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The Story of the Bush Crime Family

Former President George H.W. Bush and his son, George W. Bush.

George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, Continued

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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 carefullyreviewed the FBI memorandum to the Director, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Department of State dated November 29, 1963 which mentions a Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency.... I do not recognize the contents of the memorandum as information furnished to me orally or otherwise during the time I was at the CIA. In fact, during my time at the CIA, I did not receive any oral communications from any government agency of any nature whatsoever. I did not receive any information relating to the Kennedy assassination during my time at the CIA from the FBI. "Based on the above, it is my conclusion that I am not the Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency referred to in the memorandum." / 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 thestate AFL-CIO and its Committee on Political Education (COPE) for gearing up to help Yarborough in his race. For Bush, this meant that the AFL-CIO was not supporting the "two-party system." "A strong pitch is being made to dun the [union] membership to help elect Yarborough," he charged, "long before Yarborough's opponent is even known." Bush also spoke out during this period on foreign affairs. He demanded that President Kennedy "muster the courage" to undertake a new attack on Cuba. / 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 kindof manifesto for a worldwide U.S. imperialist and colonialist offensive -- a precursor of the new world order "ante litteram." A March 30 campaign release proclaims the "Freedom Package" in these terms: "|'I do not want to continue to live in a world where there is no hope for a real and lasting peace,' Bush said. He decried 'withdrawal symptoms' propounded by U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson and Senators William Fulbright and Mike Mansfield. 'Adlai has proposed we [inter]nationalize the Panama Canal,' Bush pointed out, 'Fulbright asks us to accommodate Red Cuba and renegotiate our Panama treaty, and Mansfield suggests we withdraw from the Viet Nam struggle. This is the kind of retreatism we have grown accustomed to among our supposed world leaders and it is just what the Kremlin ordered.'|" Nor did Bush's obsession with Panama and the Panama Canal begin with Noriega. In his campaign literature, Bush printed his basic position that the "Panama Canal ... is ours by right of treaty and historical circumstance. The Canal is critical to our domestic security and U.S. sovereignty over the Canal must be maintained." What is meant by the right of historical circumstance? "I am opposed to further negotiation in Panama," Bush stated repeatedly in his campaign speeches and releases.... Unbridled Free Enterprise In economic policy, Bush's starting point was always "unbridled free enterprise," as he stressed in a statement on unemployment on March 16: "Only unbridled free enterprise can cure unemployment. But, I don't believe the federal government has given the private sector of our economy a genuine opportunity to relieve this unemployment. For example, the [Johnson war on poverty program] contains a new version of the CCC, a Domestic Peace Corps, and various and sundry half-baked pies in the sky." Bush's printed campaign literature stated, under the heading of "federal economy," that "the free enterprise system must be unfettered. A strong economy means jobs, opportunity, and prosperity. A controlled economy means loss of freedom and bureaucratic bungling." On April 21, Bush told the voters: "We must begin a phase of re-emphasizing the private sector of our economy, instead of the public sector." By April 15, Bush had been informed that there were some 33 million Americans living in poverty, to which he replied: "I cannot see how draping a socialistic medi-care program around the sagging neck of our social security program will be a blow to poverty. And I can see only one answer to [the problem of poverty]: Let us turn our free enterprise system loose from government control." Otherwise, Bush held it "the responsibility of the local government first to assume the burden of relieving poverty wherever its exists, and I know of many communities that are more than capable of working with this problem." Bush's approach to farm policy was along similar lines, combining the rhetoric of Adam Smith with intransigent defense of the food cartels. In his campaign brochure he opined that "Agriculture ... must be restored to a free market economy, subject to the basic laws of supply and demand." On April 9 in Waco, Bush assailed the Wheat-Cotton subsidy bill which had just received the approval of the House. "If I am elected to the Senate," said Bush, I will judge each agricultural measure on the basis of whether it gets the Government further into, or out of, private business." Bush added that farm subsidies are among "our most expensive federal programs." Another of Bush's recurrent obsessions was his desire to break the labor movement. During the 1960s, he expressed this in the context of campaigns to prevent the repeal of section 14 (b) of the Taft-Hartley law, which permitted the states to outlaw the closed shop and union shop, and thus to protect state laws guaranteeing the so-called open shop or "right to work," a device which in practice prevented the organization of large sectors of the working population of these states into unions. Bush's editorializing takes him back to the era when the Sherman Antitrust Act was still being use d against labor unions. "I believe in the right-to-work laws," said Bush to a group of prominent Austin businessmen at a luncheon in the Commodore Perry Hotel on March 5. "At every opportunity, I urge union members to resist payment of political assessments. If there's only one in 100 who thinks for himself and votes for himself, then he should not be assessed by COPE." On March 19, Bush asserted that "labor's blatant attack on right-to-work laws is open admission that labor does have a monopoly and will take any step to make this monopoly. Union demands are a direct cause of the inflationary spiral lowering the real income of workers and increasing the costs of production." This is, from the point of scientific economics, an absurdity. But four days later Bush returned to the topic, attacking United Auto Workers President Walter Reuther, a figure whom Bush repeatedly sought to identify with Yarborough, for demands which "will only cause the extinction of free enterprise in America. A perfect example of labor's pricing a product out of existence is found in West Virginia. John L. Lewis's excessive demands on the coal industry raised the price of coal, forced the consumer to use a substitute cheaper product, killed the coal industry and now West Virginia has an excessive rate of unemployment." On Labor Day, Bush spoke to a rally in the courthouse square of Quanah, and called for "protection of the rights of the individual laborer through the state rather than the federal government. The individual laboring man is being forgotten by the Walter Reuthers and Ralph Yarboroughs, and it's up to the business community to protect our country's valuable labor resources from exploitation by these left-wing labor leaders," said Bush, who might just as well have suggested that the fox be allowed to guard the chicken coop. East Texas was an area of unusually high racial tension, and Bush spent most of his time there attacking the civil rights bill. But the alliance between Yarborough and big labor was one of his favorite themes. The standard pitch went something like this, as before the Austin businessmen. Yarborough, he would start off saying, "more nearly represents the state of Michigan than he does Texas." This, as we will see, was partly an attempted, lame rebuttal of Yarborough's charge that Bush was a northeastern carpetbagger. Bush would then continue: "One of the main reasons Yarborough represents Texas so badly is that he's spending most of his time representing labor interests in Detroit. His voting record makes men like Walter Reuther and James Hoffa very happy. This man has voted for every special interest bill, for every big spending measure that's come to his attention." During this period Camco, an oilfield equipment company of which Bush was a director, was embroiled in some bitter labor disputes. The regional office of the National Labor Relations Board sought a federal injunction against Camco in order to force the firm to re-hire four union organizers who had been illegally fired. Officials of the Machinists Union, which was trying to organize Camco, also accused Bush of being complicit in what they said was Camco's illegal failure to carry out a 1962 NLRB order directing Camco to re-hire 11 workers, fired because they had attended a union meeting. Bush answered that he was not going to be intimidated by labor. "As everybody knows, the union bosses are all-out for Sen. Ralph Yarborough," countered Bush, and he had been too busy with Zapata to pay attention to Camco anyway. / 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 s