The Story of the Bush Crime Family
Former President George H.W. Bush and his son, George W. Bush.
George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, Page 3
Nixon had promised Bush an attractive and prestigious political plum in the executive branch, and it was now time for Nixon to deliver. Bush's problem was that in late 1970 Nixon was more interested in what another Texan could contribute to his administration. That other Texan was John Connally, who had played the role of Bush's nemesis in the elections just concluded, by virtue of the encouragement and decisive support which Connally had given to the Bentsen candidacy. Nixon was now fascinated by the prospect of including the right-wing Democrat Connally in his cabinet in order to provide himself with a patina of bipartisanship, while emphasizing the dissension among the Democrats, strengthening Nixon's chances of successfully executing his Southern Strategy a second time during the 1972 elections. The word among Nixon's inner circle of this period was "The Boss is in love," and the object of his affections was Big Jawn. Nixon claimed that he was not happy with the stature of his current cabinet, telling his domestic policy advisor John Ehrlichman in the fall of 1970 that "Every cabinet should have at least one potential President in it. Mine doesn't." Nixon had tried to recruit leading Democrats before, asking Senator Henry Jackson to be secretary of defense and offering the post of United Nations ambassador to Hubert Humphrey. Within hours after the polls had closed in the Texas Senate race, Bush received a call from Charles Bartlett, a Washington columnist who was part of the Prescott Bush network. Bartlett tipped Bush to the fact that Treasury Secretary David Kennedy was leaving, and urged him to make a grab for the job. Bush called Nixon and put in his request. After that, he waited by the telephone. But it soon became clear that Nixon was about to recruit John Connally, and with him, perhaps, the important Texas electoral votes in 1972. Secretary of the Treasury! One of the three or four top posts in the cabinet! And that before Bush had been given anything for all of his useless slogging through the 1970 campaign! But the job was about to go to Connally. Over two decades, one can almost hear Bush's whining complaint. This move was not totally unprepared. During the fall of 1970, when Connally was campaigning for Bentsen against Bush, Connally had been invited to participate in the Ash Commission, a study group on government re-organization chaired by Roy Ash. "This White House access was dangerously undermining George Bush," complained Texas GOP chairman O'Donnell. A personal friend of Bush on the White House staff named Peter Flanigan, generated a memo to White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman with the notation: "Connally is an implacable enemy of the Republican party in Texas, and, therefore, attractive as he may be to the President, we should avoid using him again." Nixon found Connally an attractive political property, and had soon appointed him to the main White House panel for intelligence evaluations: "On November 30, when Connally's appointment to the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board was announced, the senior Senator from Texas, John Tower, and George Bush were instantly in touch with the White House to express their 'extreme' distress over the appointment. / Note #2 Tower was indignant because he had been promised by Ehrlichman some time before that Connally was not going to receive an important post. Bush's personal plight was even more poignant: "He was out of work, and he wanted a job. As a defeated senatorial candidate, he hoped and fully expected to get a major job in the administration. Yet the administration seemed to be paying more attention to the very Democrat who had put him on the job market. What gives? Bush was justified in asking." / Note #3 The appointment of Connally to replace David Kennedy as secretary of the Treasury was concluded during the first week of December 1970. But it could not be announced without causing an upheaval among the Texas Republicans until something had been done for lame duck George. On December 7, Nixon retainer H.R. Haldeman was writing memos to himself in the White House. The first was: "Connally set." Then came: "Have to do something for Bush right away." Could Bush become the director of NASA? How about the Small Business Administration? Or the Republican National Committee? Or then again, he might like to be White House congressional liaison, or perhaps undersecretary of commerce. As one account puts it, "since no job immediately came to mind, Bush was assured that he would come to the White House as a top presidential adviser on something or other, until another fitting job opened up." Bush was called to the White House on December 9, 1970 to meet with Nixon and talk about a post as assistant to the President "with a wide range of unspecified general responsibilities," according to a White House memo initialed by H.R. Haldeman. Bush accepted such a post at one point in his haggling with the Nixon White House. But Bush also sought the U.N. job, arguing that there "was a dirth [sic] of Nixon advocacy in New York City and the general New York area that he could fill that need in the New York social circles he would be moving in as ambassador. / Note #4 Nix on's U.N. ambassador had been Charles Yost, a Democrat who was now leaving. But the White House had already offered that job to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who had accepted. But then Moynihan decided that he did not want the U.N. ambassador post after all, and, with a sigh of relief, the White House offered it to Bush. Bush's appointment was announced on December 11, Connally's on December 14. / Note #5 In offering the post to Bush, Haldeman had been brutally frank, telling him that the job, although of cabinet rank, would have no power attached to it. Bush, stressed Haldeman, would be taking orders directly from Kissinger. Bush says he replied, "even if somebody who took the job didn't understand that, Henry Kissinger would give him a twenty-four hour crash course on the subject." / Note #6 Nixon told his cabinet and the Republican congressional leadership on December 14, 1970 what had been in the works for some time: that Connally was "coming not only as a Democrat but as Secretary of the Treasury for the next two full years." Even more humiliating for Bush wasthe fact that our hero had been on the receiving end of Connally's assistance. As Nixon told the cabinet: "Connally said he wouldn't take it until George Bush got whatever he was entitled to. I don't know why George wanted the U.N. appointment, but he wanted it so he got it." Only this precondition from Connally, by implication, had finally prompted Nixon to take care of poor George. Nixon turned to Senator Tower, who was in the meeting: "This is hard for you. I am for every Republican running. We need John Tower back in 1972." Tower replied: "I'm a pragmatic man. John Connally is philosophically attuned to you. He is articulate and persuasive. I for one will defend him against those in our own party who may not like him." / Note #7 There is evidence that Nixon considered Connally to be a possible successor in the presidency. Connally's approach to the international monetary crisis then unfolding was that "all foreigners are out to screw us and it's our job to screw them first," as he told C. Fred Bergsten of Kissinger's National Security Council staff. Nixon's bumbling management of the international monetary crisis was one of the reasons why he was Watergated, and Big Jawn was certainly seen by the financiers as a big part of the problem. Bush was humiliated in this episode, but that is nothing compared to what later happened to both Connally and Nixon. Connally would be indicted while Bush was in Beijing, and later he would face the further humilation of personal bankruptcy. In the view of James Reston, Jr., "George Bush was to maintain a smoldering, visceral dislike of Connally, one that lasted well into the 1980s." / Note #8 As others discovered during the Gulf war, Bush is vindictive. Confirmed by the Senate Bush appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for his pro forma and perfunctory confirmation hearings on February 8, 1971. It was a free ride. Many of the Senators had known Prescott Bush, and several were still Prescott's friends. Acting like friends of the family, they gave Bush friendly advice with a tone that was congratulatory and warm, and avoided any tough questions. Stuart Symington warned Bush that he would have to deal with the "duality of authority" between his nominal boss, Secretary of State William Rogers, and his real boss, NSC chief Kissinger. There was only passing reference to Bush's service of the oil cartel during his time in the House, and Bush vehemently denied that he had ever tried to "placate" the "oil interests." Claiborne Pell said that Bush would enhance the luster of the U.N. post. On policy matters, Bush said that it would "make sense" for the U.N. Security Council to conduct a debate on the wars in Laos and Cambodia, which was something that the United States had been attempting to procure for some time. Bush thought that such a debate could be used as a forum to expose the aggressive activities of the North Vietnamese. No senator asked Bush about China, but Bush told journalists waiting in the hall that the question of China was now under intensive study. The "Washington Post" was impressed by Bush's "lithe and youthful good looks." Bush was easily confirmed. At Bush's swearing-in later in February, Nixon, probably anxious to calm Bush down after the strains of the Connally affair, had recalled that President William McKinley had lost an election in Ohio, but neverthless gone on to become President. "But I'm not suggesting what office you should seek and at what time," said Nixon. The day before, Senator Adlai Stevenson III of Illinois had told the press that Bush was "totally unqualified" and that his appointment had been "an insult" to the U.N. Bush presented his credentials on March 1. Then Bush, "handsome and trim" at 47, moved into a suite at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan, and settled into his usual hyperkinetic, thyroid-driven lifestyle. The "Washington Post" marveled at his "whirlwind schedule" which seemed more suitable for a "political aspirant than one usually associated with a diplomat." He rose every morning at 7:00 A.M., and then mountedhis exercycle for a twelve-minute workout while taking in a television news program that also lasted exactly twelve minutes. He ate a small breakfast and left the Waldorf at 8:00, to be driven to the U.S. mission to the U.N. at Turtle Bay where he generally arrived at 8:10. Then he would get the overnight cable traffic from his secretary, Mrs. Aleene Smith, and then went into a conference with his executive assistant, Tom Lais. Later there would be meetings with his two deputies, Ambassadors Christopher Phillips and W. Tapley Bennett of the State Department. Pete Roussel was also still with him as publicity man. For Bush, a 16-hour work day was more the rule than the exception. His days were packed with one appointment after another, luncheon engagements, receptions, formal dinners -- at least one reception and one dinner per day. Sometimes there were three receptions per day -- quite an opportunity for networking with like-minded freemasons from all over the world. Bush also traveled to Washington for cabinet meetings, and still did speaking engagements around the country, especially for Republican candidates. "I try to get to bed by 11:30 if possible, " said Bush in 1971, "but often my calendar is so filled that I fall behind in my work and have to take it home with me." Bush bragged that he was still a "pretty tough" doubles player in tennis, good enough to team up with the pros. But he claimed to love baseball most. He joked about questions on his ping pong skills, since these were the months of ping pong diplomacy, when the invitation for a U.S. ping pong team to visit Beijing became a part of the preparation for Kissinger's China card. Mainly, Bush came on as an ultra-orthodox Nixon loyalist. Was he a liberal conservative? asked a reporter. "People in Texas used to ask me that in the campaigns," replied Bush. "Some even called me a right-wing reactionary. I like to think of myself as a pragmatist, but I have learned to defy being labeled.... What I can say is that I am a strong supporter of the President. If you can tell me what he is, I can tell you what I am." Barbara liked the Waldorf suite, and was an enthusiastic hostess. Soon after taking up his U.N. posting, Bush received a phone call from Assistant Secretary of State for Middle Eastern Affairs Joseph Sisco, one of Kissinger's principal henchmen. Sisco had been angered by some comments Bush had made about the Middle East situation in a press conference after presenting his credentials. Despite the fact that Bush, as a cabinet officer, ranked several levels above Sisco, Sisco was in effect the voice of Kissinger. Sisco told Bush that it was Sisco who spoke for the United States government on the Middle East, and that he would do both the on-the-record talking and the leaking about that area. Bush knuckled under, for these were the realities of the Kissinger years. Kissinger's Clone Henry Kissinger was now Bush's boss even more than Nixon was, and later, as the Watergate scandal progres sed into 1973, the dominion of Kissinger would become even more absolute. During these years Bush, serving his apprenticeship in diplomacy and world strategy under Kissinger, became a virtual Kissinger clone in two senses. First, to a significant degree, Kissinger's networks and connections merged together with Bush's own, foreshadowing a 1989 administration in which the NSC director and the number two man in the State Department were both Kissinger's business partners from his consulting and influence-peddling firm, Kissinger Associates. Secondly, Bush assimilated Kissinger's characteristic British-style geopolitical mentality and approach to problems, and this is now the epistemology that dictates Bush's own dealing with the main questions of world politics. The most essential level of Kissinger was the British one. / Note #9 This meant that U.S. foreign policy was to be guided by British imperial geopolitics, in particular the notion of the balance of power: The United States must always ally with the second strongest land power in the world (Red China) against the strongest land power (the U.S.S.R.) in order to preserve the balance of power. This was expressed in the 1971-72 Nixon-Kissinger opening to Beijing, to which Bush would contribute from his U.N. post. The balance of power, since it rules out a positive engagement for the economic progress of the international community as a whole, has always been a recipe for new wars. Kissinger was in constant contact with British foreign policy operatives like Sir Eric Roll of S.G. Warburg in London, Lord Victor Rothschild, the Barings bank and others. On May 10, 1982, in a speech entitled "Reflections on a Partnership" given at the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House in London, Henry Kissinger openly expounded his role and philosophy as a British agent-of-influence within the U.S. government during the Nixon and Ford years: "The British were so matter-of-factly helpful that they became a participant in internal American deliberations, to a degree probably never before practiced between sovereign nations. In my period in office, the British played a seminal part in certain American bilateral negotiations with the Soviet Union -- indeed, they helped draft the key document. In my White House incarnation then, I kept the British Foreign Office better informed and more closely engaged than I did the American State Department.... In my negotiations over Rhodesia I worked from a British draft with British spelling even when I did not fully grasp the distinction between a working paper and a Cabinet-approved document." Kissinger was also careful to point out that the United States must support colonial and neo-colonial strategies against the developing sector: "Americans from Franklin Roosevelt onward believed that the United States, with its 'revolutionary' heritage, was the natural ally of people struggling against colonialism; we could win the allegiance of these new nations by opposing and occasionally undermining our European allies in the areas of their colonial dominance. Churchill, of course, resisted these American pressures.... In this context, the experience of Suez is instructive.... Our humiliation of Britain and France over Suez was a shattering blow to these countries' role as world powers. It accelerated their shedding of international responsibilities, some of the consequences of which we saw in succeeding decades when reality forced us to step into their shoes -- in the Persian Gulf, to take one notable example. Suez thus added enormously to America's burdens." Kissinger was the high priest of imperialism and neocolonialism, animated by an instinctive hatred for Indira Gandhi, Aldo Moro, Ali Bhutto, and other nationalist world leaders. Kissinger's British geopolitics simply accentuated Bush's own fanatically Anglophile point of view, which he had acquired from father Prescott and imbibed from the atmosphere of the family firm, Brown Brothers Harriman, originally the U.S. branch of a British counting house. Kissinger was also a Zionist, dedicated to economic, diplomatic, and military support of Israeli aggression and expansionism to keep the Middle East in turmoil, so as to prevent Arab unity and Arab economic development while using the region to mount challenges to the Soviets. In this he was a follower of British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and Lord Balfour. In the 1973 Middle East war which he had connived to unleash, Kissinger would mastermind the U.S. resupply of Israel and would declare a U.S.-worldwide thermonuclear alert. In later years, Kissinger would enrich himself through speculative real estate purchases on the West bank of the Jordan, buying up land and buildings that had been virtually confiscated from defenseless Palestinian Arabs. Kissinger was also Soviet in a sense that went far beyond his sponsorship of the 1970s detente, SALT I, and the ABM treaty with Moscow. Polish KGB agent Michael Goleniewski is widely reported to have told the British government in 1972 that he had seen KGB documents in Poland before his 1959 defection which established that Kissinger was a Soviet asset. According to Goleniewski, Kissinger had been recruited by the Soviets during his Army service in Germany after the end of World War II, when he had worked as a humble chauffeur. Kissinger had allegedly been recruited to an espionage cell called ODRA, where he received the code name of "BOR" or "COLONEL BOR." Some versions of this story also specify that this cell had been largely composed of homosexuals, and that homosexuality had been an important part of the way that Kissinger had been picked up by the KGB. These reports were reportedly partly supported by Golitsyn, another Soviet defector. The late James Jesus Angleton, the CIA counterintelligence director for 20 years up to 1973, was said to have been the U.S. official who was handed Goleniewski's report by the British. Angleton later talked a lot about Kissinger being "objectively a Soviet agent." It has not been established that Angleton ever ordered an active investigation of Kissinger or ever assigned his case a codename. / Note #1 / Note #0 Kissinger's Chinese side was very much in evidence during 1971-73 and beyond; during these years he was obsessed with anything remotely connected with China and sought to monopolize decisions and contacts with the highest levels of the Chinese leadership. This attitude was dictated most of all by the British mentality and geopolitical considerations indicated above, but it is also unquestionable that Kissinger felt a strong personal affinity for Zhou Enlai, Mao Zedong, and the other Chinese leaders, who had been responsible for the genocide of 100 million of their own people after 1949. Kissinger possessed other dimensions in addition to these, including close links to the Zionist underworld. These will also loom large in George Bush's career. For all of these Kissingerian enormities, Bush now became the principal spokesman. In the process, he was to become a Kissinger clone. The China Card The defining events in the first year of Bush's U.N. tenure reflected Kissinger's geoplitical obsession with his China card. Remember that in his 1964 campaign, Bush had stated that Red China must never be admitted to the U.N. and that if Beijing ever obtained the Chinese seat on the Security Council, the U.S.A. must depart forthwith from the world body. This statement came back to haunt him once or twice. His stock answer went like this: "That was 1964, a long time ago. There's been an awful lot changed since.... A person who is unwilling to admit that changes have taken place is out of things these days. President Nixon is not being naive in his China policy. He is recognizing the realities of today, not the realities of seven years ago." One of the realities of 1971 was that the bankrupt British had declared themselves to be financially unable to maintain their military presence in the Indian Ocean and the Far East, in the area "East of Suez." Part of the timing of the Kissinger China card was dictated by the British desire to acquire China as a c ounterweight to India in this vast area of the world, and also to insure a U.S. military presence in the Indian Ocean, as seen later in the U.S. development of an important base on the island of Diego Garcia. On a world tour during 1969, Nixon had told President Yahya Khan, the dictator of Pakistan, that his administration wanted to normalize relations with Red China and wanted the help of the Pakistani government in exchanging messages. Regular meetings between the United States and Beijing had gone on for many years in Warsaw, but what Nixon was talking about was a total reversal of U.S. China policy. Up until 1971, the U.S.A. had recognized the government of the Republic of China on Taiwan as the sole sovereign and legitimate authority over China. The United States, unlike Britain, France, and many other Western countries, had no diplomatic relations with the Beijing Communist regime. The Chinese seat among the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council was held by the government in Taipei. Every year in the early autumn there was an attempt by the non-alignedbloc to oust Taipei from the Security Council and replace them with Beijing, but so far this vote had always failed because of U.S. arm-twisting in Latin America and the rest of the Third World. One of the reasons that this arrangement had endured so long was the immense prestige of R.O.C. President Chiang Kai-shek and the sentimental popularity of the Kuomintang with the American electorate. There still was a very powerful China lobby, which was especially strong among right-wing Republicans of what had been the Taft and Knowland factions of the party, and which Goldwater continued. Now, in the midst of the Vietnam War, with U.S. strategic and economic power in decline, the Anglo-American elite decided in favor of a geopolitical alliance with China against the Soviets for the foreseeable future. This meant that the honor of U.S. commitments to the R.O.C. had to be dumped overboard as so much useless ballast, whatever the domestic political consequences might be. This was the task given to Kissinger, Nixon, and George Bush. The maneuver on the agenda for 1971 was to oust the R.O.C. from the U.N. Security Council and assign their seat to Beijing. Kissinger and Nixon calculated that duplicity would insulate them from domestic political damage: While they were opening to Beijing, they would call for a "two Chinas" policy, under which both Beijing and Taipei would be represented at the U.N., at least in the General Assembly, despite the fact that this was an alternative that both Chinese governments vehemently rejected. The U.S.A. would pretend to be fighting to keep Taipei in the U.N., with George Bush leading the fake charge, but this effort would be defeated. Then the Nixon administration could claim that the vote in the U.N. was beyond its control, comfortably resign itself to Beijing in the Security Council, and pursue the China card. What was called for was a cynical, duplicitous diplomatic charade in which Bush would have the leading part. This scenario was complicated by the rivalry between Secretary of State Rogers and NSC boss Kissinger. Rogers was an old friend of Nixon, but it was of course Kissinger who made foreign policy for Nixon and the rest of the government, and Kissinger who was incomparably the greater evil. Between Rogers and Kissinger, Bush was unhesitatingly on the side of Kissinger. In later congressional testimony, former CIA official Ray Cline tried to argue that Rogers and Bush were kept in the dark by Nixon and Kissinger about the real nature of the U.S. China policy. The implication is that Bush's efforts to keep Taiwan at the U.N. were in good faith. According to Cline's fantastic account, "Nixon and Kissinger actually 'undermined' the department's efforts in 1971 to save Taiwan." / Note #1 / Note #1 Rogers may have believed that helping Taiwan was U.S. policy, but Bush did not. Cline's version of these events is an insult to the intelligence of any serious person. The Nixon-era China card took shape during July 1971 with Kissinger's "Operation Marco Polo I," his secret first trip to Beijing. Kissinger says in his memoirs that Bush was considered a candidate to make this journey, along with David Bruce, Elliot Richardson, Nelson Rockefeller, and Al Haig. / Note #1 / Note #2 Kissinger first journeyed to India, and then to Pakistan. From there, with the help of Yahya Khan, Kissinger went on to Beijing for meetings with Zhou Enlai and other Chinese officals. He returned by way of Paris, where he met with North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho at the Paris talks on Indo-China. Returning to Washington, Kissinger briefed Nixon on his understanding with Zhou. On July 15, 1971 Nixon announced to a huge television and radio audience that he had accepted "with pleasure" an invitation to visit China at some occasion before May of 1972. He lamely assured "old friends" (meaning Chiang Kai-shek and the R.O.C. government on Taiwan) that their interests would not be sacrificed. Later in the same year, between October 16 and 26, Kissinger undertook operation "Polo II," a second, public visit with Zhou in Beijing to decide the details of Nixon's visit and hammer out what was to become the U.S.-P.R.C. Shanghai Communique, the joint statement issued during Nixon's stay. During this visit, Zhou cautioned Kissinger not to be disoriented by the hostile Beijing propaganda line against the U.S.A., manifestations of which were everywhere to be seen. Anti-U.S. slogans on the walls, said Zhou, were meaningless, like "firing an empty cannon." Nixon and Kissinger eventually journeyed to Beijing in February 1972. U.N. 'Two Chinas' Farce It was before this backdrop that Bush waged his farcical campaign to keep Taiwan in the U.N. The State Department had stated through the mouth of Rogers on August 2 that the United States would support the admission of Red China to the U.N., but would oppose the expulsion of Taiwan. This was the so-called "two Chinas" policy. In an August 12 interview, Bush told the "Washington Post" that he was working hard to line up the votes to keep Taiwan as a U.N. member when the time to vote came in the fall. Responding to the obvious impression that this was a fraud for domestic political purposes only, Bush pledged his honor on Nixon's commitment to "two Chinas." "I know for a fact that the President wants to see the policy implemented," said Bush, apparently with a straight face, adding that he had discussed the matter with Nixon and Kissinger at the White House only a few days before. Bush said that he and other members of his mission had lobbied 66 countries so far, and that this figure was likely to rise to 80 by the following week. Ultimately Bush would claim to have talked personlly with 94 delegations to get them to let Taiwan stay, which a fellow diplomat called "a quantitative track record." Diplomatic observers noted that the U.S. activity was entirely confined to the high-profile "glass palace" of the U.N., and that virtually nothing was being done by U.S. ambassadors in capitals around the world. But Bush countered that if it were just a question of going through the motions as a gesture for Taiwan, he would not be devoting so much of his time and energy to the cause. The main effort was at the U.N. because "this is what the U.N. is for," he commented. Bush said that his optimism about keeping the Taiwan membership had increased over the past three weeks. / Note #1 / Note #3 By late September, Bush was saying that he saw a better than 50-50 chance that the U.N. General Assembly would seat both Chinese governments. By this time, the official U.S. position as enunciated by Bush was that the Security Council seat should go to Beijing, but that Taipei ought to be allowed to remain in the General Assembly. Since 1961, the U.S. strategy for blocking the admission of Beijing had depended on a procedural defense, obtaining a simple majority of the General Assembly for a resolution defining the seating of Beijing as an Important Question, which required a two-thirds majority in order to be implemented. Thus, if the U.S .A. could get a simple majority on the procedural vote, one-third plus one would suffice to defeat Beijing on the second vote. The General Assembly convened on September 21. Bush and his aides were running a ludicrous full-court press on scores of delegations. Twice a day, there was a State Department briefing on the vote tally. "Yes, Burundi is with us.... About Argentina we're not sure," etc. All this attention got Bush an appearance on "Face the Nation," where he said that the two-Chinas policy should be approved regardless of the fact that both Beijing and Taipei rejected it. "I don't think we have to go through the agony of whether the Republic of China will accept or whether Beijing will accept," Bush told the interviewers. "Let the United Nations for a change do something that really does face up to reality and then let that decision be made by the parties involved," said Bush with his usual inimitable rhetorical flair. The U.N. debate on the China seat was scheduled to open on October 18; on October 12, Nixon gave a press conference in which he totally ignored the subject, and made no appeal for support for Taiwan. On October 16, Kissinger departed with great fanfare for Beijing. Kissinger says in his memoirs that he had been encouraged to go to Beijing by Bush, who assured him that a highly publicized Kissinger trip to Beijing would have no impact whatever on the U.N. vote. On October 25, the General Assembly defeated the U.S. resolution to make the China seat an Important Question by a vote of 59 to 54, with 15 abstentions. Ninety minutes later came the vote on the Albanian resolution to seat Beijing and expel Taipei, which passed by a vote of 76 to 35. Bush then cast the U.S. vote to seat Beijing, and then hurried to escort the R.O.C. delegate, Liu Chieh, out of the hall for the last time. The General Assembly was the scene of a jubilant demonstration led by Third World delegates over the fact that Red China had been admitted, and even more so that the United States had been defeated. The Tanzanian delegate danced a jig in the aisle. Henry Kissinger, flying back from Beijing, got the news on his teletype and praised Bush's "valiant efforts." Having connived in selling Taiwan down the river, it was now an easy matter for the Nixon regime to fake a great deal of indignation for domestic political consumption about what had happened. Nixon's spokesman Ron Ziegler declared that Nixon had been outraged by the "spectacle" of the "cheering, handclapping, and dancing" delegates after the vote, which Nixon had seen as a "shocking demonstration" of "undisguised glee" and "personal animosity." Notice that Ziegler had nothing to say against the vote, or against Beijing, but concentrated the fire on the Third World delegates, who were also threatened with a cutoff of U.S. foreign aid. This was the line that Bush would slavishly follow. On the last day of October, the papers quoted him saying that the demonstration after the vote was "something ugly, something harsh that transcended normal disappointment or elation." "I really thought we were going to win," said Bush, still with a straight face. "I'm so ... disappointed." "There wasn't just clapping and enthusiasm" after the vote, he whined. "When I went up to speak I was hissed and booed. I don't think it's good for the United Nations and that's the point I feel very strongly about." In the view of a "Washington Post" staff writer, "the boyish looking U.S. ambassador to the United Nations looked considerably the worse for wear. But he still conveys the impression of an earnest fellow trying to be the class valedictorian, as he once was described." / Note #1 / Note #4 Bush expected the Beijing delegation to arrive in new York soon, because they probably wanted to take over the presidency of the Security Council, which rotated on a monthly basis. "But why anybody would want an early case of chicken pox, I don't know," said Bush. When the Beijing delegation did arrive, Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Ch'aio Kuan-hua delivered a maiden speech full of ideological bombast along the lines of passages Kissinger had convinced Zhou to cut out of the draft text of the Shanghai communique some days before. Kissinger then telephoned Bush to say in his own speech that the United States regretted that the Chinese had elected to inaugurate their participation in the U.N. by "firing these empty cannons of rhetoric." Bush, like a ventriloquist's dummy, obediently mouthed Kissinger's one-liner as a kind of coded message to Beijing that all the public bluster meant nothing between the two secret and increasingly public allies. Notes 1. In 1970, Bush's portfolio included 29 companies in which he had an interest of more than $4,000. He had 10,000 shares of American General Insurance Co., 5,500 shares of American Standard, 200 shares of AT&T, 832 shares of CBS, and 581 shares of Industries Exchange Fund. He also held stock in the Kroger Company, Simplex Wire and Cable Co. (25,000 shares), IBM, and Allied Chemical. In addition, he had created a trust fund for his children. 2. James Reston, Jr., "The Lone Star: The Life of John Connally" (New York: Harper & Row, 1989), p. 380. 3. William Safire, "Before the Fall" (New York: Doubleday, 1977), p. 646. 4. Walter Pincus and Bob Woodward, "Presidential Posts and Dashed Hopes," "Washington Post," Aug. 9, 1988. 5. Reston, "op. cit.," p. 382. 6. George Bush and Victor Gold, "Looking Forward" (New York: Doubleday, 1987), p. 110. 7. For the Nixon side of the Bush U.N. appointment, see William Safire, "op. cit.," especially "The President Falls in Love," pp. 642 "ff." 8. Reston, "op. cit.," p. 382. Reston (pp. 586-87) tells the story of how, years later in the 1980 Iowa caucuses campaign when both Bush and Connally were in the race, Bush was enraged by Connally's denigration of his manhood in remarks to Texans that Bush was 'all hat and no cattle.' Bush was walking by a television set in the Hotel Fort Des Moines when Connally came on the screen. Bush reached out toward Connally's image on the screen as if to shake hands. Then Bush screamed, "Thank you, sir, for all the kind things you and your friends have been saying about me!" Then Bush slammed his fist on the top of the set, yelling "That prick!" 9. On Kissinger, see Scott Thompson and Joseph Brewda, "Kissinger Associates: Two Birds in the Bush," "Executive Intelligence Review," March 3, 1989. 10. Tom Mangold, "Cold Warrior", (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), p. 305. 11. See Tad Szulc, "The Illusion of Peace" (New York: Viking Press, 1978), p. 498. 12. Henry Kissinger, "White House Years" (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979), p. 715. 13. Szulc, "op. cit.," p. 500, and "Washington Post," Aug. 12, 1971. 14. "Washington Post," Oct. 31, 1971. CHAPTER 12 UNITED NATIONS AMBASSADOR, KISSINGER CLONE The farce of Bush's pantomime in support of the Kissinger China card very nearly turned into the tragedy of general war later in 1971. This involved the December 1971 war between India and Pakistan, which led to the creation of an independent state of Bangladesh, and which must be counted as one of the least-known thermonuclear confrontations of the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. For Kissinger and Bush, what was at stake in this crisis was the consolidation of the China card. In 1970, Yahya Khan, the British-connected, Sandhurst-educated dictator of Pakistan, was forced to announce that elections would be held in the entire country. It will be recalled that Pakistan was at that time two separate regions, east and west, with India in between. In East Pakistan or Bengal, the Awami League of Sheik Mujibur Rahman campaigned on a platform of autonomy for Bengal, accusing the central government in far-off Islamabad of ineptitude and exploitation. The resentment in East Pakistan was made more acute by the fact that Bengal had just been hit by a typhoon, which had caused extensive flooding and devastation, and by the failure of the government in West Pakistan to organize an effective relief effort. In the elections, the Awami League won 167 out of 169 seats in the East. Yahya Khan delayed the seating of the new nationa l assembly and on the evening of March 25 ordered the Pakistani Army to arrest Mujibur and to wipe out his organization in East Pakistan. Genocide in East Pakistan The army proceeded to launch a campaign of political genocide in East Pakistan. Estimates of the number of victims range from 500,000 to 3 million dead. All members of the Awami League, all Hindus, all students and intellectuals were in danger of execution by roving army patrols. A senior U.S. Foreign Service officer sent home a dispatch in which he told of West Pakistani soldiers setting fire to a women's dormitory at the University of Dacca and then machine-gunning the women when they were forced by the flames to run out. This campaign of killing went on until December, and it generated an estimated 10 million refugees, most of whom fled across the nearby borders to India, which had territory all around East Pakistan. The arrival of 10 million refugees caused indescribable chaos in India, whose government was unable to prevent untold numbers from starving to death. / Note #1 / Note #5 >From the very beginning of this monumental genocide, Kissinger and Nixon made it clear that they would not condemn Yahya Khan, whom Nixon considered a personal friend. Kissinger referred merely to the "strong-arm tactics of the Pakistani military," and Nixon circulated a memo in his own handwriting saying, "To all hands. Don't squeeze Yahya at this time. RN" Nixon stressed repeatedly that he wanted to "tilt" in favor of Pakistan in the crisis. One level of explanation for this active complicity in genocide was that Kissinger and Nixon regarded Yahya Khan as their indispensable back channel to Peking. But Kissinger could soon go to Peking any time he wanted, and soon he could talk to the Chinese U.N. delegate in a New York safe house. The essence of the support for the butcher Yahya Khan was this: In 1962, India and China had engaged in a brief border war, and the Peking leaders regarded India as their geopolitical enemy. In order to ingratiate himself with Zhou and Mao, Kissinger wanted to take a position in favor of Pakistan, and therefore of Pakistan's ally China, and against India and against India's ally, the U.S.S.R. (Shortly after Kissinger's trip to China had taken place and Nixon had announced his intention to go to Peking, India and the U.S.S.R. had signed a 20-year friendship treaty.) In Kissinger's view, the Indo-Pakistani conflict over Bengal was sure to become a Sino-Soviet clash by proxy, and he wanted the United States aligned with China in order to impress Peking with the vast benefits to be derived from the U.S.-P.R.C. strategic alliance under the heading of the "China card." Kissinger and Nixon were isolated within the Washington bureaucracy on this issue. Secretary of State Rogers was very reluctant to go on supporting Pakistan, and this was the prevalent view in Foggy Bottom and in the embassies around the world. Nixon and Kissinger were isolated from the vast majority of congressional opinion, which expressed horror and outrage over the extent of the carnage being carried out week after week, month after month, by Yahya Khan's armed forces. Even the media and U.S. public opinion could not find any reason for the friendly "tilt" in favor of Yahya Khan. On July 31, Kissinger exploded at a meeting of the Senior Review Group when a proposal was made that the Pakistani army could be removed from Bengal. "Why is it our business how they govern themselves?" Kissinger raged. "The President always says to tilt to Pakistan, but every proposal I get [from inside the U.S. government] is in the opposite direction. Sometimes I think I am in a nut house." This went on for months. On December 3, at a meeting of Kissinger's Washington Special Action Group, Kissinger exploded again, exclaiming, "I've been catching unshirted hell every half-hour from the president who says we're not tough enough. He really doesn't believe we're carrying out his wishes. He wants to tilt toward Pakistan and he believes that every briefing or statement is going the other way." / Note #1 / Note #6 But no matter what Rogers, the State Department and the rest of the Washington bureaucracy might do, Kissinger knew that George Bush at the U.N. would play along with the pro-Pakistan tilt. "And I knew that George Bush, our able U.N. ambassador, would carry out the President's policy," wrote Kissinger in his memoirs, in describing his decision to drop U.S. opposition to a Security Council debate on the subcontinent. This made Bush one of the most degraded and servile U.S. officials of the era. Indira Gandhi had come to Washington in November to attempt a peaceful settlement to the crisis, but was crudely snubbed by Nixon and Kissinger. The chronology of the acute final phase of the crisis can be summed up as follows: "December 3, 1971": Yahya Khan ordered the Pakistani Air Force to carry out a series of surprise air raids on Indian air bases in the north and west of India. These raids were not effective in destroying the Indian Air Force on the ground, which had been Yahya Khan's intent, but Yahya Khan's aggression did precipitate the feared Indo-Pakistani war. The Indian Army made rapid ad vances against the Pakistani forces in Bengal, while the Indian Navy blockaded Pakistan's ports. At this time, the biggest-ever buildup in the Soviet naval forces in the Indian Ocean also began. "December 4": At the U.N. Security Council, George Bush delivered a speech in which his main thrust was to accuse India of repeated incursions into East Pakistan, and challenging the legitimacy of India's resort to arms, in spite of the plain evidence that Pakistan had struck first. Bush introduced a draft resolution which called on India and Pakistan immediately to cease all hostilities. Bush's resolution also mandated the immediate withdrawal of all Indian and Pakistani armed forces back to their own territory, meaning in effect that India should pull back from East Pakistan and let Yahya Khan's forces there get back to their mission of genocide against the local population. Observers were to be placed along the Indo-Pakistani borders by the U.N. secretary general. Bush's resolution also contained a grotesque call on India and Pakistan to "exert their best efforts toward the creation of a climate conducive to the voluntary return of refugees to East Pakistan." Ths resolution was out of touch with the two realities: that Yahya Khan had started the genocide in East Pakistan back in March, and that Yahya had now launched aggression against India with his air raids. Bush's resolution was vetoed by the Soviet representative, Yakov Malik. "December 6": The Indian government extended diplomatic recognition to the independent state of Bangladesh. Indian troops made continued progress against the Pakistani Army in Bengal. On the same day, an NBC camera team filmed much of Nixon's day inside the White House. Part of what was recorded, and later broadcast, was a telephone call from Nixon to George Bush at the United Nations, giving Bush his instructions on how to handle the India-Pakistan crisis. "Some, all over the world, will try to make this basically a political issue," said Nixon to Bush. "You've got to do what you can. More important than anything else now is to get the facts out with regard to what we have done, that we have worked for a political settlement, what we have done for the refugees and so forth and so on. If you see that some here in the Senate and House, for whatever reason, get out and misrepresent our opinions, I want you to hit it frontally, strongly, and toughly; is that clear? Just take the gloves off and crack it, because you know exactly what we have done, OK?" / Note #1 / Note #7 "December 7": George Bush at the U.N. made a further step forward toward global confrontation by branding India as the aggressor in the crisis, as Kissinger approvingly notes in his memoirs. Bush's draft resolution, described above, which had been vetoed by Malik in the Security Council, was approved by the General Assembly by a non-binding vote of 104 to 11, which Kissinger considered a triumph for Bush. But on the same day, Yahya Khan informed the government in Washington that his military forces in East Pakistan were rapidly disintegrating. Kissinger and Nixon seized on a dubious report from an alleged U.S. agent at a high level in the Indian government which purported to summarize recent remarks of Indira Gandhi to her cabinet. According to this report, which may have come from the later Prime Minister Moraji Desai, Mrs. Gandhi had pledged to conquer the southern part of Pakistani-held Kashmir. If the Chinese "rattled the sword," the report quoted Mrs. Gandhi as saying, the Soviets would respond. This unreliable report became one of the pillars for further actions by Nixon, Kissinger and Bush. "December 8": By this time, the Soviet Navy had some 21 ships either in or approaching the Indian Ocean, in contrast to a pre-crisis level of three ships. At this point, with the Vietnam War raging unabated, the U.S.A. had a total of three ships in the Indian Ocean -- two old destroyers and a seaplane tender. The last squadron of the British Navy was departing from the region in the framework of the British pullout from east of Suez. In the evening, Nixon suggested to Kissinger that the scheduled Moscow summit might be canceled. Kissinger raved that India wanted to detach not just Bengal, but Kashmir also, leading to the further secession of Baluchistan and the total dismemberment of Pakistan. "Fundamentally," wrote Kissinger of this moment, "our only card left was to raise the risks for the Soviets to a level where Moscow would see larger interests jeopardized" by its support of India, which had been lukewarm so far. "December 9": The State Department and other agencies were showing signs of being almost human, seeking to undermine the Nixon-Kissinger-Bush policy through damaging leaks and bureaucratic obstructionism. Nixon, "beside himself" over the damaging leaks, called in the principal officers of the Washington Special Action Group and told them that while he did not insist on their being loyal to the President, they ought at least to be loyal to the United States. Among those Nixon insulted was Undersecretary of State U. Alexis Johnson. But the leaks only increased. "December 10:" Kissinger ordered the U.S. Navy to create Task Force 74, consisting of the nuclear aircraft carrier "Enterprise", with escort and supply ships, and to have these ships proceed from their post at Yankee Station in the Gulf of Tonkin off Vietnam to Singapore. / Note #1 / Note #8 In Dacca, East Pakistan, Major General Rao Farman Ali Khan, the commander of Pakistani forces in Bengal, asked the United Nations representative to help arrange a cease-fire, followed by the transfer of power in East Pakistan to the elected representatives of the Awami League and the "repatriation with honor" of his forces back to West Pakistan. At first it appeared that this de facto surrender had been approved by Yahya Khan. But when Yahya Khan heard that the U.S. fleet had been ordered into the Indian Ocean, he was so encouraged that he junked the idea of a surrender and ordered Gen. Ali Khan to resume fighting, which he did. Colonel Melvin Holst, the U.S. military attache in Katmandu, Nepal, a small country sandwiched between India and China in the Himalayas, received a call from the Indian military attache, who asked whether the American had any knowledge of a Chinese military buildup in Tibet. "The Indian high command had some sort of information that military action was increasing in Tibet," said Holst in his cable to Washington. The same evening, Col. Holst received a call from the Soviet military attache, Loginov, who also asked about Chinese military activity. Loginov said that he had spoken over the last day or two with the Chinese military attache, Zhao Kuang-chih, "advising Zhao that the P.R.C. should not get too serious about intervention because U.S.S.R. would react, had many missiles, etc." / Note #1 / Note #9 At the moment, the Himalaya mountain passes, the corridor for any Chinese troop movement, were all open and free from snow. The CIA had noted "war preparations" in Tibet over the months since the Bengal crisis had begun. Nikolai Pegov, the Soviet ambassador to New Dehli, had assured the Indian government that in the eventuality of a Chinese attack on India, the Soviets would mount a "diversionary action in Sinkiang." "December 11": Kissinger had been in town the previous day, meeting the Chinese U.N. delegate. Today Kissinger would meet with the Pakistani Deputy Prime Minister Ali Bhutto, in Bush's suite at the Waldorf-Astoria. Huang Hua, the Chinese delegate, made remarks which Kissinger chose to interpret as meaning that the "Chinese might intervene militarily even at this late stage." "December 12:" Nixon, Kissinger and Haig met in the Oval Office early Sunday morning in a council of war. Kissinger later described this as a crucial meeting, where, as it turned out, "the first decision to risk war in the triangular Soviet-Chinese-American" geopolitical relationship was taken. / Note #2 / Note #0 During Nixon's 1975 secret grand jury testimony to the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, the former President insisted that the United States had come "close to nuclear war" during the Indo-Pakistani conflict. According to one attorney who heard Nixon's testimony in 1975, Nixon had stated that "we had threatened to go to nuclear war with the Russians." / Note #2 / Note #1 These remarks most probably refer to this December 12 meeting, and the actions it set into motion. Navy Task Force 74 was ordered to proceed through the Straits of Malacca and into the Indian Ocean, and it attracted the attention of the world media in so doing the following day. Task Force 74 was now on wartime alert. At 11:30 a.m. local time, Kissinger and Haig sent the Kremlin a message over the Hot Line. This was the first use of the Hot Line during the Nixon administration, and apparently the only time it was used during the Nixon years, with the exception of the October 1973 Middle East War. According to Kissinger, this Hot Line message contained the ultimatum that the Soviets respond to earlier American demands; otherwise Nixon would order Bush to "set in train certain moves" in the U.N. Security Council that would be irreversible. But is this all the message said? Kissinger comments in his memoirs a few pages later: "Our fleet passed through the Strait of Malacca into the Bay of Bengal and attracted much media attention. Were we threatening India? Were we seeking to defend East Pakistan? Had we lost our minds? It was in fact sober calculation. We had some seventy-two hours to bring the war to a conclusion before West Pakistan would be swept into the maelstrom. It would take India that long to shift its forces and mount an assault. Once Pakistan's air force and army were destroyed, its impotence would guarantee the country's eventual disintegration.... We had to give the Soviets a warning that matters might get out of control on our side too. We had to be ready to back up the Chinese if at the last moment they came in after all, our U.N. initiative having failed. [...] However unlikely an American military move against India, the other side could not be sure; it might not be willing to accept even the minor risk that we might act irrationally." / Note #2 / Note #2 These comments by Kissinger led to the conclusion that the Hot Line message of December 12 was part of a calculated exercise in thermonuclear blackmail and brinksmanship. Kissinger's reference to acting irrationally recalls the infamous RAND Corporation theories of thermonculear confrontations as chicken games in which it is useful to hint to the opposition that one is insane. If your adversary thinks you are crazy, then he is more likely to back down, the argument goes. Whatever threats were made by Kissinger and Haig that day in their Hot Line message are likely to have been of that variety. All evidence points to the conclusion that on December 12, 1971, the world was indeed close to the brink of thermonuclear confrontation. Where Was George? And where was George? He was acting as the willing mouthpiece for madmen. Late in the evening December 12, Bush delivered the following remarks to the Security Council, which are recorded in Kissinger's memoirs: "The question now arises as to India's further intentions. For example, does India intend to use the present situation to destroy the Pakistan army in the West? Does India intend to use as a pretext the Pakistani counterattacks in the West to annex territory in West Pakistan? Is its aim to take parts of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir contrary to the Security Council resolutions of 1948, 1949, and 1950? If this is not India's intention, then a prompt disavowal is required. The world has a right to know: What are India's intentions? Pakistan's aims have become clear: It has accepted the General Assembly's resolution passed by a vote of 104 to 11. My government has asked this question of the Indian Government several times in the last week. I regret to inform the Council that India's replies have been unsatisfactory and not reassuring. "In view of India's defiance of world opinion expressed by such an overwhelming majority, the United States is now returning the issue to the Security Council. With East Pakistan virtually occupied by Indian troops, a continuation of the war would take on increasingly the character of armed attack on the very existence of a Member State of the United Nations." / Note #2 / Note #3 Bush introduced another draft resolution of pro-Pakistan tilt, which called on the governments of India and Pakistan to take measures for an immediate cease-fire and withdrawal of troops, and for measures to help the refugees. This resolution was also vetoed by the U.S.S.R. "December 14": Kissinger shocked U.S. public opinion by stating off the record to journalists in a plane returning from a meeting with French President Georges Pompidou in the Azores, that if Soviet conduct continued in the present mode, the U.S. was "prepared to reevaluate our entire relationship, including the summit." "December 15:" The Pakistani commander in East Pakistan, after five additional days of pointless killing, again offered a cease-fire. Kissinger claimed that the five intervening days had allowed the United States to increase the pressure on India and prevent the Indian forces from turning on West Pakistan. "December 16:" Mrs. Gandhi offered an unconditional cease-fire in the west, which Pakistan immediately accepted. Kissinger opined that this decision to end all fighting had been "reluctant" on the part of India, and had been made possible through Soviet pressure generated by U.S. threats. Zhou Enlai also said later that the United States had saved West Pakistan. Kissinger praised Nixon's "courage and patriotism" and his commitment to "preserve the balance of power for the ultimate safety of all free people." Apprentice geopolitician George Bush had carried out yeoman service in that immoral cause. After a self-serving and false description of the Indo-Pakistani crisis of 1971, Kissinger pontificates in his memoirs about the necessary priority of geopolitical machinations: "There is in America an idealistic tradition that sees foreign policy as a context between evil and good. There is a pragmatic tradition that seeks to solve 'problems' as they arise. There is a legalistic tradition that treats international issues as juridical cases. There is no geopolitical tradition." In their stubborn pursuit of an alliance with the second strongest land power at the expense of all other considerations, Kissinger, Nixon and Bush were following the dictates of classic geopolitics. This is the school in which Bush was trained, and this is how he has reacted to every international crisis down through the Gulf war, which was originally conceived in London as a "geopolitical" adjustment in favor of the Anglo-Saxons against Germany, Japan, the Arabs, the developing sector and the rest of the world. Genocide in Vietnam 1972 was the second year of Bush's U.N. tenure, and it was during this time that he distinguished himself as a shameless apologist for the genocidal and vindictive Kissinger policy of prolonging and escalating the war in Vietnam. During most of his first term, Nixon pursued a policy he called the "Vietnamization" of the war. This meant that U.S. land forces were progressively withdrawn, while the South Vietnamese Army was ostensibly built up so that it could bear the battle against the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese regulars. This policy went into crisis in March 1972 when the North Vietnamese launched a 12-division assault across the Demilitarized Zone against the south. On May 8, 1972, Nixon announced that the full-scale bombing of the north, which had been suspended since the spring of 1968, would be resumed with a vengeance: Nixon ordered the bombing of Hanoi and the mining of Haiphong harbor, and the savaging of transportation lines and military installations all over the country. This mining had always been rejected as a tactic during the previous conduct of the war because of the possibility that bombing and mining the harbors might hit Soviet, Chinese, and other foreign ships, killing the crews and creating the risk of retaliation by these countries against the U.S.A. Now, before the 1972 elections, Kissinger and Nixon were determined to "go ape," discarding their previous limits on offensive action and risking whatever China and the U.S.S.R. might do. It was another gesture of reckless confrontation, fraught with incalculable consequences. Later in the same year, in December, Nixon would respond to a breakdown in the Paris talks with the Hanoi government by ordering the infamous Christmastide B-52 attacks on the north. It was George Bush who officially informed the international diplomatic community of Nixon's March decisions. Bush addressed a letter to the Presidency of the U.N. Security Council in which he outlined what Nixon had set into motion: "The President directed that the entrances to the ports of North Vietnam be mined and that the delivery of seaborne supplies to North Vietnam be prevented. These measures of collective self-defense are hereby being reported to the United Nations Security Council as required by Article 51 of the United Nations Charter." Bush went on to characterize the North Vietnamese actions. He spoke of "the massive invasion across the demilitarized zone and international boundaries by the forces of North Vietnam and the continuing aggression" of Hanoi. He accused the north of "blatant violation of the understandings negotiated in 1968 in connection with the cessation of the bombing of the territory of North Vietnam.... The extent of this renewed aggression and the manner in which it has been directed and supported demonstrate with great clarity that North Vietnam has embarked on an all-out attempt to take over South Vietnam by military force and to disrupt the orderly withdrawal of United States forces." Bush further accused the north of refusing to negotiate in good faith to end the war. The guts of Bush's message, the part that was read with greatest attention in Moscow, Peking and elsewhere, was contained in the following summary of the way in which Haiphong and the other harbors had been mined: "Accordingly, as the minimum actions necessary to meet this threat, the Republic of Vietnam and the United States of America have jointly decided to take the following measures of collective self-defense: The entrances to the ports of North Vietnam are being mined, commencing 0900 Saigon time May 9, and the mines are set to activate automatically beginning 1900 hours Saigon time May 11. This will permit vessels of other countries presently in North Vietnamese ports three daylight periods to depart safely." In a long circumlocution, Bush also conveyed that all shipping might also be the target of indiscriminate bombing. Bush called these measures "restricted in extent and purpose." The U.S. was willing to sign a cease-fire ending all acts of war in Indochina (thus including Cambodia, which had been invaded in 1970, and Laos, which had been invaded in 1971, as well as the Vietnams) and bring all U.S. troops home within four months. There was no bipartisan supp ort for the bombing and mining policy Bush announced. Senator Mike Mansfield pointed out that the decision would only protract the war. Senator Proxmire called it "reckless and wrong." Four Soviet ships were damaged by these U.S. actions. There was a lively debate within the Soviet Politburo on how to respond to this, with a faction around Shelest demanding that Nixon's invitation to the upcoming Moscow superpower summit be rescinded. But Shelest was ousted by Brezhnev, and the summit went forward at the end of May. The "China card" theoreticians congratulated themselves that the Soviets had been paralyzed by fear of what Peking might do if Moscow became embroiled with Peking's new de facto ally, the United States. Bombing Civilian Targets In July 1972, reports emerged in the international press of charges by Hanoi that the U.S.A. had been deliberately bombing the dams and dikes, which were the irrigation and flood control system around Vietnam's Red River. Once again it was Bush who came forward as the apologist for Nixon's "mad bomber" foreign policy. Bush appeared on the NBC Televison "Today" show to assure the U.S. public that the U.S. bombing had created only "the most incidental and minor impact" on North Vietnam's dike system. This, of course, amounted to a backhanded confirmation that such bombing had been done, and damage wrought in the process. Bush was in his typical whining mode in defending the U.S. policy against worldwide criticism of war measures that seemed designed to inflict widespread flooding and death on North Vietnamese civilians. According to North Vietnamese statistics, more than half of the north's 20 million people lived in areas near the Red River that would be flooded if the dike system were breached. An article which appeared in a Hanoi publication had stated that at flood crest many rivers rise to "six or seven meters above the surrounding fields" and that because of this situation "any dike break, especially in the Red River delta, is a disaster with incalculable consequences." Bush had never seen an opportunity for genocide he did not like. "I believe we are being set up by a massive propaganda campaign by the North Vietnamese in the event that there is the same kind of flooding this year -- to attribute it to bombs whereas last year it happened just out of lack of maintenance," Bush argued. "There's been a study made that I hope will be released shortly that will clarify this whole question," he went on. The study "would be very helpful because I think it will show what the North Vietnamese are up to in where they place strategic targets." What Bush was driving at here was an allegation that Hanoi customarily placed strategic assets near the dikes in order to be able to accuse the U.S. of genocide if air attacks breached the dikes and caused flooding. Bush's military spokesmen used similar arguments during the Gulf war, when Iraq was accused of placing military equipment in the midst of civilian residential areas. "I think you would have to recognize," retorted Bush, "that if there was any intention" of breaching the dikes, "it would be very, very simple to do exactly what we are accused of -- and that is what we are not doing." / Note #2 / Note #4 The bombing of the north continued and reached a final paroxysm at Christmas, when B-52s made unrestricted terror bombing raids against Hanoi and other cities. The Christmas bombing was widely condemned, even by the U.S. press: "New Madness in Vietnam" was the headline of the "St. Louis Post-Dispatch" on Dec. 19; "Terror from the Skies" that of the "New York Times" Dec. 22; "Terror Bombing in the Name of Peace" of the "Washington Post" Dec. 28; and "Beyond All Reason" of the "Los Angeles Times" of Dec. 28. More Zionist than Israelis Bush's activity at the U.N. also coincided with Kissinger's preparation of the October 1973 Middle East war. During the 1980s, Bush attempted to cultivate a public image as a U.S. politician who, although oriented toward close relations with Israel, would not slavishly appease every demand of the Israelis and the Zionist lobby in the United States, but would take an independent position designed to foster U.S. national interests. From time to time, Bush snubbed the Israelis by hinting that they held hostages of their own, and that the Israeli annexation of Jerusalem would not be accepted by the United States. For some, these delusions have survived even a refutation so categoric as the events of the Kuwait crisis of 1990-91. Bush would be more accurately designated as a Zionist, whose differences with an Israeli leader like Shamir are less significant than the differences between Shamir and other Israeli politicians. Bush's fanatically pro-Israeli ideological-political track record was already massive during the U.N. years. In September 1972, Palestinian terrorists describing themselves as the "Black September" organization attacked the quarters of the Israeli Olympic team present in Munich for the Olympic games of that year, killing a number of the Israeli athletes. The Israeli government seized on these events as carte blanche to launch a series of air attacks against Syria and Lebanon, arguing that these countries could be held responsible for what had happened in Munich. Somalia, Greece and Guinea came forward with a resolution in the Security Council which simply called for the immediate cessation of "all military operations." The Arab states argued that the Israeli air attacks were totally without provocation or justification, and had killed numerous civilians who had nothing whatever to do with the terrorist actions in Munich. The Nixon regime, with one eye on the autumn 1972 elections and the need to mobilize the Zionist lobby in support of a second term, wanted to find a way to oppose this resolution, since it did not sufficiently acknowledge the unique righteousness of the Israeli cause and Israel's inherent right to commit acts of war against its neighbors. It was Bush who authored a competing resolution, which called on all interested parties "to take all measures for the immediate cessation and prevention of all military operations and terrorist activities." It was Bush who dished up the rationalizations for U.S. rejection of the first resolution. That resolution was no good, Bush argued, because it did not reflect the fact that "the fabric of violence in the Middle East in inextricably interwoven with the massacre in Munich.... By our silence on the terror in Munich are we indeed inviting more Munichs?" he asked. Justifying the Israeli air raids on Syria and Lebanon, Bush maintained that certain governments "cannot be absolved of responsibility for the cycle of violence" because of their words and deeds, or because of their tacit acquiescence. Slightly later, after the vote had taken place, Bush argued that "by adopting this resolution, the council would have ignored reality, would have spoken to one form of violence but not another, would have looked to the effect but not the cause." When the resolution was put to a vote, Bush made front-page headlines around the world by casting the U.S. veto, a veto that had been cast only once before in the entire history of the U.N. The vote was 13 to 1, with the U.S. casting the sole negative vote. Panama was the lone abstention. The only other time the U.S. veto had been used had been in 1970, on a resolution involving Rhodesia. The Israeli U.N. ambassador, Yosef Tekoah, did not attend the debate because of the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah. But Israel's cause was well defended -- by Bush. According to an Israeli journalist observing the proceedings who was quoted by the "Washington Post," "Bush sounds more pro-Israeli than Tekoah would have." / Note #2 / Note #5 Later in 1972, attempts were made by non-aligned states and the U.N. Secretariat to arrange the indispensable basis for a Middle East peace settlement -- the withdrawal of Israel from the territories occupied during the 1967 war. Once again, Bush was more Zionist than the Israelis. In February of 1972, the U.N.'s Middle East mediator, Gunnar Jarring of Norway, had asked that the Security Council reaffirm the original contents of Resolution 242 of 1967 by reiterating that Israel should surrender Arab territory seized in 1967. "Land for peace" was anathema to the Israeli government then as now. Bush undertook to blunt this non-aligned peace bid. Late in 1972, the non-aligned group proposed a resolution in the General Assembly which called for "immediate and unconditional" Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories while inviting other countries to withold assistance that would help Israel to sustain its occupation of the Arab land. Bush quickly rose to assail this text. In a speech to the General Assembly in December 1972, Bush warned the assembly that the original text of Resolution 242 was "the essential agreed basis for U.N. peace efforts and this body and all its members should be mindful of the need to preserve the negotiating asset that it represents." "The assembly," Bush went on, "cannot seek to impose courses of action on the countries directly concerned, either by making new demands or favoring the proposals or positions of one side over the other." Never, never would George Bush ever take sides or accept a double standard of this type. Bush in Africa >From January 28 through February 4, 1972, the Security Council held its first meeting in twenty years outside of New York City. The venue chosen was Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Bush made this the occasion for a trip through the Sudan, Kenya, Zambia, Zaire, Gabon, Nigeria, Chad and Botswana. Bush later told a House subcommittee hearing that this was his second trip to Africa, with the preceding one having been a junket to Egypt and Libya "in 1963 or 1964." / Note #2 / Note #6 During this trip, Bush met with seven chiefs of state, including President Mobutu of Zaire, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, President Tombalbaye of Chad, and President Numayri of the Sudan. At a press conference in Addis Ababa, African journalists destabilized Bush with aggressive questions about the U.S. policy of ignoring mandatory U.N. economic sanctions against the racist, white supremacist Ian Smith regime in Rhodesia. The Security Council had imposed the mandatory sanctions, but later the U.S. Congress had passed, and Nixon had signed into law, legislation incorporating the so-called Byrd amendment, which allowed the U.S.A. to import chrome from Rhodesia in the event of shortages of that strategic raw material. Chrome was readily available on the world market, especially from the U.S.S.R., although the Soviet chrome was more expensive than the Rhodesian chrome. In his congressional testimony, Bush whined at length about the extensive criticism of this declared U.S. policy of breaching the Rhodesian sanctions on the part of "those who are just using this to really hammer us from a propaganda standpoint.... We have taken the rap on this thing," complained Bush. "We have taken the heat on it.... We have taken a great deal of abuse from those who wanted to embarrass us in Africa, to emphasize the negative and not the positive in the United Nations." Bush talked of his own efforts at damage control on the issue of U.S. support for the racist Rhodesian regime: "... what we are trying to do is to restrict any hypocrisy we are accused of.... I certainly don't think the U.S. position should be that the Congress was trying to further colonialism and racism in this action it took," Bush told the congressmen. "In the U.N., I get the feeling we are categorized as imperialists and colonialists, and I make clear this is not what America stands for, but nevertheless it is repeated over and over and over again," he whined. / Note #2 / Note #7 On the problems of Africa in general, Bush, ever true to Malthusian form, stressed above all the overpopulation of the continent. As he told the congressmen: "Population was one of the things I worked on when I was in the Congress with many people here in this room. It is something that the U.N. should do. It is something where we are better served to use a multilateral channel, but it has got to be done efficiently and effectively. There has [sic] to be some delivery systems. It should not be studied to death if the American people are going to see that we are better off to use a multilateral channel and I am convinced we are. We don't want to be imposing American standards of rate of growth on some country, but we are saying that if an international community decides it is worth while to have these programs and education, we want to strongly support it." / Note #2 / Note #8 Mouthpiece for Kissinger Bush spent just under two years at the U.N. His tenure coincided with some of the most monstrous crimes against humanity of the Nixon-Kissinger team, for whom Bush functioned as an international spokesman, and to whom no Kissinger policy was too odious to be enthusiatically proclaimed before the international community and world public opinion. Through this doggedly loyal service, Bush forged a link with Nixon that would be ephemeral but vital for his career, while it lasted, and a link with Kissinger that would be decisive in shaping Bush's own administration in 1988-89. The way in which Bush set about organizing the anti-Iraq coalition of 1990-91 was decisively shaped by his United Nations experience. His initial approach to the Security Council, the types of resolutions that were put forward by the United States, and the alternation of military escalation with consultations among the five permanent members of the Security Council -- all this harkened back to the experience Bush acquired as Kissinger's envoy to the world body. Notes 15. See Seymour M. Hersh, "The Price of Power" (New York: Summit Books, 1983), pp. 444 ff. 16. Henry Kissinger, "op. cit.," p. 897. The general outlines of these remarks were first published in Jack Anderson's syndicated column, and reprinted in Jack Anderson, "The Anderson Papers" (New York: Random House, 1973). 17. Anderson, "op. cit.," p. 226. 18. Elmo Zumwalt, "On Watch" (New York: Quadrangle/New York Times Book Co., 1976), p. 367. 19. Anderson, "op. cit.," pp. 260-61. 20. Kissinger, "op. cit.," p. 909. 21. Hersh, "op. cit.," p. 457. 22. Kissinger, "op. cit.," pp. 911-12. 23. See R.C. Gupta, "U.S. Policy Toward India and Pakistan" (Delhi: B.R. Publishing Corp., 1977), pp. 84 "ff." 24. "Washington Post," July 27, 1972. 25. "Washington Post," Sept. 11, 1972. 26. U.S. House of Representatives, Joint Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Africa and the Subcommittee on International Organizations and Movements of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Ninety-Second Congress, Second Session, March 1, 1972, (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972), p. 12. 27. House of Representatives, Joint Hearing, pp. 7, 10-11. 28. House of Representatives, Joint Hearing, pp. 7-8. CHAPTER 13, Part I CHAIRMAN GEORGE IN WATERGATE In November 1972, Bush's "most influential patron," Richard Nixon, / Note #1 won reelection to the White House for a second term in a landslide victory over the McGovern-Shriver Democratic ticket. Nixon's election victory had proceeded in spite of the arrest of five White House-linked burglars in the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate building in Washington, early on June 17 of the same year. This was the beginning of the infamous Watergate scandal, which would overshadow and ultimately terminate Nixon's second term in 1974. After the election, Bush received a telephone call informing him that Nixon wanted to talk to him at the Camp David retreat in the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland. Bush had been looking to Washington for the inevitable personnel changes that would be made in preparation for Nixon's second term. Bush tells us that he was aware of Nixon's plan to reorganize his cabinet around the idea of a "super cabinet" of top-level, inner cabinet ministers or "super secretaries" who would work closely with the White House while relegating the day-to-day functioning of their executive departments to sub-cabinet deputies. One of the big winners under this plan was scheduled to be George Shultz, the former Labor Secretary, who was now supposed to become "S uper" Secretary of the Treasury. Shultz was a Bechtel executive who went on to be Reagan's second Secretary of State after Al Haig. Bush and Shultz were future members of the Bohemian Club of San Francisco and of the Bohemian Grove summer gathering. Bush says he received a call from Nixon's top domestic aide, John Ehrlichman. Ehrlichman told Bush that George Shultz wanted to see him before he went on to meet with Nixon at Camp David. As it turned out, Shultz wanted to offer Bush the post of undersecretary of the treasury, which would amount to "de facto" administrative control over the department while Shultz concentrated on his projected super secretary policy functions. Bush says he thanked Shultz for his "flattering" offer, took it under consideration, and then pressed on to Camp David. / Note #2 Bush Takes RNC Chair At Camp David, Bush says that Nixon talked to him in the following terms: "George, I know that Shultz has talked to you about the Treasury job, and if that's what you'd like, that's fine with me. However, the job I really want you to do, the place I really need you, is over at the National Committee running things. This is an important time forthe Republican Party, George. We have a chance to build a new coalition in the next four years, and you're the one who can do it." / Note #3 But this was not the job that George really wanted. He wanted to be promoted, but he wanted to continue in the personal retinue of Henry Kissinger. "At first Bush tried to persuade the President to give him, instead, the number-two job at the State Department, as deputy to Secretary Henry Kissinger. Foreign affairs was his top priority, he said. Nixon was cool to this idea, and Bush capitulated." / Note #4 According to Bush's own account, he asked Nixon for some time to ponder the offer of the RNC chairmanship. Among those whom Bush said he consulted on whether or not to accept was Rogers C.B. Morton, the former congressman whom Nixon had made Secretary of Commerce. Morton suggested that if Bush wanted to accept, he insist that he continue as a member of the Nixon cabinet, where, it should be recalled, he had been sitting since he was named ambassador to the United Nations. Pennsylvania Senator Hugh Scott, one of the Republican congressional leaders, also advised Bush to demand to continue on in the cabinet: "Insist on it," Bush recalls him saying. Bush also consulted Barbara. The story goes that Bar had demanded that George pledge that the one job he would never take was the RNC post. But now he wanted to take precisely that post, which appeared to be a political graveyard. George explained his wimpish obedience to Nixon: "Boy, you can't turn a President down." / Note #5 Bush then told Ehrlichman that he would accept, if he could stay on in the cabinet. Nixon approved this condition, and the era of Chairman George had begun. Of course, making the chairman of the Republican Party an ex-officio member of the President's cabinet seems to imply something resembling a one-party state. But George was not deterred by such difficulties. While he was at the U.N., Bush had kept his eyes open for the next post on the way up his personal "cursus honorum." In November of 1971 there was a boomlet for Bush among Texas Republican leaders who were looking for a candidate to run for governor. / Note #6 Nixon's choice of Bush to head the RNC was announced on December 11, 1972. The outgoing RNC Chairman was Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, an asset of the grain cartel, but, in that period, not totally devoid of human qualities. According to press reports, Nixon palace guard heavies like Haldeman and Charles W. Colson, later a central Watergate figure, were not happy with Dole because he would not take orders from the White House. Dole also tended to function as a conduit for grassroots resistance to White House directives. In the context of the 1972 campaign, "White House" means specifically Clark MacGregor's Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP), one of the protagonists of the Watergate scandal. / Note #7 Dole was considered remarkable for his "irreverence" for Nixon: "[H]e joked about the Watergate issue, about the White House staff and about the management of the Republican convention with its 'spontaneous demonstrations that will last precisely ten minutes.'|" / Note #8 Bush's own account of how he got the RNC post ignores Dole, who was Bush's most serious rival for the 1988 Republican presidential nomination. According to Dole's version, he conferred with Nixon about the RNC post on November 28, and told the President that he would have to quit the RNC in 1973 in order to get ready to run for reelection in 1974. According to Dole, it was he who recommended Bush to Nixon. Dole even said that he had gone to New York to convince Bush to accept the post. Dole sought to remove any implication that he had been fired by Nixon, and contradicted "speculation that I went to the mountaintop to be pushed off." What was clear was that Nixon and his retainers had chosen a replacement for Dole, whom they expected to be more obedient to the commands of the White House palace guard. Bush assumed his new post in January 1973, in the midst of the trial of the Watergate burglars. He sought at once to convey the image of a pragmatic technocrat. "There's kind of a narrow line between standing for nothing and imposing one's views," Bush told the press. He stressed that the RNC would have a lot of money to spend for recruiting candidates, and that he would personally control this money. "The White House is simply not going to control the budget," said Bush. "I believe in the importance of this job and I have confidence I can do it," he added. "I couldn't do it if I were some reluctant dragon being dragged away from a three-wine luncheon." / Note #9 Bush inaugurated his new post with a pledge that the Republican Party, from President Nixon on down, would do "everything we possibly can" to make sure that the GOP was not involved in political dirty tricks in the future. "I don't think it is good for politics in this country and I am sure I am reflecting the President's views on that as head of the party," intoned Bush in an appearance on "Issues and Answers." / Note #1 / Note #1 Whether or not Bush lived up to that pledge during his months at the RNC, and indeed during his later political career, will be sufficiently answered during the following pages. But now Chairman George, sitting in Nixon's cabinet with such men as John Mitchell, his eyes fixed on Henry Kissinger as his lodestar, is about to set sail on the turbulent seas of the Watergate typhoon. Before we accompany him, we must briefly review the complex of events lumped together under the heading of "Watergate," so that we may then situate Bush's remarkable and bizarre behavior between January 1973 and August of 1974, when Nixon's fall became the occasion for yet another Bush attempt to seize the vice-presidency. The Watergate Coup By the beginning of the 1990s, it has become something of a commonplace to refer to the complex of events surrounding the fall of Nixon as a coup d'etat. / Note #1 / Note #2 It was, to be sure, a coup d'etat, but one whose organizers and beneficiaries most commentators and historians are reluctant to name, much less to confront. Broadly speaking, Watergate was a coup d'etat which was instrumental in laying the basis for the specific new type of authoritarian-totalitarian regime which now rules the United States. The purpose of the coup was to rearrange the dominant institutions of the U.S. government so as to enhance their ability to carry out policies agreeable to the increasingly urgent dictates of the Morgan-Rockefeller-Mellon-Harriman financier faction. The immediate beneficiaries of the coup have been that class of technocratic administrators who have held the highest public offices since the days of the Watergate scandal. It is obvious that George Bush himself is one of the most prominent of such beneficiaries. As the Roman playwright Seneca warns us, the one who derives advantage from the crime is the one most likely to have committed it. The policies of th e Wall Street investment banking interests named are those of usury and Malthusianism, stressing the decline of a productive industrial economy in favor of savage Third World looting and anti-population measures. The changes subsumed by Watergate included the abolition of government's function as a means to distribute the rewards and benefits of economic progress among the principal constituency groups, upon whose support the shifting political coalitions depended for their success. Henceforth, government would appear as the means by which the sacrifices and penalties of austerity and declining standards of living would be imposed on a passive and stupefied population. The constitutional office of the President was to be virtually destroyed, and the power of the usurious banking elites above and behind the presidency was to be radically enhanced. The reason why the Watergate scandal escalated into the overthrow of Nixon has to do with the international monetary crisis of those years, and with Nixon's inability to manage the collapse of the Bretton Woods system and the U.S. dollar in a way satisfactory to the Anglo-American financial elite. One real-time observer of the events of these years who emphasized the intimate relation between the international monetary upheavals on the one hand and the "peripetea" of Nixon on the other was Lyndon LaRouche. The following comments by LaRouche are excerpted from a July 1973 commentary on the conjuncture of a revaluation of the deutschemark with John Dean's testimony before Senator Sam Ervin's Watergate investigating committee: "Last week's newest up-valuation of the West German D-Mark pushed the inflation-soaked Nixon Administration one very large step closer toward 'Watergate' impeachment. Broad bi-partisan support and press enthusiasm for the televised Senate Select Committee airing of wide-ranging revelations coincides with surging contempt for the government's handling of international and domestic financial problems over the past six months." LaRouche went on to point out why the same financiers and news media who had encouraged a coverup of the Watergate scandal during 1972 had decided during 1973 to use the break-in and coverup as a means of overthrowing Nixon: "Then came the January [1973] Paris meeting of the International Monetary Fund. The world monetary system was glutted with over $60 billions of inconvertible reserves. The world economy was technically bankrupt. It was kept out of actual bankruptcy proceedings throughout 1972 solely by the commitment of the U.S.A. to agree to some January, 1973 plan by which most of these $60 billions would begin to become convertible. The leading suggestion was that the excess dollars would be gradually sopped in exchange for IMF Special Drawing Rights (SDRs). With some such White House IMF action promised for January, 1973, the financial world had kept itself more or less wired together by sheer political will throughout 1972. "Then, into the delicate January Paris IMF sessions stepped Mr. Nixon's representatives. His delegates proceeded to break up the meeting with demands for trade and tariff concessions -- a virtual declaration of trade war. "Promptly, the financial markets registered their reaction to Mr. Nixon's bungling by plunging into crisis. "To this, Mr. Nixon shortly responded with devaluation of the dollar, a temporary expedient giving a very brief breathing-space to get back to the work of establishing dollar convertibility. Nixon continued his bungling, suggesting that this devaluation made conditions more favorable for negotiating trade and tariff concessions -- more trade war. "The financiers of the world weighed Mr. Nixon's wisdom, and began selling the dollar at still-greater discounts. Through successive crises, Mr. Nixon continued to speak only of John Connally's Holy Remedies of trade and tariff concessions. Financiers thereupon rushed substantially out of all currencies into such hedges as world-wide commodity speculation on a scale unprecedented in modern history. Still, Mr. Nixon had nothing to propose on dollar convertibility -- only trade wars. The U.S. domestic economy exploded into Latin American style inflation. "General commodity speculation, reflecting a total loss of confidence in all currencies, seized upon basic agricultural commodities -- among others. Feed prices soared, driving meat, poultry, and produce costs and prices toward the stratosphere. "It was during this period, as Nixon's credibility seemed so much less important than during late 1972, that a sudden rush of enthusiasm developed for the moral sensibilities of Chairman Sam Ervin's Senate Select Committee." / Note #1 / Note #3 As LaRouche points out, it was the leading Anglo-American financier factions which decided to dump Nixon, and availed themselves of the preexisting Watergate affair in order to reach their goal. The financiers were able to implement their decision all the more easily, thanks to the numerous operatives of the intelligence community who had been embedded within the Plumbers from the moment of their creation in response to an explicit demand coming from George Bush's personal mentor, Henry Kissinger. Watergate included the option of rapid steps in the direction of a dictatorship, not so much of the military as of the intelligence community and the law enforcement agencies, acting as executors of the will of the Wall Street circles indicated. We must recall that the backdrop for Watergate had been provided first of all by the collapse of the international monetary system, as made official by Nixon's austerity decrees imposing a wage and price freeze starting on the fateful day of August 15, 1971. What followed was an attempt to run the entire U.S. economy under the top-down diktat of the Pay Board and the Price Commission. This economic state of emergency was then compounded by the artificial oil shortages orchestrated by the companies of the international oil cartel during late 1973 and 1974, all in the wake of Kissinger's October 1973 Middle East War and the Arab oil boycott. In August 1974, when Gerald Ford decided to make Nelson Rockefeller, and not George Bush, his vice president-designate, he was actively considering further executive orders to declare a new economic state of emergency. Such colossal economic dislocations had impelled the new Trilateral Commission and such theorists as Samuel Huntington to contemplate the inherent ungovernability of democracy and the necessity of beginning a transition toward forms that would prove more durable under conditions of aggravated economic breakdown. Ultimately, much to the disappointment of George Bush, whose timetable of boundless personal ambition and greed for power had once again surged ahead of what his peers of the ruling elite were prepared to accept, the perspectives for a more overtly dictatorial form of regime came to be embodied in the figure of Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. Skeptics will point to the humiliating announcement, made by President Ford within the context of his 1975 "Halloween massacre" reshuffle of key posts, that Rockefeller would not be considered for the 1976 vice-presidential nomination. But Rockefeller, thanks to the efforts of Sarah Jane Moore and Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, each of whom attempted to assassinate Ford, had already come very close to the Oval Office on two separate occasions. Ford himself was reputedly one of the most exalted freemasons ever to occupy the presidency. Preponderant power during the last years of Nixon and during the Ford years was in any case exercised by Henry Kissinger, the de facto President. The preserving of constitutional form and ritual as a hollow facade behind which to realize practices more and more dictatorial in their substance was a typical pragmatic adaptation made possible by the ability of the financiers to engineer the slow and gradual decline of the economy, avoiding upheavals of popular protest. But in retrospect, there can be no doubt that Watergate was a coup d'etat, a creeping and muffled cold coup in the institutions which has extended its consequences over almost two dec ades. Among contemporary observers, the one who grasped this significance most lucidly in the midst of the events themselves was Lyndon LaRouche, who produced a wealth of journalistic and analytical material during 1973 and 1974. The roots of the administrative fascism of the Reagan and Bush years are to be found in the institutional tremors and changed power relations set off by the banal farce of the Watergate break-in. Hollywood's Watergate In the view of the dominant school of pro-regime journalism, the essence of the Watergate scandal lies in the illegal espionage and surveillance activity of the White House covert operations team, the so-called Plumbers, who are alleged to have been caught during an attempt to burglarize the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate office building near the Potomac. The supposed goal of the break-in was to filch information and documents while planting bugs. According to the official legend of the "Washington Post" and Hollywood, Nixon and his retainers responded to the arrest of the burglars by compounding their original crime with obstruction of justice and all of the abuses of a coverup. Then, the "Washington Post" journalists Bob Woodward and CarlBernstein, dedicated partisans of the truth, blew the story open with the help of Woodward's mysterious source, Deep Throat, setting into motion the investigation of the Senate committee under Sam Ervin, leading to impeachment proceedings by Rep. Peter Rodino's House Judiciary Committee which ultimately forced Nixon to resign. The received interpretation of the salient facts of the Watergate episode is a fantastic and grotesque distortion of historical truth. Even the kind of cursory examination of the facts in Watergate which we can permit ourselves within the context of a biography of Watergate figure George Bush will reveal that the actions which caused the fall of Nixon cannot be reduced to the simplistic account just summarized. There is, for example, the question of the infiltration of the White House staff and of the Plumbers themselves by members and assets of the intelligence community whose loyalty was not to Nixon, but to the Anglo-American financier elite. This includes the presence among the Plumbers of numerous assets of the Central Intelligence Agency, and specifically of the CIA bureaus traditionally linked to George Bush, such as the Office of Security-Security Research Staff and the Miami Station with its pool of Cuban operatives. Who Paid the Plumbers? The Plumbers were created at the demand of Henry Kissinger, who told Nixon that something had to be done to stop leaks in the wake of the "Pentagon Papers" affair of 1971. But if the Plumbers were called into existence by Kissinger, they were funded through a mechanism set up by Kissinger clone George Bush. A salient fact about the White House Special Investigations Unit (or Plumbers) of 1971-72 is that the money used to finance it was provided by George Bush's business partner and lifelong intimate friend, Bill Liedtke, the president of Pennzoil. Bill Liedtke was a regional finance chairman for the Nixon campaigns of 1968 and 1972, and he was one of the most successful. Liedtke says that he accepted this post as a personal favor to George Bush. In 1972, Bill Liedtke raised $700,000 in anonymous contributions, including what appears to have been a single contribution of $100,000 that was laundered through a bank account in Mexico. According to Harry Hurt, part of this money came from Bush's bosom crony Robert Mosbacher, now Secretary of Commerce. According to one account, "two days before a new law was scheduled to begin making anonymous donations illegal, the $700,000 in cash, checks, and securities was loaded into a briefcase at Pennzoil headquarters and picked up by a company vice president, who boarded a Washington-bound Pennzoil jet and delivered the funds to the Committee to Re-Elect the President at ten o'clock that night." / Note #1 / Note #4 These Mexican checks were turned over first to Maurice Stans of the CREEP, who transferred them in turn to Watergate burglar Gordon Liddy. Liddy passed them on to Bernard Barker, one of the Miami station Cubans arrested on the night of the final Watergate break-in. Barker was actually carrying some of the cash left over from these checks when he was apprehended. When Barker was arrested, his bank records were subpoenaed by the Dade County, Florida district attorney, Richard E. Gerstein, and were obtained by Gerstein's chief investigator, Martin Dardis. As Dardis told Carl Bernstein of the "Washington Post," about $100,000 in four cashier's checks had been issued in Mexico City by Manuel Ogarrio Daguerre, a prominent lawyer who handled Stans's money-laundering operation there. / Note #1 / Note #5 Liedtke eventually appeared before three grand juries investigating the different aspects of the Watergate affair, but neither he nor Pennzoil was ever brought to trial for the CREEP contributions. But it is a matter of more than passing interest that the money for the Plumbers came from one of Bush's intimates and, at the request of Bush, a member of the Nixon cabinet from February 1971 on. The U.S. House of Representatives Banking and Currency Committee, chaired by Texas Democrat WrightPatman, soon began a vigorous investigation of the money financing the break-in, large amounts of which were found as cash in the pockets of the burglars. Patman confirmed that the largest amount of the funds going into the Miami bank account of Watergate burglar Bernard Barker, a CIA operative since the Bay of Pigs invasion, was the $100,000 sent in by Texas CREEP chairman William Liedtke, longtime business partner of George Bush. The money was sent from Houston down to Mexico, where it was "laundered" to eliminate its accounting trail. It then came back to Barker's account as four checks totaling $89,000 and $11,000 in cash. A smaller amount, an anonymous $25,000 contribution, was sent in by Minnesota CREEP officer Kenneth Dahlberg in the form of a cashier's check. Patman relentlessly pursued the true sources of this money, as the best route to the truth about who ran the break-in, and for what purpose. CREEP National Chairman Maurice Stans later described the situation just after the burglars were arrested as made dangerous by "... Congressman Wright Patman and several of his political hatchet men working on the staff of the House Banking and Currency Committee. Without specific authorization by his committee, Patman announced that he was going to investigate the Watergate matter, using as his entry the banking transactions of the Dahlberg and Mexican checks. In the guise of covering that ground, he obviously intended to roam widely, and he almost did, but his own committee, despite its Democratic majority, eventually stopped him." These are the facts that Patman had established -- before "his own committee ... stopped him." The anonymous Minnesota $25,000 had in fact been provided to Dahlberg by Dwayne Andreas, chief executive of the Archer Daniels Midland grain trading company. The Texas $100,000, sent by Liedtke, in fact came from Robert H. Allen, a mysterious nuclear weapons materials executive. Allen was chairman of Gulf Resources and Chemical Corporation in Houston. His company controlled half the world's supply of lithium, an essential component of hydrogen bombs. On April 3, 1972 (75 days before the Watergate arrests), $100,000 was transferred by telephone from a bank account of Gulf Resources and Chemical Corp. into a Mexico City account of an officially defunct subsidiary of Gulf Resources. Gulf Resources' Mexican lawyer, Manuel Ogarrio Daguerre, withdrew it and sent back to Houston the package of four checks and cash, which Liedtke forwarded for the CIA burglars. / Note #1 / Note #6 Robert H. Allen was Texas CREEP's chief financial officer, while Bush partner William Liedtke was overall chairman. But what did Allen represent? In keeping with its strategic nuclear holdings, Allen's Gulf Resources was a kind of committee of the main components of the London-New York oligarchy. Formed in the late 1960s, Gulf Resources had taken over the New York-based Lithium Corporation of America. The president of this subsidiary was Gulf Resources Executive Vice President Harry D. Feltenstein, Jr. John Roger Menke, a director of both Gulf Resources and Lithium Corp., was also a consultant and director of the United Nuclear Corporation, and a director of the Hebrew Technical Institute. The ethnic background of the Lithium subsidiary is of interest due to Israel's known preoccupation with developing a nuclear weapons arsenal. Another Gulf Resources and Lithium Corp. director was Minnesotan Samuel H. Rogers, who was also a director of Dwayne Andreas's Archer Daniels Midland Corp. Andreas was a large financial backer of the "Zionist lobby" through the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'nith. Gulf Resources Chairman Robert H. Allen received the "Torch of Liberty" award of the Anti-Defamation League in 1982. Allen was a white Anglo-Saxon conservative. No credible reason for this award was supplied to the press, and the ADL stated their satisfaction that Mr. Allen's financing of the Watergate break-in was simply a mistake, now in the distant past. >From the beginning of Gulf Resources, there was always a representative on its board of New York's Bear Stearns firm, >whose partner Jerome Kohlberg, Jr., pioneered leveraged buyouts and merged with Bush's Henry Kravis. The most prestigious board member of Allen's Gulf Resources was George A. Butler, otherwise the chairman of Houston's Post Oak Bank. Butler represented the ultra-secretive W. S. ("Auschwitz") Farish III, confidant of George Bush and U.S. host of Queen Elizabeth. Farish was the founder and controlling owner of Butler's Post Oak Bank, and was chairman of the bank's executive committee as of 1988. / Note #1 / Note #7 A decade after Watergate, it was revealed that the Hunt family had controlled about 15 percent of Gulf Resources shares. This Texas oil family hired George Bush in 1977 to be the executive committee chairman of their family enterprise, the First International Bank in Houston. In the 1980s, Ray Hunt secured a massive oil contract with the ruler of North Yemen under the sponsorship of then-Vice President Bush. Ray Hunt continues in the 1991-92 presidential campaign as George Bush's biggest Texas financial angel. Here, in this one powerful Houston corporation, we see early indications of the alliance of George Bush with the "Zionist lobby" -- an alliance which for political reasons the Bush camp wishes to keep covert. These, then, are the Anglo-American moguls whose money paid for the burglary of the Watergate Hotel. It was their money that Richard Nixon was talking about on the famous "smoking gun" tape which lost him the presidency. The Investigation Is Derailed On Oct. 3, 1972, the House Banking and Currency Committee voted 20-15 against Chairman Wright Patman's investigation. The vote prevented the issuance of 23 subpoenas for CREEP officials to come to Congress to testify. The margin of protection to the moguls was provided by six Democratic members of the committee who voted with the Republicans against Chairman Patman. As CREEP Chairman Maurice Stans put it, "There were ... indirect approaches to Democratic [committee] members. An all-out campaign was conducted to see that the investigation was killed off, as it successfully was." / Note #1 / Note #8 Certain elements of this infamous "campaign" are known. Banking Committee member Frank Brasco, a liberal Democratic congressman from New York, voted to stop the probe. New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller had arranged a meeting between Brasco and U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell. Brasco had been a target of a Justice Department investigation for alleged fraud and bribery since 1970, and Mitchell successfully warned Brasco not to back Patman. Later, in 1974, Brasco was convicted of bribery. Before Watergate, both John Mitchell and Henry Kissinger had FBI reports implicating California Congressman Richard Hanna in the receipt of illegal campaign contributions from the Korean Central Intelligence Agency. Hanna surprised Patman by voting against the investigation. Hanna was later (1978) convicted for his role in the Koreagate scandal in 1978. The secretary of Congressman William Chappell complained in 1969 that the Florida Democrat had forced her to kick back some of her salary. The Justice Department, holding this information, had declined to prosecute. Chappell, a member of the Banking Committee, voted to stop Patman's investigation. Kentucky Democratic Congressman William Curlin, Jr. revealed in 1973 that "certain members of the committee were reminded of various past political indiscretions, or of relatives who might suffer as a result of [a] pro-subpoena vote." The Justice Department worked overtime to smear Patman, including an attempt to link him to "Communist agents" in Greece. / Note #1 / Note #9 The day before the committee vote, the Justice Department released a letter to Patman claiming that any congressional investigation would compromise the rights of the accused Watergate burglars before their trial. House Republican leader Gerald Ford led the attack on Patman from within the Congress. Though he later stated his regrets for this vicious campaign, his eventual reward was the U.S. presidency. Canceling the Patman probe meant that there would be no investigation of Watergate before the 1972 presidential election. The "Washington Post" virtually ended reference to the Watergate affair, and spoke of Nixon's opponent, George McGovern, as unqualified for the presidency. The Republican Party was handed another four-year administration. Bush, Kissinger, Rockefeller and Ford were the gainers. But then Richard Nixon became the focus of all Establishment attacks for Watergate, while the money trail that Patman had pursued was forgotten. Wright Patman was forced out of his committee chairmanship in 1974. On the day Nixon resigned the presidency, Patman wrote to Peter Rodino, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, asking him not to stop investigating Watergate. Though Patman died in 1976, his advice still holds good. The CIA Plumbers As the late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover told the journalist Andrew Tully in the days before June 1972, "By God, he's [Nixon's] got some former CIA men working for him that I'd kick out of my office. Someday, that bunch will serve him up a fine mess." / Note #2 / Note #0 The CIA men in question were among the Plumbers, a unit allegedly created in the first place to stanch the flow of leaks, including the Jack Anderson material about such episodes as the December 1971 brush with nuclear war discussed above. Leading Plumbers included retired high officials of the CIA. Plumber and Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt had been a GS-15 CIA staff officer; he had played a role in the 1954 toppling of Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, and later had been one of the planners in the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961. After the failure of the Bay of Pigs, Hunt is thought to have been a part of the continuing CIA attempts to assassinate Castro, code-named Operation Mongoose, ongoing at the time of the Kennedy assassination. All of this puts him in the thick of the CIA Miami station. One of Hunt's close personal friends was Howard Osborne, an official of the CIA Office of Security who was the immediate superior of James McCord. In the spring of 1971 Hunt went to Miami to recruit from among the Cubans the contingent of Watergate burglars, including Bernard Barker, Eugenio Martinez, and the rest. This was two months before the publication of the "Pentagon Papers," leaked by Daniel Ellsberg, provided Kissinger with the pretext he needed to get Nixon to initiate what would shortly become the Plumbers. Another leading Watergate burglar was James McCord, a former top official of the CIA Office of Security, the agency bureau which is supposed to maintain contacts with U.S. police agencies in order to facilitate its basic task of providing security for CIA installations and personnel. The Office of Security was thus heavily implicated in the CIA's illegal domestic operations, including "Cointelpro" operations against political dissidents and groups, and was the vehicle for such mind-control experiments as Operations Bluebird, Artichoke, and MK-Ultra. The Office of Security also utilized male and female prostitutes and other sex operatives for purposes of compromising and blackmailing public figures, information gathering, and control. According to Hougan, the Office of Security maintained a "fag file" of some 300,000 U.S. citizens, with heavy stress on homosexuals. The Office of Security also had responsibility for Soviet and other defectors. James McCord was at one time responsible for the physical security of all CIA premises in the U.S. McCord was also a close friend of CIA Counterintelligence Director James Jesus Angleton. McCord was anxious to cover the CIA's role; at one point he wrote to his superior, General Gaynor, urging him to "flood the newspapers with leaks or anonymous letters" to discredit those who wanted to establish the responsibility of "the company." / Note #2 / Note #1 But according to one of McCord's own police contacts, Garey Bittenbender of the Washington, D.C. Police Intelligence Division, who recognized him after his arrest, McCord had averred to him that the Watergate break-ins had been "a CIA operation," an account which McCord heatedly denied later. / Note #2 / Note #2 The third leader of the Watergate burglars, G. Gordon Liddy, had worked for the FBI and the Treasury. Liddy's autobiography, "Will," published in 1980, and various statements show that Liddy's world outlook had a number of similarities with that of George Bush: He was, for example, obsessed with the maintenance and transmission of his "family gene pool." Another key member of the Plumbers unit was John Paisley, who functioned as the official CIA liaison to the White House investigative unit. It was Paisley who assumed responsibility for the overall "leak analysis," that is to say, for defining the problem of unauthorized divulging of classified material which the Plumbers were supposed to combat. Paisley, along with Howard Osborne of the Office of Security, met with the Plumbers, led by Kissinger operative David Young, at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia on August 9, 1971. Paisley's important place on the Plumbers' roster is most revealing, since Paisley was later to become an important appointee of CIA Director George Bush. In the middle of 1976, Bush decided to authorize a group of experts, ostensibly from outside the CIA, to produce an analysis which would be compared with the CIA's own National Intelligence Estimates on Soviet capabilities and intentions. The panel of outside experts was given the designation of "Team B." Bush chose Paisley to be the CIA's "coordinator" of the three subdivisions of Team B. Paisley would later disappear while sailing on Chesapeake Bay in September of 1978. In a White House memorandum by David Young summarizing the August 9, 1971 meeting between the Plumbers and the official CIA leaders, we find that Young "met with Howard Osborn and a Mr. Paisley to review what it was that we wanted CIA to do in connection with their files on leaks from January 1969 to the present." There then follows a 14-point list of leaks and their classification, including the frequency of leaks associated with certain journalists, the gravity of the leaks, and so forth. A data base was called for, and "it was decided that Mr. Paisley would get this done by next Monday, August 16, 1971." On areas where more clarification was needed, the memo noted, "the above questions should be reviewed with Paisley within the next two days." / Note #2 / Note #3 The lesser Watergate burglars came from the ranks of the CIA Miami station Cubans: Bernard Barker, Eugenio Martinez, Felipe de Diego, Frank Surgis, Virgilio Gonzalez and Reinaldo Pico. Once they had started working for Hunt, Martinez asked the Miami station chief, Jake Esterline, if he was familiar with the activities now being carried out under White House cover. Esterline in turn asked Langley for its opinion of Hunt's White House position. A reply was written by Cord Meyer, later openly profiled as a Bush admirer, to Deputy Director for Plans (that is to say, covert operations) Thomas Karamessines. The import of Meyer's directions to Esterline was that the latter should "not ... concern himself with the travels of Hunt in Miami, that Hunt was on domestic White House business of an unknown nature and that the Chief of Station should 'cool it.'|" / Note #2 / Note #4 Notes for Chapter 13 1. Fitzhugh Green, "George Bush: An Intimate Portrait" (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1989), p. 137. 2. George Bush and Victor Gold, "Looking Forward" (New York: Doubleday, 1987), pp. 120-21. 3. "Ibid.," p. 121. 4. Green, "op. cit.," p. 129. 5. Harry Hurt III, "George Bush, Plucky Lad," in "Texas Monthly," June 1983. 6. "Dallas Morning News," Nov. 25, 1971. 7. "Washington Post," Dec. 12, 1972. 8. "Ibid." 9. "Washington Post," Jan. 22, 1973. 11. "Washington Post," Jan. 22, 1973. 12. See for example Len Cholodny and Robert Gettlin, "Silent Coup" (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991). 13. Lyn Marcus, "Up-Valuation of German Mark Fuels Watergate Attack on Nixon," "New Solidarity," July 9-13, 1973, pp. 10-11. 14. See Thomas Petzinger, "Oil and Honor" (New York: Putnam, 1987), pp. 64-65. See also Harry Hurt's article mentioned above. Wright Patman's House Banking Committee revealed part of the activities of Bill Liedtke and Mosbacher during the Watergate era. 15. Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, "All the President's Men" (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), present the checks received by Barker as one of the ways they breached the wall of secrecy around the CREEP, with the aid of their anonymous source "Bookkeeper." But neither in this book nor in "The Final Days" (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976), do "Woodstein" get around to mentioning that the Mexico City money came from Bill Liedtke. This marked pattern of silence and reticence on matters pertaining to George Bush, certainly one of the most prominent of the President's men, is a characteristic of Watergate journalism in general. For more information regarding William Liedtke's role in financing the CREEP, see Hearings Before the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, 93rd Congress, including testimony by Hugh Sloan, June 6, 1973; and by Maurice Stans, June 12, 1973; see also the Final Report of the committee, issued in June, 1974. Relevant press coverage from the period includes "Stans Scathes Report," by Woodward and Bernstein, "Washington Post," Sept. 14, 1972; and "Liedtke Linked to FPC Choice," United Press International, June 26, 1973. Liedtke also influenced Nixon appointments in areas of interest to himself. 16. "New York Times," Aug. 26, 1972 and Nov. 1, 1972. 17. Interview with a Post Oak Bank executive, Nov. 21, 1991. See also "Houston Post," Dec. 27, 1988. 18. Maurice H. Stans, "The Terrors of Justice: The Untold Side of Watergate" (New York: Everest, 1978). 19. Stanley L. Kutler, "The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon" (New York: Knopf, distributed by Random House, 1990), pp. 229-33. 20. See Jim Hougan, "Secret Agenda" (New York: Random House, 1984), p. 92. 21. Ervin Committee Hearings, Book 9, pp. 3441-46, and Report of the Nedzi Committee of the House of Representatives, p. 201, cited by Hougan, "op. cit.," p. 318. 22. Nezdi Committee Report, pp. 442-43, quoted in Hougan, "op. cit.," p. 261. 23. Hougan, "op. cit.," pp. 46-47. 24. Ervin Committee Final Report, pp. 1146-49, and Hougan, "op. cit.," pp. 131-32. Chapter 13 Part 2 CHAIRMAN GEORGE IN WATERGATE During the spring of 1973, George Bush was no longer simply a long-standing member of the Nixon cabinet. He was also, de facto, a White House official, operating out of the same Old Executive Office Building, which is adjacent to the Executive Mansion and forms part of the same security compound. As we read in the Jack Anderson column for March 10, 1973, in the "Washington Post": "Republican National Chairman George Bush, as befitting the head of a party whose coffers are overflowing, has been provided with a plush office in the new Eisenhower Building here. He spends much of his time, however, in a government office next to the White House. When we asked how a party official rated a government office, a GOP spokesman explained that the office wasn't assigned to him but was merely a visitor's office. The spokesman admitted, however, that Bush spends a lot of time there." This means that Bush's principal office was in the building where Nixon most liked to work; Nixon had what was called his "hideaway" office in the Old Executive Office Building. As to the state of George's relations with Nixon at this time, we have the testimony of a "Yankee Republican" who had known and liked father Prescott, as cited by journalist Al Reinert: "I can't think of a man I've ever known for whom I have greater respect than Pres Bush ... I've always been kind of sorry his son turned out to be such a jerk. George has been kissing Nixon's ass ever since he came up here." / Note #2 / Note #5 Reinert comments that "when Nixon became president, Bush became a teacher's pet," "a presidential favorite, described in the press as one of 'Nixon's men.'|" Bush's Role On the surface, George was an ingratiating sycophant. But he dissembled. The Nixon White House would seem to have included at least one highly placed official who betrayed his President to Bob Woodward of the "Washington Post," making it possible for that newspaper to repeatedly outflank Nixon's attempts at stonewalling. This was the celebrated, and still anonymous, source Woodward called "Deep Throat." Al Haig has often been accused of having been the figure of the Nixon White House who provided Woodward and Bernstein with their leads. If there is any consensus about the true identity of Deep Throat, it would appear to be that Al Haig is the prime suspect. However, there is no conclusive evidence about the true identity of the person or persons called Deep Throat, assuming that such a phenomenon ever existed. As soon as Haig is named, we must become suspicious: The propaganda of the Bush networks has never been kind to Haig. Haig and Bush, as leading clones of Henry Kissinger, were locked on a number of occasions into a kind of sibling rivalry. On the one hand, it cannot be proven that Haig was Deep Throat. On the other hand, George Bush has frequently escaped any scrutiny in this regard. It may therefore be useful, as a kind of "reductio ad absurdum" permitting us a fresh approach to certain long-standing Watergate enigmas, to ask the question: Could Bush have been Deep Throat? Or, could Bush have been one part of a composite of sources which Woodward has chosen to popularize as his legendary Deep Throat? Or, could Bush have been a source who chose to use Deep Throat as his cut-out? The novelty of Bush as Deep Throat is not due to any objective circumstance, but rather to the selective omissions of sources, journalists, press organs, publishers, and editors, none of whom is immune to the influence of the Skull and Bones/Brown Brothers, Harriman powerhouse we have already seen in action so many times. Some years after Nixon's fall, "Time" magazine listed what it considered to be the possible sources for the leaks attributed by "Woodstein" to Deep Throat. These were: Richard Nixon, Rose Mary Woods, Alexander Haig, Charles Colson, Stephen Bull, Fred Buzhardt, Leonard Garment, and Samuel Powers. / Note #2 / Note #6 Woodward and Bernstein do not list Bush among the Cast of Characters in "All the President's Men," although he was a member of the Nixon cabinet. In these authors' later book, "The Final Days," he does appear. But the exclusion of Bush from the list of suspects is arbitrary and highly suspicious, especially on the part of "Time" magazine, founded by Henry Luce of Skull and Bones. Discounting the coverups, both crude and sophisticated, we can state that Bush is a plausible candidate to be Deep Throat, or to be one of his voices if these should prove to be multiple. What intimate of Nixon, what cabinet member and quasi-White House official had a better line of communication to the Wall Street investment banking circles who were the prime movers of the overthrow of Nixon? Who had a better working relationship with Henry Kissinger, the chief immediate beneficiary of Nixon's downfall? Who had links to the dirty tricks and black operations divisions of the CIA, especially to the Miami station? Whose business partner and cronies had financed the CREEP? And who could count on the loyalty of a far-flung freemasonic network ensconced in positions of power in the media, the courts, the executive branch, the Congress, and law enforcement agencies? Surely Bush is more than a plausible candidate; by any realistic reckoning, he is a formidable candidate. In terms of the immediate tactical mechanics of the Watergate scandal, Bush possessed undeniable trump cards. The first was his long-standing family and business relationship with the owners of the "Washington Post," the flagship news organ of the scandal. The paper was controlled by Katherine Meyer Graham, and both her father, Eugene Meyer, and her late husband, Philip Graham, had been among the investers of the Bush-Overbey oil firm in 1951-52. With Eugene Meyer, Bush says, he "had other oil-business dealings over the years, most of them profitable, all enjoyable." / Note #2 / Note #7 In addition, there are a few details of the personal background of reporter Bob Woodward which may suggest a covert link to Chairman George. Woodward was a naval intelligence officer with a government security clearance of the highest level ("top secret crypto"). He was specifically one of the briefers sent by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to provide verbal intelligence and operational summaries for top officials, including those of the National Security Council. Woodward was also, like Bush, a graduate of Yale, where he took his degree in 1965. Also like Bush, Woodward had been a member of a Yale secret society. Woodward had not been tapped for Skull and Bones, however; he had joined Book and Snake, thought to be among the four most prestigious of these masonic institutions. Book and Snake, like Scroll and Key and Wolf's Head, functions as a satellite of Skull and Bones, receiving as members the best young oligarchs not culled by Skull and Bones. Dean Acheson, of Wolf's Head, for example, was an asset of the political-financial faction headed up by Averell Harriman of Skull and Bones. Some delving into the details of the Deep Throat-Woodward relationship may further substantiate the Bush candidacy. If we wish literally to believe what Woodward recounts, we obtain the following picture of his contacts with Deep Throat. First we have a series of telephone contacts between June 19 and October 8, 1972. Even if we posit that Bush was busily fulfilling his diplomatic commitments in New York City on the days when he was not attending cabinet meetings in Washington, there is no practical reason why Bush could not have provided the tips Woodward describes. Then we have the legendary late-night garage meetings, starting Monday, October 9, 1972, and repeated on Saturday, October 21, and Friday, October 27, with a further likely garage meeting in late December. Since all of these but the first were on weekends, there is no reason to conclude that they could not have been accommodated within Bush's U.N. schedule. Any time after December 12, 1972 (the date Bush's GOP appointment was announced), his presence in Washington would have fit easily into the reorientation of his work schedule toward his new job at the White House. A garage meeting in January 1973, a bar meeting in February, phone calls in April, another garage meeting in May, and a further one in November -- none of this would have presented any difficulty. What does Woodward tell us about Deep Throat? "The man's position in the Executive Branch was extremely sensitive." "Deep Throat had access to information from the White House, Justice, the FBI and CRP. What he knew represented an aggregate of hard information flowing in and out of many stations." He was someone whom Woodward had known for some time : "His friendship with Deep Throat was genuine, not cultivated. Long before Watergate, they had spent many evenings talking about Washington, the government, power." / Note #2 / Note #8 Deep Throat was a man who "could be rowdy, drink too much, overreach. He was not good at concealing his feelings, hardly ideal for a man in his position." Could this be the precursor of the Bush of Panama, the Gulf, and civil rights controversies, unable to suppress periodic episodes of public rage? Perhaps. We also learn from Woodward that Deep Throat was "an incurable gossip." Perhaps this can be related to Bush's talent as a mimic, described by Fitzhugh Green. / Note #2 / Note #9 It was on May 16, 1973 Deep Throat told Woodward: "Everyone's life is in danger." He added that "electronic surveillance is going on and we had better watch it." Who is doing it? Bernstein asked. "CIA," was Woodward's reply. Woodward typed a summary of Deep Throat's further remarks, including these comments: "The covert activities involve the whole U.S. intelligence community and are incredible. Deep Throat refused to give specifics because it is against the law. The cover-up had little to do with the Watergate, but was mainly to protect the covert operations." / Note #3 / Note #0 Butwh at were the covert operations to which Deep Throat so dramatically refers? Enter Lou Russell One of the major sub-plots of Watergate, and one that will eventually lead us back to the documented public record of George B