law firm of Baker &
 |  Botts; and on the other, the British-trained political
 |  operative Colonel Edward M. House, the controller of
 |  President Woodrow Wilson. The close relation between Baker &
 |  Botts and the Harriman interests has remained in place down
 |  to the present. And since the time that Captain James A.
 |  Baker founded the Texas Commerce Bank, the Baker family has
 |  helped the London-New York axis run the Texas banking
 |  system.
 |
 |  In 1901, the discovery of large oil deposits in Texas
 |  offered great promise for the future economic development of
 |  the state, but also attracted the Anglo-American oil cartel.
 |  The Baker family law firm in Texas, like the Bush and Dulles
 |  families in New York, was aligned with the
 |  Harriman-Rockefeller cartel.
 |
 |  The Bakers were prominent in supporting eugenics and
 |  utopian-feudalist social engineering. Captain James A.
 |  Baker, so the story goes, the grandfather of the current
 |  boss of Foggy Bottom, solved the murder of his client
 |  William Marsh Rice and took control of Rice's huge estate.
 |  Baker used the money to start Rice University and became the
 |  chairman of the school's board of trustees. Baker sought to
 |  create a center for diffusion of racist eugenics, and for
 |  this purpose brought in Julian Huxley of the infamous
 |  British oligarchical family to found the biology program at
 |  Rice starting in 1912. [2]  Huxley was the vice president of
 |  the British Eugenics Society and actually helped to organize
 |  "race science" programs for the Nazi Interior Ministry,
 |  before becoming the founding director general of UNESCO in
 |  1946-48.
 |
 |  James A. Baker III was born April 28, 1930, in the fourth
 |  generation of his family's wealth. Baker holdings have
 |  included Exxon, Mobil, Atlantic Richfield, Standard Oil of
 |  California, Standard Oil of Indiana, Kerr-McGee, Merck, and
 |  Freeport Minerals. Baker also held stock in some large New
 |  York banks during the time that he was negotiating the Latin
 |  American debt crisis in his capacity as secretary of the
 |  treasury. [3] 
 |
 |  James Baker grew up in patrician surroundings. His social
 |  profile has been described as "Tex-prep." Like his father,
 |  James III attended the Hill School near Philadelphia, and
 |  then went on to Princeton, where he was a member of the Ivy
 |  Club, a traditional preserve of Eastern Anglophile Liberal
 |  Establishment oligarchs.
 |
 |  Baker & Botts maintains an "anti-nepotism" policy, so James
 |  III became a boss of Houston's Andrews, Kurth, Campbell &
 |  Jones law firm, a satellite of Baker & Botts. Baker's
 |  relation to Bush extends across both law firms: In 1977,
 |  Baker & Botts partner Blaine Kerr became president of
 |  Pennzoil, and in 1979, Baker & Botts partner B.J. Mackin
 |  became chairman of Zapata Corporation. Baker & Botts have
 |  always represented Zapata, and are often listed as counsel
 |  for Schlumberger, the oil services firm. James Baker and his
 |  Andrews, Kurth partners were the Houston attorneys for First
 |  International Bank of Houston when George Bush was chairman
 |  of the bank's executive committee.
 |
 |  During the 1980 campaign, Baker became the chairman of the
 |  Reagan-Bush campaign committee, while fellow Texan Bob
 |  Strauss was chairman of the Carter-Mondale campaign. But
 |  Baker and Strauss were at the very same time business
 |  partners in Herman Brothers, one of America's largest beer
 |  distributors. Bush Democrat Strauss later went to Moscow as
 |  Bush's ambassador to the U.S.S.R., and later, to Russia.
 |
 |  Another leading Bush supporter was Ray Cline. During 1979,
 |  it was Ray Cline who had gone virtually public with a loose
 |  and informal, but highly effective, campaign network mainly
 |  composed of former intelligence officers. Cline had been the
 |  CIA station chief in Taiwan from 1958 to 1962. He had been
 |  deputy director of central intelligence from 1962 to 1966,
 |  and had then gone on to direct the intelligence-gathering
 |  operation at the State Department. Cline became a de facto
 |  White House official during the first Bush administration,
 |  and wrote the White House boiler plate entitled "National
 |  Security Strategy of the United States," under which the
 |  Gulf war was carried out.
 |
 |  Heading up the Bush campaign muckraking "research" staff was
 |  Stefan Halper, Ray Cline's son-in-law and a former official
 |  of the Nixon White House.
 |
 |  A member of Halper's staff was a CIA veteran named Robert
 |  Gambino. Gambino had held the sensitive post of director of
 |  the CIA's Office of Security. The Office of Security is
 |  reputed to possess extensive files on the domestic
 |  activities of American citizens. David Aaron, Brzezinski's
 |  deputy at the Carter National Security Council, recalled
 |  that some high Carter officials were "upset" that Gambino
 |  had gone to work for the Bush camp. According to Aaron,
 |  "several [CIA] people took early retirement and went to work
 |  for Bush's so-called security staff. The thing that upset
 |  us, was that a guy who has been head of security for the CIA
 |  has been privy to a lot of dossiers, and the possibility of
 |  abuse was quite high, although we never heard of any
 |  occasion when Gambino called someone up and forced them to
 |  do something for the campaign." [4] 
 |
 |  Other high-level spooks active in the Bush campaign included
 |  Lt. Gen. Sam V. Wilson and Lt. Gen. Harold A. Aaron, both
 |  former directors of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Another
 |  enthusiastic Bushman was retired Gen. Richard Stillwell,
 |  formerly the CIA's chief of covert operations for the Far
 |  East. The former deputy director for operations, Theodore
 |  Shackley, was also on board, reportedly as a speechwriter,
 |  but more likely for somewhat heavier work.
 |
 |  According to one estimate, at least 25 former intelligence
 |  officials worked directly for the Bush campaign. As Bill
 |  Peterson of the "Washington Post" wrote on March 1, 1980,
 |  "Simply put, no presidential campaign in recent memory --
 |  perhaps ever -- has attracted as much support from the
 |  intelligence community as the campaign of former CIA
 |  Director George Bush."
 |
 |  Further intelligence veterans among the Bushmen included
 |  Daniel C. Arnold, the former CIA station chief in Bangkok,
 |  Thailand, who retired early to join the campaign during
 |  1979. Harry Webster, a former clandestine agent, became a
 |  member of Bush's paid staff for the Florida primary. CIA
 |  veteran Bruce Rounds was Bush's "director of operations"
 |  during the key New Hampshire primary. Also on board with the
 |  Bushmen wa s Jon R. Thomas, a former clandestine operative
 |  who had been listed as a State Department official during a
 |  tour of duty in Spain, and who later worked on terrorism and
 |  drug-trafficking at the State Department. Andrew Falkiewicz,
 |  the former spokesman of the CIA in Langley, attended some of
 |  Bush's pre-campaign brainstorming sessions as a consultant
 |  on foreign policy matters.
 |
 |  One leading bastion of the Bushmen was predictably David
 |  Atlee Philips's AFIO, the Association of Former Intelligence
 |  Officers. Jack Coakley was a former director and Bush's
 |  campaign coordinator for Virginia. He certified that at the
 |  AFIO annual meeting in the fall of 1979, he counted 190
 |  "Bush for President" buttons among 240 delegates to the
 |  convention. [5] 
 |
 |  James Baker was the obvious choice to be Bush's campaign
 |  manager. He had served Bush in this function in the failed
 |  Senate campaign of 1970. During the Ford years, Baker had
 |  advanced to become deputy secretary of commerce. Baker had
 |  been the manager of Ford's failed 1976 campaign. In 1978,
 |  Baker had attempted to get himself elected attorney general
 |  of Texas, but had been defeated.
 |
 |  David Keene was political adviser. And, as always, no Bush
 |  campaign would be complete without Robert Mosbacher heading
 |  up the national finance operation. Mosbacher's experience,
 |  as we have seen, reached back to the Bill Liedtke
 |  conveyances to Maurice Stans of the CREEP in 1972.
 |
 |  With the help of Baker and Mosbacher, Bush began to set up
 |  political campaign committees that could be used to convoy
 |  quasi-legal "soft money" into his campaign coffers. This is
 |  the classic stratagem of setting up political action
 |  committees that are registered with the Federal Election
 |  Commission for the alleged purpose of channeling funds into
 |  the campaigns of deserving Republican (or Democratic)
 |  candidates. In reality, almost all of the money is used for
 |  the presidential candidate's own staff, office, mailings,
 |  travel and related expenses. Bush's principal vehicle for
 |  this type of funding was called the Fund for Limited
 |  Government. During the first six months of 1987, this group
 |  collected $99,000 and spent $46,000, of which only $2,500
 |  went to other candidates.
 |
 |  Despite the happy facade, Bush's campaign staff was plagued
 |  by turmoil and morale problems, leading to a high rate of
 |  turnover in key posts.
 |
 |  One who has stayed on all along has been Jennifer
 |  Fitzgerald, a British woman born in 1932 who had been with
 |  Bush at least since Beijing. Fitzgerald later worked in
 |  Bush's vice-presidential office, first as appointments
 |  secretary, and later as executive assistant. According to
 |  some Washington wags, she controlled access to Bush in the
 |  same way that Martin Bormann controlled access to Hitler.
 |  According to Harry Hurt, among former Bush staffers,
 |  "Fitzgerald gets vituperative reviews. She has been accused
 |  of bungling the 1980 presidential campaign by canceling Bush
 |  appearances at factory sites in favor of luncheon club
 |  speeches. Critics of her performance say she misrepresents
 |  staff scheduling requests and blocks access to her boss....
 |  A number of the vice president's close friends worry that
 |  'the Jennifer problem' -- or the appearance of one -- may
 |  inhibit Bush's future political career. 'There's just
 |  something about her that makes him feel good,' says one
 |  trusted Bush confidant. 'I don't think it's sexual. I don't
 |  know what it is. But if Bush ever runs for president again,
 |  I think he's going to have to make a change on that score."
 |  [6] 
 |
 |  The Establishment's Candidate
 |
 |  Bush formally announced his presidential candidacy on May 1,
 |  1979. One of Bush's themes was the idea of a "Union of the
 |  English-Speaking Peoples." Bush was asked later in his
 |  campaign by a reporter to elaborate on this. Bush stated at
 |  that time that "the British are the best friend America has
 |  in the world today. I believe we can benefit greatly from
 |  much close collaboration in the economic, military, and
 |  political spheres. Sure, I am an Anglophile. We should all
 |  be. Britain has never done anything bad to the United
 |  States." [7] 
 |
 |  Together with James Baker III, always the idea man of the
 |  Bush-Baker combo, the Bush campaign studied Jimmy Carter's
 |  success story of 1976. They knew they were starting with a
 |  "George Who?" virtually unknown to most voters. First of
 |  all, Bush would ape the Carter strategy of showing up in
 |  Iowa and New Hampshire early and often.
 |
 |  Thanks to Mosbacher's operation, the Bush campaign would
 |  advance on a cushion of money -- he spent $1.3 million for
 |  the Illinois primary alone. The biggest item would be media
 |  buys -- above all television. This time Bush brought in
 |  Baltimore media expert Robert Goodman, who designed a series
 |  of television shorts that were described as "fast-moving,
 |  newsfilmlike portraits of an energetic, dynamic Bush
 |  creating excitement and moving through crowds, with an
 |  upbeat musical track behind him. Each of the advertisements
 |  used a slogan that attempted to capitalize on Bush's
 |  experience, while hitting Carter's wretched on-the-job
 |  performance and Ronald Reagan's inexperience on the national
 |  scene: 'George Bush,' the announcer intoned, 'a President we
 |  won't have to train.'|" [8] 
 |
 |  On November 3, 1979, Bush bested Sen. Howard Baker in a
 |  "beauty contest" straw poll taken at the Maine Republican
 |  convention in Portland. Bush won by a paper-thin margin of
 |  20 votes out of 1,336 cast, and Maine was really his home
 |  state, but the Brown Brothers Harriman networks at the "New
 |  York Times" delivered a front-page lead story with a subhead
 |  that read, "Bush Gaining Stature as '80 Contender."
 |
 |  Bush's biggest lift of the 1980 campaign came when he won a
 |  plurality in the January 21 Iowa caucuses, narrowly besting
 |  Reagan, who had not put any effort into the state. At this
 |  point, the Brown Brothers Harriman/Skull and Bones media
 |  operation went into high gear. That same night Walter
 |  Cronkite told viewers: "George Bush has apparently done what
 |  he hoped to do, coming out of the pack as the principal
 |  challenger to front-runner Ronald Reagan."
 |
 |  In the interval between January 21 and the New Hampshire
 |  primary of February 26, the Eastern Liberal Establishment
 |  labored mightily to put George Bush into power as President
 |  that same year. The press hype in favor of Bush was
 |  overwhelming. "Newsweek"'s cover featured a happy and
 |  smiling Bush talking with his supporters: "Bush Breaks Out
 |  of the Pack," went the headline.
 |
 |  "Time", which had been founded by Henry Luce of Skull and
 |  Bones, showed a huge, grinning Bush and a smaller, very
 |  cross Reagan, headlined: "BUSH SOARS." The leading polls,
 |  always doctored by the intelligence agencies and other
 |  interests, showed a Bush boom: Lou Harris found that whereas
 |  Reagan had led Bush into Iowa by 32-6 nationwide, Bush had
 |  pulled even with Reagan at 27-27 within 24 hours after the
 |  Iowa result had become known.
 |
 |  Robert Healy of the "Boston Globe" stuck his neck out even
 |  further for the neo-Harrimanite cause with a forecast that
 |  "even though he is still called leading candidate in some
 |  places, Reagan does not look like he'll be on the
 |  Presidential stage much longer."
 |
 |  NBC's Tom Brokaw started calling Reagan the "former
 |  front-runner." Tom Pettit of the same network was more
 |  direct: "I would like to suggest that Ronald Reagan is
 |  politically dead."
 |
 |  The Eastern Liberal Establishment had left no doubt who its
 |  darling was: Bush, and not Reagan. In their arrogance, the
 |  Olympians had once again committed the error of confusing
 |  their collective patrician whim with real processes ongoing
 |  in the real world. The New Hampshire primary was to prove a
 |  devastating setback for Bush, in spite of all the hype the
 |  Bushman networks were able to crank out. How did it happen?
 |
 |  New Hampshire: The LaRouche Factor
 |
 |  George Bush was, of course, a lifelong member of the Skull
 |  and Bones secret society of Yale University, through which
 |  he advanced toward the freemasonic upper reaches of the
 |  Anglo-American Establishment, toward those exalted circles
 |  of London, New York and Washington, in which the
 |  transatlantic destiny of the self-styled Anglo-Saxon master
 |  race is elaborated. The entrees provided by Skull and Bones
 |  membership would always be, for Bush, the most vital ones.
 |  But, in addition to such exalted feudal brotherhoods as
 |  Skull and Bones, the Anglo-American Establishment also
 |  maintains a series of broader-based elite organizations
 |  whose function is to manifest the hegemonic Anglo-American
 |  policy line to the broader layers of the Establishment,
 |  including bureaucrats, businessmen, bankers, journalists,
 |  professors and other such assorted retainers and stewards of
 |  power.
 |
 |  George Bush had thus found it politic over the years to
 |  become a member of the New York Council on Foreign
 |  Relations. By 1979, Bush was a member of the board of the
 |  CFR, where he sat next to his old patron Henry Kissinger.
 |  The president of the CFR during this period was Kissinger
 |  clone Winston Lord of the traditional Skull and Bones
 |  family.
 |
 |  George was also a member of the Bohemian Club of San
 |  Francisco, which had been founded by Ambrose Bierce after
 |  the Civil War to cater to the Stanfords, Huntingtons,
 |  Crockers, Hopkinses and the other nouveau-riche tycoons that
 |  had emerged from the gold rush.
 |
 |  Then there was the Trilateral Commission, founded by David
 |  Rockefeller in 1973-74. The Trilateral Commission emerged at
 |  the same time that the Rockefeller-Kissinger interests
 |  perpetrated the first oil hoax. Some of its first studies
 |  were devoted to the mechanics of imposing
 |  authoritarian-totalitarian forms of government in the United
 |  States, Europe, and Japan to manage the austerity and
 |  economic decay that would be the results of Trilateral
 |  policies.
 |
 |  As we saw briefly during Bush's Senate campaign, the
 |  combination of bankruptcy and arrogance which was the
 |  hallmark of Eastern Liberal Establishment rule over the
 |  United States generated resentments which could make
 |  membership in such organizations a distinct political
 |  liability. That the issue exploded in New Hampshire during
 |  the 1979-80 campaign in such a way as to wreck the Bush
 |  campaign was largely the merit of Lyndon LaRouche, who had
 |  launched an outsider bid in the Democratic primary.
 |
 |  LaRouche conducted a vigorous campaign in New Hampshire
 |  during late 1979, focusing on the need to put forward an
 |  economic policy to undo the devastation being wrought by the
 |  22 percent prime rate being charged by many banks as a
 |  result of the high-interest, usurious policies of Paul
 |  Volcker, whom Carter had made the head of the Federal
 |  Reserve. But in addition to contesting Carter, Ted Kennedy
 |  and Jerry Brown on the Democratic side, LaRouche's campaign
 |  also noticed George Bush, whom LaRouche correctly identified
 |  as a liberal Republican in the Theodore Roosevelt-House of
 |  Morgan "Bull Moose" tradition of 1912.
 |
 |  During late 1979, the LaRouche campaign began to call
 |  attention to Bush as a threat against which other
 |  candidates, Republicans and Democrats, ought to unite.
 |  LaRouche attacked Bush as the spokesman for "the folks who
 |  live on the hill," for petty oligarchs and blue bloods who
 |  think that it is up to them to dictate political decisions
 |  to the average citizen. These broadsides were the first to
 |  raise the issue of Bush's membership in David Rockefeller's
 |  Trilateral Commission and in the New York Council on Foreign
 |  Relations.
 |
 |  While on the hustings in New Hampshire, LaRouche observed
 |  the high correlation between preppy, liberal Republican,
 |  blue-blooded support for Bush and mental pathology. As
 |  LaRouche wrote, "In the course of campaigning in New
 |  Hampshire during 1979 and 1980, I have encountered minds,
 |  especially in western New Hampshire, who represent, in a
 |  decayed sort of way, exactly the treasonous outlook our
 |  patriotic forefathers combatted more than a century or more
 |  ago. Naturally, since I am an American Whig by family
 |  ancestry stretching back into the early 19th century, born a
 |  New Hampshire Whig, and a Whig Democrat by profession today,
 |  the blue-blooded kooks of certain 'respected' Connecticut
 |  River Valley families get my dander up." [9] 
 |
 |  LaRouche's principal charge was that George Bush was a
 |  "cult-ridden kook, and more besides." He cited Bush's
 |  membership in "the secret society which largely controls
 |  George Bush's personal destiny, the Russell Trust
 |  Association, otherwise known as 'Skull and Bones'....
 |  Understanding the importance of the Russell Trust
 |  Association in Bush's adult life will help the ordinary
 |  citizen to understand why one must place a question mark on
 |  Bush's political candidacy today. Is George Bush a
 |  'Manchurian candidate'?"
 |
 |  After noting that the wealth of many of the Skull and Bones
 |  families was derived from the British East India Company's
 |  trade in black slaves and in opium, LaRouche went on to
 |  discuss "How Yale Turned 'Gay'|":
 |
 |  "Today, visiting Yale, one sees male students walking hand
 |  in hand, lovers, blatantly, on the streets. One does not
 |  permit one's boy children to visit certain of the residences
 |  on or around that campus. There have been too many incidents
 |  to be overlooked. One is reminded of the naked wrestling in
 |  the mud which initiates to the Yale Skull and Bones Society
 |  practice. One thinks of 'Skull and Boneser' William F.
 |  Buckley's advocacy of the dangerous, mind-wrecking
 |  substance, marijuana, and of Buckley's recent, publicly
 |  expressed sympathies for sodomy between male public school
 |  teachers and students....
 |
 |  "As the anglophile commitments [of the blue-blooded
 |  families] deepened and decayed, the families reflected this
 |  in part by a growth of the incidence of 'homosexuality' for
 |  which British public schools and universities are rightly
 |  notorious. Skull and Bones is a concentrated expression of
 |  that moral and intellectual degeneration."
 |
 |  LaRouche pointed out that the symbol of Skull and Bones is
 |  the skull and crossbones of the pirate Jolly Roger with
 |  "322" placed under the crossbones. The 322 is thought to
 |  refer to 322 B.C., the year of the death of the Athenian
 |  orator Demosthenes, whom LaRouche identified as a traitor to
 |  Athens and an agent provocateur in the service of King
 |  Philip of Macedonia. The Skull and Bones ceremony of
 |  induction and initiation is modeled on the death and
 |  resurrection fetish of the cult of Osiris in ancient Egypt.
 |  LaRouche described the so-called "Persian model" of
 |  oligarchical rule sought by Skull and Bones:
 |
 |  "The 'oligarchical' or 'Persian' model was what might be
 |  called today a 'neo-Malthusian' sort of 'One World' scheme.
 |  Science and technological progress were to be essentially
 |  crushed and most of the world turned back into
 |  labor-intensive, 'appropriate' technologies. By driving
 |  civilization back toward barbarism in that way, the sponsors
 |  of the 'oligarchical model' proposed to ensure the
 |  perpetuation of a kind of 'one world' rule by what we would
 |  term today a 'feudal landlord' class. To aid in bringing
 |  about that '"One World Order",' the sponsors of the project
 |  utilized a variety of religious cults. Some of these cults
 |  were designed for the most illiterate strata of the
 |  population, and, at the other extreme, other cults were
 |  designed for the indoctrination and control of the ruling
 |  elite themselves. The cult-organization under the Roman
 |  Empire is an excellent example of what was intended."
 |
 |  LaRouche went on: "Skull and Bones is no mere fraternity, no
 |  special alumni association with added mumbo-jumbo. It is a
 |  very serious, very dedicated cult-conspiracy against the
 |  U.S. Constitution. Like the Cambridge Apostles, the initiate
 |  to the Skull and Bones is a dedicated agent of British
 |  secret intelligence for life. The fifteen Yale recruits
 |  added each year function as a powerful secret intelligence
 |  association for life, penetrating into our nation's
 |  intelligence services as well as related high levels of
 |  national policy-making.
 |
 |  "Representatives of the cult who have functioned in that way
 |  include Averell Harriman, Henry Luce, Henry Stimson, Justice
 |  Potter Stewart, McGeorge Bundy, Rev. William Sloane Coffin
 |  (who recruited William F. Buckley), William Bundy, J.
 |  Richardson Dilworth, and George Bush ... and many more
 |  notables. The list of related Yalies in the history of the
 |  CIA accounts for many of the CIA's failures and ultimate
 |  destruction by the Kennedy machine, including the reason
 |  Yalie James Jesus Angleton failed to uncover H. 'Kim'
 |  Philby's passing of CIA secrets to Moscow.
 |
 |  "Now, the ordinary citizen should begi n to realize how
 |  George Bush became a kook-cultist, and also how so
 |  incompetent a figure as Bush was appointed for a while
 |  Director of Central Intelligence for the CIA....
 |
 |  "On the record, the ordinary citizen who knew something of
 |  Bush's policies and sympathies would class him as a 'Peking
 |  sympathizer,' hence a Communist sympathizer."
 |
 |  Focusing on Bush's links with the Maoist regime, LaRouche
 |  stressed the recent genocide in Cambodia: "The genocide of
 |  three out of seven million Cambodians by the Peking puppet
 |  regime of Pol Pot (1975-78) was done under the direction of
 |  battalions of Peking bureaucrats controlling every detail of
 |  the genocide -- the worst genocide of the present century to
 |  date. This genocide, which was aimed especially against all
 |  merely literate Cambodians as well as professional strata,
 |  had the purpose of sending all of Southeast Asia back into a
 |  'dark age.' That 'dark age' policy is the policy of the
 |  present Peking regime. That is the regime which Kissinger,
 |  Bush and Brzezinski admire so much as an 'ally'....
 |
 |  "The leading circles of London have no difficulty in
 |  recognizing what 'Peking Communism' is. It is their
 |  philosophy, their policy in a Chinese mandarin culture form.
 |  To the extent that Yalies of the Skull and Bones sort are
 |  brought into the same culture as their superiors in London,
 |  such Yalies, like Bush, also have deep affection for 'Peking
 |  Communism.'
 |
 |  "Like Bush, who supports neo-Malthusian doctrines and
 |  zero-growth and anti-nuclear policies, the Peking rulers are
 |  dedicated to a 'one world' order in which the population is
 |  halved over the next twenty years (i.e. genocide far greater
 |  than Hitler's), and most of the survivors are driven into
 |  barbarism and cultism under the rule of parasitical blue
 |  blood families of the sort represented in the membership of
 |  the Skull and Bones.
 |
 |  "In that sense, Bush is to be viewed without quibble as a
 |  'Manchurian candidate.' From the vantage point of the U.S.
 |  Constitution and American System of technological progress
 |  and capital formation, Bush is in effect an agent of the
 |  same evil philosophies and policies as the rulers of Peking.
 |
 |  "That, dear friends, is not mere opinion; that is hard
 |  fact." [10] 
 |
 |  This leaflet represented the most accurate and devastating
 |  personal and political indictment Bush had ever received in
 |  his career. It was clear that LaRouche had Bush's number.
 |  The linking of Bush with the Cambodian genocide is all the
 |  more surprising, since most of the evidence on Bush's role
 |  was at that time not in the public domain. Other aspects of
 |  LaRouche's comments are prophetic: Bush's "deep affection"
 |  for Chinese communism was to become an international scandal
 |  when Bush maintained his solidarity with Deng Xiaoping after
 |  the Tiananmen massacre of 1989. Outstanding is LaRouche's
 |  reference to the 'One World Order' which the world began to
 |  wonder about as the 'New World Order' in the late summer of
 |  1990, during the buildup for Bush's Gulf war; LaRouche had
 |  identified the policy content of the term way back in 1980.
 |
 |  Bush's handlers were stunned, then enraged. No one had ever
 |  dared to stand up to George Bush and Skull and Bones like
 |  this before. The Bush entourage wanted revenge. A vote fraud
 |  to deprive LaRouche of virtually all the votes cast in the
 |  Democratic primary, and transfer as many of them as possible
 |  to the Bush column, would be the first installment. Later,
 |  Gary Howard and Ron Tucker, two agents provocateur from
 |  Midland, Texas, were dispatched to try to infiltrate
 |  pro-LaRouche political circles. From 1986 on, Bush would
 |  emerge as a principal sponsor of a judicial vendetta by the
 |  Department of Justice that would see LaRouche and several of
 |  his supporters twice indicted, and finally convicted, on a
 |  series of trumped-up charges. One week after George Bush's
 |  inauguration as President, his most capable and determined
 |  opponent, Lyndon LaRouche, would be thrown into federal
 |  prison, where he remains to this day.
 |
 |  But in the New Hampshire of 1979-80, LaRouche's attacks on
 |  Bush brought into precise focus many aspects of Bush's
 |  personality that voters found profoundly distasteful.
 |  LaRouche's attack sent out a shock wave, which, as it
 |  advanced, detonated one turbulent assault on Bush after the
 |  other.
 |
 |  One who was caught up in the turbulence was William Loeb,
 |  the opinionated curmudgeon of Pride's Crossing,
 |  Massachusetts who was the publisher of the Manchester "Union
 |  Leader", the most important newspaper in the state. Loeb had
 |  supported Reagan in 1976 and was for him again in 1980. Loeb
 |  might have dispersed his fire against all of Reagan's
 |  Republican rivals, including Howard Baker, Robert Dole, Phil
 |  Crane, John Anderson, John Connally and Bush. It was the
 |  LaRouche campaign which demonstrated to Loeb long before the
 |  Iowa caucuses that Bush was the main rival to Reagan, and
 |  therefore the principal target. As a result, Loeb would
 |  launch a barrage of slashing attacks on Bush.
 |
 |  Loeb had assailed Ford as "Gerry the Jerk" in 1976; his
 |  attacks on Sen. Edmund Muskie reduced the latter to tears
 |  during the 1972 primary. Loeb began to play up the theme of
 |  Bush as a liberal, as a candidate controlled by the
 |  "internationalist" (or Kissinger) wing of the GOP and the
 |  Wall Street bankers, always soft on communism and always
 |  ready to undermine liberty through Big Government here at
 |  home. A February editorial by Loeb reacted to Bush's Iowa
 |  success with these warnings of vote fraud: "The Bush
 |  operation in Iowa had all the smell of a CIA covert
 |  operation.... Strange aspects of the Iowa operation
 |  [included] a long, slow count and then the computers broke
 |  down at a very convenient point, with Bush having a six per
 |  cent bulge over Reagan.... Will the elite nominate their
 |  man, or will we nominate Reagan?" [11] 
 |
 |  For Loeb, the most damning evidence was Bush's membership in
 |  the Trilateral Commission, the creature of David Rockefeller
 |  and the international bankers. Carter and his administration
 |  had been packed with Trilateral members; there were
 |  indications that the Establishment choice of Carter to be
 |  the next U.S. President had been made at a meeting of the
 |  Trilateral Commission in Kyodo, Japan, where Carter had been
 |  introduced by Gianni Agnelli of Italy's FIAT motor company.
 |
 |  Loeb simplified all that: "George Bush is a Liberal" was the
 |  title of his editorial published the day before the primary.
 |  Loeb flayed Bush as a "spoiled little rich kid who has been
 |  wet-nursed to succeed and now, packaged by David
 |  Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission, thinks he is entitled
 |  to the White House as his latest toy."
 |
 |  Shortly before the election Loeb ran a cartoon entitled
 |  "Silk Stocking Republicans," which showed Bush at a cocktail
 |  party with a cigarette and glass in hand. Bush and the other
 |  participants, all male, were wearing women's pantyhose.
 |
 |  Paid political ads began to appear in the "Union Leader"
 |  sponsored by groups from all over the country, some helped
 |  along by John Sears of the Reagan campaign. One showed a
 |  drawing of Bush juxtaposed with a Mr. Peanut logo: "The same
 |  people who gave you Jimmy Carter want now to give you George
 |  Bush," read the headline. The text described a "coalition of
 |  liberals, multinational corporate executives, big-city
 |  bankers, and hungry power brokers" led by David Rockefeller,
 |  whose "purpose is to control the American government,
 |  regardless of which political party -- Democrat or
 |  Republican -- wins the presidency this coming November! ...
 |  The Trojan horse for this scheme," the ad went on, "is
 |  Connecticut-Yankee-turned-Texas oilman George Bush -- the
 |  out-of-nowhere Republican who openly admits he is using the
 |  same 'game-plan' developed for Jimmy Carter in the 1976
 |  presidential nomination campaign." The ad went on to mention
 |  the Council on Foreign Relations and the "Rockefeller money"
 |  that was the lifeblood of Bush's effort.
 |
 |  While campaigning, Bush was asked once again about the money
 |  he received from Nixon's 1970 Townhouse slush fund. Bush's
 |  stock reply was that his friend Leon Jaworski had cleared
 |  him: "The answer came back, clean, clean, clean," said Bush.
 |
 |  By now the Reagan camp had caught on that something
 |  important was happening, something which could benefit
 |  Reagan enormously. First Reagan's crony Edwin Meese piped up
 |  an oblique reference to the Trilateral membership of some
 |  candidates, including Bush: "[A]ll these people come out of
 |  an international economic industrial organization with a
 |  pattern of thinking on world affairs" that led to a
 |  "softening on defense." That played well, and Reagan decided
 |  he would pick up the theme. On February 7, 1980, Reagan
 |  observed in a speech that 19 key members of the Carter
 |  administration, including Carter, were members of the
 |  Trilateral Commission. According to Reagan, this influence
 |  had indeed led to a "softening on defense" because of the
 |  Trilateraloids' belief that business "should transcend,
 |  perhaps, the national defense." [12] 
 |
 |  Bush realized that he was faced with an ugly problem. He
 |  summarily resigned from both the Trilateral Commission and
 |  from the New York Council on Foreign Relations. But his
 |  situation in New Hampshire was desperate. His cover had been
 |  largely blown.
 |
 |  Now the real polls, the ones that are generally not
 |  published, showed Bush collapsing, and even media that would
 |  normally have been rabidly pro-Bush were obliged to distance
 |  themselves from him in order to defend their own
 |  "credibility."
 |
 |  Bush was now running scared, sufficiently so as to entertain
 |  the prospect of a debate among candidates.
 |
 |  Notes for Chapter XVII
 |
 |  1. Albert Pike to Robert Toombs, May 20, 1861 in "The War of
 |  the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the
 |  Union and Confederate Armies" (Washington: U.S. Government
 |  Printing Office, 1881), Series I, Vol. III, pp. 580-81. See
 |  also James David Carter, "History of the Supreme Council,
 |  330 (Mother Council of the World), Ancient and Accepted
 |  Scottish Rite of Freemasonry Southern Jurisdiction, U.S.A.,
 |  1861-1891" (Washington: The Supreme Council, 330, 1967), pp.
 |  5-24, and James David Carter, Ed., "The First Century of
 |  Scottish Rite Masonry in Texas: 1867-1967" (Texas Scottish
 |  Rite Bodies, 1967), pp. 32-33, 42.
 |
 |  2. Fredericka Meiners, "A History of Rice University: The
 |  Institute Years, 1907-1963" (Houston: Rice University,
 |  1982).
 |
 |  3. Ronald Brownstein and Nina Easton, "Reagan's Ruling
 |  Class" (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983), p. 650.
 |
 |  4. Joe Conason, "Company Man," "Village Voice," Oct. 1988.
 |
 |  5. Bob Callahan, "Agents for Bush," "Covert Action
 |  Information Bulletin," No. 33 (Winter 1990), pp. 5 ff.
 |
 |  6. Harry Hurt III, "George Bush, Plucky Lad," "Texas
 |  Monthly," June 1983, p. 206.
 |
 |  7. L. Wolfe, "King George VII Campaigns in New Hampshire,"
 |  "New Solidarity," Jan. 8, 1980.
 |
 |  8. Jeff Greenfield, "The Real Campaign" (New York: Summit
 |  Books, 1982), pp. 36-37.
 |
 |  9. See Lyndon LaRouche, "Is Republican George Bush a
 |  'Manchurian Candidate'?" issued by Citizens for LaRouche,
 |  Manchester, New Hampshire, Jan. 12, 1980.
 |
 |  10. Quoted in Greenfield, "op. cit.," p. 44.
 |
 |  11. Manchester "Union Leader," Feb. 24, 1980.
 |
 |  12. Sidney Blumenthal, "The Rise of the
 |  Counter-Establishment" (New York: Perennial Library, 1988),
 |  pp. 82-83.
 |
 |  "XVII: Campaign 1980"
 |
 |  Epiphany of a Scoundrel
 |
 |  John Sears of the Reagan campaign signaled to the "Nashua
 |  Telegraph", a paper published in southern New Hampshire,
 |  that Reagan would accept a one-on-one debate with Bush.
 |  James Baker was gulled: He welcomed the idea because the
 |  debate format would establish Bush as the main alternative
 |  to Reagan. "We thought it was the best thing since sliced
 |  bread," said Baker. Bob Dole complained to the Federal
 |  Elections Commission about being excluded, and the Reagan
 |  camp suggested that the debate be paid for out of campaign
 |  funds, half by Reagan and half by Bush. Bush refused to pay,
 |  but Reagan pronounced himself willing to defray the entire
 |  cost. Thus it came to pass that a bilateral Bush-Reagan
 |  debate was scheduled for February 23 at a gymnasium in
 |  Nashua.
 |
 |  For many, this evening would provide the epiphany of George
 |  Bush, a moment when his personal essence was made manifest.
 |
 |  Bush propaganda has always tried to portray the "Nashua
 |  Telegraph" debate as some kind of ambush planned by Reagan's
 |  diabolical campaign manager, John Sears. Established facts
 |  include that the "Nashua Telegraph" owner, blueblood J.
 |  Herman Pouliot, and "Telegraph" editor John Breen, were both
 |  close personal friends of former Governor Hugh Gregg, who
 |  was Bush's campaign director in the state. Bush had met with
 |  Breen before the debate. Perhaps it was Bush who was trying
 |  to set some kind of a trap for Reagan.
 |
 |  On the night of February 23, the gymnasium was packed with
 |  more than 2,400 people. Bush's crony, Rep. Barber Conable
 |  (or "Barbarian Cannibal," later Bush's man at the World
 |  Bank), was there with a group of congressmen for Bush. Then
 |  the excluded GOP candidates, John Anderson, Howard Baker,
 |  Bob Dole, and Phil Crane, all arrived and asked to meet with
 |  Reagan and Bush to discuss opening the debate up to them as
 |  well. (Connally, also a candidate, was in South Carolina.)
 |  Reagan agreed to meet with them and went backstage into a
 |  small office with the other candidates. He expressed a
 |  general willingness to let them join in. But Bush refused to
 |  talk to the other candidates, and sat on the stage waiting
 |  impatiently for the debate to begin. John Sears told Bush's
 |  press secretary, Peter Teeley, that Sears wanted to talk to
 |  Bush about the debate format. "It doesn't work that way,"
 |  hissed the liberal Teeley, who sent James Baker to talk with
 |  Sears. Sears said it was time to have an open debate. Baker
 |  passed the buck to the "Nashua Telegraph".
 |
 |  >From the room behind the stage where the candidates were
 |  meeting, the Reagan people sent U.S. Senator Gordon Humphrey
 |  out to urge Bush to come and confer with the rest of them.
 |  "If you don't come now," said Humphrey to  Bush, "you're
 |  doing a disservice to party unity." Bush whined in reply:
 |  "Don't tell me about unifying the Republican Party! I've
 |  done more for this party than you'll ever do! I've worked
 |  too hard for this and they're not going to take it away from
 |  me!" In the back room, there was a proposal that Reagan,
 |  Baker, Dole, Anderson, and Crane should go on stage together
 |  and announce that Reagan would refuse to debate unless the
 |  others were included.
 |
 |  "Everyone seemed quite irritated with Bush, whom they viewed
 |  as acting like a spoiled child," wrote an aide to Anderson
 |  later. [13]  Bush refused to even acknowledge the presence
 |  of Dole, who had helped him get started as GOP chairman; of
 |  Anderson and Crane, former House colleagues; and of Howard
 |  Baker, who had helped him get confirmed at the CIA. George
 |  kept telling anybody who came close that he was sticking
 |  with the original rules.
 |
 |  The audience was cheering for the four excluded candidates,
 |  demanding that they be allowed to speak. Publisher Pouliot
 |  addressed the crowd: "This is getting to sound more like a
 |  boxing match. In the rear are four other candidates who have
 |  not been invited by the "Nashua Telegraph"," said Pouliot.
 |  He was roundly booed. "Get them chairs," cried a woman, and
 |  she was applauded. Bush kept staring straight ahead into
 |  space, and the hostility of the crowd was focusing more and
 |  more on him.
 |
 |  Reagan started to speak, motivating why the debate should be
 |  opened up. Editor Breen, a rubbery-looking hack with a bald
 |  pate and glasses, piped up: "Turn Mr. Reagan's microphone
 |  off." There was pandemonium. "You Hitler!" screamed a man in
 |  the front row right at Breen.
 |
 |  Reagan replied: "I'm paying for this microphone, Mr. Breen."
 |  The crowd broke out in wild cheers. Bush still stared
 |  straight ahead in his temper tantrum. Reagan spoke on to ask
 |  that the others be included, saying that exclusion was
 |  unfair. But he was unsure of himself, looking to Nancy
 |  Reagan for a sign as to what he should do. At the end,
 |  Reagan said he would prefer an open debate, but that he
 |  would accept the bilateral format if that were the only way.
 |
 |  With that, the other candidates left the podium in a
 |  towering rage. "There'll be another day, George," growled
 |  Bob Dole.
 |
 |  Reagan and Bush then debated, and those who were still
 |  paying attention agreed that Bush was the loser. A staff
 |  member later told Bush, "The good news is that nobody paid
 |  any attention to the debate. The bad news is y ou lost that,
 |  too."
 |
 |  Film footage of Reagan grabbing the microphone while Bush
 |  stewed in his temper tantrum was all over local and network
 |  television for the next 48 hours. It was the epiphany of a
 |  scoundrel.
 |
 |  Now the Bush damage control apparatus went into that mode it
 |  finds so congenial: lying. A radio commercial was prepared
 |  under orders from James Baker for New Hampshire stations:
 |  Here an announcer, not Bush, intoned that "at no time did
 |  George Bush object to a full candidate forum. This
 |  accusation by the other candidates is without foundation
 |  whatsoever."
 |
 |  Walter Cronkite heard a whining voice from Houston, Texas as
 |  he interviewed Bush on his new program: "I wanted to do what
 |  I agreed to do," said the whine. "I wanted to debate with
 |  Ronald Reagan."
 |
 |  The New Hampshire primary was a debacle for Bush. Reagan won
 |  50 percent of the votes to George's 23 percent, with 13
 |  percent for Baker and 10 percent for Anderson. [14] 
 |
 |  Bush played out the string through the primaries, but he won
 |  only four states (Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania
 |  and Michigan) plus Puerto Rico. Reagan took 29. Even in
 |  Pennsylvania, where the Bushmen outspent Reagan by a
 |  colossal margin, Reagan managed to garner more delegates
 |  even though Bush got more votes.
 |
 |  Bush was able to keep going after New Hampshire because
 |  Mosbacher's machinations had given him a post-New Hampshire
 |  war chest of $3 million. The Reagan camp had spent
 |  two-thirds of their legal total expenditure of $18 million
 |  before the primaries had begun. This had proven effective,
 |  but it meant that in more than a dozen primaries, Reagan
 |  could afford no televis ion purchases at all. This allowed
 |  Bush to move in and smother Reagan under a cascade of
 |  greenbacks in a few states, even though Reagan was on his
 |  way to the nomination. That was the story in Pennsylvania
 |  and Michigan. The important thing for Bush now was to
 |  outlast the other candidates and to build his credentials
 |  for the vice-presidency, since that was what he was now
 |  running for.
 |
 |  Seeking his 'Birthright'
 |
 |  All the money and organization had not sufficed. After some
 |  expensive primary failures, Bush now turned his entire
 |  attention to the quest for his "birthright," the
 |  vice-presidency. This would be his fifth attempt to attain
 |  that office, and once again, despite the power of Bush's
 |  network, success was uncertain.
 |
 |  Inside the Reagan camp, one of Bush's greatest assets would
 |  be William Casey, who had been closely associated with the
 |  late Prescott Bush. Casey was to be Reagan's campaign
 |  manager for the final phase of the 1980 elections. In 1962,
 |  Prescott and Casey had co-founded a think tank called the
 |  National Strategy Information Center in New York City, a
 |  forum where Wall Street lawyers like Casey could join hands
 |  with politicians from Prescott's wing of the Republican
 |  Party, financiers, and the intelligence community. The
 |  National Strategy Information Center provided material for a
 |  news agency called Forum World Features, a CIA proprietary
 |  that operated in London, and which was in liaison with the
 |  British Information Research Department, a Cold War
 |  propaganda unit set up by Christopher Mayhew of British
 |  intelligence with the approval of Prime Minister Clement
 |  Attlee.
 |
 |  This Prescott Bush-William Casey think tank promoted the
 |  creation of endowed chairs in strategic analysis, national
 |  intelligence and the like on a number of campuses. The
 |  Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies,
 |  later the home of Kissinger, Michael Ledeen and a whole
 |  stable of ideologues of the Anglo-American empire, was in
 |  part a result of the work of Casey and Prescott.
 |
 |  Casey was also a close associate of George Bush. During
 |  1976, Ford appointed Casey to PFIAB, where Casey was an
 |  enthusiastic supporter of the Team B operation along with
 |  Bush and Leo Cherne. George Bush and Casey would play
 |  decisive roles in the secret government operations of the
 |  Reagan years.
 |
 |  As the Republican convention gathered in Detroit in July
 |  1980, the problem was to convince Reagan of the
 |  inevitability of tapping Bush as his running mate. But
 |  Reagan did not want Bush. He had conceived an antipathy,
 |  even a hostility, for George. What Reagan had experienced
 |  personally from Bush during the "Nashua Telegraph" debate
 |  had left a lasting and highly derogatory impression.
 |
 |  According to one account of this phase, "ever since the
 |  episode in Nashua in February, Reagan had come to hold the
 |  preppy Yankee transplant in, as the late Senator Robert Kerr
 |  of Oklahoma used to say, minimum high regard. 'Reagan is a
 |  very gracious contestant,' one of his inner circle said,
 |  'and he generally views his opponents with a good deal of
 |  respect. The thing he couldn't understand was Bush's conduct
 |  at the "Nashua Telegraph" debate. It imprinted with Reagan
 |  that Bush was a wimp. He remembered that night clearly when
 |  we had our vice-presidential discussions. He couldn't
 |  understand how a man could have sat there so passively. He
 |  felt it showed a lack of courage." And now that it was time
 |  to think about a running mate, the prospective presidential
 |  nominee gave a sympathetic ear to those who objected to Bush
 |  for reasons that ran, one of the group said later, from his
 |  behavior at Nashua to 'anti-Trilateralism.'|" According to
 |  this account, conservatives seeking to stop Bush at the
 |  convention were citing their suspicions about a
 |  "|'conspiracy' backed by Rockefeller to gain control of the
 |  American government." [15] 
 |
 |  Drew Lewis was a leading Bushman submarine in the Reagan
 |  camp, telling the candidate that Bush could help him in
 |  electoral college mega-states like Pennsylvania and Michigan
 |  where Ted Kennedy had demonstrated that Carter was
 |  vulnerable during the primaries. Lewis badgered Reagan with
 |  the prospect that if he waited too long, he would have to
 |  accept a politically neutral running mate in the way that
 |  Ford took Dole in 1976, which might end up costing him the
 |  election. According to Lewis, Reagan needed to broaden his
 |  base, and Bush was the most palatable and practical vehicle
 |  for doing so.
 |
 |  Much to his credit, Reagan resisted; "[H]e told several
 |  staff members and advisers that he still harbored 'doubts'
 |  about Bush, based on Nashua. 'If he can't stand up to that
 |  kind of pressure,' Reagan told one intimate, 'how could he
 |  stand up to the pressure of being President?' To another, he
 |  said: 'I want to be very frank with you. I have strong
 |  reservations about George Bush. I'm concerned about turning
 |  the country over to him.'|"
 |
 |  As the convention came closer, Reagan continued to be
 |  hounded by Bushmen from inside and outside his own campaign.
 |  A few days before the convention, it began to dawn on Reagan
 |  that one alternative to the unpalatable Bush might be former
 |  President Gerald Ford, assuming the latter could be
 |  convinced to make the run. Two days before Reagan left for
 |  Detroit, according to one of his strategists, Reagan "came
 |  to the conclusion that it would be Bush, but he wasn't all
 |  that happy about it." [16]  But this was not yet the last
 |  word.
 |
 |  Casey, Meese and Michael Deaver sounded out Ford, who was
 |  reluctant but did not issue a categorical rejection. Stuart
 |  Spencer, Ford's 1976 campaign manager, reported to Reagan on
 |  his contacts with Ford. "Ron," Spencer said, "Ford ain't
 |  gonna do it, and you're gonna pick Bush." But judging from
 |  Reagan's reaction, Spencer recalled later, "There was no way
 |  he was going to pick Bush," and the reason was simple:
 |  Reagan just didn't like the guy. "It was chemistry," Spencer
 |  said. [17] 
 |
 |  Reagan now had to be ground down by an assortment of Eastern
 |  Liberal Establishment perception-mongers and political
 |  heavies. Much of the well-known process of negotiation
 |  between Reagan and Ford for the "Dream Ticket" of 1980 was
 |  simply a charade to disorient and demoralize Reagan while
 |  eating up the clock, until the point was reached when Reagan
 |  would have no choice but to make the classic phone call to
 |  Bush. It is obvious that Reagan offered the vice-presidency
 |  to Ford, and that the latter refused to accept it outright,
 |  but engaged in a process of negotiations ostensibly in order
 |  to establish the conditions under which he might,
 |  eventually, accept. [18]  Casey called in Henry Kissinger
 |  and asked him to intercede with Ford. What then developed
 |  was a marathon of haggling in which Ford was represented by
 |  Kissinger, Alan Greenspan, Jack Marsh and Bob Barrett.
 |  Reagan was represented by Casey, Meese and perception-monger
 |  Richard Wirthlin. Dick Cheney, Ford's former chief of staff,
 |  who is now Bush's pro-genocide secretary of defense, also
 |  got into the act.
 |
 |  This complex strategy of intrigue culminated in Ford's
 |  notorious interview with Walter Cronkite, in which the CBS
 |  anchorman asked Ford if "It's got to be something like a
 |  co-presidency?" "That's something Governor Reagan really
 |  ought to consider," replied Ford, which was not what a
 |  serious vice-presidential candidate might say, but did
 |  correspond rather well to what "Gerry the Jerk" would say if
 |  he wanted to embarrass Reagan and help Bush.
 |
 |  The best indication that Ford had been working all along as
 |  an agent of Bush was provided by Ford himself to Germond and
 |  Witcover: "Ford, incidentally, told us after the election
 |  that one of his prime objectives at the convention had been
 |  'to subtly help George Bush get the [vice-presidential]
 |  nomination.'|" [19] 
 |
 |  Drew Lewis helped Reagan make the call that he found so
 |  distasteful. Reagan came on the line: "Hello, George, this
 |  is Ron Reagan. I'd like to go over to the convention and
 |  announce that you're my choice for vice president ... if
 |  that's all right with you."
 |
 |  "I'd be honored, Governor."
 |
 |  Reagan now proceeded to the convention floor, where he would
 |  announce his choice of Bush. Knowing that this decision
 |  would alienate many of Reagan's ideological backers, the
 |  Reagan campaign leaked the news that Bush had been chosen to
 |  the media, so that it would quickly spread to the convention
 |  floor. They were seeking to cushion the blow, to avoid mass
 |  expressions of disgust when Bush's name was announced. Even
 |  as it was, there was much groaning and booing among the
 |  Reagan faithful.
 |
 |  As the Detroit convention came to a close, the Reagan and
 |  Bush campaign staffs were merged, with James Baker assuming
 |  a prominent position in the Casey-run Reagan campaign. The
 |  Ray Cline, Halper, and Gambino operations were all
 |  continued. From this point on, Reagan's entourage would be
 |  heavily infiltrated by Bushmen.
 |
 |  The October Surprise
 |
 |  The Reagan-Bush campaign, now chock full of Bush's Brown
 |  Brothers Harriman/Skull and Bones assets, announced a
 |  campaign of espionage. This campaign told reporters that it
 |  was going to spy on the Carter regime.
 |
 |  Back in April, Carter had taken to live television at 7:00
 |  a.m. one morning to announce some ephemeral progress in his
 |  efforts to secure the release of State Department officials
 |  and others from the U.S. embassy in Teheran, who were being
 |  held as hostages by the Khomeini forces in Iran. This
 |  announcement was timed to coincide with Democratic primaries
 |  in Kansas and Wisconsin, in which Carter was able to
 |  overwhelm challenges from Teddy Kennedy and Jerry Brown. A
 |  memo from Richard Wirthlin to Casey and Reagan initiated a
 |  discussion of how the Carter gang might exploit the
 |  advantages of incumbency in order to influence the outcome
 |  of the election, perhaps by attempting to stampede the
 |  public by some dramatic event at the last minute, such as
 |  the freeing of the hostages in Teheran. On April 24, a
 |  military task force failed to free the hostages. Casey began
 |  to institute countermeasures even before the Detroit GOP
 |  convention.
 |
 |  During the convention, at a July 14 press conference, Casey
 |  told reporters of his concern that Carter might spring an
 |  "October Surprise" in foreign or domestic policy on the eve
 |  of the November elections. He announced that he had set up
 |  what he called an "incumbency watch" to monitor Carter's
 |  activities and decisions. Casey explained that an
 |  "intelligence operation" directed against the Carter White
 |  House was functioning "already in germinal form." Ed Meese,
 |  who was with Casey at this press conference, added that the
 |  October Surprise "could be anything from a summit conference
 |  on energy" or development in Latin America, or perhaps the
 |  imposition of "wage and price controls" on the domestic
 |  economy.
 |
 |  "We've talked about the October surprise and what the
 |  October surprise will be," said Casey. "I think it's immoral
 |  and improper." [20] 
 |
 |  The previous evening, in a television appearance, Reagan had
 |  suggested that "the Soviet Union is going to throw a few
 |  bones to Mr. Carter during this coming campaign to help him
 |  continue as President."
 |
 |  Although Casey and Meese had defined a broad range of
 |  possibilities for the October Surprise, the most prominent
 |  of these was certainly the liberation of the American
 |  hostages in Iran. A poll showed that if the hostages were to
 |  be released during the period between October 18 and October
 |  25, Carter could receive a 10 percent increase in popular
 |  vote on election day.
 |
 |  The "incumbency watch" set up by Casey would go beyond
 |  surveillance and become a dirty tricks operation against
 |  Carter.
 |
 |  What followed was in essence a pitched battle between two
 |  fascist gangs, the Carter White House and the Bush-Casey
 |  forces. Out of this 1980 gang warfare, the post-1981 United
 |  States regime would emerge.
 |
 |  Carter and Brzezinski had deliberately toppled the Shah of
 |  Iran, and deliberately installed Khomeini in power. This was
 |  an integral part of Brzezinski's "arc of crisis"
 |  geopolitical lunacy, another made-in-London artifact which
 |  called for the United States to support the rise of
 |  Khomeini, and his personal brand of fanaticism, a militant
 |  heresy within Islam. U.S. arms deliveries were made to Iran
 |  during the time of the Shah; during the short-lived Shahpour
 |  Bakhtiar government at the end of the Shah's reign; and
 |  continuously after the advent of Khomeini.
 |
 |  Subsequently, President Carter and senior members of his
 |  administration have suggested that the Reagan/Bush campaign
 |  cut a deal with the Khomeini regime to block the liberation
 |  of the hostages before the November 1980 election. By early
 |  1992, the charges and countercharges reached such a fever
 |  pitch that a preliminary congressional investigation of the
 |  affair had been initiated.
 |
 |  In March 1992, "Executive Intelligence Review" issued a
 |  Special Report titled, "Treason in Washington: New Evidence
 |  on the 'October Surprise,'|" [21]  which presented extensive
 |  new evidence from internal FBI and CIA documents, released
 |  under the Freedom of Information Act, that suggests that the
 |  then-Republican vice-presidential candidate played a
 |  personal role in keeping the hostages in Khomeini's hands
 |  until after Election Day 1980; and that Casey, a personal
 |  friend of Bush's father and Reagan's CIA director,
 |  coordinated the operation.
 |
 |  The central link suggesting Bush's role in the scandal was
 |  Cyrus Hashemi, an Iranian arms dealer and agent of the
 |  Iranian SAVAK secret police, whom Casey seems to have
 |  recruited as a liaison to the mullahs.
 |
 |  On December 7, 1979, less than two months after the hostages
 |  were seized, Carter's assistant secretary of state, Harold
 |  Saunders, was contacted by an intermediary for Cyrus
 |  Hashemi. The Iranian arms merchant proposed a deal to free
 |  the hostages, and submitted a memorandum calling for the
 |  following: removal of the ailing expatriate Shah from U.S.
 |  territory; an apology by the United States to the people of
 |  Iran for past U.S. interference; the creation of a United
 |  Nations Commission; the unfreezing of the Iranian financial
 |  assets seized by Carter; and arms and spare parts deliveries
 |  by the United States to Iran. All of this was summed up in a
 |  memorandum submitted to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance
 |  following meetings with Hashemi and his attorney. [22] 
 |
 |  The notable aspect of this encounter is the identity of the
 |  American lawyer who was both the business partner and the
 |  intermediary for the Iranian gun-runner: John Stanley
 |  Pottinger. The account of the 1976 Letelier case provided
 |  above (see Chapter 16) has established that Pottinger was a
 |  close friend of George Bush. Pottinger, it will be recalled,
 |  had served as assistant attorney general for civil rights in
 |  the Nixon and Ford administration s between 1973 and 1977,
 |  after having directed the U.S. Office of Civil Rights in the
 |  Justice Department between 1970 and 1973. Pottinger had also
 |  stayed on into the early Carter administration, serving as
 |  special assistant to the attorney general from February to
 |  April 1977. Pottinger had then joined the law firm of Tracy,
 |  Malin and Pottinger of Washington, London, and Paris. After
 |  the 1980 election, Pottinger was being considered for a
 |  high-level post in the Reagan/Bush administration.
 |
 |  This same Pottinger was now the representative for
 |  gun-runner Cyrus Hashemi. Given Pottinger's proven relation
 |  to Bush, we may wonder to what extent was Bush informed of
 |  Hashemi's proposal, and of the responses of the Carter
 |  administration.
 |
 |  Relevant evidence that might help us to determine what Bush
 |  knew and when he knew it is still being withheld by the Bush
 |  regime. The FBI bugged Cyrus Hashemi's phones and office
 |  from August 1980 to February 1981, and many of the
 |  conversations that were recorded were between Hashemi and
 |  Bush's friend Pottinger. Ten years later, in November 1991,
 |  the FBI released heavily redacted summaries of some of the
 |  conversations, but most of the summaries and transcripts are
 |  still classified.
 |
 |  "EIR"'s Special Report thoroughly documented how Pottinger
 |  was protected from indictment by the Reagan-Bush Justice
 |  Department. For years, prosecution of Hashemi and Pottinger,
 |  for illegally conspiring to ship weapons to the Khomeini
 |  regime, was blocked by the administration on "national
 |  security" grounds. Declassified FBI documents show that an
 |  indictment of Pottinger had been drawn up, but that the
 |  indictment was killed at the last minute in 1984 when the
 |  FBI "lost"crucial taped evidence. The FBI conducted an
 |  extensive internal investigation of the missing "Pottinger
 |  tapes" but the results have never been disclosed.
 |
 |  Other information on the intentions of the Khomeini regime
 |  and secret dealings may have reached Bush from his old
 |  friend and associate Mitchell Rogovin, the former CIA
 |  general counsel. During 1976, Rogovin had accompanied Bush
 |  on many trips to the capital to testify before congressional
 |  committees; the two were known to be close. Rogovin was
 |  credited with having saved the CIA after it came under major
 |  congressional and media attack in the mid-1970s. In the
 |  spring of 1980, Rogovin told the Carter administration that
 |  he had been approached by Iranian-American arms dealer
 |  Houshang Lavi with an offer to start negotiations for the
 |  release of the hostages. Lavi claimed to be an emissary of
 |  Iranian President Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr; Rogovin at this
 |  time was working as the lawyer for the John Anderson GOP
 |  presidential campaign.
 |
 |  Bush's family friend Casey had also been in direct contact
 |  with Iranian representatives. Jamshid Hashemi, the brother
 |  of Cyrus Hashemi (who died under suspicious circumstances
 |  during 1986), had told Gary Sick, a former official of
 |  Carter's National Security Council, that he met with William
 |  Casey at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. in March of
 |  1980 to discuss the hostages. According to Jamshid Hashemi,
 |  "Casey quickly made clear that he wanted to prevent Jimmy
 |  Carter from gaining any political advantage from the hostage
 |  crisis. The Hashemis agreed to cooperate with Casey without
 |  the knowledge of the Carter administration." [23] 
 |
 |  Casey's "intelligence operation" included the spying on the
 |  opposing candidate that has been routine in U.S. political
 |  campaigns for decades, but went far beyond it. As
 |  journalists like Witcover and Germond knew during the course
 |  of the campaign, and as the 1984 Albosta committee
 |  "Debategate" investigation showed, Casey set up at least two
 |  "October Surprise" espionage groups.
 |
 |  The first of these watched the Carter White House, the
 |  Washington bureaucracy, and diplomatic and intelligence
 |  posts overseas. This group was headed by Reagan's principal
 |  foreign policy adviser and later NSC chairman, Richard
 |  Allen. Allen was in touch with some 120 foreign policy and
 |  national security experts sympathetic to the Reagan
 |  campaign. Casey helped Allen to interface with the Bush
 |  campaign network of retired and active duty assets in the
 |  intelligence community. This network reached into the Carter
 |  NSC, where Bush crony Don Gregg worked as the CIA liaison
 |  man, and into Carter's top-secret White House situation
 |  room.
 |
 |  Another October Surprise monitoring group was headed by Adm.
 |  Robert Garrick. The task of this group was the physical
 |  surveillance of U.S. military bases by on-the-ground
 |  observers, often retired and sometimes active duty military
 |  officers. Lookouts were posted to watch Tinker Air Force
 |  Base in Oklahoma, Andrews Air Force Base near Washington,
 |  McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey (where weapons already
 |  bought and paid for by the Shah were stockpiled), and Norton
 |  and March Air Force bases in California.
 |
 |  Garrick, Casey, Meese, Wirthlin, and other campaign
 |  officials met each morning in Falls Church, Virginia, just
 |  outside of Washington, to review intelligence gathered.
 |
 |  This group soon became operational. It was clear that
 |  Khomeini was keeping the hostages to sell them to the
 |  highest bidder. Bush and Casey were not reticent about
 |  putting their own offer on the table.
 |
 |  Shortly after the GOP convention, Casey appears to have
 |  traveled to Europe for a meeting in Madrid in late July with
 |  Mehdi Karrubi, a leading Khomeini supporter, now the speaker
 |  of the Iranian Parliament. Jamshid Hashemi said that he and
 |  his late brother Cyrus were present at this meeting and at
 |  another one in Madrid during August, which they say Casey
 |  also attended. The present government of Iran has declined
 |  to confirm or deny this contact, saying that "the Islamic
 |  Government of Iran sees no benefit to involve itself in the
 |  matter."
 |
 |  Casey's whereabouts in the last days of July 1980 are
 |  officially unknown. Part of the coverup on the story has
 |  been to create uncertainty and confusion on Casey's travels
 |  at the time. What is known is that as soon as Casey surfaced
 |  again in Washington on July 30, he reported back to
 |  vice-presidential candidate George Bush in a dinner meeting
 |  held at the Alibi Club. It is certain from the evidence that
 |  there were negotiations with the mullahs by the Reagan-Bush
 |  camp, and that Bush was heavily involved at every stage.
 |
 |  In early September, Bush's brother, Prescott Bush, Jr.,
 |  became involved, with a letter to James Baker in which he
 |  described his contacts with a certain Herbert Cohen, a
 |  consultant to the Carter administration on Middle East
 |  matters. Cohen had promised to abort any possible Carter
 |  moves to "politicize" the hostage issue by openly denouncing
 |  any machinations that Carter might attempt. Prescott offered
 |  Baker a meeting with Cohen.
 |
 |  Sometime in fall 1980, there was a meeting at the L'Enfant
 |  Plaza Hotel in Washington among Richard Allen, Bud
 |  McFarlane, Laurence Silberman of the Reagan-Bush campaign,
 |  and a mysterious Iranian representative, thought to be an
 |  emissary of Hashemi Rafsanjani, currently Iranian President
 |  and an asset of U.S. intelligence who was then becoming one
 |  of the most powerful mullahs in Khomeini's entourage. The
 |  Iranian representative offered a deal whereby "he could get
 |  the hostages released directly to our campaign before the
 |  election," Silberman recalls. (Silberman went on to become a
 |  judge in the District of Columbia Appeals Court and led the
 |  vote in overturning Oliver North's conviction.) Allen has
 |  claimed that he cut this meeting short after 20 minutes.
 |  Allen, McFarlane, and Silberman all failed to report this
 |  approach to the White House, the State Department or other
 |  authorities.
 |
 |  On September 22, Iraq invaded Iran, starting a war that
 |  would last until the middle of 1988 and which would claim
 |  more than a million lives. The U.S. intelligence estimate
 |  had been that Khomeini and the mullahs were in danger of
 |  losing power by the end of 1980 because of their
 |  incompetence, corruption and benighted stupidity. U.S. and
 |  other Western intelligence agencies, especially the French,
 |  thereupon encouraged Iraq to attack Iran, offering the
 |  prospect of an easy victory. The "easy victory" analysis was
 |  incorporated into a "secret" CIA report which was delivered
 |  to the Saudi Arabian government with the suggestion that it
 |  be leaked to Iraq. The real U.S. estimate was that a war
 |  with Iraq would strengthen Khomeini against reformers who
 |  looked to President Bani-Sadr, and that the war emergency
 |  would assist in the imposition of a "new dark ages" regime
 |  in Iran. An added benefit was that Iran and Iraq as warring
 |  states would be forced vastly to increase their oil
 |  production, forcing down the oil price on the world market
 |  and thus providing the bankrupt U.S. dollar with an
 |  important subsidy in terms of the dollar's ability to
 |  command basic commodities in the real world. Bani-Sadr spoke
 |  in this connection of "an oil crisis in reverse" as a result
 |  of the Iran-Iraq war.
 |
 |  President Bani-Sadr, who was later deposed in a coup d'etat
 |  by Khomeini, Rafsanjani and Beheshti, has recalled that
 |  during this period, Khomeini decided to bet on Reagan-Bush.
 |  "So what if Reagan wins," said Khomeini. "Nothing will
 |  really change since he and Carter are both enemies of
 |  Islam."  [24] 
 |
 |  This was the time of the Reagan-Carter presidential debates,
 |  and Casey's operation had also yielded booty in this regard.
 |  Bush ally and then-Congressman David Stockman boasted in
 |  Indiana in late October that he had used a "pilfered copy"
 |  of Carter's personal briefing book to coach Reagan prior to
 |  the debates.
 |
 |  Many sources agree that a conclusive series of meetings
 |  between the Reagan-Bush and Khomeini forces took place in
 |  the weeks and months prior to Election Day 1980. In late
 |  1991, as the campaign season heated up, close to a score of
 |  articles appeared in the U.S. press responding to Gary
 |  Sick's "October Surprise" book, which gave credibility to
 |  the charge that the Reagan-Bush campaign had indeed made a
 |  dirty deal with the mullahs to prevent the release of the
 |  hostages. Even Carter, who said that he had heard such
 |  rumors back in 1980, now agreed that a congressional
 |  investigation would be helpful in settling the matter.
 |  President Bush and an entire gaggle of political operatives
 |  and neoconservative journalists denounced Sick's book and
 |  the accusation as the fantasies of "conspiracy theorists."
 |
 |  Sick and other journalists who published articles about the
 |  affair were severely criticized for retailing the stories of
 |  an assortment of intelligence informants, gun-runners, money
 |  launderers, pilots, and other flotsam and jetsam from the
 |  seamy side of international espionage and intrigue by
 |  pro-Bush journalists and congressional leaders opposed to
 |  probing the accusations. Immediately after the Iran-Contra
 |  scandal made headlines in early 1987, numerous sources
 |  surfaced and began to contact journalists with purported
 |  eyewitness accounts of meetings between Reagan/Bush campaign
 |  representatives and Khomeini intermediaries. Several of the
 |  sources said they had seen Bush and Casey at meetings in
 |  Europe with Khomeini's emissaries. Others offered bits and
 |  pieces of information complementing the eyewitness reports.
 |
 |  One source, Richard Brenneke, a self-admitted money
 |  launderer and pilot for the CIA, was indicted for perjury by
 |  a U.S. attorney in Colorado for saying he had been told by
 |  another alleged CIA pilot, Heinrich Rupp, that he had seen
 |  Bush in Paris in October 1980. Brenneke said that he had
 |  personally seen Casey and Donald Gregg in Paris at the same
 |  time. But a jury acquitted Brenneke. Later, Frank Snepp, a
 |  former CIA officer turned investigative reporter, did an
 |  expose published in the "Village Voice", allegedly proving
 |  that Brenneke could not have been in Paris in October 1980
 |  because he had obtained credit card receipts showing that
 |  Brenneke was in Oregon at the time he had told others he had
 |  been in Paris. The original source on Bush's secret trip to
 |  Paris was Oscar LeWinter, a German-based professional
 |  snitch, who seems to have done some work for both the
 |  Israeli Mossad and the CIA. LeWinter later admitted that he
 |  had been paid, allegedly by the CIA, to spread false
 |  information about Bush and Casey's secret trips to Europe
 |  for meetings with messengers from the mullahs.
 |
 |  Does that mean there is no smoking gun linking Bush to the
 |  "coincidence" that the hostages were only released on
 |  Inauguration Day 1981, within minutes of Reagan taking his
 |  presidential oath? No. What is clear, is that some
 |  intelligence apparatus deployed an elaborate disinformation
 |  campaign which created a false trail which could be
 |  discredited. The intelligence community operation of
 |  "damage-control" is premised on revealing some of the truth,
 |  mixed with half-truths and blatantly false facts, which
 |  allows the bigger story to be undermined. It is possible
 |  that Bush was not in Paris in October 1980 to meet with an
 |  Iranian delegation to seal the deal. Bush has heatedly
 |  denied that he was in Paris at this time, and has said that
 |  he personally did not negotiate with Khomeini envoys. But he
 |  has generally avoided a blanket denial that the campaign, of
 |  which he was a principal, engaged in surreptitious dealings
 |  with the Khomeini mullahs.
 |
 |  There is another intriguing possibility: During the same
 |  time frame that LeWinter and Brenneke (Oct. 18-19, 1980) say
 |  Bush was in Paris, an adversary of then-President Bani-Sadr
 |  and puppet of Khomeini, Prime Minister Ali Rajai, was in New
 |  York preparing to depart for Algiers after consultations at
 |  the United Nations. Rajai had refused all contact with
 |  Carter, Muskie, and other U.S. officials, but he may have
 |  been more interested in meeting Bush or one of his
 |  representatives. What is now well documented is, that
 |  throughout 1980, many Reagan/Bush campaign officials were
 |  tripping over themselves to meet with anyone purporting to
 |  be an Iranian. If a deal were to be authenticated, there is
 |  no question that Khomeini and crew would have sought a
 |  handshake from someone who could not later deny the
 |  agreement.
 |
 |  Between October 21 and October 23, Israel dispatched a
 |  planeload of much-needed F-4 Phantom jet spare parts to Iran
 |  in violation of the U.S. arms boycott. Who in Washington had
 |  sanctioned these shipments? In Teheran, the U.S. hostages
 |  were reportedly dispersed into a multitude of locations on
 |  October 22. Also on October 22, Prime Minister Rajai, back
 |  from New York and Algiers, announced that Iran wanted
 |  neither American spare parts nor American arms.
 |
 |  The Iranian approach to the ongoing contacts with the Carter
 |  administration now began to favor evasive delaying tactics.
 |  There were multiple indications that Khomeini had decided
 |  that Reagan-Bush was a better bet than Carter, and that
 |  Reagan-Bush had made the more generous offer.
 |
 |  Barbara Honegger, then an official of the Reagan-Bush
 |  campaign, recalls that "on October 24th or 25th, an
 |  assistant to Stephan Halper's 'October Surprise'
 |  intelligence operation echoed William Casey's newfound
 |  confidence, boasting to the author in the operations center
 |  where [Reagan-Bush Iran-watcher Michel] Smith worked that
 |  the campaign no longer needed to worry about an 'October
 |  Surprise' because Dick [Allen] cut a deal." [25] 
 |
 |  On October 27, Bush campaigned in Pittsburgh, where he
 |  addressed a gathering of labor leaders. His theme that day
 |  was the Iranian attempt to "manipulate" the outcome of the
 |  U.S. election through the exertion of "last-minute leverage"
 |  involving the hostages. "It's no secret that the Iranians do
 |  not want to see Ronald Reagan elected President," Bush lied.
 |  "They want to play a hand in the election -- with our 52
 |  hostages as the 52 cards in their negotiating deck." It was
 |  a "cool, cynical, unconscionable ploy" by the Khomeini
 |  regime. Bush asserted that it was "fair to ask how come
 |  right now there's talk of releasing them [the hostages]
 |  after nearly a year." His implication was that Carter was
 |  the one with the dirty deal. Bush concluded that he wanted
 |  the hostages "out as soon as possible.... We want them home
 |  and we'll worry about who to blame later." [26] 
 |
 |  During the first week of December, "Executive Intelligence
 |  Review" reported that Henry Kissinger "held a series of
 |  meetings during the week of November 12 in Paris with
 |  representatives of Ayatollah Beheshti, leader of the
 |  fundamentalist clergy in Iran.... Top-level intelligence
 |  sources in Reagan's inner circle confirmed Kissinger's
 |  unreported talks with the Iranian mullahs, but stressed that
 |  the Kissinger initiative was totally unauthorized by the
 |  president-elect." According to "EIR", "it appears that the
 |  pattern of cooperation between the Khomeini people and
 |  circles nominally in Reagan's camp began approximately six
 |  to eight weeks ago, at the height of President Carter's
 |  efforts to secure an arms-for-hostages deal with Teheran.
 |  Carter's failure to secure the deal, which a number of
 |  observers believe cost him the November 4 election,
 |  apparently resulted from an intervention in Teheran by
 |  pro-Reagan British circles and the Kissinger faction." [27] 
 |  These revelations from "EIR" are the first mention in the
 |  public record of the scandal which has come over the years
 |  to be known as the October Surprise.
 |
 |  The hostages were not released before the November election,
 |  which Reagan won convincingly. Khomeini kept the hostages
 |  imprisoned until January 20, the day of the Reagan-Bush
 |  inauguration, and let the hostage plane take off just as
 |  Reagan and Bush were taking their oaths of office.
 |
 |  Whether George Bush was personally present in Paris, or at
 |  other meetings with Iranian representatives where the
 |  hostage and arms questions were on the agenda, has yet to be
 |  conclusively proven. Here a thorough and intrusive
 |  congressional investigation of the Carter and Reagan
 |  machinations in this regard is long overdue. Such a probe
 |  might also shed light on the origins of the Iran-Iraq war,
 |  which set the stage for the more recent Gulf crisis. But,
 |  quite apart from questions regarding George Bush's presence
 |  at this or that meeting, there can be no doubt that both the
 |  Carter regime and the Reagan-Bush campaign were actively
 |  involved in dealings with the Khomeini regime concerning the
 |  hostages and concerning the timing of their possible
 |  release. In the case of the Reagan-Bush Iran connection,
 |  there is reason to believe that federal crimes in violation
 |  of the Logan Act and other applicable laws may have taken
 |  place.
 |
 |  George Bush had now grasped the interim prize that had
 |  eluded him since 1968: After more than a dozen years of
 |  effort, he had now become the Vice President of the United
 |  States.
 |
 |  Notes for Chapter XVII
 |
 |  13. Mark Bisnow, "Diary of a Dark Horse: The 1980 Anderson
 |  Presidential Campaign" (Carbondale: Southern Illinois
 |  University Press, 1983), p. 136.
 |
 |  14. For the "Nashua Telegraph" debate, see: Jeff Greenfield,
 |  "op. cit.," pp. 44 ff.; Mark Bisnow, "op. cit.," pp. 134
 |  ff.; Jules Witcover and Jack Germond, "Blue Smoke and
 |  Mirrors" (New York: Viking, 1981), pp. 116 ff.
 |
 |  15. Germond and Witcover, "op. cit.," p. 169.
 |
 |  16. "Ibid.," p. 170.
 |
 |  17. "Ibid.," p. 171.
 |
 |  18. The best testimony on this is Reagan's own response to a
 |  question from Witcover and Germond. Asked if "it was true
 |  that he was trying to get President Ford to run with him,"
 |  Reagan promptly responded, "Oh, sure. That would be the
 |  best." See Germond and Witcover, "op. cit.," p. 178.
 |
 |  19. "Ibid.," p. 188.
 |
 |  20. "Washington Star," July 15, 1980.
 |
 |  21. "EIR Special Report:" "Treason in Washington: New
 |  Evidence on the October Surprise," March 1992.
 |
 |  22. See "EIR Special Report:" "Project Democracy: The
 |  'Parallel Government' Behind the Iran-Contra Affair"
 |  (Washington, 1987), pp. 88-101.
 |
 |  23. Gary Sick, "The Election Story of the Decade," "New York
 |  Times," April 15, 1991.
 |
 |  24. Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr, "My Turn to Speak" (New York:
 |  Brassey's, U.S., 1991), p. 33.
 |
 |  25. Barbara Honegger, "October Surprise" (New York: Tudor
 |  Publishing Co., 1989) p. 58.
 |
 |  26. "Washington Post," Oct. 28, 1980.
 |
 |  27. "Executive Intelligence Review," Dec. 2, 1980.
 |
 |  "XVIII: The Attempted Coup d'Etat of March 30, 1981"
 |
 |  For Bush, the vice-presidency was not an end in itself, but
 |  merely another stage in the ascent toward the White House.
 |  With the help of his Brown Brothers Harriman/Skull and Bones
 |  network, Bush had now reached the point where but a single
 |  human life stood between him and the presidency.
 |
 |  Ronald Reagan was 70 years old when he took office, the
 |  oldest man ever to be inaugurated as President. His mind
 |  wandered; long fits of slumber crept over his cognitive
 |  faculties. His custom was to delegate all administrative
 |  decisions to the cabinet members, to the executive
 |  departments and agencies. Policy questions were delegated to
 |  the White House staff, who prepared the options and then
 |  guided Reagan's decisions among the pre-defined options.
 |  This was the staff that composed not just Reagan's speeches,
 |  but the script of his entire life.
 |
 |  But sometimes Reagan was capable of lucidity, and even of
 |  inspired greatness, in the way a thunderstorm can
 |  momentarily illuminate a darkling countryside. Reagan's
 |  greatest moment of conceptual clarity came in his television
 |  speech of March 23, 1983 on the Strategic Defense
 |  Initiative, a concept that had been drummed into the
 |  Washington bureaucracy through the indefatigable efforts of
 |  Lyndon LaRouche and a few others. The idea of defending
 |  against nuclear missiles, of not accepting Mutually Assured
 |  Destruction, and of using such a program as a science driver
 |  for rapid technological renewal was something Reagan
 |  permanently grasped and held onto, even under intense
 |  pressure.
 |
 |  In addition, during the early years of Reagan's first term,
 |  there were enough Reaganite loyalists in the administration,
 |  typified by William Clark, to cause much trouble for the
 |  Bushmen. But as the years went by, the few men like Clark
 |  whom Reagan had brought with him from California would be
 |  ground up by endless bureaucratic warfare, and their
 |  replacements, like McFarlane at the NSC, would come more and
 |  more from the ranks of the Kissingerians. Unfortunately,
 |  Reagan never developed a plan to make the SDI an
 |  irreversible political and budgetary reality, and this
 |  critical shortcoming grew out of Reagan's failed economic
 |  policies, which never substantially departed from Carter's.
 |
 |  But apart from rare moments like the SDI, Reagan tended to
 |  drift. Don Regan called it "the guesswork presidency"; for
 |  Al Haig, frustrated in his own lust for power, it was
 |  government by an all-powerful staff. Who were the staff? At
 |  first, it was thought that Reagan would take most of his
 |  advice from his old friend Edwin Meese, his close associate
 |  from California days, loyal and devoted to Reagan, and
 |  sporting his Adam Smith tie. But it was soon evident that
 |  the White House was really run by a troika: Meese, Michael
 |  Deaver, and James Baker III, Bush's man.
 |
 |  Deaver gravitated by instinct toward Baker; Deaver tells us
 |  in his memoirs that he was a supporter of Bush for vice
 |  president at the Detroit convention. This meant that James
 |  Baker-Michael Deaver became the dominant force over Ron and
 |  over Nancy; George Bush, in other words, already had an edge
 |  in the bureaucratic infighting.
 |
 |  Thus it was that White House Press Secretary James Brady
 |  could say in early March 1981: "Bush is functioning much
 |  like a co-President. George is involved in all the national
 |  security stuff because of his special background as CIA
 |  director. All the budget working groups he was there, the
 |  economic working groups, the Cabinet meetings. He is
 |  included in almost all the meetings." [1] 
 |
 |  During the first months of the Reagan administration, Bush
 |  found himself locked in a power struggle with Gen. Alexander
 |  Haig, whom Reagan had appointed to be secretary of state.
 |
 |  Inexorably, the Brown Brothers Harriman/Skull and Bones
 |  networks went into action against Haig. The idea was to
 |  paint him as a power-hungry megalomaniac bent on dominating
 |  the administration of the weak figurehead Reagan. This would
 |  then be supplemented by a vicious campaign of leaking by
 |  James Baker and Michael Deaver, designed to play Reagan
 |  against Haig and vice-versa, until the rival to Bush could
 |  be eliminated.
 |
 |  Three weeks into the new administration, Haig concluded that
 |  "someone in the White House staff was attempting to
 |  communicate with me through the press," by a process of
 |  constant leakage, including leakage of the contents of
 |  secret diplomatic papers. Haig protested to Meese, NSC chief
 |  Richard Allen, James Baker and Bush. Shortly thereafter,
 |  Haig noted that "Baker's messeng ers sent rumors of my
 |  imminent departure or dismissal murmuring through the
 |  press." "Soon, a 'senior presidential aide' was quoted in a
 |  syndicated column as saying, 'We will get this man [Haig]
 |  under control.'|"  [2]  It took more than a year for Baker
 |  and Bush to drive Haig out of the administration. Shortly
 |  before his ouster, Haig got a report of a White House
 |  meeting during which Baker was reported to have said, "Haig
 |  is going to go, and quickly, and we are going to make it
 |  happen." [3] 
 |
 |  Haig's principal bureaucratic ploy during the first weeks of
 |  the Reagan administration was his submission to Reagan, on
 |  the day of his inauguration, of a draft executive order to
 |  organize the National Security Council and interagency task
 |  forces, including the crisis staffs, according to Haig's
 |  wishes. Haig refers to this document as National Security
 |  Decision Directive 1 (NSDD 1), and laments that it was never
 |  signed in its original form, and that no comparable
 |  directive for structuring the NSC interagency groups was
 |  signed for over a year. Ultimately a document called NSDD 1
 |  would be signed, establishing a Special Situation Group
 |  (SSG) crisis management staff chaired by Bush. Haig's draft
 |  would have made the secretary of state the chairman of the
 |  SSG crisis staff in conformity with Haig's demand to be
 |  recognized as Reagan's "vicar of foreign policy." This was
 |  unacceptable to Bush, who made sure, with the help of James
 |  Baker and probably also Deaver, that Haig's draft of NSDD 1
 |  would never be signed.
 |
 |  The struggle between Haig and Bush culminated toward the end
 |  of Reagan's first 100 days in office. Haig was chafing
 |  because the White House staff, meaning James Baker, was
 |  denying him access to the President.Haig's NSDD 1 had still
 |  not been signed. Then, on Sunday, March 22, Haig's attention
 |  was called to an elaborate leak to reporter Martin Schram
 |  that had appeared that day in the "Washington Post" under
 |  the headline "White House Revamps Top Policy Roles; Bush to
 |  Head Crisis Management." Haig's attention was drawn to the
 |  following paragraphs: "Partly in an effort to bring harmony
 |  to the Reagan high command, it has been decided that Vice
 |  President George Bush will be placed in charge of a new
 |  structure for national security crisis management, according
 |  to senior presidential assistants. This assignment will
 |  amount to an unprecedented role for a vice president in
 |  modern times....
 |
 |  "Reagan officials emphasized that Bush, a former director of
 |  the CIA and former United Nations ambassador, would be able
 |  to preserve White House control over crisis management
 |  without irritating Haig, who they stressed was probably the
 |  most experienced and able of all other officials who could
 |  serve in that function.
 |
 |  "|'The reason for this [choice of Bush] is that the
 |  secretary of state might wish he were chairing the crisis
 |  management structure,' said one Reagan official, 'but it is
 |  pretty hard to argue with the vice president being in
 |  charge.'|" [4] 
 |
 |  Haig says that he called Ed Meese at the White House to
 |  check the truth of this report, and that Meese replied that
 |  there was no truth to it. Haig went to see Reagan at the
 |  White House. Reagan was concerned about the leak, and
 |  reassured Haig: "I want you to know that the story in the
 |  "Post" is a fabrication. It means that George would sit in
 |  for me in the NSC in my absence, and that's all it means. It
 |  doesn't affect your authority in any way."
 |
 |  But later the same afternoon, White House Press Secretary
 |  James Brady read the following statement to the press: "I am
 |  confirming today the President's decision to have the Vice
 |  President chair the Administration's 'crisis management'
 |  team, as a part of the National Security Council system....
 |  President Reagan's choice of the Vice President was guided
 |  in large measure by the fact that management of crises has
 |  traditionally -- and appropriately -- been done in the White
 |  House." [5] 
 |
 |  In the midst of the Bush-James Baker cabal's relentless
 |  drive to seize control over the Reagan administration, John
 |  Warnock Hinckley, Jr. carried out his attempt to assassinate
 |  President Reagan on the afternoon of March 30, 1981. George
 |  Bush was visiting Texas that day. Bush was flying from Fort
 |  Worth to Austin in his Air Force Two Boeing 707.
 |
 |  In Austin, Bush was scheduled to deliver an address to a
 |  joint session of the Texas state legislature. It was Al Haig
 |  who called Bush and told him that the President had been
 |  shot, while forwarding the details of Reagan's condition,
 |  insofar as they were known, by scrambler as a classified
 |  message. Haig was in touch with James Baker III, who was
 |  close to Reagan at George Washington University hospital.
 |  Bush's man in the White House situation room was Admiral Dan
 |  Murphy, who was standing right next to Haig. Bush agreed
 |  with Haig's estimate that he ought to return to Washington
 |  at once. But first his plane needed to be refueled, so it
 |  landed at Carswell Air Force Base near Austin.
 |
 |  Bush says that his flight from Carswell to Andrews Air Force
 |  Base near Washington took about two and one-half hours, and
 |  that he arrived at Andrews at about 6:40 p.m. Bush says he
 |  was told by Ed Meese that the operation to remove the bullet
 |  that had struck Reagan was a success, and that the President
 |  was likely to survive.
 |
 |  Back at the White House, the principal cabinet officers had
 |  assembled in the Situation Room and had been running a
 |  crisis management committee during the afternoon. Haig says
 |  he was at first adamant that a conspiracy, if discovered,
 |  should be ruthlessly exposed: "Remembering the aftermath of
 |  the Kennedy assassination, I said to Woody Goldberg, 'No
 |  matter what the truth is about this shooting, the American
 |  people must know it.'|" [6] 
 |
 |  In his memoir Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger recalls,
 |  that "at almost e xactly 7:00, the Vice President came to
 |  the Situation Room and very calmly assumed the chair at the
 |  head of the table." [7]  Bush asked Weinberger for a report
 |  on the status of U.S. forces, which Weinberger furnished.
 |
 |  Another eyewitness of these transactions was Don Regan, who
 |  records that "the Vice President arrived with Ed Meese, who
 |  had met him when he landed to fill him in on the details.
 |  George asked for a condition report: 1) on the President; 2)
 |  on the other wounded; 3) on the assailant; 4) on the
 |  international scene.... After the reports were given and it
 |  was determined that there were no international
 |  complications and no domestic conspiracy, it was decided
 |  that the U.S. government would carry on business as usual.
 |  The Vice President would go on TV from the White House to
 |  reassure the nation and to demonstrate that he was in
 |  charge." [8] 
 |
 |  As Weinberger recounts the same moments: "[Attorney General
 |  William French Smith] then reported that all FBI reports
 |  concurred with the information I had received; that the
 |  shooting was a completely isolated incident and that the
 |  assassin, John Hinckley, with a previous record in
 |  Nashville, seemed to be a 'Bremmer' type, a reference to the
 |  attempted assassin of George Wallace." [9] 
 |
 |  Those who were not watching carefully here may have missed
 |  the fact that just a few minutes after George Bush had
 |  walked into the room, he had presided over the sweeping
 |  under the rug of the decisive question regarding Hinckley
 |  and his actions: Was Hinckley a part of a conspiracy,
 |  domestic or international? Not more than five hours after
 |  the attempt to kill Reagan, on the basis of the most
 |  fragmentary early reports, before Hinckley had been properly
 |  questioned, and before a full investigation had been carried
 |  out, a group of cabinet officers chaired by George Bush had
 |  ruled out "a priori" any conspiracy. Haig, whose memoirs
 |  talk most about the possibility of a conspiracy, does not
 |  seem to have objected to this incredible decision.
 |
 |  >From that moment on, "no conspiracy" became the official
 |  doctrine of the U.S. regime and the most massive efforts
 |  were undertaken to stifle any suggestion to the contrary.
 |
 |  The Conspiracy
 |
 |  Curiously enough, press accounts emerging over the next few
 |  days provided a "prima facie" case that there had been a
 |  conspiracy around the Hinckley attentat, and that the cons
 |  piracy had included members of Bush's immediate family. Most
 |  of the overt facts were not disputed, but were actually
 |  confirmed by Bush and his son Neil.
 |
 |  On Tuesday, March 31, the "Houston Post" published a
 |  copyrighted story under the headline: "Bush's Son Was to
 |  Dine with Suspect's Brother." The lead paragraph read as
 |  follows: "Scott Hinckley, the brother of John Hinckley, Jr.,
 |  who is charged with shooting President Reagan and three
 |  others, was to have been a dinner guest Tuesday night at the
 |  home of Neil Bush, son of Vice President George Bush, the
 |  "Houston Post" has learned."
 |
 |  According to the article, Neil Bush had admitted on Monday,
 |  March 30 that he was personally acquainted with Scott
 |  Hinckley, having met with him on one occasion in the recent
 |  past. Neil Bush also stated that he knew the Hinckley
 |  family, and referred to large monetary contributions made by
 |  the Hinckleys to the Bush 1980 presidential campaign. Neil
 |  Bush and Scott Hinckley both lived in Denver at this time.
 |  Scott Hinckley was the vice president of Vanderbilt Energy
 |  Corporation, and Neil Bush was employed as a landman for
 |  Standard Oil of Indiana. John W. Hinckley, Jr., the would-be
 |  assassin, lived on and off with his family in Evergreen,
 |  Colorado, not far from Denver.
 |
 |  Neil Bush was reached for comment on Monday, March 30, and
 |  was asked if, in addition to Scott Hinckley, he also knew
 |  John W. Hinckley, Jr., the would-be killer. "I have no
 |  idea," said Neil Bush. "I don't recognize any pictures of
 |  him. I just wish I could see a better picture of him."
 |
 |  Sharon Bush, Neil's wife, was also asked about her
 |  acquaintance with the Hinckley family. "I don't even know
 |  the brother," she replied, suggesting that Scott Hinckley
 |  was coming to dinner as the date  of a woman whom Sharon did
 |  know. "From what I know and have heard, they [the Hinckleys]
 |  are a very nice family ... and have given a lot of money to
 |  the Bush campaign. I understand he [John W. Hinckley, Jr.]
 |  was just the renegade brother in the family. They must feel
 |  awful."
 |
 |  It also proved necessary for Bush's office to deny that the
 |  Vice President was familiar with the "Hinckley-Bush
 |  connection." Bush's press secretary, Peter Teeley, said when
 |  asked to comment: "I don't know a damn thing about it. I was
 |  talking to someone earlier tonight, and I couldn't even
 |  remember his [Hinckley's] name. All I know is what you're
 |  telling me."
 |
 |  On April 1, 1981, the "Rocky Mountain News" of Denver
 |  carried Neil Bush's confirmation that if the assassination
 |  attempt had not happened on March 30, Scott Hinckley would
 |  have been present at a dinner party at Neil Bush's home the
 |  night of March 31. According to Neil, Scott Hinckley had
 |  come to the home of Neil and Sharon Bush on January 23, 1981
 |  to be present along with about 30 other guests at a surprise
 |  birthday party for Neil, who had turned 26 one day earlier.
 |  Scott Hinckley had come "through a close friend who brought
 |  him," according to this version, and this same close female
 |  friend was scheduled to come to dinner along with Scott
 |  Hinckley on that last night of March, 1981.
 |
 |  "My wife set up a surprise party for me, and it truly was a
 |  surprise, and it was an honor for me at that time to meet
 |  Scott Hinckley," said Neil Bush to reporters. "He is a good
 |  and decent man. I have no regrets whatsoever in saying Scott
 |  Hinckley can be considered a friend of mine. To have had one
 |  meeting doesn't make the best of friends, but I have no
 |  regrets in saying I do know him."
 |
 |  Neil Bush told the reporters that he had never met John W.
 |  Hinckley, Jr., the gunman, nor his fat