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George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography

by Webster Griffin Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin

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." Note #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." Note #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." Note #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." Note #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,"
Note #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." Note #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." Note #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." Note #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. Note #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." Note #1 Note #0 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 the blessings 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...." Note #1 Note #1

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." Note #1 Note #2

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 personal papers, 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. Note #1 Note #3

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
Convention of 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. Note #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:

 See #b|"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.

 See #b|"Cornelis Lievense -- 4 shares." Lievense was president and
director of UBC, and a New York resident banking functionary for the
Nazis.

 See #b|"Harold D. Pennington -- 1 share." Pennington was treasurer
and director of UBC, and an office manager employed by Bush at Brown
Brothers Harriman.

 See #b|"Ray Morris -- 1 share." Morris was director of UBC, and a
partner of Bush and the Harrimans.

 See #b|"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.

 See #b|"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.

 See #b|"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."
Note #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 seizing only the Nazi interests,
leaving the Nazis' U.S. partners to carry on the business. Note #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, Note #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", Note #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. Note #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...." Note #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." Note #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. Note #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." Note #1 Note #0

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." Note
#1 Note #1

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. Note #1 Note #2

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. Note #1 Note #3

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...." Note #1 Note #4

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." Note #1 Note #5

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. Note #1 Note #6

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']...." Note #1 Note #7

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. Note #1 Note #8 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. Note #1 Note #9 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...." Note #2 Note #0

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." Note #2
Note #1

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. Note #2 Note #2

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. Note #2 Note #3

"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. Note #2 Note
#4

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. Note #2 Note #5

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. Note #2
Note #6

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." Note #2 Note #7

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." Note #2 Note #8

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. Note #2 Note #9

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." Note #3 Note #0

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." Note #3 Note #1

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. Note #3 Note #2

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." Note #3 Note #3

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. Note #3
Note #4

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". Note #3 Note #5

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. Note #3 Note #6

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. Note #3 Note #7

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" Note #1 came to share the outlook of the first, "Adolf
Hitler". Note #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. Note #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. Note #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 Note #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:

 Note #b|Shell Oil is principally owned by the British Royal family.
Shell's chairman, Sir Henri Deterding, helped sponsor Hitler's rise to
power, Note #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.

 Note #b|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. Note #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. Note #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. Note
#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. Note #1 Note #0

Averell Harriman personally arranged with the Walker/Bush
Hamburg-Amerika Line to transport Nazi ideologues from Germany to New
York for this meeting. Note #1 Note #1 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:

 Note #b|sterilization of mental patients ("mental hygiene
societies");

 Note #b|execution of the insane, criminals and the terminally ill
("euthanasia societies"); and

 Note #b|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. Note #1 Note #2

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. Note #1 Note #3

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. Note #1 Note #4

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. Note #1 Note #5

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. Note #1 Note #6

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." Note #1 Note #7

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." Note #1 Note #8

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. Note #1 Note #9

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. Note #2 Note #0

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. Note #2 Note #1

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. Note #2
Note #2 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. Note #2
Note #3

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. Note #2 Note #4

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. Note #2 Note #5 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." Note #2 Note
#6 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." Note #2
Note #7

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. Note #2 Note #8 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." Note #2 Note #9

(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.) Note #3 Note #0

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!
Note #3 Note #1

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. Note #3 Note #2 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. Note #3 Note #3

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. Note #3 Note #4

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. Note #3 Note #5

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. Note #3
Note #6

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. Note #3 Note #7 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 was financed 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: Note #3 Note #8

"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 sterilization law 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 in the 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." Note #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". Note #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 ordinance 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. Note #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

 Note #b|Jupiter Islander "Robert A. Lovett," Note #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." Note #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. Note #6 But the CIA was established in 1947
according to the prescription of Robert Lovett, of Jupiter Island.

 / Note #b|"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.
/ Note #7

 / Note #b|"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.

 / Note #b|"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.

 / Note #b|"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.

 / Note #b|"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.

 / Note #b|"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.

 / Note #b|"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.

 / Note #b|"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.

 / Note #b|"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.

 / Note #b|"Fred H. Haggerson," chairman of Union Carbide Corp.,
produced munitions, chemicals, and firearms.

 / Note #b|"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. / Note #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." / Note
#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. / Note #1 / Note #0

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...." / Note #1 / Note
#1

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]. / Note #1 / Note #2

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." / Note #1 / Note #3

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. /
Note #1 / Note #4

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...." / Note #1 / Note #5

"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...." / Note #1 /
Note #6

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. / Note #1 / Note #7

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. / Note #1 / Note #8 (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). /
Note #1 / Note #8

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. /
Note #1 / Note #9

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]." /
Note #2 / Note #0

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:

 / Note #b|"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.

 / Note #b|"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.

 / Note #b|"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.

 / Note #b|"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.

 / Note #b|"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."

 / Note #b|"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. / Note #2 / Note #1

"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. / Note #2 / Note #2

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. / Note #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...." /
Note #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...." / Note #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." / Note #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...." / Note #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." / Note #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."" / Note #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.'|" / Note #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.'|" / Note #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.'|" / Note #1 / Note #0

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...." / Note #1 / Note #1

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." / Note #1 /
Note #2

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." / Note #1 /
Note #3

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. / Note #1 / Note #4

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. / Note #1 / Note #5

Headmaster Fuess used to say to his staff, "I came to power with
Hitler and Mussolini."/ Note #1 / Note #6 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." / Note #1 / Note #7

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. / Note #1 / Note #8

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." / Note #2 / Note #1....

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. / Note #2 / Note #2....

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. / Note #3 / Note #0

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." / Note #3 /
Note #4

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. / Note #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." / Note #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." / Note #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." / Note #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." /
Note #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." / Note #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. / Note #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. / Note #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." / Note #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. / Note #1
/ Note #0

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." / Note #1 / Note #1

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." / Note #1 / Note #2

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." / Note #1 / Note #3

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." / Note #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. / Note #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:

 / Note #b|""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;

 / Note #b|"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;

 / Note #b|"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;

 / Note #b|"Andrew D. White "(S&B 1853), founding president of Cornell
University; psychic researcher; and diplomatic cohort of the Venetian,
Russian and British oligarchies;

 / Note #b|"Chauncey M. Depew "(S&B 1856), general counsel for the
Vanderbilt railroads, he helped the Harriman family to enter into high
society....

 / Note #b|"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.

 / Note #b|"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....

 / Note #b|"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." / Note #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." / Note #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:

 / Note #b|"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.

 / Note #b|"Robert Lovett was assistant secretary of war for Air from
1941-45.

 / Note #b|"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

 / Note #b|""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.

 / Note #b|""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.

 / Note #b|"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.

 / Note #b|""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.

 / Note #b|"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.

 / Note #b|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 / Note #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...." / Note #1 / Note #0

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. / Note
#1 / Note #1

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"" / Note #1 / Note #2 [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 member had 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.".... / Note #1 / Note #3

- 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
London.

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." / Note #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. / Note #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. / Note #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." / Note #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. / Note #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. / Note #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." / Note #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. / Note #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." / Note #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. / Note #1 / Note #0

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. / Note #1 / Note #1 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. / Note #1 / Note #2

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. / Note #1 / Note #3
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." /
Note #1/ Note #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:

 / Note #b|George H.W. Bush, Midland, Texas;

 / Note #b|J.G.S. Gammell, Edinburgh, Scotland, manager of British
Assets Trust, Ltd.;

 / Note #b|J. Hugh Liedtke, Midland, Texas;

 / Note #b|William C. Liedtke, independent oil operator, Midland,
Texas;

 / Note #b|Arthur E. Palmer, Jr., New York, N.Y., a partner in
Winthrop, Stimson, Putnam, and Roberts;

 / Note #b|G.H. Walker, Jr. (Uncle Herbie), managing partner of G.H.
Walker and Co., New York, N.Y.;

 / Note #b|Howard J. Whitehill, independent oil producer, Tulsa,
Oklahoma;

 / Note #b|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;

 / Note #b|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

 / Note #b|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. / Note #1
/ Note #5

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. / Note #1 / Note #6

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. / Note #1 / Note #7 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. / Note #1 / Note #8 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." / Note #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." / Note #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. / Note #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. / Note #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." /
Note #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. / Note #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.") / Note #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." / Note #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." / Note #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." / Note #1 / Note #0 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." / Note #1 / Note #1
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. / Note #1 / Note #2

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. / Note #1 / Note #3

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. / Note #1 /
Note #4

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. / Note #1 / Note #5

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. / Note #1 / Note #6

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."
/ Note #1 / Note #7

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. / Note #1 /
Note #8 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." / Note #1 / Note #9 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. / Note #2 / Note #0

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 carefully reviewed 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." / Note #2 / Note #1

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. / Note #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." /
Note #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." / Note #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. / Note #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." / Note #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." / Note #1 / Note #0 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. / Note #1 / Note #2

... 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 the state 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. / Note #1 / Note #3

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. / Note #1 / Note #4

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. / Note #1 / Note #5
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." / Note #1 / Note #6 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. / Note #1 / Note #7

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." / Note #1 / Note #8 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. / Note #1 / Note #9 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 kind
of 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 used 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.
/ Note #2 / Note #0 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?'|" / Note #2 /
Note #1

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." / Note #2 / Note #2

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." / Note #2 / Note #3 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. / Note #2 / Note #4

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. / Note #2 /
Note #5 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." / Note #2 / Note #6

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." / Note #2 / Note #7

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. / Note #2 / Note #8

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. / Note #2 / Note #9 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. / Note #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." / Note #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. / Note #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." / Note
#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. / Note #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." / Note #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. /
Note #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." / Note #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. / Note #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. / Note #1 / Note #0 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." / Note #1 / Note #1

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. / Note #1 / Note #2

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. / Note #1 / Note
#3 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. / Note #1 / Note #4 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." / Note #1 / Note #5
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." / Note
#1 / Note #6 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. / Note #1 / Note #7 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. / Note #1 / Note #8 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. / Note #1 / Note #9

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." / Note
#2 / Note #0

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. / Note #2 / Note #1 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. / Note #2 / Note #2

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. / Note #2 / Note #3

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. / Note #2 / Note #4 "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." / Note #2 / Note #5 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. / Note #2 / Note #6

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. / Note #2 / Note #7

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 / Note #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. / Note #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." / Note #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. / Note #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. / Note #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." / Note #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
was the 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." / Note #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." / Note #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 mounted his 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. / Note #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. /
Note #1 / Note #0

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-aligned bloc
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." / Note #1 / Note #1
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. / Note #1 / Note #2 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. / Note #1 / Note #3

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." / Note #1 / Note #4

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. / Note #1
/ Note #5

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." / Note #1 / Note
#6

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 advances 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?" / Note #1 /
Note #7

"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.
/ Note #1 / Note #8

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." / Note #1 /
Note #9

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. / Note #2 / Note #0

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." / Note #2 / Note #1 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."
/ Note #2 / Note #2

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." / Note #2 / Note #3

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." / Note #2 / Note #4

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." / Note #2 / Note #5

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." / Note #2 / Note #6 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. / Note #2 / Note #7

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." / Note #2 /
Note #8

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, /
Note #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. / Note #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 for the 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." /
Note #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." / Note #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." / Note #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. / Note #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. / Note #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.'|" / Note #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." /
Note #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." / Note
#1 / Note #1

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. / Note #1 / Note #2 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." / Note #1 / Note #3

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." / Note #1 / Note #4

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. / Note #1 / Note #5 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 Wright Patman, 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. /
Note #1 / Note #6

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. / Note #1 /
Note #7

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." / Note #1 / Note #8

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. / Note #1 / Note
#9

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." / Note #2 / Note
#0 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." / Note #2 / Note #1 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. / Note #2 / Note #2

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." /
Note #2 / Note #3

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.'|" / Note #2 / Note #4

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." /
Note #2 / Note #5 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. / Note #2 / Note #6 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." / Note #2 / Note #7 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." / Note #2 / Note #8 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. / Note #2 /
Note #9

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." / Note #3 / Note #0 But what 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. / Note #3 / Note #1 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." / Note #3 / Note #2

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." / Note #3 / Note #3

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." / Note #3 / Note #4 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." / Note #3 / Note #5 "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. / Note #3 / Note #6 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." / Note #3 / Note #7

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." / Note #3 / Note #8
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. /
Note #3 / Note #9 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." / Note #4 / Note #0 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." / Note #4 / Note #1

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." / Note #4 / Note #2

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." / Note #4 / Note #3

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." / Note #4 / Note #4

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.
/ Note #4 / Note #5

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. / Note #4 / Note #6

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. / Note #4 / Note #7

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. / Note #4 / Note #8

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." /
Note #4 / Note #9

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." / Note #5 / Note #0

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. /
Note #5 / Note #1

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." / Note #5 / Note #2

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." / Note #5 / Note #3 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. / Note #5 / Note #4

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." / Note #5 / Note #5 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. / Note #5 / Note #6

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." / Note #5 / Note #7

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." / Note #5 / Note #8

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. / Note #5 / Note #9

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." /
Note #6 / Note #0 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. / Note #6 / Note #1

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."/ Note #6 / Note #2

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. / Note #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. /
Note #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.
/ Note #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." / Note #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." / Note #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." / Note #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. / Note #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 of 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."
/ Note #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. / Note
#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. / Note #1 / Note #0

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 fact that 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. / Note #1 / Note #1
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."" / Note #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. / Note #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." / Note #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. / Note #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. / Note #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. / Note #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." / Note #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. / Note #1 / Note #0

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. / Note #1 / Note #1

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. / Note #1 / Note #2

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. / Note #1 / Note #3

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." / Note #1 / Note #4

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. / Note #1 / Note #5 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 August 29, 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. / Note #1 / Note #6

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 / Note #1 / Note #7 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." / Note #1 / Note #8

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...." / Note #1 / Note #9

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." / Note #2 / Note #0 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." / Note #2 / Note
#1

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." / Note #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." / Note #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." / Note #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." / Note #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." / Note #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." / Note #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." / Note #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. / Note #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, he proposed 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." /
Note #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." / Note #1 / Note #0

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. / Note #1 / Note #1

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." / Note #1 / Note
#2

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. / Note #1 / Note #3 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. /
Note #1 / Note #4

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. / Note #1 / Note #5

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. /
Note #1 / Note #6

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. / Note #1 /
Note #7

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.'|" / Note #1 / Note #8

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. / Note #1 / Note #9 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. / Note #2 / Note #0

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. / Note #2 / Note #1

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. / Note #2 / Note #2

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." / Note #2 / Note #3 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." / Note #2 / Note #4

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." / Note #2 / Note #5

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." / Note #2 / Note #6

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, / Note #2 / Note #7 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. / Note #2 / Note #8

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 was being 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. / Note #2 / Note #9

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. / Note #1 The policy of the
Scottish Rite was to regroup unreconstructed 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. / Note #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. / Note #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." / Note #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. / Note #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." / Note #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." / Note #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.'|" / Note #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." / Note #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." / Note
#1 / Note #0

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?" / Note #1 / Note #1

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." / Note #1 / Note #2

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. / Note #1 /
Note #3 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. / Note #1 / Note #4

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 television 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." / Note #1 / Note #5

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." / Note #1 / Note #6 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. / Note #1
/ Note #7

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. / Note #1 / Note
#8 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.'|" / Note #1 / Note #9

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." / Note #2 /
Note #0

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,'|" / Note #2 / Note #1 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. / Note #2 / Note #2

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." / Note #2 / Note #3

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." / Note #2 / Note #4

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." / Note #2 / Note #5

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." / Note #2 / Note #6

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." / Note #2 / Note #7 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." / Note #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.'|" / Note #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." / Note #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.'|" / Note #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." / Note #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.'|" / Note #6

In his memoir Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger recalls, that "at
almost exactly 7:00, the Vice President came to the Situation Room and
very calmly assumed the chair at the head of the table." / Note #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." / Note #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." / Note #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 father, John W. Hinckley, Sr., president and
chairman of the board of Vanderbilt Energy Corporation of Denver. But
Neil Bush also added that he would be interested in meeting the elder
Hinckley: "I would like [to meet him]. I'm trying to learn the oil
business, and he's in the oil business. I probably could learn
something from Mr. Hinckley."

Neil Bush then announced that he wanted to "set straight" certain
inaccuracies that had appeared the previous day in the "Houston Post"
about the relations between the Bush and Hinckley families. The first
was his own wife Sharon's reference to the large contributions from
the Hinckleys to the Bush campaign. Neil asserted that the 1980 Bush
campaign records showed no money whatever coming in from any of the
Hinckleys. All that could be found, he argued, was a contribution to
that "great Republican," John Connally.

The other issue the "Houston Post" had raised regarded the 1978
period, when George W. Bush of Midland, Texas, Neil's oldest brother,
had run for Congress in Texas's 19th Congressional District. At that
time, Neil Bush had worked for George W. Bush as his campaign manager,
and in this connection Neil had lived in Lubbock, Texas during most of
the year. This raised the question of whether Neil might have been in
touch with gunman John W. Hinckley, Jr. during that year of 1978,
since gunman Hinckley had lived in Lubbock from 1974 through 1980,
when he was an intermittent student at Texas Tech University there.
Neil Bush ruled out any contact between the Bush family and gunman
John W. Hinckley, Jr. in Lubbock during that time.

The previous day, elder son George W. Bush had been far less
categorical about never having met gunman Hinckley. He had stated to
the press: "It's certainly conceivable that I met him or might have
been introduced to him.... I don't recognize his face from the brief,
kind of distorted thing they had on TV, and the name doesn't ring any
bells. I know he wasn't on our staff. I could check our volunteer
rolls."

Neil Bush's confirmation of his relations with Scott Hinckley was
matched by a parallel confirmation from the Executive Office of the
Vice President. This appeared in the "Houston Post", April 1, 1981
under the headline, "Vice President Confirms his Son was to have
Hosted Hinckley Brother." Here the second-string press secretary,
Shirley M. Green, was doing the talking. "I've spoken to Neil," she
said, "and he says they never saw [Scott] Hinckley again [after the
birthday party]. They kept saying 'we've got to get together,' but
they never made any plans until tonight." Contradicting Neil Bush's
remarks, Ms. Green asserted that Neil Bush knew Scott Hinckley "only
slightly."

Later in the day, Bush spokesman Peter Teeley surfaced to deny any
campaign donations from the Hinckley clan to the Bush campaign. When
asked why Sharon Bush and Neil Bush had made reference to large
political contributions from the Hinckleys to the Bush campaign,
Teeley responded, "I don't have the vaguest idea." "We've gone through
our files," said Teeley, "and we have absolutely no information that
he [John W. Hinckley, Sr.] or anybody in the family were contributors,
supporters, anything."

Once the cabinet had decided that there had been no conspiracy, all
such facts were irrelevant anyway. There is no record of Neil Bush,
George W. Bush, or Vice President George H.W. Bush ever having been
questioned by the FBI in regard to the contacts described. They never
appeared before a grand jury or a congressional investigating
committee. Which is another way of saying that by March 1981, the
United States government had degenerated into total lawlessness, with
special exemptions for the now-ruling Bush family. Government by law
had dissolved.

Haig Is Out

The media were not interested in the dinner date of Neil Bush and
Scott Hinckley, but they were very interested indeed in the soap opera
of what had gone on in the Situation Room in the White House during
the afternoon of March 30. Since the media had been looking for ways
to go after Haig for weeks, they simply continued this line into their
coverage of the White House scene that afternoon. Haig had appeared
before the television cameras to say: "Constitutionally, gentlemen,
you have the President, the Vice President, and the Secretary of
State, in that order, and should the President decide that he wants to
transfer the helm he will do so. He has not done that. As of now, I am
in control here, in the White House, pending the return of the Vice
President and in close touch with him. If something came up, I would
check with him, of cou rse."

The "I'm in control here" story on Haig was made into the leitmotif
for his sacking, which was still a year in the future. Reagan's own
ghostwritten biography published the year after he left office gives a
good idea what James Baker and Michael Deaver fed the confused and
wounded President about what had gone on during his absence: "On the
day I was shot, George Bush was out of town and Haig immediately came
to the White House and claimed he was in charge of the country. Even
after the vice-president was back in Washington, I was told he
maintained that he, not George, should be in charge. I didn't know
about this when it was going on. But I heard later that the rest of
the cabinet was furious. They said he acted as if he thought he had
the right to sit in the Oval Office and believed it was his
constitutional right to take over -- a position without any legal
basis." / Note #1 / Note #0

This fantastic account finds no support in the Regan or Weinberger
memoirs, but is a fair sample of the Bushman line.

Manchurian Candidate?

What also interested the media very much was the story of John W.
Hinckley, Jr.'s obsession with the actress Jodie Foster, who had
played the role of a teenage prostitute in the 1976 movie "Taxi
Driver." The prostitute is befriended by a taxi driver, Travis Bickle,
who threatens to kill a Senator who is running for President in order
to win the love of the girl. Young John Hinckley had imitated the
habits and mannerisms of Travis Bickle.

When John Hinckley, Jr. had left his hotel room in Washington, D.C. on
his way to shoot Reagan, he had left behind a letter to Jodie Foster:

Dear Jodie,

There is a definite possibility that I will be killed in my attempt to
get Reagan. It is for this reason that  I am writing you this letter
now. As you well know by now, I love you very much. The past seven
months I have left you dozens of poems, letters, and messages in the
faint hope you would develop an interest in me.... Jodie, I'm asking
you to please look into your heart and at least give me the chance
with this historical deed to gain your respect and love.

I love you forever.

[signed] John Hinckley / Note #1 / Note #1

In 1980, Jodie Foster was enrolled at Yale University in New Haven,
Connecticut, as an undergraduate. Hinckley spent three weeks in
September 1980 in a New Haven hotel, according to the "New York Daily
News". In early October, he spent several days in New Haven, this time
at the Colony Inn motel. Two bartenders in a bar near the Yale campus
recalled Hinckley as having bragged about his relationship with Jodie
Foster. Hinckley had been arrested by airport authorities in
Nashville, Tennessee on October 9, 1980 for carrying three guns, and
was quickly released. Reagan had been in Nashville on October 7, and
Carter arrived there on October 9. The firearms charge on the same day
that the President was coming to town should have landed Hinckley on
the Secret Service watch list of potential presidential assassins, but
the FBI apparently neglected to transmit the information to the Secret
Service.

In February 1981, Hinckley was again near the Yale campus. During this
time, Hinckley claimed that he was in contact with Jodie Foster by
mail and telephone. Jodie Foster had indeed received a series of
letters and notes from Hinckley, which she had passed on to her
college dean. The dean allegedly gave the letters to the New Haven
police, who supposedly gave them to the FBI. Nevertheless, nothing was
done to restrain Hinckley, who had a record of psychiatric treatment.
Hinckley had been buying guns in various locations across the United
States. Was Hinckley a Manchurian candidate, brainwashed to carry out
his role as an assassin? Was a network operating through the various
law enforcement agencies responsible for the failure to restrain
Hinckley or to put him under special surveillance?

The FBI soon officially rubber-stamped the order promulgated by the
cabinet that no conspiracy be found: "There was no conspiracy and
Hinckley acted alone," said the bureau. Hinckley's parents' memoir
refers to some notes penciled by Hinckley which were found during a
search of his cell and which "could sound bad." These notes "described
an imaginary conspiracy -- either with the political left or the
political right .. to assassinate the President." Hinckley's lawyers,
from Edward Bennett Williams's law firm, said that the notes were too
absurd to be taken seriously, and they have been suppressed. / Note #1
/ Note #2

In July 1985, the FBI was compelled to release some details of its
investigation of Hinckley under the Freedom of Information Act. No
explanation was offered of how it was determined that Hinckley had
acted alone, and the names of all witnesses were censored. According
to a wire service account, "The file made no mention of papers seized
from Hinckley's prison cell at Butner, North Carolina, which
reportedly made reference to a conspiracy. Those writings were ruled
inadmissible by the trial judge and never made public." / Note #1 /
Note #3

The FBI has refused to release 22 pages of documents concerning
Hinckley's "associates and organizations," 22 pages about his personal
finances, and 37 pages about his personality and character. The
Williams and Connally defense team argued that Hinckley was insane,
controlled by his obsession with Jodie Foster. The jury accepted this
version, and in July 1982, Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of
insanity. He was remanded to St. Elizabeth's mental hospital where he
remains to this day with no fixed term to serve; his mental condition
is periodically reviewed by his doctors.

Bush Takes Over

Bush took up the duties of the presidency, all the while elaborately
denying, in his self-deprecating way, that he had in fact taken
control. During the time that Reagan was convalescing, the President
was even less interested than usual in detailed briefings about
government operations. Bush's visits to the chief executive were thus
reduced to the merest courtesy calls, after which Bush was free to do
what he wanted.

Bush's key man was James Baker III, White House chief of staff and the
leading court favorite of Nancy Reagan. During this period, Michael
Deaver was a wholly controlled appendage of Baker, and would remain
one for as long as he was useful to the designs of the Bushmen.

And Baker and Deaver were not the only Bushmen in the White House.
There were also Bush campaign veterans David Gergen and Jay Moorhead.
In the cabinet, one Bush loyalist was Secretary of Commerce Malcolm
Baldridge, who was flanked by his assistant secretary, Fred Bush
(apparently not a member of the George Bush family). The Bushmen were
strong in the sub-cabinet: Here were Assistant Secretary of State for
East Asian and Pacific Affairs John Holdridge, who had served Bush on
his Beijing mission staff and during the 1975 Pol Pot caper in
Beijing; and Assistant Secretary of State for Congressional Affairs
Richard Fairbanks; with these two in Foggy Bottom, Haig's days were
numbered. At the Pentagon was Henry E. Catto, the assistant secretary
of defense for public affairs; Catto would later be rewarded by Bush
with an appointment as U.S. ambassador to the Court of St. James in
London, the post that foreign service officers spend their lives
striving to attain. Bush was also strong among the agencies: His pal
William H. Draper III, son of the Nazi banker, was the chairman and
president of the Export-Import Bank. Loret Miller Ruppe, Bush's
campaign chairman in Michigan, was director of the Peace Corps.

At the Treasury, Bush's cousin, John Walker, would be assistant
secretary for enforcement. When the BCCI scandal exploded in the media
during 1991, William von Raab, the former director of the U.S.
Customs, complained loudly that, during Reagan's second term, his
efforts to "go after" BCCI had been frustrated by reticence at the
Treasury Department. By this time, James Baker III was secretary of
the treasury, and Bush's kissing cousin, John Walker, was an official
who would have had the primary responsibility for the intensity of
such investigations.

At the Pentagon, Caspar Weinberger's d eputy assistant secretary for
East Asia, Richard Armitage, was no stranger to the circles of
Shackley and Clines. Bush's staff numbered slightly less than 60
during the early spring of 1981. He often operated out of a small
office in the West Wing of the White House where he liked to spend
time because it was "in the traffic pattern," but his staff was
principally located in the Old Executive Office Building. Here Bush
sat at a mammoth mahogany desk which had been used in 1903 by his
lifetime ego ideal, the archetypal liberal Republican extravagant,
Theodore Roosevelt.

During and after Reagan's recovery, Bush put together a machine
capable of steering many of the decisions of the Reagan
administration. Bush had a standing invitation to sit in on all
cabinet meetings and other executive activities, and James Baker was
always there to make sure he knew what was going on. Bush was a part
of every session of the National Security Council. Bush also possessed
guaranteed access to Reagan, in case he ever needed that: Each
Thursday Reagan and Bush would have lunch alone together in the Oval
Office.

Each Tuesday, Bush attended the weekly meeting of GOP committee
chairmen presided over by Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker at the
Senate. Then Bush would stay on the Hill for the weekly luncheon of
the Republican Policy Committee hosted by Senator John Tower of Texas.

Prescott's old friend William Casey was beginning to work his deviltry
at Langley, and kept in close touch with Bush.

The Attempt on the Pope

Forty-four days after the attempted assassination of Reagan, there
followed the attempt to assassinate Pope John Paul II during a general
audience in St. Peter's Square in Rome. During those 44 days, Bush had
been running the U.S. government. It was as if a new and malignant
evil had erupted onto the world stage, and was asserting its presence
with an unprecedented violence and terror. Bush was certainly involved
in the attempt to cover up the true authors of the attentat of St.
Peter's Square. An accessory before the fact in the attempt to slay
the pontiff appears to have been Bush's old cohort Frank Terpil, who
had been one of the instructors who had trained Mehmet Ali Agca, who
fired on the Pope.

After a lengthy investigation, the Italian investigative magistrate,
Ilario Martella, in December 1982 issued seven arrest warrants in the
case, five against Turks and two against Bulgarians. Ultimate
responsibility for the attempt on the Pope's life belonged to Yuri
Andropov of the Soviet KGB. On March 1, 1990, Viktor Ivanovich
Sheymov, a KGB officer who had defected to the West, revealed at a
press conference in Washington, D.C. that as early as 1979, shortly
after Karol Woityla became Pope, the KGB had been instructed through
an order signed by Yuri Andropov to gather all possible information on
how to get "physically close to the Pope." / Note #1 / Note #4

According to one study of these events, during the second week of
August 1980, when the agitation of the Polish trade union Solidarnosc
was at its height, the Pope had dispatched a special emissary to
Moscow with a personal letter for Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev.
The Pope's message warned the Soviet dictator that if the Red Army
were to invade Poland, as then seemed imminent, the Pope would fly to
Warsaw and lead the resistance. It is very likely that shortly after
this the Soviets gave the order to eliminate Pope John Paul II. / Note
#1 / Note #5

With the Vatican supporting Judge Martella in his campaign to expose
the true background of Ali Agca's assault, it appeared that the
Bulgarian connection, and with it the Andropov-KGB connection, might
soon be exposed. But in the meantime, Brezhnev had died, and had been
succeeded by the sick and elderly Konstantin Chernenko. Bush was
already in the "you die, we fly" business, representing Reagan at all
important state funerals, and carrying on the summit diplomacy that
belongs to such occasions. Bush attended Brezhnev's funeral in
November 1982, and conferred at length with Yuri Andropov. Chernenko
was a transitional figure, and the Anglo-American elites were looking
to KGB boss Andropov as a desirable successor with whom a new series
of condominium deals at the expense of peoples and nations all over
the planet might be consummated. For the sake of the condominium, it
was imperative that the hit against the Pope not be pinned on Moscow.
There was also the scandal that would result if it turned out that
U.S. assets had also been involved within the framework of derivative
assassination networks.

During the first days of 1983, Bush lodged an urgent request with
Monsignor Pio Laghi, the apostolic pro-nuncio in Washington, in which
Bush asked for an immediate private audience with the Pope. By
February 8, Bush was in Rome. According to reliable reports, during
the private audience Bush "suggested that John Paul should not pursue
quite so energetically his own interest in the plot." / Note #1 / Note
#6

Bush's personal intervention had the effect of supplementing and
accelerating a U.S. intelligence operation that was already in motion
to sabotage and discredit Judge Martella and his investigation. On May
13, 1983, the second anniversary of the attempt on the Pope's life,
Vassily Dimitrov, the first secretary of the Bulgarian embassy in
Rome, expressed his gratitude: "Thanks to the CIA, I feel as if I were
born again!" / Note #1 / Note #7

Bush consistently expressed skepticism on Bulgarian support for Agca.
On December 20, 1982, responding to the Martella indictments, Bush
told the "Christian Science Monitor": "Maybe I speak defensively as a
former head of the CIA, but leave out the operational side of the KGB
-- the naughty things they allegedly do: Here's a man, Andropov, who
has had access to a tremendous amount of intelligence over the years.
In my judgment, he would be less apt to misread the intentions of the
U.S.A. That offers potential. And the other side of that is that he's
tough, and he appears to have solidified his leadership position."

According to one study, the German foreign intelligence service (the
Bundesnachrichtendienst) believed at this time that "a common link
between the CIA and the Bulgarians" existed. / Note #1 / Note #8

Martella was convinced that Agca had been sent into action by Sergei
Antonov, a Bulgarian working in Rome. According to author Gordon
Thomas, Martella was aware that the White House, and Bush
specifically, were determined to sabotage the exposure of this
connection. Martella brought Agca and Antonov together, and Agca
identified Antonov in a line-up. Agca also described the interior of
Antonov's apartment in Rome. "Later, Martella told his staff that the
CIA or anyone else can spread as much disinformation as they like; he
is satisfied that Agca is telling the truth about knowing Antonov." /
Note #1 / Note #9

Later, U.S. intelligence networks would redouble these sabotage
efforts with some success. Agca was made to appear a lunatic, and two
key Bulgarian witnesses changed their testimony. A campaign of leaks
was also mounted. In a bizarre but significant episode, even New York
Senator Al D'Amato got into the act. D'Amato alleged that he had heard
about the Pope's letter warning Brezhnev about invading Poland while
he was visiting the Vatican during early 1981: As the "New York Times"
reported on February 9, 1983, "D'Amato says he informed the CIA about
the letter and identified his source in the Vatican when he returned
to the U.S. from a 1981 trip to Rome." Later, D'Amato was told that
the Rome CIA station had never heard anything from Langley about his
report of the Pope's letter. "I gave them important information and
they clearly never followed it up," complained D'Amato to reporters.

In February 1983, D'Amato visited Rome once again on a fact-finding
mission in connection with the Agca plot. He asked the U.S. embassy in
Rome to set up appointments for him with Italian political leaders and
law enforcement officials, but his visit was sabotaged by U.S.
Ambassador Maxwell Raab. The day before D'Amato was scheduled to leave
Washington, he found that he had no meetings set up in Rome. Then an
Italian-speaking member of the staff of the Senate Intelligence
Committee, who was familiar with the Agca investigation and who was
scheduled to accompany D'Amato to Rome, informed the Senator that he
would not make the trip. D'Amato told the press that this last-minute
cancellation was due to pressure from the CIA.

Much to D'Amato's irritation, it turned out that George Bush
personally had been responsible for a rather thorough sabotage of his
trip. D'Amato showed the Rome press "a telegram from the American
Ambassador in Rome urging him to postpone the visit because the
embassy was preoccupied with an overlapping appearance by Vice
President Bush," as the "New York Times" reported. This was Bush's
mission to warn the Pope not to pursue the Bulgarian connection.
D'Amato said he was shocked that no one on the CIA staff in Rome had
been assigned to track the Agca investigation.

The CIA station chief in Rome during the early 1980s was William
Mulligan, a close associate of former CIA Deputy Assistant Director
for Operations Theodore Shackley. Shackley, as we have seen, was a
part of the Bush for President campaign of 1980.

Mehmet Ali Agca received training in the use of explosives, firearms,
and other subjects from the "former" CIA agent Frank Terpil. Terpil
was known to Agca as "Major Frank," and the training appears to have
taken place in Syria and in Libya.

Agca's identification of Terpil had been very precise and detailed on
Major Frank and on the training program. Terpil himself granted a
television interview, which was incorporated into a telecast on his
activities and entitled "The Most Dangerous Man in the World,"
broadcast in January 1982, during which Terpil described in some
detail how he had trained Agca. Shortly after this, Terpil left his
apartment in Beirut, accompanied by three unidentified men, and
disappeared. Terpil and Ed Wilson had gone to Libya and begun a
program of terrorist training at about the time that George Bush
became the CIA director. Wilson was indicted for supplying explosives
to Libya, for conspiring to assassinate one of Qaddafi's opponents in
Egypt, and for recruiting former U.S. pilots and Green Berets to work
for Qaddafi. Wilson was later lured back to the U.S. and jailed. Frank
Terpil presumably continues to operate, if he is still alive. Was
Terpil actually a triple agent?

What further relation might George Bush have had to the attempt to
take the life of the Pope?

Notes for Chapter XVI

1. Clay F. Richards, "George Bush: 'co-president' in the Reagan
administration," United Press International, March 10, 1981.

2. Alexander Haig, "Caveat" (New York: MacMillan, 1984), p. 115.

3. "Ibid.," p. 302.

4. "Washington Post," March 22, 1981.

5. Haig, "op. cit.," pp. 144-45.

6. Haig, "op. cit.," p. 151.

7. Caspar Weinberger, "Fighting for Peace" (New York: Warner Books,
1990), p. 94.

8. Donald T. Regan, "For the Record" (New York: Harcourt, Brace,
Jovanovich, 1988), p. 168.

9. Weinberger, "op. cit.," p. 95.

10. Ronald Reagan, "An American Life" (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1990), p. 271.

11. Jack and JoAnn Hinckley, "Breaking Points" (Grand Rapids: Chosen
Books, 1985), p. 169.

12. "Ibid.," p. 215.

13. Judy Hasson, United Press International, July 31, 1985.

14. "Washington Post," March 2, 1990.

15. See Gordon Thomas, "Pontiff" (New York: Doubleday, 1983).

16. Gordon Thomas, "Averting Armageddon" (New York: Doubleday, 1984),
p. 74.

17. "American Leviathan," "op. cit."

18. "Ibid.," p. 268.

19. "Ibid.," p. 75.

"XVII: Iran-Contra"

"What pleases the prince has the force of law."

 -- Roman law ""As long as the police carries out the will of the
leadership, it is acting legally.""

 -- Gestapo officer Werner Best / Note #1 We cannot provide here a
complete overview of the Iran-Contra affair. We shall attempt, rather,
to give an account of George Bush's decisive, central role in those
events, which occurred during his vice-presidency and spilled over
into his presidency.

The principal elements of scandal in Iran-Contra may be reduced to the
following points:

1) the secret arming of the Khomeini regime in Iran by the U.S.
government, during an official U.S.-decreed arms embargo against Iran,
while the U.S. publicly denounced the recipients of its secret
deliveries as terrorists and kidnappers;

2) the secret arming of its "Contras" for war against the Sandinista
regime in Nicaragua, while such aid was explicitly prohibited under
U.S. law;

3) the use of communist and terrorist enemies -- often "armed directly
by the Anglo-Americans" -- to justify a police state and covert,
oligarchical rule at home;

4) paying for and protecting the gun-running projects with
drug-smuggling, embezzlement, theft by diversion from authorized U.S.
programs, and the "silencing" of both opponents and knowledgeable
participants in the schemes; and

5) the continual, routine perjury and deception of the public by
government officials pretending to have no knowledge of these
activities.

Bush's Central Role

When the scandal broke, in late 1986 and early 1987, George Bush
maintained that he knew nothing about these illegal activities.

Since that time, many once-classified documents have come to light,
which suggest that Bush organized and supervised many, if not most, of
the criminal aspects of the Iran-Contra adventures.

The most significant events relevant to George Bush's role are
presented here in the format of a chronology.

Over the time period covered, the reader will observe the emergence of
new structures in the U.S. government:

 / Note #b^The "Special Situation Group," together with its
subordinate "Standing Crisis Pre-Planning Group" (May 14, 1982).

 / Note #b^The "Crisis Management Center" (February 1983).

 / Note #b^The "Terrorist Incident Working Group" (April 3, 1984).

 / Note #b^The "Task Force on Combatting Terrorism" (or simply
Terrorism Task Force) (July 1985).

 / Note #b^The "Operations Sub-Group" (January 20, 1986).

All of these structures revolved around the secret command role of the
then-vice president, George Bush.

The propaganda given out to justify these changes in government has
stressed the need for secrecy to carry out necessary "covert acts"
against enemies of the nation (or of its leaders). Certainly, a
military command will act secretly in war, and will protect secrets of
its vulnerable capabilities.

But the Bush apparatus, within and behind the government, was formed
to carry out "covert policies": to make war when the constitutional
government had decided not to make war; to support enemies of the
nation (terrorists and drug-runners) who are the friends or agents of
the secret government.

In the period of the chronology, there are a number of meetings of
public officials. By looking at the scant information that has come to
light on these meetings, we may reach some conclusions about who
advocated certain policy choices; but we have not then learned much
about the actual origin of the policies that were being carried out.
This is the rule of an oligarchy whose members are unknown to the
public, an oligarchy which is bound by no known laws.

"March 25, 1981:"

Vice President George Bush was named the leader of the United States
"crisis management" staff, "as a part of the National Security Council
system."

"March 30, 1981:"

President Reagan was shot in an attempted assassination.

"May 14, 1982:"

Bush's position as chief of all covert action and "de facto" head of
U.S. intelligence -- in a sense, the acting President -- was
formalized in a secret memorandum.

The memo explained that "National Security Decision Directive 3,
Crisis Management, establishes the Special Situation Group (SSG),
chaired by the Vice President. The SSG is charged ... with formulating
plans in anticipation of crises."

The memo in question also announced the birth of another organization,
the Standing Crisis Pre-Planning Group (CPPG), which was to work as an
intelligence-gathering agency for Bush and his SSG. This new
subordinate group, consisting of representatives of Vice President
Bush, National Security Council (NSC) staff members, the CIA, the
military, and the State Department, was to "meet periodically in the
White House Situation Room...." They were to identify areas of
potential crisis and "[p]resent ... plans and policy options to the
SSG" under Chairman Bush. And they were to provide to Bush and his
assistants, "as crises develop, alternative plans," "action/options"
and "coordinated implementation plans" to resolve the "crises."

Finally, the subordinate group was to give to Chairman Bush and his
assistants "recommended security, cover, and media plans that will
enhance the likelihood of successful execution." It was announced that
the CPPG would meet for the first time on May 20, 1982, and that
agencies were to "provide the name of their CPPG representative to
Oliver North, NSC staff...."

The memo was signed ""for the President"" by Reagan's national
security adviser, William P. Clark. It was declassified during the
congressional Iran-Contra hearings. / Note #2

Gregg, Rodriguez, and North

"August 1982:"

Vice President Bush hired Donald P. Gregg as his principal adviser on
national security affairs. Gregg now officially retired from the
Central Intelligence Agency.

Donald Gregg brought along into the vice president's office his old
relationship with mid-level CIA assassinations manager "Felix I.
Rodriguez". Gregg had been Rodriguez's boss in Vietnam.

Donald Gregg worked under Bush in Washington from 1976 -- when Bush
was CIA director -- through the later 1970s, when the Bush clique was
at war with President Carter and his CIA director, Stansfield Turner.
Gregg was detailed to work at the National Security Council between
1979 and 1982. From 1976 right up through that NSC assignment, CIA
officer Gregg saw CIA agent Rodriguez regularly. Both men were
intensely loyal to Bush. / Note #3

Their continuing collaboration  was crucial to Vice President Bush's
organization of covert action. Rodriguez was now to operate out of the
vice president's office.

"December 21, 1982:"

The first "Boland Amendment" became law: "None of the funds provided
in this Act [the Defense Appropriations Bill] may be used by the
Central Intelligence Agency or the Department of Defense to furnish
military equipment, military training or advice, or other support for
military activities, to any group or individual ... for the purpose of
overthrowing the government of Nicaragua."

"Boland I," as it was called, remained in effect until Oct. 3, 1984,
when it was superseded by a stronger prohibition known as "Boland II."
/ Note #4

"February 1983:"

Fawn Hall joined Oliver North as his assistant. Ms. Hall reported that
she worked with North on the development of a secret "Crisis
Management Center."

Lt. Colonel North, an employee of the National Security Council, is
seen here managing a new structure within the Bush-directed SSG/CPPG
arrangements of 1981-82. / Note #5

"March 3, 1983:"

In the spring of 1983, the National Security Council established an
office of "Public Diplomacy" to propagandize in favor of and run cover
for the Iran-Contra operations, and to coordinate published attacks on
opponents of the program.

Former CIA Director of Propaganda Walter Raymond was put in charge of
the effort. The unit was to work with domestic and international news
media, as well as private foundations. The Bush family-affiliated
Smith Richardson Foundation was part of a National Security Council
"private donors steering committee" charged with coordinating this
propaganda effort.

A March 3, 1983 memorandum from Walter Raymond to then-NSC Director
William Clark, provided details of the program: "As you will remember
you and I briefly mentioned to the President when we briefed him on
the N[ational] S[ecurity] D[ecision] D[irective] on public diplomacy
that we would like to get together with some potential donors at a
later date....

"To accomplish these objectives Charlie [United States Information
Agency Director Charles Z. Wick] has had two lengthy meetings with a
group of people representing the private sector. This group had
included principally program directors rather than funders. The group
was largely pulled together by Frank Barnett, Dan McMichael (Dick
[Richard Mellon] Scaife's man), Mike Joyce (Olin Foundation), Les
Lenkowsky (Smith Richardson Foundation) plus Leonard Sussman and Leo
Cherne of Freedom House. A number of others including Roy Godson have
also participated." / Note #6

Elsewhere, Raymond described Cherne and Godson as the coordinators of
this group. Frank Barnett was the director of the Bush family's
National Strategy Information Center, for which Godson was the
Washington, D.C. director. Barnett had been the project director of
the Smith Richardson Foundation prior to being assigned to that post.

The Smith Richardson Foundation has sunk millions of dollars into the
Iran-Contra projects. Some Smith Richardson grantees, receiving money
since the establishment of the National Security Council's "private
steering committee" include the following:

 / Note #b^"Dennis King", to write the book "Lyndon LaRouche and the
New American Fascism", used as the basis for arguments against
LaRouche and his associates by federal and state prosecutors around
the country.

 / Note #b^"Freedom House." This was formed by Leo Cherne, business
partner of CIA Director William Casey. Cherne oversaw Walter Raymond's
"private donors committee."

 / Note #b^"National Strategy Information Center", founded in 1962 by
Casey, Cherne, and the Bush family.

Thus, when an item appeared in a daily newspaper, supporting the
Contras, or attacking their opponents -- calling them "extremists,"
etc. -- it is likely to have been planted by the U.S. government, by
the George Bush-NSC "private donors" apparatus.

"March 17, 1983:"

Professional assassinations manager Felix I. Rodriguez met with Bush
aide Donald P. Gregg, officially and secretly, at the White House.
Gregg then recommended to National Security Council adviser Robert
"Bud" McFarlane a plan for El Salvador-based military attacks on a
target area of Central American nations including Nicaragua.

Gregg's March 17, 1983 memo to McFarlane said: "The attached plan,
written in March of last year, grew out of two experiences:

" -- Anti-Vietcong operations run under my direction in III Corps
Vietnam from 1970-1972. These operations [see below], based on ... a
small elite force ... produced very favorable results.

" -- Rudy Enders, who is now in charge of what is left of the
para-military capability of the CIA, went to El Salvador in 1981 to do
a survey and develop plans for effective anti-guerrilla operations. He
came back and endorsed the attached plan. (I should add that Enders
and Felix Rodriguez, who wrote the attached plan, both worked for me
in Vietnam and carried out the actual operations outlined above.)

"This plan encountered opposition and skepticism from the U.S.
military....

"I believe the plan can work based on my experience in Vietnam...." /
Note #7

Three years later, Bush agent Rodriguez would be publicly exposed as
the supervisor of the covert Central American network illegally
supplying arms to the Contras.

Rodriguez's uncle had been Cuba's public works minister under
Fulgencio Batista, and his family fled Castro's 1959 revolution. Felix
Rodriguez joined the CIA, and was posted to the CIA's notorious Miami
Station in the early 1960s. The Ted Shackley-E. Howard Hunt
organization there, assisted by Meyer Lansky and Santos Trafficante's
mafiosi, trained Rodriguez and other Cubans in the arts of murder and
sabotage.

Felix Rodriguez recounted his early adventures in gun-running under
false pretexts in a ghost-written book, "Shadow Warrior": "[J]ust
around the time President Kennedy was assassinated, I left for Central
America.

"I spent almost two years in Nicaragua, running the communications
network for [our enterprise].... [O]ur arms cache was in Costa Rica.
The funding for the project came from the CIA, but the money's origin
was hidden through the use of a cover corporation.... The U.S.
government had the deniability it wanted; we got the money we
needed....

"In fact, what we did in Nicaragua twenty-five year s ago has some
pretty close parallels to the Contra operation today." / Note #8

Rodriguez followed his CIA boss Ted Shackley to Southeast Asia in
1970. Shackley and Donald Gregg put Rodriguez into the huge
assassination and dope business which Shackley and his colleagues ran
during the Indochina war; this bunch became the heart of the
"Enterprise" that went into action 15 to 20 years later in
Iran-Contra.

Shackley funded opium-growing Meo tribesmen for murder, and used the
dope proceeds in turn to fund his hit squads. He formed the Military
Assistance Group-Special Operations Group (MAG-SOG) political murder
unit; Gen. John K. Singlaub was a commander of MAG-SOG; Oliver North
and Richard Secord were officers of the unit. By 1971, the Shackley
group had killed about 100,000 civilians in Southeast Asia as part of
the CIA's Operation Phoenix.

After Vietnam, Felix Rodriguez went back to Latin American CIA
operations, while other parts of the Shackley organization went on to
drug-selling and gun-running in the Middle East.

By 1983, both the Mideast Shackley group and the self-styled "Shadow
Warrior," Felix Rodriguez, were attached to the shadow
commander-in-chief, George Bush.

"May 25, 1983:"

Secretary of State George Shultz wrote a memorandum for President
Reagan, trying to stop George Bush from running Central American
operations for the U.S. government. Shultz included a draft National
Security Decision Directive for the President to sign, and an
organizational chart ("Proposed Structure") showing Shultz's proposal
for the line of authority -- from the President and his NSC, through
Secretary of State Shultz and his assistant secretary, down to an
interagency group.

The last line of the Shultz memo says bluntly what role is reserved
for the Bush-supervised CPPG: "The Crisis Pre-Planning Group is
relieved of its assignments in this area."

Back came a memorandum on White House letterhead but bearing no
signature, saying no to Shultz: "The institutional arrangements
established in NSDD-2 are, I believe, appropriate to fulfill [our
national security requirements in Central America]...." With the
put-down is a chart headlined ""NSDD-2 Structure for Central
America."" At the top is the President; just below is a complex of
Bush's SSG and CPPG as managers of the NSC; then below that is the
secretary of state, and below him various agencies and interagency
groups. / Note #9

"July 12, 1983:"

Kenneth De Graffenreid, new manager of the Intelligence Directorate of
the National Security Council, sent a secret memo to George Bush's
aide, Admiral Daniel Murphy:

"... Bud McFarlane has asked that I meet with you today, if possible,
to review procedures for obtaining the Vice President's comments and
concurrence on all N[ational] S[ecurity] C[ouncil] P[lanning] G[roup]
covert action and MONs." / Note #1 / Note #0

The Bush Regency in Action

"October 20, 1983:"

The U.S. invasion of the Caribbean island-nation of Grenada was
decided upon in a secret meeting under the leadership of George Bush.
National Security Council operative Constantine Menges, a stalwart
participant in these events, described the action for posterity: "My
job that afternoon was to write the background memorandum that would
be used by the vice president, who in his role as 'crisis manager'
would chair this first NSC meeting on the [Grenada] issue....

"Shortly before 6:00 p.m., the participants began to arrive: Vice
President Bush, [Secretary of Defense Caspar] Weinberger, [Attorney
General Edwin] Meese, J[oint] C[hiefs of] S[taff] Chairman General
Vessey, acting CIA Director McMahon, [State Dept. officer Lawrence]
Eagleburger, ... North and myself.

"President Reagan was travelling, as were [CIA Director] Bill Casey
and Jeane Kirkpatrick....

"Vice President Bush sat in the President's chair."

Menges continued: "The objective, right from the beginning, was to
plan a rescue [of American students detained on Grenada] that would
guarantee quick success, but with a minimum of casualties....

"Secrecy was imperative.... As part of this plan, there would be no
change in the schedule of the top man. President Reagan ... would
travel to Augusta, Georgia, for a golf weekend. Secretary of State
Shultz would go too...."

Work now proceeded on detailed action plans, under the guidance of the
vice president's Special Situation Group.

"Late Friday afternoon [Oct. 21] .. the CPPG ... [met] in room 208....
Now the tone of our discussions had shifted from whether we would act
to how this could be accomplished....

"[The] most secure means [were to] be used to order U.S. ships to
change course ... toward Grenada. Nevertheless, ABC news had learned
about this and was broadcasting it."

Thus, the course of action decided upon without the President was
"leaked" to the news media, and became a "fait-accompli." Menges's
memo continues: "It pleased me to see that now our government was
working as a team.... That evening Ollie North and I worked together
... writing the background and decision memoranda. Early in the
evening [NSC officer Admiral John] Poindexter reviewed our first draft
and made a few minor revisions. Then the Grenada memoranda were sent
to the President, Shultz and McFarlane at the golf course in
Georgia....

"Shortly before 9:00 a.m. [Oct. 22], members of the foreign policy
cabinet [sic!] began arriving at the White House -- all out of sight
of reporters. The participants included Weinberger, Vessey, and Fred
Ikle from Defense; Eagleburger and Motley from State; McMahon and an
operations officer from CIA; and Poindexter, North and myself from
NSC. Vice President Bush chaired the Washington group.

"All participants were escorted to room 208, which many had never seen
before. The vice president sat at one end of the long table and
Poindexter at the other, with speaker phones positioned so that
everyone could hear President Reagan, Shultz, and McFarlane.

"The detailed hour-by-hour plan was circulated to everyone at the
meeting. There was also a short discussion of the War Powers
Resolution, which requires the President to get approval of Congress
if he intends to deploy U.S. troops in combat for more than sixty
days. There was little question that U.S. combat forces would be out
before that time....

"The President had participated and asked questions over the speaker
phone; he made his decision. The U.S. would answer the call from our
Caribbean neighbors. We would assure the safety of our citizens." /
Note #1 / Note #1

Clearly, there was no perceived need to follow the U.S. Constitution
and leave the question of whether to make war up to the Congress.
After all, President Reagan had concurred, from the golf course, with
Acting President Bush's decision in the matter.

"November 3, 1983:"

Bush aide Donald Gregg met with Felix Rodriguez to discuss "the
general situation in Central America." / Note #1 / Note #2

"December 1983:"

Oliver North accompanied Vice President Bush to El Salvador as his
assistant. Bush met with Salvadoran army commanders. North helped Bush
prepare a speech, in which he publicly called upon them to end their
support for the use of "death squads." / Note #1 / Note #3

Attack from Jupiter

"January 1 through March 1984:"

The "Wall Street Journal" of March 6, 1985 gave a de-romanticized
version of certain aquatic adventures in Central America: "Armed
speedboats and a helicopter launched from a Central Intelligence
Agency 'mother ship' attacked Nicaragua's Pacific port, Puerto Sandino
on a moonless New Year's night in 1984.

"A week later the speedboats returned to mine the oil terminal. Over
the next three months, they laid more than 30 mines in Puerto Sandino
and also in the harbors at Corinto and El Bluff. In air and sea raids
on coastal positions, Americans flew -- and fired from -- an armed
helicopter that accompanied the U.S.-financed Latino force, while a
CIA plane provided sophisticated reconaissance guidance for the
nighttime attacks.

"The operation, outlined in a classified CIA document, marked the peak
of U.S. involvement in the four-year guerrilla war in Nicaragua. More
than any single event, it so lidified congressional opposition to the
covert war, and in the year since then, no new money has been approved
beyond the last CIA checks drawn early [in the] summer [of 1984]....

"CIA paramilitary officers were upset by the ineffectiveness of the
Contras.... As the insurgency force grew ... during 1983 ... the CIA
began to use the guerrilla army as a cover for its own small "Latino"
force....

[The] most celebrated attack, by armed speedboats, came Oct. 11, 1983,
against oil facilities at Corinto. Three days later, an underwater
pipeline at Puerto Sandino was sabotaged by Latino [sic] frogmen. The
message wasn't lost on Exxon Corp.'s Esso unit [formerly Standard Oil
of New Jersey], and the international giant informed the Sandinista
government that it would no longer provide tankers for transporting
oil to Nicaragua.

"The CIA's success in scaring off a major shipper fit well into its
mining strategy....

"The mother ship used in the mining operation is described by sources
as a private chartered vessel with a configuration similar to an
oil-field service and towing ship with a long, flat stern section
where helicopters could land...."

The reader may have already surmised that Vice President Bush (with
his background in "oilfield service" and his control of a "top-level
committee of the National Security Council") sat in his Washington
office and planned these brilliant schemes. But such a guess is
probably incorrect -- it is off by about 800 miles.

On Jupiter Island, Florida, where the Bush family has had a seasonal
residence for the past several decades, is the headquarters of
Continental Shelf Associates, Inc. (CSA). / Note #1 / Note #4

This company describes itself as "an environmental consulting firm
specializing in applied marine science and technology ... founded in
1970.... The main office ... is located in Jupiter, Florida,
approximately 75 miles north of  Miami."

The founder and chief executive of CSA is Robert "Stretch" Stevens. A
former lieutenant commander in naval special operations, Stevens has
been a close associate of CIA officer "Theodore Shackley", and of Bush
agent "Felix Rodriguez" since the early 1960s, when Stevens served as
a boat captain in the invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, and through
the Vietnam War.

During the period 1982-85, CSA was contracted by the U.S. intelligence
community, including the CIA, to carry out coastal and on-the-ground
reconnaissance and logistical support work in the eastern
Mediterranean in support of the U.S. Marine deployment into Lebanon;
and coastal mapping and reconnaissance of the Caribbean island of
Grenada prior to the October 1983 U.S. military action.

Beginning in approximately the autumn of 1983, CSA was employed to
design and execute a program for the mining of several Nicaraguan
harbors. After the U.S. Senate restricted such activities to non-U.S.
personnel only, CSA trained "Latin American nationals" at a facility
located on El Bravo Island off the eastern coast of Nicaragua.

Acta Non Verba (Deeds Not Words) is a "subsidiary" of CSA,
incorporated in 1986 and located at the identical Jupiter address.

"Rudy Enders", the head of the CIA's paramilitary section -- and
deployed by George Bush aide Donald Gregg -- is a minority owner of
Acta Non Verba (ANV).

ANV's own tough-talking promotional literature says that it
concentrates on "counter-terrorist activities in the maritime
environment."

A very high-level retired CIA officer, whose private interview was
used in preparation for this book, described this "Fish Farm" in the
following more realistic terms: "Assassination operations and training
company controlled by Ted Shackley, under the cover of a private
corporation with a regular board of directors, stockholders, etc.,
located in Florida. They covertly bring in Haitian and Southeast Asian
boat people as recruits, as well as Koreans, Cubans, and Americans.
They hire out assassinations and intelligence services to governments,
corporations, and individuals, and also use them for covering or
implementing 'Fish Farm' projects/activities."

The upshot of the attack from Jupiter -- the mining of Nicaragua's
harbors -- was that the Congress got angry enough to pass the "Boland
II" amendment, re-tightening the laws against this public-private
warfare.

"April 3, 1984:"

Another subcommittee of the Bush terrorism apparatus was formed, as
President Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 138. The
new "Terrorist Incident Working Group (TIWG)" reported to Bush's
Special Situation Group. The TIWG geared up government agencies to
support militant counterterrorism assaults, on the Israeli model. /
Note #1 / Note #5

"How Can Anyone Object?"

"June 25, 1984:"

The National Security Planning Group, including Reagan, Bush, and
other top officials, met secretly in the White House situation room at
2:00 p.m. They discussed whether to risk seeking "third-country aid"
to the Contras, to get around the congressional ban enacted Dec. 21,
1982.

George Bush spoke in favor, according to minutes of the meeting.

Bush said, "How can anyone object to the U.S. encouraging third
parties to provide help to the anti-Sandinistas under the
[intelligence] finding. The only problem that might come up is if the
United States were to promise to give these third parties something in
return so that "some people might interpret" this as some kind of an
exchange" [emphasis added].

Warning that this would be illegal, Secretary of State Shultz said: "I
would like to get money for the Contras also, but another lawyer
[then-Treasury Secretary] Jim Baker said if we go out and try to get
money from third countries, it is an impeachable offense."

CIA Director Casey reminded Shultz that "Jim Baker changed his mind
[and now supported the circumvention]...."

NSC adviser Robert McFarlane cautioned, "I propose that there be no
authority for anyone to seek third party support for the
anti-Sandinistas until we have the information we need, and I
certainly hope none of this discussion will be made public in any
way."

President Ronald Reagan then closed the meeting with a warning against
anyone leaking the fact they were considering how to circumvent the
law: "If such a story gets out, we'll all be hanging by our thumbs in
front of the White House until we find out who did it." In March of
the following year, Bush personally arranged the transfer of funds to
the Contras by the Honduran government, assuring them they would
receive compensating U.S. aid.

The minutes of this meeting, originally marked ""secret,"" were
released five years later, at Oliver North's trial in the spring of
1989. / Note #1 / Note #6

"October 3, 1984:"

Congress enacted a new version of the earlier attempt to outlaw the
U.S. secret war in Central America. This "Boland II" amendment was
designed to prevent any conceivable form of deceit by the covert
action apparatus.

This law was effective from October 3, 1984, to December 5, 1985, when
it was superceded by various aid-limitation laws which, taken
together, were referred to as "Boland III." / Note #1 / Note #7

"November 1, 1984:"

Felix Rodriguez's partner, Gerard Latchinian, was arrested by the FBI.
Latchinian was then tried and convicted of smuggling $10.3 million in
cocaine into the United States. The dope was to finance the murder and
overthrow of the President of Honduras, Roberto Suazo Cordova.
Latchinian was sentenced to a 30-year prison term.

On Nov. 10, 1983, a year before the arrest, Felix Rodriguez had filed
the annual registration with Florida's secretary of state on behalf of
Latchinian and Rodriguez's joint enterprise, "Giro Aviation Corp." /
Note #1 / Note #8

"December 21, 1984:"

Felix Rodriguez met in the office of the vice president with Bush
adviser Donald Gregg. Immediately after this meeting, Rodriguez met
with Oliver North, supposedly for the first time in his life. But
Bush's adviser strenuously denied to investigators that he
"introduced" his CIA employee to North. / Note #1 / Note #9

"January 18, 1985:"

Felix Rodriguez met with Ramon Milian Rodriguez, accountant and money
launderer, who had moved $1.5 billion for the Medellin cocaine cartel.
Milian testified before a Senate investigation of the Contras'
drug-smuggling, that more than a year earlier he had granted Felix's
request and given $10 million from the cocaine cartel to Felix for the
Contras.

Milian Rodriguez was interviewed in his prison cell in Butner, North
Carolina, by investigative journalist Martha Honey. He said Felix
Rodriguez had offered that "in exchange for money for the Contra cause
he would use his influence in high places to get the [Cocaine] cartel
U.S. 'good will'.... Frankly, one of the selling points was that he
could talk directly to Bush. The issue of good will wasn't something
that was going to go through 27 bureaucratic hands. It was something
that was directly between him and Bush."

Ramon Milian Rodriguez was a Republican contributor, who had partied
by invitation at the 1981 Reagan-Bush inauguration ceremonies. He had
been arrested aboard a Panama-bound private jet by federal agents in
May 1983, while carrying over $5 million in cash. According to Felix
Rodriguez, Milian was seeking a way out of the narcotics charges when
he met with Felix on January 18, 1985.

This meeting remained secret until two years later, when Felix
Rodriguez had become notorious in the Iran-Contra scandal. The "Miami
Herald" broke the story on June 30, 1987. Felix Rodriguez at first
denied ever meeting with Ramon Milian Rodriguez. But then a new story
was worked out with various agencies. Felix "remembered" the Jan. 18,
1985 meeting, claimed he had "said nothing" during it, and
"remembered" that he had filed documents with the FBI and CIA telling
them about the meeting just afterwards. / Note #2 / Note #0

"January 22, 1985":

George Bush met with Felix Rodriguez in the Executive Office Building.

Felix's ghost writer doesn't tell us what was said, only that "Mr.
Bush was easy to talk to, and he was interested in my stories." / Note
#2 / Note #1

"Late January, 1985:"

George Bush's office officially organized contacts through the State
Department for Felix Rodriguez to operate in Central America from a
base in El Salvador, in a false "private" capacity.

The U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, Thomas Pickering, then cabled to
Gen. Paul F. Gorman, commander of the U.S. Army Southern Command:
"Rodriguez has high-level contacts at the White House, DOS [State
Department] and DOD [Defense Department], some of whom are strongly
supporting his use in El Salvador.

"It would be in our best interests that Mr. Rodriguez confer with you
personally prior to coming to El Salvador. I have some obvious
concerns about this arrangement...."

Felix Rodriguez flew to Panama to speak to General Gorman. They
discussed his covert aid to the Contras "since the early eighties." /
Note #2 / Note #2

Rodriguez, by George Bush's story the private, volunteer helper of the
Contras, flew from Panama to El Salvador on General Gorman's personal
C-12 airplane. General Gorman also sent a confidential cable to
Ambassador Pickering and Col. James Steele, U.S. military liaison man
with the Contra resupply operation in El Salvador: "I have just met
here with Felix Rodriguez, [deleted, probably "CIA"] pensioner from
Miami. Born in Cuba, a veteran of guerrilla operations [several lines
deleted]....

"He is operating as a private citizen, but his acquaintanceship with
the V[ice] P[resident] is real enough, going back to the latter's days
as D[irector of] C[entral] I[ntelligence].

"Rodriguez' primary commitment to the region is in [deleted] where he
wants to assist the FDN [Contras military forces]." / Note #2 / Note
#3

"February 7, 1985:"

The Crisis Pre-Planning Group (CPPG), subordinate to Chairman Bush of
the Special Situation Group (SSG), met to discuss means to circumvent
the Boland amendment's ban on aid to the Contras. They agreed on a
"presidential letter" to be sent to President Suazo of Honduras, "to
provide several enticements to Honduras in exchange for its continued
support of the Nicaraguan Resistance. These enticements included
expedited delivery of military supplies ordered by Honduras, a phased
release of withheld economic assistance (ESF) funds, and other
support."

The preceding was the admission of the United States government in the
1989 Oliver North trial -- number 51 in a series of "stipulations"
that was given to the court to avoid having to release classified
documents.

"February 12, 1985:"

The government admissions in the North trial continued:

"52: ... North proposed that McFarlane send a memo [to top officials
on] the recommendation of the CPPG [the Bush-supervised body, often
chaired by Bush adviser Don Gregg].... The memo stated that this part
of the message [to the Honduran President] should not be contained in
a written document but should be delivered verbally by a discreet
emissary." This was to be George Bush himself.

Honduras would be given increased aid, to be diverted to the Contras,
so as to deceive Congress and the American population. / Note #2 /
Note #4

"February 15, 1985:"

After Rodriguez had arrived in El Salvador and had begun setting up
the central resupply depot for the Contras, Ambassador Thomas
Pickering sent an "Eyes Only" cable to the State Department on his
conversation with Rodriguez. Pickering's cable bore the postscript,
"Please brief Don Gregg in the V.P.'s office for me." / Note #2 / Note
#5

"February 19, 1985:"

Felix Rodriguez met with Bush's staff in the vice-presidential offices
in the Executive Office Building, briefing them on the progress of his
mission.

Over the next two years, Rodriguez met frequently with Bush staff
members in Washington and in Central America, often jointly with CIA
and other officials, and conferred with Bush's staff by telephone
countless times. / Note #2 / Note #6

"March 15-16, 1985:"

George Bush and Felix Rodriguez were in Central America on their
common project.

On Friday, Rodriguez supervised delivery in Honduras of military
supplies for the FDN Contras whose main base was there in Honduras.

On Saturday, George Bush met with Honduran President Roberto Suazo
Cordova. Bush told Suazo that the Reagan-Bush administration was
expediting delivery of more than $110 million in economic and military
aid to Suazo's government. This was the "quid pro quo": a bribe for
Suazo's support for the U.S. mercenary force, and a transfer through
Honduras of the Contra military supplies, which had been directly
prohibited by the Congress.

Notes for Chapter XIX

1. William L. Shirer, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History
of Nazi Germany" (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960), p. 271.

2. Memo, May 14, 1982, two pp. bearing the nos. 29464 and 29465.

3. Testimony of Donald P. Gregg, pp. 72-73 in Stenographic Transcript
of Hearings Before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations,
Nomination Hearing for Donald Phinney Gregg to be Ambassador to the
Republic of Korea. Washington, D.C., May 12, 1989.

4. "Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran
Contra Affair", published jointly by the U.S. House of Representatives
Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran,
and the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Secret Military Assistance to
Iran and the Nicaraguan Opposition, Nov. 17, 1987, Washington, D.C.,
pp. 395-97.

5. "CovertAction," No. 33, Winter 1990, p. 12.

6. Memoranda and meetings of March 1983, in the "National Security
Archive" Iran-Contra Collection on microfiche at the Library of
Congress, Manuscript Reading Room.

7. Don Gregg Memorandum for Bud McFarlane, March 17, 1983, stamped
SECRET, since declassified. Document no. 77 in the Iran-Contra
Collection.

8. Felix Rodriguez and John Weisman, "Shadow Warrior" (New York: Simon
and Schuseter), 1989 p. 119.

9. Shultz Memorandum, May 25, 1983 and White House reply, both stamped
SECRET/SENSITIVE. Documents beginning no. 00107 in the Iran-Contra
Collection.

10. De Graffenreid Memorandum for Admiral Murphy, July 12, 1983, since
declassified, bearing the no. 43673. Document no. 00137 in the
Iran-Contra Collection.

11. Constantine C. Menges, "Inside the National Security Council" (New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), pp. 70-78.

12. Chronology supplied by the Office of the Vice President, cited in
"The Progressive", May 18, 1987, London, England, p. 20.

13. Rodriguez and Weisman, "op. cit.," p. 221.

14. This section is based on 1) literature supplied by CSA, Inc. and
its subsidiary ANV, and 2) an exhaustive examination of CSA/ANV in
Jupiter and other locations.

15. Scott Armstrong, Executive Editor for The National Security
Archive, "The Chronology: The Documented Day-by-Day Account of the
Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Contras" (New York: Warner
Books, 1987), p. 55.

Jonathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott and Jane Hunter, "The Iran-Contra
Connection: Secret Teams and Covert Operations in the Reagan Era"
(Boston: South End Press, 1987), pp. 219-20.

16. National Security Planning Group Meeting Minutes, June 25, 1984,
pp. 1 and 14.

17. This is an excerpt from Section 8066 of Public Law 98-473, the
Continuing Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 1985.

18. Armstrong, "op. cit.," Nov. 1, 1984 entry, p. 70, citing "Miami
Herald" 11/2/84 and 11/3/84, "Wall Street Journal" 11/2/84,
"Washington Post" 8/15/85, "New York Times" 12/23/87.

Armstrong, "op. cit.," Nov. 10, 1983 entry, p. 42, citing corporate
records of the Florida secretary of state 7/14/86, "Miami Herald"
11/2/84, "New York Times" 11/3/84.

19. Rodriguez and Weisman, "op. cit.," pp. 220-21.

20. Report of the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and
International Operations of the Committee on Foreign Relations, United
States Senate, December 1988, pp. 61-62.

21. Rodriguez and Weisman, "op. cit.," pp. 221-22.

22. "Ibid.," pp. 224-25.

23. General Gorman "Eyes Only" cable to Pickering and Steele, Feb. 14,
1985. Partially declassified and released on July 30, 1987 by the
National Security Council, bearing no. D 23179. Document no. 00833 in
the Iran-Contra Collection.

24. U.S. government stipulations in the trial of Oliver North,
reproduced in "EIR Special Report:" "Irangate...," pp. 20, 22.

25. Gregg Hearings, p. 99.

26. Rodriguez and Weisman, "op. cit.," p. 227.

"XVII: Iran-Contra"

In July 1985, Vice President George Bush was designated by President
Reagan to lead the "Task Force on Combatting Terrorism".

Bush's task force was a means to sharply concentrate the powers of
government into the hands of the Bush clique, for such policies as the
Iran-Contra armaments schemes.

The task force had the following cast of characters: George Bush, U.S.
vice president: chairman; Admiral James L. Holloway III: executive
assistant to Chairman Bush; Craig Coy: Bush's deputy assistant under
Holloway; Vice Admiral John Poindexter: senior NSC representative to
Chairman Bush; Marine Corps Lt. Col. Oliver North: day-to-day NSC
representative to George Bush; Amiram Nir: counterterror adviser to
Israeli Premier Shimon Peres; Lt. Col. Robert Earl: staff member;
Terry Arnold: principal consultant; Charles E. Allen, CIA officer:
Senior Review Group; Robert Oakley, director, State Department Counter
Terrorism Office: Senior Review Group; Noel Koch, deputy to asstistant
secretary of defense Richard Armitage: Senior Review Group; Lt. Gen.
John Moellering, Joint Chiefs of Staff: Senior Review Group; Oliver
"Buck" Revell, FBI executive: Senior Review Group.

The Terrorism Task Force organization, as we shall see, was a
permanent affair. / Note #2 / Note #7

"August 8, 1985:"

George Bush met with the National Security Planning Group in the
residence section of the White House. Spurring on their deliberations
on the terrorism problem, a car bomb had blown up that day at a U.S.
air base in Germany, with 22 American casualties.

The officials discussed shipment of U.S.-made arms to Iran through
Israel -- to replenish Israeli stocks of TOW missiles and to permit
Israel to sell arms to Iran.

According to testimony by Robert McFarlane, the transfer was supported
by George Bush, Casey and Donald Regan, and opposed by Shultz and
Weinberger. / Note #2 / Note #8

"August 18, 1985:"

Luis Posada Carriles escaped from prison in Venezuela, where he was
being held for the terrorist murder of 73 persons. Using forged
documents falsely identifying him as a Venezuelan named "Ramon
Medina," Posada flew to Central America. Within a few weeks, Felix
Rodriguez assigned him to supervise the Bush office's Contra resupply
operations being run from the El Salvador air base. Posada personally
ran the safe-houses used for the CIA flight crews.

Rodriguez explained the arrangement in his book: "Because of my
relationship with [El Salvador Air Force] Gen. Bustillo, I was able to
pave the way for [the operations attributed to Oliver] North to use
the facilities at Ilopango [El Salvador air force base].... I found
someone to manage the Salvadorian-based resupply operation on a
day-to-day basis. They knew that person as Ramon Medina. I knew him by
his real name: Luis Posada Carriles.... I first [sic!] met Posada in
1963 at Fort Benning, Georgia, where we went through basic training
together .. as U.S. Army second lieutenants...."

Rodriguez neglects to explain that agent Posada Carriles was
originally recruited and trained by the same CIA murder operation,
"JM/WAVE" in Miami, as was Rodriguez himself.

Felix continues: "In the sixties, he reportedly went to work for
DISIP, the Venezuelan intelligence service, and rose to considerable
power within its ranks. It was rumored that he held one of the top
half-dozen jobs in the organization....

"After the midair bombing of a Cubana airliner on October 6, 1976, in
which seventy-three people were killed, Posada was charged with
planning the attack and was thrown in prison.... Posada was confined
in prison for more than nine years...." / Note #2 / Note #9

"September 10, 1985:"

George Bush's national security adviser, Donald Gregg, met at 4:30
P.M. with Oliver North and Col. James Steele, the U.S. military
official in El Salvador who oversaw flights of cargo going to the
Contras from various points in Central America. They discussed
information given to one or more of them by arms dealer Mario
DelAmico, supplier to the Contras. According to the entry in Oliver
North's notebook, they discussed particularities of the supply
flights, and the operations of FDN commander Enrique Bermudez.

Elsewhere in the diary pages for that day, Colonel North noted that
DelAmico had procured a certain 1,000 munitions items for the Contras.
/ Note #3 / Note #0

"November 1985 :"

George Bush sent Oliver North a note, with thanks for "your dedication
and tireless work with the hostage thing and with Central America." /
Note #3 / Note #1

"December 1985:"

Congress passed new laws limiting U.S. aid to the Contras. The CIA,
the Defense Department, and "any other agency or entity of the United
States involved in intelligence activities" were prohibited from
providing "armaments" to the Contras. The CIA was permitted to provide
communications equipment and training. "Humanitarian" aid was allowed.

These laws, known together as "Boland III," were in effect from
December 4, 1985 to October 17, 1986.

"December 18, 1985:"

CIA official Charles E. Allen, a member of George Bush's Terrorism
Task Force, wrote an update on the arms-for-hostages dealings with
Iran. Allen's memo was a debriefing of an unnamed member of the group
of U.S. government officials participating in the arms negotiations
with the Iranians. The unnamed U.S. official is referred to in Allen's
memo as "Subject".

Allen wrote: "[Speaker of the Iranian Parliament Hashemi] Rafsanjani
.. believes Vice President George Bush is orchestrating the U.S.
initiative with Iran. In fact, according to Subject, Rafsanjani
believes that Bush is the most powerful man in the U.S. because in
addition to being Vice President, he was once Director of CIA." / Note
#3 / Note #2

"December 1985-January 1986:"

George Bush completed his official study of terrorism in December
1985. John Poindexter now directed Oliver North to go back to work
with Amiram Nir.

Amiram Nir came to Washington and met with Oliver North. He told U.S.
officials that the Iranians had promised to free all hostages in
exchange for more arms. Reportedly after this Nir visit, Pr esident
Reagan was persuaded of the necessity of revving up the arms shipments
to Iran. / Note #3 / Note #3

"December 27, 1985:"

Terrorists bombed Rome and Vienna airports, killing 20 people,
including five Americans. The Crisis Pre-Planning Group (CPPG),
supervised by Bush's office and reporting to Bush, blamed Libyans for
the attack and began planning for a military strike on Libya. Yet an
unpublished CIA analysis and the Israelis both acknowledged that the
Abu Nidal group (in effect, the Israeli Mossad agency) carried out the
attacks. / Note #3 / Note #4

Bush's CPPG later organized the U.S. bombing of Libya, which occurred
in mid-April 1986.

"December 31, 1985:"

Iranian arms dealer Cyrus Hashemi told Paris-based CIA agent Bernard
Veillot that Vice President Bush was backing arms sales to Iran, and
that official U.S. approval for private sales to Iran, amounting to $2
billion, was "going to be signed by Mr. Bush and [U.S. Marine Corps
commandant] Gen. [Paul X.] Kelley on Friday." / Note #3 / Note #5

Loudly and publicly exposed in the midst of Iran arms deals, Veillot
was indicted by the United States. Then the charges were quietly
dropped, and Veillot went underground. A few months later, Hashemi
died suddenly of "leukemia." / Note #3 / Note #6

"January 2, 1986:"

Israeli counterterrorism chief Amiram Nir met with North and
Poindexter in Washington. The Bush report on terrorism had now been
issued within the government but was not yet published. Bush's report
was urging that a counterterrorism coordinator be named for the entire
U.S. government -- and Oliver North was the one man intended for that
slot.

At this meeting, Nir proposed specifically that prisoners held by
Israeli-controlled Lebanese, and 3,000 American TOW missiles, be
exchanged for U.S. hostages held by Iran. Other discussions between
Nir and Bush's nominee involved the supposedly new idea that the
Iranians be overcharged for the weapons shipped to them, and the
surplus funds be diverted  to the Contras. / Note #3 / Note #7

"January 6, 1986:"

President Reagan met with George Bush, Donald Regan, McFarlane and
Poindexter. The President was handed a draft "Presidential Finding"
that called for shipping arms to Iran through Israel. The President
signed this document, drafted following the discussions with Amiram
Nir.

The draft consciously violated the National Security Act which had
established the Central Intelligence Agency, requiring notification of
Congress. But Bush joined in urging President Reagan to sign this
"finding":

"I hereby find that the following operation in a foreign country ...
is important to the national security of the United States, and due to
its extreme sensitivity and security risks, I determine it is
essential to "limit prior notice, and direct the Director of Central
Intelligence to refrain from reporting this finding to the Congress as
provided in Section 501 of the National Security Act of 1947, as
amended, until I otherwise direct"" [emphasis added].

"... The USG[overnment] will act to facilitate efforts by third
parties and third countries to establish contacts with "moderate
elements" within and outside the Government of Iran by providing these
elements with arms, equipment and related materiel in order to enhance
the credibility of these elements...."

Of course, Bush, Casey and their Israeli allies had never sought to
bolster "moderate elements" in Iran, but overthrew them at every
opportunity -- beginning with President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr. / Note
#3 / Note #8

"January 7, 1986:"

President Reagan and Vice President Bush met at the White House with
several other administration officials. There was an argument over new
proposals by Amiram Nir and Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar
to swap arms for hostages.

Secretary of State George Shultz later told the Tower Commission that
George Bush supported the arms-for-hostages deal at this meeting, as
did President Reagan, Casey, Meese, Regan and Poindexter. Shultz
reported that he himself and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger
both opposed further arms shipments. / Note #3 / Note #9

"January 9, 1986:"

Lt. Col. Oliver North complained, in his notebook, that "Felix
[Rodriguez]" has been "talking too much about the V[ice] P[resident]
connection." / Note #4 / Note #0

"January 15, 1986:"

CIA and Mossad employee Richard Brenneke wrote a letter to Vice
President Bush giving full details, alerting Bush about his own work
on behalf of the CIA in illegal -- but U.S. government-sanctioned --
sales of arms to Iran. / Note #4 / Note #1

"Mid-January, 1986:"

George Bush and Oliver North worked together on the illegal plan.

Later, at North's trial, the Bush administration -- portraying Colonel
North as the master strategist in the case! -- stipulated that North
"prepared talking points for a meeting between Admiral Poindexter,
Vice-President Bush, and [the new] Honduran President [Jose Simon]
Azcona. North recommended that Admiral Poindexter and Vice-President
Bush tell President Azcona of the need for Honduras to work with the
U.S. government on increasing regional involvement with and support
for the Resistance. Poindexter and Bush were also to raise the subject
of better U.S. government support for the states bordering Nicaragua."

That is, Honduras, which of course "borders on Nicaragua," was to get
more U.S. aid and was to pass some of it through to the Contras.

In preparation for the January 1986 Bush-Azcona meeting, the U.S.
State Department sent to Bush adviser Donald Gregg a memorandum, which
"alerted Gregg that Azcona would insist on receiving clear economic
and social benefits from its [Honduras's] cooperation with the United
States." / Note #4 / Note #2

Two months after the January Bush-Azcona meeting, President Reagan
asked Congress for $20 million in emergency aid to Honduras, needed to
repel a cross-border raid by Nicaraguan forces against Contra camps.
Congress voted the "emergency" expenditure.

"January 17, 1986:"

George Bush met with President Reagan, John Poindexter, Donald Regan,
and NSC staff member Donald Fortier to review the final version of the
January 7 arms-to-Iran draft.

With the encouragement of Bush, President Reagan signed the
authorization to arm the Khomeini regime with missiles, and keep the
facts of this scheme from congressional oversight committees.

The official story about this meeting -- given in the Tower Commission
Report -- is as follows:

"[T]he proposal to shift to direct U.S. arms sales to Iran ... was
considered by the president at a meeting on January 17 which only the
Vice President, Mr. Regan, Mr. Fortier, and VADM Poindexter
attended.... There was no subsequent collective consideration of the
Iran initiative by the NSC principals before it became public 11
months later....

"The National Security Act also requires notification of Congress of
covert intelligence activities. If not done in advance, notification
must be 'in timely fashion.' The Presidential Finding of January 17
directed that congressional notification be withheld, and this
decision appears to have never been reconsidered." / Note #4 / Note #3

"January 18, 1986:"

Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger was directed to prepare the
transfer of 4,000 TOW anti-tank missiles to the CIA, which was to ship
them to Khomeini's Iran. Bypassing normal channels for covert
shipments, he elected to have his senior military assistant, Lt. Gen.
Colin L. Powell, handle the arrangements for the arms transfer. / Note
#4 / Note #4

"January 19-21, 1986:"

George Bush's deputy national security aide, Col. Samuel Watson,
worked with Felix Rodriguez in El Salvador, and met with Col. James
Steele, the U.S. military liaison officer with the covert Contra
resupply organization in El Salvador. / Note #4 / Note #5

Bush Sets Up North

"January 20, 1986:"

Following the recommendations of an as-yet-unofficial report of the
George Bush Terrorism Task Force, President Reagan signed National
Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 207.

The unofficial Bush report, the official Bush report released in
February, and the Bush-organized NSDD 207, together p ut forward
Oliver North as "Mr. Iran-Contra." North became the nominal, up-front
coordinator of the administration's counterterrorism program, hiding
as best he could Bush's hand in these matters. He was given a secret
office and staff (the Office to Combat Terrorism), separate from
regular NSC staff members.

George Bush now reassigned his Terrorism Task Force employees, Craig
Coy and Robert Earl, to do the daily work of the North secret office.
The Bush men spent the next year working on Iran arms sales: Earl
devoted one-quarter to one-half of his time on Iran and Contra support
operations; Coy "knew everything" about Project Democracy. North
traveled much of the time. Earl and Coy were at this time officially
attached to the Crisis Management Center, which North worked on in
1983. / Note #4 / Note #6

FBI Assistant Director Revell, often George Bush's "hit man" against
Bush's domestic opponents, partially disclosed this shell game in a
letter to Sen. David Boren (D-Ok.), explaining the FBI's contacts with
North: "At the time [April 1986], North was the NSC official charged
by the President with the coordination of our national
counterterrorist program. He was responsible for working closely with
designated lead agencies and was responsible for participating in all
interagency groups, maintaining the national programming documents,
assisting in the coordination of research and development in relation
to counterterrorism, facilitating the development of response options
and overseeing the implementation of the Vice President's Terrorism
Task Force recommendations.

"This description of Col. North's position is set forth in the public
report of the Vice President's Task Force on Combatting Terrorism,
February 1986. There is an even more detailed and comprehensive
description of Col. North's position in the classified National
Security Decision Directive #207 issued by the President on January
20, 1986." / Note #4 / Note #7

The Bush Terrorism Task Force, having completed its official work, had
simply made itself into a renamed, permanent, covert agency. Its new
name was "Operations Sub-Group" (OSG).

In this transformation, CIA Contra-handler Duane Clarridge had been
added to the Task Force to form the "OSG," which included North,
Poindexter, Charles Allen, Robert Oakley, Noel Koch, General
Moellering and "Buck" Revell.

According to the Oliver North diaries, even before this final phase of
the Bush-North apparatus there were at least 14 meetings between North
and the Bush Task Force's senior members Holloway, Oakley, and Allen,
its principal consultant Terry Arnold, and its staff men Robert Earl
and Craig Coy. The North diaries from July 1985 through January 1986,
show one meeting with President Reagan, and four meetings with Vice
President Bush: either the two alone, North with Bush and Amiram Nir,
or North with Bush and Donald Gregg.

The Bush counterterrorism apparatus had its own communications
channels, and a global antiterrorist computer network called
Flashboard outside of all constitutional government arrangements.
Those opposed to the arming of terrorists, including cabinet members,
had no access to these communications. / Note #4 / Note #8

This apparatus had responsibility for Iran arms sales; the private
funding of the Contras, from contributions, theft, dope-running; the
"public diplomacy" of Project Democracy to back these efforts; and
counterintelligence against other government agencies and against
domestic opponents of the policy. / Note #4 / Note #9

"January 28, 1986:"

George Bush met with Oliver North and FDN Contra Political Director
Adolfo Calero in the Old Executive Office Building. / Note #5 / Note
#0 North and Calero would work together to protect George Bush when
the Contra supply effort blew apart in October 1986.

"January 31, 1986:"

Iranian arms dealer Cyrus Hashemi was told by a French arms agent that
"[a]n assistant of the vice president's going to be in Germany ... and
the indication is very clear that the transaction can go forward"
referring to George Bush's supposed approval of the private arms sale
to Iran. / Note #5 / Note #1

"February 6, 1986:"

Responding to the January 15 letter from Richard Brenneke, Bush aide
Lt. Col. E. Douglas Menarczik wrote to Brenneke: "The U.S. government
will not permit or participate in the provision of war materiel to
Iran and will prosecute any such efforts by U.S. citizens to the
fullest extent of the law." / Note #5 / Note #2

"February 7, 1986:"

Samuel M. Evans, a representative of Saudi and Israeli arms dealers,
told Cyrus Hashemi that "[t]he green light now finally has been given
[for the private sale of arms to Iran], that Bush is in favor, Shultz
against, but nevertheless they are willing to proceed." / Note #5 /
Note #3

"February 25, 1986:"

Richard Brenneke wrote again to Bush's office, to Lt. Col. Menarczik,
documenting a secret project for U.S. arms sales to Iran going on
since 1984.

Brenneke later said publicly that early in 1986, he called Menarczik
to warn that he had learned that the United States planned to buy
weapons for the Contras with money from Iran arms sales. Menarczik
reportedly said, "We will look into it." Menarczik claimed not to have
"any specific recollection of telephone conversations with" Brenneke.
/ Note #5 / Note #4

"Late February, 1986:"

Vice President George Bush issued the public report of his Terrorism
Task Force. In his introduction to the report, Bush asserted: "We
firmly oppose terrorism in all forms and wherever it takes place....
We will make no concessions to terrorists." / Note #5 / Note #5

"March 1986:"

According to a sworn statement of pilot Michael Tolliver, Felix
Rodriguez had met him in July 1985. Now Rodriguez instructed Tolliver
to go to Miami International Airport. Tolliver picked up a DC-6
aircraft and a crew, and flew the plane to a Contra base in Honduras.
There Tolliver watched the unloading of 14 tons of military supplies,
and the loading of 12 and 2/3 tons of marijuana. Following his
instructions from Rodriguez, Tolliver flew the dope to Homestead Air
Force Base in Florida. The next day Rodriguez paid Tolliver $75,000. /
Note #5 / Note #6

Tolliver says that another of the flights he performed for Rodriguez
carried cocaine on the return trip to the U.S.A. He made a series of
arms deliveries from Miami into the air base at Agucate, Honduras. He
was paid in cash by Rodriguez and his old Miami CIA colleague, Rafael
"Chi Chi" Quintero.

In another circuit of flights, Tolliver and his crew flew between
Miami and El Salvador's Ilopango air base. Tolliver said that
Rodriguez and Quintero "instructed me where to go and who to see."
While making these flights, he "could go by any route available
without any interference from any agency. We didn't need a stamp of
approval from Customs or anybody...." / Note #5 / Note #7

With reference to the covert arms shipments out of Miami, George
Bush's son Jeb said: "Sure, there's a pretty good chance that arms
were shipped, but does that break any law? I'm not sure it's illegal.
The Neutrality Act is a completely untested notion, established in the
1800s." / Note #5 / Note #8

Smuggling Missiles

Trafficking in lethal weapons without government authorization is
always a tricky business for covert operators. But when the operatives
are smuggling weapons in a particular traffic which the U.S. Congress
has expressly prohibited, a good deal of criminal expertise and
certain crucial contacts are required for success.

And when the smugglers report to the Vice President, who wishes his
role to remain concealed, the whole thing can become very sticky -- or
even ludicrous to the point of low comedy.

"March 26, 1986:"

Oliver North sent a message to Robert McFarlane about his efforts to
procure missiles for the Contras, and to circumvent many U.S. laws, as
well as the customs services and police forces of several nations. The
most important component of such transactions, aside from the purchase
money, was a falsified document showing the supposed recipient of the
arms, the "end-user certificate" (EUC).

In the message he wrote, North said that "we have" an EUC; that is, a
false document has been acquired for this arms sale: "[W]e are trying
to find a way to get 10 BLOWPIPE launchers and 20 missiles from [a
South American country] ... thru the Short Bros. Rep.... Short Bros.,
the mfgr. of the BLOWPIPE, is willing to arrange the deal, conduct the
training and even send U.K. 'tech. reps' ... if we can close the
arrangement. Dick Secord has already paid 10% down on the delivery and
we have a [country deleted] EUC which is acceptable to [that South
American country]." / Note #5 / Note #9

Now, since this particular illegal sale somehow came to light in the
Iran-Contra scandal, another participant in this one deal decided not
to bother hiding his own part in it. Thus, we are able to see how
Colonel North got his false certificate.

"April 20, 1986:"

Felix Rodriguez met in San Salvador with Oliver North and Enrique
Bermudez, the Contras' military commander. Rodriguez informs us of the
following in his own, ghost-written book:

"Shortly before that April 20 meeting, Rafael Quintero had asked me to
impose upon my good relations with the Salvadoran military to obtain
'end-user' certificates made out to Lake Resources, which he told me
was a Chilean company...." / Note #6 / Note #0

The plan was to acquire false end-user certificates from his contacts
in the Salvadoran armed forces for Blowpipe ground-to-air missiles
supposedly being shipped into El Salvador. The missiles would then be
illegally diverted to the Contras in Honduras and Nicaragua.

Rodriguez continues, with self-puffery: "The Salvadorans complied with
my request, and in turn I supplied the certificates, handing them over
personally to Richard Secord at that April 20 meeting." / Note #6 /
Note #1

While arranging the forgery for the munitions sale, Rodriguez was in
touch with the George Bush staff back in his home office. On April 16,
four days before the Rodriguez-North missile meeting, Bush national
security adviser Donald Gregg asked his staff to put a meeting with
Rodriguez on George Bush's calendar.

Gregg said the purposeof the White House meeting would be "to brief
the Vice President on the war in El Salvador and resupply of the
Contras." The meeting was arranged for 11:30 A.M. on May 1. / Note #6
/ Note #2

Due to its explicitly stated purpose -- clandestine weapons
trafficking in an undeclared war against the rigid congressional
prohibition -- the planned meeting was to become one of the most
notorious of the Iran-Contra scandal.

"April 30, 1986:"

Felix Rodriguez met in Washington with Bush aide Col. Sam Watson.

The following reminder message was sent to George Bush:

"Briefing Memorandum for the Vice President"

Event: Meeting with Felix Rodriguez

Date: Thursday, May 1, 1986

Time: 11:30-11:45 a.m. -- West Wing

From: Don Gregg

I. PURPOSE

Felix Rodriguez, a counterinsurgency expert who is visiting from El
Salvador, will provide a briefing on the status of the war in El
Salvador and resupply of the Contras.

III. [sic] PARTICIPANTS

The Vice President

Felix Rodriguez

Craig Fuller

Don Gregg

Sam Watson

IV. MEDIA COVERAGE

Staff photographer. [i.e. internal-use photographs, no media coverage]
/ Note #6 / Note #3

"May 1, 1986:"

Vice President Bush and his staff met in the White House with Felix
Rodriguez, Oliver North, financier Nicholas Brady, and the new U.S.
ambassador to El Salvador, Edwin Corr.

At this meeting it was decided that "private citizen" Felix Rodriguez
would continue his work in Central America. / Note #6 / Note #4

"May 16, 1986:"

George Bush met with President Reagan, and with cabinet members and
other officials in the full National Security Planning Group. They
discussed the urgent need to raise more money for the Contras.

The participants decided to seek support for the Contras from nations
("third countries") which were not directly involved in the Central
American conflict.

As a result of this initiative, George Bush's former business
partners, the Sultan of Brunei, donated $10 million to the Contras.
But after being deposited in secret Swiss bank accounts, the money was
"lost." / Note #6 / Note #5

"May 20, 1986:"

George Bush met with Felix Rodriguez and El Salvador Air Force
commander Gen. Juan Rafael Bustillo at a large reception in Miami on
Cuban independence day. / Note #6 / Note #6

"May 29, 1986:"

George Bush, President Reagan, Donald Regan and John Poindexter met to
hear from McFarlane and North on their latest arms-for-hostages
negotiations with Iranian officials and Amiram Nir in Teheran, Iran.
The two reported their arrangement with the Khomeini regime to
establish a secure covert communications network between the two
"enemy" governments. / Note #6 / Note #7

"July 10, 1986:"

Eugene Hasenfus, whose successful parachute landing would explode the
Iran-Contra scandal into world headlines three months later, flew from
Miami to El Salvador. He had just been hired to work for "Southern Air
Transport," a CIA front company for which Hasenfus worked previously
in the Indochina War.

Within a few days he was introduced to "Max Gomez" -- the pseudonym of
Felix Rodriguez -- as "one of the Cuban coordinators of the company."

He now began work as a cargo handler on flights carrying military
supplies to Contra soldiers inside Nicaragua. / Note #6 / Note #8

"July 29, 1986:"

George Bush met in Jerusalem with Terrorism Task Force member Amiram
Nir, the manager of Israel's participation in the arms-for hostages
schemes. Bush did not want this meeting known about. The vice
president told his chief of staff, Craig Fuller, to send his notes of
the meeting only to Oliver North -- not to President Reagan, or to
anyone else.

Craig Fuller's memorandum said, in part:

1. SUMMARY. Mr. Nir indicated that he had briefed Prime Minister Peres
and had been asked to brief the V[ice] P[resident] by his White House
contacts. He described the details of the efforts from last year
through the current period to gain the release of the U.S. hostages.
He reviewed what had been learned which was essentially that the
radical group was the group that could deliver. He reviewed the issues
to be considered -- namely that there needed to be ad [sic] decision
as to whether the items requested would be delivered in separate
shipments or whether we would continue to press for the release of the
hostages prior to delivering the items in an amount agreed to
previously.

2. The VP's 25 minute meeting was arranged after Mr. Nir called Craig
Fuller and requested the meeting and after it was discussed with the
VP by Fuller and North....

14. Nir described some of the lessons learned: 'We are dealing with
the most radical elements.... They can deliver ... that's for sure....
[W]e've learned they can deliver and the moderates can't.... / Note #6
/ Note #9

"July 30, 1986:"

The day after his Jerusalem summit with Amiram Nir, Vice President
Bush conferred with Oliver North. This meeting with North was never
acknowledged by Bush until the North diaries were released in May
1990.

"Early September, 1986:"

Retired Army Maj. Gen. John K. Singlaub sent a memo to Oliver North on
the Contra resupply effort under Felix Rodriguez. Singlaub warned
North that Rodriguez was boasting about having "daily contact" with
George Bush's office. / Note #7 / Note #0

The Scandal Breaks

"October 5, 1986:"

A C-123k cargo aircraft left El Salvador's Ilopango air base at 9:30
a.m., carrying "10,000 pounds of small arms and ammunition, consisting
mainly of AK rifles and AK ammunition, hand grenades, jungle boots."
It was scheduled to make air drops to Contra soldiers in Nicaragua. /
Note #7 / Note #1

The flight had been organized by elements of the CIA, the Defense
Department, and the National Security Council, coordinated by the
Office of Vice President George Bush.

At that time, such arms resupply was prohibited under U.S. law.

The aircraft headed south along the Pacific coast of Nicaragua, turned
east over Costa Rica, then headed up north into Nicaraguan air space.
As it descended toward the point at which it was to drop the cargo,
the plane was hit in the right engine and wing by a ground-to-air
missile. The wing burst into flames and broke up. Cargo handler Eugene
Hasenfus jumped out the left cargo door and opened his parachute. The
other three crew members died in the crash. / Note #7 / Note #2

Meanwhile, Felix Rodriguez made a single telephone call -- to the
office of Vice President George Bush. He told Bush aide Samuel Watson
that the C-123k aircraft was missing and was possibly down.

"October 6, 1986:"

Eugene Hasenfus, armed only with a pistol, took refuge in a small hut
on a jungle hilltop inside Nicaragua. He was soon surrounded by
Sandinista soldiers and gave himself up. / Note #7 / Note #3

Felix Rodriguez called George Bush's aide Sam Watson again. Watson now
notified the White House Situation Room and the National Security
Council staff about the missing aircraft.

Oliver North was immediately dispatched to El Salvador to prevent
publicity over the event, and to arrange death benefits for the crew.
/ Note #7 / Note #4

After the shoot-down, several elaborate attempts were made by
government agencies to provide false explanations for the origin of
the aircraft.

A later press account, appearing on May 15, 1989, after Bush was
safely installed as President, exposed one such attempted coverup:

Official: Contras Lied to Protect VP Bush

By Alfonso Chardy, Knight-Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON -- Nicaraguan rebels falsely assumed responsibility for an
arms-laden plane downed over Nicaragua in 1986 in an effort to shield
then-Vice President George Bush from the controversy that soon
blossomed into the Iran-Contra scandal, a senior Contra official said
in early May 1989.

According to the Contra official, who requested anonymity but has
direct knowledge of the events, a Contra spokesman, Bosco Matamoros
[official FDN representative in Washington, D.C.], was ordered by [FDN
Political Director] Adolfo Calero to claim ownership of the downed
aircraft, even though the plane belonged to Oliver North's secret
Contra supply network....

Calero called (Matamoros) and said, "Take responsibility for the
Hasenfus plane because we need to take the heat off the vice
president," the Contra source said....

The senior Contra official said that shortly after Calero talked to
Matamoros, Matamoros called a reporter for the "New York Times" and
"leaked" the bogus claim of responsibility. The "Times" ran a story
about the claim on its front page. / Note #7 / Note #5

"October 7, 1986:"

Rep. Henry B. Gonzalez (D-Tx.) called for a congressional
investigation of the Nicaraguan air crash, and the crash of a Southern
Air Transport plane in Texas, to see if they were part of a covert CIA
operation to overthrow the Nicaraguan government.

"October 9, 1986:"

At a news conference in Nicaragua, captured U.S. crew member Eugene
Hasenfus exposed Felix Rodriguez, alias "Max Gomez," as the head of an
international supply system for the Contras. The explosive, public
phase of the Iran-Contra scandal had begun.

Notes for Chapter XIX

27. "CovertAction," No. 33, Winter 1990, pp. 13-14.

On Amiram Nir, see Armstrong, "op. cit.," pp. 225-26, citing "Wall
Street Journal" 12/22/86, "New York Times" 1/12/87.

On Poindexter and North, see Menges, "op. cit.," p. 264.

28. Armstrong, "op. cit.," pp. 140-41, citing Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence, "Report on Preliminary Inquiry," Jan. 29, 1987.

29. Rodriguez and Weisman, "op. cit.," pp. 239-41.

30. Oliver North's diary, since edited and partially declassified,
entries for "10 Sep 85." Document no. 01527 in the Iran-Contra
Collection.

31. "Washington Post," June 10, 1990.

32. Charles E. Allen "Memorandum for the Record," December 18, 1985.
Partially declassified/released (i.e. some parts are still deleted) by
the National Security Council on January 26, 1988. Document no. 02014
in the Iran-Contra Collection.

33. Armstrong, "op. cit.," pp. 226-27, citing "Wall Street Journal"
12/22/86, "New York Times" 12/25/86 and 1/12/87.

34. Armstrong, "op. cit.," p. 231, citing "Washington Post" 2/20/87,
"New York Times" 2/22/87.

35. "Ibid.," p. 232, citing "Miami Herald" 11/30/86.

36. Interview with Herman Moll in "EIR Special Report:" "Irangate...,"
pp. 81-83.

37. Armstrong, "op. cit.," p. 235, citing "Washington Post" 12/16/86,
12/27/86, 1/10/87 and 1/12/87; "Ibid.," p. 238, citing Tower
Commission Report; Menges, "op. cit.," p. 271.

38. Armstrong, "op. cit.," pp. 240-41, citing "Washington Post"
1/10/87 and 1/15/87; Sen. John Tower, Chairman, "The Tower Commission
Report: The Full Text of the President's Special Review Board" (New
York: Bantam Books, 1987), p. 217.

39. "Ibid.," pp. 37, 225.

40. North notebook entry Jan. 9, 1986, Exhibits attached to Gregg
Deposition in Tony Avirgan and Martha Honey v. John Hull, Rene Corbo,
Felipe Vidal et al., 29 April 1988.

41. Armstrong, "op. cit.," p. 258, citing the Brenneke letter, which
was made available to the National Security Archive.

42. U.S. government stipulations at the North trial, in "EIR Special
Report:" "Irangate...," p. 22.

43. "Tower Commission Report", pp. 67-68, 78.

44. Armstrong, "op. cit.," p. 266, citing "Washington Post" 1/10/87
and 1/15/87.

45. Chronology supplied by Office of Vice President Bush; Armstrong,
"op. cit.," p. 266, citing "Washington Post" 12/16/86.

46. Deposition of Robert Earl, "Iran-Contra Report", May 2, 1987, Vol.
9, pp. 22-23; Deposition of Craig Coy, "Iran-Contra Report", March 17,
1987, Vol. 7, pp. 24-25: cited in "CovertAction," No. 33, Winter 1990,
p. 13.

47. Oliver Revell to Sen. David Boren, chairman of Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence, April 17, 1987; "Washington Post" Feb. 17,
20 and 22, 1987; "Wall Street Journal" Feb. 20, 1987: cited in
"CovertAction," No. 33, Winter 1990, p. 13.

48.

"Newsweek," Oct. 21, 1985, p. 26; Earl Exhibit, nos. 3-8, attached to
Earl Deposition, "op. cit.": cited in "CovertAction" No. 33, Winter
1990, p. 15.

49. Earl Deposition, "op. cit.," May 30, 1987, pp. 33-37; May 15,
1987, pp. 117-21 (Channell and Miller); May 15, 1987, pp. 131, 119
(private contributors).

50. Donald Gregg Briefing Memorandum for the Vice President, Jan. 27,
1986; released by the National Security Council March 22, 1988.
Document no. 02254 in Iran-Contra Collection.

51. Armstrong, "op. cit.," p. 275, citing "Miami Herald" 11/30/86.

52. "Ibid.," p. 280, citing the Menarczik letter to Brenneke which was
made available to the National Security Archive.

53. "Ibid.," citing "Miami Herald" 11/30/86.

54. "New York Times," Nov. 30, 1986, Dec. 4, 1986. See Gregg
testimony: Brenneke had M's number.

55. Quoted in Menges, "op. cit.," p. 275.

56. Deposition of Michael Tolliver in Avirgan and Honey, "op. cit."

57. Allan Nairn, "The Bush Connection," in "The Progressive" (London:
May 18, 1987), pp. 21-22.

58. Nairn, "op. cit.," pp. 19, 21-23.

59. "Tower Commission Report," p. 465

60. Rodriguez and Weisman, "op. cit.," pp. 244-45.

61. "Ibid."

62. "Schedule Proposal," Office of the Vice President, April 16, 1986,
exhibit attached to Gregg Deposition in Avirgan and Honey, "op. cit."

63. Office of the Vice President Memorandum, April 30, 1986, released
Aug. 28, 1987 by the National Security Council. Document no. 02738 in
the Iran-Contra Collection.

64. Rodriguez and Weisman, "op. cit.," pp. 245-46.

See also Gregg confirmation hearings, excerpted "infra," and numerous
other sources.

65. Armstrong, "op. cit.," pp. 368-69, citing Senate Select
Intelligence Committee Report, Jan. 29, 1987.

66. "Ibid.," p. 373, citing "Washington Post" 12/16/86.

67. "Ibid.," p. 388-89, citing McFarlane testimony to the Tower
Commission.

68. Affidavit of Eugene Harry Hasenfus, October 12, 1986, pp. 2-3.
Document no. 03575 in the Iran-Contra Collection.

69. "Tower Commission Report," pp. 385-88.

70. "Washington Post", Feb. 26, 1987.

71. Hasenfus Affidavit, pp. 6-7.

72. "Ibid."

73. Hasenfus Affidavit, p. 7.

74. Armstrong, "op. cit.," p. 508, citing the chronology provided by
George Bush's office, "Washington Post" 12/16/86; "New York Times"
12/16/86, 12/17/86 and 12/25/86; "Wall Street Journal" 12/19/86 and
12/24/86.

75. "Laredo [Tex as] Morning Times," May 15, 1989, p. 1.

"XIX: Iran-Contra"

On October 11, 1986, the "Washington Post" ran two headlines
side-by-side: "Captured American Flyer to be Tried in Nicaragua" and
"Bush is Linked to Head of Contra Aid Network."

The "Post" reported: "Max Gomez, a Cuban American veteran of the CIA's
ill-fated Bay of Pigs operation, has told associates that he reported
to Vice President Bush about his activities as head of the secret air
supply operation that lost a cargo plane to Nicaraguan missile
fire....

"Gomez has said that he met with Bush twice and has been operating in
Nicaragua with the Vice President's knowledge and approval, the
sources said....

"Asked about these matters, a spokesman for Bush, Marlin Fitzwater,
said: 'Neither the vice president nor anyone on his staff is directing
or coordinating an operation in Central America.'

"... The "San Francisco Examiner", which earlier this week linked
[Bush adviser Donald] Gregg to Gomez, reported that Gomez maintains
daily contact with Bush's office...." / Note #7 / Note #6

George Bush's career was now on the line. News media throughout the
world broke the story of the Hasenfus capture, and of the crewman's
fingering of Bush and his underlings Rodriguez and Posada Carriles.

Bush was now besieged by inquiries from around the world, as to how
and why he was directing the gun-running into Latin America.

Speaking in Charleston, South Carolina, George Bush described Max
Gomez/Rodriguez as "a patriot." The vice president denied that he
himself was directing the illegal operations to supply the Contras:
""To say I'm running the operation ... it's absolutely untrue.""

Bush said of Rodriguez: "I know what he was doing in El Salvador, and
I strongly support it, as does the President of El Salvador, Mr.
Napoleon Duarte, and as does the chief of the armed forces in El
Salvador, because this man, an expert in counterinsurgency, was down
there helping them put down a communist-led revolution [i.e. in El
Salvador, not Nicaragua]." / Note #7 / Note #7

Two days later, Gen. Adolfo Blandon, armed forces chief of staff in El
Salvador, denied Bush's contention that Felix Rodriguez worked for his
country's military forces. / Note #7 / Note #8

"October 12, 1986:"

Eugene Hasenfus gave and signed an affidavit in which it was stated:
"About Max Gomez [Felix Rodriguez], Hasenfus says that he was the head
Cuban coordinator for the company and that he works for the CIA and
that he is a very close friend of the Vice-President of the United
States, George Bush....

"About Ramon Medina [escaped airplane bomber Luis Posada Carriles],
Hasenfus says that he was also a CIA agent and that he did the 'small
work' because "Max Gomez" was the 'senior man.' He says that "Ramon"
took care of the rent of the houses, the maids, the food,
transportation and drivers, and also, coordination of the fuel for the
aircraft, etc." [emphasis in the original]. / Note #7 / Note #9

His cover being blown, and knowing he was still wanted in Venezuela
for blowing up an airliner and killing 73 persons, Posada Carriles now
"vanished" and went underground. / Note #8 / Note #0

"October 19, 1986:"

Eugene Hasenfus, interviewed in Nicaragua by Mike Wallace on the CBS
television program "60 Minutes," said that Vice President Bush was
well aware of the covert arms supply operation. He felt the
Reagan-Bush administration was "backing this 100 percent."

Wallace asked Hasenfus why he thought that Gomez/Rodriguez and the
other managers of the covert arms resupply "had the blessing of Vice
President Bush." Hasenfus replied, "They had his knowledge that he was
working [on it] and what was happening, and whoever controlled this
whole organization -- which I do not know -- Mr. Gomez, Mr. Bush, I
believe a lot of these other people. They know how this is being run.
I do not." / Note #8 / Note #1

Cover-Up of Bush Role

"November 3, 1986:"

The Lebanese newspaper "Al-Shiraa" revealed that the U.S. government
was secretly dealing arms to the Khomeini regime. This was three weeks
after the Eugene Hasenfus expose of George Bush made world headlines.

"November 22, 1986:"

President Reagan sent a message, "through Vice President George Bush,"
to Secretary of State George Shultz, along the lines of "Support me or
get off my team." / Note #8 / Note #2

"December 18, 1986:"

CIA Director William Casey, a close ally of George Bush who knew
everything from the inside, was operated on for a "brain tumor" and
lost the power of speech.

That same day, associates of Vice President George Bush said that Bush
believed White House Chief of Staff Donald Regan should resign, but
claimed Bush had not yet broached the issue with the President. Donald
Regan said that he had no intention of quitting. / Note #8 / Note #3

"February 2, 1987:"

CIA Director William Casey resigned. He soon died, literally without
ever talking.

"February 9, 1987:"

Former National Security Director Robert McFarlane, a principal figure
in the Reagan-Bush administration's covert operations, attempted
suicide by taking an overdose of drugs. McFarlane survived.

"February 26, 1987:"

The President's Special Review Board, commonly known as the Tower
Commission, issued its report. The commission heavily blamed White
House Chief of Staff Donald Regan for the "chaos that descended upon
the White House" in the Iran-Contra affair.

The commission hardly mentioned Vice President George Bush except to
praise him for his "vigorous reaffirmation of U.S. opposition to
terrorism in all forms"!

The afternoon the Tower Commission report came out, George Bush
summoned Donald Regan to his office. Bush said the President wanted to
know what his plans were about resigning. Donald Regan blasted the
President: "What's the matter -- isn't he man enough to ask me that
question?" Bush expressed sympathy. Donald Regan said he would leave
in four days. / Note #8 / Note #4

"February 27, 1987:"

Cable News Network televised a leaked report that Donald Regan had
already been replaced as White House chief of staff. After submitting
a one-sentence letter of resignation, Donald Regan said, "There's been
a deliberate leak, and it's been done to humiliate me." / Note #8 /
Note #5

George Bush, when President, rewarded the commission's chairman, Texas
Senator John Tower, by appointing him U.S. secretary of defense. Tower
was asked by a reporter at the National Press Club, whether his
nomination was a "payoff" for the "clean bill of health" he gave Bush.
Tower responded that "the commission was made up of three people,
Brent Scowcroft and [Senator] Ed Muskie in addition to myself, that
would be sort of impugning the integrity of Brent Scowcroft and Ed
Muskie.... We found nothing to implicate the Vice President.... I
wonder what kind of payoff they're going to get?" / Note #8 / Note #6

President Bush appointed Brent Scowcroft his chief national security
adviser.

But the Senate refused to confirm Tower. Tower then wrote a book and
began to talk about the injustice done to him. He died April 5, 1991
in a plane crash.

"March 8, 1987:"

In light of the Iran-Contra scandal, President Reagan called on George
Bush to reconvene his Terrorism Task Force to evaluate the current
program!

"June 2, 1987:"

Bush summarized his findings in a press release: "[O]ur current policy
as articulated in the Task Force report is sound, effective, and fully
in accord with our democratic principles, and national ideals of
freedom." / Note #8 / Note #7

"November 13, 1987:"

The designated congressional committees filed their joint report on
the Iran-Contra affair. Wyoming Representative Richard Cheney, the
senior Republican member of the House Select Committee to Investigate
Covert Arms Transactions with Iran, helped steer the joint committees
to an impotent result. George Bush was totally exonerated, and was
hardly mentioned.

George Bush, when President, rewarded Dick Cheney by appointing him
U.S. secretary of defense, after the Senate refused to confirm John
Tower.

The Mortification of the U.S. Congress

"January 20, 1989:"

George Bush was inaugurated President of the United S tates.

"May 12, 1989:"

President Bush's nomination of Donald Gregg to be U.S. ambassador to
Korea was considered in hearings by the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee.

What follows are excerpts from the typed transcript of the Gregg
hearings. The transcript has never been reproduced, it has not been
printed, and it will not be published by the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, which is evidently embarrassed by its contents. / Note #8 /
Note #8

"Gregg:" [As] his national security adviser [for] six and a half years
... I worked closely with the vice president keeping him informed as
best I could on matters of foreign policy, defense, and
intelligence....

[After Vietnam] I did not see [Felix Rodriguez] until the early
eighties where he would drop into Washington sporadically ... we
remained friends.... So, some of those contacts would have been
[1979-1982] when I was at the White House at the NSC.

"Sen. Sarbanes:" And Felix would come to see you there?

"Gregg:" No, at my home.... [Then] he brought me in '83 the plan which
I have already discussed with Senator Cranston.... [At that point] I
was working for the vice president ... [which I began in] August 1982.

"Sen. Sarbanes:" In December of 1984 he came to see you with the idea
of going to El Salvador. You ... cleared it with the vice president?

"Gregg:" ... I just said, "My friend Felix, who was a remarkable
former agency employee ... wants to go down and help with El Salvador.
And I am going to introduce him to [State Department personnel] and
see if he can sell himself to those men," and the vice president said
fine.

"Gregg:" Felix went down there about the first of March [1985]. Before
he went ... I introduced him to the vice president....

"Sen. Sarbanes:" So before he went down, you undertook to introduce
him to the vice president.... Why did you do that?

"Gregg:" Well, the vice president had always spoken very highly and
enthusiastically of his career [!], or his one-year as DCI [Director
of Central Intelligence]. I had gone out with him to the agency just
after I joined him in '82 and I saw the tremendous response he got
there and he got quite choked up about it and as we drove back in the
car he said, you know, that is the best job I have ever hadbefore I
became vice president.

So here it was, as I said probably the most extraordinary CIA comrade
I had known, who was going down to help in a country that I knew that
the vice president was interested in....

The vice president was interested in the progress of the Contras.

There were two occasions on which he asked me, how are they doing and
I, on one occasion went to a CIA officer who was knowledgeable and got
a run-down on how they were doing from that and sent it to the vice
president and he sent it back with no comment.

On another occasion, he asked me again, how are they doing, and I went
-- I drew a memo up, I think on the basis of a conversation with
North. Again, he returned that with no comment. So he was interested
in the Contras as an instrument of putting pressure on the
Sandinistas....

"Sen. Simon:" Let me read another section from Senator Cranston's
statement. I believe the record suggests the following happened: After
Boland II was signed in October 1984 [outlawing all U.S. aid to the
Contras], you and certain others in the White House were encouraged to
secure military aid for the Contras through unorthodox channels.

Your career training in establishing secrecy and deniability for
covert operations, your decades-old friendship for Felix Rodriguez,
apparently led you to believe you could serve the national interest by
sponsoring a freelance covert operation out of the vice president's
office.

What is your response to that statement?

"Gregg:" Well, I think it is a rather full-blown conspiracy theory.
That was not what I was doing.... I was involved in helping the vice
president's task force on antiterrorist measures write their report.
But normally I had no operational responsibilities....

"Sen. Simon:" When did you first find out the law was being violated?

"Gregg:" By the law, do you mean the Boland amendment?

"Sen. Simon:" That is correct.

"Gregg:" I guess my knowledge of that sort of came at me piecemeal
after Hasenfus had been shot down....

"Sen. Simon:" So what you are telling us, you found out about the law
being violated the same time the rest of us found out the law was
being violated?

"Gregg:" Yes, sir....

"Sen. Cranston:" From February 1985 to August 1986, you have
acknowledged that you spoke to Rodriguez many, many times on the
telephone. Let me quote from your sworn deposition to the Iran-Contra
Committee: "Felix called me quite often and frequently it was what I
would call sort of combat catharsis. He used to do the same thing in
Vietnam...."

Now, is it still your testimony that Rodriguez never mentioned his
deep involvement in Contra supply activities during any of these phone
conversations?

"Gregg:" That is my testimony.

"Sen. Cranston:" Is it still your testimony that prior to Aug. 8th,
1986, Rodriguez never mentioned the status of his Contra resupply
efforts during his numerous face-to-face meetings with you in
Washington?

"Gregg:" Never.

"Sen. Cranston:" Is it still your testimony that Rodriguez did not
mention the status of his Contra resupply efforts in the very meetings
that were convened according to two memos bearing your name, for
Rodriguez to "brief the vice president on the status of the war in El
Salvador and efforts to resupply the Contras"?

"Gregg:" There was no intention to discuss resupply of the Contras and
everyone at that meeting, including former Senator Nick Brady have
[sic] testified that it was not discussed.

"Sen. Cranston:" As you know, it is difficult to reconcile those
statements about what happened in the meeting with the statement and
memos from you that the agenda was ... two things, one of them being
efforts to resupply the Contras....

"Gregg:" Those memos first surfaced to my attention in December of
1986, when we undertook our first document search of the vice
president's office. They hit me rather hard because by that time I had
put the pieces together of what had been going on and I realized the
implications of that agenda item.

I did not shred the documents. I did not hide it.... [T]his is the
worst thing I have found and here it is, and I cannot really explain
it.... I have a speculative explanation which I would like to put
forward if you would be interested.

"Sen. Cranston:" Fine.

"Gregg:" Again, turning to Felix [Rodriguez]'s book ... Felix makes
the following quote.... This is the quote, sir: "... I had no qualms
about calling [Sam Watson] or Don [Gregg] when I thought they could
help run interference with the Pentagon to speed up deliveries of
spare chopper parts." That means helicopters.

"I must have made many such calls during the spring of 1986. Without
operating Hughes 500 helicopters it was impossible to carry out my
strategy against the [El Salvadoran] insurgents...." [There are] then
documented steps that Colonel Watson had taken with the Pentagon to
try to get spare parts expedited for El Salvador....

So my construction is this, sir. I recall that in the meeting with the
vice president the question of spare parts for the helicopters in El
Salvador was discussed and so that I think "what the agenda item on
the two memos is, is a garbled reference to something like resupply of
the copters, instead of resupply of the Contras" [emphasis added]."

"Sen. Sarbanes:" How did the scheduling proposal of April 16, 1986 and
the briefing memorandum of April 30th take place?

"Gregg:" They were prepared by my assistant, Mrs. Byrne, acting on
advice from Colonel Watson. She signed my initials, but those are not
my initials. I did not see the documents until December 1986, when I
called them to the attention of the House Intelligence Committee....
And if .. my speculation does not hold up, I have to refer you to a
memorandum that I turned over to the Iran-Contra Committee on the 14th
of May 1987....

"Sen. Sarbanes:" I am looking at that memorandum now.

"Gregg:" Okay. That has been my explanation up until now.

"Sen. Sarbanes:" But you are now providing a different explanation?

"Gregg:" It is the only one -- I have been thinking about these
documents for over two years, and it is the only thing that I can come
up with that would come close to explaining that agenda item -- given
the fact that there was no intention of discussing resupply to the
Contras. That resupply of the Contras was not discussed, according to
the testimony of everyone who was in the meeting...."

"Sen. Kerry:" Douglas Minarczik is who?

"Gregg:" He was one of my assistants in my office responsible for
Mid-East and African affairs....

"Sen. Kerry:" And he was working for you in 1985 and 1986, that
period?

"Gregg:" Yes.

"Sen. Kerry:" Now, when I began first investigating allegations of the
"gun-running" that was taking place out of Miami, "Miami was buzzing
with the notion that the vice president's office was somehow involved
in monitoring that, at least" [emphasis added].

Now, Jesus Garcia was a Miami corrections official who got into
trouble and wound up going to jail on weapons offenses. Through that
connection, we came across telephone records. And those telephone
records demonstrate calls from Garcia's house to Contra camps in
Honduras, to John Hull in Costa Rica, and Douglas Minarczik in, not
necessarily in your office, but directly to the White House.

However, there is incontrovertible evidence that he had in his
possession the name of Mr. Minarczik, a piece of paper in our
possession, in Garcia's home in connection with monitoring those
paramilitary operations, in August of 1985.

Now, how do you account for the fact that Minarczik's -- that the
people involved with the Contra supply operations out of Miami ... had
Minarczik's name and telephone number, and that there is a record of
calls to the White House at that time?

"Gregg:" I cannot account for it. Could it have anything to do with
our old friend Mr. Brenicke [sic]? Because Brenicke did have
Minarczik's phone number....

"Sen. Kerry:" ... No. Totally separate.

"Gregg:" This is all new. I do not have an explanation, sir....

"Sen. Kerry:" Do you recall the downing of a Cuban airliner in [1976]
in which 72 people lost their lives as a result; do you remember that?

"Gregg:" Yes.

"Sen. Kerry:" A terrorist bomb. And a Cuban-American named Luis Posada
[Carriles] was arrested in Venezuela in connection with that. He then
escaped in 1985 with assistance from Felix Rodriguez -- I do not know
if this is going to be in the [Rodriguez] book or not --

"Gregg:" It is.

"Sen. Kerry:" Okay, and he brought him to Central America to help the
Contras under pseudonym of Ramon Medina, correct?

"Gregg:" Now, I know that; yes.

"Sen. Kerry:" ... [Is] it appropriate for a Felix Rodriguez to help a
man indicted in a terrorist bombing to escape from prison, and then
appropriate for him to take him to become involved in supply
operations, which we are supporting?

"Gregg:" I cannot justify that, sir. And I am not certain what role
Felix played in getting him out....

Committee Session June 15, 1989

"Sen. Cranston:" Before proceeding in this matter, I would like to
state clearly for the record what the central purpose of this
investigation is about and in my view what it is not about.

It is not about who is for or against the Contras....

Similarly, this investigation is not about building up or tearing down
our new President [Bush]. We have tried throughout this proceeding to
avoid partisan attacks. Indeed, "Republicans and Democrats alike" have
sought Mr. Gregg's withdrawal as one way to avoid casting aspersions
on the [Bush] White House.... [emphasis added].

Mr. Gregg remains steadfast in his loyalty to his boss, then-Vice
President Bush, and to his long-time friend, Felix Rodriguez. Mr.
Gregg has served his country in the foreign policy field for more than
three decades.

By all accounts he is a loyal American....

As Mr. Gregg himself conceded last month, there are substantial
reasons for senators to suspect his version of events and to raise
questions about his judgment.

It does not take a suspicious or partisan mind to look at the
documentary evidence, the back channel cables, the "eyes only" memos,
and then to conclude that Mr. Gregg has not been straight with us.
Indeed, I am informed that more than one Republican senator who has
looked at the accumulated weight of the evidence against Mr. Gregg,
has remained unconvinced and has sought Mr. Gregg's withdrawal.

Mr. Gregg, this committee has a fundamental dilemma. If we are to
promote a man we believe to have misled us under oath, we would make a
mockery of this institution....

... [It] has been established that when you are confronted with
written evidence undermining your story, you point the finger of blame
elsewhere. At our last hearing you said Gorman's cables were wrong,
North's notebooks were wrong, Steele's memory was wrong, North's sworn
testimony [that Gregg introduced Rodriguez to him] was wrong, you
concocted a theory that your aide, Watson, and your secretary erred by
writing "Contras" instead of "helicopters" on those infamous briefing
memos for the Vice President....

Incredibly, when senators confront you with the documentary evidence
which undermines your story, you accuse us of concocting conspiracy
theories and you do so with a straight face.

... I think it is clear by now that many important questions may never
be answered satisfactorily, especially because we have been
stonewalled by the administration.

The National Security Agency has rejected our legitimate enquiries out
of hand. The Central Intelligence Agency provided a response with
access restrictions so severe ... as to be laughable.

The Department of Defense has given an unsatisfactory response two
days late. The State Department's response was utterly unresponsive.
They answered our letter after their self-imposed deadline and failed
to produce specific documents we requested and which we know exist.

This Committee has been stonewalled by Oliver North, too. He has not
complied with the Committee subpoena for his unredacted notebooks. The
redacted notebooks contain repeated January 1985 references to Felix
Rodriguez which suggests North's involvement in Rodriguez' briefings
of the Vice President.

No member of the Senate can escape the conclusion that these
administration actions are contemptuous of this Committee....

"Sen. McConnell:" ... During the period of the Boland Amendment, were
you ever asked to inform the vice president's office or lend his name
to private, nonprofit efforts to support the Contras?

"Gregg:" Yes. I recall one instance, in particular, where there was a
request -- I guess it was probably from one aspect of the Spitz
Channell organization, which had a variety of things going on in and
around Nicaragua.

We got, on December 2nd, 1985, a letter to the vice president, asking
him to get involved in something called the Friends of the Americas,
which was aid to the Meskito Indians ... in Nicaragua that had been
badly mistreated by the Sandinistas.... And so I have a document here
which shows how we dealt with it. I sent it to Boyden Gray, the
counsel of the vice president and said, "Boyden, this looks okay as a
charity issue, but there is the question of precedent. Please give me
a legal opinion. Thanks." ... Boyden Gray wrote back to me and said,
"No, should not do. Raises questions about indirect circumvention of
congressional funding limits or restriction, vis-a-vis Nicaragua."

That is the only time I recall that we had a specific request like
that, and this is how we dealt with it.

"Sen. Pell" [Chairman of the Committee]":" ... First, you say that you
offered to resign twice, I think.

Knowing that you are a very loyal servant of what you view as the
national interest, and knowing the embarrassment that this nomination
has caused the administration, I was wondering why you did not ask
your name to be withdrawn ... to pull your name back.... [w]hich has
been recommended by many of us as being a way to resolve this problem.

"Gregg:" Well, I haven't because I think I'm fully qualified to b e
ambassador to South Korea. And so does the vice president [sic].

So I am here because he has asked me to serve....

"Sen. Cranston:" ... Senators will recall that on Oct. 5th of '86 a
plane bearing military supplies to the Contras was shot down over
Nicaragua. The sole survivor, Eugene Hasenfus, spoke publicly of the
role of Felix Rodriguez, alias Max Gomez, in aiding military resupply
and noted Gomez's ties to the vice president's office.

Could you please describe your understanding of why it was that the
first call to official Washington regarding the shootdown was from
Felix Rodriguez to your aid[e] in Washington?

"Gregg:" ... [It] was because on the 25th of June of that year he had
come to Washington to confront North about what he regarded as
corruption in the supply process of the Contras.... [H]e broke with
North on the 25th of June and has not been on speaking terms with the
man since then.... [H]e tried to get me -- he could not -- he reached
Colonel Watson....

"Sen. Cranston:" As you recall, the vice president was besieged at
that time with inquiries regarding Rodriguez's ties to the vice
president's office. What did you tell [Bush press spokesman] Marlin
Fitzwater regarding that relationship?

"Gregg:" ... The thrust of the press inquiries was always that from
the outset I had had in mind that Rodriguez should play some role in
the Contra support operation, and my comments to Marlin ... were that
that had not been in my mind....

"Sen. Cranston:" Let me quote again from the "New York Times", George
Bush quoted October 13, '86. Bush said, "To the best of my knowledge,
this man, Felix Rodriguez, is not working for the United States
government."

Now Mr. Gregg, you knew that Rodriguez was aiding the Contras and
receiving material assistance in the form of cars, housing,
communications equipment and transportation from the U.S. government.
Did you inform Bush of those facts so that he could make calculated
misleading statements in ignorance of his staff's activities?

"Gregg:" ... At that point I had no idea that Felix -- you said -- you
mentioned communications equipment. I had no idea he had been given by
North one of those encryption devices. I think I was aware that
Colonel Steele had given him access to a car, and I knew he was living
in a BOQ at the air base. He was not being paid any salary. His main
source of income was, as it is now, his retirement pension from CIA.

"Sen. Cranston:" ... You told the Iran-Contra committee that you and
Bush never discussed the Contras, had no expertise on the issue, no
responsibility for it, and the details of Watergate-sized scandal
involving NSC staff and the [Edwin] Wilson gang was not Vice
Presidential.

Your testimony on that point I think is demonstrably false. There are
at least six memos from Don Gregg to George Bush regarding detailed
Contra issues....

"Sen Cranston:" Am I correct in this, that you have confirmed ... that
senior U.S. military, diplomatic ... and intelligence personnel,
really looked with great doubt upon Rodriguez's mission and that they
tolerated it only because Rodriguez used his contacts with the vice
president and his staff as part of the way to bolster his mission.

"Gregg:" ... I was not aware of the diplomatic; I was aware of the
military and intelligence, yes, sir.

"The committee voted in favor of confirmation." Cranston voted no. But
three Democrats -- Charles Robb, Terry Sanford and Chairman Claiborne
Pell -- joined the Republicans.

Sanford confirmed Cranston's viewpoint, saying that he was allowing
the nomination to go through because he was afraid "the path would
lead to Bush," the new President. Sanford said, shamefacedly, ""If
Gregg was lying, he was lying to protect the President, which is
different from lying to protect himself."" / Note #8 / Note #9

In George Bush's government, the one-party state, the knives soon came
out, and the prizes appeared.

The Senate Ethics Committee, including the shamefaced Terry Sanford,
began in November 1989, its attack on the "Keating Five." These were
U.S. Senators, among them Senator Alan Cranston, charged with savings
and loan corruption. The attack soon narrowed down to one target only
-- the Iran-Contrary Senator Cranston.

On Aug. 2, 1991, Senator Terry Sanford, having forgotten his shame,
took over as the new chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee.

Bush, LaRouche and Iran-Contra

George Bush and his friends have repeatedly told political pundits
that America is "tired" and "bored" of hearing about the Iran-Contra
affair.

Bush has taken a dim view of those who were not tired or bored, but
fought him.

Oct. 6, 1986 was a fateful day in Washington. The secret government
apparatus learned that the Hasenfus plane had been shot down the day
before, and went scurrying about to protect its exposed parts. At the
same time, it sent about 400 heavily armed FBI agents, other federal,
state and local policemen storming into the Leesburg, Virginia,
publishing offices associated with the American dissident political
leader Lyndon LaRouche, Jr.

LaRouche and his political movement had certified their danger to the
Bush program. Six months before the raid, LaRouche associates Mark
Fairchild and Janice Hart had gained the Democratic nominations for
Illinois lieutenant governor and secretary of state; they won the
primary elections after denouncing the government-mafia joint
coordination of the narcotics trade. With this notoriety, LaRouche was
certain to act in an even more unpredictable and dangerous fashion as
a presidential candidate in 1988. LaRouche allies were at work
throughout Latin America, promoting resistance to the Anglo-Americans.
The LaRouche-founded "Executive Intelligence Review" had exposed U.S.
government covert support for Khomeini's Iranians, beginning in 1980.

More directly, the LaRouchites were fighting the Bush apparatus for
its money. Connecticut widow Barbara Newington, who had given Spitz
Channell's National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty
$1,735,578 out of its total 1985 income of $3,360,990, / Note #9 /
Note #0 was also contributing substantial sums to LaRouche-related
publishing efforts ... which were exposing the Contras and their
dope-pushing. Fundraiser Michael Billington argued with Mrs.
Newington, warning her not to give money to the Bush-North-Spitz
Channell gang.

Back on August 19, 1982, and on November 25, 1982, George Bush's old
boss, Henry A. Kissinger, had written to FBI Director William Webster,
asking for FBI action against "the LaRouche group." In promoting
covert action against LaRouche, Kissinger also got help from James
Jesus Angleton, who had retired as chief of counterintelligence for
the CIA. After Yalie Angleton got going in this anti-dissident work,
he mused "Fancy that, now I've become Kissinger's Rebbe." / Note #9 /
Note #1

One week before the raid, an FBI secret memorandum described the
LaRouche political movement as "subversive," and claimed that its
"policy positions ... dovetail nicely with Soviet propaganda and
disinformation objectives." / Note #9 / Note #2

Three months after Spitz Channell's fraud confession, Vice President
Bush denounced LaRouche at an Iowa campaign rally: "I don't like the
things LaRouche does.... He's bilked people out of lots of money, and
misrepresented what causes money was going to. LaRouche is in a lot of
trouble, and deserves to be in a lot of trouble." / Note #9 / Note #3

LaRouche and several associates eventually went on trial in Boston, on
a variety of "fraud" charges -- neither "subversion" nor defunding the
Contras was in the indictments. Bush was now running hard for the
presidency.

Suddenly, in the midst of the primary elections, the LaRouche trial
took a threatening turn. On March 10, 1988, Federal Judge Robert E.
Keeton ordered a search of the indexes to Vice President George Bush's
confidential files to determine whether his spies had infiltrated
LaRouche-affiliated organizations.

Iran-Contra Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh had acquired, and turned
over to the LaRouche defense, in response to an FOIA request, a secret
memorandum found in Oliver North's safe. It was a mes sage from Gen.
Richard Secord to North, written May 5, 1986 -- four days after North
had met with George Bush and Felix Rodriguez to confirm that Rodriguez
would continue running guns to the Contras using Spitz Channell's
payments to Richard Secord. The memo, released in the Boston
courtroom, said, "Lewis has met with FBI and other agency reps and is
apparently meeting again today. Our Man here claims Lewis has
collected info against LaRouche." / Note #9 / Note #4

The government conceded that "our man here" in the memo was Bush
Terrorism Task Force member Oliver "Buck" Revell, the assistant
director of the FBI. "Lewis" -- "soldier of fortune" Fred Lewis --
together with Bush operatives Gary Howard and Ron Tucker, had met
later in May 1986, with C. Boyden Gray, counsel to Vice President
Bush. / Note #9 / Note #5

Howard and Tucker, deputy sheriffs from Bush-family-controlled
Midland, Texas, were couriers and bagmen for money transfers between
the National Security Council and private "counterterror" companies.
They were also professional sting artists. Howard and Tucker had sold
100 battle tanks to a British arms dealer for shipment to Iran, and
had taken his $1.6 million. Then they turned him in to British
authorities and claimed a huge reward. A British jury, outraged at
Howard and Tucker, threw out the criminal case in late 1983.

The LaRouche defense contended, with the North memo and other
declassified documents, that the Bush apparatus had sent spies and
provocateurs into the LaRouche political movement in an attempt to
wreck it.

Judge Keeton demanded that the Justice Department tell him why
information they withheld from the defense was now appearing in court
in declassified documents.

The government was not forthcoming, and in May 1988, the judge
declared a mistrial. The jury told the newspapers they would have
voted for acquittal.

But Bush could not afford to quit. LaRouche and his associates were
simply indicted again, on new charges. This time they were brought to
trial before a judge who could be counted on.

Judge Albert V. Bryan, Jr. was the organizer, lawyer and banker of the
world's largest private weapons dealer, Interarms of Alexandria,
Virginia. As the new LaRouche trial began, the CIA-front firm that the
judge had founded controlled 90 percent of the world's official
private weapons traffic. Judge Bryan had personally arranged the
financing of more than a million weapons traded by Interarms between
the CIA, Britain and Latin America.

Agency for International Development trucks carried small arms,
rifles, machine guns and ammunition from Interarms in Alexandria for
flights to Cuba -- first for Castro's revolutionary forces. Then,
Judge Bryan's company, Interarms, provided guns for the anti-Castro
initiatives of the CIA Miami Station, for Rodriguez, Shackley, Posada
Carriles, Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, et al. When George Bush was CIA
director, Albert V. Bryan's company was the leading private supplier
of weapons to the CIA. / Note #9 / Note #6

In the LaRouche trial, Judge Bryan prohibited virtually all defense
initiatives. The jury foreman, Buster Horton, had top secret clearance
for government work with Oliver North and Oliver "Buck" Revell.
LaRouche and his associates were declared guilty.

On January 27, 1989 -- one week after George Bush became President --
Judge Albert V. Bryan sentenced the 66-year-old dissident leader
LaRouche to 15 years in prison. Michael Billington, who had tried to
wreck the illicit funding for the Contras, was jailed for three years
with LaRouche; he was later railroaded into a Virginia court and
sentenced to another "77 years in prison" for "fundraising fraud."

Notes for Chapter XIX

76. "Washington Post," Oct. 11, 1986.

77. "Washington Post," Oct. 12, 1986, Oct. 14, 1986.

78. "Washington Post," Oct. 14, 1986.

79. Hasenfus Affidavit, p. 3.

80. Rodriguez and Weisman, "op. cit.," p. 241.

81. "Washington Post," Nov. 20, 1986.

82. "Washington Post," Feb. 12, 1987.

83. "Washington Post," Dec. 18, 1986, "Wall Street Journal," Dec. 19,
1986.

84. Donald T. Regan, "For the Record: From Wall Street to Washington"
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, 1988), pp. 368-73.

85. "Ibid."

86. "New York Times," March 2, 1989.

87. "CovertAction," No. 33, Winter 1990, p. 15.

88. Stenographic Transcript of Hearings Before the U.S. Senate
Committee on Foreign Relations, Nomination Hearing for Donald Phinney
Gregg to be Ambassador to the Republic of Korea. Washington, D.C., May
12 and June 15, 1989.

89. Mary McGrory, "The Truth According to Gregg," "Washington Post,"
June 22, 1989.

90. NEPL contributions 1985 printout, cited in Armstrong, "op. cit.,"
p. 226.

91. Kissinger letters, declassified in 1984, photostats in "EIR
Special Report:" "Irangate...," pp. 52, 55.

Angleton quote in Tom Mangold, "Cold Warrior" (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1991), p. 352.

See also Burton Hersh, "In the Hall of Mirrors: The Cold War's
Distorted Images," in "The Nation," June 23, 1991. Hersh says: "I knew
Angleton in the last five years of his life [he died May 11, 1987].
Angleton was amusing himself just then with a vendetta against Lyndon
LaRouche."

92. Director FBI to D[efense] I[ntelligence] A[gency], Sept. 30, 1986,
classified SECRET.

93. Bush at Shelton, Iowa, July 31, 1987, quoted in "EIR Special
Report:" "Irangate...," p. 65.

94. Secord to North 5/5/86 memorandum marked SECRET, declassified Feb.
26, 1988 by Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, photostat in "EIR
Special Report:" "Irangate...," p. 31.

95. "Washington Post," March 27, 1989.

96. Corporate records of the First National Bank of Alexandria and the
First Citizens Bank of Alexandria, 1940s to 1960s, in "Polk's Bankers
Directory."

Clarence J. Robinson, "Reminiscences" (Fairfax, Va.: George Mason
University, 1983).

"XX: The Leveraged Buyout Mob"

During the entire decade of the 1980s, the policies of the Reagan-Bush
and Bush administrations encouraged one of the greatest paroxysms of
speculation and usury that the world has ever seen. Starting
especially in the summer of 1982, a malignant and cancerous mass of
speculative paper spread through all the vital organs of the banking,
credit, and financial system. Capital had long since ceased to be used
for the creation of new productive plant and equipment, new productive
manufacturing jobs, investment in transportation, power systems and
education; health services and other infrastructure declined well
below the breakeven level. Wall Street investors came more and more to
resemble vampires who ranged over a ghoulish landscape in search of
living prey whose blood they could suck to perpetuate their own lively
form of death.

For the vast majority of the U.S. population (to say nothing of the
brutal immiseration in the developing countries) it was an epoch of
austerity, sacrifice, and decline, of the entropy of a society in
which most people have no purpose and feel themselves becoming
redundant. But for a paper-thin stratum of plutocrats and parasites,
the 1980s was a time of unlimited opportunity. These were the
practitioners of the disastrous financial swindles that marked the
decade, the protagonists of the hostile takeovers, mergers and
acquisitions, leveraged buyouts, greenmail, and stock plays that
occupied the admiration of Wall Street. These were corporate raiders
like J. Hugh Liedtke, Baine Kerr, T. Boone Pickens, and Frank Lorenzo;
Wall Street financiers like Henry Kravis and Nicholas Brady. And these
men, surely not by coincidence, belonged to the intimate circle of
personal friends and close political supporters of George Herbert
Walker Bush.

The Pennzoil Wars: A Case Study

One of the landmark corporate battles of the first Reagan
administration was the battle over control of Getty Oil, a battle
fought between Texaco -- at that time the third largest oil company in
the United States and the fourth largest industrial corporation -- and
J. Hugh Liedtke's Pennzoil. George Bush's old partner and constant
crony, J. Hugh Liedtke, was still obsessed with his dream of building
Pennzoil into a major oil company, one that could become the seventh
of the traditional Seven Si sters after Chevron and Gulf merged.

Liedtke was the chairman of the Pennzoil board, and the Pennzoil
president was now Baine Kerr, a former lawyer from Baker & Botts in
Houston. Baine Kerr was also an old friend of George Bush. Back in
1970, when George was running against Lloyd Bentsen, Kerr had advised
Bush on a proposed business deal involving a loan request from Victor
A. Flaherty, who needed money to buy Fidelity Printing Company. Baine
Kerr was a hard bargainer: He recommended that Bush make the loan, but
that he also demand some stock in Fidelity Printing as part of the
deal. Three years later, when Fidelity Printing was sold, Bush cashed
in his stock for $99,600 in profit, a gain of 1,900 percent on his
original investment. That was the kind of return that George Bush
liked, the kind that honest activities can so rarely produce. / Note
#1

Chairman Mao Liedtke and his sidekick Baine Kerr constantly scanned
their radar screens for an oil company to acquire. They studied
Superior Oil, which was in play, but Superior Oil did too much of its
business in Canada, where there had been no equivalent of George
Bush's Task Force on Regulatory Relief, and where the oil companies
were thus still subject to some restraints. Chairman Mao ruled that
one out. Then there was Gulf Oil, where T. Boone Pickens was
attempting a takeover, but Liedtke reluctantly decided that Gulf was
beyond his means. Then, Chairman Mao began to hear reports of
conflicts on the board of Getty Oil. Getty Oil, with 20,000 employees,
was a $12 billion corporation, about six times larger than Pennzoil.
But Chairman Mao had already managed to gobble up United Gas when that
company was about six times larger than his own Pennzoil. Getty Oil
had about a billion barrels of oil in the ground. Now Chairman Mao was
very interested.

In early 1984, Gordon Getty and his Sarah Getty Trust, plus the Getty
Museum represented by the New York mergers and acquisitions lawyer
Marty Lipton, combined to oblige the board of Getty Oil to give
preliminary acceptance to a tender offer for Getty Oil stock at a
price of about $112.50 per share. Arthur Liman thought he had a deal
that would enable Chairman Mao to seize control of Getty Oil and its
billion barrel reserves, but no contract or any other document was
ever signed, and key provisions of the transaction remained to be
negotiated.

When the  news of these negotiations began to leak out, major oil
companies who also wanted Getty and its reserves began to move in:
Chevron showed signs of making a move, but it was Texaco, represented
by Bruce Wasserstein of First Boston and the notorious Skadden, Arps,
Slate, Meagher & Flom law firm, that got the attention of the Getty
Museum and Gordon Getty with a bid (of $125 a share) that was sweeter
than the tight-fisted Chairman Mao Liedtke had been willing to put
forward. Gordon Getty and the Getty Museum accordingly signed a
contract with Texaco. This was nominally the largest acquisition in
human history up to that time, and the check received by Gordon Getty
was for $4,071,051,264, the second largest check ever written in the
history of the United States, second only to one that had been used to
roll over a part of the post-World War II national debt.

But Chairman Mao Liedtke thought he had been cheated. "They've made
off with a million dollars of my oil!" he bellowed. "We're going to
sue everybody in sight!"

But Chairman Mao Liedtke's attempts to stop the deal in court were
fruitless; he then concentrated his attention on a civil suit for
damages on a claim that Texaco had been guilty of "tortious
interference" with Pennzoil's alleged oral contract with Getty Oil.
The charge was that Texaco had known that there already had been a
contract, and had set out deliberately to breach it. After extensive
forum shopping, Chairman Mao concluded that Houston, Texas was the
right venue for a suit of this type. Liedtke and Pennzoil demanded $7
billion in actual damages and $7 billion in punitive damages for a
total of at least $14 billion, a sum bigger than the entire public
debt of the United States on December 7, 1941. Liedtke hired Houston
lawyer Joe "King of Torts" Jamail, and backed up Jamail with Baker &
Botts.

Interestingly, the judge who presided over the trial until the final
phase, when the die had already been cast, was none other than Anthony
J.P. "Tough Tony" Farris. Back in February 1963, the newly elected
Republican county chairman for Harris County, George H.W. Bush, had
named Tough Tony Farris as his first assistant county chairman. / Note
#2 During the Nixon administration, Farris became the U.S. Attorney in
Houston. Given what we know of the relations between Nixon and George
Bush, we must conclude that a patronage appointment of this type could
hardly have been made without George Bush's involvement. Tough Tony
Farris was decidedly an asset of the Bush networks.

Now Tough Tony Farris was a state district judge, whose remaining
ambition in life was an appointment to the federal bench. Farris did
not recuse himself because his patron, George Bush, was a former
business partner and constant crony of J. Hugh Liedtke. Farris rather
began issuing a string of rulings favorable to Pennzoil: He ruled that
Pennzoil had a right to quick discovery from Texaco. Farris was an old
friend of Pennzoil's lead trial lawyer, Joe Jamail, and Jamail had
just given Tough Tony Farris a $10,000 contribution for his next
election campaign. Jamail, in fact, was a member of Tough Tony's
campaign committee. Texaco attempted to recuse Farris, but they
failed. Farris claimed that he would have recused himself if Texaco's
lawyers had come to him privately, but that their public attempt to
get him pitched out of the case made him decide to fight to stay on.
Just at that point, the district courts of Harris County changed their
rules in such a way as to allow Bush's man Tough Tony Farris, who had
presided over the pretrial hearings, to actually try the case.

And try the case he did, for 15 weeks, during which the deck was
stacked for Pennzoil's ultimate victory. With a few weeks left in the
trial, Farris was diagnosed as suffering from terminal cancer, and he
was forced to request a replacement district judge. The last-minute
substitute was Judge Solomon Casseb, who finished up the case along
the lines already clearly established by Farris. In late November
1985, the jury awarded Pennzoil damages of $10.53 billion. Casseb not
only upheld this monstrous result, but increased it to a total of
$11,120,976,110.83.

Before the trial, back in January 1985, Chairman Mao Liedtke had met
with John K. McKinley, the chairman of Texaco, at the Hay-Adams Hotel
across Lafayette Park from the White House in Washington, D.C. Liedtke
told McKinley that he thought what Texaco had done was highly illegal,
but McKinley responded that his lawyers had assured him that his legal
position was "very sound." McKinley offered suggestions for an
out-of-court settlement, but these were rejected by Chairman Mao, who
made his own counter-offer: He wanted three-sevenths of Getty Oil, and
was now willing to hike his price to $125 a share. According to one
account of this meeting, Liedtke seemed to go out of his way to
mention his friendship with George Bush, according to Bill Weitzel of
Texaco. "Mr. Liedtke was quite outspoken with regard to the influence
that he felt he had -- and would and could expect in Washington -- in
connection with antitrust matters and legislative matters," McKinley
would say in deposition. "The idea was that Pennzoil was not without
political influence that could adversely affect the efforts of Texaco
in completing its merger." / Note #3

Liedtke denied all this: "The political-influence thing isn't true. I
don't have any and McKinley knows it!" Did Liedtke keep a straight
face?

In any case, the Reagan-Bush regime made no secret of its support for
Pennzoil. In the spring of 1987, after prolonged litigation, the U.S.
Supreme Court required Texaco to post a bond of $11 billion. On April
13, 1987, the press announced that Texaco had filed for Chapter 11
bankruptcy protection. The Justice Department created two committees
to represent the interests of Texaco's unsecured creditors, and
Pennzoil was made the chairman of one of these committees. Texaco
operations were subjected to severe disruptions.

During the closing weeks of 1987, Texaco was haggling with Chairman
Mao about the sum of money that the bankrupt firm would pay to
Pennzoil. At this point, Bushman Lawrence Gibbs was the commissioner
of the Internal Revenue Service. He slammed bankrupt and wounded
Texaco with a demand for $6.5 billion in back taxes. This move was in
the works behind the scenes during the Texaco-Pennzoil talks, and it
certainly made clear to Texaco which side the government was on. The
implication was that Texaco had better settle with Chairman Mao in a
hurry, or face the prospect of being broken up by the various Wall
Street sharks, who had begun to circle the wounded company. In case
Texaco had not gotten the message, the Department of Energy also
launched an attack on Texaco, alleging that the bankrupt firm had
overcharged its customers by $1.25 billion during the time before 1981
when oil price controls had been in effect.

The entire affair represented a monstrous miscarriage of justice, a
declaration that the entire U.S. legal system was bankrupt. At the
heart of the matter was the pervasive influence of the Bush networks,
which gave Liedtke the support he needed to fight all the way to the
final settlement.

Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts

But even the enormities of Chairman Mao Liedtke were destined to be
eclipsed in the political and regulatory climate of savage greed
created with the help of the Reagan-Bush administration and George
Bush's Task Force on Regulatory Relief. Even Liedtke's colossal
grasping was about to be out-topped by a small Wall Street firm,
which, primarily during the second Reagan-Bush term, assembled a
financial empire greater than that of J.P. Morgan at the height of
Jupiter's power. This firm was Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts (KKR) which
had been founded in 1976 by a partner and some former employees of the
Bear Stearns brokerage firm of lower Manhattan, and which by late 1990
had bought a total of 36 companies using some $58 billion lent to KKR
by insurance companies, commercial banks, state pension funds, and
junk bond king Michael Milken. The dominant personality of KKR was
Henry Kravis.

Henry Kravis's epic achievements in speculation and usury perhaps had
something to do with the fact that he was a close family friend of
George Bush. As we have seen, when Prescott Bush was arranging a job
for young George Herbert Walker Bush in 1948, he contacted Ray Kravis
of Tulsa, Oklahoma, whose business included helping Brown Brothers
Harriman to evaluate the oil reserves of companies. Ray Kravis over
the years had kept in close touch with Senator Prescott Bush and
George Bush, and young Henry Kravis, his son, had been introduced to
George and had hob-nobbed with him at various Republican Party
fundraising events. Henry Kravis by the early 1980s was a member of
the Republican Party's elite inner circle.

Bush and Henry Kravis became even more closely associated during the
time that Bush, ever mindful of campaign financing, was preparing his
bid for the presidency. Among political contributors, Henry Kravis was
a very high roller. In 1987-88, Kravis gave over $80,000 to various
senators, congressmen, Republican political action committees, and the
Republican National Committee. During 1988, Kravis gave $100,000 to
the GOP Team 100, which meant a "soft money" contribution to the Bush
campaign. Kravis's partner, George Roberts, also anted up $100,000 for
the Republican Team 100. In 1989, the first year in which it was owned
by KKR, RJR Nabisco also gave $100,000 to Team 100. During that year,
Kravis and Roberts gave $25,000 each to the GOP. During the 1988
primary season, Kravis was the co-chair of a lavish Bush fundraiser at
the Vista Hotel in lower Manhattan, at which Henry's fellow Wall
Street dealmakers and financier fat cats coughed up a total of
$550,000 for Bush. Part of Kravis's symbolic recompense was the
prestigious title of co-chairman of Bush's Inaugural Dinner in January
1989. One year later, in January 1990, Kravis was the national
chairman of Bush's Inaugural Anniversary Dinner. / Note #4

According to Kravis, Bush "writes me handwritten notes all the time
and he calls me and stuff, and we talk." The talk concerned what the
U.S. government should do in areas of immediate interest to Kravis:
"We talked on corporate debt -- this was going back a few years -- and
what that meant to the private sector," said Kravis.

Henry Kravis certainly knows all about debt. The 1980s witnessed the
triumph of debt over equity, with a tenfold increase in total
corporate debt during the decade, while production, productive
capacity, and employment stagnated and declined. One of the principal
ways in which this debt was loaded onto a shrinking productive base
was through the technique of the hostile, junk bond-assisted leveraged
buyout, of which Henry Kravis and his firm were the leading
practitioners.

Small-scale leveraged buyouts were pioneered by KKR during the late
1970s. In its final form, the technique looked something like this:
Corporate raiders looked around for companies that might be worth more
than their current stock price if they were broken up and sold off.
Using money borrowed from a number of sources, the raider would make a
tender offer, or otherwise secure a majority of the shares. Often all
outstanding shares in the company would be bought up, taking the
company private, with ownership residing in a small group of
financiers. The company would end up saddled with an immense amount of
new debt, often in the form of high-yield, high-risk subordinated debt
certificates called junk bonds. The risk on these was high, since, if
the company were to go bankrupt and be auctioned off, the holders of
the junk bonds would be the last to get any compensation.

Often, the first move of the raider after seizing control of the
company and forcing out its existing management, would be to sell off
the parts of the firm that produced the least cash flow, since
enhanced cash flow was imperative to start paying the new debt.
Proceeds from these sales could also be used to pay down some of the
initial debt, but this process inevitably meant jobs destroyed and
production diminished. These raiding operations were justified by a
fascistoid-populist demagogy that accused the existing management of
incompetence, indolence, and greed. The LBO pirates professed to have
the interests of the shareholders at heart, and made much of the fact
that their operations increased the value of the stock and, in the
case of tender offers, gave the stockholders a better price than they
would have gotten otherwise. The litany of the corporate raider was
built around his commitment to "maximize shareholder value"; workers,
bondholders, the public, the firms themselves were all expendable in
the short run.

An important enticement to transform stocks and equity into bonded and
other debt was provided by the insanity of the U.S. tax code, which
taxed profits distributed to shareholders, but not the debt paid on
junk bonds. The ascendancy of the leveraged buyout, therefore, was
accompanied by the demolition of the U.S. corporate tax base,
contributing in no small way to the growth of federal deficits.

Ultimately, the big profits were expected when the acquired companies,
after having been downsized to "lean and mean" dimensions, had their
stock sold back to the public. KKR reserved itself 20 percent of the
profits on these final transactions. In the meantime, Kravis and his
associates collected investment banking fees, retainer fees,
directors' fees, management fees, monitoring fees, and a plethora of
other charges for their services.

The leverage was accomplished by the smaller amount of equity left
outstanding in comparison with the vastly increased debt. This meant
that if, after deducting the debt service, profits went up, the return
to the investors could become very high. Naturally, if losses began to
appear, reverse leverage would come into play, producing astronom ical
amounts of red ink. Most fundamental was that companies were being
loaded with debt during the years of what the Reagan-Bush regime
insisted on calling a boom. It was evident to any sober observer that
as the depression asserted its existence, many of the companies that
had succumbed to leveraged buyouts and related usury would very
rapidly become insolvent.

All in all, during the years between 1982 and 1988, more than 10,000
merger and acquisition deals were completed within the borders of the
United States, for a total capitalization of $1 trillion. There were,
in addition, 3,500 international mergers and acquisitions for another
$500 billion. / Note #5 The enforcement of antitrust laws atrophied
into nothing: As one observer said of the late 1980s, "such
concentrations had not been allowed since the early days of antitrust
at the beginning of the century."

George Bush's friend Henry Kravis raised money for his leveraged
buyouts from a number of sources. Money came first of all from
insurance companies such as the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company of
New York, which cultivated a close relation with KKR over a number of
years. Met was joined by Prudential, Aetna, and Northwestern Mutual.
Then there were banks like Manufacturers Hanover Trust and Bankers
Trust. All these institutions were attracted by astronomical rates of
return on KKR investments, estimated at 32.2 percent in 1980, 41.8
percent in 1982, 28 percent in 1984, and 29.6 percent in 1986. By
1987, the KKR prospectus boasted that they had carried out the first
large LBO of a publicly held company, the first billion-dollar LBO,
the first large LBO of a public company via tender offer, and the
largest LBO in history until then, Beatrice Foods.

Then came the state pension funds, which were also anxious to share in
these very large returns. The first to begin investing with KKR was
Oregon, which shoveled money to KKR like there was no tomorrow. Other
states that joined in were Washington, Utah, Minnesota, Michigan, New
York, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts and Montana.

KKR had one other very important source of capital for its deals: This
was the now-defunct Wall Street investment firm of Drexel, Burnham,
Lambert and its California-based junk bond king, Michael Milken.
Drexel and Milken were the most important single customers KKR had.
(Drexel had its own Harriman link: It had merged with  Harriman Ripley
& Co. of New York in 1966.) During the period of close working
alliance between KKR and Drexel, Milken's junk-bond operation raised
an estimated $20 billion of funds for KKR.

The Beatrice Foods LBO illustrates how necessary Milken's role was to
the overall strategy of Bush backer Kravis. With a price tag of $8.2
billion, Beatrice was the biggest LBO up to the time it was completed
in January-February 1986. As part of this deal, Kravis gave Milken
warrants for 5 million shares of stock in the new Beatrice
corporation. These warrants could be used in the future to buy
Beatrice shares at a small fraction of the market price. One result of
this would be a dilution of the equity of the other investors. Milken
kept the warrants for his own account, rather than offer them to his
junk bond buyers, in order to get a better price for the Beatrice junk
bonds. Later in the same year, KKR bought out Safeway grocery stores
for $4.1 billion, of which a large part came from Milken.

After 1986, Henry Kravis and George Roberts were gripped by financial
megalomania. Between 1987 and 1989, they acquired eight additional
companies with an aggregate price tag of $43.9 billion. These new
victims included Owens-Illinois Glass, Duracell, Stop and Shop food
markets, and, in the landmark transaction of the 1980s, RJR Nabisco.
RJR Nabisco was the product of a number of earlier mergers: National
Biscuit Company had merged with Standard Brands to form Nabisco
Brands, and this in turn merged with R.J. Reynolds Tobacco to create
RJR Nabisco. It is important to recall that R.J. Reynolds was the
concern traditionally controlled by the family of Bush's personal
White House lawyer, C. Boyden "Boy" Gray.

Control of RJR Nabisco was sought by opposing gangs: A first group
included RJR Nabisco chairman Ross Johnson, Peter Cohen of Shearson
Lehman Hutton and the notorious John Gutfreund of Salomon Brothers.
KKR was a second contender, and a third offer for RJR came from First
Boston. The Johnson offer and the KKR were about the same, but a cover
story in the Henry Luce-Skull and Bones "Time" magazine in early
December 1988 targeted Johnson as the greedy party. The attraction of
RJR Nabisco, one of the 20 largest U.S. corporations, was an immense
cash flow supplied especially by its cigarette sales, where profit
margins were enormous. The crucial phases of the fight corresponded
with the presidential election of 1988: Bush won the White House, and
Kravis won RJR with a bid of about $109 per share compared to a stock
price of about $55 per share before the company was put into play,
giving the pre-buyout shareholders a capital gain of more than $13.3
billion.

The RJR Nabisco swindle generated senior bank debt of about $15
billion. Then came $5 billion of subordinated debt, with the largest
offering of junk bonds ever made. Then came an echelon of even more
junior debt with payment-in-kind securities: junk bonds that paid
interest not in cash, but in other junk bonds. But even with all the
wizardry of KKR, there could have been no deal without Milken and his
junk bonds. The banks could not muster the cash required to complete
the financing; KKR required bridge loans. Merrill Lynch and Drexel
were in the running to provide an extra $5 billion of bridge
financing. Drexel got Milken's monsters and many others to buy
short-term junk notes with an interest rate that would increase the
longer the owner refrained from cashing in the note. Drexel's
"increasing rate notes" easily brought in the entire $5 billion
required.

In November of 1986, Ivan Boesky pled guilty to one felony count of
manipulating securities, and his testimony led to the indictment of
Milken in March 1989, some months after the RJR Nabisco deal had been
sewn up. In order to protect more important financial players, Milken
was allowed to plead guilty in April 1990 to five counts of insider
trading, for which he agreed to pay a fine of $600 million. On
February 13, 1990, Drexel Burnham Lambert had declared itself bankrupt
and gone into liquidation, much to the distress of junk bond holders
everywhere, who saw the firm as a junk bond buyer of last resort.

By this time, many of the great LBOs had begun to collapse. Robert
Campeau's retail sales empire of Allied and Federated Stores blew up
in the fall of 1989, bringing down almost $10 billion of LBO debt.
Revco, Fruehauf, Southland (Seven-Eleven stores), Resorts
International, and many other LBOs went into Chapter 11 proceedings.
As for KKR's deals, they also began to implode: SCI-TV, a spin-off of
Storer Broadcasting, announced that it could not service its $1.3
billion of debt, and forced the holders of $500 million in junk bonds
to settle for new stocks and bonds worth between 20 and 70 cents on
the dollar. Hillsborough Holdings, a subsidiary of Jim Walker, went
bankrupt, and Seamans Furniture put through a forced restructuring of
its debt.

It was clear at the time of the RJR Nabisco LBO that the totality of
the company's large cash flow would be necessary to maintain payments
of $25 billion of debt. Within a short time after the LBO, RJR Nabisco
proved unable to maintain payments. KKR was forced to inject several
billion dollars of new equity, take out new bank loans, and dun its
clients for an extra $1.7 billion. RJR Nabisco by the early autumn of
1991 was a time bomb ticking away near the center of a ruined U.S.
economy.

In September 1987, very late in the day, Senator William Proxmire
submitted a bill which aimed at restricting takeovers. Two weeks
later, Rep. Dan Rostenkowski of Illinois offered a bill to limit the
tax deductibility of the interest on takeover debt. The LBO gang in
Wall Street was horrified, even though it was clear that the
Reagan-Bush team would opp ose such legislation using every trick in
the book. Later, LBO ideologues blamed the Congress for causing the
crash of October 1987.

Bush's 'Free Enterprise'

During the 1988 campaign, Bush presented his views on hostile
takeovers, using the forum provided by his old friend T. Boone
Pickens' "U.S.A. Advocate", a monthly newsletter published by the
United Shareholders Association, which Pickens runs. In the October
1988 issue of this publication, Bush made clear that he was not
worried about leveraged buyouts. Rather, what concerned Bush was the
need to prevent corporations from adopting defenses to deter such
attempted hostile takeovers. Bush also railed against "golden
parachutes," which provide lucrative settlements for top executives
who are ousted as the result of a takeover. / Note #6

Bush was clearly hostile to any federal restrictions on hostile
takeovers. If anything, he was closer to those who demanded that the
federal government stop the states from passing laws that interfere
with LBO activity. For that notorious corporate raider and disciple of
Chairman Mao Liedtke, T. Boone Pickens, the message was clear: "I know
that Vice President Bush is a free enterpriser." / Note #7

The expectations of Pickens and his ilk were not disappointed by the
Bush cabinet that took office in January 1989. The new secretary of
the treasury, Bush crony Nicholas Brady, was not only a supporter of
leveraged buyouts; he had been one of the leading practitioners of the
mergers and acquisitions game during his days in Wall Street as
partner of the Harriman-allied investment bank of Dillon Read.

The family of Nicholas Brady has been allied for most of this century
with the Bush-Walker clan. During his Wall Street career at Dillon
Read, Brady, like Bush, cultivated the self-image of the patrician
banker, becoming a member of the New York Jockey Club and racing his
own thoroughbred horses at the New York tracks once presided over by
George Herbert Walker and Prescott Bush. Brady, like Bush, is a member
of the Bohemian Club of San Francisco and attends the Bohemian Grove
every summer. Inside the Bohemian Grove oligarchic pantheon, Brady
enjoys the special distinction of presiding over the prestigious
Mandalay Camp (or cabin complex), the one to which Henry Kissinger
habitually retires, and sometimes frequented by Gerald Ford.

Nick Brady got the job he presently occupies by heading up a study of
the October 1987 stock market crash, the results of which Brady
announced on a cold Friday afternoon in January 1988, just after the
New York stock market had taken another 150-point dive.

The study of the October 1987 "market break" was produced by a group
of Wall Street and Treasury insiders billed as the "Presidential Task
Force on Market Mechanisms." At the center of the report's attention
was the relation between the New York Stock Exchange, American Stock
Exchange, and NASDAC over-the-counter stock trading, on the one hand,
and the future, options, and index trading carried on at the Chicago
Board of Trade, Chicago Board Options Exchange, and Chicago Mercantile
Exchange. The Brady group examined the impact of program trading,
index arbitrage, and portfolio insurance strategies on the behavior of
the markets that led to the crash. The Brady report recommended the
centralization of all market oversight in a single federal agency, the
unification of clearing systems, consistent margins, and the
installation of circuit-breaker mechanisms. That, at least, was the
public content of the report.

The real purpose of the Brady report was to create a series of drugged
and manipulated markets. The Brady group realized that if the Chicago
futures price of a stock or stock index could be artificially
inflated, this would be of great assistance in propping up the value
of the underlying stock in New York.

The Brady group focused on the Major Market Index of 20 stock futures
traded on the Chicago Board of Trade, which roughly corresponded to
the principal stocks of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. As long as
the MMI was trading at a higher price than the DJIA, the program
traders and index arbitrageurs would tend to sell the MMI and buy the
underlying stock in New York in order to lock in their parasitical
profits. The great advantage of this system was first of all that some
tens of millions of dollars in Chicago, where turnover was less
intense than in New York, could generate hundreds of millions of
dollars of demand in New York. In addition, the margin requirements
for borrowing money to buy futures in Chicago were much less stringent
than the requirements for margin-buying of stocks in New York.
Liquidity for this operation could be drawn from banks and other
institutions loyal to the Bush-Baker-Brady power cartel, with full
backup and assistance from the district banks of the Federal Reserve.

The Brady "drugged market" mechanisms, with the refinements they have
acquired since 1988, are a key factor behind the Dow Jones
Industrial's seeming defiance of the law of gravity in attaining a new
all-time high, well above the 3,000 mark during 1991.

In 1988, Bush boasted of his achievements in the field of
deregulation. One important case study of the impact of Bush's Task
Force on Regulatory Relief is the meatpacking industry. In February
1981, when Reagan gave Bush "line" authority for deregulation, he
promulgated Executive Order 12291, which established the principle
that federal regulations "be based upon adequate evidence that their
potential benefits to society are greater than their potential costs
to society." In practice, that meant that Bush threw health and safety
standards out the window in order to ingratiate himself with gouging
entrepreneurs. In March 1981, Bush wrote to businessmen and invited
them to enumerate the ten areas they wanted to see deregulated, with
specific recommendations on what they wanted done. By the end of the
year, Bush's office issued a self-congratulatory report boasting of a
"significant reduction in the cost of federal regulation."

In the meatpacking industry, this translated into production line
speedup as jobs were eliminated, with a cavalier attitude toward
safety precautions. At the same time, the Occupational Safety and
Health Administration sharply reduced inspections, often arriving only
after disabling or lethal accidents had already occurred. In 1980,
there were 280 OSHA inspections in meatpacking plants, but in 1988
there were only 176. This is in an industry in which the rate of
personal injury is 173 persons per working day, three times the
average of all remaining U.S. industry. / Note #8

Bush used his Task Force on Regulatory Relief as a way to curry favor
with various business groups whose support he wanted for his future
plans to assume the presidency in his own right. According to one
study made midway through the Reagan years, Bush converted his own
office "into a convenient back door for corporate lobbyists" and "a
hidden court of last resort for special interest groups that have lost
their arguments in Congress, in the federal courts, or in the
regulatory process.... Case by case, the vice president's office got
involved in some mean and petty issues that directly affect people's
health and lives, from the dumping of toxic pollutants to government
warnings concerning potentially harmful drugs." / Note #9

There were also reports of serious abuses by Bush, especially in the
area of conflicts of interest. In one case, Bush intervened in March
1981 in favor of Eli Lilly & Co., of which he had been a director in
1977-79. Bush had owned $145,000 of stock in Eli Lilly until January
1981, after which it was placed in a blind trust, meaning that Bush
ostensibly had no way of knowing whether his trust still owned shares
in the firm or not. The Treasury Department had wanted to make the
terms of a tax break for U.S. pharmaceutical firms operating in Puerto
Rico more stringent, but Vice President Bush had contacted the
Treasury to urge that "technical" changes be made in the planned
restriction of the tax break. By April 14, Bush was feeling some heat,
and he wrote a second letter to Treasury Secretary Don Regan asking
that his first request be withdrawn, because Bush was now
"uncomfortable about the appearance of my active personal involvement
in the details of a tax matter directly affecting a company with which
I once had a close association." / Note #1 / Note #0

Bush's continuing interest in Eli Lilly is underlined by the fact that
the Pulliam family of Indiana, the family clan of Bush's 1988 running
mate, Dan Quayle, owned a large portion of the Eli Lilly shares.
Bush's choice of Quayle was but a reaffirmation of a pre-existing
financial and political alliance with the Pulliam interests, which
also include a newspaper chain.

Ripping Up the Airline Industry

Bush's ideal of labor-management practices and corporate leadership in
general appears to have been embodied by Frank Lorenzo, the most
celebrated and hated "banquerotteur" of U.S. air transport. Before his
downfall in early 1990, Lorenzo combined Texas Air, Continental
Airlines, New York Air, People's Express and Eastern Airlines into one
holding, and then presided over its bankruptcy. Now Eastern has been
liquidated, and the other components are likely to follow suit. Along
the way to this debacle, Lorenzo won the sympathy of the Reagan-Bush
crowd through his union-busting tactics: He had thrown Continental
Airlines into bankruptcy court and used the bankruptcy statutes to
break all union contracts, and to break the unions themselves.

George Bush has been on record as a dedicated union-buster going back
to 1963-64, and he has always been very friendly with Lorenzo. When
Bush became President, this went beyond the personal sphere and became
a revolving door between the Texas Air group and the Bush
administration. During 1989, the Airline Pilots Association issued a
list of some 30 cases in which Texas Air officials had transferred to
jobs in the Bush regime and vice versa. By the end of 1989, Bush's top
congressional lobbyist was Frederick D. McClure, who had been a vice
president and chief lobbyist for Texas Air. McClure had traded jobs
with Rebecca Range, who had worked as a public liaison for Reagan
until she moved over to the post of lead congressional lobbyist for
Texas Air. John Robson, Bush's deputy secretary of the Treasury, was a
former member of the Continental Airlines board of directors. Elliott
Seiden, a top antitrust lawyer for the Justice Department, switched to
being an attorney for Texas Air.

When questionedby columnist Jack Anderson, McClure and Robson claimed
that they recused themselves from any matters involving Texas Air. But
McClure signed a letter to Congress announcing Bush's opposition to
any government investigation of the circumstances surrounding the
Eastern Airlines strike in early 1989. This was a move in support of
Lorenzo. Bush himself has always stonewalled in favor of Lorenzo.
During the early months of that same Eastern Airlines strike, in which
pilots, flight attendants and machinists all walked out to block
Lorenzo's plan to asset strip the airline and bust the unions, the
Congress attempted to set up a panel to investigate the dispute, but
Bush was adamant in favor of Lorenzo and vetoed any government probes.
/ Note #1 / Note #1

Lorenzo's activities were decisive in the wrecking of U.S. airline
transportation during the Reagan-Bush era. When Carl Icahn was in the
process of taking over TWA, he was able to argue that the need to
compete in many of the same markets in which Lorenzo's airlines were
active made it mandatory that the TWA workforce accept similar
sacrifices and wage cuts. The cost-cutting criteria pioneered with
such ruthless aggressivity by Lorenzo have had the long-term effect of
reducing safety margins and increasing the risk the traveling public
must confront in any decision to board an airliner operating under
U.S. jurisdiction. Eastern, Midway, and Pan Am have disappeared, and
Continental has been joined in bankruptcy by America West and TWA.
Northwest, having been taken through the wringer of an LBO by Albert
Cecchi, is now busy extorting subsidies from the state of Minnesota
and other sources as a way to stay afloat.

It is widely believed that when the dust settles, only Delta,
American, and perhaps United will remain among the large nationwide
carriers.

And how, the reader may ask, was George Bush doing financially while
surrounded by so many billions in junk bonds? Bush had always
pontificated that he had led the fight for full public disclosure of
personal financial interests by elected officials. He never tired of
repeating that "in 1967, as a freshman member of the House of
Representatives, I led the fight for full financial disclosure." But
after he was elected to the vice presidency, Bush stopped disclosing
his investments in detail. He stated his net worth, which had risen to
$2.1 million by the time of the 1984 election, representing an
increase of some $300,000 over the previous five years. Bush justified
his refusal to disclose his investments in detail by saying that he
didn't know himself just what securities he held, since his portfolio
was now in the blind trust mentioned above. The blind trust was
administered by W.S. Farish & Co. of Houston, owned by Bush's close
crony William Stamps Farish III of Beeville, Texas, the grandson and
heir of the Standard Oil executive who had backed Heinrich Himmler and
the Waffen SS. / Note #1 / Note #2

Notes for Chapter XVIII

1. Walter Pincus and Bob Woodward, "Doing Well with Help from Family,
Friends," "Washington Post," Aug. 11, 1988.

2. "Houston Chronicle," Feb. 21, 1963. See clippings available in
Texas Historical Society, Houston.

3. Thomas Petzinger, "Oil and Honor" (New York: Putnam, 1987), pp.
244-45.

4. For the relation between George Bush and Henry Kravis, see Sarah
Bartlett, "The Money Machine: How KKR Manufactured Power & Profits"
(New York: 1991), pp. 258-59 and 267-70.

5. Roy C. Smith, "The Money Wars" (New York: Dutton, 1990), p. 106.

6. "Washington Post," Sept. 29, 1988.

7. "Ibid."

8. Judy Mann, "Bush's Top Achievement," "Washington Post," Nov. 2,
1988.

9. William Greider, "Rolling Stone," April 12, 1984.

10. "Bush Denies Influencing Drug Firm Tax Proposal," "Washington
Post," May 20, 1981.

11. Jack Anderson and Dale Van Atta, "The Bush-Lorenzo Connections,"
"Washington Post," Dec. 21, 1989.

12. James Ridgway, "The Tax Records of Reagan and Bush," "Texas
Observer," Sept. 28, 1984.

"XXI: The Phony War on Drugs"

An indispensable component of the mythical media profile which George
Bush has built up over the years to buttress his electoral aspirations
has been his role as an antidrug fighter. His first formally scheduled
prime time presidential television address to the nation, in September
1989, was devoted to announcing his plans for measures to combat the
illegal narcotics that continued to inundate the streets of the United
States. During his 1988 election campaign, Bush had pointed with
astounding complacency to his record as President Reagan's designated
point man in the administration's war on drugs.

In his acceptance speech to the Republican National Convention in
1988, Bush stated: "I want a drug-free America. Tonight, I challenge
the young people of our country to shut down the drug dealers around
the world.... My administration will be telling the dealers, 'Whatever
we have to do, we'll do, but your day is over. You're history.'|"

Indeed, Bush has an impressive resume of bureaucratic titles to back
up his claim to be America's top antidrug fighter. On January 28,
1982, Reagan created the South Florida Task Force under Bush's
high-profile leadership, to coordinate the efforts of the various
federal agencies to stem the tide of narcotics into Bush's old family
bailiwick. On March 23, 1983, Bush was placed in charge of the
National Narcotics Border Interdiction System, which was supposed to
staunch the drug flow over all U.S. borders. In August 1986, U.S.
officials presented to their Mexican counterparts a scheme called
Operation Alliance, a new border enforcement initiative that was
allegedly to do for the U.S.-Mexican border area what the South
Florida Task Force had allegedly already done for the southeastern
states. George Bush was appointed chief of Operation Alliance, which
involved 20 federal agencies, 500 additional federal officers, and a
budget of $266 million.

The drug plague is an area in which the national interest requires
results. Illegal narcotics are one of the most important causes of the
dissolution of American society at the present time. To interdict the
drug flows and to prosecute the drug money launderers at the top of
the banking community would have represented a real public service.
But Bush had no intention of seriously pursuing such goals. For him,
the war on drugs was, and is, a cruel hoax, a cynical exercise in
demagogic self-promotion, designed in large part to camouflage
activities by himself and his networks that promoted drug trafficking.
A further shocking episode that has come to light in this regard
involves Bush's 14-year friendship with a member of Meyer Lansky's
Miami circles who sold Bush his prized trophy, the Cigarette boat
"Fidelity".

Bush's war on drugs was a rhetorical and public relations success for
a time. On February 16, 1982, in a speech on his own turf in Miami,
Florida, Bush promised to use sophisticated military aircraft to track
the airplanes used by smugglers. Several days later, Bush ordered the
U.S. Navy to send in its E-2C surveillance aircraft for this purpose.
If these were not available in sufficient numbers, said Bush, he was
determined to bring in the larger and more sophisticated AWACS early
warning aircraft to do the job. But Bush's skills as an interagency
expediter left something to be desired: By May, two of the four E-2C
aircraft that originally had been in Florida were transferred out of
the state. By June, airborne surveillance time was running a mere 40
hours per month, not the 360 hours promised by Bush, prompting Rep.
Glenn English (D-Ok.) to call hearings on this topic. By October 1982,
the General Accounting Office issued an opinion in which it found "it
is doubtful whether the [south Florida] task force can have any
substantial long-term impact on drug availability." But the headlines
were grabbed by Bush, who stated in 1984 that the efforts of his task
force had eliminated the marijuana trade in south Florida. That was an
absurd claim, but it sounded very good. When Francis Mullen, Jr., the
administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), criticized
Bush for making this wildly inaccurate statement, he was soon ousted
from his post at the DEA.

In 1988, Democratic Congressman Glenn English concluded that Bush's
"war on drugs" had been fought with "little more than lip service and
press releases." English wrote: "There has been very little substance
behind the rhetoric, and some of the major interdiction problems have
yet to be resolved. The President assigned ... Bush to coordinate and
direct federal antidrug-abuse programs among the various law
enforcement agencies. However, eight years later it is apparent that
the task has not been accomplished." / Note #1

Bush and Organized Crime

But the whole truth is much uglier. We have indicated how the
Iran-Contra drug-running and gun-running operations run out of Bush's
own office played their role in increasing the cocaine and marijuana
brought into this country. We have reviewed Bush's relations with his
close supporters in the Wall Street LBO gang, much of whose liquidity
is derived from narcotics payments which the banking system is eager
to recycle and launder. We recall Bush's 1990 meeting with Syrian
President Hafez al Assad, who is personally one of the most prolific
drug pushers on the planet, and whom Bush embraced as an ally during
the Gulf war.

But there is an even more flagrant aspect of Bush's conduct which can
be said to demolish once and for all the myth of the "war on drugs"
and replace it with a reality so sinister that it goes beyond the
imagination of most citizens.

Those who follow Bush's frenetic sports activities on television are
doubtless familiar with Bush's speedboat, in which he is accustomed to
cavort in the waters off his estate at Walker's Point in
Kennebunkport, Maine. / Note #2 The craft in question is the
"Fidelity," a powerboat capable of operating on the high seas.
"Fidelity" is a class of boat marketed under the brand name of
"Cigarette," a high-priced speedboat dubbed "the Ferrari of the high
seas." This detail should awaken our interest, since Bush's profile as
an Anglo-Saxon aristocrat would normally include a genteel
predilection for sailing, rather than a preference for a vulgar
hot-rod like "Fidelity," which evokes the ethos of rum-runners and
smugglers.

The Cigarette boat "Fidelity" was purchased by George Bush from a
certain Don Aronow. Bush reportedly met Aronow at a boat show in 1974,
and decided to buy one of the Cigarette boats Aronow manufactured.
Aronow was one of the most celebrated and successful powerboat racers
of the 1960s, and had then turned his hand to designing and building
these boats. But, according to at least one published account, there
is compelling evidence to conclude that Aronow was a drug smuggler and
suspected drug-money launderer, linked to the Genovese family of New
York and New Jersey within the more general framework of the Meyer
Lansky organized crime syndicate. Aronow's role in marijuana smuggling
was reportedly confirmed by Bill Norris, head of the Major Narcotics
Unit at the Miami U.S. Attorney's office, and thus the top federal
drug prosecution official in south Florida. / Note #3

Aronow numbered among his friends and acquaintances not just Bush, but
many international public figures and celebrities, many of whom had
purchased the boats he built. In May of 1986, Aronow received a letter
from Nicolas Iliopoulos, the royal boat captain to King Hussein of
Jordan, expressing on behalf of the King the latter's satisfaction
with a powerboat purchased from Aronow, and conveying the compliments
of King Juan Carlos of Spain and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, who
had recently been the Jordanian sovereign's guests on board. Aronow
sent a copy of this letter to Bush, from whom he received a reply
dated June 6, 1986, in which Bush thanked him "with warm regards" for
forwarding the royal note and added: "I can repeat that my old
Cigarette, the 'Fidelity' is running well too. I've had her out a
couple of weekends and the engines have been humming. I hope our paths
cross soon, my friend." / Note #4

Aronow was reportedly a close friend of George Bush. Over the years,
Bush had apparently consulted with Aronow concerning the servicing and
upkeep of his Cigarette boat. During 1983, Bush began to seek out
Aronow's company for fishing trips. The original engines on Bush's
Cigarette boat needed replacement, and this was the ostensible
occasion for renewing contact with Aronow. Aronow told Bush of a new
model of boat that he had designed, supposedly a high-performance
catamaran. Bush planned to come to Florida during the New Year's
holiday for a short vacation during which he would go bonefishing with
his crony Nick Brady. During this time he would also arrange to
deliver an antidrug pep-talk.

On January 4, 1984, George Bush rendezvoused with Don Aronow at
Islamorada in the Florida Keys. Earlier in the day, Bush had delivered
one of his "war on drugs" speeches at the Omni International Hotel in
Miami. Bush and Brady then proceeded by motorcade to Islamorada, where
Aronow was waiting with his catamaran. Accompanied by a flotilla of
Secret Service and Customs agents in Cigarette boats that had been
seized from drug smugglers, Bush, Brady, Aronow and one of the
latter's retainers proceeded aboard the catamaran through moderate
swells to Miami, with White House photographers eternalizing the photo
opportunity at every moment. Bush, who had donned designer racing
goggles for the occasion, was allowed to take the wheel of the
catamaran and seemed very thrilled and very happy. Nick Brady,
sporting his own wraparound shades, found the seas too rough for his
taste.

After the trip was over, Bush personally typed the following letter to
Don Aronow on his vice-presidential stationery, which he sent
accompanied by some photographs of Bush, Aronow, Brady, and the others
on board the catamaran: "January 14, 1984

"Dear Don,

"... Again Don this day was one of the greatest of my life. I love
boats, always have. But ever since knowing you that private side of my
life has become ever more exciting and fulfilling. Incidentally, I
didn't get to tell you but my reliable 28 footer Cigarette that is
still doing just fine ... no trouble at all and the new last year
engines.

"All the best to you and all your exciting ventures. May all your
boats bee [sic] number one and may the hosres [sic] be not far
behind."

At the end of this message, before his signature, Bush wrote in by
hand, "My typing stinks." / Note #5

As a result of this outing, Bush is said to have used his influence to
see to it that Aronow received a lucrative contract to build the "Blue
Thunder" catamarans at $150,000 apiece for the U.S. Customs Service.
This contract was announced with great fanfare in Miami on February 4,
1985, and was celebrated a week later in a public ceremony in which
Florida Senator Paula Hawkins and U.S. Customs Commissioner William
von Raab mugged for photographers together with Aronow. The government
purchase was hyped as the first time that Customs would receive boats
especially designed and built to intercept drug-runners on the high
seas, a big step forward in the war on drugs.

This was the same George Bush who in March 1988 had stated: "I will
never bargain with drug dealers on U.S. or foreign soil."

As one local resident recalled of that time, "everyone in Miami knew
that if you needed a favor from Bush, you spoke to Aronow." / Note #6
It was proverbial among Florida pols and powerbrokers that Aronow had
the vice president's ear.

The Customs Service soon found that the Blue Thunder catamarans were
highly unseaworthy and highly unsuitable for the task of chasing down
other speedboats, including, above all, Aronow's earlier model
Cigarette boats, which were now produced by a company not controlled
by Aronow. Blue Thunder was a relatively slow class, capable of a top
speed of only 56 miles per hour, despite the presence of twin
440-horsepower marine engines. The design of the catamaran hulls
lacked any hydrodynamic advantages, and the boats were too heavy to
attain sufficient lift. The stern drives were too weak for the
powerful engines, leading to the problem of "grenading." This meant
that the boats had to be kept well below their maximum speed. Most
Blue Thunders  spent more time undergoing repairs than chasing
drug-runners in the coastal waters of Florida.

Documents found by Thomas Burdick in the Dade County land records
office show that U.S.A. Racing, the company operated by Aronow which
built the Blue Thunder catamarans for the Customs Service, was not
owned by Aronow, but rather by a one Jack J. Kramer in his capacity as
president of Super Chief South Corporation. Jack Kramer had married a
niece of Meyer Lansky. Jack Kramer's son, Ben Kramer, was thus the
great-nephew and one of the putative heirs of the top boss of the U.S.
crime syndicate, Meyer Lansky. Ben Kramer was also a notorious
organized crime figure in his own right. On March 28, 1990 Jack Kramer
and Ben Kramer were found guilty of 23 and 28 counts (respectively) of
federal money laundering charges. In the previous year, Ben Kramer had
also been sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for having
imported half a million pounds of marijuana. Bush had thus given a
prime contract in waging the war on drugs to one of the leading
drug-smuggling and money-laundering crime families in the U.S.

Aronow Is Murdered

Don Aronow was murdered by Mafia-style professional killers on
February 3, 1987. During the last days of his life, Aronow is reported
to have made numerous personal telephone calls to Bush. Aronow had
been aware that his life was in danger, and he had left a list of
instructions to tell his wife what to do if anything should happen to
him. The first point on the list was "#1. CALL GEORGE BUSH." / Note #7
Lillian Aronow did call Bush, who reportedly responded by placing a
personal call to the Metro-Dade Police Department homicide division to
express his concern and to request an expeditious handling of the
case. Bush did not attend Aronow's funeral, but a month later he sent
a letter to Aronow's son Gavin in which he called the late Don Aronow
"a hero."

When Lillian Aronow suspected that her telephone was being tapped, she
called Bush, who urged her to be calm and promised to order an
investigation of the matter. Shortly after that, the suspicious noises
in Mrs. Aronow's telephone ceased. When Lillian Aronow received
reports that her husband might have been murdered by rogue CIA
operatives or other wayward federal agents, and that she herself and
her children were still in danger, she shared her fears in a telephone
call to Bush. Bush reportedly later called Mrs. Aronow and, as she
recalled, "He said to me, 'Lillian, you're fine.' He said that 'ex-CIA
people are really off.' That's the truth." / Note #8

In the summer of 1987, Bush snubbed Mrs. Aronow by pointedly avoiding
her at a Miami dinner party. But during this same period, Bush
frequently went fishing with former Aronow employee Willie Meyers.
According to Thomas Burdick's sources, Willie Meyers was also a friend
of Secretary of State George Shultz, and often expressed concern about
damaging publicity for Bush and Shultz that might derive from the
Aronow case.

According to Thomas Burdick, Meyers says that Bush talked to him about
how the vice president's staff was monitoring the Aronow story. Bush
lamented that he did not have grounds to get federal agencies
involved. "I just wish," said Bush to Meyers, "that there was some
federal aspect to the murder. If the killers crossed state lines, then
I could get the FBI involved." / Note #9 The form of the argument is
reminiscent of the views expressed by Bush and Tony Lapham during the
Orlando Letelier case.

In May or June of 1987, several months after Aronow had been killed,
Mike Brittain, who owned a company called Aluminum Marine Products,
located on "Thunderboat Alley" in the northern part of Miami (the same
street where Aronow had worked), was approached by two FBI special
agents, Joseph Usher and John Donovan, both of the Miami FBI field
office. They were accompanied by a third FBI man, whom they presented
as a member of George Bush's staff at the National Drug Task Force in
Washington, D.C. The third agent, reportedly named William Temple,
had, according to the other two, come to Miami on a special mission
ordered by the vice president of the United States.

As Brittain told his story to Burdick, Special Agent Temple "didn't
ask about the murder or anything like that. All he wanted to know
about was the merger." / Note #1 / Note #0 The merger in question was
the assumption of control over Aronow's company, U.S.A. Racing, by the
Kramers' Super Chief South, which meant that a key contract in the
Bush "war on drugs" had been awarded to a company controlled by
persons who would later be convicted for marijuana smuggling and money
laundering. Many of the FBI questions focused on this connection
between Aronow and Kramer. Later, after Bush's victory in the 1988
presidential election, the FBI again questioned Brittain, and again
the central issue was the Aronow-Kramer connection, plus additional
questions of whether Brittain had divulged any of his knowledge of
these matters to other persons. A possible conclusion was that a
damage control operation in favor of Bush was in progress.

Tommy Teagle, an ex-convict interviewed by Burdick, said he feared
that George Bush would have him killed because information in his
possession would implicate Jeb Bush in cocaine smuggling. Teagle's
story was that Aronow and Jeb Bush had been partners in cocaine
trafficking and were $2.5 million in debt to their Colombian
suppliers. Dr. Robert Magoon, a friend of Aronow, is quoted in the
same location as having heard a similar report. But Teagle rapidly
changed his story. / Note #1 / Note #1 Ultimately, an imprisoned
convict was indicted for the murder of Aronow.

But the circumstances of the murder remain highly sus pect. Starting
in 1985, and with special intensity during 1987-88, more than two
dozen persons involved in various aspects of the Iran-Contra
gun-running and drug-running operation met their deaths. Above and
beyond the details of each particular case, the overall pattern of
these deaths strongly suggests that they are coherent with a damage
control operation by the networks involved, that has concentrated on
liquidating those individuals whose testimony might prove to be most
damning to the leading personalities of these networks. The death of
Don Aronow occurred within the time frame of this general process of
amputation and cauterization of the Iran-Contra and related networks.
Many aspects of Aronow's life suggest that his assassination may have
been a product of the same "damage control" logic.

insert Chapter 22 head box here

On the morning of June 29, 1989, pandemonium erupted in the corridors
of power in the nation's capital. "Homosexual Prostitution Probe
Ensnares Official of Bush, Reagan," screamed the front-page headline
of the "Washington Times" with the kicker "Call Boys Took Midnight
Tour of White House."

The "Times" reported, "A homosexual prostitution ring is under
investigation by federal and District authorities and includes among
its clients key officials of the Reagan and Bush administrations,
military officers, congressional aides and U.S. and foreign
businessmen with close ties to Washington's political elite."

The expose centered on the role of one Craig Spence, a Republican
powerbroker known for his lavish "power cocktail" parties. Spence was
well connected. He celebrated Independence Day 1988 by conducting a
midnight tour of the White House in the company of two teenage male
prostitutes among others in his party.

Rumors circulated that a list existed of some 200 Washington
prominents who had used the call boy service. The Number Two in charge
of personnel affairs at the White House, who was responsible for
filling all the top civil service posts in the federal bureaucracy,
and Secretary of Labor Elizabeth Dole's chief of staff, were two
individuals publicly identified as patrons of the call boy ring.

Two of the ring's call boys were allegedly KGB operatives, according
to a retired general from the Defense Intelligence Agency interviewed
by the press. But the evidence seemed to point to a CIA sexual
blackmail operation, instead. Spence's entire mansion was covered with
hidden microphones, two-way mirrors and video cameras, ever ready to
capture the indiscretions of Washington's high, mighty and perverse.
The political criteria for proper sexual comportment had long been
established in Washington: Any kinkiness goes, so long as you don't
get caught. The popular proverb was that the only way a politician
could hurt his career was if he were "caught with a dead woman or a
live boy" in his bed.

Months after the scandal had died down, and a few weeks before he
allegedly committed suicide, Spence was asked who had given him the
"key" to the White House. The "Washington Times" reported that "Mr.
Spence hinted the tours were arranged by 'top level' persons,
including Donald Gregg, national security advisor to Vice President
Bush" / Note #1 and later U.S. ambassador to South Korea.

We have already had occasion to examine Don Gregg's role in
Iran-Contra, and have observed his curious performance when testifying
under oath before congressional committees. Gregg indignantly denied
any connection to Spence, yet it is public record that Spence had
sponsored a dinner in Gregg's honor in the spring of 1989 at
Washington's posh Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown.

George Bush was less than pleased with the media coverage of the
prostitution charges and kept abreast of the scandal as it mushroomed.
The "Washington Times" reported in an article titled "White House Mute
on Call Boy Scandal," that "White House sources confirmed that
President Bush has followed the story of the late night visit and Mr.
Spence's links to a homosexual prostitution ring under investigation
by federal authorities since they were disclosed June 29 in the
"Washington Times". But top officials will not discuss the story's
substance, reportedly even among themselves.

"Press officers have rebuffed repeated requests to obtain Mr. Bush's
reaction and decline to discuss investigations or fall out from the
disclosures." / Note #2 By midsummer, the scandal had been buried. The
President had managed to avoid giving a single press conference where
he would surely have been asked to comment.

Scandal in Nebraska

As the call boy ring affair dominated the cocktail gossip circuit in
Washington, another scandal, halfway across the country in the state
of Nebraska, peaked. Again this scandal knocked on the President's
door.

A black Republican who had been a leader in organizing minority
support for the President's 1988 campaign and who proudly displayed a
photo of himself and the President, arm in arm, in his Omaha home, was
at the center of a sex and money scandal that continues to rock the
Cornhusker state.

The scandal originated with the collapse of the minority-oriented
Franklin Community Credit Union in Omaha, directed by Lawrence E.
King, Jr., a nationally influential black Republican who sang the
national anthem at both the 1984 and 1988 Republican conventions. King
became the subject of the Nebraska Senate's investigation conducted by
the specially created "Franklin Committee" to probe charges of
embezzlement. In November 1988, King's offices were raided by the FBI
and $40 million was discovered missing. Within weeks, the Nebraska
Senate, which initially opened the inquiry to find out where the money
had gone, instead found itself questioning young adults and teenagers
who said that they had been child prostitutes. Social workers and
state child-care administrators accused King of running a child
prostitution ring. The charges grew, with the former police chief of
Omaha, the publisher of the state's largest daily newspaper, and
several other political associates of King, finding themselves accused
of patronizing the child prostitution ring.

King is now serving a 15-year federal prison sentence for defrauding
the Omaha-based credit union. But the magazines "Avvenimenti" of Italy
and "Pronto" of Spain, among others, have charged that King's crimes
were more serious: that he ran a national child prostitution ring that
serviced the political and business elite of both Republican and
Democratic parties. Child victims of King's operations charged him
with participation in at least one satanic ritual murder of a child
several years ago. The "Washington Post", "New York Times", "Village
Voice" and "National Law Journal" covered the full range of
accusations after the story broke in November of 1988. King's money
machinations were also linked to the Iran-Contra affair, and some say
that King provided the CIA with information garnered from his alleged
activities as a "pimp" for the high and mighty.

"Pronto", the Barcelona-based, largest circulation weekly in Spain
with 4.5 million readers, reported that the Lawrence E. King child
prostitution scandal "appears to directly implicate politicos of the
state of Nebraska and Washington, D.C. who are very close to the White
House and George Bush himself."

The weekly stated that Roy Stephens, a private investigator who has
worked on the case and heads the Missing Youth Foundation, "says there
is reason to believe that the CIA is directly implicated," and that
the "FBI refuses to help in the investigation and has sabotaged any
efforts" to get to the bottom of the story. Stephens says that "Paul
Bonacci directly accused President Bush of being implicated" in the
affair when he testified before the Franklin Committee. / Note #3
Bonacci, who had been one of the child prostitutes, is identified by
leading child-abuse experts as a well-informed, credible witness.

Lawrence King was no stranger to President Bush. And Lawrence King was
no stranger to Craig Spence. Several of the Omaha child prostitutes
testified that they had traveled to Washington, D.C. with King in
private planes to attend political events whic h were followed by sex
parties. King and Spence had much in common. Not only were they both
Republican Party activists but they had gone into business together
procuring prostitutes for Washington's elite.

Bush's name had repeatedly surfaced in the Nebraska scandal. But his
name was first put into print in July 1989, a little less than a month
after the Washington call boy affair had first made headlines. Omaha's
leading daily newspaper reported, "One child, who has been under
psychiatric care, is said to believe she saw George Bush at one of
King's parties." / Note #4

A full three years after the scandal had first made headlines, Bush's
name again appeared in print. "Gentleman's Quarterly (GQ)" carried a
lengthy article, viewed by many political observers in Nebraska as an
attempt to refute the charges, which would not die, despite the
termination of all official inquiries. The "GQ" piece disputed the
allegations as a conspiracy theory that went out of control and
resonated because of some mystical sociological phenomena allegedly
unique to Nebraskan rural folk who will believe anything and burn
"with the mistrust of city life that once inflamed the prairie with
populist passion." Numerous polls over the last few years have
recorded over 90% saying they believe there has been a "cover up" of
the truth.

"GQ" reported that yes, there was theft, corruption and homosexuality
in this story, "but no children were ever involved in this case." In
fact, "the only child even mentioned was a 9-year-old boy, whom the
least reliable of [Senate Committee investigator Gary] Caradori's
witnesses claimed to have seen in the company of George Bush at one of
Larry King's Washington parties."

Gary Caradori was a retired state police investigator who had been
hired by the Nebraska Senate to investigate the case, and who had died
mysteriously during the course of his investigations. / Note #5

Sound crazy? Not to Steve Bowman, an Omaha businessman who is
compiling a book about the Franklin money and sex scandal. "We do have
some credible witnesses who say that 'Yes, George Bush does have a
problem.'... Child abuse has become one of the epidemics of the
1990s," Bowman told "GQ". Allegedly, one of Bowman's sources is a
retired psychiatrist who worked for the CIA. He added that cocaine
trafficking and political corruption were the other principal themes
of his book. / Note #6

It didn't sound crazy to Peter Sawyer either. An Australian
conservative activist who  publishes a controversial newsletter,
"Inside News", with a circulation of 200,000, dedicated his November
1991 issue entirely to the Nebraska scandal, focusing on President
Bush's links to the affair. In a section captioned, "The Original
Allegations: Bush First Named in 1985," Sawyer writes, "Stories about
child sex and pornography first became public knowledge in 1989,
following the collapse of the Franklin Credit Union. That is not when
the allegations started, however. Indeed, given the political flavor
of the subsequent investigations, it would be easy to dismiss claims
that George Bush had been involved. He was by then a very public
figure....

"If the first allegations about a massive child exploitation ring,
centered around Larry King and leading all the way to the White House,
had been made in 1989, and had all come from the same source, some
shenanigans and mischievous collusion could be suspected. However, the
allegations arising out of the Franklin Credit Union collapse were not
the first.

"Way back in 1985, a young girl, Eulice (Lisa) Washington, was the
center of an investigation by Andrea L. Carener, of the Nebraska
Department of Social Services. The investigation was instigated
because Lisa and her sister Tracey continually ran away from their
foster parents, Jarrett and Barbara Webb. Initially reluctant to
disclose information for fear of being further punished, the two girls
eventually recounted a remarkable story, later backed up by other
children who had been fostered out to the Webb's [sic].

"These debriefings were conducted by Mrs. Julie Walters, another
welfare officer, who worked for Boys Town at the time, and who had
been called in because of the constant reference by the Webb children
and others, to that institution.

"Lisa, supported by her sister, detailed a massive child sex,
homosexual, and pornography industry, run in Nebraska by Larry King.
She described how she was regularly taken to Washington by plane, with
other youths, to attend parties hosted by King and involving many
prominent people, including businessmen and politicians. Lisa
specifically named George Bush as being in attendance on at least two
separate occasions.

"Remember, this was in 1985," emphasized the Australian newsletter.

The newsletter reproduces several documents on Lisa's case, including
a Nebraska State Police report, a State of Nebraska Foster Care Review
Board letter to the Attorney General, an investigative report prepared
for the Franklin Committee of the Nebraska Senate, and a portion of
the handwritten debriefing by Mrs. Julie Walters. Peter Sawyer says
that he obtained the documents from sympathetic Australian law
enforcement officers who had helped Australian Channel Ten produce an
expose of a national child prostitution ring, Down Under. The
Australian cops seem to have been in communication with American law
enforcement officers who apparently agreed that there had been a
coverup on the Nebraska scandal. Subsequent investigations by the
authors established that all four documents were authentic.

Mrs. Julie Walters, now a housewife in the Midwest, confirmed that in
1986 she had interviewed the alleged child prostitute, Lisa, who told
her about Mr. Bush. Lisa and her sister Tracey were temporarily living
at the time in the home of Kathleen Sorenson, another foster parent.
Mrs. Walters explained that at first she was very surprised. But Lisa,
who came from a very underprivileged background with no knowledge of
political affairs, gave minute details of her attendance at political
meetings around the country.

From Julie Walters' 50-page handwritten report: "3/25/86. Met with
Kathleen [Sorenson] and Lisa for about 2 hours in Blair [Neb.]
questioning Lisa for more details about sexual abuse.... Lisa admitted
to being used as a prostitute by Larry King when she was on trips with
his family. She started going on trips when she was in 10th grade.
Besides herself and Larry there was also Mrs. King, their son, Prince,
and 2-3 other couples. They traveled in Larry's private plane, Lisa
said that at these trip parties, which Larry hosted, she sat naked
'looking pretty and innocent' and guests could engage in any sexual
activity they wanted (but penetration was not allowed) with her....
Lisa said she first met V.P. George Bush at the Republican Convention
(that Larry King sang the national anthem at) and saw him again at a
Washington, D.C. party that Larry hosted. At that party, Lisa saw no
women ('make-up was perfect -- you had to check their legs to make
sure they weren't a woman').

"The polygraph test which Lisa took only centered around sexual abuse
committed by Jarrett Webb. At that time, she had said only general
things about Larry's trips (i.e. where they went, etc.). She only
began talking about her involvement in prostitution during those trips
on 3/25/86....

"Lisa also accompanied Mr. and Mrs. King and Prince on trips to
Chicago, N.Y. and Washington, D.C. beginning when she was 15 years
old. She missed twenty-two days of school almost totally due to these
trips. Lisa was taken along on the pretense of being Prince's
babysitter. Last year she met V.P. George Bush and saw him again at
one of the parties Larry gave while on a Washington, D.C. trip. At
some of the parties there are just men (as was the case at the party
George Bush attended) -- older men and younger men in their early
twenties. Lisa said she has seen sodomy committed at those parties....

"At these parties, Lisa said every guest had a bodyguard and she saw
some of the men wearing guns. All guests had to produce a card which
was run through a machine to verify who the guest was, in fact, who
they said t hey were. And then each guest was frisked down before
entering the party." / Note #7

The details of the accusations against Mr. Bush are known to be in the
hands of the FBI. A Franklin Committee report stated: "Apparently she
[Lisa] was contacted on December 19 [1988] and voluntarily came to the
FBI offices on December 30, 1988. She was interviewed by Brady, Tucker
and Phillips.

"She indicates that in September or October 1984, when [Lisa]
Washington was fourteen or fifteen years of age, she went on a trip to
Chicago with Larry King and fifteen to twenty boys from Omaha. She
flew to Chicago on a private plane.

"The plane was large and had rows of two seats apiece on either side
of the interior middle aisle.

"She indicates that King got the boys from Boys Town and the boys
worked for him. She stated that Rod Evans and two other boys with the
last name of Evans were on the plane. Could not recall the names of
the other boys.

"The boys who flew to Chicago with Washington and King were between
the ages of fifteen and eighteen. Most of the boys were black but some
were white. She was shown a color photograph of a boy and identified
that boy as being one of the boys on the plane. She could not recall
his name.

"She indicates that she was coerced to going on the trip by Barbara
Webb.

"She indicates that she attended a party in Chicago with King and the
male youths. She indicated George Bush was present.

"She indicates that she set [sic] at a table at the party while
wearing nothing but a negligee. She stated that George Bush saw her on
the table. She stated she saw George Bush pay King money, and that
Bush left the party with a nineteen year old black boy named Brent."

Lisa said the party George Bush attended was in Chicago in September
or October 1984. According to the "Chicago Tribune" of October 31,
1984, Bush was in Illinois campaigning for congressional candidates at
the end of October.

Lisa added more details on the Chicago trip, and told why she was sure
it was George Bush she had seen. According to a May 8, 1989 report by
investigator Jerry Lowe, "Eulice [Lisa] indicated that she recognized
George Bush as coming to the party and that Bush had two large white
males with him. Eulice indicated Bush came to the party approximately
45 minutes after it started and that he was greeted by Larry King.
Eulice indicated that she knew George Bush due to the fact that he had
been in political campaigns and also she had observed a picture of
Bush with Larry King at Larry King's house in Omaha."

There is no question that Lisa and Tracey Webb were abused in the way
they claimed. But, in keeping with the alleged pattern of coverup, a
Washington County, Nebraska judge in December 1990 dismissed all
charges against their abusers, Jarrett and Barbara Webb. The judge
ignored presented testimony of the 1986 report by Boys Town official
Julie Walters. The report stated: "Lisa was given four polygraph tests
administered by a state trooper at the State Patrol office on Center
Street in Omaha. The state trooper, after Lisa's testing was
completed, told [another foster parent] he tried to 'break Lisa down,'
but he was convinced she was telling the truth." / Note #8

Furthermore, numbers of foster care officials and youth workers
debriefed the sisters. All of them fully believed not only their
general story of abuse, but specifically their account of Bush's
involvement. The March 1986 report on Bush was incorporated into the
Foster Care Review Board's official report presented to the Senate
Franklin Committee and to law enforcement. As Kathleen Sorenson wrote
in a report dated May 1, 1989, "This was long before he [Bush] was
President. It seems like there were more exciting people to 'lie'
about if that's what they were doing." / Note #9

Notes for Chapter XXI

1. For Bush's "war on drugs," see Jack Anderson and Dale Van Atta,
"How Bush Commanded the War on Drugs," "Washington Post," June 20,
1988; Lawrence Lifschultz, "Bush, Drugs and Pakistan: Inside the
Kingdom of Heroin," "The Nation," Nov. 14, 1988; "Drug Czars We Have
Known," "The Nation," Feb. 27, 1989; and Robert A. Pastor and Jorge
Castaneda, "Limits to Friendship: The United States and Mexico" (New
York: Knopf, dist. by Random House), p. 271. 14, 1988.

2. See the cover of "Newsweek," Oct. 19, 1987, "Fighting the 'Wimp
Factor,'|" which portrays Bush at the controls of "Fidelity." A
similar photo appears facing p. 223 in George Bush and Victor Gold,
"Looking Forward" (New York: Doubleday, 1987).

3. See Thomas Burdick and Charlene Mitchell, "Blue Thunder" (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1990), p. 229. The following account of the
relations between Bush and Aronow relies upon this remarkable study.

4. "Ibid.," p. 182.

5. "Ibid.," p. 18.

6. "Ibid.," p. 34.

7. "Ibid.," p. 71.

8. "Ibid.," p. 95.

9. "Ibid.," p. 103.

10. "Ibid.," pp. 326-27.

11. "Ibid.," pp. 351, 357.

Notes for Chapter XXII

1. "Washington Times," Aug. 9, 1989.

2. "Washington Times," July 7, 1989.

3. "Pronto" (Barcelona, Spain), Aug. 3, 1991 and Aug. 10, 1991.

4. "Omaha World-Herald," July 23, 1989.

5. On July 11, 1990, during the course of his investigations, Gary
Caradori, 41, died in the crash of his small plane, together with his
8-year-old son, after a mid-air explosion whose cause has not yet been
discovered. A skilled and cautious pilot, Caradori told friends
repeatedly in the weeks before his death that he feared his plane
would be sabotaged.

6. "Gentleman's Quarterly," December 1991.

7. Report, written on March 25, 1986 by Julie Walters and
authenticated by her in an interview in 1990.

8. Report, early 1989, compiled by Jerry Lowe, the first investigator
for the Franklin Committee of the Nebraska State Senate.

9. A book recently published on the Nebraska affair by a former
Republican state senator and decorated Vietnam veteran, John W. De
Camp, "The Franklin Cover-Up: Child Abuse, Satanism and Murder in
Nebraska" (Lincoln, Nebraska: AWT, Inc., 1992) tells the whole story.

"XXIII: Bush Takes the Presidency"

George Bush's quest for the summit of American political power was so
sustained and so unrelenting that it is impossible to assign the
beginning of his campaign for President to any specific date. It is
more accurate to report that his entire tenure as Vice President was
consumed by the renovation and expansion of his personal and family
network for the purpose of seizing the presidency at some point in the
future. During this phase, Bush was far more concerned with
organizational and machine-building matters than with ideology or
public relations. For most of the 1980s, it was convenient for Bush to
cultivate the public profile of a faithful and even obsequious deputy
to Reagan, while using the office of the vice president to build a
national and international overt/covert power cartel.

Bush had no regional constituency in any of the half-dozen places he
tried to call home; his "favorite son" appeal was diluted all over the
map. He had no base among labor, blacks, or in the cities, like the
Kennedy apparat. Blue-blooded financiers gravitated instinctively to
Bush; and his lifeline to the post-Meyer Lansky mob was robust indeed;
and these were important factors, although not enough by themselves to
win an election. Bush's networks could always tilt the media in his
favor, but the Reagan experience had provided a painful lesson of how
inadequate this could be against a clever populist rival. Otherwise,
Bush's base was in the government, where eight years of patient work
had packed the executive branch, the Congress and its staffs, and the
judiciary with Bushmen.

Nor was it only that Bush lacked a loyal base of support. He also had
very high negatives, meaning that there were a lot of people who
disliked him intensely. Such animosity was especially strong among the
ideological Reaganite conservatives, whom Bush had been purging from
the Reagan administration from early on.

There would prove to be very little that Bush could do to lower his
negative response rate, so the only answer would be to raise the
negatives of all rival candidates on both sides of the partisan
divide. This brutal i mperative for the Bush machine has contributed
significantly to the last half decade's increase in derogation and
vilification in American life. Bush's discrediting campaigns would be
subsumed within the "anything goes" approach advocated by the late Lee
Atwater, the organizer of Reagan's 1984 campaign, who had signed on
with Bush well in advance of 1988.

The "Washington Post" went after Bush as "the Cliff Barnes of American
politics," a reference to a character in the TV soap opera "Dallas,"
whom the "Post" found "blustering, opportunistic, craven, and
hopelessly ineffective all at once." Others, foreshadowing the thyroid
revelations of 1991, talked about Bush's "hyperkinesis." Even the
unsavory George Will commented that "the optimistic statement 'George
Bush is not as silly as he frequently seems' now seems comparable to
Mark Twain's statement that Wagner's music is better than it sounds."
/ Note #1

More than anything, Bush wanted an early endorsement from Reagan, in
order to suppress or at least undercut challenges to his presumptive
front-runner status from GOP rivals in the primaries; it was already
clear that Senator Bob Dole might be the most formidable of these.
Bush feared Dole's challenge, and desperately wanted to be anointed as
Reagan's heir-apparent as soon as possible before 1988. But Reagan had
apparently not gotten over the antipathy to Bush he had conceived
during the "Nashua Telegraph" debate of 1980. According to a
high-level Reagan administration source speaking in the summer of
1986, "more than once the President [told Bush], 'Obviously, I'm going
to stay neutral until after the convention, and then I'm going to work
for whichever candidate comes out on top.'|" / Note #2 Despite Bush's
"slavish devotion," Reagan wanted to keep the door open to his good
friend, Senator Paul Laxalt of Nevada, whom Reagan apparently thought
was getting ready to run for President. One can imagine Bush's rage
and chagrin.

Reagan stubbornly refused to come out for Bush until the endorsement
could no longer help him in the Republican primaries. Reagan chose to
wait until Super Tuesday was over and the rest of the Republican field
had been mathematically eliminated. Reagan actually waited until Bob
Dole, the last of Bush's rivals, had dropped out. Then Reagan ignored
the demands of Bush's media handlers and perception-mongers and gave
his endorsement in the evening, too late for the main network news
programs. The scene was a partisan event, a very large GOP
congressional  fundraising dinner. Reagan waited to the end of the
speech, explained that he was now breaking his silence on the
presidential contest, and in a perfunctory way said he would support
Bush. "I'm going to work as hard as I can to make Vice President
George Bush the next President of the United States," said old Ron.
There were no accolades for Bush's real or imagined achievements, no
stirring kudos. Seasoned observers found Reagan's statement
"halfhearted ... almost grudging." / Note #3

The Wimp Factor

Reagan's endless reticence meant that Bush had to work especially hard
to pander to the right wing, to those people whom he despised but
nevertheless needed to use. Here Bush stooped to boundless public
degradation. In December 1985, Bush went to Canossa by accepting an
invitation to a dinner in Manchester, New Hampshire held in honor of
the late William Loeb, the former publisher of the Manchester "Union
Leader". We have already documented that old man Loeb hated Bush and
worked doggedly for his defeat in 1980. Still, Bush was the "soul of
humility," and he was willing to do anything to be able to take power
in his own name. Bush gave a speech full of what the "Washington Post"
chose to call "self-deprecating humor," but what others might have
seen as groveling. Bush regaled 500 Republicans and rightists with a
fairy tale about having tried in 1980 to woo Loeb by offering rewards
of colored watchbands, LaCoste shirts, and Topsider shoes to anyone
who could win over Bill Loeb. The items named were preppy
paraphernalia which Loeb and many others found repugnant.

Some of the assembled right-wingers repeated the line from the
Doonesbury comic strip according to which Bush "had placed his manhood
in a blind trust." Loeb's widow, Nackey Scripps Loeb, was
noncommittal. "We have decided on a candidate for 1988 -- whoever best
fights for the Reagan agenda," she announced. "Whether that person is
here tonight remains to be seen," she added. / Note #4

Lawfully, Bush had earned only the contempt of these New Hampshire
conservatives. In October 1987, when the New Hampshire primary season
was again at hand, Mrs. Loeb rewarded Bush for his groveling with a
blistering attack that featured reprints of Bill Loeb's 1980 barbs: "a
preppy wimp, part of the self-appointed elite," and so forth. Mrs.
Loeb wrote, "George Bush has been Bush for 63 years. He has been
Ronald Reagan's errand boy for just the last seven. Without Ronald
Reagan he will surely revert to the original George Bush." Mrs. Loeb
repeated her late husband's 1980 advice: "Republicans should flee the
presidential candidacy of George Bush as if it were the black plague
itself." / Note #5

All of this culminated in the devastating "Newsweek" cover story of
October 19, 1987, "Fighting the 'Wimp Factor.'|" The article was more
analytical than hostile, but did describe the "crippling handicap" of
being seen as a "wimp." Bush had been a "vassal to Kissinger" at the
United Nations and in Beijing, the article found, and now even Bush's
second-term chief of staff said of Bush, "He's emasculated by the
office of vice president." To avoid appearing as a television wimp,
Bush had "tried for the past 10 years to master the medium, studying
it as if it were a foreign language. He has consulted voice and
television coaches. He tried changing his glasses and even wearing
contact lenses.... Bush's tight, twangy voice is a common problem.
Under stress, experts explain, the vocal cords tighten and the voice
is higher than normal and lacks power." According to "Newsweek", 51
percent of Americans found that "wimp" was a "serious problem" for
Bush.

The "Newsweek" "wimp" cover soon had Bush chewing the carpet at the
Naval Observatory. Bush's knuckle-dragging son, George W. Bush, called
the story "a cheap shot" and added menacingly: "... I'd like to take
the guy who wrote that headline out on that boat," i.e., the
Aronow-built "Fidelity" in which Bush was depicted on the "Newsweek"
cover -- which sounded very much like a threat. George W. Bush also
called "Newsweek" Washington bureau chief Evan Thomas to inform him
that the Bush campaign had officially cut off all contact with
"Newsweek" and its reporters. The decision to put "Newsweek" out of
business was made by candidate Bush personally, and aborted a plan by
"Newsweek" to publish a book on the 1988 campaign. The press got the
message: Portray Bush in a favorable light or face vindictive and
discriminatory countermeasures.

Big Bucks for Bush

Bush campaigns have always advanced on a cushion of money, and the
1988 effort was to push this characteristic to unheard-of extremes. In
keeping with a tradition that had stretched over almost three decades,
the Bush campaign finance chairman was Robert Mosbacher, whose
Mosbacher Energy Corporation is one of the largest privately held
independent oil companies in Texas. Mosbacher's net personal worth is
estimated at $200 million. During the 1988 campaign, Mosbacher raised
$60 million for the Bush campaign and $25 million for the Republican
National Committee.

Bush's big money campaigning was especially dependent upon Texas
oilmen, whose largesse he required to stoke his political machine.
Bush was running a political action committee called the Fund for
America's Future, which raised $3.9 million in off-year 1985, a hefty
sum. Of that take, about a fifth was raised from 505 Texas donors,
with Texans giving more than the residents of any other state. Some
$135,095 of Bush's money harvest came from persons who could be
clearly identified as oil industry figures, and the rakeoff here was
probably much greater.

The Primary Campaign

James Baker w as the titular head of the Bush campaign, but the person
responsible for the overall concepts and specific tactics of the Bush
campaign was Lee Atwater, a political protege of Senator Strom
Thurmond of South Carolina. Thurmond had been a Democrat, then a
Dixiecrat in 1948, then a Democrat again, and finally a Republican.
The exigencies of getting elected in South Carolina on the GOP ticket
had taught Thurmond to reach deeply into that demagogue's bag of
tricks called the wedge issues. Under Thurmond's tutelage, Atwater had
become well versed in the essentials of the Southern Strategy, the key
to that emergent Republican majority in presidential elections which
Kevin Phillips had written about in 1968. Atwater had also imbibed
political doctrine from the first practitioner of the Southern
Strategy, the dark-jowled Richard M. Nixon himself.

In January 1983, for example, Lee Atwater, at that time deputy
director of the White House office of political affairs (and a
creature of the Bush-Baker connection), met with Nixon for three and a
half hours in Columbia, South Carolina. Nixon held forth on three
points: the decisive political importance of the Sun Belt, the
numerical relations within the Electoral College, and the vast
benefits of having no primary competition when seeking reelection.

In 1988 as well, Nixon was brought in to be the "spiritus rector" of
the Bush campaign. During March of 1988, when it was clear that Bush
was going to win the nomination, Nixon "slipped into town" to join
George Bush, Bar, and Lee Atwater for dinner at the Naval Observatory.
This time it was Bush who received a one-hour lecture from Nixon on
the need to cater to the Republican right wing, the imperative of a
tough line on crime in the streets, and the Soviets (again to
propitiate the rightists), to construct an independent identity only
after the convention, and to urge Reagan to campaign actively. And of
course, where Nixon shows up, Kissinger cannot be far away. / Note #6

1988 saw another large-scale mobilization of the intelligence
community in support of Bush's presidential ambitions. The late Miles
Copeland, a high-level former CIA official who operated out of London
during the 1980s, contributed a piece frankly titled "Old Spooks for
Bush" to the March 18, 1988 issue of "National Review".

Bush and Atwater feared all their competition. They feared former
Governor Pierre DuPont of Delaware because of his appeal to liberal
and blue-blooded Republicans who might otherwise automatically
gravitateto Bush. They feared New York Congressman Jack Kemp because
of his appeal to the GOP right wing and to blue-collar Reagan
Democrats, and because of what they viewed as his disturbing habit of
talking about the Strategic Defense Initiative and similar issues.
They feared that Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, with his "root canal
economics" and right-wing populism, and his solid backing from the
international grain cartel, might appear more credible to the Wall
Street bankers than Bush as an enforcer of austerity and sacrifices.

But at the same time, they knew that Bush had more money to spend and
incomparably more state-by-state organization than any of his GOP
rivals, to say nothing of the fabled Brown Brothers Harriman media
edge. Bush also ruled the Republican National Committee with
Stalin-like ferocity, denying these assets to all of his rivals. This
allowed Bush to wheel toward the right in 1986-87 to placate some of
his critics there, and then move back toward the center by the time of
the primaries.

But all the money and the organization could not mask the fact that
Bush was fundamentally a weak candidate. This began to become obvious
to Atwater and his team of perception mongers as the Iowa caucuses
began to shape up. These were the caucuses that Bush had so niftily
won in 1980. By 1988, Bush's Iowa effort had become complicated by
reality, in the form of a farm crisis that was driving thousands of
farmers into bankruptcy every week. Farm voters were now enraged
against the avuncular thespian Ronald Reagan and were looking for a
way to send a message to the pointy-headed set in Washington, D.C.
Bush's Iowa campaign was dripping with lucre, but this now brought
forth resentment among the grim and grey-faced rural voters.

In mid-October 1987, five of the six declared Republican candidates
attended a traditional Iowa GOP rally in Ames, just north of Des
Moines, on the campus of Iowa State University. Televangelist Pat
Robertson surprised all the others by mobilizing 1,300 enthusiastic
supporters for the Saturday event. The culmination of this rally was a
presidential straw poll, which Robertson won with 1,293 votes to 958
for Dole. Bush trailed badly with 864. This was the occasion for
Bush's incredible explanation of what had happened: "A lot of people
that support me, they were off at the air show, they were at their
daughters' coming out parties, or teeing up at the golf course for
that all-important last round." / Note #7 Many Iowans, including
Republicans, had to ask what a debutante cotillion was, and began to
meditate on the fact that they were not socially acceptable. But most
concluded that George Bush was the imperial candidate from another
planet, bereft of the foggiest notion of their lives and their
everyday problems.

During the buildup to the Iowa caucus, Bush continued to dodge
questions on Iran-Contra. The famous "tension city" encounter with Dan
Rather took place during this time. Lee Atwater considered that
performance Bush's defining event for the campaign, a display which
made him look like John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Gary Cooper,
especially in the South, where people like a pol who "can kick
somebody's ass" and where that would make a big difference on Super
Tuesday.

But Bush's handlers were nevertheless shocked when Dole won the Iowa
caucuses with 37 percent of the vote, followed by Pat Robertson with
25 percent. Bush managed only a poor show, with 19 percent, a massive
collapse in comparison with 1980, when he had been far less known to
the public.

Bush had known that defeat was looming in Iowa, and he had scuttled
out of the state and gone to New Hampshire before the results were
known. Bush was nevertheless stunned by his ignominious third-place
finish, and he consulted with Nick Brady, Lee Atwater, chief of staff
Craig Fuller, and pollster Bob Teeter. Atwater had boasted that he had
built a "fire wall" in the southern Super Tuesday states that would
prevent any rival from seizing the nomination out of Bush's grasp, but
the Bush image-mongers were well aware that a loss in New Hampshire
might well prove a fatal blow to their entire effort, the advantages
of money, networks, and organization notwithstanding.

Atwater accordingly ordered a huge media buy of 1,800 gross rating
points, enough to ensure that the theoretical New Hampshire television
viewer would be exposed to a Bush attack ad 18 times over the final
three days before the election. The ad singled out Bob Dole, judged by
the Bushmen as their most daunting New Hampshire challenger, and
savaged him for "straddling" the question of whether or not new taxes
ought to be imposed. The ad proclaimed that Bush "won't raise taxes,"
period. It was during this desperate week in New Hampshire that Bush
became indissolubly wedded to his lying and demagogic "no new taxes"
pledge, which he repudiated with considerable fanfare during the
spring of 1990.

When Bush had arrived in Manchester the night of the disastrous Iowa
result, New Hampshire Governor John Sununu, his principal supporter in
the state, had promised a nine-point victory for Bush in his state.
Oddly enough, that turned out to be exactly right. The final result
was 38 percent for Bush, 29 percent for Dole, 13 percent for Kemp, 10
percent for DuPont, and 9 percent for Robertson.

In the South Carolina primary, the Bushmen were concerned about a
possible threat from television evangelist Pat Robertson, who had
mounted his major effort in the Palmetto state. Robertson was widely
known through his appearances on his Christian Broadcasting Network.
Shortly before the South Carolina vote, a scandal became publi c which
involved another television evangelist, Jimmy Swaggart, a close friend
of Robertson and an active supporter of Robertson's presidential
campaign. Swaggart admitted to consorting with a prostitute, and this
caused a severe crisis in his ministry. Jim Bakker of the PTL
television ministry had already been tainted by a sex scandal.

Pat Robertson accused the Bush campaign of orchestrating the Swaggart
revelations at a time that would be especially advantageous to their
man. Talking to reporters, Robertson pointed to "the evidence that two
weeks before the primary ... it suddenly comes to light." Robertson
added that the Bush campaign was prone to "sleazy" tricks, and
suggested that his own last-place finish in New Hampshire was "quite
possibly" the result of "dirty tricks" by the Bush campaign. Bush
responded by dismissing Robertson's charges as "crazy" and "absurd."
Robertson had been linking Bush to the "international banking
community" in his South Carolina campaigning. / Note #8

True to his Southern Strategy, Atwater had "front-loaded" Bush's
effort in the southern states with money, political operatives, and
television, straining the legal limit of what could be spent during
the primary season as a whole. A few days before Super Tuesday came
the South Carolina primary. The state's governor, Caroll Campbell, was
a former customer of Lee Atwater. Strom Thurmond was for Dole, but his
endorsement proved to be valueless. Here Bush got all the state's 37
delegates by scoring 48 percent of the vote to 21 percent for Dole, 19
percent for Robertson, and 11 percent for Kemp.

Then, in the March 8 Super Tuesday polling, Bush scored an
across-the-board triumph, winning in Florida, Texas, Alabama,
Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina,
Oklahoma, Tennessee, Virginia, Missouri, and Maryland, plus
Massachusetts and Rhode Island outside of the region. With this, Bush
took 600 of 803 delegates at stake that day. Four and a half million
Republicans had voted, the best turnout ever in southern GOP
primaries. When Bush beat Dole by a three-to-two margin in Illinois,
supposedly a part of Dole's base, it was all over. Bush prepared for
the convention and the choice of a vice president.

The Wedge Issues Campaign

The Bush campaign of 1988 had no issues, but only demagogic themes.
These were basically all on the table by June, well before the
Republican convention. The first was the pledge of no new taxes, later
embroidered with the Clint Eastwood tough-guy overtones of "Read My
Lips -- No New Taxes." The other themes reflected Atwater's studies of
how to drive up the negatives of Bush's Democratic opponent, who would
be Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis. Very early on, Bush began
to harp on Dukakis's veto of a bill requiring teachers to lead their
class each day in the pledge of allegiance. Speaking in Orange County,
California on June 7, Bush said: "I'll never understand, when it came
to his desk, why he vetoed a bill that called for the pledge of
allegiance to be said in the schools of Massachusetts. I'll never
understand it. We are one nation under God. Our kids should say the
pledge of allegiance." / Note #9

This theme lent itself very well to a highly cathexized visual
portrayal, with flags and bunting. Atwater was assisted in these
matters by Roger Ailes, a television professional who had been the
executive producer of the Mike Douglas Show by the time he was 27
years old. That was in 1967, when he was hired by Richard Nixon and
Leonard Garment. Between them, Atwater and Ailes would produce the
modern American television equivalent of a 1930s Nuremburg party
rally.

At about this time, the Bush network we have seen in operation at the
"Reader's Digest" since the 1964 campaign conveniently printed an
article about a certain Willie Horton, a black convicted murderer who
was released from a Massachusetts jail on a furlough, and then
absconded to Maryland, where he raped a white woman and stabbed her
fiance. The Massachusetts furlough program had been started by
Republican Governor Frank Sargent, but this meant nothing. Bush was to
use Willie Horton in the same way that Hitler and the Nazis exploited
the grisly crimes of one Harmann, a serial killer in Germany of the
early 1930s, in their calls for law and order. In Illinois in
mid-June, Bush began to talk about how Dukakis let "murderers out on
vacation to terrorize innocent people."

As packaged by Bush's handlers, it was thoroughly racist without being
nominally so, like Nixon's "crime in the streets" shorthand for racist
backlash during the 1968 campaign. Later, Bush would embroider this
theme with his demand for the death penalty, his own Final Solution to
the problem of criminals like Willie Horton.

To crown this demagogy, George H.W. Bush of Skull and Bones portrayed
Dukakis as an elitist insider: "Governor Dukakis, his foreign-policy
views born in Harvard Yard's boutique, would cut the muscle of our
defense." Bush's frequent litany of "liberal Massachusetts governor"
was shameless in its main purpose of suggesting that Bush himself was
"not" a liberal.

When Bush arrived in New Orleans for the Republican National
Convention, he was accompanied by Baker, Teeter, Fuller, Atwater,
Ailes, and James Baker's Girl Friday, Margaret Tutwiler. Up to this
point, Bush's staff had expected him to generate a little suspense
around the convention by withholding the name of his vice presidential
choice until the morning of the last day of the convention, when Bush
could share his momentous secret with the Texas caucus and then tell
it to the world.

Bush's vetting of vice presidents was carried out between Bush and
Robert Kimmitt, the Washington lawyer and Baker crony who later joined
Baker's ruling clique at the State Department, before being put up for
ambassador to Germany when Vernon Walters quit in the spring of 1991.
Bush and Kimmitt reviewed the obvious choices: Kemp was out because he
lectured Bush on the SDI and was too concerned about issues. Dole was
out because he kept sniping at Bush with his patented sardonic
zingers. Elizabeth Dole was a choice to be deemed imprudent. John
Danforth, Pete Domenici, Al Simpson, and some others were eliminated.
Many were the possible choices who had to be ruled out not because of
lack of stature, but because they might seem to have more stature than
Bush himself.

Quayle had shown up on lists prepared by Fuller and Ailes. Ed Rollins,
attuned to the Reagan Democrats, could not believe that Quayle was
being seriously considered. But now, at Belle Chase Naval Air Station
north of New Orleans, Bush told his staff that he had chosen Dan
Quayle. Not only was it Quayle, but Bush's thyroid was now in
overdrive: He wanted to announce his selection within hours. Quayle
was contacted by telephone and instructed to meet Bush at the dock in
New Orleans when the paddle-wheel steamer "Natchez" brought Bush down
the Mississippi to that city's Spanish Plaza.

Why J. Danforth Quayle?

Quayle turned up at the dock in a state of inebriated euphoria,
grabbing Bush's arm, prancing and capering around Bush. As soon as the
dossiers on Quayle came out, a few questions were posed. Had his
Senate office been a staging point for Contra resupply efforts? One of
the Iran-Contra figures, Rob Owen, had indeed worked for Quayle, but
Quayle denied everything. Had Quayle, now a hawk, been in Vietnam? Tom
Brokaw asked Quayle if he had gotten help in joining the National
Guard as a way of ducking the draft. Quayle stammered that it had been
20 years earlier, but maybe "phone calls were made." Then Dan Rather
asked Quayle what his worst fear was. "Paula Parkinson," was the
reply. This was the woman lobbyist and "Playboy" nude model who had
been present with Quayle at a wild weekend at a Florida country club
back in 1980.

The Bush image-mongers hurriedly convened damage control sessions, and
Quayle was given two professional handlers, Stuart Spencer and Joe
Canzeri. After a couple of Bush-Quayle joint appearances before groups
of war veterans to attempt to dissipate Quayle's National Guard issue,
Quayle was then shunted into the secondary media ma rkets under the
iron control of his new handlers.

Although Bush's impulsive proclamation of his choice of Quayle does
indeed raise the question of the hyperthyroid snap decision, the
choice of Quayle was not impulsive, but rather perfectly coherent with
Bush's profile and pedigree. Bush told James Baker that Quayle had
been "my first and only choice." / Note #1 / Note #0 Bush's selection
of political appointees is very often the product of Bush-Walker
family alliances over more than a generation -- as in the case of
Baker, Brady, Boy Gray, and Henry Kravis -- or at least of a long and
often lucrative business collaboration, as in the case of Mosbacher.
The choice of Quayle lies somewhere in between, and was strengthened
by a deep ideological affinity in the area of racism.

J. Danforth Quayle's grandfather was Eugene C. Pulliam, who built an
important press empire starting with his purchase of the Atchison
(Kansas) "Champion" in 1912. The bulk of these papers were in Indiana,
the home state of the Pulliam clan, and in Arizona. "Gene" Pulliam had
died in 1975, but his newspaper chain was worth an estimated $1.4
billion by the time Dan Quayle became a household word.

Old Gene was a firm opponent of racial integration. When Martin Luther
King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968, Gene Pulliam sent a note to the
editors of his papers in Indianapolis, Indiana ordering them not to
give the King tragedy "much exposure" because he considered the civil
rights leader a "rabble rouser." He instructed that the news of King's
death be summarized in as few words as possible and relegated to the
bottom of the front page.

The Bush-Quayle alliance thus reposed first of all on a shared premise
of racism.

Quayle is known to the vast majority of the American public as a
virtual cretin. Quayle is the first representative of the post-war
Baby Boom to advance to national elective office. Unfortunately, he
seems to exhibit some of the mental impairment that is known to
overtake long-term, habitual marijuana users.

Quayle was admitted by the University of Indiana Law School in
violation of that school's usual policy of rejecting all applicants
with an academic average of less than 2.6. He wanted to be a lawyer
because he had heard that "lawyers make lots of money and do little,"
as he told his fraternity brothers at De Pauw. As it turned out, the
dean of admissions at the University of Indiana Law School was one G.
Kent Frandsen, who was a Republican city judge in Lebanon, Indiana, a
town where the Pulliam family controls the local  newspaper. He had
always been endorsed by the Pulliam interests. Two years later,
Frandsen would officiate at the marriage of J. Danforth Quayle to
Marilyn Tucker. Still later, Frandsen would serve as Quayle's campaign
manager in Boone County during the 1986 Senate race. It was thus no
surprise that Frandsen was willing to admit Dan Quayle to law school
as part of a program for disadvantaged students, primarily those from
the black community.

After all this, it may appear as a miracle that Dan Quayle was ever
able to obtain a law degree. J. Danforth's receipt of that degree
appears to have been mightily facilitated by the plutocratic Quayle
family, who made large donations to the law school each year during
Dan's time as a law student.

What were Quayle's pastimes during his law school years? According to
one account, they included recreational drugs. During the summer of
1988, a Mr. Brett Kimberlin told Dennis Bernstein and a radio audience
of WBAI in New York that he had first met J. Danforth during this
period at a fraternity party at which marijuana was indeed being
consumed. "He found out that I had marijuana available at the time,"
said Kimberlin. "It was good quality, and he asked if I had any for
sale.... I thought it was kind of strange. He looked kind of straight.
I thought he might be a narc [DEA agent] at first. But we talked and I
felt a little more comfortable, and finally I gave him my phone number
and said, 'Hey, well, give me a call.' He called me a couple weeks
later, and said, 'Hey, this is DQ. Can we get together?' and I said
'Yes, meet me at the Burger Chef restaurant.' We struck up a
relationship that lasted for 18 months. I sold him small quantities of
marijuana for his personal use about once a month during that period.
He was a good customer. He was a friend of mine. We had a pretty good
relationship. He always paid cash.... When him and Marilyn got married
in 1972, I gave him a wedding present of some Afghanistan hashish and
some Acapulco gold." / Note #1 / Note #1

Kimberlin repeated these charges in a pre-election interview on NBC
News on November 4, 1988. Kimberlin was a federal prisoner serving
time in Tennessee after conviction on charges of drug smuggling and
explosives. Later that same day, Kimberlin was scheduled to address a
news conference by telephone conference call. But before Kimberlin
could speak to the press, he was placed in solitary confinement, and
was moved in and out of solitary confinement until well after the
November 8 presidential election. A second attempted press conference
by telephone hookup on the eve of the election did not take place,
because Kimberlin was still being held incommunicado. On August 6,
1991, U.S. District Judge Harold H. Greene ruled that the allegations
made by Kimberlin against U.S. Bureau of Prisons Director J. Michael
Quinlan were "tangible and detailed" enough to justify a trial.
Kimberlin had accused Quinlan of ordering solitary confinement for him
when it became clear that his ability to further inform the media
about Quayle's drug use would damage the Bush-Quayle effort. The trial
is still pending as of our publication date.

In March 1977, Congressman Dan Quayle contributed an article to the
Fort Wayne, Indiana "News-Sentinel" in which he recommended that
Congress take a "serious" look at marijuana decriminalization. In
April 1978, Quayle repeated this proposal, specifying he supported
decriminalization for first-time users. / Note #1 / Note #2

The Last Lap

The final stages of the campaign were played out amid great public
indifference. Some interest was generated in the final weeks by a
matter of prurient, rather than policy interest: Rumors were flying of
a Bush sex scandal. This talk, fed by the old Jennifer Fitzgerald
story, had surfaced during 1987 in the wake of the successful covert
operation against Gary Hart. The gossip became intense enough that
George W. Bush asked his father if he had been guilty of philandering.
The young Bush reported back to the press that "the answer to the Big
A [adultery] question is N-O." Lee Atwater accused David Keene of the
Dole campaign of helping to circulate the rumor, and Keene, speaking
on a television talk show, responded that Atwater was "a liar."
Shortly thereafter, a "sex summit" was convened between the Bush and
Dole camps for the purpose of maintaining correct GOP decorum even
amidst the acrimony of the campaign. / Note #1 / Note #3

Evans and Novak opined that "Atwater and the rest of the Bush high
command, convinced that the rumors would soon be published, reacted in
a way that spelled panic to friend and foe alike." On June 17, 1987,
Michael Sneed of the "Chicago Sun-Times" had written that "several
major newspapers are sifting ... reported dalliances of Mr. Boring." /
Note #1 / Note #4 But during that summer of 1987, the Brown Brothers
Harriman/Skull and Bones networks were powerful enough to suppress the
story and spare Bush any embarrassment.

In the end, the greatest trump card of Bush's 1988 campaign was Bush's
opponent Michael Dukakis. There is every reason to believe that
Dukakis was chosen by Bush Democrat power brokers and the Eastern
Establishment bankers primarily because he was so manifestly unwilling
and unable seriously to oppose Bush. Many are the indications that the
Massachusetts governor had been selected to take a dive. The gravest
suspicions are in order as to whether there ever was a Dukakis
campaign at all. Well before Dukakis received the nomination,
supporters of Lyndon LaRouche in the National Democratic Policy
Committee called attention to the indications of per sonal and mental
instability in Dukakis's personal history, but the Democratic
Convention in Atlanta chose to ignore these highly relevant issues.

As the NDPC leaflet pointed out, "There is strong evidence that
Michael Dukakis suffers from a deep-seated mental instability that
could paralyze him, and decapitate our government, in the event of a
severe economic or strategic crisis. This is a tendency for
psychological breakdown in a situation of adversity and perceived
personal rejection." / Note #1 / Note #5 The best proof of the
validity of this assessment is the pitiful election campaign that
Dukakis then conducted. The NDPC leaflet had warned that the GOP would
exploit this obvious issue, and Reagan soon made his celebrated quip,
"I'm not going to pick on an invalid," focusing intense public
attention on Dukakis's refusal to release his medical records.

The colored maps used by the television networks on the night of
November 8 presented a Bush victory which, although less convincing
than Reagan's two landslides, nevertheless seemed impressive. A closer
examination of the actual vote totals reveals a much different lesson:
Even in competition with the bumbling and craven Dukakis campaign,
Bush remained a pitifully weak candidate who, despite overwhelming
advantages of incumbency, money, organization, years of enemies-list
operations, a free ride from the controlled media, and a pathetic
opponent, just managed to eke out a hair's breadth margin.

Bush had won 53 percent of the popular vote, but if just 535,000
voters in 11 states (or 600,000 voters in nine states) had switched to
Dukakis, the latter would have been the winner. The GOP had ruled the
terrain west of the Mississippi for many moons, but Bush had managed
to lose three Pacific states: Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii. Bush won
megastates like Illinois and Pennsylvania by paper-thin margins of 51
percent, and the all-important California vote, which went to Bush by
just 52 percent, had been too close for George's comfort. Missouri had
also been a 52 percent close call for George. In the farm states, the
devastation wrought by eight years of GOP free enterprise caused both
Iowa and Wisconsin to join Minnesota in the Democratic column.
Chronically depressed West Virginia was having none of George. In the
oil patch, the Democrats posted percentage gains even though Bush
carried these states: In Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana the Democratic
presidential vote was up between 7 and 11 percent compared to the
Mondale disaster of 1984. In the Midwest, Dukakis managed to carry
four dozen counties that had not gone for a Democratic presidential
contender since 1964. All in all, half of Bush's electoral votes came
from states in which he got less than 55.5 percent of the two-party
vote, showing that there was no runaway Bush landslide.

The voter turnout hit a new postwar low, with just 49.1 percent of
eligible voters showing up at the polls, significantly worse than the
Harry Truman-Thomas Dewey matchup of 1948, when just 51 percent had
deemed it worthwhile to vote. This means that Bush expected to govern
the country with the votes of just 26.8 percent of the eligible voters
in his pocket. Bush had won a number of southern states by lop-sided
margins of about 20 percent, but this was correlated in many cases
with very low overall voter turnout, which dipped below 40 percent in
Georgia and South Carolina. A big plus factor for George was the very
low black voter turnout in the South, where a significant black vote
had helped the Democrats retake control of the Senate in 1986.

Among those Republicans who had succeeded in winning the White House
in two-way races (excluding years like 1948 or 1968, when the totals
were impacted by Henry Wallace and Strom Thurmond's Dixiecrats, or by
George Wallace), Bush's result was the weakest since fellow Skull and
Bones alumnus William Howard Taft in 1908. / Note #1 / Note #6

Notes for Chapter XXIII

1. George Will column, Jan. 30, 1986, in George Will, "The Morning
After" (New York: Free Press London, Collier-MacMillan, 1986), p. 254.

2. Jack Anderson and Dale Van Atta, "Bush Waits and Hopes for Reagan
Nod," "Washington Post," Aug. 18, 1986.

3. Jack W. Germond and Jules Witcover, "Whose Broad Stripes and Bright
Stars: The Trivial Pursuit of the Presidency, 1988" (New York: Warner
Books, 1989), p. 156.

4. "Bush Proves Successful in Ticklish Appearance," "Washington Post,"
Dec. 12, 1985.

5. "New Hampshire Chill," "Washington Post," Oct. 11, 1987.

6. For Bush in the 1988 campaign, see "Whose Broad Stripes and Bright
Stars."

7. "Washington Post," Oct. 16, 1987.

8. "Robertson Links Bush to Swaggart Scandal," "Washington Post," Feb.
24, 1988.

9. "Whose Broad Stripes and Bright Stars," p. 161.

10. "Whose Broad Stripes and Bright Stars," p. 385.

11. Joel Bleifuss, "In Short," "In These Times," Nov. 16-22, 1988, p.
5, cited by Arthur Frederick Ide, "Bush-Quayle: The Reagan Legacy"
(Irving, Texas: Scholars Books, 1989), pp. 55-56.

12. "Ibid."

13. "Washington Post," July 1, 1987.

14. "Washington Post," June 26, 1987.

15. See "Is Dukakis the New Senator Eagleton?" in "Dukakis's Mental
Health: An Objective Assessment," "Executive Intelligence Review
Reprint," Aug. 15, 1988, p. 8.

16. See Kevin Phillips, "The Politics of Rich and Poor" (New York:
Random House, 1990), p. 215; "Facts on File," Nov. 11, 1988; and Paul
R. Abramson, John H. Aldrich and David W. Rohde, "Change and
Continuity in the 1988 Elections" (Washington: Congressional
Quarterly, 1991).

"XXIV: The End of History"

""If the Emperor Tiberius -- George Bush -- is elected, this country
will become a fascist state in the first year he is in office, I
guarantee it."

 -- Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., April 15, 1988

campaign speech in Buffalo, N.Y."

George Bush's inaugural address of January 21, 1989, was on the whole
an eminently colorless and forgettable oration. The speech was for the
most part a rehash of the tired demagogy of Bush's election campaign,
with the ritual references to "a thousand points of light" and the
hollow pledge that when it came to the drug inundation which Bush had
supposedly been fighting for most of the decade, "This scourge will
stop." Bush talked of "stewardship" being passed on from one
generation to another. There was almost nothing about the state of the
U.S. economy. Bush was preoccupied with the "divisiveness" left over
from the Vietnam era, and this he pledged to end in favor of a return
to bipartisan consensus between the President and the Congress, since
"the statute of limitations has been reached. This is a fact: The
final lesson of Vietnam is that no great nation can long afford to be
sundered by a memory." There is good reason to believe that Bush was
already contemplating the new round of foreign military adventures
which were not long in coming.

The characteristic note of Bush's remarks came at the outset, in the
passages in which he celebrated the triumph of the American variant of
the bureaucratic-authoritarian police state, based on usury, which
chooses to characterize itself as "freedom": "We know what works:
Freedom works. We know what's right: Freedom is right. We know how to
secure a more just and prosperous life for man on Earth -- through
free markets, free speech, free elections, and the exercise of free
will unhampered by the state. / Note #1

After the inauguration ceremonies at the Capitol were completed,
George and Barbara Bush descended Pennsylvania Avenue toward the White
House in a triumphant progress, getting out of their limousine every
block or two to walk among the crowds and savor the ovations. George
Bush, imperial administrator and bureaucrat, had now reached the apex
of his career, the last station of the "cursus honorum": the chief
magistracy. Bush now assumed leadership of a Washington bureaucracy
that was increasingly focused on itself and its own aspirations,
convinced of its own omnipotence and infallibility, of its own
manifest destiny to dominate the world. It was a heady moment, full of
the stuff of megalomaniac delusion.

Imperial Washington was now aware of the increasing symptoms of
collapse in the Soviet Empire. The feared adversary of four decades of
cold war was collapsing. Germany and Japan were formidable economic
powers, but they were led by a generation of politicians which had
been well schooled in the necessity of following Anglo-Saxon orders.
France had abandoned her traditional Gaullist policy of independence
and sovereignty, and had returned to the "suivisme" of the old Fourth
Republic under Bush's freemasonic brother Francois Mitterrand.
Opposition to Washington's imperial designs might still come from
leading states of the developing sector, from India, Brazil, Iraq and
Malaysia, but the imperial administrators, puffed up with their
xenophobic contempt for the former colonials, were confident that
these states could be easily defeated, and that the Third World would
meekly succumb to the installation of Anglo-American puppet regimes in
the way that the Philippines and so many Latin American countries had
during the 1980s.

Bush assembled a team of his fellow Malthusian bureaucrats and
administrators from among those officials who had staffed Republican
administrations going back to 1969, the year that Nixon chose
Kissinger for the National Security Council. Persons like Scowcroft,
James Baker, Carla Hills, and Bush himself had, with few exceptions,
been in or around the federal government and especially the executive
branch for most of two decades.

All the great issues of policy had been solved under Nixon, Ford and
Reagan; the geopolitical situation was being brought under control;
all that remained was to consolidate and perfect the total
administration of the world according to the policies and procedures
already established, while delivering mass consensus through the same
methods that had just proven unbeatable in the presidential campaign.
The Bush team was convinced of its own inherent superiority to the
Mandarin Chinese, the Roman and Byzantine, the Ottoman, the Austrian,
the Prussian, the Soviet, and to all other bureaucratic-authoritarian
regimes that had ever existed on the planet.

Pride goeth ever before a fall.

The imperial functionaries of the Bush team had chosen to ignore
certain gross facts, most importantly the demonstrable bankruptcy and
insolvency of their own leading institutions of finance, credit and
government. Their ability to command production and otherwise to act
upon the material world was in sharp decline. How long would the
American population remain in its state of stupefied passivity in the
face of deteriorating standards of living that were now falling more
rapidly than at any time in the last 20 years? And now, the
speculative orgy of the 1980s would have to be paid for. Even their
advantage over the crumbling Soviet empire was ultimately only a
marginal, relative, and temporary one, due primarily to a faster rate
of collapse on the Soviet side; but the day of reckoning for the
Anglo-Americans was coming, too.

This was the triumphalism that pervaded the opening weeks of the Bush
administration. Bush gave more press conferences during the transition
period than Reagan had given during most of his second term; he
reveled in the accoutrements of his new office, and gave the White
House press corps all the photo opportunities and interviews they
wanted, to butter them up and get them in his pocket.

These fatuous delusions of grandeur were duly projected upon the plane
of the philosophy of history by an official of the Bush
administration, Francis Fukuyama, the deputy director of the State
Department Policy Planning Staff, the old haunt of Harrimanites like
Paul Nitze and George Kennan. In the winter of 1989, during Bush's
first hundred days in office, Fukuyama delivered a lecture to the Olin
Foundation which was later published in "The National Interest"
quarterly under the title of "The End of History?" / Note #2 Imperial
administrator Fukuyama had studied under the reactionary elitist Allan
Bloom, and was conversant with the French neo-Enlightenment semiotic
(or semi-idiotic) school of Derrida, Foucault and Roland Barthes,
whose "zero degree of writing" Fukuyama may have been striving to
attain. Above all, Fukuyama was a follower of Hegel in the
interpretation of the French postwar neo-Hegelian Alexandre Kojeve.

Fukuyama qualifies as the official ideologue of the Bush regime. His
starting point is the "unabashed victory of economic and social
liberalism," meaning by that the economic and political system
reaching its maturity under Bush -- what the State Department usually
calls "democracy." "The triumph of the West, of the Western idea, is
evident first of all in the total exhaustion of viable systematic
alternatives to Western liberalism.... The triumph of the Western
political idea is complete. Its rivals have been routed.... Political
theory, at least the part concerned with defining the good polity, is
finished. The Western idea of governance has prevailed.... What we may
be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a
particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such:
that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the
universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of
human government."

According to Fukuyama, communism as an alternative system had been
thoroughly discredited in the U.S.S.R., China, and the other communist
countries. Since there are no other visible models contending for the
right to shape the future, he concludes that the modern American state
is the "final, rational form of society and state."

There are of course large areas of the world where governments and
forms of society prevail which diverge radically from Fukuyama's
Western model, but he answers this objection by explaining that
backward, still historic parts of the world exist and will continue to
exist for some time. It is just that they will never be able to
present their forms of society as a credible model or alternative to
"liberalism." Since Fukuyama presumably knew something of what was in
the Bush administration pipeline, he carefully kept the door open for
new wars and military conflicts, especially among historical states,
or between historical and post-historical powers. Both Panama and Iraq
would, according to Fukuyama's typology, fall into the latter
category.

Thus, in the view of the early Bush administration, the planet would
come to be dominated more and more by the "universal homogenous
state," a mixture of "liberal democracy in the political sphere
combined with easy access to VCRs and stereos in the economic." The
arid banality of that definition is matched by Fukuyama's dazzling
tribute to "the spectacular abundance of advanced liberal economies
and the infinitely diverse consumer culture." Fukuyama, it turns out,
is a resident of the privileged enclave for imperial functionaries
that is northeast Virginia, and so has little understanding of the
scope of U.S. domestic poverty and immiseration: For Fukuyama, writing
at a moment when American class divisions were more pronounced than at
any time in human memory, "the egalitarianism of modern America
represents the essential achievement of the classless society
envisaged by Marx." As a purveyor of official doctrine for the Bush
regime, Fukuyama is bound to ignore 20 years of increasing poverty and
declining standards of living for all Americans which have caused an
even greater retrogression for the minority population.

It is not far from the End of History to Bush's later slogans of the
New World Order and the imperial Pax Universalis. It is ironic but
lawful that Bush should have chosen a neo-Hegelian as apologist for
his regime. Hegel was the arch-obscurantist, philosophical dictator,
and saboteur of the natural sciences; he was the ideologue of
Metternich's Holy Alliance system of police states in the post-1815
oligarchic restoration in Europe imposed by the Congress of Vienna.
When we mention Metternich, we have at once brought Bush's old patron
Kissinger into play, since Metternich is well known as his ego ideal.
Hegel deified the bureaucratic-authoritarian state machinery of which
he was a part as the final embodiment of rationality in h uman
affairs, beyond which it was impossible to go. Hegel told
intellectuals to be reconciled with the world they found around them,
and pronounced philosophy incapable of producing ideas for the reform
of the world.

The Bush regime thus took shape as a bureaucratic-authoritarian
stewardship of the financial interests of Wall Street and the City of
London. Many saw in the Bush team the patrician financiers of the
Nelson Rockefeller administration that never was. The groups in
society which were to be served were so narrowly restricted that the
Bush administration often looked like a government that had totally
separated itself from the underlying society and had constituted
itself to govern in the interests of the bureaucracy itself. Since
Bush was irrevocably committed to carrying forward the policies that
had been consolidated and institutionalized during the previous eight
years, the regime became more and more rigid and inflexible. Active
opposition, or even the dislocations occasioned by administration
policies were therefore dealt with by the repressive means of the
police state. The Bush regime could not govern, but it could indict,
and the Discrediting Committee was always ready to vilify. Some
observers spoke of a new form of Bonapartism "sui generis," but the
most accurate description for the Bush combination was the
"administrative fascism" coined by political prisoner Lyndon LaRouche,
who was thrown in jail just seven days after the Bush inauguration.

The Bush Cabinet

Bush's cabinet reflected several sets of optimizing criteria:

The best way to attain a top cabinet post was to belong to a family
that had been allied with the Bush-Walker clan over a period of at
least half a century, and to have served as a functionary or
fundraiser for the Bush campaign. This applied to Secretary of State
James Baker III, Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady, Commerce Secretary
Robert Mosbacher, and Bush's White House counsel and top political
adviser, C. Boyden Gray.

A second royal road to high office was to have been an officer of
Kissinger Associates, the international consulting firm set up by
Bush's lifelong patron, Henry Kissinger. In this category we find Gen.
Brent Scowcroft, the former chief of the Kiss. Ass. Washington office,
and Lawrence Eagleburger, the dissipated wreck who was named to the
number two post in the State Department, Undersecretary of State.
Eagleburger had been the president of Kissinger Associates. The
ambassadorial (or proconsul) list was also rife with Kissingerian
pedigrees: a prominent one was John Negroponte,  Bush's ambassador to
Mexico.

Overlapping with this last group were the veterans of the 1974-77 Ford
administration. National Security Council Director Brent Scowcroft,
for example, was simply returning to the job that he had held under
Ford as Kissinger's alter ego inside the White House. Dick Cheney, who
eventually became secretary of defense, had been Ford's White House
chief of staff. Cheney had been executive assistant to the director of
Nixon's Office of Economic Opportunity way back in 1969. In 1971, he
had joined Nixon's White House staff as Don Rumsfeld's deputy. >From
1971 to 1973, Cheney was at the Cost of Living Council, working as an
enforcer for the infamous Phase II wage freeze in Nixon's "Economic
Stabilization Program." The charming Carla Hills, who became Bush's
trade representative, had been Ford's Secretary of Housing and Urban
Development. William Seidman and James Baker (and Federal Reserve
Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, a Reagan holdover who was the chairman
of Ford's Council of Economic Advisers) had also been in the picture
under Gerry Ford.

Bush also extended largesse to those who had assisted him in the
election campaign just concluded. At the top of this list was Governor
John Sununu of New Hampshire, who would have qualified as the modern
Nostradamus for his exact prediction of Bush's 9 percent margin of
victory over Dole in the New Hampshire primary -- unless he had helped
to arrange it with vote fraud.

Another way to carry off a top plum in the Bush regime was to have
participated in the coverup of the Iran-Contra scandal. The leading
role in that coverup had been assumed by Reagan's own blue ribbon
commission of notables, the Tower Commission, which carried out the
White House's own in-house review of what had allegedly gone wrong,
and had scapegoated Don Regan for a series of misdeeds that actually
belonged at the doorstep of George Bush. The members of that board
were former GOP Senator John Tower of Texas, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, and
former Sen. Edmund Muskie, who had been secretary of state for Carter
after the resignation of Cyrus Vance. Scowcroft, who shows up under
many headings, was ensconced at the NSC. Bush's original candidate for
secretary of defense was John Tower, who had been the point man of the
1986-87 coverup of Iran-Contra during the months before the
congressional investigating committees formally got into the act.
Tower's nomination was rejected by the Senate after he was accused of
being drunken and promiscuous by Paul Weyrich, a Buckleyite activist,
and others. Some observers thought that the Tower nomination had been
deliberately torpedoed by Bush's own discrediting committee so as to
avoid the presence of a top cabinet officer with the ability to
blackmail Bush. Perhaps Tower had overplayed his hand. In any case,
Dick Cheney, a Wyoming congressman with strong intelligence community
connections, was speedily nominated and confirmed after Tower had been
shot down.

Another Iran-Contra veteran in line to get a reward was Bush's former
national security adviser, Don Gregg, who had served Bush since at
least the time of the 1976 Koreagate scandal. Gregg, as we have seen,
was more than willing to commit the most maladroit and blatant perjury
in order to save his boss from the wolves (see Chapter 17). Later,
when William Webster retired as director of the CIA, there were
persistent rumors that the hyperthyroid Bush had originally demanded
that Don Gregg be nominated to take his place. According to these
reports, it required all the energy of Bush's handlers to convince the
President that Gregg was too dirty to pass confirmation; Bush
relented, but then announced to his dismayed and exhausted staff that
his second and non-negotiable choice for Langley was Robert Gates, the
former CIA Deputy Director who had been working as Scowcroft's number
two at the National Security Council. As it turned out, the Bush
Democrats in the Senate proved more than willing to approve Gates.

The Dismal Hundred Days

Bush's first 100 days in office fulfilled Fukuyama's prophecy that the
End of History would be "a very sad time." If "post-history" meant
that very little was accomplished, Bush filled the bill. Three weeks
after his inauguration, Bush addressed a joint session of the Congress
on certain changes that he had proposed in Reagan's last budget. The
litany was hollow and predictable: Bush wanted to be the Education
President, but was willing to spend less than a billion dollars of new
money in order to do it. He froze the U.S. military budget, and
announced a review of the previous policy toward the Soviet Union.
This last point meant that Bush wanted to wait to see how fast the
Soviets would in fact collapse before he would even discuss trade
normalization, which had been the perspective held out to Moscow by
Reagan and others. Bush said he wanted to join with Drug Czar William
Bennett in "leading the charge" in the war on drugs.

Bush also wanted to be the Environmental President. This was a far
more serious aspiration. Shortly after the election, Bush had attended
the gala centennial awards dinner of the very oligarchical National
Geographic Society, for many years a personal fiefdom of the
feudal-minded Grosvenor family. Bush promised the audience that night
that there was "one issue my administration is going to address, and
I'm talking about the environment." Bush confided that he had been
coordinating his plans with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher,
and that he had agreed with her on the necessity for "international
cooperation" on green iss ues. "We will support you," intoned Gilbert
Grosvenor, a fellow Yale alumnus, "... Planet Earth is at risk." /
Note #6

In order to be the Environmental President, Bush was willing to
propose a disastrous Clean Air Act that would drain the economy of
hundreds of billions of dollars over time in the name of fighting acid
rain. Bush's first hundred days coincided with the notable phenomenon
of the "greening" of Margaret Thatcher, who had previously denounced
environmentalists as "the enemy within," and fellow travelers of the
British Labour Party and the loonie left. Thatcher's resident
ideologue, Nicholas Ridley, had referred to the green movement in
Britain as "pseudo-Marxists." But in the early months of 1989,
allegedly under the guidance of Sir Crispin Tickell, the British
ambassador to the United Nations, Thatcher embraced the orthodoxy that
the erosion of the ozone layer, the greenhouse effect and acid rain --
every one of them a pseudo-scientific hoax -- were indeed at the top
of the list of the urgent problems of the human species. Thatcher's
acceptance of the green orthodoxy permitted the swift establishment of
a total environmentalist-Malthusian consensus in the European
Community, the Group of 7 and other key international forums.

Characteristically, Bush followed Thatcher's lead, as he would on so
many other issues. During the first 100 days, Bush called for the
elimination of all chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) by the end of the
century, thus accepting the position assumed by the European Community
as a result of Mrs. Thatcher's turning green. Bush told the National
Academy of Sciences that new "scientific advancements" had permitted
the identification of a serious threat to the ozone layer; Bush
stressed the need to "reduce CFCs that deplete our precious upper
atmospheric resources." A treaty had been signed in Montreal in 1987
that called for cutting the production of CFCs by one half within a
ten-year period. "But recent studies indicate that this 50 percent
reduction may not be enough," Bush now opined. Senator Albert Gore,
Jr. of Tennessee was calling for complete elimination of CFCs within
five years. Here a pattern emerged that was to be repeated frequently
during the Bush years: Bush would make sweeping concessions to the
environmentalist Luddites, but would then be denounced by them for
measures that were insufficiently radical. This would be the case when
Bush's Clean Air Bill was going through the Congress during the summer
of 1990.

After Bush's appearance before the Congress with his revised budget,
the new regime exploited the honeymoon to seal a sweetheart contract
with the rubber-stamp congressional Democrats, who under no
circumstances could be confused with an opposition. The de facto
one-party state was alive and well, personified by milquetoast Senator
George Mitchell of Maine, the Democrats' majority leader. The
collusion between Bush and the Democratic leadership involved new
sleight of hand in order to meet the deficit-reduction targets
stipulated by the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings law. This involved mobilizing
more than $100 billion from surpluses in the Social Security, highway
and other special trust funds which had not previously been counted.
The Democrats also went along with a $28 billion package of asset
sales, financing tricks, and unspecified new revenues. They also
bought Bush's rosy economic forecast of higher economic growth and
lower interest rates. Senate Majority Leader Mitchell, accepting his
pathetic rubber-stamp role, commented only that "much sterner measures
will be required in the future." Since the Democrats were incapable of
proposing an economic recovery program in order to deal with the
depression, they were condemned to give Bush what he wanted. This
particular swindle would come back to haunt all concerned, but not
before the spectacular budget debacle of October 1990.

In the spring of 1990, according to an estimate by Sid Taylor of the
National Taxpayers' Union, the total potential liabilities of the
federal government exceeded $14 trillion. At that point, the official
national debt totaled $2.8 trillion, but this estimate included the
commitments of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, the
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Pension Benefit Guarantee
Corporation, and other agencies.

Bush's inability to pull his regime together for a serious round of
domestic austerity was not appreciated by the crowd at the Bank for
International Settlements in Geneva. Evelyn Rothschild's London
"Economist" summed up the international banking view of George's
temporizing on this score with its headline, "Bush Bumbles."

A few weeks into the new administration, it was the collapse of the
FSLIC, studiously ignored by the waning Reagan administration, that
reached critical mass. On February 6, 1989, Bush announced measures
that his image-mongers billed as the most sweeping and significant
piece of financial legislation since the creation of the Federal
Reserve Board on the eve of World War I. This was the savings and loan
bailout, a new orgy in the monetization of debt and a giant step
toward the consolidation of a neo-fascist corporate state.

At the heart of Bush's policy was his refusal to acknowledge the
existence of an economic crisis of colossal proportions, which had
among its symptoms the gathering collapse of the real estate market
after the stock market crash of October 1987. The sequence of a stock
market panic, followed by a real estate and banking crisis, closely
followed the sequence of the Great Depression of the 1930s. But Bush
violently rejected the existence of such a crisis, and was grimly
determined to push on with more of the same. This meant that the
federal government would simply take control of the savings banks, the
majority of which were bankrupt or imminently bankrupt. The depositors
might get their money, but the result would be the debasement of the
currency and a deepening depression all around. In the process, the
U.S. government would become one of the main owners of real estate,
buildings, and the worthless junk bonds that had been spewed out by
Bush's friend Henry Kravis and his partner Michael Milken during the
heady days of the boom.

The federal government would create a new world of bonded debt to pay
for the savings banks that would be seized. When Bush announced his
bailout that February, he stated that $40 billion had already been
poured into the S&L sinkhole, and that he proposed to issue an
additional $50 billion in new bonds through a financing corporation, a
subsidiary of the new Resolution Trust Corporation.

By August 1989, when Bush's legislation had been passed, the estimated
cost of the S&L bailout had increased to $164 billion over a period of
ten years, with $20 billion of that scheduled to be spent by the end
of September 1989.

Within a few months, Bush was forced to increase his estimates once
again. "It's a whale of a mess, and we'll see where we go," Bush told
a group of newspaper editorial writers at the White House in
mid-December. "We've had this one refinancing. I am told that that
might not be enough." By this time, academic experts were suggesting
that the bailout might exceed the administration's $164 billion by as
much as $100 billion more. Every new estimate was swiftly overtaken by
the ghastly spectacle of a real estate market in free fall, with no
bottom in sight. The growing public awareness of this situation,
compounded by the ongoing bankruptcy of the commercial banking system
as well, would lead in July 1990 to a very ugly public relations
crisis for the Bush regime around the role of the President's son Neil
Bush, in the insolvency of the Silverado Savings and Loan of Denver,
Colorado. One of the obvious reasons for Bush's enthusiastic choice of
war in the Persian Gulf was the need to get Neil Bush off the front
page. But even the Gulf war bought no respite in the collapse of the
real estate markets and the chain-reaction bankruptcies of the savings
banks: By the summer of 1991, federal regulators were seizing S&Ls at
the rate of just under one every business day, and the estimates of
the total pr ice tag of the bailout had ballooned to over $500
billion, with every certainty that this figure would also be
surpassed. / Note #7

The carnage among the S&Ls did not prevent Bush from seeking an
increase in the U.S. contribution to the International Monetary Fund,
the main agency of a world austerity that claims upwards of 50 million
human lives each year as the needless victims of its Malthusian
conditionalities. The members of the IMF had been debating an increase
in the funds each member must pay into the IMF (which has been
bankrupt for years as a matter of reality), with Managing Director
Michel Camdessus proposing a 100 percent increase, and Britain and
Saudi Arabia arguing for a much smaller 25 percent hike. Bush
attempted to mediate and resolve the dispute with a proposal for a 35
percent increase, equal to an $8 billion additional payment by the
U.S. This sum was equal to more than three times the yearly
expenditure for the highly successful Women, Infants and Children
(WIC) program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, savagely cut
during Bush's first year, which attempted to provide a high-protein
and balanced food supplement to mothers and their offspring. / Note #8

As the depression deepened, Bush had only one idea: to reduce the
capital gains tax rate from 28 percent to 15 percent. This was a
proposal for a direct public subsidy to the vulture legions of Kravis,
Liedtke, Pickens, Milken, Brady, Mosbacher, and the rest of Bush's
apostles of greed. The Bushmen estimated that a capital gains tax
reduction in this magnitude would cost the Treasury some $25 billion
in lost receipts over six years, a crass underestimate. These funds,
argued the Bushmen, would then be invested in high-tech plant and
equipment, creating new jobs and new production. In reality, the funds
would have flowed into bigger and better leveraged buyouts, which were
still being attempted after the crash of the junk bond market with the
failure of the United Airlines buyout in October 1989. But Bush had no
serious interest in, or even awareness of, commodity production. His
policies had now brought the country to the brink of a financial panic
in which 75 percent of the current prices of all stocks, bonds,
debentures, mortgages, and other financial paper would be wiped out.

If there was a constant note in Bush's first year in office, it was a
callously flaunted contempt for the misery of the American people.
During the spring of 1989, the Congress passed a bill that would have
raised the minimum wage in interstate commerce from $3.55 per hour to
$4.55 per hour by a series ofincrements over three years. This
legislation would even have permitted a subminimum wage that could be
paid to certain newly hired workers over a 60-day training period.
Bush vetoed this measure because the $4.55 minimum wage was 30 cents
an hour higher than he wanted, and because he demanded a subminimum
wage for all new employees for the first six months on the job,
regardless of their previous experience or training. On June 14, 1989,
the House of Representatives failed to override this veto, by a margin
of 37 votes. (Later, Bush signed legislation to raise the minimum wage
to $4.25 per hour over two years, with a subminimum training wage
applicable only to teenagers and only during the first 90 days of the
teenagers' employment, with the possibility of a second 90-day
training wage stint if they moved on to a different employer.) / Note
#9

This was the same George Bush who had proposed $164 billion for
bankrupt S&Ls, and $8 billion for the International Monetary Fund, all
without batting an eye.

This is also the George Bush who, customarily during holiday periods,
joins his millionaire crony William Stamps ("Auschwitz") Farish III at
his Lazy F Ranch near Beeville, Texas, for the two men's traditional
holiday quail hunt. This is the same William Stamps Farish III whose
grandfather, the president of Standard Oil of New Jersey, had financed
Heinrich Himmler. William Stamps Farish III's investment bank in
Houston, W.S. Farish & Co., had at one time managed the blind trust
into which Bush had placed his personal investment portfolio. Farish
was rich enough to vaunt five addresses: Beeville, Texas; Lane's End
Farm in the Versailles, Kentucky bluegrass; Florida, and two others.
Farish's hobby for the past several decades has been the creation of
his own top-flight farm for the raising of thoroughbred horses, the
3,000-acre Lazy F Ranch, with its ten horse barns and four sumptuous
residences. Over the years, Farish has saddled winners in the 1972
Preakness and the 1987 Belmont Stakes, and bred 80 stakes winners over
the past decade. Farish, who is married to Sarah Sharp, the daughter
of a Du Pont heiress, had worked with Bush as an aide during the 1964
Senate campaign.

Farish III is rich enough to extend his largesse even to Queen
Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, probably the richest individual in
the world. The queen regularly visits Farish's horse farm, traveling
by Royal Air Force jetliner to the Blue Grass Airport in Lexington,
Kentucky, accompanied by mares which Her Majesty wishes to breed with
Farish's million-dollar prize stallions. Farish magnanimously waives
the usual stud fees for the queen, resulting in an estimated savings
to Her Majesty of some $800,000.

Smear, Scandal and Sanctions

For George Bush, the exercise of power has always been inseparable
from the use of smear, scandal, and the final sanctions of
police-state methods against political rivals and other branches of
government. A classic example was the Koreagate scandal of 1976,
unleashed with the help of Bush's long-time retainer, Don Gregg. It
will be recalled that Koreagate included the toppling of Democratic
Speaker of the House Carl Albert of Oklahoma, who quietly retired from
the House at the end of 1976. That was in the year when Bush had
returned from Beijing to Langley. Was it merely coincidence that, in
the first year of Bush's tenure in the White House, not just the
Democratic Speaker of the House, but also the House Majority Whip,
were driven from office?

The campaign against Speaker of the House Jim Wright was spearheaded
by Georgia Republican Congressman Newt Gingrich, a typical "wedge
issue" ideologue of the GOP's Southern Strategy. Gingrich's campaign
against Wright could never have succeeded without systematic support
from the news media, who regularly trumpeted his charges and lent him
a wholly undeserved importance. Gingrich's pretext was a story about
the financing of a small book in which Wright had collected some of
his old speeches, which Gingrich claimed had been sold to lobbyists in
such a way as to constitute an unreported gift in violation of the
House rules. One of Gingrich's first steps when he launched the
assault on Wright during 1988 was to send letters to Bush and to
Assistant Attorney General William Weld, whose family investment bank,
White Weld, had purchased Uncle Herbie Walker's G.H. Walker & Co.
brokerage when Bush's favorite uncle was ready to retire. Newt
Gingrich wrote: "May I suggest, the next time the news media asks
about corruption in the White House, you ask them about corruption in
the Speaker's office?" A similar letter went out from the
"Conservative Campaign Fund" to all GOP House candidates with the
message: "We write to encourage you to make ... House Speaker Jim
Wright a major issue in your campaign." / Note #1 / Note #1 Bush
placed himself in the vanguard of this campaign.

When Bush, in the midst of his presidential campaign, was asked by
reporters about the investigation of Reagan Attorney General Edwin
Meese (no friend of Bush) concerning his dealings with the Wedtech
Corporation, he replied: "You talk about Ed Meese. How about talking
about what Common Cause raised against the Speaker the other day? Are
they going to go for an independent counsel so the nation will have
this full investigation? Why don't people call out for that? I will
right now. I think they ought to." / Note #1 / Note #2 Reagan followed
Bush's lead in calling for Wright to be investigated.

In January-February 1989, the House took under consideration a pay
increase f or members. Both Reagan and Bush had endorsed such a pay
increase, but Lee Atwater, now installed at the Republican National
Committee, launched a series of mailings and public statements to make
the pay increase into a new wedge issue. It was a brilliant success,
with the help of a few old Prescott Bush strings pulled on key talk
show hosts across the country. Bush accomplished the coup of
thoroughly destabilizing the Congress at the outset of his tenure. Jim
Wright was hounded out of office and into retirement a few months
later, followed by Tony Coelho, the Democratic Whip. What remained was
the meek Tom Foley, a pliable rubber stamp, and Richard Gephardt, who
briefly got in trouble with Bush during 1989, but who found his way to
a deal with Bush that allowed him to rubber-stamp Bush's "fast track"
formula for the free trade zone with Mexico, which effectively killed
any hope of resistance to that measure. The fall of Jim Wright was a
decisive step in the domestication of the Congress by the Bush regime.

Bush was also able to rely on an extensive swamp of "Bush Democrats"
who would support his proposals under virtually all circumstances. The
basis of this phenomenon was the obvious fact that the national
leadership of the Democratic Party had long been a gang of
Harrimanites. The Brown Brothers Harriman grip on the Democratic Party
had been represented by W. Averell Harriman until his death, and after
that was carried on by his widow, Pamela Churchill Harriman, the
former wife of Sir Winston Churchill's alcoholic son, Randolph. The
very extensive Meyer Lansky/Anti-Defamation League networks among the
Democrats were oriented toward cooperation with Bush, sometimes
directly, and sometimes through the orchestration of gang vs.
countergang charades for the manipulation of public opinion. A special
source of Bush strength among southern Democrats is the cooperation
between Skull and Bones and southern jurisdiction freemasons in the
tradition of the infamous Albert Pike. These southern jurisdiction
freemasonic networks have been most obviously decisive in the Senate,
where a group of southern Democratic senators has routinely joined
with Bush to block overrides of Bush's many vetoes, or to provide a
pro-Bush majority on key votes like the Gulf war resolution.

Bush's style in the Oval Office was described during this period as
"extremely secretive." Many members of Bush's staff felt that the
President had his own long-term plans, but refused to discuss them
with his own top White House personnel. During Bush's first year, the
White House was described as "a tomb," without the usual dense barrage
of leaks, counter-leaks, trial balloons, and signals which government
insiders customarily employ to influence public debate on policy
matters. Bush is said to employ a "need to know" approach even with
his closest White House collaborators, keeping each one of them in the
dark about what the others are doing. Aides have complained of their
inability to keep up with Bush's phone calls when he goes into his
famous "speed-dialing mode," in which he can contact dozens of
politicians, bankers or world leaders within a couple of hours.
Unauthorized passages of information from one office to another inside
the White House constitute leaks in Bush's opinion, and he has been at
pains to suppress them. When information was given to the press about
a planned meeting with Gorbachov, Bush threatened his top-level
advisers: "If we cannot maintain proper secrecy with this group, we
will cut the circle down."

Bush routinely humiliates and mortifies his subordinates. This recalls
his style in dealing with the numerous hapless servants and domestics
who populated his patrician youth; it may also have been reinforced by
the characteristic style of Henry Kissinger. If advisers or staff dare
to manifest disagreement, the typical Bush retort is a whining "If
you're so damned smart, why are you doing what you're doing and I'm
the President of the United States?" / Note #1 / Note #3

In one sense, Bush's style reflects his desire to seem "absolute and
autocratic" in the tradition of the Romanov czars and other Byzantine
rulers. He refuses to be advised or dissuaded on many issues, relying
on his enraged, hyperthyroid intuitions. More profoundly, Bush's
"absolute and autocratic" act is a cover for the fact that many of his
initiatives, ideas and policies came from outside of the U.S.
government, since they originated in the rarefied ether of those
international finance circles where names like Harriman, Kravis, and
Gammell are the coin of the realm. Indeed, many of Bush's policies
come from outside of the United States altogether, deriving from the
oligarchical financial circles of the City of London. The classic case
is the Gulf crisis of 1990-91. When the documents on the Bush
administration are finally thrown open to the public, it is a safe bet
that some top British financiers and Foreign Office types will be
found to have combined remarkable access and power with a non-existent
public profile.

Notes for Chapter XXIV

1. "Washington Post," Jan. 21, 1991.

2. For Fukuyama's "End of History," see "The National Interest,"
Summer 1989, and Henry Allen, "The End. Or Is It?" "Washington Post,"
Sept. 27, 1989.

6. "Bush's Earthly Pursuits," "Washington Post," Nov. 18, 1988.

7. See the transcript of Bush's statement and news conference,
"Washington Post," Feb. 7, 1989; "With Signs and Ceremony, S&L Bailout
Begins," "Washington Post," Aug. 10, 1989; and "Bush: S&Ls May Need
More Help," "Washington Post," Dec. 12, 1989.

8. "Bush Backs Increase in IMF Funds," "Washington Post," Nov. 23,
1989.

9. See House Democratic Study Group, Special Report No. 101-45,
"Legislation Vetoed by the President," p. 83.

11. John M. Barry, "The Ambition and the Power" (New York: Viking
Press, 1989) pp. 621-22.

12. "Ibid."

13. "Bush: The Secret Presidency," "Newsweek," Jan. 1, 1990.

"XXIV: The End of History"

One of the defining moments in the first year of the Bush presidency
was his reaction to the Tiananmen massacre of June 4, 1989. No one can
forget the magnificent movement of the antitotalitarian Chinese
students, who used the occasion of the funeral of Hu Yaobang in the
spring of 1989 to launch a movement of protest and reform against the
monstrous dictatorship of Deng Xiaoping, Yang Shankun, and Prime
Minister Li Peng. As the portrait of the old butcher Mao Zedong looked
down from the former imperial palace, the students erected a statue of
liberty and filled the square with the Ode to Joy from Beethoven's
Ninth Symphony. By the end of May, it was clear that the Deng regime
was attempting to pull itself together to attempt a convulsive
massacre of its political opposition. At this point, it is likely that
a pointed and unequivocal public warning from the U.S. government
might have avoided the looming bloody crackdown against the students.
Even a warning through secret diplomatic channels might have sufficed.
Bush undertook neither, and he must bear responsibility for this
blatant omission.

The nonviolent protest of the students was then crushed by the martial
law troops of the hated and discredited Communist regime. Untold
thousands of students were killed outright, and thousands more died in
the merciless death hunt against political dissidents which followed.
Mankind was horrified. For Bush, however, the main considerations were
that Deng Xiaoping was part of his own personal network, with whom
Bush had maintained close contact since at least 1975. Bush's devotion
to the immoral British doctrine of "geopolitics" further dictated
that, unless and until the U.S.S.R. had totally collapsed as a
military power, the U.S. alliance with China as the second-strongest
land power must be maintained at all costs. Additionally, Bush was
acutely sensitive to the views on China policy held by his mentor,
Henry Kissinger, whose paw-prints were still to be found all over U.S.
relations with Deng.

In the pre-1911 imperial court of China, the etiquette of the
Forbidden City required that a person approaching the throne of the
"Son of Heaven" must prostrate himself before that living deity,
touching both hands and the forehead to the floor three times. This is
the celebrated "kow-tow." And it was "kow-tow" which sprang to the
lips and pens of commentators all over the world as they observed
Bush's elaborate propitiation of the Deng regime. Even cynics were
astounded that Bush could be so deferential to a regime that was
obviously so hated by its own population that it had to be considered
as being on its last legs.

In a press conference held on June 9, in the immediate wake of the
massacre, Bush astounded even the meretricious White House press corps
by his mild and obsequious tone toward Deng and his cohorts. Bush
limited his retaliation to a momentary cutoff of some military sales.
That would be all: "I'm one who lived in China; I understand the
importance of the relationship with the Chinese people and with the
government. It is in the interest of the United States to have good
relations...." / Note #1 / Note #4

This was the wimp with a vengeance, groveling and scraping like
Neville Chamberlain before the dictators, but there was more to come.
As part of his meek and pathetic response, Bush had pledged to
terminate all "high-level exchanges" with the Deng crowd. With this
public promise, Bush had cynically lied to the American people.
Shortly before Bush's invasion of Panama in December, it became known
that Bush had dispatched the two most prominent Kissinger clones in
his retinue, NSC Chairman Brent Scowcroft and Undersecretary of State
Lawrence Eagleburger, on a secret mission to Beijing over the July 4th
weekend, less than a month after the massacre in Tiananmen. The story
about Scowcroft and Eagleburger, both veterans of Kissinger
Associates, spending the glorious Fourth toasting the butchers of
Beijing was itself leaked in the wake of a high-profile public mission
to China involving the same Kissingerian duo that started December 7,
1989. Bush's cover story for the second trip was that he wanted to get
a briefing to Deng on the results of the Bush-Gorbachov Malta summit,
which had just concluded. The second trip was supposed to lead to the
quick release of Chinese physicist and dissident Fang Lizhi, who had
taken refuge in the U.S. embassy in Beijing during the massacre; this
did not occur until some time later.

The news of Bush's secret diplomacy in favor of Deng caused a
widespread wave of sincere and healthy public disgust with Bush, but
this was shortly overwhelmed by the jingoist hysteria that accompanied
Bush's invasion of Panama.

Bush's handling of the issue of the immigration status of the Chinese
students who had enrolled at U.S. universities also illuminated Bush's
character in the wake of Tiananmen. In Bush's pronouncements in the
immediate wake of the massacre, he absurdly asserted that there were
no Chinese students who wanted political asylum here, but also
promised that the visas of these (non-existent) students would be
extended so that they would not be forced to return to political
persecution and possible death in mainland China. It later turned out
that Bush had neglected to promulgate the executive orders that would
have been necessary. In response to Bush's prevarication about the
lives and well-being of the Chinese students, the Congress
subsequently passed legislation that would have waived the requirement
that holders of J-visas, the type commonly obtained by Chinese
students, be required to return to their home country for two years
before being able to apply for permanent residence in the U.S. Bush,
in an act of loathsome cynicism, vetoed this bill. The House voted to
override by a majority of 390 to 25, but Bush Democrats in the Senate
allowed Bush's veto to be sustained by a vote of 62 to 37. Bush,
squirming under the broad public obloquy brought on by his despicable
behavior, finally issued regulations that would temporarily waive the
requirement of returning home for most of the students.

Noriega and the Thornburgh Doctrine

George Bush's involvement with Panama goes back to operations
conducted in Central America and the Caribbean by Senator Prescott
Bush's Jupiter Island Harrimanite cabal. For the Bush clan, the
cathexis of Panama is very deep, since it is bound up with the
exploits of Theodore Roosevelt, the founder of twentieth-century U.S.
imperialism, which the Bush family is determined to defend to the
farthest corners of the planet. For it was Theodore Roosevelt who had
used the U.S.S. "Nashville" and other U.S. naval forces to prevent the
Colombian military from repressing the U.S.-fomented revolt of
Panamanian soldiers in November 1903, thus setting the stage for the
creation of an independent Panama and for the signing of the
Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty, which created a Panama Canal Zone under U.S.
control. Roosevelt's "cowboy diplomacy" had been excoriated in the
U.S. press of those days as "piracy."

Theodore Roosevelt had in December 1904 expounded his so-called
"Roosevelt Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine, in reality a complete
repudiation and perversion of the anticolonial essence of John Quincy
Adams's original warning to the British and other imperialists. The
self-righteous Teddy Roosevelt had stated, "Chronic wrongdoing ... may
in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some
civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the
United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States,
however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or
impotence, to the exercise of an international police power." / Note
#1 / Note #8

The old imperialist idea of Theodore Roosevelt was quickly revived by
the Bush administration during 1989. Through a series of actions by
Attorney General Richard Thornburgh, the U.S. Supreme Court, and CIA
Director William Webster, the Bush regime arrogated to itself a
sweeping carte blanche for extraterritorial interference in the
internal affairs of sovereign states, all in open defiance of the
norms of international law. These illegal innovations can be
summarized under the heading of the "Thornburgh Doctrine." The Federal
Bureau of Investigation arrogated to itself the "right" to search
premises outside of U.S. territory and to arrest and kidnap foreign
citizens outside of U.S. jurisdiction, all without the concurrence of
the judicial process of the other countries whose territory was thus
subject to violation. U.S. armed forces were endowed with the "right"
to take police measures against civilians. The CIA demanded that an
Executive Order prohibiting the participation of U.S. government
officials and military personnel in the assassination of foreign
political leaders, which had been issued by President Ford in October
1976, be rescinded. There is every indication that this presidential
ban on assassinations of foreign officials and politicians, which had
been promulgated in response to the Church and Pike Committees'
investigations of CIA abuses, has indeed been abrogated. To round out
this lawless package, an opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court issued on
February 28, 1990 permitted U.S. officials abroad to arrest (or
kidnap) and search foreign citizens without regard to the laws or
policy of the foreign nation subject to this interference. Through
these actions, the Bush regime effectively staked its claim to
universal extraterritorial jurisdiction, the classic posture of an
empire seeking to assert universal police power. The Bush regime
aspired to the status of a world power "legibus solutus," a superpower
exempted from all legal restrictions. / Note #1 / Note #9

The hostility of the U.S. government against General Noriega was
occasioned first of all by Noriega's refusal to be subservient to the
U.S. policy of waging war against the Sandinista regime. This was
explained by Noriega in an interview with CBS journalist Mike Wallace
on February 4, 1988, in which General Noriega described the U.S.
campaign against him as a "political conspiracy of the Department of
Justice." General Noriega described a visit to Panama on December 17,
1985 by Admiral John Poindexter, then the chief of the U.S. National
Security Council, who demanded that General Noriega join in acts of
war against Nicara gua, and then threatened Panama with economic
warfare and political destabilization when Noriega refused to go along
with Poindexter's plans: "Noriega: Poindexter said he came in the name
of President Reagan. He said that Panama and Mexico were acting
against U.S. policy in Central America because we were saying that the
Nicaragua conflict must be settled peacefully. And that wasn't good
enough for the plans of the Reagan administration. The single thing
that will protect us from being economically and politically attacked
by the United States is that we allow the Contras to be trained in
Panama for the fight against Nicaragua.

"Wallace: He told you that you would be economically attacked if you
didn't do that?

"Noriega: It was stated, Panama must expect economic consequences.
Your interest was that we should aid the Contras, and we said 'no' to
that."

Poindexter outlined plans for a U.S. invasion of Nicaragua that would
require the fig leaf of participation of troops from other countries
in the region:

"Noriega: Yes, they wanted to attack Nicaragua and the only reason it
hadn't already happened was that Panama was in the way, and all they
wanted was that Panama would open the way and make it possible for
them to continue their plans."

According to Noriega's adviser, Panamanian Defense Forces Captain
Cortiso, "[the U.S.] wanted that Panamanian forces attack first. Then
we would receive support from U.S. troops." / Note #3 / Note #7

It was in this same December 1985 period that Bush and Don Gregg met
with Ambassador Briggs to discuss Noriega's refusal to follow
dictation from Washington. According to Gregg in his deposition in the
Christic Institute lawsuit, "I think we [i.e., Bush and Gregg] came
away from the meeting with Ambassador Briggs with the sense that
Noriega was a growing problem, politically, militarily, and possibly
in the drug area." When pressed to comment about Noriega's alleged
relations to drug trafficking, Gregg could only add: "It would have
been part of the general picture of Noriega as a political problem,
corruption, and a general policy problem.... I don't recall any
specific discussion of Noriega's involvement in drugs," Gregg
testified. / Note #2 / Note #2

In this case it is quite possible that Don Gregg is for once providing
accurate testimony: The U.S. government decision to begin interference
in Panama's internal affairs for the overthrow of Noriega had nothing
to do with questions of drug trafficking. It was predicated on
Noriega's rejection of Poindexter's ultimatum demanding support for
the Nicaraguan Contras, themselves a notorious gang of drug-pushers
enjoying the full support of Bush and the U.S. government.

In addition to the question of Contra aid, another rationale for
official U.S. rage against Noriega had emerged during 1985. Panamanian
President Nicky Barletta, a darling of the State Department and a
former vice president of the genocidal World Bank, attempted to impose
a package of conditionalities and economic adjustment measures
dictated by the International Monetary Fund. This was a package of
brutal austerity, and riots soon erupted in protest against Barletta.
Noriega refused to comply with Barletta's request to use the
Panamanian military forces to put down these anti-austerity riots, and
the IMF austerity package was thus compromised. Barletta was shortly
forced out as President.

During 1986-87, Noriega cooperated with U.S. law enforcement officials
in a number of highly effective antidrug operations. This successful
joint effort was documented by letters of commendation sent to Noriega
by John C. Lawn, at that time head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration. On February 13, 1987, Lawn wrote to Noriega: "Your
longstanding support of the Drug Enforcement Administration is greatly
appreciated. International police cooperation and vigorous pursuit of
drug traffickers are our common goal." Later in the same year, Lawn
wrote to Noriega to commend the latter's contributions to Operation
Pisces, a joint U.S.-Panamanian effort against drug-smuggling and drug
money laundering. Panamanian participation was facilitated by a tough
new law, called Law 23, which contained tough new provisions against
drug money laundering. Lawn's letter to Noriega of May 27, 1987
includes the following:

"As you know, the recently concluded Operation Pisces was enormously
successful: many millions of dollars and many thousands of pounds of
drugs have been taken from the drug traffickers and international
money launderers....

"Again, the DEA and officials of Panama have together dealt an
effective blow against drug dealers and international money
launderers. Your personal commitment to Operation Pisces and the
competent, professional, and tireless efforts of other officials in
the Republic of Panama were essential to the final positive outcome of
this investigation. Drug dealers throughout the world now know that
the profits of their illegal operations are not welcome in Panama. The
operation of May 6 led to the freezing of millions of dollars in the
bank accounts of drug dealers. Simultaneously, bank papers were
confiscated that gave officials important insights into the drug trade
and the laundering operations of the drug trade. The DEA has always
valued close cooperation, and we are prepared to proceed together
against international drug dealers whenever the opportunity presents
itself." / Note #2 / Note #4

By a striking coincidence, it was in June 1987, just one month after
this glowing tribute had been written, that the U.S. government
declared war against Panama, initiating a campaign to destabilize
Noriega on the pretexts of lack of democracy and corruption. On June
30, 1987, the U.S. State Department demanded the ouster of General
Noriega. Elliott Abrams, the assistant secretary of state for Latin
American affairs, later indicted for perjury in 1991 for his role in
the Iran-Contra scandal and coverup, to which he pled guilty, made the
announcement. Abrams took note of a resolution passed on June 23 by
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee demanding the creation of a
"democratic government" in Panama, and officially concurred, thus
making the toppling of Noriega the official U.S. policy. Abrams also
demanded that the Panamanian military be freed of "political
corruption."

These were precisely the destabilization measures which Poindexter had
threatened 18 months earlier. The actual timing of the U.S. demand for
the ouster of Noriega appears to have been dictated by resentment in
the U.S. financial community over Noriega's apparent violation of
certain taboos in his measures against drug money laundering. As the
"New York Times" commented on August 10, 1987: "The political crisis
follows closely what bankers here saw as a serious breach of bank
secrecy regulations. Earlier this year, as part of an American
campaign against the laundering of drug money, the Panamanian
government froze a few suspect accounts here in a manner that bankers
and lawyers regarded as arbitrary." These were precisely the actions
lauded by the DEA's John Lawn.

On August 12, 1987, Noriega responded to the opposition campaigns
fomented by the U.S. inside Panama by declaring that the aim of
Washington and its Panamanian minions was "to smash Panama as a free
and independent nation. It is a repetition of what Teddy Roosevelt did
when he militarily attacked following the separation of Panama from
Colombia."

On August 13, 1987, the "Los Angeles Times" reported that U.S.
Assistant Attorney General Stephen Trott, who had headed up the
Department of Justice "Get Noriega" Task Force for more than a year,
had sent out orders to "pull together everything that we have on him
[Noriega] in order to see if he is prosecutable." This classic
enemies-list operation was clearly aimed at fabricating drug charges
against Noriega, since that was the political spin which the U.S.
regime wished to impart to its attack on Panama. In February 1988,
Noriega was indicted on U.S. drug charges, despite a lack of evidence
and an even more compelling lack of jurisdiction. This indictment was
quickly followed by economic sanctions, an emba rgo on trade and other
economic warfare measures that were invoked by Washington on March 2,
1988. All of these measures were timed to coincide with the "Super
Tuesday" presidential preference primaries in the southern states.

During the spring of 1988, the Reagan administration conducted a
negotiation with Noriega with the declared aim of convincing him to
relinquish power in exchange for having the drug charges against him
dropped. In May, Michael G. Kozak, the deputy assistant secretary of
state for inter-American affairs, had been sent to Panama to meet with
Noriega. Bush had come under attack from other presidential
candidates, especially Dukakis, for being soft on Noriega and seeking
a plea bargain with the Panamanian leader. Bush first took the floor
during the course of an administration policy-making meeting to
advocate an end of the bargaining with Noriega. According to press
reports, this proposal was "hotly contested." Then, in a speech in Los
Angeles, Bush made one of his exceedingly rare departures from the
Reagan line, by announcing with a straight face that a Bush
administration would not "bargain with drug dealers" at home or
abroad. / Note #2 / Note #5

Bush's interest in Noriega continued after he had assumed the
presidency. On April 6, 1989, Bush formally declared that the
government of Panama represented an "unusual and extraordinary threat"
to U.S. national security and foreign policy. He invoked the National
Emergencies Act and the International Emergency Act to declare a state
of "national emergency" in this country to meet the menace allegedly
posed by the nationalists of little Panama. The May 1, 1989 issue of
"U.S. News and World Report" revealed that Bush had authorized the
expenditure of $10 million in CIA funds for operations against the
Panamanian government. These funds were obviously to be employed to
influence the Panamanian elections, which were scheduled for early
May. The money was delivered to Panama by CIA bagman Carlos Eleta
Almaran, who had just been arrested in Georgia on charges of drug
trafficking. On May 2, with one eye on those elections, Bush attempted
to refurbish his wimp image with a blustering tirade delivered to the
David Rockefeller-controlled Council of the Americas in which he
stated: "Let me say one thing clearly. The U.S.A. will not accept the
results of fraudulent elections that serve to keep the supreme
commander of the Panamanian armed forces in power." This made clear
that Bush intended to declare the elections undemocratic if the
pro-Noriega candidates were not defeated.

The CIA's $10 million and other monies were used to finance an
extensive covert operation which aimed at stealing the elections on
May 7. The U.S.-supported Civic Democratic Alliance, whose candidate
was Guillermo Endara, purchased votes, bribed the election officials,
and finally physically absconded with the official vote tallies.
Because of the massive pattern of fraud and irregularities, the
Panamanian government annulled the election. Somewhere along the line,
the usual U.S.-staged "people power" upsurge had failed to
materialize. The inability of Bush to force through a victory by the
anti-Noriega opposition was a first moment of humiliation for the
would-be Rough Rider.

Speaking at the commencement ceremonies of Mississippi State
University in Starkville, Mississippi, Bush issued a formal call to
the citizens and soldiers of Panama to overthrow Noriega, asserting
that "they ought to do everything they can to get Mr. Noriega out of
there." Asked whether this was a call for a military coup against
Noriega, Bush replied: "I would love to see them get him out of there.
Not just the PDF -- the will of the people of Panama." Bush elaborated
that his was a call for "a revolution...."

During this period, Admiral William Crowe, the chairman of the U.S.
Joint Chiefs of Staff, attempted to convince the U.S. commander in
Panama, Gen. Frederick F. Woerner, to accept a brigade-sized
reinforcement of 3,000 troops in addition to the 12,000 men already
stationed in Panama. Woerner declined the additional men, which the
Pentagon had intended to dispatch with great fanfare in an attempt to
intimidate Noriega and his triumphant supporters.

Operation Blue Spoon

At this point, the Pentagon activated preparations for Operation Blue
Spoon, which included a contingency plan to kidnap Noriega with the
help of a Delta Force unit. There were discussions about whether an
attempt could be made to abduct Noriega with any likelihood of
success; it was concluded that Noriega was very wily and exceedingly
difficult to track. It was in the course of these deliberations that
Defense Secretary Cheney is reported to have told Crowe, "You know,
the President has got a long history of vindictive political actions.
Cross Bush and you pay," he said, supplying the names of a few victims
and adding: "Bush remembers and you have to be careful." / Note #2 /
Note #6 Thus intimidated by Bush, the military commanders concurred in
Bush's announcement of a brigade-sized reinforcement for Woerner, plus
the secret dispatch of Delta Forces and Navy Seals. On July 17, Bush
approved a plan to "assert U.S. treaty rights" by undertaking
demonstrative military provocations in violation of the treaty.
Woerner was soon replaced by Gen. Maxwell Reid "Mad Max" Thurman, who
would bring no qualms to his assignment of aggression. Thurman took
over at the Southern Command on September 30.

In the wake of this tirade, the U.S. forces in Panama began a
systematic campaign of military provocations. In July, the U.S. forces
began practicing how to seize control of important Panamanian military
installations and civilian objectives, all in flagrant violation of
the Panama Canal Treaty. On July 1, for example, the town of Gamboa
was seized and held for 24 hours by U.S. troops, tanks, and
helicopters. The mayor of the town and 30 other persons were illegally
detained during this "maneuver." In Chilibre, the U.S. forces occupied
the key water purification plant serving Panama City and Colon. On
August 15, Bush escalated the rhetoric still further by proclaiming
that he had the obligation "to kidnap Noriega." Then, during the first
days of October, there came an abortive U.S.-sponsored coup attempt,
followed by the public humiliation of George Bush, who had failed to
measure up to the standards of efficacy set by Theodore Roosevelt.

The provocations continued all the way up to the December 20 invasion.

In his speech delivered at 7:20 a.m. on December 21, 1989 announcing
the U.S. invasion, Bush said: "Many attempts have been made to resolve
this crisis through diplomacy and negotiations. All were rejected by
the dictator of Panama, Gen. Manuel Noriega, an indicted drug
trafficker.

"Last Friday, Noriega declared his military dictatorship to be in a
state of war with the United States and publicly threatened the lives
of Americans in Panama. The very next day forces under his command
shot and killed an unarmed American serviceman, wounded another,
arrested and brutally beat a third American serviceman and then
brutally interrogated his wife, threatening her with sexual abuse.
That was enough." / Note #2 / Note #7

Bush Orders Holocaust

The U.S. military operations, which got under way just after midnight
on Tuesday, were conducted with unusual ferocity. Mad Max Thurman sent
in the new Stealth and A-7 fighter-bombers, and AC-13 gunships. The
neighborhood around Noriega's Comandancia, called El Chorillo, was
bombarded with a vengeance and virtually razed, as was the
working-class district of San Miguelito, and large parts of the city
of Colon.

U.S. commanders had been instructed that Bush wished to avoid U.S.
casualties at all costs, and that any hostile fire was to be answered
by overwhelming U.S. firepower, without regard to the number of
civilian casualties that this might produce among the Panamanians.
Many of the Panamanian civilian dead were secretly buried in unmarked
mass graves during the dead of night by the U.S. forces; many other
bodies were consumed in the holocaust of fires that leveled El
Chorillo. The Institute of Seismology counted 417 bomb bu rsts in
Panama City alone during the first 14 hours of the U.S. invasion. For
many days there were no U.S. estimates of the civilian dead (or
"collateral damage"), and eventually the Bush regime set the death
toll for Panamanian noncombatants at slightly over 200. In reality, as
"Executive Intelligence Review" and former U.S. Attorney General
Ramsey Clark pointed out, there had been approximately 5,000 innocent
civilian victims, including large numbers of women and children.

U.S. forces rounded up 10,000 suspected political opponents of
"democracy" and incarcerated them in concentration camps, calling many
of them prisoners of war. Many political prisoners were held for
months after the invasion without being charged with any specific
offense, a clear violation of the norms of "habeas corpus." The
combined economic devastation caused by 30 months of U.S. sanctions
and economic warfare, plus the results of bombardments, firefights and
torchings, had taken an estimated $7 billion out of the Panamanian
economy, in which severe poverty was the lot of most of the
population, apart from the "rabiblanco" bankers who were the main
support for Bush's intervention. The bombing left 15,000 homeless. The
Endara government purged several thousand government officials and
civil servants under the pretext that they had been tainted by their
association with Noriega.

Perhaps not by accident, the new U.S. puppet regime could only be
described as a congeries of drug pushers and drug money launderers.
The most succinct summary was provided by the "International Herald
Tribune" on February 7, 1990, which reported: "The nation's new
President Guillermo Endara has for years been a director of one of the
Panamanian banks used by Colombia's drug traffickers. Guillermo Ford,
the Second Vice President and chairman of the banking commission, is a
part owner of the Dadeland Bank of Florida, which was named in a court
case two years ago as a central financial institution for one of the
biggest Medellin money launderers, Gonzalo Mora. Rogelio Cruz, the new
Attorney General, has been a director of the First Interamericas Bank,
owned by Rodriguez Orejuela, one of the bosses of the Cali Cartel gang
in Colombia."

The portly Guillermo Endara was also the business partner and
corporate attorney of Carlos Eleta Almaran, the CIA bagman already
mentioned. Eleta Almaran, the owner of the Panamanian branch of Philip
Morris Tobacco was arraigned in Bibb County, Georgia in April 1989 by
DEA officials, who accused him of conspiracy to import 600 kilos of
cocaine per month into the U.S., and to set up dummy corporations to
launder the estimated $300 million in profits this project was
expected to produce. Eleta was first freed on $8 million bail; after
the "successful" U.S. invasion of Panama, all charges against him were
ordered dropped by Bush and Thornburgh.

As for Endara's first vice president, Ricardo Arias Calderon, his
brother, Jaime Arias Calderon, was president of the First
Interamericas Bank when that bank was controlled by the Cali Cartel.
Jaime Arias Calderon was also the co-owner of the Banco Continental,
which laundered $40 million in drug money, part of which was used to
finance the activities of the anti-Noriega opposition. Thus, all of
Bush's most important newly installed puppets were implicated in
drug-dealing.

The invasion presented some very difficult moments for Bush. From the
beginning of the operation late on December 20, until Christmas Eve,
the imposing U.S. martial apparatus had proven incapable of locating
and capturing Noriega. The U.S. Southern Command was terrorized when a
few Noriega loyalists launched a surprise attack on U.S. headquarters
with mortars, scattering the media personnel who had been grinding out
their propaganda.

There was great fear through the U.S. command that Noriega had
successfully implemented a plan for the PDF to melt away to arms
caches and secret bases in the Panamanian jungle for a prolonged
guerrilla warfare effort. As it turned out, Noriega had failed to give
the order to disperse.

At War With the Vatican

Then, on the evening of December 24, it was reported that Noriega,
armed with an Uzi machine gun, had made his way unchallenged and
undetected to the Papal Nunciature in Panama City where he had asked
for and obtained political asylum.

The standoff that then developed encapsulated the hereditary war of
the Bush family with the Holy See and the Roman Catholic Church. For
eight days, U.S. troops surrounded the Nunciature, which they
proceeded to bombard with deafening decibels of explicitly satanic
heavy metal and other hard rock music, which, according to some
reports, had been personally chosen by Mad Max Thurman in order to
"unnerve Noriega and the Nuncio," Monsignor LaBoa.

At the same time, Bush ordered the State Department to carry out real
acts of thuggery in making threatening representations to the Holy
See. It became clear that Roman Catholic priests, nuns, monks and
prelates would soon be in danger in many countries of Ibero-America.
Nevertheless, the Vatican declined to expel Noriega from the
Nunciature in accordance with U.S. demands. Bush's forces in Panama
had shown they were ready to play fast and loose with diplomatic
immunity. A number of foreign embassies were broken into by U.S.
troops while they were frantically searching for Noriega, and the
Cuban and Nicaraguan embassies were ringed with tanks and troops in a
ham-handed gesture of intimidation. It is clear that in this context,
Bush contemplated the storming of the Nunciature by U.S. forces.

In Panama City, the Endara-Ford-Arias Calderon forces mobilized their
BMW base and hired hundreds of those who had nothing to eat for
militant demonstrations outside of the Nunciature. These were
liberally seeded with U.S. special forces and other commandos in
civilian clothes. As the demonstrations grew more menacing, and the
U.S. troops and tanks made no move to restrain them, it was clear that
the U.S. forces were preparing to stage a violent but "spontaneous"
assault by the masses on the Nunciature that would include the
assassination of Noriega and the small group of his co-workers who had
accompanied him into that building. At about this time, Monsignor
LaBoa warned Noriega, "you could be lynched like Mussolini." Noriega
appears to have concluded that remaining in the Nunciature meant
certain death for himself and his subordinates at the hands of the
U.S. commandos operating under the cover of the mob. LaBoa and the
others on the staff of the Nunciature would also be in grave danger.
On January 3, 1990, after thanking LaBoa and giving him a letter to
the Pope, Noriega, dressed in his general's uniform, left the
Nunciature and surrendered to General Cisneros.

A Crime and a Failure

In Bush's speech of December 20 he had offered the following
justification for his act of war, Operation Just Cause: "The goals of
the United States have been to safeguard the lives of Americans, to
defend democracy in Panama, to combat drug trafficking, and to protect
the integrity of the Panama Canal Treaty."

If these were the goals, then Bush's invasion of Panama must be
counted not only a crime, but also a failure.

On April 5, 1991, newspapers all over Ibero-America carried details of
a new report by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration confirming
that the U.S.-installed puppet President of Panama, Guillermo Endara,
had been an officer of at least six companies which had been
demonstrably implicated in laundering drug money. These were the Banco
General, the Banco de Colombia, the Union Bank of Switzerland, the
Banco Aleman, the Primer Banco de Ahorros, Sudameris, Banaico and the
Banco del Istmo. The money laundered came from a drug-smuggling ring
headed up by Augusto Falcon and Salvador Magluta of Colombia, who are
reported to have smuggled an average of one ton of cocaine per month
into Florida during the decade 1977-87, including many of the years
during which Bush's much-touted South Florida Task Force and related
operations were in operation.

With the puppet President so heavily implicated in the activity of the
international drug mafia, it can be no surprise that the plague of
illegal drugs has markedly worsened in the wake of Bush's invasion.
According to the London "Independent" of March 5, 1991, "statistics
now indicate that since General Noriega's departure, cocaine
trafficking has, in fact, prospered" in the country. On March 1, the
State Department had conceded that the turnover of drug money
laundered in Panama had at least regained the levels attained before
the 1989 invasion. According to the "Los Angeles Times" of April 28,
1991, current levels of drug-trafficking in Panama "in some cases
exceed" what existed before the December 20 invasion, and U.S.
officials "say the trend is sharply upward and includes serious
movements by the Colombian cartels into areas largely ignored under
Noriega."

Bush's invasion of Panama has done nothing to fight the scourge of
illegal narcotics. Rather, the fact that so many of Bush's hand-picked
puppets can be shown to be top figures in the drug mafia suggests that
drug-trafficking through Panama toward the United States has increased
after the ouster of Noriega. If drug shipments to the United States
have increased, this exposes Bush's pledge to "protect the lives of
Americans" as a lie.

As far as the promise of democracy is concerned, it must be stressed
that Panama has remained under direct U.S. military dictatorship and
virtual martial law until this writing in the late autumn of 1991, two
years after Bush's adventure was launched. The congressional and local
elections that were conducted during early 1991 were thoroughly
orchestrated by the U.S. occupation forces. Army intelligence units
interrogated potential voters, and medical battalions handed out
vaccines and medicines to urban and rural populations to encourage
them to vote. Every important official in the Panamanian government
from Endara on down has U.S. military "liaison officers" assigned on a
permanent basis. These officers are from the Defense Department's
Civic Action-Country Area Team (or CA-CAT), a counterinsurgency
apparatus that parallels the "civic action" teams unleashed during the
Vietnam War. CA-CAT officers supervise all government ministries and
even supervise police precincts in Panama City. The Panamanian Defense
Forces have been dissolved, and the CA-CAT officers are busily
creating a new constabulary, the Fuerza Publica.

Radio station and newspaper editors who spoke out against the U.S.
invasion or criticized the puppet regime were jailed or intimidated,
as in the case of the publisher Escolastico Calvo, who was held in
concentration camps and jails for some months after the invasion
without an arrest warrant and without specificcharges.

Trade union rights are non-existent: After a demonstration by 100,000
persons in December 1990 had protested growing unemployment and
Endara's plans to "privatize" the state sector by selling it off for a
song to the "rabiblanco" bankers, all of the labor leaders who had
organized the march were fired from their jobs, and arrest warrants
were issued against 100 union officials by the government.

In the wake of Bush's invasion, the economy of Panama has not been
rebuilt, but has rather collapsed further into misery. The Bush
administration has set as the first imperative for the puppet regime
the maintenance of debt service on Panama's $6 billion in
international debt. Debt service payments take precedence over
spending on public works, public health, and all other categories.
Bush had promised Panama $2 billion for post-invasion reconstruction,
but he later reduced this to $1 billion. What was finally forthcoming
was just $460 million, most of which was simply transferred to the
Wall Street banks in order to defray the debt service owed by Panama.
The figure of $460 million scarcely exceeds the $400 million in
Panamanian holdings that were supposedly frozen by the United States
during the period of economic warfare against Noriega, but which were
then given to the New York banks, also for debt service payments.

As far as the integrity of the Panama Canal Treaty signed by Torrijos
and Carter, and ratified by the U.S. Senate, is concerned, on February
7, 1989, Rep. Philip Crane (R-Il.) introduced a House Joint
Resolution, with 26 co-sponsors, to express "the sense of the Congress
that the President or the Congress should abrogate the Panama Canal
Treaties of 1977 and the Neutrality Treaty." Then on March 21, 1991,
Senator Larry Craig (R-Id.), together with Rep. Philip Crane on the
House side, introduced a concurrent resolution, calling on George Bush
to renegotiate the Canal Treaties "to permit the United States Armed
Forces to remain in Panama beyond Dec. 31, 1999, and to permit the
U.S. to act independently to continue to protect the Panama Canal" --
i.e., for the United States to keep a military presence in Panama
indefinitely. These resolutions are still pending before the Congress.

Thus, on every point enumerated by Bush as basic to his policy -- the
lives of Americans, Panamanian democracy, anti-drug operations, and
the integrity of the treaty -- Bush has obtained a fiasco. Bush's
invasion of Panama will stand as a chapter of shame and infamy in the
recent history of the United States.

Notes for Chapter XXIV

14. Transcript of President Bush's press conference, "Washington
Post," June 9, 1989.

18. "Congressional Record," 58th Congress, 3rd session, p. 19.

19. See "Police State and Global Gendarme: The United States under the
Thornburgh Doctrine," "American Leviathan: Administrative Fascism
under the Bush Regime," (Wiesbaden: EIR News Service, 1990), pp.
61-102.

21. "Panama: Atrocities of the 'Big Stick,'|" in "American Leviathan",
pp. 39-40.

22. For Gregg's testimony on Bush-Noriega relations, see "Testimony on
Bush Meeting With Panama Ambassador," "New York Times," May 21, 1988.

24. "American Leviathan," pp. 41-42.

25. "Bush Presses to Cut Off Talks with Noriega," "Washington Post,"
May 20, 1988.

26. Bob Woodward, "The Commanders" (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1991), p. 89.

27. Text of President Bush's Address, "Washington Post," Dec. 21,
1989.
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