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 4
Thus
it was that White House Press Secretary James Brady could say in early
March 1981: "Bush is functioning much like a co-President. George is involved
in all the national security stuff because of his special background as
CIA director. All the budget working groups he was there, the economic
working groups, the Cabinet meetings. He is included in almost all the
meetings." / Note #1 During the first months of the Reagan administration,
Bush found himself locked in a power struggle with Gen. Alexander Haig,
whom Reagan had appointed to be secretary of state. Inexorably, the Brown
Brothers Harriman/Skull and Bones networks went into action against Haig.
The idea was to paint him as a power-hungry megalomaniac bent on dominating
the administration of the weak figurehead Reagan. This would then be supplemented
by a vicious campaign of leaking by James Baker and Michael Deaver, designed
to play Reagan against Haig and vice-versa, until the rival to Bush could
be eliminated. Three weeks into the new administration, Haig concluded
that "someone in the White House staff was attempting to communicate with
me through the press," by a process of constant leakage, including leakage
of the contents of secret diplomatic papers. Haig protested to Meese, NSC
chief Richard Allen, James Baker and Bush. Shortly thereafter, Haig noted
that "Baker's messeng ers sent rumors of my imminent departure or dismissal
murmuring through the press." "Soon, a 'senior presidential aide' was quoted
in a syndicated column as saying, 'We will get this man [Haig] under control.'|"
/ Note #2 It took more than a year for Baker and Bush to drive Haig out
of the administration. Shortly before his ouster, Haig got a report of
a White House meeting during which Baker was reported to have said, "Haig
is going to go, and quickly, and we are going to make it happen." / Note
#3 Haig's principal bureaucratic ploy during the first weeks of the Reagan
administration was his submission to Reagan, on the day of his inauguration,
of a draft executive order to organize the National Security Council and
interagency task forces, including the crisis staffs, according to Haig's
wishes. Haig refers to this document as National Security Decision Directive
1 (NSDD 1), and laments that it was never signed in its original form,
and that no comparable directive for structuring the NSC interagency groups
was signed for over a year. Ultimately a document called NSDD 1 would be
signed, establishing a Special Situation Group (SSG) crisis management
staff chaired by Bush. Haig's draft would have made the secretary of state
the chairman of the SSG crisis staff in conformity with Haig's demand to
be recognized as Reagan's "vicar of foreign policy." This was unacceptable
to Bush, who made sure, with the help of James Baker and probably also
Deaver, that Haig's draft of NSDD 1 would never be signed. The struggle
between Haig and Bush culminated toward the end of Reagan's first 100 days
in office. Haig was chafing because the White House staff, meaning James
Baker, was denying him access to the President.Haig's NSDD 1 had still
not been signed. Then, on Sunday, March 22, Haig's attention was called
to an elaborate leak to reporter Martin Schram that had appeared that day
in the "Washington Post" under the headline "White House Revamps Top Policy
Roles; Bush to Head Crisis Management." Haig's attention was drawn to the
following paragraphs: "Partly in an effort to bring harmony to the Reagan
high command, it has been decided that Vice President George Bush will
be placed in charge of a new structure for national security crisis management,
according to senior presidential assistants. This assignment will amount
to an unprecedented role for a vice president in modern times.... "Reagan
officials emphasized that Bush, a former director of the CIA and former
United Nations ambassador, would be able to preserve White House control
over crisis management without irritating Haig, who they stressed was probably
the most experienced and able of all other officials who could serve in
that function. "|'The reason for this [choice of Bush] is that the secretary
of state might wish he were chairing the crisis management structure,'
said one Reagan official, 'but it is pretty hard to argue with the vice
president being in charge.'|" / Note #4 Haig says that he called Ed Meese
at the White House to check the truth of this report, and that Meese replied
that there was no truth to it. Haig went to see Reagan at the White House.
Reagan was concerned about the leak, and reassured Haig: "I want you to
know that the story in the "Post" is a fabrication. It means that George
would sit in for me in the NSC in my absence, and that's all it means.
It doesn't affect your authority in any way." But later the same afternoon,
White House Press Secretary James Brady read the following statement to
the press: "I am confirming today the President's decision to have the
Vice President chair the Administration's 'crisis management' team, as
a part of the National Security Council system.... President Reagan's choice
of the Vice President was guided in large measure by the fact that management
of crises has traditionally -- and appropriately -- been done in the White
House." / Note #5 In the midst of the Bush-James Baker cabal's relentless
drive to seize control over the Reagan administration, John Warnock Hinckley,
Jr. carried out his attempt to assassinate President Reagan on the afternoon
of March 30, 1981. George Bush was visiting Texas that day. Bush was flying
from Fort Worth to Austin in his Air Force Two Boeing 707. In Austin, Bush
was scheduled to deliver an address to a joint session of the Texas state
legislature. It was Al Haig who called Bush and told him that the President
had been shot, while forwarding the details of Reagan's condition, insofar
as they were known, by scrambler as a classified message. Haig was in touch
with James Baker III, who was close to Reagan at George Washington University
hospital. Bush's man in the White House situation room was Admiral Dan
Murphy, who was standing right next to Haig. Bush agreed with Haig's estimate
that he ought to return to Washington at once. But first his plane needed
to be refueled, so it landed at Carswell Air Force Base near Austin. Bush
says that his flight from Carswell to Andrews Air Force Base near Washington
took about two and one-half hours, and that he arrived at Andrews at about
6:40 p.m. Bush says he was told by Ed Meese that the operation to remove
the bullet that had struck Reagan was a success, and that the President
was likely to survive. Back at the White House, the principal cabinet officers
had assembled in the Situation Room and had been running a crisis management
committee during the afternoon. Haig says he was at first adamant that
a conspiracy, if discovered, should be ruthlessly exposed: "Remembering
the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination, I said to Woody Goldberg, 'No
matter what the truth is about this shooting, the American people must
know it.'|" / Note #6 In his memoir Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger
recalls, that "at almost e xactly 7:00, the Vice President came to the
Situation Room and very calmly assumed the chair at the head of the table."
/ Note #7 Bush asked Weinberger for a report on the status of U.S. forces,
which Weinberger furnished. Another eyewitness of these transactions was
Don Regan, who records that "the Vice President arrived with Ed Meese,
who had met him when he landed to fill him in on the details. George asked
for a condition report: 1) on the President; 2) on the other wounded; 3)
on the assailant; 4) on the international scene.... After the reports were
given and it was determined that there were no international complications
and no domestic conspiracy, it was decided that the U.S. government would
carry on business as usual. The Vice President would go on TV from the
White House to reassure the nation and to demonstrate that he was in charge."
/ Note #8 As Weinberger recounts the same moments: "[Attorney General William
French Smith] then reported that all FBI reports concurred with the information
I had received; that the shooting was a completely isolated incident and
that the assassin, John Hinckley, with a previous record in Nashville,
seemed to be a 'Bremmer' type, a reference to the attempted assassin of
George Wallace." / Note #9 Those who were not watching carefully here may
have missed the fact that just a few minutes after George Bush had walked
into the room, he had presided over the sweeping under the rug of the decisive
question regarding Hinckley and his actions: Was Hinckley a part of a conspiracy,
domestic or international? Not more than five hours after the attempt to
kill Reagan, on the basis of the most fragmentary early reports, before
Hinckley had been properly questioned, and before a full investigation
had been carried out, a group of cabinet officers chaired by George Bush
had ruled out "a priori" any conspiracy. Haig, whose memoirs talk most
about the possibility of a conspiracy, does not seem to have objected to
this incredible decision. >From that moment on, "no conspiracy" became
the official doctrine of the U.S. regime and the most massive efforts were
undertaken to stifle any suggestion to the contrary. The Conspiracy Curiously
enough, press accounts emerging over the next few days provided a "prima
facie" case that there had been a conspiracy around the Hinckley attentat,
and that the cons piracy had included members of Bush's immediate family.
Most of the overt facts were not disputed, but were actually confirmed
by Bush and his son Neil. On Tuesday, March 31, the "Houston Post" published
a copyrighted story under the headline: "Bush's Son Was to Dine with Suspect's
Brother." The lead paragraph read as follows: "Scott Hinckley, the brother
of John Hinckley, Jr., who is charged with shooting President Reagan and
three others, was to have been a dinner guest Tuesday night at the home
of Neil Bush, son of Vice President George Bush, the "Houston Post" has
learned." According to the article, Neil Bush had admitted on Monday, March
30 that he was personally acquainted with Scott Hinckley, having met with
him on one occasion in the recent past. Neil Bush also stated that he knew
the Hinckley family, and referred to large monetary contributions made
by the Hinckleys to the Bush 1980 presidential campaign. Neil Bush and
Scott Hinckley both lived in Denver at this time. Scott Hinckley was the
vice president of Vanderbilt Energy Corporation, and Neil Bush was employed
as a landman for Standard Oil of Indiana. John W. Hinckley, Jr., the would-be
assassin, lived on and off with his family in Evergreen, Colorado, not
far from Denver. Neil Bush was reached for comment on Monday, March 30,
and was asked if, in addition to Scott Hinckley, he also knew John W. Hinckley,
Jr., the would-be killer. "I have no idea," said Neil Bush. "I don't recognize
any pictures of him. I just wish I could see a better picture of him."
Sharon Bush, Neil's wife, was also asked about her acquaintance with the
Hinckley family. "I don't even know the brother," she replied, suggesting
that Scott Hinckley was coming to dinner as the date of a woman whom Sharon
did know. "From what I know and have heard, they [the Hinckleys] are a
very nice family ... and have given a lot of money to the Bush campaign.
I understand he [John W. Hinckley, Jr.] was just the renegade brother in
the family. They must feel awful." It also proved necessary for Bush's
office to deny that the Vice President was familiar with the "Hinckley-Bush
connection." Bush's press secretary, Peter Teeley, said when asked to comment:
"I don't know a damn thing about it. I was talking to someone earlier tonight,
and I couldn't even remember his [Hinckley's] name. All I know is what
you're telling me." On April 1, 1981, the "Rocky Mountain News" of Denver
carried Neil Bush's confirmation that if the assassination attempt had
not happened on March 30, Scott Hinckley would have been present at a dinner
party at Neil Bush's home the night of March 31. According to Neil, Scott
Hinckley had come to the home of Neil and Sharon Bush on January 23, 1981
to be present along with about 30 other guests at a surprise birthday party
for Neil, who had turned 26 one day earlier. Scott Hinckley had come "through
a close friend who brought him," according to this version, and this same
close female friend was scheduled to come to dinner along with Scott Hinckley
on that last night of March, 1981. "My wife set up a surprise party for
me, and it truly was a surprise, and it was an honor for me at that time
to meet Scott Hinckley," said Neil Bush to reporters. "He is a good and
decent man. I have no regrets whatsoever in saying Scott Hinckley can be
considered a friend of mine. To have had one meeting doesn't make the best
of friends, but I have no regrets in saying I do know him." Neil Bush told
the reporters that he had never met John W. Hinckley, Jr., the gunman,
nor his father, John W. Hinckley, Sr., president and chairman of the board
of Vanderbilt Energy Corporation of Denver. But Neil Bush also added that
he would be interested in meeting the elder Hinckley: "I would like [to
meet him]. I'm trying to learn the oil business, and he's in the oil business.
I probably could learn something from Mr. Hinckley." Neil Bush then announced
that he wanted to "set straight" certain inaccuracies that had appeared
the previous day in the "Houston Post" about the relations between the
Bush and Hinckley families. The first was his own wife Sharon's reference
to the large contributions from the Hinckleys to the Bush campaign. Neil
asserted that the 1980 Bush campaign records showed no money whatever coming
in from any of the Hinckleys. All that could be found, he argued, was a
contribution to that "great Republican," John Connally. The other issue
the "Houston Post" had raised regarded the 1978 period, when George W.
Bush of Midland, Texas, Neil's oldest brother, had run for Congress in
Texas's 19th Congressional District. At that time, Neil Bush had worked
for George W. Bush as his campaign manager, and in this connection Neil
had lived in Lubbock, Texas during most of the year. This raised the question
of whether Neil might have been in touch with gunman John W. Hinckley,
Jr. during that year of 1978, since gunman Hinckley had lived in Lubbock
from 1974 through 1980, when he was an intermittent student at Texas Tech
University there. Neil Bush ruled out any contact between the Bush family
and gunman John W. Hinckley, Jr. in Lubbock during that time. The previous
day, elder son George W. Bush had been far less categorical about never
having met gunman Hinckley. He had stated to the press: "It's certainly
conceivable that I met him or might have been introduced to him.... I don't
recognize his face from the brief, kind of distorted thing they had on
TV, and the name doesn't ring any bells. I know he wasn't on our staff.
I could check our volunteer rolls." Neil Bush's confirmation of his relations
with Scott Hinckley was matched by a parallel confirmation from the Executive
Office of the Vice President. This appeared in the "Houston Post", April
1, 1981 under the headline, "Vice President Confirms his Son was to have
Hosted Hinckley Brother." Here the second-string press secretary, Shirley
M. Green, was doing the talking. "I've spoken to Neil," she said, "and
he says they never saw [Scott] Hinckley again [after the birthday party].
They kept saying 'we've got to get together,' but they never made any plans
until tonight." Contradicting Neil Bush's remarks, Ms. Green asserted that
Neil Bush knew Scott Hinckley "only slightly." Later in the day, Bush spokesman
Peter Teeley surfaced to deny any campaign donations from the Hinckley
clan to the Bush campaign. When asked why Sharon Bush and Neil Bush had
made reference to large political contributions from the Hinckleys to the
Bush campaign, Teeley responded, "I don't have the vaguest idea." "We've
gone through our files," said Teeley, "and we have absolutely no information
that he [John W. Hinckley, Sr.] or anybody in the family were contributors,
supporters, anything." Once the cabinet had decided that there had been
no conspiracy, all such facts were irrelevant anyway. There is no record
of Neil Bush, George W. Bush, or Vice President George H.W. Bush ever having
been questioned by the FBI in regard to the contacts described. They never
appeared before a grand jury or a congressional investigating committee.
Which is another way of saying that by March 1981, the United States government
had degenerated into total lawlessness, with special exemptions for the
now-ruling Bush family. Government by law had dissolved. Haig Is Out The
media were not interested in the dinner date of Neil Bush and Scott Hinckley,
but they were very interested indeed in the soap opera of what had gone
on in the Situation Room in the White House during the afternoon of March
30. Since the media had been looking for ways to go after Haig for weeks,
they simply continued this line into their coverage of the White House
scene that afternoon. Haig had appeared before the television cameras to
say: "Constitutionally, gentlemen, you have the President, the Vice President,
and the Secretary of State, in that order, and should the President decide
that he wants to transfer the helm he will do so. He has not done that.
As of now, I am in control here, in the White House, pending the return
of the Vice President and in close touch with him. If something came up,
I would check with him, of cou rse." The "I'm in control here" story on
Haig was made into the leitmotif for his sacking, which was still a year
in the future. Reagan's own ghostwritten biography published the year after
he left office gives a good idea what James Baker and Michael Deaver fed
the confused and wounded President about what had gone on during his absence:
"On the day I was shot, George Bush was out of town and Haig immediately
came to the White House and claimed he was in charge of the country. Even
after the vice-president was back in Washington, I was told he maintained
that he, not George, should be in charge. I didn't know about this when
it was going on. But I heard later that the rest of the cabinet was furious.
They said he acted as if he thought he had the right to sit in the Oval
Office and believed it was his constitutional right to take over -- a position
without any legal basis." / Note #1 / Note #0 This fantastic account finds
no support in the Regan or Weinberger memoirs, but is a fair sample of
the Bushman line. Manchurian Candidate? What also interested the media
very much was the story of John W. Hinckley, Jr.'s obsession with the actress
Jodie Foster, who had played the role of a teenage prostitute in the 1976
movie "Taxi Driver." The prostitute is befriended by a taxi driver, Travis
Bickle, who threatens to kill a Senator who is running for President in
order to win the love of the girl. Young John Hinckley had imitated the
habits and mannerisms of Travis Bickle. When John Hinckley, Jr. had left
his hotel room in Washington, D.C. on his way to shoot Reagan, he had left
behind a letter to Jodie Foster: Dear Jodie, There is a definite possibility
that I will be killed in my attempt to get Reagan. It is for this reason
that I am writing you this letter now. As you well know by now, I love
you very much. The past seven months I have left you dozens of poems, letters,
and messages in the faint hope you would develop an interest in me....
Jodie, I'm asking you to please look into your heart and at least give
me the chance with this historical deed to gain your respect and love.
I love you forever. [signed] John Hinckley / Note #1 / Note #1 In 1980,
Jodie Foster was enrolled at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut,
as an undergraduate. Hinckley spent three weeks in September 1980 in a
New Haven hotel, according to the "New York Daily News". In early October,
he spent several days in New Haven, this time at the Colony Inn motel.
Two bartenders in a bar near the Yale campus recalled Hinckley as having
bragged about his relationship with Jodie Foster. Hinckley had been arrested
by airport authorities in Nashville, Tennessee on October 9, 1980 for carrying
three guns, and was quickly released. Reagan had been in Nashville on October
7, and Carter arrived there on October 9. The firearms charge on the same
day that the President was coming to town should have landed Hinckley on
the Secret Service watch list of potential presidential assassins, but
the FBI apparently neglected to transmit the information to the Secret
Service. In February 1981, Hinckley was again near the Yale campus. During
this time, Hinckley claimed that he was in contact with Jodie Foster by
mail and telephone. Jodie Foster had indeed received a series of letters
and notes from Hinckley, which she had passed on to her college dean. The
dean allegedly gave the letters to the New Haven police, who supposedly
gave them to the FBI. Nevertheless, nothing was done to restrain Hinckley,
who had a record of psychiatric treatment. Hinckley had been buying guns
in various locations across the United States. Was Hinckley a Manchurian
candidate, brainwashed to carry out his role as an assassin? Was a network
operating through the various law enforcement agencies responsible for
the failure to restrain Hinckley or to put him under special surveillance?
The FBI soon officially rubber-stamped the order promulgated by the cabinet
that no conspiracy be found: "There was no conspiracy and Hinckley acted
alone," said the bureau. Hinckley's parents' memoir refers to some notes
penciled by Hinckley which were found during a search of his cell and which
"could sound bad." These notes "described an imaginary conspiracy -- either
with the political left or the political right .. to assassinate the President."
Hinckley's lawyers, from Edward Bennett Williams's law firm, said that
the notes were too absurd to be taken seriously, and they have been suppressed.
/ Note #1 / Note #2 In July 1985, the FBI was compelled to release some
details of its investigation of Hinckley under the Freedom of Information
Act. No explanation was offered of how it was determined that Hinckley
had acted alone, and the names of all witnesses were censored. According
to a wire service account, "The file made no mention of papers seized from
Hinckley's prison cell at Butner, North Carolina, which reportedly made
reference to a conspiracy. Those writings were ruled inadmissible by the
trial judge and never made public." / Note #1 / Note #3 The FBI has refused
to release 22 pages of documents concerning Hinckley's "associates and
organizations," 22 pages about his personal finances, and 37 pages about
his personality and character. The Williams and Connally defense team argued
that Hinckley was insane, controlled by his obsession with Jodie Foster.
The jury accepted this version, and in July 1982, Hinckley was found not
guilty by reason of insanity. He was remanded to St. Elizabeth's mental
hospital where he remains to this day with no fixed term to serve; his
mental condition is periodically reviewed by his doctors. Bush Takes Over
Bush took up the duties of the presidency, all the while elaborately denying,
in his self-deprecating way, that he had in fact taken control. During
the time that Reagan was convalescing, the President was even less interested
than usual in detailed briefings about government operations. Bush's visits
to the chief executive were thus reduced to the merest courtesy calls,
after which Bush was free to do what he wanted. Bush's key man was James
Baker III, White House chief of staff and the leading court favorite of
Nancy Reagan. During this period, Michael Deaver was a wholly controlled
appendage of Baker, and would remain one for as long as he was useful to
the designs of the Bushmen. And Baker and Deaver were not the only Bushmen
in the White House. There were also Bush campaign veterans David Gergen
and Jay Moorhead. In the cabinet, one Bush loyalist was Secretary of Commerce
Malcolm Baldridge, who was flanked by his assistant secretary, Fred Bush
(apparently not a member of the George Bush family). The Bushmen were strong
in the sub-cabinet: Here were Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian
and Pacific Affairs John Holdridge, who had served Bush on his Beijing
mission staff and during the 1975 Pol Pot caper in Beijing; and Assistant
Secretary of State for Congressional Affairs Richard Fairbanks; with these
two in Foggy Bottom, Haig's days were numbered. At the Pentagon was Henry
E. Catto, the assistant secretary of defense for public affairs; Catto
would later be rewarded by Bush with an appointment as U.S. ambassador
to the Court of St. James in London, the post that foreign service officers
spend their lives striving to attain. Bush was also strong among the agencies:
His pal William H. Draper III, son of the Nazi banker, was the chairman
and president of the Export-Import Bank. Loret Miller Ruppe, Bush's campaign
chairman in Michigan, was director of the Peace Corps. At the Treasury,
Bush's cousin, John Walker, would be assistant secretary for enforcement.
When the BCCI scandal exploded in the media during 1991, William von Raab,
the former director of the U.S. Customs, complained loudly that, during
Reagan's second term, his efforts to "go after" BCCI had been frustrated
by reticence at the Treasury Department. By this time, James Baker III
was secretary of the treasury, and Bush's kissing cousin, John Walker,
was an official who would have had the primary responsibility for the intensity
of such investigations. At the Pentagon, Caspar Weinberger's d eputy assistant
secretary for East Asia, Richard Armitage, was no stranger to the circles
of Shackley and Clines. Bush's staff numbered slightly less than 60 during
the early spring of 1981. He often operated out of a small office in the
West Wing of the White House where he liked to spend time because it was
"in the traffic pattern," but his staff was principally located in the
Old Executive Office Building. Here Bush sat at a mammoth mahogany desk
which had been used in 1903 by his lifetime ego ideal, the archetypal liberal
Republican extravagant, Theodore Roosevelt. During and after Reagan's recovery,
Bush put together a machine capable of steering many of the decisions of
the Reagan administration. Bush had a standing invitation to sit in on
all cabinet meetings and other executive activities, and James Baker was
always there to make sure he knew what was going on. Bush was a part of
every session of the National Security Council. Bush also possessed guaranteed
access to Reagan, in case he ever needed that: Each Thursday Reagan and
Bush would have lunch alone together in the Oval Office. Each Tuesday,
Bush attended the weekly meeting of GOP committee chairmen presided over
by Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker at the Senate. Then Bush would stay
on the Hill for the weekly luncheon of the Republican Policy Committee
hosted by Senator John Tower of Texas. Prescott's old friend William Casey
was beginning to work his deviltry at Langley, and kept in close touch
with Bush. The Attempt on the Pope Forty-four days after the attempted
assassination of Reagan, there followed the attempt to assassinate Pope
John Paul II during a general audience in St. Peter's Square in Rome. During
those 44 days, Bush had been running the U.S. government. It was as if
a new and malignant evil had erupted onto the world stage, and was asserting
its presence with an unprecedented violence and terror. Bush was certainly
involved in the attempt to cover up the true authors of the attentat of
St. Peter's Square. An accessory before the fact in the attempt to slay
the pontiff appears to have been Bush's old cohort Frank Terpil, who had
been one of the instructors who had trained Mehmet Ali Agca, who fired
on the Pope. After a lengthy investigation, the Italian investigative magistrate,
Ilario Martella, in December 1982 issued seven arrest warrants in the case,
five against Turks and two against Bulgarians. Ultimate responsibility
for the attempt on the Pope's life belonged to Yuri Andropov of the Soviet
KGB. On March 1, 1990, Viktor Ivanovich Sheymov, a KGB officer who had
defected to the West, revealed at a press conference in Washington, D.C.
that as early as 1979, shortly after Karol Woityla became Pope, the KGB
had been instructed through an order signed by Yuri Andropov to gather
all possible information on how to get "physically close to the Pope."
/ Note #1 / Note #4 According to one study of these events, during the
second week of August 1980, when the agitation of the Polish trade union
Solidarnosc was at its height, the Pope had dispatched a special emissary
to Moscow with a personal letter for Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev.
The Pope's message warned the Soviet dictator that if the Red Army were
to invade Poland, as then seemed imminent, the Pope would fly to Warsaw
and lead the resistance. It is very likely that shortly after this the
Soviets gave the order to eliminate Pope John Paul II. / Note #1 / Note
#5 With the Vatican supporting Judge Martella in his campaign to expose
the true background of Ali Agca's assault, it appeared that the Bulgarian
connection, and with it the Andropov-KGB connection, might soon be exposed.
But in the meantime, Brezhnev had died, and had been succeeded by the sick
and elderly Konstantin Chernenko. Bush was already in the "you die, we
fly" business, representing Reagan at all important state funerals, and
carrying on the summit diplomacy that belongs to such occasions. Bush attended
Brezhnev's funeral in November 1982, and conferred at length with Yuri
Andropov. Chernenko was a transitional figure, and the Anglo-American elites
were looking to KGB boss Andropov as a desirable successor with whom a
new series of condominium deals at the expense of peoples and nations all
over the planet might be consummated. For the sake of the condominium,
it was imperative that the hit against the Pope not be pinned on Moscow.
There was also the scandal that would result if it turned out that U.S.
assets had also been involved within the framework of derivative assassination
networks. During the first days of 1983, Bush lodged an urgent request
with Monsignor Pio Laghi, the apostolic pro-nuncio in Washington, in which
Bush asked for an immediate private audience with the Pope. By February
8, Bush was in Rome. According to reliable reports, during the private
audience Bush "suggested that John Paul should not pursue quite so energetically
his own interest in the plot." / Note #1 / Note #6 Bush's personal intervention
had the effect of supplementing and accelerating a U.S. intelligence operation
that was already in motion to sabotage and discredit Judge Martella and
his investigation. On May 13, 1983, the second anniversary of the attempt
on the Pope's life, Vassily Dimitrov, the first secretary of the Bulgarian
embassy in Rome, expressed his gratitude: "Thanks to the CIA, I feel as
if I were born again!" / Note #1 / Note #7 Bush consistently expressed
skepticism on Bulgarian support for Agca. On December 20, 1982, responding
to the Martella indictments, Bush told the "Christian Science Monitor":
"Maybe I speak defensively as a former head of the CIA, but leave out the
operational side of the KGB -- the naughty things they allegedly do: Here's
a man, Andropov, who has had access to a tremendous amount of intelligence
over the years. In my judgment, he would be less apt to misread the intentions
of the U.S.A. That offers potential. And the other side of that is that
he's tough, and he appears to have solidified his leadership position."
According to one study, the German foreign intelligence service (the Bundesnachrichtendienst)
believed at this time that "a common link between the CIA and the Bulgarians"
existed. / Note #1 / Note #8 Martella was convinced that Agca had been
sent into action by Sergei Antonov, a Bulgarian working in Rome. According
to author Gordon Thomas, Martella was aware that the White House, and Bush
specifically, were determined to sabotage the exposure of this connection.
Martella brought Agca and Antonov together, and Agca identified Antonov
in a line-up. Agca also described the interior of Antonov's apartment in
Rome. "Later, Martella told his staff that the CIA or anyone else can spread
as much disinformation as they like; he is satisfied that Agca is telling
the truth about knowing Antonov." / Note #1 / Note #9 Later, U.S. intelligence
networks would redouble these sabotage efforts with some success. Agca
was made to appear a lunatic, and two key Bulgarian witnesses changed their
testimony. A campaign of leaks was also mounted. In a bizarre but significant
episode, even New York Senator Al D'Amato got into the act. D'Amato alleged
that he had heard about the Pope's letter warning Brezhnev about invading
Poland while he was visiting the Vatican during early 1981: As the "New
York Times" reported on February 9, 1983, "D'Amato says he informed the
CIA about the letter and identified his source in the Vatican when he returned
to the U.S. from a 1981 trip to Rome." Later, D'Amato was told that the
Rome CIA station had never heard anything from Langley about his report
of the Pope's letter. "I gave them important information and they clearly
never followed it up," complained D'Amato to reporters. In February 1983,
D'Amato visited Rome once again on a fact-finding mission in connection
with the Agca plot. He asked the U.S. embassy in Rome to set up appointments
for him with Italian political leaders and law enforcement officials, but
his visit was sabotaged by U.S. Ambassador Maxwell Raab. The day before
D'Amato was scheduled to leave Washington, he found that he had no meetings
set up in Rome. Then an Italian-speaking member of the staff of the Senate
Intelligence Committee, who was familiar with the Agca investigation and
who was scheduled to accompany D'Amato to Rome, informed the Senator that
he would not make the trip. D'Amato told the press that this last-minute
cancellation was due to pressure from the CIA. Much to D'Amato's irritation,
it turned out that George Bush personally had been responsible for a rather
thorough sabotage of his trip. D'Amato showed the Rome press "a telegram
from the American Ambassador in Rome urging him to postpone the visit because
the embassy was preoccupied with an overlapping appearance by Vice President
Bush," as the "New York Times" reported. This was Bush's mission to warn
the Pope not to pursue the Bulgarian connection. D'Amato said he was shocked
that no one on the CIA staff in Rome had been assigned to track the Agca
investigation. The CIA station chief in Rome during the early 1980s was
William Mulligan, a close associate of former CIA Deputy Assistant Director
for Operations Theodore Shackley. Shackley, as we have seen, was a part
of the Bush for President campaign of 1980. Mehmet Ali Agca received training
in the use of explosives, firearms, and other subjects from the "former"
CIA agent Frank Terpil. Terpil was known to Agca as "Major Frank," and
the training appears to have taken place in Syria and in Libya. Agca's
identification of Terpil had been very precise and detailed on Major Frank
and on the training program. Terpil himself granted a television interview,
which was incorporated into a telecast on his activities and entitled "The
Most Dangerous Man in the World," broadcast in January 1982, during which
Terpil described in some detail how he had trained Agca.Shortl y after
this, Terpil left his apartment in Beirut, accompanied by three unidentified
men, and disappeared. Terpil and Ed Wilson had gone to Libya and begun
a program of terrorist training at about the time that George Bush became
the CIA director. Wilson was indicted for supplying explosives to Libya,
for conspiring to assassinate one of Qaddafi's opponents in Egypt, and
for recruiting former U.S. pilots and Green Berets to work for Qaddafi.
Wilson was later lured back to the U.S. and jailed. Frank Terpil presumably
continues to operate, if he is still alive. Was Terpil actually a triple
agent? What further relation might George Bush have had to the attempt
to take the life of the Pope? Notes for Chapter XVI 1. Clay F. Richards,
"George Bush: 'co-president' in the Reagan administration," United Press
International, March 10, 1981. 2. Alexander Haig, "Caveat" (New York: MacMillan,
1984), p. 115. 3. "Ibid.," p. 302. 4. "Washington Post," March 22, 1981.
5. Haig, "op. cit.," pp. 144-45. 6. Haig, "op. cit.," p. 151. 7. Caspar
Weinberger, "Fighting for Peace" (New York: Warner Books, 1990), p. 94.
8. Donald T. Regan, "For the Record" (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich,
1988), p. 168. 9. Weinberger, "op. cit.," p. 95. 10. Ronald Reagan, "An
American Life" (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), p. 271. 11. Jack and
JoAnn Hinckley, "Breaking Points" (Grand Rapids: Chosen Books, 1985), p.
169. 12. "Ibid.," p. 215. 13. Judy Hasson, United Press International,
July 31, 1985. 14. "Washington Post," March 2, 1990. 15. See Gordon Thomas,
"Pontiff" (New York: Doubleday, 1983). 16. Gordon Thomas, "Averting Armageddon"
(New York: Doubleday, 1984), p. 74. 17. "American Leviathan," "op. cit."
18. "Ibid.," p. 268. 19. "Ibid.," p. 75. "XVII: Iran-Contra" "What pleases
the prince has the force of law." -- Roman law ""As long as the police
carries out the will of the leadership, it is acting legally."" -- Gestapo
officer Werner Best / Note #1 We cannot provide here a complete overview
of the Iran-Contra affair. We shall attempt, rather, to give an account
of George Bush's decisive, central role in those events, which occurred
during his vice-presidency and spilled over into his presidency. The principal
elements of scandal in Iran-Contra may be reduced to the following points:
1) the secret arming of the Khomeini regime in Iran by the U.S. government,
during an official U.S.-decreed arms embargo against Iran, while the U.S.
publicly denounced the recipients of its secret deliveries as terrorists
and kidnappers; 2) the secret arming of its "Contras" for war against the
Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, while such aid was explicitly prohibited
under U.S. law; 3) the use of communist and terrorist enemies -- often
"armed directly by the Anglo-Americans" -- to justify a police state and
covert, oligarchical rule at home; 4) paying for and protecting the gun-running
projects with drug-smuggling, embezzlement, theft by diversion from authorized
U.S. programs, and the "silencing" of both opponents and knowledgeable
participants in the schemes; and 5) the continual, routine perjury and
deception of the public by government officials pretending to have no knowledge
of these activities. Bush's Central Role When the scandal broke, in late
1986 and early 1987, George Bush maintained that he knew nothing about
these illegal activities. Since that time, many once-classified documents
have come to light, which suggest that Bush organized and supervised many,
if not most, of the criminal aspects of the Iran-Contra adventures. The
most significant events relevant to George Bush's role are presented here
in the format of a chronology. Over the time period covered, the reader
will observe the emergence of new structures in the U.S. government: /
Note #b^The "Special Situation Group," together with its subordinate "Standing
Crisis Pre-Planning Group" (May 14, 1982). / Note #b^The "Crisis Management
Center" (February 1983). / Note #b^The "Terrorist Incident Working Group"
(April 3, 1984). / Note #b^The "Task Force on Combatting Terrorism" (or
simply Terrorism Task Force) (July 1985). / Note #b^The "Operations Sub-Group"
(January 20, 1986). All of these structures revolved around the secret
command role of the then-vice president, George Bush. The propaganda given
out to justify these changes in government has stressed the need for secrecy
to carry out necessary "covert acts" against enemies of the nation (or
of its leaders). Certainly, a military command will act secretly in war,
and will protect secrets of its vulnerable capabilities. But the Bush apparatus,
within and behind the government, was formed to carry out "covert policies":
to make war when the constitutional government had decided not to make
war; to support enemies of the nation (terrorists and drug-runners) who
are the friends or agents of the secret government. In the period of the
chronology, there are a number of meetings of public officials. By looking
at the scant information that has come to light on these meetings, we may
reach some conclusions about who advocated certain policy choices; but
we have not then learned much about the actual origin of the policies that
were being carried out. This is the rule of an oligarchy whose members
are unknown to the public, an oligarchy which is bound by no known laws.
"March 25, 1981:" Vice President George Bush was named the leader of the
United States "crisis management" staff, "as a part of the National Security
Council system." "March 30, 1981:" President Reagan was shot in an attempted
assassination. "May 14, 1982:" Bush's position as chief of all covert action
and "de facto" head of U.S. intelligence -- in a sense, the acting President
-- was formalized in a secret memorandum. The memo explained that "National
Security Decision Directive 3, Crisis Management, establishes the Special
Situation Group (SSG), chaired by the Vice President. The SSG is charged
... with formulating plans in anticipation of crises." The memo in question
also announced the birth of another organization, the Standing Crisis Pre-Planning
Group (CPPG), which was to work as an intelligence-gathering agency for
Bush and his SSG. This new subordinate group, consisting of representatives
of Vice President Bush, National Security Council (NSC) staff members,
the CIA, the military, and the State Department, was to "meet periodically
in the White House Situation Room...." They were to identify areas of potential
crisis and "[p]resent ... plans and policy options to the SSG" under Chairman
Bush. And they were to provide to Bush and his assistants, "as crises develop,
alternative plans," "action/options" and "coordinated implementation plans"
to resolve the "crises." Finally, the subordinate group was to give to
Chairman Bush and his assistants "recommended security, cover, and media
plans that will enhance the likelihood of successful execution." It was
announced that the CPPG would meet for the first time on May 20, 1982,
and that agencies were to "provide the name of their CPPG representative
to Oliver North, NSC staff...." The memo was signed ""for the President""
by Reagan's national security adviser, William P. Clark. It was declassified
during the congressional Iran-Contra hearings. / Note #2 Gregg, Rodriguez,
and North "August 1982:" Vice President Bush hired Donald P. Gregg as his
principal adviser on national security affairs. Gregg now officially retired
from the Central Intelligence Agency. Donald Gregg brought along into the
vice president's office his old relationship with mid-level CIA assassinations
manager "Felix I. Rodriguez". Gregg had been Rodriguez's boss in Vietnam.
Donald Gregg worked under Bush in Washington from 1976 -- when Bush was
CIA director -- through the later 1970s, when the Bush clique was at war
with President Carter and his CIA director, Stansfield Turner. Gregg was
detailed to work at the National Security Council between 1979 and 1982.
>From 1976 right up through that NSC assignment, CIA officer Gregg saw
CIA agent Rodriguez regularly. Both men were intensely loyal to Bush. /
Note #3 Their continuing collaboration was crucial to Vice President Bush's
organization of covert action. Rodriguez was now to operate out of the
vice president's office. "December 21, 1982:" The first "Boland Amendment"
became law: "None of the funds provided in this Act [the Defense Appropriations
Bill] may be used by the Central Intelligence Agency or the Department
of Defense to furnish military equipment, military training or advice,
or other support for military activities, to any group or individual ...
for the purpose of overthrowing the government of Nicaragua." "Boland I,"
as it was called, remained in effect until Oct. 3, 1984, when it was superseded
by a stronger prohibition known as "Boland II." / Note #4 "February 1983:"
Fawn Hall joined Oliver North as his assistant. Ms. Hall reported that
she worked with North on the development of a secret "Crisis Management
Center." Lt. Colonel North, an employee of the National Security Council,
is seen here managing a new structure within the Bush-directed SSG/CPPG
arrangements of 1981-82. / Note #5 "March 3, 1983:" In the spring of 1983,
the National Security Council established an office of "Public Diplomacy"
to propagandize in favor of and run cover for the Iran-Contra operations,
and to coordinate published attacks on opponents of the program. Former
CIA Director of Propaganda Walter Raymond was put in charge of the effort.
The unit was to work with domestic and international news media, as well
as private foundations. The Bush family-affiliated Smith Richardson Foundation
was part of a National Security Council "private donors steering committee"
charged with coordinating this propaganda effort. A March 3, 1983 memorandum
from Walter Raymond to then-NSC Director William Clark, provided details
of the program: "As you will remember you and I briefly mentioned to the
President when we briefed him on the N[ational] S[ecurity] D[ecision] D[irective]
on public diplomacy that we would like to get together with some potential
donors at a later date.... "To accomplish these objectives Charlie [United
States Information Agency Director Charles Z. Wick] has had two lengthy
meetings with a group of people representing the private sector. This group
had included principally program directors rather than funders. The group
was largely pulled together by Frank Barnett, Dan McMichael (Dick [Richard
Mellon] Scaife's man), Mike Joyce (Olin Foundation), Les Lenkowsky (Smith
Richardson Foundation) plus Leonard Sussman and Leo Cherne of Freedom House.
A number of others including Roy Godson have also participated." / Note
#6 Elsewhere, Raymond described Cherne and Godson as the coordinators of
this group. Frank Barnett was the director of the Bush family's National
Strategy Information Center, for which Godson was the Washington, D.C.
director. Barnett had been the project director of the Smith Richardson
Foundation prior to being assigned to that post. The Smith Richardson Foundation
has sunk millions of dollars into the Iran-Contra projects. Some Smith
Richardson grantees, receiving money since the establishment of the National
Security Council's "private steering committee" include the following:
/ Note #b^"Dennis King", to write the book "Lyndon LaRouche and the New
American Fascism", used as the basis for arguments against LaRouche and
his associates by federal and state prosecutors around the country. / Note
#b^"Freedom House." This was formed by Leo Cherne, business partner of
CIA Director William Casey. Cherne oversaw Walter Raymond's "private donors
committee." / Note #b^"National Strategy Information Center", founded in
1962 by Casey, Cherne, and the Bush family. Thus, when an item appeared
in a daily newspaper, supporting the Contras, or attacking their opponents
-- calling them "extremists," etc. -- it is likely to have been planted
by the U.S. government, by the George Bush-NSC "private donors" apparatus.
"March 17, 1983:" Professional assassinations manager Felix I. Rodriguez
met with Bush aide Donald P. Gregg, officially and secretly, at the White
House. Gregg then recommended to National Security Council adviser Robert
"Bud" McFarlane a plan for El Salvador-based military attacks on a target
area of Central American nations including Nicaragua. Gregg's March 17,
1983 memo to McFarlane said: "The attached plan, written in March of last
year, grew out of two experiences: " -- Anti-Vietcong operations run under
my direction in III Corps Vietnam from 1970-1972. These operations [see
below], based on ... a small elite force ... produced very favorable results.
" -- Rudy Enders, who is now in charge of what is left of the para-military
capability of the CIA, went to El Salvador in 1981 to do a survey and develop
plans for effective anti-guerrilla operations. He came back and endorsed
the attached plan. (I should add that Enders and Felix Rodriguez, who wrote
the attached plan, both worked for me in Vietnam and carried out the actual
operations outlined above.) "This plan encountered opposition and skepticism
from the U.S. military.... "I believe the plan can work based on my experience
in Vietnam...." / Note #7 Three years later, Bush agent Rodriguez would
be publicly exposed as the supervisor of the covert Central American network
illegally supplying arms to the Contras. Rodriguez's uncle had been Cuba's
public works minister under Fulgencio Batista, and his family fled Castro's
1959 revolution. Felix Rodriguez joined the CIA, and was posted to the
CIA's notorious Miami Station in the early 1960s. The Ted Shackley-E. Howard
Hunt organization there, assisted by Meyer Lansky and Santos Trafficante's
mafiosi, trained Rodriguez and other Cubans in the arts of murder and sabotage.
Felix Rodriguez recounted his early adventures in gun-running under false
pretexts in a ghost-written book, "Shadow Warrior": "[J]ust around the
time President Kennedy was assassinated, I left for Central America. "I
spent almost two years in Nicaragua, running the communications network
for [our enterprise].... [O]ur arms cache was in Costa Rica. The funding
for the project came from the CIA, but the money's origin was hidden through
the use of a cover corporation.... The U.S. government had the deniability
it wanted; we got the money we needed.... "In fact, what we did in Nicaragua
twenty-five year s ago has some pretty close parallels to the Contra operation
today." / Note #8 Rodriguez followed his CIA boss Ted Shackley to Southeast
Asia in 1970. Shackley and Donald Gregg put Rodriguez into the huge assassination
and dope business which Shackley and his colleagues ran during the Indochina
war; this bunch became the heart of the "Enterprise" that went into action
15 to 20 years later in Iran-Contra. Shackley funded opium-growing Meo
tribesmen for murder, and used the dope proceeds in turn to fund his hit
squads. He formed the Military Assistance Group-Special Operations Group
(MAG-SOG) political murder unit; Gen. John K. Singlaub was a commander
of MAG-SOG; Oliver North and Richard Secord were officers of the unit.
By 1971, the Shackley group had killed about 100,000 civilians in Southeast
Asia as part of the CIA's Operation Phoenix. After Vietnam, Felix Rodriguez
went back to Latin American CIA operations, while other parts of the Shackley
organization went on to drug-selling and gun-running in the Middle East.
By 1983, both the Mideast Shackley group and the self-styled "Shadow Warrior,"
Felix Rodriguez, were attached to the shadow commander-in-chief, George
Bush. "May 25, 1983:" Secretary of State George Shultz wrote a memorandum
for President Reagan, trying to stop George Bush from running Central American
operations for the U.S. government. Shultz included a draft National Security
Decision Directive for the President to sign, and an organizational chart
("Proposed Structure") showing Shultz's proposal for the line of authority
-- from the President and his NSC, through Secretary of State Shultz and
his assistant secretary, down to an interagency group. The last line of
the Shultz memo says bluntly what role is reserved for the Bush-supervised
CPPG: "The Crisis Pre-Planning Group is relieved of its assignments in
this area." Back came a memorandum on White House letterhead but bearing
no signature, saying no to Shultz: "The institutional arrangements established
in NSDD-2 are, I believe, appropriate to fulfill [our national security
requirements in Central America]...." With the put-down is a chart headlined
""NSDD-2 Structure for Central America."" At the top is the President;
just below is a complex of Bush's SSG and CPPG as managers of the NSC;
then below that is the secretary of state, and below him various agencies
and interagency groups. / Note #9 "July 12, 1983:" Kenneth De Graffenreid,
new manager of the Intelligence Directorate of the National Security Council,
sent a secret memo to George Bush's aide, Admiral Daniel Murphy: "... Bud
McFarlane has asked that I meet with you today, if possible, to review
procedures for obtaining the Vice President's comments and concurrence
on all N[ational] S[ecurity] C[ouncil] P[lanning] G[roup] covert action
and MONs." / Note #1 / Note #0 The Bush Regency in Action "October 20,
1983:" The U.S. invasion of the Caribbean island-nation of Grenada was
decided upon in a secret meeting under the leadership of George Bush. National
Security Council operative Constantine Menges, a stalwart participant in
these events, described the action for posterity: "My job that afternoon
was to write the background memorandum that would be used by the vice president,
who in his role as 'crisis manager' would chair this first NSC meeting
on the [Grenada] issue.... "Shortly before 6:00 p.m., the participants
began to arrive: Vice President Bush, [Secretary of Defense Caspar] Weinberger,
[Attorney General Edwin] Meese, J[oint] C[hiefs of] S[taff] Chairman General
Vessey, acting CIA Director McMahon, [State Dept. officer Lawrence] Eagleburger,
... North and myself. "President Reagan was travelling, as were [CIA Director]
Bill Casey and Jeane Kirkpatrick.... "Vice President Bush sat in the President's
chair." Menges continued: "The objective, right from the beginning, was
to plan a rescue [of American students detained on Grenada] that would
guarantee quick success, but with a minimum of casualties.... "Secrecy
was imperative.... As part of this plan, there would be no change in the
schedule of the top man. President Reagan ... would travel to Augusta,
Georgia, for a golf weekend. Secretary of State Shultz would go too...."
Work now proceeded on detailed action plans, under the guidance of the
vice president's Special Situation Group. "Late Friday afternoon [Oct.
21] .. the CPPG ... [met] in room 208.... Now the tone of our discussions
had shifted from whether we would act to how this could be accomplished....
"[The] most secure means [were to] be used to order U.S. ships to change
course ... toward Grenada. Nevertheless, ABC news had learned about this
and was broadcasting it." Thus, the course of action decided upon without
the President was "leaked" to the news media, and became a "fait-accompli."
Menges's memo continues: "It pleased me to see that now our government
was working as a team.... That evening Ollie North and I worked together
... writing the background and decision memoranda. Early in the evening
[NSC officer Admiral John] Poindexter reviewed our first draft and made
a few minor revisions. Then the Grenada memoranda were sent to the President,
Shultz and McFarlane at the golf course in Georgia.... "Shortly before
9:00 a.m. [Oct. 22], members of the foreign policy cabinet [sic!] began
arriving at the White House -- all out of sight of reporters. The participants
included Weinberger, Vessey, and Fred Ikle from Defense; Eagleburger and
Motley from State; McMahon and an operations officer from CIA; and Poindexter,
North and myself from NSC. Vice President Bush chaired the Washington group.
"All participants were escorted to room 208, which many had never seen
before. The vice president sat at one end of the long table and Poindexter
at the other, with speaker phones positioned so that everyone could hear
President Reagan, Shultz, and McFarlane. "The detailed hour-by-hour plan
was circulated to everyone at the meeting. There was also a short discussion
of the War Powers Resolution, which requires the President to get approval
of Congress if he intends to deploy U.S. troops in combat for more than
sixty days. There was little question that U.S. combat forces would be
out before that time.... "The President had participated and asked questions
over the speaker phone; he made his decision. The U.S. would answer the
call from our Caribbean neighbors. We would assure the safety of our citizens."
/ Note #1 / Note #1 Clearly, there was no perceived need to follow the
U.S. Constitution and leave the question of whether to make war up to the
Congress. After all, President Reagan had concurred, from the golf course,
with Acting President Bush's decision in the matter. "November 3, 1983:"
Bush aide Donald Gregg met with Felix Rodriguez to discuss "the general
situation in Central America." / Note #1 / Note #2 "December 1983:" Oliver
North accompanied Vice President Bush to El Salvador as his assistant.
Bush met with Salvadoran army commanders. North helped Bush prepare a speech,
in which he publicly called upon them to end their support for the use
of "death squads." / Note #1 / Note #3 Attack from Jupiter "January 1 through
March 1984:" The "Wall Street Journal" of March 6, 1985 gave a de-romanticized
version of certain aquatic adventures in Central America: "Armed speedboats
and a helicopter launched from a Central Intelligence Agency 'mother ship'
attacked Nicaragua's Pacific port, Puerto Sandino on a moonless New Year's
night in 1984. "A week later the speedboats returned to mine the oil terminal.
Over the next three months, they laid more than 30 mines in Puerto Sandino
and also in the harbors at Corinto and El Bluff. In air and sea raids on
coastal positions, Americans flew -- and fired from -- an armed helicopter
that accompanied the U.S.-financed Latino force, while a CIA plane provided
sophisticated reconaissance guidance for the nighttime attacks. "The operation,
outlined in a classified CIA document, marked the peak of U.S. involvement
in the four-year guerrilla war in Nicaragua. More than any single event,
it so lidified congressional opposition to the covert war, and in the year
since then, no new money has been approved beyond the last CIA checks drawn
early [in the] summer [of 1984].... "CIA paramilitary officers were upset
by the ineffectiveness of the Contras.... As the insurgency force grew
... during 1983 ... the CIA began to use the guerrilla army as a cover
for its own small "Latino" force.... [The] most celebrated attack, by armed
speedboats, came Oct. 11, 1983, against oil facilities at Corinto. Three
days later, an underwater pipeline at Puerto Sandino was sabotaged by Latino
[sic] frogmen. The message wasn't lost on Exxon Corp.'s Esso unit [formerly
Standard Oil of New Jersey], and the international giant informed the Sandinista
government that it would no longer provide tankers for transporting oil
to Nicaragua. "The CIA's success in scaring off a major shipper fit well
into its mining strategy.... "The mother ship used in the mining operation
is described by sources as a private chartered vessel with a configuration
similar to an oil-field service and towing ship with a long, flat stern
section where helicopters could land...." The reader may have already surmised
that Vice President Bush (with his background in "oilfield service" and
his control of a "top-level committee of the National Security Council")
sat in his Washington office and planned these brilliant schemes. But such
a guess is probably incorrect -- it is off by about 800 miles. On Jupiter
Island, Florida, where the Bush family has had a seasonal residence for
the past several decades, is the headquarters of Continental Shelf Associates,
Inc. (CSA). / Note #1 / Note #4 This company describes itself as "an environmental
consulting firm specializing in applied marine science and technology ...
founded in 1970.... The main office ... is located in Jupiter, Florida,
approximately 75 miles north of Miami." The founder and chief executive
of CSA is Robert "Stretch" Stevens. A former lieutenant commander in naval
special operations, Stevens has been a close associate of CIA officer "Theodore
Shackley", and of Bush agent "Felix Rodriguez" since the early 1960s, when
Stevens served as a boat captain in the invasion of Cuba at the Bay of
Pigs, and through the Vietnam War. During the period 1982-85, CSA was contracted
by the U.S. intelligence community, including the CIA, to carry out coastal
and on-the-ground reconnaissance and logistical support work in the eastern
Mediterranean in support of the U.S. Marine deployment into Lebanon; and
coastal mapping and reconnaissance of the Caribbean island of Grenada prior
to the October 1983 U.S. military action. Beginning in approximately the
autumn of 1983, CSA was employed to design and execute a program for the
mining of several Nicaraguan harbors. After the U.S. Senate restricted
such activities to non-U.S. personnel only, CSA trained "Latin American
nationals" at a facility located on El Bravo Island off the eastern coast
of Nicaragua. Acta Non Verba (Deeds Not Words) is a "subsidiary" of CSA,
incorporated in 1986 and located at the identical Jupiter address. "Rudy
Enders", the head of the CIA's paramilitary section -- and deployed by
George Bush aide Donald Gregg -- is a minority owner of Acta Non Verba
(ANV). ANV's own tough-talking promotional literature says that it concentrates
on "counter-terrorist activities in the maritime environment." A very high-level
retired CIA officer, whose private interview was used in preparation for
this book, described this "Fish Farm" in the following more realistic terms:
"Assassination operations and training company controlled by Ted Shackley,
under the cover of a private corporation with a regular board of directors,
stockholders, etc., located in Florida. They covertly bring in Haitian
and Southeast Asian boat people as recruits, as well as Koreans, Cubans,
and Americans. They hire out assassinations and intelligence services to
governments, corporations, and individuals, and also use them for covering
or implementing 'Fish Farm' projects/activities." The upshot of the attack
from Jupiter -- the mining of Nicaragua's harbors -- was that the Congress
got angry enough to pass the "Boland II" amendment, re-tightening the laws
against this public-private warfare. "April 3, 1984:" Another subcommittee
of the Bush terrorism apparatus was formed, as President Reagan signed
National Security Decision Directive 138. The new "Terrorist Incident Working
Group (TIWG)" reported to Bush's Special Situation Group. The TIWG geared
up government agencies to support militant counterterrorism assaults, on
the Israeli model. / Note #1 / Note #5 "How Can Anyone Object?" "June 25,
1984:" The National Security Planning Group, including Reagan, Bush, and
other top officials, met secretly in the White House situation room at
2:00 p.m. They discussed whether to risk seeking "third-country aid" to
the Contras, to get around the congressional ban enacted Dec. 21, 1982.
George Bush spoke in favor, according to minutes of the meeting. Bush said,
"How can anyone object to the U.S. encouraging third parties to provide
help to the anti-Sandinistas under the [intelligence] finding. The only
problem that might come up is if the United States were to promise to give
these third parties something in return so that "some people might interpret"
this as some kind of an exchange" [emphasis added]. Warning that this would
be illegal, Secretary of State Shultz said: "I would like to get money
for the Contras also, but another lawyer [then-Treasury Secretary] Jim
Baker said if we go out and try to get money from third countries, it is
an impeachable offense." CIA Director Casey reminded Shultz that "Jim Baker
changed his mind [and now supported the circumvention]...." NSC adviser
Robert McFarlane cautioned, "I propose that there be no authority for anyone
to seek third party support for the anti-Sandinistas until we have the
information we need, and I certainly hope none of this discussion will
be made public in any way." President Ronald Reagan then closed the meeting
with a warning against anyone leaking the fact they were considering how
to circumvent the law: "If such a story gets out, we'll all be hanging
by our thumbs in front of the White House until we find out who did it."
In March of the following year, Bush personally arranged the transfer of
funds to the Contras by the Honduran government, assuring them they would
receive compensating U.S. aid. The minutes of this meeting, originally
marked ""secret,"" were released five years later, at Oliver North's trial
in the spring of 1989. / Note #1 / Note #6 "October 3, 1984:" Congress
enacted a new version of the earlier attempt to outlaw the U.S. secret
war in Central America. This "Boland II" amendment was designed to prevent
any conceivable form of deceit by the covert action apparatus. This law
was effective from October 3, 1984, to December 5, 1985, when it was superceded
by various aid-limitation laws which, taken together, were referred to
as "Boland III." / Note #1 / Note #7 "November 1, 1984:" Felix Rodriguez's
partner, Gerard Latchinian, was arrested by the FBI. Latchinian was then
tried and convicted of smuggling $10.3 million in cocaine into the United
States. The dope was to finance the murder and overthrow of the President
of Honduras, Roberto Suazo Cordova. Latchinian was sentenced to a 30-year
prison term. On Nov. 10, 1983, a year before the arrest, Felix Rodriguez
had filed the annual registration with Florida's secretary of state on
behalf of Latchinian and Rodriguez's joint enterprise, "Giro Aviation Corp."
/ Note #1 / Note #8 "December 21, 1984:" Felix Rodriguez met in the office
of the vice president with Bush adviser Donald Gregg. Immediately after
this meeting, Rodriguez met with Oliver North, supposedly for the first
time in his life. But Bush's adviser strenuously denied to investigators
that he "introduced" his CIA employee to North. / Note #1 / Note #9 "January
18, 1985:" Felix Rodriguez met with Ramon Milian Rodriguez, accountant
and money launderer, who had moved $1.5 billion for the Medellin cocaine
cartel. Milian testified before a Senate investigation of the Contras'
drug-smuggling, that more than a year earlier he had granted Felix's request
and given $10 million from the cocaine cartel to Felix for the Contras.
Milian Rodriguez was interviewed in his prison cell in Butner, North Carolina,
by investigative journalist Martha Honey. He said Felix Rodriguez had offered
that "in exchange for money for the Contra cause he would use his influence
in high places to get the [Cocaine] cartel U.S. 'good will'.... Frankly,
one of the selling points was that he could talk directly to Bush. The
issue of good will wasn't something that was going to go through 27 bureaucratic
hands. It was something that was directly between him and Bush." Ramon
Milian Rodriguez was a Republican contributor, who had partied by invitation
at the 1981 Reagan-Bush inauguration ceremonies. He had been arrested aboard
a Panama-bound private jet by federal agents in May 1983, while carrying
over $5 million in cash. According to Felix Rodriguez, Milian was seeking
a way out of the narcotics charges when he met with Felix on January 18,
1985. This meeting remained secret until two years later, when Felix Rodriguez
had become notorious in the Iran-Contra scandal. The "Miami Herald" broke
the story on June 30, 1987. Felix Rodriguez at first denied ever meeting
with Ramon Milian Rodriguez. But then a new story was worked out with various
agencies. Felix "remembered" the Jan. 18, 1985 meeting, claimed he had
"said nothing" during it, and "remembered" that he had filed documents
with the FBI and CIA telling them about the meeting just afterwards. /
Note #2 / Note #0 "January 22, 1985": George Bush met with Felix Rodriguez
in the Executive Office Building. Felix's ghost writer doesn't tell us
what was said, only that "Mr. Bush was easy to talk to, and he was interested
in my stories." / Note #2 / Note #1 "Late January, 1985:" George Bush's
office officially organized contacts through the State Department for Felix
Rodriguez to operate in Central America from a base in El Salvador, in
a false "private" capacity. The U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, Thomas
Pickering, then cabled to Gen. Paul F. Gorman, commander of the U.S. Army
Southern Command: "Rodriguez has high-level contacts at the White House,
DOS [State Department] and DOD [Defense Department], some of whom are strongly
supporting his use in El Salvador. "It would be in our best interests that
Mr. Rodriguez confer with you personally prior to coming to El Salvador.
I have some obvious concerns about this arrangement...." Felix Rodriguez
flew to Panama to speak to General Gorman. They discussed his covert aid
to the Contras "since the early eighties." / Note #2 / Note #2 Rodriguez,
by George Bush's story the private, volunteer helper of the Contras, flew
from Panama to El Salvador on General Gorman's personal C-12 airplane.
General Gorman also sent a confidential cable to Ambassador Pickering and
Col. James Steele, U.S. military liaison man with the Contra resupply operation
in El Salvador: "I have just met here with Felix Rodriguez, [deleted, probably
"CIA"] pensioner from Miami. Born in Cuba, a veteran of guerrilla operations
[several lines deleted].... "He is operating as a private citizen, but
his acquaintanceship with the V[ice] P[resident] is real enough, going
back to the latter's days as D[irector of] C[entral] I[ntelligence]. "Rodriguez'
primary commitment to the region is in [deleted] where he wants to assist
the FDN [Contras military forces]." / Note #2 / Note #3 "February 7, 1985:"
The Crisis Pre-Planning Group (CPPG), subordinate to Chairman Bush of the
Special Situation Group (SSG), met to discuss means to circumvent the Boland
amendment's ban on aid to the Contras. They agreed on a "presidential letter"
to be sent to President Suazo of Honduras, "to provide several enticements
to Honduras in exchange for its continued support of the Nicaraguan Resistance.
These enticements included expedited delivery of military supplies ordered
by Honduras, a phased release of withheld economic assistance (ESF) funds,
and other support." The preceding was the admission of the United States
government in the 1989 Oliver North trial -- number 51 in a series of "stipulations"
that was given to the court to avoid having to release classified documents.
"February 12, 1985:" The government admissions in the North trial continued:
"52: ... North proposed that McFarlane send a memo [to top officials on]
the recommendation of the CPPG [the Bush-supervised body, often chaired
by Bush adviser Don Gregg].... The memo stated that this part of the message
[to the Honduran President] should not be contained in a written document
but should be delivered verbally by a discreet emissary." This was to be
George Bush himself. Honduras would be given increased aid, to be diverted
to the Contras, so as to deceive Congress and the American population.
/ Note #2 / Note #4 "February 15, 1985:" After Rodriguez had arrived in
El Salvador and had begun setting up the central resupply depot for the
Contras, Ambassador Thomas Pickering sent an "Eyes Only" cable to the State
Department on his conversation with Rodriguez. Pickering's cable bore the
postscript, "Please brief Don Gregg in the V.P.'s office for me." / Note
#2 / Note #5 "February 19, 1985:" Felix Rodriguez met with Bush's staff
in the vice-presidential offices in the Executive Office Building, briefing
them on the progress of his mission. Over the next two years, Rodriguez
met frequently with Bush staff members in Washington and in Central America,
often jointly with CIA and other officials, and conferred with Bush's staff
by telephone countless times. / Note #2 / Note #6 "March 15-16, 1985:"
George Bush and Felix Rodriguez were in Central America on their common
project. On Friday, Rodriguez supervised delivery in Honduras of military
supplies for the FDN Contras whose main base was there in Honduras. On
Saturday, George Bush met with Honduran President Roberto Suazo Cordova.
Bush told Suazo that the Reagan-Bush administration was expediting delivery
of more than $110 million in economic and military aid to Suazo's government.
This was the "quid pro quo": a bribe for Suazo's support for the U.S. mercenary
force, and a transfer through Honduras of the Contra military supplies,
which had been directly prohibited by the Congress. Notes for Chapter XIX
1. William L. Shirer, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History
of Nazi Germany" (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960), p. 271. 2. Memo,
May 14, 1982, two pp. bearing the nos. 29464 and 29465. 3. Testimony of
Donald P. Gregg, pp. 72-73 in Stenographic Transcript of Hearings Before
the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Nomination Hearing for
Donald Phinney Gregg to be Ambassador to the Republic of Korea. Washington,
D.C., May 12, 1989. 4. "Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating
the Iran Contra Affair", published jointly by the U.S. House of Representatives
Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran, and
the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Secret Military Assistance to Iran
and the Nicaraguan Opposition, Nov. 17, 1987, Washington, D.C., pp. 395-97.
5. "CovertAction," No. 33, Winter 1990, p. 12. 6. Memoranda and meetings
of March 1983, in the "National Security Archive" Iran-Contra Collection
on microfiche at the Library of Congress, Manuscript Reading Room. 7. Don
Gregg Memorandum for Bud McFarlane, March 17, 1983, stamped SECRET, since
declassified. Document no. 77 in the Iran-Contra Collection. 8. Felix Rodriguez
and John Weisman, "Shadow Warrior" (New York: Simon and Schuseter), 1989
p. 119. 9. Shultz Memorandum, May 25, 1983 and White House reply, both
stamped SECRET/SENSITIVE. Documents beginning no. 00107 in the Iran-Contra
Collection. 10. De Graffenreid Memorandum for Admiral Murphy, July 12,
1983, since declassified, bearing the no. 43673. Document no. 00137 in
the Iran-Contra Collection. 11. Constantine C. Menges, "Inside the National
Security Council" (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), pp. 70-78. 12.
Chronology supplied by the Office of the Vice President, cited in "The
Progressive", May 18, 1987, London, England, p. 20. 13. Rodriguez and Weisman,
"op. cit.," p. 221. 14. This section is based on 1) literature supplied
by CSA, Inc. and its subsidiary ANV, and 2) an exhaustive examination of
CSA/ANV in Jupiter and other locations. 15. Scott Armstrong, Executive
Editor for The National Security Archive, "The Chronology: The Documented
Day-by-Day Account of the Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Contras"
(New York: Warner Books, 1987), p. 55. Jonathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott
and Jane Hunter, "The Iran-Contra Connection: Secret Teams and Covert Operations
in the Reagan Era" (Boston: South End Press, 1987), pp. 219-20. 16. National
Security Planning Group Meeting Minutes, June 25, 1984, pp. 1 and 14. 17.
This is an excerpt from Section 8066 of Public Law 98-473, the Continuing
Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 1985. 18. Armstrong, "op. cit.," Nov.
1, 1984 entry, p. 70, citing "Miami Herald" 11/2/84 and 11/3/84, "Wall
Street Journal" 11/2/84, "Washington Post" 8/15/85, "New York Times" 12/23/87.
Armstrong, "op. cit.," Nov. 10, 1983 entry, p. 42, citing corporate records
of the Florida secretary of state 7/14/86, "Miami Herald" 11/2/84, "New
York Times" 11/3/84. 19. Rodriguez and Weisman, "op. cit.," pp. 220-21.
20. Report of the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International
Operations of the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate,
December 1988, pp. 61-62. 21. Rodriguez and Weisman, "op. cit.," pp. 221-22.
22. "Ibid.," pp. 224-25. 23. General Gorman "Eyes Only" cable to Pickering
and Steele, Feb. 14, 1985. Partially declassified and released on July
30, 1987 by the National Security Council, bearing no. D 23179. Document
no. 00833 in the Iran-Contra Collection. 24. U.S. government stipulations
in the trial of Oliver North, reproduced in "EIR SpecialReport:" "Irangate...,"
pp. 20, 22. 25. Gregg Hearings, p. 99. 26. Rodriguez and Weisman, "op.
cit.," p. 227. "XVII: Iran-Contra" In July 1985, Vice President George
Bush was designated by President Reagan to lead the "Task Force on Combatting
Terrorism". Bush's task force was a means to sharply concentrate the powers
of government into the hands of the Bush clique, for such policies as the
Iran-Contra armaments schemes. The task force had the following cast of
characters: George Bush, U.S. vice president: chairman; Admiral James L.
Holloway III: executive assistant to Chairman Bush; Craig Coy: Bush's deputy
assistant under Holloway; Vice Admiral John Poindexter: senior NSC representative
to Chairman Bush; Marine Corps Lt. Col. Oliver North: day-to-day NSC representative
to George Bush; Amiram Nir: counterterror adviser to Israeli Premier Shimon
Peres; Lt. Col. Robert Earl: staff member; Terry Arnold: principal consultant;
Charles E. Allen, CIA officer: Senior Review Group; Robert Oakley, director,
State Department Counter Terrorism Office: Senior Review Group; Noel Koch,
deputy to asstistant secretary of defense Richard Armitage: Senior Review
Group; Lt. Gen. John Moellering, Joint Chiefs of Staff: Senior Review Group;
Oliver "Buck" Revell, FBI executive: Senior Review Group. The Terrorism
Task Force organization, as we shall see, was a permanent affair. / Note
#2 / Note #7 "August 8, 1985:" George Bush met with the National Security
Planning Group in the residence section of the White House. Spurring on
their deliberations on the terrorism problem, a car bomb had blown up that
day at a U.S. air base in Germany, with 22 American casualties. The officials
discussed shipment of U.S.-made arms to Iran through Israel -- to replenish
Israeli stocks of TOW missiles and to permit Israel to sell arms to Iran.
According to testimony by Robert McFarlane, the transfer was supported
by George Bush, Casey and Donald Regan, and opposed by Shultz and Weinberger.
/ Note #2 / Note #8 "August 18, 1985:" Luis Posada Carriles escaped from
prison in Venezuela, where he was being held for the terrorist murder of
73 persons. Using forged documents falsely identifying him as a Venezuelan
named "Ramon Medina," Posada flew to Central America. Within a few weeks,
Felix Rodriguez assigned him to supervise the Bush office's Contra resupply
operations being run from the El Salvador air base. Posada personally ran
the safe-houses used for the CIA flight crews. Rodriguez explained the
arrangement in his book: "Because of my relationship with [El Salvador
Air Force] Gen. Bustillo, I was able to pave the way for [the operations
attributed to Oliver] North to use the facilities at Ilopango [El Salvador
air force base].... I found someone to manage the Salvadorian-based resupply
operation on a day-to-day basis. They knew that person as Ramon Medina.
I knew him by his real name: Luis Posada Carriles.... I first [sic!] met
Posada in 1963 at Fort Benning, Georgia, where we went through basic training
together .. as U.S. Army second lieutenants...." Rodriguez neglects to
explain that agent Posada Carriles was originally recruited and trained
by the same CIA murder operation, "JM/WAVE" in Miami, as was Rodriguez
himself. Felix continues: "In the sixties, he reportedly went to work for
DISIP, the Venezuelan intelligence service, and rose to considerable power
within its ranks. It was rumored that he held one of the top half-dozen
jobs in the organization.... "After the midair bombing of a Cubana airliner
on October 6, 1976, in which seventy-three people were killed, Posada was
charged with planning the attack and was thrown in prison.... Posada was
confined in prison for more than nine years...." / Note #2 / Note #9 "September
10, 1985:" George Bush's national security adviser, Donald Gregg, met at
4:30 P.M. with Oliver North and Col. James Steele, the U.S. military official
in El Salvador who oversaw flights of cargo going to the Contras from various
points in Central America. They discussed information given to one or more
of them by arms dealer Mario DelAmico, supplier to the Contras. According
to the entry in Oliver North's notebook, they discussed particularities
of the supply flights, and the operations of FDN commander Enrique Bermudez.
Elsewhere in the diary pages for that day, Colonel North noted that DelAmico
had procured a certain 1,000 munitions items for the Contras. / Note #3
/ Note #0 "November 1985 :" George Bush sent Oliver North a note, with
thanks for "your dedication and tireless work with the hostage thing and
with Central America." / Note #3 / Note #1 "December 1985:" Congress passed
new laws limiting U.S. aid to the Contras. The CIA, the Defense Department,
and "any other agency or entity of the United States involved in intelligence
activities" were prohibited from providing "armaments" to the Contras.
The CIA was permitted to provide communications equipment and training.
"Humanitarian" aid was allowed. These laws, known together as "Boland III,"
were in effect from December 4, 1985 to October 17, 1986. "December 18,
1985:" CIA official Charles E. Allen, a member of George Bush's Terrorism
Task Force, wrote an update on the arms-for-hostages dealings with Iran.
Allen's memo was a debriefing of an unnamed member of the group of U.S.
government officials participating in the arms negotiations with the Iranians.
The unnamed U.S. official is referred to in Allen's memo as "Subject".
Allen wrote: "[Speaker of the Iranian Parliament Hashemi] Rafsanjani ..
believes Vice President George Bush is orchestrating the U.S. initiative
with Iran. In fact, according to Subject, Rafsanjani believes that Bush
is the most powerful man in the U.S. because in addition to being Vice
President, he was once Director of CIA." / Note #3 / Note #2 "December
1985-January 1986:" George Bush completed his official study of terrorism
in December 1985. John Poindexter now directed Oliver North to go back
to work with Amiram Nir. Amiram Nir came to Washington and met with Oliver
North. He told U.S. officials that the Iranians had promised to free all
hostages in exchange for more arms. Reportedly after this Nir visit, Pr
esident Reagan was persuaded of the necessity of revving up the arms shipments
to Iran. / Note #3 / Note #3 "December 27, 1985:" Terrorists bombed Rome
and Vienna airports, killing 20 people, including five Americans. The Crisis
Pre-Planning Group (CPPG), supervised by Bush's office and reporting to
Bush, blamed Libyans for the attack and began planning for a military strike
on Libya. Yet an unpublished CIA analysis and the Israelis both acknowledged
that the Abu Nidal group (in effect, the Israeli Mossad agency) carried
out the attacks. / Note #3 / Note #4 Bush's CPPG later organized the U.S.
bombing of Libya, which occurred in mid-April 1986. "December 31, 1985:"
Iranian arms dealer Cyrus Hashemi told Paris-based CIA agent Bernard Veillot
that Vice President Bush was backing arms sales to Iran, and that official
U.S. approval for private sales to Iran, amounting to $2 billion, was "going
to be signed by Mr. Bush and [U.S. Marine Corps commandant] Gen. [Paul
X.] Kelley on Friday." / Note #3 / Note #5 Loudly and publicly exposed
in the midst of Iran arms deals, Veillot was indicted by the United States.
Then the charges were quietly dropped, and Veillot went underground. A
few months later, Hashemi died suddenly of "leukemia." / Note #3 / Note
#6 "January 2, 1986:" Israeli counterterrorism chief Amiram Nir met with
North and Poindexter in Washington. The Bush report on terrorism had now
been issued within the government but was not yet published. Bush's report
was urging that a counterterrorism coordinator be named for the entire
U.S. government -- and Oliver North was the one man intended for that slot.
At this meeting, Nir proposed specifically that prisoners held by Israeli-controlled
Lebanese, and 3,000 American TOW missiles, be exchanged for U.S. hostages
held by Iran. Other discussions between Nir and Bush's nominee involved
the supposedly new idea that the Iranians be overcharged for the weapons
shipped to them, and the surplus funds be diverted to the Contras. / Note
#3 / Note #7 "January 6, 1986:" President Reagan met with George Bush,
Donald Regan, McFarlane and Poindexter. The President was handed a draft
"Presidential Finding" that called for shipping arms to Iran through Israel.
The President signed this document, drafted following the discussions with
Amiram Nir. The draft consciously violated the National Security Act which
had established the Central Intelligence Agency, requiring notification
of Congress. But Bush joined in urging President Reagan to sign this "finding":
"I hereby find that the following operation in a foreign country ... is
important to the national security of the United States, and due to its
extreme sensitivity and security risks, I determine it is essential to
"limit prior notice, and direct the Director of Central Intelligence to
refrain from reporting this finding to the Congress as provided in Section
501 of the National Security Act of 1947, as amended, until I otherwise
direct"" [emphasis added]. "... The USG[overnment] will act to facilitate
efforts by third parties and third countries to establish contacts with
"moderate elements" within and outside the Government of Iran by providing
these elements with arms, equipment and related materiel in order to enhance
the credibility of these elements...." Of course, Bush, Casey and their
Israeli allies had never sought to bolster "moderate elements" in Iran,
but overthrew them at every opportunity -- beginning with President Abolhassan
Bani-Sadr. / Note #3 / Note #8 "January 7, 1986:" President Reagan and
Vice President Bush met at the White House with several other administration
officials. There was an argument over new proposals by Amiram Nir and Iranian
arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar to swap arms for hostages. Secretary of
State George Shultz later told the Tower Commission that George Bush supported
the arms-for-hostages deal at this meeting, as did President Reagan, Casey,
Meese, Regan and Poindexter. Shultz reported that he himself and Secretary
of Defense Caspar Weinberger both opposed further arms shipments. / Note
#3 / Note #9 "January 9, 1986:" Lt. Col. Oliver North complained, in his
notebook, that "Felix [Rodriguez]" has been "talking too much about the
V[ice] P[resident] connection." / Note #4 / Note #0 "January 15, 1986:"
CIA and Mossad employee Richard Brenneke wrote a letter to Vice President
Bush giving full details, alerting Bush about his own work on behalf of
the CIA in illegal -- but U.S. government-sanctioned -- sales of arms to
Iran. / Note #4 / Note #1 "Mid-January, 1986:" George Bush and Oliver North
worked together on the illegal plan. Later, at North's trial, the Bush
administration -- portraying Colonel North as the master strategist in
the case! -- stipulated that North "prepared talking points for a meeting
between Admiral Poindexter, Vice-President Bush, and [the new] Honduran
President [Jose Simon] Azcona. North recommended that Admiral Poindexter
and Vice-President Bush tell President Azcona of the need for Honduras
to work with the U.S. government on increasing regional involvement with
and support for the Resistance. Poindexter and Bush were also to raise
the subject of better U.S. government support for the states bordering
Nicaragua." That is, Honduras, which of course "borders on Nicaragua,"
was to get more U.S. aid and was to pass some of it through to the Contras.
In preparation for the January 1986 Bush-Azcona meeting, the U.S. State
Department sent to Bush adviser Donald Gregg a memorandum, which "alerted
Gregg that Azcona would insist on receiving clear economic and social benefits
from its [Honduras's] cooperation with the United States." / Note #4 /
Note #2 Two months after the January Bush-Azcona meeting, President Reagan
asked Congress for $20 million in emergency aid to Honduras, needed to
repel a cross-border raid by Nicaraguan forces against Contra camps. Congress
voted the "emergency" expenditure. "January 17, 1986:" George Bush met
with President Reagan, John Poindexter, Donald Regan, and NSC staff member
Donald Fortier to review the final version of the January 7 arms-to-Iran
draft. With the encouragement of Bush, President Reagan signed the authorization
to arm the Khomeini regime with missiles, and keep the facts of this scheme
from congressional oversight committees. The official story about this
meeting -- given in the Tower Commission Report -- is as follows: "[T]he
proposal to shift to direct U.S. arms sales to Iran ... was considered
by the president at a meeting on January 17 which only the Vice President,
Mr. Regan, Mr. Fortier, and VADM Poindexter attended.... There was no subsequent
collective consideration of the Iran initiative by the NSC principals before
it became public 11 months later.... "The National Security Act also requires
notification of Congress of covert intelligence activities. If not done
in advance, notification must be 'in timely fashion.' The Presidential
Finding of January 17 directed that congressional notification be withheld,
and this decision appears to have never been reconsidered." / Note #4 /
Note #3 "January 18, 1986:" Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger was directed
to prepare the transfer of 4,000 TOW anti-tank missiles to the CIA, which
was to ship them to Khomeini's Iran. Bypassing normal channels for covert
shipments, he elected to have his senior military assistant, Lt. Gen. Colin
L. Powell, handle the arrangements for the arms transfer. / Note #4 / Note
#4 "January 19-21, 1986:" George Bush's deputy national security aide,
Col. Samuel Watson, worked with Felix Rodriguez in El Salvador, and met
with Col. James Steele, the U.S. military liaison officer with the covert
Contra resupply organization in El Salvador. / Note #4 / Note #5 Bush Sets
Up North "January 20, 1986:" Following the recommendations of an as-yet-unofficial
report of the George Bush Terrorism Task Force, President Reagan signed
National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 207. The unofficial Bush report,
the official Bush report released in February, and the Bush-organized NSDD
207, together p ut forward Oliver North as "Mr. Iran-Contra." North became
the nominal, up-front coordinator of the administration's counterterrorism
program, hiding as best he could Bush's hand in these matters. He was given
a secret office and staff (the Office to Combat Terrorism), separate from
regular NSC staff members. George Bush now reassigned his Terrorism Task
Force employees, Craig Coy and Robert Earl, to do the daily work of the
North secret office. The Bush men spent the next year working on Iran arms
sales: Earl devoted one-quarter to one-half of his time on Iran and Contra
support operations; Coy "knew everything" about Project Democracy. North
traveled much of the time. Earl and Coy were at this time officially attached
to the Crisis Management Center, which North worked on in 1983. / Note
#4 / Note #6 FBI Assistant Director Revell, often George Bush's "hit man"
against Bush's domestic opponents, partially disclosed this shell game
in a letter to Sen. David Boren (D-Ok.), explaining the FBI's contacts
with North: "At the time [April 1986], North was the NSC official charged
by the President with the coordination of our national counterterrorist
program. He was responsible for working closely with designated lead agencies
and was responsible for participating in all interagency groups, maintaining
the national programming documents, assisting in the coordination of research
and development in relation to counterterrorism, facilitating the development
of response options and overseeing the implementation of the Vice President's
Terrorism Task Force recommendations. "This description of Col. North's
position is set forth in the public report of the Vice President's Task
Force on Combatting Terrorism, February 1986. There is an even more detailed
and comprehensive description of Col. North's position in the classified
National Security Decision Directive #207 issued by the President on January
20, 1986." / Note #4 / Note #7 The Bush Terrorism Task Force, having completed
its official work, had simply made itself into a renamed, permanent, covert
agency. Its new name was "Operations Sub-Group" (OSG). In this transformation,
CIA Contra-handler Duane Clarridge had been added to the Task Force to
form the "OSG," which included North, Poindexter, Charles Allen, Robert
Oakley, Noel Koch, General Moellering and "Buck" Revell. According to the
Oliver North diaries, even before this final phase of the Bush-North apparatus
there were at least 14 meetings between North and the Bush Task Force's
senior members Holloway, Oakley, and Allen, its principal consultant Terry
Arnold, and its staff men Robert Earl and Craig Coy. The North diaries
from July 1985 through January 1986, show one meeting with President Reagan,
and four meetings with Vice President Bush: either the two alone, North
with Bush and Amiram Nir, or North with Bush and Donald Gregg. The Bush
counterterrorism apparatus had its own communications channels, and a global
antiterrorist computer network called Flashboard outside of all constitutional
government arrangements. Those opposed to the arming of terrorists, including
cabinet members, had no access to these communications. / Note #4 / Note
#8 This apparatus had responsibility for Iran arms sales; the private funding
of the Contras, from contributions, theft, dope-running; the "public diplomacy"
of Project Democracy to back these efforts; and counterintelligence against
other government agencies and against domestic opponents of the policy.
/ Note #4 / Note #9 "January 28, 1986:" George Bush met with Oliver North
and FDN Contra Political Director Adolfo Calero in the Old Executive Office
Building. / Note #5 / Note #0 North and Calero would work together to protect
George Bush when the Contra supply effort blew apart in October 1986. "January
31, 1986:" Iranian arms dealer Cyrus Hashemi was told by a French arms
agent that "[a]n assistant of the vice president's going to be in Germany
... and the indication is very clear that the transaction can go forward"
referring to George Bush's supposed approval of the private arms sale to
Iran. / Note #5 / Note #1 "February 6, 1986:" Responding to the January
15 letter from Richard Brenneke, Bush aide Lt. Col. E. Douglas Menarczik
wrote to Brenneke: "The U.S. government will not permit or participate
in the provision of war materiel to Iran and will prosecute any such efforts
by U.S. citizens to the fullest extent of the law." / Note #5 / Note #2
"February 7, 1986:" Samuel M. Evans, a representative of Saudi and Israeli
arms dealers, told Cyrus Hashemi that "[t]he green light now finally has
been given [for the private sale of arms to Iran], that Bush is in favor,
Shultz against, but nevertheless they are willing to proceed." / Note #5
/ Note #3 "February 25, 1986:" Richard Brenneke wrote again to Bush's office,
to Lt. Col. Menarczik, documenting a secret project for U.S. arms sales
to Iran going on since 1984. Brenneke later said publicly that early in
1986, he called Menarczik to warn that he had learned that the United States
planned to buy weapons for the Contras with money from Iran arms sales.
Menarczik reportedly said, "We will look into it." Menarczik claimed not
to have "any specific recollection of telephone conversations with" Brenneke.
/ Note #5 / Note #4 "Late February, 1986:" Vice President George Bush issued
the public report of his Terrorism Task Force. In his introduction to the
report, Bush asserted: "We firmly oppose terrorism in all forms and wherever
it takes place.... We will make no concessions to terrorists." / Note #5
/ Note #5 "March 1986:" According to a sworn statement of pilot Michael
Tolliver, Felix Rodriguez had met him in July 1985. Now Rodriguez instructed
Tolliver to go to Miami International Airport. Tolliver picked up a DC-6
aircraft and a crew, and flew the plane to a Contra base in Honduras. There
Tolliver watched the unloading of 14 tons of military supplies, and the
loading of 12 and 2/3 tons of marijuana. Following his instructions from
Rodriguez, Tolliver flew the dope to Homestead Air Force Base in Florida.
The next day Rodriguez paid Tolliver $75,000. / Note #5 / Note #6 Tolliver
says that another of the flights he performed for Rodriguez carried cocaine
on the return trip to the U.S.A. He made a series of arms deliveries from
Miami into the air base at Agucate, Honduras. He was paid in cash by Rodriguez
and his old Miami CIA colleague, Rafael "Chi Chi" Quintero. In another
circuit of flights, Tolliver and his crew flew between Miami and El Salvador's
Ilopango air base. Tolliver said that Rodriguez and Quintero "instructed
me where to go and who to see." While making these flights, he "could go
by any route available without any interference from any agency. We didn't
need a stamp of approval from Customs or anybody...." / Note #5 / Note
#7 With reference to the covert arms shipments out of Miami, George Bush's
son Jeb said: "Sure, there's a pretty good chance that arms were shipped,
but does that break any law? I'm not sure it's illegal. The Neutrality
Act is a completely untested notion, established in the 1800s." / Note
#5 / Note #8 Smuggling Missiles Trafficking in lethal weapons without government
authorization is always a tricky business for covert operators. But when
the operatives are smuggling weapons in a particular traffic which the
U.S. Congress has expressly prohibited, a good deal of criminal expertise
and certain crucial contacts are required for success. And when the smugglers
report to the Vice President, who wishes his role to remain concealed,
the whole thing can become very sticky -- or even ludicrous to the point
of low comedy. "March 26, 1986:" Oliver North sent a message to Robert
McFarlane about his efforts to procure missiles for the Contras, and to
circumvent many U.S. laws, as well as the customs services and police forces
of several nations. The most important component of such transactions,
aside from the purchase money, was a falsified document showing the supposed
recipient of the arms, the "end-user certificate" (EUC). In the message
he wrote, North said that "we have" an EUC; that is, a false document has
been acquired for this arms sale: "[W]e are trying to find a way to get
10 BLOWPIPE launchers and 20 missiles from [a South American country] ...
thru the Short Bros. Rep.... Short Bros., the mfgr. of the BLOWPIPE, is
willing to arrange the deal, conduct the training and even send U.K. 'tech.
reps' ... if we can close the arrangement. Dick Secord has already paid
10% down on the delivery and we have a [country deleted] EUC which is acceptable
to [that South American country]." / Note #5 / Note #9 Now, since this
particular illegal sale somehow came to light in the Iran-Contra scandal,
another participant in this one deal decided not to bother hiding his own
part in it. Thus, we are able to see how Colonel North got his false certificate.
"April 20, 1986:" Felix Rodriguez met in San Salvador with Oliver North
and Enrique Bermudez, the Contras' military commander. Rodriguez informs
us of the following in his own, ghost-written book: "Shortly before that
April 20 meeting, Rafael Quintero had asked me to impose upon my good relations
with the Salvadoran military to obtain 'end-user' certificates made out
to Lake Resources, which he told me was a Chilean company...." / Note #6
/ Note #0 The plan was to acquire false end-user certificates from his
contacts in the Salvadoran armed forces for Blowpipe ground-to-air missiles
supposedly being shipped into El Salvador. The missiles would then be illegally
diverted to the Contras in Honduras and Nicaragua. Rodriguez continues,
with self-puffery: "The Salvadorans complied with my request, and in turn
I supplied the certificates, handing them over personally to Richard Secord
at that April 20 meeting." / Note #6 / Note #1 While arranging the forgery
for the munitions sale, Rodriguez was in touch with the George Bush staff
back in his home office. On April 16, four days before the Rodriguez-North
missile meeting, Bush national security adviser Donald Gregg asked his
staff to put a meeting with Rodriguez on George Bush's calendar. Gregg
said the purposeof the White House meeting would be "to brief the Vice
President on the war in El Salvador and resupply of the Contras." The meeting
was arranged for 11:30 A.M. on May 1. / Note #6 / Note #2 Due to its explicitly
stated purpose -- clandestine weapons trafficking in an undeclared war
against the rigid congressional prohibition -- the planned meeting was
to become one of the most notorious of the Iran-Contra scandal. "April
30, 1986:" Felix Rodriguez met in Washington with Bush aide Col. Sam Watson.
The following reminder message was sent to George Bush: "Briefing Memorandum
for the Vice President" Event: Meeting with Felix Rodriguez Date: Thursday,
May 1, 1986 Time: 11:30-11:45 a.m. -- West Wing From: Don Gregg I. PURPOSE
Felix Rodriguez, a counterinsurgency expert who is visiting from El Salvador,
will provide a briefing on the status of the war in El Salvador and resupply
of the Contras. III. [sic] PARTICIPANTS The Vice President Felix Rodriguez
Craig Fuller Don Gregg Sam Watson IV. MEDIA COVERAGE Staff photographer.
[i.e. internal-use photographs, no media coverage] / Note #6 / Note #3
"May 1, 1986:" Vice President Bush and his staff met in the White House
with Felix Rodriguez, Oliver North, financier Nicholas Brady, and the new
U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, Edwin Corr. At this meeting it was decided
that "private citizen" Felix Rodriguez would continue his work in Central
America. / Note #6 / Note #4 "May 16, 1986:" George Bush met with President
Reagan, and with cabinet members and other officials in the full National
Security Planning Group. They discussed the urgent need to raise more money
for the Contras. The participants decided to seek support for the Contras
from nations ("third countries") which were not directly involved in the
Central American conflict. As a result of this initiative, George Bush's
former business partners, the Sultan of Brunei, donated $10 million to
the Contras. But after being deposited in secret Swiss bank accounts, the
money was "lost." / Note #6 / Note #5 "May 20, 1986:" George Bush met with
Felix Rodriguez and El Salvador Air Force commander Gen. Juan Rafael Bustillo
at a large reception in Miami on Cuban independence day. / Note #6 / Note
#6 "May 29, 1986:" George Bush, President Reagan, Donald Regan and John
Poindexter met to hear from McFarlane and North on their latest arms-for-hostages
negotiations with Iranian officials and Amiram Nir in Teheran, Iran. The
two reported their arrangement with the Khomeini regime to establish a
secure covert communications network between the two "enemy" governments.
/ Note #6 / Note #7 "July 10, 1986:" Eugene Hasenfus, whose successful
parachute landing would explode the Iran-Contra scandal into world headlines
three months later, flew from Miami to El Salvador. He had just been hired
to work for "Southern Air Transport," a CIA front company for which Hasenfus
worked previously in the Indochina War. Within a few days he was introduced
to "Max Gomez" -- the pseudonym of Felix Rodriguez -- as "one of the Cuban
coordinators of the company." He now began work as a cargo handler on flights
carrying military supplies to Contra soldiers inside Nicaragua. / Note
#6 / Note #8 "July 29, 1986:" George Bush met in Jerusalem with Terrorism
Task Force member Amiram Nir, the manager of Israel's participation in
the arms-for hostages schemes. Bush did not want this meeting known about.
The vice president told his chief of staff, Craig Fuller, to send his notes
of the meeting only to Oliver North -- not to President Reagan, or to anyone
else. Craig Fuller's memorandum said, in part: 1. SUMMARY. Mr. Nir indicated
that he had briefed Prime Minister Peres and had been asked to brief the
V[ice] P[resident] by his White House contacts. He described the details
of the efforts from last year through the current period to gain the release
of the U.S. hostages. He reviewed what had been learned which was essentially
that the radical group was the group that could deliver. He reviewed the
issues to be considered -- namely that there needed to be ad [sic] decision
as to whether the items requested would be delivered in separate shipments
or whether we would continue to press for the release of the hostages prior
to delivering the items in an amount agreed to previously. 2. The VP's
25 minute meeting was arranged after Mr. Nir called Craig Fuller and requested
the meeting and after it was discussed with the VP by Fuller and North....
14. Nir described some of the lessons learned: 'We are dealing with the
most radical elements.... They can deliver ... that's for sure.... [W]e've
learned they can deliver and the moderates can't.... / Note #6 / Note #9
"July 30, 1986:" The day after his Jerusalem summit with Amiram Nir, Vice
President Bush conferred with Oliver North. This meeting with North was
never acknowledged by Bush until the North diaries were released in May
1990. "Early September, 1986:" Retired Army Maj. Gen. John K. Singlaub
sent a memo to Oliver North on the Contra resupply effort under Felix Rodriguez.
Singlaub warned North that Rodriguez was boasting about having "daily contact"
with George Bush's office. / Note #7 / Note #0 The Scandal Breaks "October
5, 1986:" A C-123k cargo aircraft left El Salvador's Ilopango air base
at 9:30 a.m., carrying "10,000 pounds of small arms and ammunition, consisting
mainly of AK rifles and AK ammunition, hand grenades, jungle boots." It
was scheduled to make air drops to Contra soldiers in Nicaragua. / Note
#7 / Note #1 The flight had been organized by elements of the CIA, the
Defense Department, and the National Security Council, coordinated by the
Office of Vice President George Bush. At that time, such arms resupply
was prohibited under U.S. law. The aircraft headed south along the Pacific
coast of Nicaragua, turned east over Costa Rica, then headed up north into
Nicaraguan air space. As it descended toward the point at which it was
to drop the cargo, the plane was hit in the right engine and wing by a
ground-to-air missile. The wing burst into flames and broke up. Cargo handler
Eugene Hasenfus jumped out the left cargo door and opened his parachute.
The other three crew members died in the crash. / Note #7 / Note #2 Meanwhile,
Felix Rodriguez made a single telephone call -- to the office of Vice President
George Bush. He told Bush aide Samuel Watson that the C-123k aircraft was
missing and was possibly down. "October 6, 1986:" Eugene Hasenfus, armed
only with a pistol, took refuge in a small hut on a jungle hilltop inside
Nicaragua. He was soon surrounded by Sandinista soldiers and gave himself
up. / Note #7 / Note #3 Felix Rodriguez called George Bush's aide Sam Watson
again. Watson now notified the White House Situation Room and the National
Security Council staff about the missing aircraft. Oliver North was immediately
dispatched to El Salvador to prevent publicity over the event, and to arrange
death benefits for the crew. / Note #7 / Note #4 After the shoot-down,
several elaborate attempts were made by government agencies to provide
false explanations for the origin of the aircraft. A later press account,
appearing on May 15, 1989, after Bush was safely installed as President,
exposed one such attempted coverup: Official: Contras Lied to Protect VP
Bush By Alfonso Chardy, Knight-Ridder Newspapers WASHINGTON -- Nicaraguan
rebels falsely assumed responsibility for an arms-laden plane downed over
Nicaragua in 1986 in an effort to shield then-Vice President George Bush
from the controversy that soon blossomed into the Iran-Contra scandal,
a senior Contra official said in early May 1989. According to the Contra
official, who requested anonymity but has direct knowledge of the events,
a Contra spokesman, Bosco Matamoros [official FDN representative in Washington,
D.C.], was ordered by [FDN Political Director] Adolfo Calero to claim ownership
of the downed aircraft, even though the plane belonged to Oliver North's
secret Contra supply network.... Calero called (Matamoros) and said, "Take
responsibility for the Hasenfus plane because we need to take the heat
off the vice president," the Contra source said.... The senior Contra official
said that shortly after Calero talked to Matamoros, Matamoros called a
reporter for the "New York Times" and "leaked" the bogus claim of responsibility.
The "Times" ran a story about the claim on its front page. / Note #7 /
Note #5 "October 7, 1986:" Rep. Henry B. Gonzalez (D-Tx.) called for a
congressional investigation of the Nicaraguan air crash, and the crash
of a Southern Air Transport plane in Texas, to see if they were part of
a covert CIA operation to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. "October
9, 1986:" At a news conference in Nicaragua, captured U.S. crew member
Eugene Hasenfus exposed Felix Rodriguez, alias "Max Gomez," as the head
of an international supply system for the Contras. The explosive, public
phase of the Iran-Contra scandal had begun. Notes for Chapter XIX 27. "CovertAction,"
No. 33, Winter 1990, pp. 13-14. On Amiram Nir, see Armstrong, "op. cit.,"
pp. 225-26, citing "Wall Street Journal" 12/22/86, "New York Times" 1/12/87.
On Poindexter and North, see Menges, "op. cit.," p. 264. 28. Armstrong,
"op. cit.," pp. 140-41, citing Senate Select Committee on Intelligence,
"Report on Preliminary Inquiry," Jan. 29, 1987. 29. Rodriguez and Weisman,
"op. cit.," pp. 239-41. 30. Oliver North's diary, since edited and partially
declassified, entries for "10 Sep 85." Document no. 01527 in the Iran-Contra
Collection. 31. "Washington Post," June 10, 1990. 32. Charles E. Allen
"Memorandum for the Record," December 18, 1985. Partially declassified/released
(i.e. some parts are still deleted) by the National Security Council on
January 26, 1988. Document no. 02014 in the Iran-Contra Collection. 33.
Armstrong, "op. cit.," pp. 226-27, citing "Wall Street Journal" 12/22/86,
"New York Times" 12/25/86 and 1/12/87. 34. Armstrong, "op. cit.," p. 231,
citing "Washington Post" 2/20/87, "New York Times" 2/22/87. 35. "Ibid.,"
p. 232, citing "Miami Herald" 11/30/86. 36. Interview with Herman Moll
in "EIR Special Report:" "Irangate...," pp. 81-83. 37. Armstrong, "op.
cit.," p. 235, citing "Washington Post" 12/16/86, 12/27/86, 1/10/87 and
1/12/87; "Ibid.," p. 238, citing Tower Commission Report; Menges, "op.
cit.," p. 271. 38. Armstrong, "op. cit.," pp. 240-41, citing "Washington
Post" 1/10/87 and 1/15/87; Sen. John Tower, Chairman, "The Tower Commission
Report: The Full Text of the President's Special Review Board" (New York:
Bantam Books, 1987), p. 217. 39. "Ibid.," pp. 37, 225. 40. North notebook
entry Jan. 9, 1986, Exhibits attached to Gregg Deposition in Tony Avirgan
and Martha Honey v. John Hull, Rene Corbo, Felipe Vidal et al., 29 April
1988. 41. Armstrong, "op. cit.," p. 258, citing the Brenneke letter, which
was made available to the National Security Archive. 42. U.S. government
stipulations at the North trial, in "EIR Special Report:" "Irangate...,"
p. 22. 43. "Tower Commission Report", pp. 67-68, 78. 44. Armstrong, "op.
cit.," p. 266, citing "Washington Post" 1/10/87 and 1/15/87. 45. Chronology
supplied by Office of Vice President Bush; Armstrong, "op. cit.," p. 266,
citing "Washington Post" 12/16/86. 46. Deposition of Robert Earl, "Iran-Contra
Report", May 2, 1987, Vol. 9, pp. 22-23; Deposition of Craig Coy, "Iran-Contra
Report", March 17, 1987, Vol. 7, pp. 24-25: cited in "CovertAction," No.
33, Winter 1990, p. 13. 47. Oliver Revell to Sen. David Boren, chairman
of Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, April 17, 1987; "Washington
Post" Feb. 17, 20 and 22, 1987; "Wall Street Journal" Feb. 20, 1987: cited
in "CovertAction," No. 33, Winter 1990, p. 13. 48. "Newsweek," Oct. 21,
1985, p. 26; Earl Exhibit, nos. 3-8, attached to Earl Deposition, "op.
cit.": cited in "CovertAction" No. 33, Winter 1990, p. 15. 49. Earl Deposition,
"op. cit.," May 30, 1987, pp. 33-37; May 15, 1987, pp. 117-21 (Channell
and Miller); May 15, 1987, pp. 131, 119 (private contributors). 50. Donald
Gregg Briefing Memorandum for the Vice President, Jan. 27, 1986; released
by the National Security Council March 22, 1988. Document no.02254 in Iran-Contra
Collection. 51. Armstrong, "op. cit.," p. 275, citing "Miami Herald" 11/30/86.
52. "Ibid.," p. 280, citing the Menarczik letter to Brenneke which was
made available to the National Security Archive. 53. "Ibid.," citing "Miami
Herald" 11/30/86. 54. "New York Times," Nov. 30, 1986, Dec. 4, 1986. See
Gregg testimony: Brenneke had M's number. 55. Quoted in Menges, "op. cit.,"
p. 275. 56. Deposition of Michael Tolliver in Avirgan and Honey, "op. cit."
57. Allan Nairn, "The Bush Connection," in "The Progressive" (London: May
18, 1987), pp. 21-22. 58. Nairn, "op. cit.," pp. 19, 21-23. 59. "Tower
Commission Report," p. 465 60. Rodriguez and Weisman, "op. cit.," pp. 244-45.
61. "Ibid." 62. "Schedule Proposal," Office of the Vice President, April
16, 1986, exhibit attached to Gregg Deposition in Avirgan and Honey, "op.
cit." 63. Office of the Vice President Memorandum, April 30, 1986, released
Aug. 28, 1987 by the National Security Council. Document no. 02738 in the
Iran-Contra Collection. 64. Rodriguez and Weisman, "op. cit.," pp. 245-46.
See also Gregg confirmation hearings, excerpted "infra," and numerous other
sources. 65. Armstrong, "op. cit.," pp. 368-69, citing Senate Select Intelligence
Committee Report, Jan. 29, 1987. 66. "Ibid.," p. 373, citing "Washington
Post" 12/16/86. 67. "Ibid.," p. 388-89, citing McFarlane testimony to the
Tower Commission. 68. Affidavit of Eugene Harry Hasenfus, October 12, 1986,
pp. 2-3. Document no. 03575 in the Iran-Contra Collection. 69. "Tower Commission
Report," pp. 385-88. 70. "Washington Post", Feb. 26, 1987. 71. Hasenfus
Affidavit, pp. 6-7. 72. "Ibid." 73. Hasenfus Affidavit, p. 7. 74. Armstrong,
"op. cit.," p. 508, citing the chronology provided by George Bush's office,
"Washington Post" 12/16/86; "New York Times" 12/16/86, 12/17/86 and 12/25/86;
"Wall Street Journal" 12/19/86 and 12/24/86. 75. "Laredo [Tex as] Morning
Times," May 15, 1989, p. 1. "XIX: Iran-Contra" On October 11, 1986, the
"Washington Post" ran two headlines side-by-side: "Captured American Flyer
to be Tried in Nicaragua" and "Bush is Linked to Head of Contra Aid Network."
The "Post" reported: "Max Gomez, a Cuban American veteran of the CIA's
ill-fated Bay of Pigs operation, has told associates that he reported to
Vice President Bush about his activities as head of the secret air supply
operation that lost a cargo plane to Nicaraguan missile fire.... "Gomez
has said that he met with Bush twice and has been operating in Nicaragua
with the Vice President's knowledge and approval, the sources said....
"Asked about these matters, a spokesman for Bush, Marlin Fitzwater, said:
'Neither the vice president nor anyone on his staff is directing or coordinating
an operation in Central America.' "... The "San Francisco Examiner", which
earlier this week linked [Bush adviser Donald] Gregg to Gomez, reported
that Gomez maintains daily contact with Bush's office...." / Note #7 /
Note #6 George Bush's career was now on the line. News media throughout
the world broke the story of the Hasenfus capture, and of the crewman's
fingering of Bush and his underlings Rodriguez and Posada Carriles. Bush
was now besieged by inquiries from around the world, as to how and why
he was directing the gun-running into Latin America. Speaking in Charleston,
South Carolina, George Bush described Max Gomez/Rodriguez as "a patriot."
The vice president denied that he himself was directing the illegal operations
to supply the Contras: ""To say I'm running the operation ... it's absolutely
untrue."" Bush said of Rodriguez: "I know what he was doing in El Salvador,
and I strongly support it, as does the President of El Salvador, Mr. Napoleon
Duarte, and as does the chief of the armed forces in El Salvador, because
this man, an expert in counterinsurgency, was down there helping them put
down a communist-led revolution [i.e. in El Salvador, not Nicaragua]."
/ Note #7 / Note #7 Two days later, Gen. Adolfo Blandon, armed forces chief
of staff in El Salvador, denied Bush's contention that Felix Rodriguez
worked for his country's military forces. / Note #7 / Note #8 "October
12, 1986:" Eugene Hasenfus gave and signed an affidavit in which it was
stated: "About Max Gomez [Felix Rodriguez], Hasenfus says that he was the
head Cuban coordinator for the company and that he works for the CIA and
that he is a very close friend of the Vice-President of the United States,
George Bush.... "About Ramon Medina [escaped airplane bomber Luis Posada
Carriles], Hasenfus says that he was also a CIA agent and that he did the
'small work' because "Max Gomez" was the 'senior man.' He says that "Ramon"
took care of the rent of the houses, the maids, the food, transportation
and drivers, and also, coordination of the fuel for the aircraft, etc."
[emphasis in the original]. / Note #7 / Note #9 His cover being blown,
and knowing he was still wanted in Venezuela for blowing up an airliner
and killing 73 persons, Posada Carriles now "vanished" and went underground.
/ Note #8 / Note #0 "October 19, 1986:" Eugene Hasenfus, interviewed in
Nicaragua by Mike Wallace on the CBS television program "60 Minutes," said
that Vice President Bush was well aware of the covert arms supply operation.
He felt the Reagan-Bush administration was "backing this 100 percent."
Wallace asked Hasenfus why he thought that Gomez/Rodriguez and the other
managers of the covert arms resupply "had the blessing of Vice President
Bush." Hasenfus replied, "They had his knowledge that he was working [on
it] and what was happening, and whoever controlled this whole organization
-- which I do not know -- Mr. Gomez, Mr. Bush, I believe a lot of these
other people. They know how this is being run. I do not." / Note #8 / Note
#1 Cover-Up of Bush Role "November 3, 1986:" The Lebanese newspaper "Al-Shiraa"
revealed that the U.S. government was secretly
dealing arms to the Khomeini
regime. This was three weeks after the Eugene Hasenfus expose of George
Bush made world headlines. "November 22, 1986:" President Reagan sent a
message, "through Vice President George Bush," to Secretary of State George
Shultz, along the lines of "Support me or get off my team." / Note #8 /
Note #2 "December 18, 1986:" CIA Director William Casey, a close ally of
George Bush who knew everything from the inside, was operated on for a
"brain tumor" and lost the power of speech. That same day, associates of
Vice President George Bush said that Bush believed White House Chief of
Staff Donald Regan should resign, but claimed Bush had not yet broached
the issue with the President. Donald Regan said that he had no intention
of quitting. / Note #8 / Note #3 "February 2, 1987:" CIA Director William
Casey resigned. He soon died, literally without ever talking. "February
9, 1987:" Former National Security Director Robert McFarlane, a principal
figure in the Reagan-Bush administration's covert operations, attempted
suicide by taking an overdose of drugs. McFarlane survived. "February 26,
1987:" The President's Special Review Board, commonly known as the Tower
Commission, issued its report. The commission heavily blamed White House
Chief of Staff Donald Regan for the "chaos that descended upon the White
House" in the Iran-Contra affair. The commission hardly mentioned Vice
President George Bush except to praise him for his "vigorous reaffirmation
of U.S. opposition to terrorism in all forms"! The afternoon the Tower
Commission report came out, George Bush summoned Donald Regan to his office.
Bush said the President wanted to know what his plans were about resigning.
Donald Regan blasted the President: "What's the matter -- isn't he man
enough to ask me that question?" Bush expressed sympathy. Donald Regan
said he would leave in four days. / Note #8 / Note #4 "February 27, 1987:"
Cable News Network televised a leaked report that Donald Regan had already
been replaced as White House chief of staff. After submitting a one-sentence
letter of resignation, Donald Regan said, "There's been a deliberate leak,
and it's been done to humiliate me." / Note #8 / Note #5 George Bush, when
President, rewarded the commission's chairman, Texas Senator John Tower,
by appointing him U.S. secretary of defense. Tower was asked by a reporter
at the National Press Club, whether his nomination was a "payoff" for the
"clean bill of health" he gave Bush. Tower responded that "the commission
was made up of three people, Brent Scowcroft and [Senator] Ed Muskie in
addition to myself, that would be sort of impugning the integrity of Brent
Scowcroft and Ed Muskie.... We found nothing to implicate the Vice President....
I wonder what kind of payoff they're going to get?" / Note #8 / Note #6
President Bush appointed Brent Scowcroft his chief national security adviser.
But the Senate refused to confirm Tower. Tower then wrote a book and began
to talk about the injustice done to him. He died April 5, 1991 in a plane
crash. "March 8, 1987:" In light of the Iran-Contra scandal, President
Reagan called on George Bush to reconvene his Terrorism Task Force to evaluate
the current program! "June 2, 1987:" Bush summarized his findings in a
press release: "[O]ur current policy as articulated in the Task Force report
is sound, effective, and fully in accord with our democratic principles,
and national ideals of freedom." / Note #8 / Note #7 "November 13, 1987:"
The designated congressional committees filed their joint report on the
Iran-Contra affair. Wyoming Representative Richard Cheney, the senior Republican
member of the House Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions
with Iran, helped steer the joint committees to an impotent result. George
Bush was totally exonerated, and was hardly mentioned. George Bush, when
President, rewarded Dick Cheney by appointing him U.S. secretary of defense,
after the Senate refused to confirm John Tower. The Mortification of the
U.S. Congress "January 20, 1989:" George Bush was inaugurated President
of the United S tates. "May 12, 1989:" President Bush's nomination of Donald
Gregg to be U.S. ambassador to Korea was considered in hearings by the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee. What follows are excerpts from the
typed transcript of the Gregg hearings. The transcript has never been reproduced,
it has not been printed, and it will not be published by the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, which is evidently embarrassed by its contents. /
Note #8 / Note #8 "Gregg:" [As] his national security adviser [for] six
and a half years ... I worked closely with the vice president keeping him
informed as best I could on matters of foreign policy, defense, and intelligence....
[After Vietnam] I did not see [Felix Rodriguez] until the early eighties
where he would drop into Washington sporadically ... we remained friends....
So, some of those contacts would have been [1979-1982] when I was at the
White House at the NSC. "Sen. Sarbanes:" And Felix would come to see you
there? "Gregg:" No, at my home.... [Then] he brought me in '83 the plan
which I have already discussed with Senator Cranston.... [At that point]
I was working for the vice president ... [which I began in] August 1982.
"Sen. Sarbanes:" In December of 1984 he came to see you with the idea of
going to El Salvador. You ... cleared it with the vice president? "Gregg:"
... I just said, "My friend Felix, who was a remarkable former agency employee
... wants to go down and help with El Salvador. And I am going to introduce
him to [State Department personnel] and see if he can sell himself to those
men," and the vice president said fine. "Gregg:" Felix went down there
about the first of March [1985]. Before he went ... I introduced him to
the vice president.... "Sen. Sarbanes:" So before he went down, you undertook
to introduce him to the vice president.... Why did you do that? "Gregg:"
Well, the vice president had always spoken very highly and enthusiastically
of his career [!], or his one-year as DCI [Director of Central Intelligence].
I had gone out with him to the agency just after I joined him in '82 and
I saw the tremendous response he got there and he got quite choked up about
it and as we drove back in the car he said, you know, that is the best
job I have ever hadbefore I became vice president. So here it was, as I
said probably the most extraordinary CIA comrade I had known, who was going
down to help in a country that I knew that the vice president was interested
in.... The vice president was interested in the progress of the Contras.
There were two occasions on which he asked me, how are they doing and I,
on one occasion went to a CIA officer who was knowledgeable and got a run-down
on how they were doing from that and sent it to the vice president and
he sent it back with no comment. On another occasion, he asked me again,
how are they doing, and I went -- I drew a memo up, I think on the basis
of a conversation with North. Again, he returned that with no comment.
So he was interested in the Contras as an instrument of putting pressure
on the Sandinistas.... "Sen. Simon:" Let me read another section from Senator
Cranston's statement. I believe the record suggests the following happened:
After Boland II was signed in October 1984 [outlawing all U.S. aid to the
Contras], you and certain others in the White House were encouraged to
secure military aid for the Contras through unorthodox channels. Your career
training in establishing secrecy and deniability for covert operations,
your decades-old friendship for Felix Rodriguez, apparently led you to
believe you could serve the national interest by sponsoring a freelance
covert operation out of the vice president's office. What is your response
to that statement? "Gregg:" Well, I think it is a rather full-blown conspiracy
theory. That was not what I was doing.... I was involved in helping the
vice president's task force on antiterrorist measures write their report.
But normally I had no operational responsibilities.... "Sen. Simon:" When
did you first find out the law was being violated? "Gregg:" By the law,
do you mean the Boland amendment? "Sen. Simon:" That is correct. "Gregg:"
I guess my knowledge of that sort of came at me piecemeal after Hasenfus
had been shot down.... "Sen. Simon:" So what you are telling us, you found
out about the law being violated the same time the rest of us found out
the law was being violated? "Gregg:" Yes, sir.... "Sen. Cranston:" From
February 1985 to August 1986, you have acknowledged that you spoke to Rodriguez
many, many times on the telephone. Let me quote from your sworn deposition
to the Iran-Contra Committee: "Felix called me quite often and frequently
it was what I would call sort of combat catharsis. He used to do the same
thing in Vietnam...." Now, is it still your testimony that Rodriguez never
mentioned his deep involvement in Contra supply activities during any of
these phone conversations? "Gregg:" That is my testimony. "Sen. Cranston:"
Is it still your testimony that prior to Aug. 8th, 1986, Rodriguez never
mentioned the status of his Contra resupply efforts during his numerous
face-to-face meetings with you in Washington? "Gregg:" Never. "Sen. Cranston:"
Is it still your testimony that Rodriguez did not mention the status of
his Contra resupply efforts in the very meetings that were convened according
to two memos bearing your name, for Rodriguez to "brief the vice president
on the status of the war in El Salvador and efforts to resupply the Contras"?
"Gregg:" There was no intention to discuss resupply of the Contras and
everyone at that meeting, including former Senator Nick Brady have [sic]
testified that it was not discussed. "Sen. Cranston:" As you know, it is
difficult to reconcile those statements about what happened in the meeting
with the statement and memos from you that the agenda was ... two things,
one of them being efforts to resupply the Contras.... "Gregg:" Those memos
first surfaced to my attention in December of 1986, when we undertook our
first document search of the vice president's office. They hit me rather
hard because by that time I had put the pieces together of what had been
going on and I realized the implications of that agenda item. I did not
shred the documents. I did not hide it.... [T]his is the worst thi ng I
have found and here it is, and I cannot really explain it.... I have a
speculative explanation which I would like to put forward if you would
be interested. "Sen. Cranston:" Fine. "Gregg:" Again, turning to Felix
[Rodriguez]'s book ... Felix makes the following quote.... This is the
quote, sir: "... I had no qualms about calling [Sam Watson] or Don [Gregg]
when I thought they could help run interference with the Pentagon to speed
up deliveries of spare chopper parts." That means helicopters. "I must
have made many such calls during the spring of 1986. Without operating
Hughes 500 helicopters it was impossible to carry out my strategy against
the [El Salvadoran] insurgents...." [There are] then documented steps that
Colonel Watson had taken with the Pentagon to try to get spare parts expedited
for El Salvador.... So my construction is this, sir. I recall that in the
meeting with the vice president the question of spare parts for the helicopters
in El Salvador was discussed and so that I think "what the agenda item
on the two memos is, is a garbled reference to something like resupply
of the copters, instead of resupply of the Contras" [emphasis added]."
"Sen. Sarbanes:" How did the scheduling proposal of April 16, 1986 and
the briefing memorandum of April 30th take place? "Gregg:" They were prepared
by my assistant, Mrs. Byrne, acting on advice from Colonel Watson. She
signed my initials, but those are not my initials. I did not see the documents
until December 1986, when I called them to the attention of the House Intelligence
Committee.... And if .. my speculation does not hold up, I have to refer
you to a memorandum that I turned over to the Iran-Contra Committee on
the 14th of May 1987.... "Sen. Sarbanes:" I am looking at that memorandum
now. "Gregg:" Okay. That has been my explanation up until now. "Sen. Sarbanes:"
But you are now providing a different explanation? "Gregg:" It is the only
one -- I have been thinking about these documents for over two years, and
it is the only thing that I can come up with that would come close to explaining
that agenda item -- given the fact that there was no intention of discussing
resupply to the Contras. That resupply of the Contras was not discussed,
according to the testimony of everyone who was in the meeting...." "Sen.
Kerry:" Douglas Minarczik is who? "Gregg:" He was one of my assistants
in my office responsible for Mid-East and African affairs.... "Sen. Kerry:"
And he was working for you in 1985 and 1986, that period? "Gregg:" Yes.
"Sen. Kerry:" Now, when I began first investigating allegations of the
"gun-running" that was taking place out of Miami, "Miami was buzzing with
the notion that the vice president's office was somehow involved in monitoring
that, at least" [emphasis added]. Now, Jesus Garcia was a Miami corrections
official who got into trouble and wound up going to jail on weapons offenses.
Through that connection, we came across telephone records. And those telephone
records demonstrate calls from Garcia's house to Contra camps in Honduras,
to John Hull in Costa Rica, and Douglas Minarczik in, not necessarily in
your office, but directly to the White House. However, there is incontrovertible
evidence that he had in his possession the name of Mr. Minarczik, a piece
of paper in our possession, in Garcia's home in connection with monitoring
those paramilitary operations, in August of 1985. Now, how do you account
for the fact that Minarczik's -- that the people involved with the Contra
supply operations out of Miami ... had Minarczik's name and telephone number,
and that there is a record of calls to the White House at that time? "Gregg:"
I cannot account for it. Could it have anything to do with our old friend
Mr. Brenicke [sic]? Because Brenicke did have Minarczik's phone number....
"Sen. Kerry:" ... No. Totally separate. "Gregg:" This is all new. I do
not have an explanation, sir.... "Sen. Kerry:" Do you recall the downing
of a Cuban airliner in [1976] in which 72 people lost their lives as a
result; do you remember that? "Gregg:" Yes. "Sen. Kerry:" A terrorist bomb.
And a Cuban-American named Luis Posada [Carriles] was arrested in Venezuela
in connection with that. He then escaped in 1985 with assistance from Felix
Rodriguez -- I do not know if this is going to be in the [Rodriguez] book
or not -- "Gregg:" It is. "Sen. Kerry:" Okay, and he brought him to Central
America to help the Contras under pseudonym of Ramon Medina, correct? "Gregg:"
Now, I know that; yes. "Sen. Kerry:" ... [Is] it appropriate for a Felix
Rodriguez to help a man indicted in a terrorist bombing to escape from
prison, and then appropriate for him to take him to become involved in
supply operations, which we are supporting? "Gregg:" I cannot justify that,
sir. And I am not certain what role Felix played in getting him out....
Committee Session June 15, 1989 "Sen. Cranston:" Before proceeding in this
matter, I would like to state clearly for the record what the central purpose
of this investigation is about and in my view what it is not about. It
is not about who is for or against the Contras.... Similarly, this investigation
is not about building up or tearing down our new President [Bush]. We have
tried throughout this proceeding to avoid partisan attacks. Indeed, "Republicans
and Democrats alike" have sought Mr. Gregg's withdrawal as one way to avoid
casting aspersions on the [Bush] White House.... [emphasis added]. Mr.
Gregg remains steadfast in his loyalty to his boss, then-Vice President
Bush, and to his long-time friend, Felix Rodriguez. Mr. Gregg has served
his country in the foreign policy field for more than three decades. By
all accounts he is a loyal American.... As Mr. Gregg himself conceded last
month, there are substantial reasons for senators to suspect his version
of events and to raise questions about his judgment. It does not take a
suspicious or partisan mind to look at the documentary evidence, the back
channel cables, the "eyes only" memos, and then to conclude that Mr. Gregg
has not been straight with us. Indeed, I am informed that more than one
Republican senator who has looked at the accumulated weight of the evidence
against Mr. Gregg, has remained unconvinced and has sought Mr. Gregg's
withdrawal. Mr. Gregg, this committee has a fundamental dilemma. If we
are to promote a man we believe to have misled us under oath, we would
make a mockery of this institution.... ... [It] has been established that
when you are confronted with written evidence undermining your story, you
point the finger of blame elsewhere. At our last hearing you said Gorman's
cables were wrong, North's notebooks were wrong, Steele's memory was wrong,
North's sworn testimony [that Gregg introduced Rodriguez to him] was wrong,
you concocted a theory that your aide, Watson, and your secretary erred
by writing "Contras" instead of "helicopters" on those infamous briefing
memos for the Vice President.... Incredibly, when senators confront you
with the documentary evidence which undermines your story, you accuse us
of concocting conspiracy theories and you do so with a straight face. ...
I think it is clear by now that many important questions may never be answered
satisfactorily, especially because we have been stonewalled by the administration.
The National Security Agency has rejected our legitimate enquiries out
of hand. The Central Intelligence Agency provided a response with access
restrictions so severe ... as to be laughable. The Department of Defense
has given an unsatisfactory response two days late. The State Department's
response was utterly unresponsive. They answered our letter after their
self-imposed deadline and failed to produce specific documents we requested
and which we know exist. This Committee has been stonewalled by Oliver
North, too. He has not complied with the Committee subpoena for his unredacted
notebooks. The redacted notebooks contain repeated January 1985 references
to Felix Rodriguez which suggests North's involvement in Rodriguez' briefings
of the Vice President. No member of the Senate can escape the conclusion
that these administration actions are contemptuous of this Committee....
"Sen. McConnell:" ... During the period of the Boland Amendment, were you
ever asked to inform the vice president's office or lend his name to private,
nonprofit efforts to support the Contras? "Gregg:" Yes. I recall one instance,
in particular, where there was a request -- I guess it was probably from
one aspect of the Spitz Channell organization, which had a variety of things
going on in and around Nicaragua. We got, on December 2nd, 1985, a letter
to the vice president, asking him to get involved in something called the
Friends of the Americas, which was aid to the Meskito Indians ... in Nicaragua
that had been badly mistreated by the Sandinistas.... And so I have a document
here which shows how we dealt with it. I sent it to Boyden Gray, the counsel
of the vice president and said, "Boyden, this looks okay as a charity issue,
but there is the question of precedent. Please give me a legal opinion.
Thanks." ... Boyden Gray wrote back to me and said, "No, should not do.
Raises questions about indirect circumvention of congressional funding
limits or restriction, vis-a-vis Nicaragua." That is the only time I recall
that we had a specific request like that, and this is how we dealt with
it. "Sen. Pell" [Chairman of the Committee]":" ... First, you say that
you offered to resign twice, I think. Knowing that you are a very loyal
servant of what you view as the national interest, and knowing the embarrassment
that this nomination has caused the administration, I was wondering why
you did not ask your name to be withdrawn ... to pull your name back....
[w]hich has been recommended by many of us as being a way to resolve this
problem. "Gregg:" Well, I haven't because I think I'm fully qualified to
b e ambassador to South Korea. And so does the vice president [sic]. So
I am here because he has asked me to serve.... "Sen. Cranston:" ... Senators
will recall that on Oct. 5th of '86 a plane bearing military supplies to
the Contras was shot down over Nicaragua. The sole survivor, Eugene Hasenfus,
spoke publicly of the role of Felix Rodriguez, alias Max Gomez, in aiding
military resupply and noted Gomez's ties to the vice president's office.
Could you please describe your understanding of why it was that the first
call to official Washington regarding the shootdown was from Felix Rodriguez
to your aid[e] in Washington? "Gregg:" ... [It] was because on the 25th
of June of that year he had come to Washington to confront North about
what he regarded as corruption in the supply process of the Contras....
[H]e broke with North on the 25th of June and has not been on speaking
terms with the man since then.... [H]e tried to get me -- he could not
-- he reached Colonel Watson.... "Sen. Cranston:" As you recall, the vice
president was besieged at that time with inquiries regarding Rodriguez's
ties to the vice president's office. What did you tell [Bush press spokesman]
Marlin Fitzwater regarding that relationship? "Gregg:" ... The thrust of
the press inquiries was always that from the outset I had had in mind that
Rodriguez should play some role in the Contra support operation, and my
comments to Marlin ... were that that had not been in my mind.... "Sen.
Cranston:" Let me quote again from the "New York Times", George Bush quoted
October 13, '86. Bush said, "To the best of my knowledge, this man, Felix
Rodriguez, is not working for the United States government." Now Mr. Gregg,
you knew that Rodriguez was aiding the Contras and receiving material assistance
in the form of cars, housing, communications equipment and transportation
from the U.S. government. Did you inform Bush of those facts so that he
could make calculated misleading statements in ignorance of his staff's
activities? "Gregg:" ... At that point I had no idea that Felix -- you
said -- you mentioned communications equipment. I had no idea he had been
given by North one of those encryption devices. I think I was aware that
Colonel Steele had given him access to a car, and I knew he was living
in a BOQ at the air base. He was not being paid any salary. His main source
of income was, as it is now, his retirement pension from CIA. "Sen. Cranston:"
... You told the Iran-Contra committee that you and Bush never discussed
the Contras, had no expertise on the issue, no responsibility for it, and
the details of Watergate-sized scandal involving NSC staff and the [Edwin]
Wilson gang was not Vice Presidential. Your testimony on that point I think
is demonstrably false. There are at least six memos from Don Gregg to George
Bush regarding detailed Contra issues.... "Sen Cranston:" Am I correct
in this, that you have confirmed ... that senior U.S. military, diplomatic
... and intelligence personnel, really looked with great doubt upon Rodriguez's
mission and that they tolerated it only because Rodriguez used his contacts
with the vice president and his staff as part of the way to bolster his
mission. "Gregg:" ... I was not aware of the diplomatic; I was aware of
the military and intelligence, yes, sir. "The committee voted in favor
of confirmation." Cranston voted no. But three Democrats -- Charles Robb,
Terry Sanford and Chairman Claiborne Pell -- joined the Republicans. Sanford
confirmed Cranston's viewpoint, saying that he was allowing the nomination
to go through because he was afraid "the path would lead to Bush," the
new President. Sanford said, shamefacedly, ""If Gregg was lying, he was
lying to protect the President, which is different from lying to protect
himself."" / Note #8 / Note #9 In George Bush's government, the one-party
state, the knives soon came out, and the prizes appeared. The Senate Ethics
Committee, including the shamefaced Terry Sanford, began in November 1989,
its attack on the "Keating Five." These were U.S. Senators, among them
Senator Alan Cranston, charged with savings and loan corruption. The attack
soon narrowed down to one target only -- the Iran-Contrary Senator Cranston.
On Aug. 2, 1991, Senator Terry Sanford, having forgotten his shame, took
over as the new chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee. Bush, LaRouche
and Iran-Contra George Bush and his friends have repeatedly told political
pundits that America is "tired" and "bored" of hearing about the Iran-Contra
affair. Bush has taken a dim view of those who were not tired or bored,
but fought him. Oct. 6, 1986 was a fateful day in Washington. The secret
government apparatus learned that the Hasenfus plane had been shot down
the day before, and went scurrying about to protect its exposed parts.
At the same time, it sent about 400 heavily armed FBI agents, other federal,
state and local policemen storming into the Leesburg, Virginia, publishing
offices associated with the American dissident political leader Lyndon
LaRouche, Jr. LaRouche and his political movement had certified their danger
to the Bush program. Six months before the raid, LaRouche associates Mark
Fairchild and Janice Hart had gained the Democratic nominations for Illinois
lieutenant governor and secretary of state; they won the primary elections
after denouncing the government-mafia joint coordination of the narcotics
trade. With this notoriety, LaRouche was certain to act in an even more
unpredictable and dangerous fashion as a presidential candidate in 1988.
LaRouche allies were at work throughout Latin America, promoting resistance
to the Anglo-Americans. The LaRouche-founded "Executive Intelligence Review"
had exposed U.S. government covert support for Khomeini's Iranians, beginning
in 1980. More directly, the LaRouchites were fighting the Bush apparatus
for its money. Connecticut widow Barbara Newington, who had given Spitz
Channell's National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty $1,735,578
out of its total 1985 income of $3,360,990, / Note #9 / Note #0 was also
contributing substantial sums to LaRouche-related publishing efforts ...
which were exposing the Contras and their dope-pushing. Fundraiser Michael
Billington argued with Mrs. Newington, warning her not to give money to
the Bush-North-Spitz Channell gang. Back on August 19, 1982, and on November
25, 1982, George Bush's old boss, Henry A. Kissinger, had written to FBI
Director William Webster, asking for FBI action against "the LaRouche group."
In promoting covert action against LaRouche, Kissinger also got help from
James Jesus Angleton, who had retired as chief of counterintelligence for
the CIA. After Yalie Angleton got going in this anti-dissident work, he
mused "Fancy that, now I've become Kissinger's Rebbe." / Note #9 / Note
#1 One week before the raid, an FBI secret memorandum described the LaRouche
political movement as "subversive," and claimed that its "policy positions
... dovetail nicely with Soviet propaganda and disinformation objectives."
/ Note #9 / Note #2 Three months after Spitz Channell's fraud confession,
Vice President Bush denounced LaRouche at an Iowa campaign rally: "I don't
like the things LaRouche does.... He's bilked people out of lots of money,
and misrepresented what causes money was going to. LaRouche is in a lot
of trouble, and deserves to be in a lot of trouble." / Note #9 / Note #3
LaRouche and several associates eventually went on trial in Boston, on
a variety of "fraud" charges -- neither "subversion" nor defunding the
Contras was in the indictments. Bush was now running hard for the presidency.
Suddenly, in the midst of the primary elections, the LaRouche trial took
a threatening turn. On March 10, 1988, Federal Judge Robert E. Keeton ordered
a search of the indexes to Vice President George Bush's confidential files
to determine whether his spies had infiltrated LaRouche-affiliated organizations.
Iran-Contra Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh had acquired, and turned
over to the LaRouche defense, in response to an FOIA request, a secret
memorandum found in Oliver North's safe. It was a mes sage from Gen. Richard
Secord to North, written May 5, 1986 -- four days after North had met with
George Bush and Felix Rodriguez to confirm that Rodriguez would continue
running guns to the Contras using Spitz Channell's payments to Richard
Secord. The memo, released in the Boston courtroom, said, "Lewis has met
with FBI and other agency reps and is apparently meeting again today. Our
Man here claims Lewis has collected info against LaRouche." / Note #9 /
Note #4 The government conceded that "our man here" in the memo was Bush
Terrorism Task Force member Oliver "Buck" Revell, the assistant director
of the FBI. "Lewis" -- "soldier of fortune" Fred Lewis -- together with
Bush operatives Gary Howard and Ron Tucker, had met later in May 1986,
with C. Boyden Gray, counsel to Vice President Bush. / Note #9 / Note #5
Howard and Tucker, deputy sheriffs from Bush-family-controlled Midland,
Texas, were couriers and bagmen for money transfers between the National
Security Council and private "counterterror" companies. They were also
professional sting artists. Howard and Tucker had sold 100 battle tanks
to a British arms dealer for shipment to Iran, and had taken his $1.6 million.
Then they turned him in to British authorities and claimed a huge reward.
A British jury, outraged at Howard and Tucker, threw out the criminal case
in late 1983. The LaRouche defense contended, with the North memo and other
declassified documents, that the Bush apparatus had sent spies and provocateurs
into the LaRouche political movement in an attempt to wreck it. Judge Keeton
demanded that the Justice Department tell him why information they withheld
from the defense was now appearing in court in declassified documents.
The government was not forthcoming, and in May 1988, the judge declared
a mistrial. The jury told the newspapers they would have voted for acquittal.
But Bush could not afford to quit. LaRouche and his associates were simply
indicted again, on new charges. This time they were brought to trial before
a judge who could be counted on. Judge Albert V. Bryan, Jr. was the organizer,
lawyer and banker of the world's largest private weapons dealer, Interarms
of Alexandria, Virginia. As the new LaRouche trial began, the CIA-front
firm that the judge had founded controlled 90 percent of the world's official
private weapons traffic. Judge Bryan had personally arranged the financing
of more than a million weapons traded by Interarms between the CIA, Britain
and Latin America. Agency for International Development trucks carried
small arms, rifles, machine guns and ammunition from Interarms in Alexandria
for flights to Cuba -- first for Castro's revolutionary forces. Then, Judge
Bryan's company, Interarms, provided guns for the anti-Castro initiatives
of the CIA Miami Station, for Rodriguez, Shackley, Posada Carriles, Howard
Hunt, Frank Sturgis, et al. When George Bush was CIA director, Albert V.
Bryan's company was the leading private supplier of weapons to the CIA.
/ Note #9 / Note #6 In the LaRouche trial, Judge Bryan prohibited virtually
all defense initiatives. The jury foreman, Buster Horton, had top secret
clearance for government work with Oliver North and Oliver "Buck" Revell.
LaRouche and his associates were declared guilty. On January 27, 1989 --
one week after George Bush became President -- Judge Albert V. Bryan sentenced
the 66-year-old dissident leader LaRouche to 15 years in prison. Michael
Billington, who had tried to wreck the illicit funding for the Contras,
was jailed for three years with LaRouche; he was later railroaded into
a Virginia court and sentenced to another "77 years in prison" for "fundraising
fraud." Notes for Chapter XIX 76. "Washington Post," Oct. 11, 1986. 77.
"Washington Post," Oct. 12, 1986, Oct. 14, 1986. 78. "Washington Post,"
Oct. 14, 1986. 79. Hasenfus Affidavit, p. 3. 80. Rodriguez and Weisman,
"op. cit.," p. 241. 81. "Washington Post," Nov. 20, 1986. 82. "Washington
Post," Feb. 12, 1987. 83. "Washington Post," Dec. 18, 1986, "Wall Street
Journal," Dec. 19, 1986. 84. Donald T. Regan, "For the Record: From Wall
Street to Washington" (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, 1988), pp.
368-73. 85. "Ibid." 86. "New York Times," March 2, 1989. 87. "CovertAction,"
No. 33, Winter 1990, p. 15. 88. Stenographic Transcript of Hearings Before
the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Nomination Hearing for
Donald Phinney Gregg to be Ambassador to the Republic of Korea. Washington,
D.C., May 12 and June 15, 1989. 89. Mary McGrory, "The Truth According
to Gregg," "Washington Post," June 22, 1989. 90. NEPL contributions 1985
printout, cited in Armstrong, "op. cit.," p. 226. 91. Kissinger letters,
declassified in 1984, photostats in "EIR Special Report:" "Irangate...,"
pp. 52, 55. Angleton quote in Tom Mangold, "Cold Warrior" (New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1991), p. 352. See also Burton Hersh, "In the Hall of Mirrors:
The Cold War's Distorted Images," in "The Nation," June 23, 1991. Hersh
says: "I knew Angleton in the last five years of his life [he died May
11, 1987]. Angleton was amusing himself just then with a vendetta against
Lyndon LaRouche." 92. Director FBI to D[efense] I[ntelligence] A[gency],
Sept. 30, 1986, classified SECRET. 93. Bush at Shelton, Iowa, July 31,
1987, quoted in "EIR Special Report:" "Irangate...," p. 65. 94. Secord
to North 5/5/86 memorandum marked SECRET, declassified Feb. 26, 1988 by
Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, photostat in "EIR Special Report:" "Irangate...,"
p. 31. 95. "Washington Post," March 27, 1989. 96. Corporate records of
the First National Bank of Alexandria and the First Citizens Bank of Alexandria,
1940s to 1960s, in "Polk's Bankers Directory." Clarence J. Robinson, "Reminiscences"
(Fairfax, Va.: George Mason University, 1983). "XX: The Leveraged Buyout
Mob" During the entire decade of the 1980s, the policies of the Reagan-Bush
and Bush administrations encouraged one of the greatest paroxysms of speculation
and usury that the world has ever seen. Starting especially in the summer
of 1982, a malignant and cancerous mass of speculative paper spread through
all the vital organs of the banking, credit, and financial system. Capital
had long since ceased to be used for the creation of new productive plant
and equipment, new productive manufacturing jobs, investment in transportation,
power systems and education; health services and other infrastructure declined
well below the breakeven level. Wall Street investors came more and more
to resemble vampires who ranged over a ghoulish landscape in search of
living prey whose blood they could suck to perpetuate their own lively
form of death. For the vast majority of the U.S. population (to say nothing
of the brutal immiseration in the developing countries) it was an epoch
of austerity, sacrifice, and decline, of the entropy of a society in which
most people have no purpose and feel themselves becoming redundant. But
for a paper-thin stratum of plutocrats and parasites, the 1980s was a time
of unlimited opportunity. These were the practitioners of the disastrous
financial swindles that marked the decade, the protagonists of the hostile
takeovers, mergers and acquisitions, leveraged buyouts, greenmail, and
stock plays that occupied the admiration of Wall Street. These were corporate
raiders like J. Hugh Liedtke, Baine Kerr, T. Boone Pickens, and Frank Lorenzo;
Wall Street financiers like Henry Kravis and Nicholas Brady. And these
men, surely not by coincidence, belonged to the intimate circle of personal
friends and close political supporters of George Herbert Walker Bush. The
Pennzoil Wars: A Case Study One of the landmark corporate battles of the
first Reagan administration was the battle over control of Getty Oil, a
battle fought between Texaco -- at that time the third largest oil company
in the United States and the fourth largest industrial corporation -- and
J. Hugh Liedtke's Pennzoil. George Bush's old partner and constant crony,
J. Hugh Liedtke, was still obsessed with his dream of building Pennzoil
into a major oil company, one that could become the seventh of the traditional
Seven Si sters after Chevron and Gulf merged. Liedtke was the chairman
of the Pennzoil board, and the Pennzoil president was now Baine Kerr, a
former lawyer from Baker & Botts in Houston. Baine Kerr was also an
old friend of George Bush. Back in 1970, when George was running against
Lloyd Bentsen, Kerr had advised Bush on a proposed business deal involving
a loan request from Victor A. Flaherty, who needed money to buy Fidelity
Printing Company. Baine Kerr was a hard bargainer: He recommended that
Bush make the loan, but that he also demand some stock in Fidelity Printing
as part of the deal. Three years later, when Fidelity Printing was sold,
Bush cashed in his stock for $99,600 in profit, a gain of 1,900 percent
on his original investment. That was the kind of return that George Bush
liked, the kind that honest activities can so rarely produce. / Note #1
Chairman Mao Liedtke and his sidekick Baine Kerr constantly scanned their
radar screens for an oil company to acquire. They studied Superior Oil,
which was in play, but Superior Oil did too much of its business in Canada,
where there had been no equivalent of George Bush's Task Force on Regulatory
Relief, and where the oil companies were thus still subject to some restraints.
Chairman Mao ruled that one out. Then there was Gulf Oil, where T. Boone
Pickens was attempting a takeover, but Liedtke reluctantly decided that
Gulf was beyond his means. Then, Chairman Mao began to hear reports of
conflicts on the board of Getty Oil. Getty Oil, with 20,000 employees,
was a $12 billion corporation, about six times larger than Pennzoil. But
Chairman Mao had already managed to gobble up United Gas when that company
was about six times larger than his own Pennzoil. Getty Oil had about a
billion barrels of oil in the ground. Now Chairman Mao was very interested.
In early 1984, Gordon Getty and his Sarah Getty Trust, plus the Getty Museum
represented by the New York mergers and acquisitions lawyer Marty Lipton,
combined to oblige the board of Getty Oil to give preliminary acceptance
to a tender offer for Getty Oil stock at a price of about $112.50 per share.
Arthur Liman thought he had a deal that would enable Chairman Mao to seize
control of Getty Oil and its billion barrel reserves, but no contract or
any other document was ever signed, and key provisions of the transaction
remained to be negotiated. When the news of these negotiations began to
leak out, major oil companies who also wanted Getty and its reserves began
to move in: Chevron showed signs of making a move, but it was Texaco, represented
by Bruce Wasserstein of First Boston and the notorious Skadden, Arps, Slate,
Meagher & Flom law firm, that got the attention of the Getty Museum
and Gordon Getty with a bid (of $125 a share) that was sweeter than the
tight-fisted Chairman Mao Liedtke had been willing to put forward. Gordon
Getty and the Getty Museum accordingly signed a contract with Texaco. This
was nominally the largest acquisition in human history up to that time,
and the check received by Gordon Getty was for $4,071,051,264, the second
largest check ever written in the history of the United States, second
only to one that had been used to roll over a part of the post-World War
II national debt. But Chairman Mao Liedtke thought he had been cheated.
"They've made off with a million dollars of my oil!" he bellowed. "We're
going to sue everybody in sight!" But Chairman Mao Liedtke's attempts to
stop the deal in court were fruitless; he then concentrated his attention
on a civil suit for damages on a claim that Texaco had been guilty of "tortious
interference" with Pennzoil's alleged oral contract with Getty Oil. The
charge was that Texaco had known that there already had been a contract,
and had set out deliberately to breach it. After extensive forum shopping,
Chairman Mao concluded that Houston, Texas was the right venue for a suit
of this type. Liedtke and Pennzoil demanded $7 billion in actual damages
and $7 billion in punitive damages for a total of at least $14 billion,
a sum bigger than the entire public debt of the United States on December
7, 1941. Liedtke hired Houston lawyer Joe "King of Torts" Jamail, and backed
up Jamail with Baker & Botts. Interestingly, the judge who presided
over the trial until the final phase, when the die had already been cast,
was none other than Anthony J.P. "Tough Tony" Farris. Back in February
1963, the newly elected Republican county chairman for Harris County, George
H.W. Bush, had named Tough Tony Farris as his first assistant county chairman.
/ Note #2 During the Nixon administration, Farris became the U.S. Attorney
in Houston. Given what we know of the relations between Nixon and George
Bush, we must conclude that a patronage appointment of this type could
hardly have been made without George Bush's involvement. Tough Tony Farris
was decidedly an asset of the Bush networks. Now Tough Tony Farris was
a state district judge, whose remaining ambition in life was an appointment
to the federal bench. Farris did not recuse himself because his patron,
George Bush, was a former business partner and constant crony of J. Hugh
Liedtke. Farris rather began issuing a string of rulings favorable to Pennzoil:
He ruled that Pennzoil had a right to quick discovery from Texaco. Farris
was an old friend of Pennzoil's lead trial lawyer, Joe Jamail, and Jamail
had just given Tough Tony Farris a $10,000 contribution for his next election
campaign. Jamail, in fact, was a member of Tough Tony's campaign committee.
Texaco attempted to recuse Farris, but they failed. Farris claimed that
he would have recused himself if Texaco's lawyers had come to him privately,
but that their public attempt to get him pitched out of the case made him
decide to fight to stay on. Just at that point, the district courts of
Harris County changed their rules in such a way as to allow Bush's man
Tough Tony Farris, who had presided over the pretrial hearings, to actually
try the case. And try the case he did, for 15 weeks, during which the deck
was stacked for Pennzoil's ultimate victory. With a few weeks left in the
trial, Farris was diagnosed as suffering from terminal cancer, and he was
forced to request a replacement district judge. The last-minute substitute
was Judge Solomon Casseb, who finished up the case along the lines already
clearly established by Farris. In late November 1985, the jury awarded
Pennzoil damages of $10.53 billion. Casseb not only upheld this monstrous
result, but increased it to a total of $11,120,976,110.83. Before the trial,
back in January 1985, Chairman Mao Liedtke had met with John K. McKinley,
the chairman of Texaco, at the Hay-Adams Hotel across Lafayette Park from
the White House in Washington, D.C. Liedtke told McKinley that he thought
what Texaco had done was highly illegal, but McKinley responded that his
lawyers had assured him that his legal position was "very sound." McKinley
offered suggestions for an out-of-court settlement, but these were rejected
by Chairman Mao, who made his own counter-offer: He wanted three-sevenths
of Getty Oil, and was now willing to hike his price to $125 a share. According
to one account of this meeting, Liedtke seemed to go out of his way to
mention his friendship with George Bush, according to Bill Weitzel of Texaco.
"Mr. Liedtke was quite outspoken with regard to the influence that he felt
he had -- and would and could expect in Washington -- in connection with
antitrust matters and legislative matters," McKinley would say in deposition.
"The idea was that Pennzoil was not without political influence that could
adversely affect the efforts of Texaco in completing its merger." / Note
#3 Liedtke denied all this: "The political-influence thing isn't true.
I don't have any and McKinley knows it!" Did Liedtke keep a straight face?
In any case, the Reagan-Bush regime made no secret of its support for Pennzoil.
In the spring of 1987, after prolonged litigation, the U.S. Supreme Court
required Texaco to post a bond of $11 billion. On April 13, 1987, the press
announced that Texaco had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The
Justice Department created two committees to represent the interests of
Texaco's unsecured creditors, and Pennzoil was made the chairman of one
of these committees. Texaco operations were subjected to severe disruptions.
During the closing weeks of 1987, Texaco was haggling with Chairman Mao
about the sum of money that the bankrupt firm would pay to Pennzoil. At
this point, Bushman Lawrence Gibbs was the commissioner of the Internal
Revenue Service. He slammed bankrupt and wounded Texaco with a demand for
$6.5 billion in back taxes. This move was in the works behind the scenes
during the Texaco-Pennzoil talks, and it certainly made clear to Texaco
which side the government was on. The implication was that Texaco had better
settle with Chairman Mao in a hurry, or face the prospect of being broken
up by the various Wall Street sharks, who had begun to circle the wounded
company. In case Texaco had not gotten the message, the Department of Energy
also launched an attack on Texaco, alleging that the bankrupt firm had
overcharged its customers by $1.25 billion during the time before 1981
when oil price controls had been in effect. The entire affair represented
a monstrous miscarriage of justice, a declaration that the entire U.S.
legal system was bankrupt. At the heart of the matter was the pervasive
influence of the Bush networks, which gave Liedtke the support he needed
to fight all the way to the final settlement. Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts
But even the enormities of Chairman Mao Liedtke were destined to be eclipsed
in the political and regulatory climate of savage greed created with the
help of the Reagan-Bush administration and George Bush's Task Force on
Regulatory Relief. Even Liedtke's colossal grasping was about to be out-topped
by a small Wall Street firm, which, primarily during the second Reagan-Bush
term, assembled a financial empire greater than that of J.P. Morgan at
the height of Jupiter's power. This firm was Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts
(KKR) which had been founded in 1976 by a partner and some former employees
of the Bear Stearns brokerage firm of lower Manhattan, and which by late
1990 had bought a total of 36 companies using some $58 billion lent to
KKR by insurance companies, commercial banks, state pension funds, and
junk bond king Michael Milken. The dominant personality of KKR was Henry
Kravis. Henry Kravis's epic achievements in speculation and usury perhaps
had something to do with the fact that he was a close family friend of
George Bush. As we have seen, when Prescott Bush was arranging a job for
young George Herbert Walker Bush in 1948, he contacted Ray Kravis of Tulsa,
Oklahoma, whose business included helping Brown Brothers Harriman to evaluate
the oil reserves of companies. Ray Kravis over the years had kept in close
touch with Senator Prescott Bush and George Bush, and young Henry Kravis,
his son, had been introduced to George and had hob-nobbed with him at various
Republican Party fundraising events. Henry Kravis by the early 1980s was
a member of the Republican Party's elite inner circle. Bush and Henry Kravis
became even more closely associated during the time that Bush, ever mindful
of campaign financing, was preparing his bid for the presidency. Among
political contributors, Henry Kravis was a very high roller. In 1987-88,
Kravis gave over $80,000 to various senators, congressmen, Republican political
action committees, and the Republican National Committee. During 1988,
Kravis gave $100,000 to the GOP Team 100, which meant a "soft money" contribution
to the Bush campaign. Kravis's partner, George Roberts, also anted up $100,000
for the Republican Team 100. In 1989, the first year in which it was owned
by KKR, RJR Nabisco also gave $100,000 to Team 100. During that year, Kravis
and Roberts gave $25,000 each to the GOP. During the 1988 primary season,
Kravis was the co-chair of a lavish Bush fundraiser at the Vista Hotel
in lower Manhattan, at which Henry's fellow Wall Street dealmakers and
financier fat cats coughed up a total of $550,000 for Bush. Part of Kravis's
symbolic recompense was the prestigious title of co-chairman of Bush's
Inaugural Dinner in January 1989. One year later, in January 1990, Kravis
was the national chairman of Bush's Inaugural Anniversary Dinner. / Note
#4 According to Kravis, Bush "writes me handwritten notes all the time
and he calls me and stuff, and we talk." The talk concerned what the U.S.
government should do in areas of immediate interest to Kravis: "We talked
on corporate debt -- this was going back a few years -- and what that meant
to the private sector," said Kravis. Henry Kravis certainly knows all about
debt. The 1980s witnessed the triumph of debt over equity, with a tenfold
increase in total corporate debt during the decade, while production, productive
capacity, and employment stagnated and declined. One of the principal ways
in which this debt was loaded onto a shrinking productive base was through
the technique of the hostile, junk bond-assisted leveraged buyout, of which
Henry Kravis and his firm were the leading practitioners. Small-scale leveraged
buyouts were pioneered by KKR during the late 1970s. In its final form,
the technique looked something like this: Corporate raiders looked around
for companies that might be worth more than their current stock price if
they were broken up and sold off. Using money borrowed from a number of
sources, the raider would make a tender offer, or otherwise secure a majority
of the shares. Often all outstanding shares in the company would be bought
up, taking the company private, with ownership residing in a small group
of financiers. The company would end up saddled with an immense amount
of new debt, often in the form of high-yield, high-risk subordinated debt
certificates called junk bonds. The risk on these was high, since, if the
company were to go bankrupt and be auctioned off, the holders of the junk
bonds would be the last to get any compensation. Often, the first move
of the raider after seizing control of the company and forcing out its
existing management, would be to sell off the parts of the firm that produced
the least cash flow, since enhanced cash flow was imperative to start paying
the new debt. Proceeds from these sales could also be used to pay down
some of the initial debt, but this process inevitably meant jobs destroyed
and production diminished. These raiding operations were justified by a
fascistoid-populist demagogy that accused the existing management of incompetence,
indolence, and greed. The LBO pirates professed to have the interests of
the shareholders at heart, and made much of the fact that their operations
increased the value of the stock and, in the case of tender offers, gave
the stockholders a better price than they would have gotten otherwise.
The litany of the corporate raider was built around his commitment to "maximize
shareholder value"; workers, bondholders, the public, the firms themselves
were all expendable in the short run. An important enticement to transform
stocks and equity into bonded and other debt was provided by the insanity
of the U.S. tax code, which taxed profits distributed to shareholders,
but not the debt paid on junk bonds. The ascendancy of the leveraged buyout,
therefore, was accompanied by the demolition of the U.S. corporate tax
base, contributing in no small way to the growth of federal deficits. Ultimately,
the big profits were expected when the acquired companies, after having
been downsized to "lean and mean" dimensions, had their stock sold back
to the public. KKR reserved itself 20 percent of the profits on these final
transactions. In the meantime, Kravis and his associates collected investment
banking fees, retainer fees, directors' fees, management fees, monitoring
fees, and a plethora of other charges for their services. The leverage
was accomplished by the smaller amount of equity left outstanding in comparison
with the vastly increased debt. This meant that if, after deducting the
debt service, profits went up, the return to the investors could become
very high. Naturally, if losses began to appear, reverse leverage would
come into play, producing astronom ical amounts of red ink. Most fundamental
was that companies were being loaded with debt during the years of what
the Reagan-Bush regime insisted on calling a boom. It was evident to any
sober observer that as the depression asserted its existence, many of the
companies that had succumbed to leveraged buyouts and related usury would
very rapidly become insolvent. All in all, during the years between 1982
and 1988, more than 10,000 merger and acquisition deals were completed
within the borders of the United States, for a total capitalization of
$1 trillion. There were, in addition, 3,500 international mergers and acquisitions
for another $500 billion. / Note #5 The enforcement of antitrust laws atrophied
into nothing: As one observer said of the late 1980s, "such concentrations
had not been allowed since the early days of antitrust at the beginning
of the century." George Bush's friend Henry Kravis raised money for his
leveraged buyouts from a number of sources. Money came first of all from
insurance companies such as the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company of
New York, which cultivated a close relation with KKR over a number of years.
Met was joined by Prudential, Aetna, and Northwestern Mutual. Then there
were banks like Manufacturers Hanover Trust and Bankers Trust. All these
institutions were attracted by astronomical rates of return on KKR investments,
estimated at 32.2 percent in 1980, 41.8 percent in 1982, 28 percent in
1984, and 29.6 percent in 1986. By 1987, the KKR prospectus boasted that
they had carried out the first large LBO of a publicly held company, the
first billion-dollar LBO, the first large LBO of a public company via tender
offer, and the largest LBO in history until then, Beatrice Foods. Then
came the state pension funds, which were also anxious to share in these
very large returns. The first to begin investing with KKR was Oregon, which
shoveled money to KKR like there was no tomorrow. Other states that joined
in were Washington, Utah, Minnesota, Michigan, New York, Wisconsin, Illinois,
Iowa, Massachusetts and Montana. KKR had one other very important source
of capital for its deals: This was the now-defunct Wall Street investment
firm of Drexel, Burnham, Lambert and its California-based junk bond king,
Michael Milken. Drexel and Milken were the most important single customers
KKR had. (Drexel had its own Harrimanli nk: It had merged with Harriman
Ripley & Co. of New York in 1966.) During the period of close working
alliance between KKR and Drexel, Milken's junk-bond operation raised an
estimated $20 billion of funds for KKR. The Beatrice Foods LBO illustrates
how necessary Milken's role was to the overall strategy of Bush backer
Kravis. With a price tag of $8.2 billion, Beatrice was the biggest LBO
up to the time it was completed in January-February 1986. As part of this
deal, Kravis gave Milken warrants for 5 million shares of stock in the
new Beatrice corporation. These warrants could be used in the future to
buy Beatrice shares at a small fraction of the market price. One result
of this would be a dilution of the equity of the other investors. Milken
kept the warrants for his own account, rather than offer them to his junk
bond buyers, in order to get a better price for the Beatrice junk bonds.
Later in the same year, KKR bought out Safeway grocery stores for $4.1
billion, of which a large part came from Milken. After 1986, Henry Kravis
and George Roberts were gripped by financial megalomania. Between 1987
and 1989, they acquired eight additional companies with an aggregate price
tag of $43.9 billion. These new victims included Owens-Illinois Glass,
Duracell, Stop and Shop food markets, and, in the landmark transaction
of the 1980s, RJR Nabisco. RJR Nabisco was the product of a number of earlier
mergers: National Biscuit Company had merged with Standard Brands to form
Nabisco Brands, and this in turn merged with R.J. Reynolds Tobacco to create
RJR Nabisco. It is important to recall that R.J. Reynolds was the concern
traditionally controlled by the family of Bush's personal White House lawyer,
C. Boyden "Boy" Gray. Control of RJR Nabisco was sought by opposing gangs:
A first group included RJR Nabisco chairman Ross Johnson, Peter Cohen of
Shearson Lehman Hutton and the notorious John Gutfreund of Salomon Brothers.
KKR was a second contender, and a third offer for RJR came from First Boston.
The Johnson offer and the KKR were about the same, but a cover story in
the Henry Luce-Skull and Bones "Time" magazine in early December 1988 targeted
Johnson as the greedy party. The attraction of RJR Nabisco, one of the
20 largest U.S. corporations, was an immense cash flow supplied especially
by its cigarette sales, where profit margins were enormous. The crucial
phases of the fight corresponded with the presidential election of 1988:
Bush won the White House, and Kravis won RJR with a bid of about $109 per
share compared to a stock price of about $55 per share before the company
was put into play, giving the pre-buyout shareholders a capital gain of
more than $13.3 billion. The RJR Nabisco swindle generated senior bank
debt of about $15 billion. Then came $5 billion of subordinated debt, with
the largest offering of junk bonds ever made. Then came an echelon of even
more junior debt with payment-in-kind securities: junk bonds that paid
interest not in cash, but in other junk bonds. But even with all the wizardry
of KKR, there could have been no deal without Milken and his junk bonds.
The banks could not muster the cash required to complete the financing;
KKR required bridge loans. Merrill Lynch and Drexel were in the running
to provide an extra $5 billion of bridge financing. Drexel got Milken's
monsters and many others to buy short-term junk notes with an interest
rate that would increase the longer the owner refrained from cashing in
the note. Drexel's "increasing rate notes" easily brought in the entire
$5 billion required. In November of 1986, Ivan Boesky pled guilty to one
felony count of manipulating securities, and his testimony led to the indictment
of Milken in March 1989, some months after the RJR Nabisco deal had been
sewn up. In order to protect more important financial players, Milken was
allowed to plead guilty in April 1990 to five counts of insider trading,
for which he agreed to pay a fine of $600 million. On February 13, 1990,
Drexel Burnham Lambert had declared itself bankrupt and gone into liquidation,
much to the distress of junk bond holders everywhere, who saw the firm
as a junk bond buyer of last resort. By this time, many of the great LBOs
had begun to collapse. Robert Campeau's retail sales empire of Allied and
Federated Stores blew up in the fall of 1989, bringing down almost $10
billion of LBO debt. Revco, Fruehauf, Southland (Seven-Eleven stores),
Resorts International, and many other LBOs went into Chapter 11 proceedings.
As for KKR's deals, they also began to implode: SCI-TV, a spin-off of Storer
Broadcasting, announced that it could not service its $1.3 billion of debt,
and forced the holders of $500 million in junk bonds to settle for new
stocks and bonds worth between 20 and 70 cents on the dollar. Hillsborough
Holdings, a subsidiary of Jim Walker, went bankrupt, and Seamans Furniture
put through a forced restructuring of its debt. It was clear at the time
of the RJR Nabisco LBO that the totality of the company's large cash flow
would be necessary to maintain payments of $25 billion of debt. Within
a short time after the LBO, RJR Nabisco proved unable to maintain payments.
KKR was forced to inject several billion dollars of new equity, take out
new bank loans, and dun its clients for an extra $1.7 billion. RJR Nabisco
by the early autumn of 1991 was a time bomb ticking away near the center
of a ruined U.S. economy. In September 1987, very late in the day, Senator
William Proxmire submitted a bill which aimed at restricting takeovers.
Two weeks later, Rep. Dan Rostenkowski of Illinois offered a bill to limit
the tax deductibility of the interest on takeover debt. The LBO gang in
Wall Street was horrified, even though it was clear that the Reagan-Bush
team would opp ose such legislation using every trick in the book. Later,
LBO ideologues blamed the Congress for causing the crash of October 1987.
Bush's 'Free Enterprise' During the 1988 campaign, Bush presented his views
on hostile takeovers, using the forum provided by his old friend T. Boone
Pickens' "U.S.A. Advocate", a monthly newsletter published by the United
Shareholders Association, which Pickens runs. In the October 1988 issue
of this publication, Bush made clear that he was not worried about leveraged
buyouts. Rather, what concerned Bush was the need to prevent corporations
from adopting defenses to deter such attempted hostile takeovers. Bush
also railed against "golden parachutes," which provide lucrative settlements
for top executives who are ousted as the result of a takeover. / Note #6
Bush was clearly hostile to any federal restrictions on hostile takeovers.
If anything, he was closer to those who demanded that the federal government
stop the states from passing laws that interfere with LBO activity. For
that notorious corporate raider and disciple of Chairman Mao Liedtke, T.
Boone Pickens, the message was clear: "I know that Vice President Bush
is a free enterpriser." / Note #7 The expectations of Pickens and his ilk
were not disappointed by the Bush cabinet that took office in January 1989.
The new secretary of the treasury, Bush crony Nicholas Brady, was not only
a supporter of leveraged buyouts; he had been one of the leading practitioners
of the mergers and acquisitions game during his days in Wall Street as
partner of the Harriman-allied investment bank of Dillon Read. The family
of Nicholas Brady has been allied for most of this century with the Bush-Walker
clan. During his Wall Street career at Dillon Read, Brady, like Bush, cultivated
the self-image of the patrician banker, becoming a member of the New York
Jockey Club and racing his own thoroughbred horses at the New York tracks
once presided over by George Herbert Walker and Prescott Bush. Brady, like
Bush, is a member of the Bohemian Club of San Francisco and attends the
Bohemian Grove every summer. Inside the Bohemian Grove oligarchic pantheon,
Brady enjoys the special distinction of presiding over the prestigious
Mandalay Camp (or cabin complex), the one to which Henry Kissinger habitually
retires, and sometimes frequented by Gerald Ford. Nick Brady got the job
he presently occupies by heading up a study of the October 1987 stock market
crash, the results of which Brady announced on a cold Friday afternoon
in January 1988, just after the New York stock market had taken another
150-point dive. The study of the October 1987 "market break" was produced
by a group of Wall Street and Treasury insiders billed as the "Presidential
Task Force on Market Mechanisms." At the center of the report's attention
was the relation between the New York Stock Exchange, American Stock Exchange,
and NASDAC over-the-counter stock trading, on the one hand, and the future,
options, and index trading carried on at the Chicago Board of Trade, Chicago
Board Options Exchange, and Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The Brady group
examined the impact of program trading, index arbitrage, and portfolio
insurance strategies on the behavior of the markets that led to the crash.
The Brady report recommended the centralization of all market oversight
in a single federal agency, the unification of clearing systems, consistent
margins, and the installation of circuit-breaker mechanisms. That, at least,
was the public content of the report. The real purpose of the Brady report
was to create a series of drugged and manipulated markets. The Brady group
realized that if the Chicago futures price of a stock or stock index could
be artificially inflated, this would be of great assistance in propping
up the value of the underlying stock in New York. The Brady group focused
on the Major Market Index of 20 stock futures traded on the Chicago Board
of Trade, which roughly corresponded to the principal stocks of the Dow
Jones Industrial Average. As long as the MMI was trading at a higher price
than the DJIA, the program traders and index arbitrageurs would tend to
sell the MMI and buy the underlying stock in New York in order to lock
in their parasitical profits. The great advantage of this system was first
of all that some tens of millions of dollars in Chicago, where turnover
was less intense than in New York, could generate hundreds of millions
of dollars of demand in New York. In addition, the margin requirements
for borrowing money to buy futures in Chicago were much less stringent
than the requirements for margin-buying of stocks in New York. Liquidity
for this operation could be drawn from banks and other institutions loyal
to the Bush-Baker-Brady power cartel, with full backup and assistance from
the district banks of the Federal Reserve. The Brady "drugged market" mechanisms,
with the refinements they have acquired since 1988, are a key factor behind
the Dow Jones Industrial's seeming defiance of the law of gravity in attaining
a new all-time high, well above the 3,000 mark during 1991. In 1988, Bush
boasted of his achievements in the field of deregulation. One important
case study of the impact of Bush's Task Force on Regulatory Relief is the
meatpacking industry. In February 1981, when Reagan gave Bush "line" authority
for deregulation, he promulgated Executive Order 12291, which established
the principle that federal regulations "be based upon adequate evidence
that their potential benefits to society are greater than their potential
costs to society." In practice, that meant that Bush threw health and safety
standards out the window in order to ingratiate himself with gouging entrepreneurs.
In March 1981, Bush wrote to businessmen and invited them to enumerate
the ten areas they wanted to see deregulated, with specific recommendations
on what they wanted done. By the end of the year, Bush's office issued
a self-congratulatory report boasting of a "significant reduction in the
cost of federal regulation." In the meatpacking industry, this translated
into production line speedup as jobs were eliminated, with a cavalier attitude
toward safety precautions. At the same time, the Occupational Safety and
Health Administration sharply reduced inspections, often arriving only
after disabling or lethal accidents had already occurred. In 1980, there
were 280 OSHA inspections in meatpacking plants, but in 1988 there were
only 176. This is in an industry in which the rate of personal injury is
173 persons per working day, three times the average of all remaining U.S.
industry. / Note #8 Bush used his Task Force on Regulatory Relief as a
way to curry favor with various business groups whose support he wanted
for his future plans to assume the presidency in his own right. According
to one study made midway through the Reagan years, Bush converted his own
office "into a convenient back door for corporate lobbyists" and "a hidden
court of last resort for special interest groups that have lost their arguments
in Congress, in the federal courts, or in the regulatory process.... Case
by case, the vice president's office got involved in some mean and petty
issues that directly affect people's health and lives, from the dumping
of toxic pollutants to government warnings concerning potentially harmful
drugs." / Note #9 There were also reports of serious abuses by Bush, especially
in the area of conflicts of interest. In one case, Bush intervened in March
1981 in favor of Eli Lilly & Co., of which he had been a director in
1977-79. Bush had owned $145,000 of stock in Eli Lilly until January 1981,
after which it was placed in a blind trust, meaning that Bush ostensibly
had no way of knowing whether his trust still owned shares in the firm
or not. The Treasury Department had wanted to make the terms of a tax break
for U.S. pharmaceutical firms operating in Puerto Rico more stringent,
but Vice President Bush had contacted the Treasury to urge that "technical"
changes be made in the planned restriction of the tax break. By April 14,
Bush was feeling some heat, and he wrote a second letter to Treasury Secretary
Don Regan asking that his first request be withdrawn, because Bush was
now "uncomfortable about the appearance of my active personal involvement
in the details of a tax matter directly affecting a company with which
I once had a close association." / Note #1 / Note #0 Bush's continuing
interest in Eli Lilly is underlined by the fact that the Pulliam family
of Indiana, the family clan of Bush's 1988 running mate, Dan Quayle, owned
a large portion of the Eli Lilly shares. Bush's choice of Quayle was but
a reaffirmation of a pre-existing financial and political alliance with
the Pulliam interests, which also include a newspaper chain. Ripping Up
the Airline Industry Bush's ideal of labor-management practices and corporate
leadership in general appears to have been embodied by Frank Lorenzo, the
most celebrated and hated "banquerotteur" of U.S. air transport. Before
his downfall in early 1990, Lorenzo combined Texas Air, Continental Airlines,
New York Air, People's Express and Eastern Airlines into one holding, and
then presided over its bankruptcy. Now Eastern has been liquidated, and
the other components are likely to follow suit. Along the way to this debacle,
Lorenzo won the sympathy of the Reagan-Bush crowd through his union-busting
tactics: He had thrown Continental Airlines into bankruptcy court and used
the bankruptcy statutes to break all union contracts, and to break the
unions themselves. George Bush has been on record as a dedicated union-buster
going back to 1963-64, and he has always been very friendly with Lorenzo.
When Bush became President, this went beyond the personal sphere and became
a revolving door between the Texas Air group and the Bush administration.
During 1989, the Airline Pilots Association issued a list of some 30 cases
in which Texas Air officials had transferred to jobs in the Bush regime
and vice versa. By the end of 1989, Bush's top congressional lobbyist was
Frederick D. McClure, who had been a vice president and chief lobbyist
for Texas Air. McClure had traded jobs with Rebecca Range, who had worked
as a public liaison for Reagan until she moved over to the post of lead
congressional lobbyist for Texas Air. John Robson, Bush's deputy secretary
of the Treasury, was a former member of the Continental Airlines board
of directors. Elliott Seiden, a top antitrust lawyer for the Justice Department,
switched to being an attorney for Texas Air. When questionedby columnist
Jack Anderson, McClure and Robson claimed that they recused themselves
from any matters involving Texas Air. But McClure signed a letter to Congress
announcing Bush's opposition to any government investigation of the circumstances
surrounding the Eastern Airlines strike in early 1989. This was a move
in support of Lorenzo. Bush himself has always stonewalled in favor of
Lorenzo. During the early months of that same Eastern Airlines strike,
in which pilots, flight attendants and machinists all walked out to block
Lorenzo's plan to asset strip the airline and bust the unions, the Congress
attempted to set up a panel to investigate the dispute, but Bush was adamant
in favor of Lorenzo and vetoed any government probes. / Note #1 / Note
#1 Lorenzo's activities were decisive in the wrecking of U.S. airline transportation
during the Reagan-Bush era. When Carl Icahn was in the process of taking
over TWA, he was able to argue that the need to compete in many of the
same markets in which Lorenzo's airlines were active made it mandatory
that the TWA workforce accept similar sacrifices and wage cuts. The cost-cutting
criteria pioneered with such ruthless aggressivity by Lorenzo have had
the long-term effect of reducing safety margins and increasing the risk
the traveling public must confront in any decision to board an airliner
operating under U.S. jurisdiction. Eastern, Midway, and Pan Am have disappeared,
and Continental has been joined in bankruptcy by America West and TWA.
Northwest, having been taken through the wringer of an LBO by Albert Cecchi,
is now busy extorting subsidies from the state of Minnesota and other sources
as a way to stay afloat. It is widely believed that when the dust settles,
only Delta, American, and perhaps United will remain among the large nationwide
carriers. And how, the reader may ask, was George Bush doing financially
while surrounded by so many billions in junk bonds? Bush had always pontificated
that he had led the fight for full public disclosure of personal financial
interests by elected officials. He never tired of repeating that "in 1967,
as a freshman member of the House of Representatives, I led the fight for
full financial disclosure." But after he was elected to the vice presidency,
Bush stopped disclosing his investments in detail. He stated his net worth,
which had risen to $2.1 million by the time of the 1984 election, representing
an increase of some $300,000 over the previous five years. Bush justified
his refusal to disclose his investments in detail by saying that he didn't
know himself just what securities he held, since his portfolio was now
in the blind trust mentioned above. The blind trust was administered by
W.S. Farish & Co. of Houston, owned by Bush's close crony William Stamps
Farish III of Beeville, Texas, the grandson and heir of the Standard Oil
executive who had backed Heinrich Himmler and the Waffen SS. / Note #1
/ Note #2 Notes for Chapter XVIII 1. Walter Pincus and Bob Woodward, "Doing
Well with Help from Family, Friends," "Washington Post," Aug. 11, 1988.
2. "Houston Chronicle," Feb. 21, 1963. See clippings available in Texas
Historical Society, Houston. 3. Thomas Petzinger, "Oil and Honor" (New
York: Putnam, 1987), pp. 244-45. 4. For the relation between George Bush
and Henry Kravis, see Sarah Bartlett, "The Money Machine: How KKR Manufactured
Power & Profits" (New York: 1991), pp. 258-59 and 267-70. 5. Roy C.
Smith, "The Money Wars" (New York: Dutton, 1990), p. 106. 6. "Washington
Post," Sept. 29, 1988. 7. "Ibid." 8. Judy Mann, "Bush's Top Achievement,"
"Washington Post," Nov. 2, 1988. 9. William Greider, "Rolling Stone," April
12, 1984. 10. "Bush Denies Influencing Drug Firm Tax Proposal," "Washington
Post," May 20, 1981. 11. Jack Anderson and Dale Van Atta, "The Bush-Lorenzo
Connections," "Washington Post," Dec. 21, 1989. 12. James Ridgway, "The
Tax Records of Reagan and Bush," "Texas Observer," Sept. 28, 1984. "XXI:
The Phony War on Drugs" An indispensable component of the mythical media
profile which George Bush has built up over the years to buttress his electoral
aspirations has been his role as an antidrug fighter. His first formally
scheduled prime time presidential television address to the nation, in
September 1989, was devoted to announcing his plans for measures to combat
the illegal narcotics that continued to inundate the streets of the United
States. During his 1988 election campaign, Bush had pointed with astounding
complacency to his record as President Reagan's designated point man in
the administration's war on drugs. In his acceptance speech to the Republican
National Convention in 1988, Bush stated: "I want a drug-free America.
Tonight, I challenge the young people of our country to shut down the drug
dealers around the world.... My administration will be telling the dealers,
'Whatever we have to do, we'll do, but your day is over. You're history.'|"
Indeed, Bush has an impressive resume of bureaucratic titles to back up
his claim to be America's top antidrug fighter. On January 28, 1982, Reagan
created the South Florida Task Force under Bush's high-profile leadership,
to coordinate the efforts of the various federal agencies to stem the tide
of narcotics into Bush's old family bailiwick. On March 23, 1983, Bush
was placed in charge of the National Narcotics Border Interdiction System,
which was supposed to staunch the drug flow over all U.S. borders. In August
1986, U.S. officials presented to their Mexican counterparts a scheme called
Operation Alliance, a new border enforcement initiative that was allegedly
to do for the U.S.-Mexican border area what the South Florida Task Force
had allegedly already done for the southeastern states. George Bush was
appointed chief of Operation Alliance, which involved 20 federal agencies,
500 additional federal officers, and a budget of $266 million. The drug
plague is an area in which the national interest requires results. Illegal
narcotics are one of the most important causes of the dissolution of American
society at the present time. To interdict the drug flows and to prosecute
the drug money launderers at the top of the banking community would have
represented a real public service. But Bush had no intention of seriously
pursuing such goals. For him, the war on drugs was, and is, a cruel hoax,
a cynical exercise in demagogic self-promotion, designed in large part
to camouflage activities by himself and his networks that promoted drug
trafficking. A further shocking episode that has come to light in this
regard involves Bush's 14-year friendship with a member of Meyer Lansky's
Miami circles who sold Bush his prized trophy, the Cigarette boat "Fidelity".
Bush's war on drugs was a rhetorical and public relations success for a
time. On February 16, 1982, in a speech on his own turf in Miami, Florida,
Bush promised to use sophisticated military aircraft to track the airplanes
used by smugglers. Several days later, Bush ordered the U.S. Navy to send
in its E-2C surveillance aircraft for this purpose. If these were not available
in sufficient numbers, said Bush, he was determined to bring in the larger
and more sophisticated AWACS early warning aircraft to do the job. But
Bush's skills as an interagency expediter left something to be desired:
By May, two of the four E-2C aircraft that originally had been in Florida
were transferred out of the state. By June, airborne surveillance time
was running a mere 40 hours per month, not the 360 hours promised by Bush,
prompting Rep. Glenn English (D-Ok.) to call hearings on this topic. By
October 1982, the General Accounting Office issued an opinion in which
it found "it is doubtful whether the [south Florida] task force can have
any substantial long-term impact on drug availability." But the headlines
were grabbed by Bush, who stated in 1984 that the efforts of his task force
had eliminated the marijuana trade in south Florida. That was an absurd
claim, but it sounded very good. When Francis Mullen, Jr., the administrator
of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), criticized Bush for making
this wildly inaccurate statement, he was soon ousted from his post at the
DEA. In 1988, Democratic Congressman Glenn English concluded that Bush's
"war on drugs" had been fought with "little more than lip service and press
releases." English wrote: "There has been very little substance behind
the rhetoric, and some of the major interdiction problems have yet to be
resolved. The President assigned ... Bush to coordinate and direct federal
antidrug-abuse programs among the various law enforcement agencies. However,
eight years later it is apparent that the task has not been accomplished."
/ Note #1 Bush and Organized Crime But the whole truth is much uglier.
We have indicated how the Iran-Contra drug-running and gun-running operations
run out of Bush's own office played their role in increasing the cocaine
and marijuana brought into this country. We have reviewed Bush's relations
with his close supporters in the Wall Street LBO gang, much of whose liquidity
is derived from narcotics payments which the banking system is eager to
recycle and launder. We recall Bush's 1990 meeting with Syrian President
Hafez al Assad, who is personally one of the most prolific drug pushers
on the planet, and whom Bush embraced as an ally during the Gulf war. But
there is an even more flagrant aspect of Bush's conduct which can be said
to demolish once and for all the myth of the "war on drugs" and replace
it with a reality so sinister that it goes beyond the imagination of most
citizens. Those who follow Bush's frenetic sports activities on television
are doubtless familiar with Bush's speedboat, in which he is accustomed
to cavort in the waters off his estate at Walker's Point in Kennebunkport,
Maine. / Note #2 The craft in question is the "Fidelity," a powerboat capable
of operating on the high seas. "Fidelity" is a class of boat marketed under
the brand name of "Cigarette," a high-priced speedboat dubbed "the Ferrari
of the high seas." This detail should awaken our interest, since Bush's
profile as an Anglo-Saxon aristocrat would normally include a genteel predilection
for sailing, rather than a preference for a vulgar hot-rod like "Fidelity,"
which evokes the ethos of rum-runners and smugglers. The Cigarette boat
"Fidelity" was purchased by George Bush from a certain Don Aronow. Bush
reportedly met Aronow at a boat show in 1974, and decided to buy one of
the Cigarette boats Aronow manufactured. Aronow was one of the most celebrated
and successful powerboat racers of the 1960s, and had then turned his hand
to designing and building these boats. But, according to at least one published
account, there is compelling evidence to conclude that Aronow was a drug
smuggler and suspected drug-money launderer, linked to the Genovese family
of New York and New Jersey within the more general framework of the Meyer
Lansky organized crime syndicate. Aronow's role in marijuana smuggling
was reportedly confirmed by Bill Norris, head of the Major Narcotics Unit
at the Miami U.S. Attorney's office, and thus the top federal drug prosecution
official in south Florida. / Note #3 Aronow numbered among his friends
and acquaintances not just Bush, but many international public figures
and celebrities, many of whom had purchased the boats he built. In May
of 1986, Aronow received a letter from Nicolas Iliopoulos, the royal boat
captain to King Hussein of Jordan, expressing on behalf of the King the
latter's satisfaction with a powerboat purchased from Aronow, and conveying
the compliments of King Juan Carlos of Spain and President Hosni Mubarak
of Egypt, who had recently been the Jordanian sovereign's guests on board.
Aronow sent a copy of this letter to Bush, from whom he received a reply
dated June 6, 1986, in which Bush thanked him "with warm regards" for forwarding
the royal note and added: "I can repeat that my old Cigarette, the 'Fidelity'
is running well too. I've had her out a couple of weekends and the engines
have been humming. I hope our paths cross soon, my friend." / Note #4 Aronow
was reportedly a close friend of George Bush. Over the years, Bush had
apparently consulted with Aronow concerning the servicing and upkeep of
his Cigarette boat. During 1983, Bush began to seek out Aronow's company
for fishing trips. The original engines on Bush's Cigarette boat needed
replacement, and this was the ostensible occasion for renewing contact
with Aronow. Aronow told Bush of a new model of boat that he had designed,
supposedly a high-performance catamaran. Bush planned to come to Florida
during the New Year's holiday for a short vacation during which he would
go bonefishing with his crony Nick Brady. During this time he would also
arrange to deliver an antidrug pep-talk. On January 4, 1984, George Bush
rendezvoused with Don Aronow at Islamorada in the Florida Keys. Earlier
in the day, Bush had delivered one of his "war on drugs" speeches at the
Omni International Hotel in Miami. Bush and Brady then proceeded by motorcade
to Islamorada, where Aronow was waiting with his catamaran. Accompanied
by a flotilla of Secret Service and Customs agents in Cigarette boats that
had been seized from drug smugglers, Bush, Brady, Aronow and one of the
latter's retainers proceeded aboard the catamaran through moderate swells
to Miami, with White House photographers eternalizing the photo opportunity
at every moment. Bush, who had donned designer racing goggles for the occasion,
was allowed to take the wheel of the catamaran and seemed very thrilled
and very happy. Nick Brady, sporting his own wraparound shades, found the
seas too rough for his taste. After the trip was over, Bush personally
typed the following letter to Don Aronow on his vice-presidential stationery,
which he sent accompanied by some photographs of Bush, Aronow, Brady, and
the others on board the catamaran: "January 14, 1984 "Dear Don, "... Again
Don this day was one of the greatest of my life. I love boats, always have.
But ever since knowing you that private side of my life has become ever
more exciting and fulfilling. Incidentally, I didn't get to tell you but
my reliable 28 footer Cigarette that is still doing just fine ... no trouble
at all and the new last year engines. "All the best to you and all your
exciting ventures. May all your boats bee [sic] number one and may the
hosres [sic] be not far behind." At the end of this message, before his
signature, Bush wrote in by hand, "My typing stinks." / Note #5 As a result
of this outing, Bush is said to have used his influence to see to it that
Aronow received a lucrative contract to build the "Blue Thunder" catamarans
at $150,000 apiece for the U.S. Customs Service. This contract was announced
with great fanfare in Miami on February 4, 1985, and was celebrated a week
later in a public ceremony in which Florida Senator Paula Hawkins and U.S.
Customs Commissioner William von Raab mugged for photographers together
with Aronow. The government purchase was hyped as the first time that Customs
would receive boats especially designed and built to intercept drug-runners
on the high seas, a big step forward in the war on drugs. This was the
same George Bush who in March 1988 had stated: "I will never bargain with
drug dealers on U.S. or foreign soil." As one local resident recalled of
that time, "everyone in Miami knew that if you needed a favor from Bush,
you spoke to Aronow." / Note #6 It was proverbial among Florida pols and
powerbrokers that Aronow had the vice president's ear. The Customs Service
soon found that the Blue Thunder catamarans were highly unseaworthy and
highly unsuitable for the task of chasing down other speedboats, including,
above all, Aronow's earlier model Cigarette boats, which were now produced
by a company not controlled by Aronow. Blue Thunder was a relatively slow
class, capable of a top speed of only 56 miles per hour, despite the presence
of twin 440-horsepower marine engines. The design of the catamaran hulls
lacked any hydrodynamic advantages, and the boats were too heavy to attain
sufficient lift. The stern drives were too weak for the powerful engines,
leading to the problem of "grenading." This meant that the boats had to
be kept well below their maximum speed. Most Blue Thunders spent more time
undergoing repairs than chasing drug-runners in the coastal waters of Florida.
Documents found by Thomas Burdick in the Dade County land records office
show that U.S.A. Racing, the company operated by Aronow which built the
Blue Thunder catamarans for the Customs Service, was not owned by Aronow,
but rather by a one Jack J. Kramer in his capacity as president of Super
Chief South Corporation. Jack Kramer had married a niece of Meyer Lansky.
Jack Kramer's son, Ben Kramer, was thus the great-nephew and one of the
putative heirs of the top boss of the U.S. crime syndicate, Meyer Lansky.
Ben Kramer was also a notorious organized crime figure in his own right.
On March 28, 1990 Jack Kramer and Ben Kramer were found guilty of 23 and
28 counts (respectively) of federal money laundering charges. In the previous
year, Ben Kramer had also been sentenced to life imprisonment without parole
for having imported half a million pounds of marijuana. Bush had thus given
a prime contract in waging the war on drugs to one of the leading drug-smuggling
and money-laundering crime families in the U.S. Aronow Is Murdered Don
Aronow was murdered by Mafia-style professional killers on February 3,
1987. During the last days of his life, Aronow is reported to have made
numerous personal telephone calls to Bush. Aronow had been aware that his
life was in danger, and he had left a list of instructions to tell his
wife what to do if anything should happen to him. The first point on the
list was "#1. CALL GEORGE BUSH." / Note #7 Lillian Aronow did call Bush,
who reportedly responded by placing a personal call to the Metro-Dade Police
Department homicide division to express his concern and to request an expeditious
handling of the case. Bush did not attend Aronow's funeral, but a month
later he sent a letter to Aronow's son Gavin in which he called the late
Don Aronow "a hero." When Lillian Aronow suspected that her telephone was
being tapped, she called Bush, who urged her to be calm and promised to
order an investigation of the matter. Shortly after that, the suspicious
noises in Mrs. Aronow's telephone ceased. When Lillian Aronow received
reports that her husband might have been murdered by rogue CIA operatives
or other wayward federal agents, and that she herself and her children
were still in danger, she shared her fears in a telephone call to Bush.
Bush reportedly later called Mrs. Aronow and, as she recalled, "He said
to me, 'Lillian, you're fine.' He said that 'ex-CIA people are really off.'
That's the truth." / Note #8 In the summer of 1987, Bush snubbed Mrs. Aronow
by pointedly avoiding her at a Miami dinner party. But during this same
period, Bush frequently went fishing with former Aronow employee Willie
Meyers. According to Thomas Burdick's sources, Willie Meyers was also a
friend of Secretary of State George Shultz, and often expressed concern
about damaging publicity for Bush and Shultz that might derive from the
Aronow case. According to Thomas Burdick, Meyers says that Bush talked
to him about how the vice president's staff was monitoring the Aronow story.
Bush lamented that he did not have grounds to get federal agencies involved.
"I just wish," said Bush to Meyers, "that there was some federal aspect
to the murder. If the killers crossed state lines, then I could get the
FBI involved." / Note #9 The form of the argument is reminiscent of the
views expressed by Bush and Tony Lapham during the Orlando Letelier case.
In May or June of 1987, several months after Aronow had been killed, Mike
Brittain, who owned a company called Aluminum Marine Products, located
on "Thunderboat Alley" in the northern part of Miami (the same street where
Aronow had worked), was approached by two FBI special agents, Joseph Usher
and John Donovan, both of the Miami FBI field office. They were accompanied
by a third FBI man, whom they presented as a member of George Bush's staff
at the National Drug Task Force in Washington, D.C. The third agent, reportedly
named William Temple, had, according to the other two,come to Miami on
a special mission ordered by the vice president of the United States. As
Brittain told his story to Burdick, Special Agent Temple "didn't ask about
the murder or anything like that. All he wanted to know about was the merger."
/ Note #1 / Note #0 The merger in question was the assumption of control
over Aronow's company, U.S.A. Racing, by the Kramers' Super Chief South,
which meant that a key contract in the Bush "war on drugs" had been awarded
to a company controlled by persons who would later be convicted for marijuana
smuggling and money laundering. Many of the FBI questions focused on this
connection between Aronow and Kramer. Later, after Bush's victory in the
1988 presidential election, the FBI again questioned Brittain, and again
the central issue was the Aronow-Kramer connection, plus additional questions
of whether Brittain had divulged any of his knowledge of these matters
to other persons. A possible conclusion was that a damage control operation
in favor of Bush was in progress. Tommy Teagle, an ex-convict interviewed
by Burdick, said he feared that George Bush would have him killed because
information in his possession would implicate Jeb Bush in cocaine smuggling.
Teagle's story was that Aronow and Jeb Bush had been partners in cocaine
trafficking and were $2.5 million in debt to their Colombian suppliers.
Dr. Robert Magoon, a friend of Aronow, is quoted in the same location as
having heard a similar report. But Teagle rapidly changed his story. /
Note #1 / Note #1 Ultimately, an imprisoned convict was indicted for the
murder of Aronow. But the circumstances of the murder remain highly sus
pect. Starting in 1985, and with special intensity during 1987-88, more
than two dozen persons involved in various aspects of the Iran-Contra gun-running
and drug-running operation met their deaths. Above and beyond the details
of each particular case, the overall pattern of these deaths strongly suggests
that they are coherent with a damage control operation by the networks
involved, that has concentrated on liquidating those individuals whose
testimony might prove to be most damning to the leading personalities of
these networks. The death of Don Aronow occurred within the time frame
of this general process of amputation and cauterization of the Iran-Contra
and related networks. Many aspects of Aronow's life suggest that his assassination
may have been a product of the same "damage control" logic. insert Chapter
22 head box here On the morning of June 29, 1989, pandemonium erupted in
the corridors of power in the nation's capital. "Homosexual Prostitution
Probe Ensnares Official of Bush, Reagan," screamed the front-page headline
of the "Washington Times" with the kicker "Call Boys Took Midnight Tour
of White House." The "Times" reported, "A homosexual prostitution ring
is under investigation by federal and District authorities and includes
among its clients key officials of the Reagan and Bush administrations,
military officers, congressional aides and U.S. and foreign businessmen
with close ties to Washington's political elite." The expose centered on
the role of one Craig Spence, a Republican powerbroker known for his lavish
"power cocktail" parties. Spence was well connected. He celebrated Independence
Day 1988 by conducting a midnight tour of the White House in the company
of two teenage male prostitutes among others in his party. Rumors circulated
that a list existed of some 200 Washington prominents who had used the
call boy service. The Number Two in charge of personnel affairs at the
White House, who was responsible for filling all the top civil service
posts in the federal bureaucracy, and Secretary of Labor Elizabeth Dole's
chief of staff, were two individuals publicly identified as patrons of
the call boy ring. Two of the ring's call boys were allegedly KGB operatives,
according to a retired general from the Defense Intelligence Agency interviewed
by the press. But the evidence seemed to point to a CIA sexual blackmail
operation, instead. Spence's entire mansion was covered with hidden microphones,
two-way mirrors and video cameras, ever ready to capture the indiscretions
of Washington's high, mighty and perverse. The political criteria for proper
sexual comportment had long been established in Washington: Any kinkiness
goes, so long as you don't get caught. The popular proverb was that the
only way a politician could hurt his career was if he were "caught with
a dead woman or a live boy" in his bed. Months after the scandal had died
down, and a few weeks before he allegedly committed suicide, Spence was
asked who had given him the "key" to the White House. The "Washington Times"
reported that "Mr. Spence hinted the tours were arranged by 'top level'
persons, including Donald Gregg, national security advisor to Vice President
Bush" / Note #1 and later U.S. ambassador to South Korea. We have already
had occasion to examine Don Gregg's role in Iran-Contra, and have observed
his curious performance when testifying under oath before congressional
committees. Gregg indignantly denied any connection to Spence, yet it is
public record that Spence had sponsored a dinner in Gregg's honor in the
spring of 1989 at Washington's posh Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown. George
Bush was less than pleased with the media coverage of the prostitution
charges and kept abreast of the scandal as it mushroomed. The "Washington
Times" reported in an article titled "White House Mute on Call Boy Scandal,"
that "White House sources confirmed that President Bush has followed the
story of the late night visit and Mr. Spence's links to a homosexual prostitution
ring under investigation by federal authorities since they were disclosed
June 29 in the "Washington Times". But top officials will not discuss the
story's substance, reportedly even among themselves. "Press officers have
rebuffed repeated requests to obtain Mr. Bush's reaction and decline to
discuss investigations or fall out from the disclosures." / Note #2 By
midsummer, the scandal had been buried. The President had managed to avoid
giving a single press conference where he would surely have been asked
to comment. Scandal in Nebraska As the call boy ring affair dominated the
cocktail gossip circuit in Washington, another scandal, halfway across
the country in the state of Nebraska, peaked. Again this scandal knocked
on the President's door. A black Republican who had been a leader in organizing
minority support for the President's 1988 campaign and who proudly displayed
a photo of himself and the President, arm in arm, in his Omaha home, was
at the center of a sex and money scandal that continues to rock the Cornhusker
state. The scandal originated with the collapse of the minority-oriented
Franklin Community Credit Union in Omaha, directed by Lawrence E. King,
Jr., a nationally influential black Republican who sang the national anthem
at both the 1984 and 1988 Republican conventions. King became the subject
of the Nebraska Senate's investigation conducted by the specially created
"Franklin Committee" to probe charges of embezzlement. In November 1988,
King's offices were raided by the FBI and $40 million was discovered missing.
Within weeks, the Nebraska Senate, which initially opened the inquiry to
find out where the money had gone, instead found itself questioning young
adults and teenagers who said that they had been child prostitutes. Social
workers and state child-care administrators accused King of running a child
prostitution ring. The charges grew, with the former police chief of Omaha,
the publisher of the state's largest daily newspaper, and several other
political associates of King, finding themselves accused of patronizing
the child prostitution ring. King is now serving a 15-year federal prison
sentence for defrauding the Omaha-based credit union. But the magazines
"Avvenimenti" of Italy and "Pronto" of Spain, among others, have charged
that King's crimes were more serious: that he ran a national child prostitution
ring that serviced the political and business elite of both Republican
and Democratic parties. Child victims of King's operations charged him
with participation in at least one satanic ritual murder of a child several
years ago. The "Washington Post", "New York Times", "Village Voice" and
"National Law Journal" covered the full range of accusations after the
story broke in November of 1988. King's money machinations were also linked
to the Iran-Contra affair, and some say that King provided the CIA with
information garnered from his alleged activities as a "pimp" for the high
and mighty. "Pronto", the Barcelona-based, largest circulation weekly in
Spain with 4.5 million readers, reported that the Lawrence E. King child
prostitution scandal "appears to directly implicate politicos of the state
of Nebraska and Washington, D.C. who are very close to the White House
and George Bush himself." The weekly stated that Roy Stephens, a private
investigator who has worked on the case and heads the Missing Youth Foundation,
"says there is reason to believe that the CIA is directly implicated,"
and that the "FBI refuses to help in the investigation and has sabotaged
any efforts" to get to the bottom of the story. Stephens says that "Paul
Bonacci directly accused President Bush of being implicated" in the affair
when he testified before the Franklin Committee. / Note #3 Bonacci, who
had been one of the child prostitutes, is identified by leading child-abuse
experts as a well-informed, credible witness. Lawrence King was no stranger
to President Bush. And Lawrence King was no stranger to Craig Spence. Several
of the Omaha child prostitutes testified that they had traveled to Washington,
D.C. with King in private planes to attend political events whic h were
followed by sex parties. King and Spence had much in common. Not only were
they both Republican Party activists but they had gone into business together
procuring prostitutes for Washington's elite. Bush's name had repeatedly
surfaced in the Nebraska scandal. But his name was first put into print
in July 1989, a little less than a month after the Washington call boy
affair had first made headlines. Omaha's leading daily newspaper reported,
"One child, who has been under psychiatric care, is said to believe she
saw George Bush at one of King's parties." / Note #4 A full three years
after the scandal had first made headlines, Bush's name again appeared
in print. "Gentleman's Quarterly (GQ)" carried a lengthy article, viewed
by many political observers in Nebraska as an attempt to refute the charges,
which would not die, despite the termination of all official inquiries.
The "GQ" piece disputed the allegations as a conspiracy theory that went
out of control and resonated because of some mystical sociological phenomena
allegedly unique to Nebraskan rural folk who will believe anything and
burn "with the mistrust of city life that once inflamed the prairie with
populist passion." Numerous polls over the last few years have recorded
over 90% saying they believe there has been a "cover up" of the truth.
"GQ" reported that yes, there was theft, corruption and homosexuality in
this story, "but no children were ever involved in this case." In fact,
"the only child even mentioned was a 9-year-old boy, whom the least reliable
of [Senate Committee investigator Gary] Caradori's witnesses claimed to
have seen in the company of George Bush at one of Larry King's Washington
parties." Gary Caradori was a retired state police investigator who had
been hired by the Nebraska Senate to investigate the case, and who had
died mysteriously during the course of his investigations. / Note #5 Sound
crazy? Not to Steve Bowman, an Omaha businessman who is compiling a book
about the Franklin money and sex scandal. "We do have some credible witnesses
who say that 'Yes, George Bush does have a problem.'... Child abuse has
become one of the epidemics of the 1990s," Bowman told "GQ". Allegedly,
one of Bowman's sources is a retired psychiatrist who worked for the CIA.
He added that cocaine trafficking and political corruption were the other
principal themes of his book. / Note #6 It didn't sound crazy to Peter
Sawyer either. An Australian conservative activist who publishes a controversial
newsletter, "Inside News", with a circulation of 200,000, dedicated his
November 1991 issue entirely to the Nebraska scandal, focusing on President
Bush's links to the affair. In a section captioned, "The Original Allegations:
Bush First Named in 1985," Sawyer writes, "Stories about child sex and
pornography first became public knowledge in 1989, following the collapse
of the Franklin Credit Union. That is not when the allegations started,
however. Indeed, given the political flavor of the subsequent investigations,
it would be easy to dismiss claims that George Bush had been involved.
He was by then a very public figure.... "If the first allegations about
a massive child exploitation ring, centered around Larry King and leading
all the way to the White House, had been made in 1989, and had all come
from the same source, some shenanigans and mischievous collusion could
be suspected. However, the allegations arising out of the Franklin Credit
Union collapse were not the first. "Way back in 1985, a young girl, Eulice
(Lisa) Washington, was the center of an investigation by Andrea L. Carener,
of the Nebraska Department of Social Services. The investigation was instigated
because Lisa and her sister Tracey continually ran away from their foster
parents, Jarrett and Barbara Webb. Initially reluctant to disclose information
for fear of being further punished, the two girls eventually recounted
a remarkable story, later backed up by other children who had been fostered
out to the Webb's [sic]. "These debriefings were conducted by Mrs. Julie
Walters, another welfare officer, who worked for Boys Town at the time,
and who had been called in because of the constant reference by the Webb
children and others, to that institution. "Lisa, supported by her sister,
detailed a massive child sex, homosexual, and pornography industry, run
in Nebraska by Larry King. She described how she was regularly taken to
Washington by plane, with other youths, to attend parties hosted by King
and involving many prominent people, including businessmen and politicians.
Lisa specifically named George Bush as being in attendance on at least
two separate occasions. "Remember, this was in 1985," emphasized the Australian
newsletter. The newsletter reproduces several documents on Lisa's case,
including a Nebraska State Police report, a State of Nebraska Foster Care
Review Board letter to the Attorney General, an investigative report prepared
for the Franklin Committee of the Nebraska Senate, and a portion of the
handwritten debriefing by Mrs. Julie Walters. Peter Sawyer says that he
obtained the documents from sympathetic Australian law enforcement officers
who had helped Australian Channel Ten produce an expose of a national child
prostitution ring, Down Under. The Australian cops seem to have been in
communication with American law enforcement officers who apparently agreed
that there had been a coverup on the Nebraska scandal. Subsequent investigations
by the authors established that all four documents were authentic. Mrs.
Julie Walters, now a housewife in the Midwest, confirmed that in 1986 she
had interviewed the alleged child prostitute, Lisa, who told her about
Mr. Bush. Lisa and her sister Tracey were temporarily living at the time
in the home of Kathleen Sorenson, another foster parent. Mrs. Walters explained
that at first she was very surprised. But Lisa, who came from a very underprivileged
background with no knowledge of political affairs, gave minute details
of her attendance at political meetings around the country. >From Julie
Walters' 50-page handwritten report: "3/25/86. Met with Kathleen [Sorenson]
and Lisa for about 2 hours in Blair [Neb.] questioning Lisa for more details
about sexual abuse.... Lisa admitted to being used as a prostitute by Larry
King when she was on trips with his family. She started going on trips
when she was in 10th grade. Besides herself and Larry there was also Mrs.
King, their son, Prince, and 2-3 other couples. They traveled in Larry's
private plane, Lisasaid that at these trip parties, which Larry hosted,
she sat naked 'looking pretty and innocent' and guests could engage in
any sexual activity they wanted (but penetration was not allowed) with
her.... Lisa said she first met V.P. George Bush at the Republican Convention
(that Larry King sang the national anthem at) and saw him again at a Washington,
D.C. party that Larry hosted. At that party, Lisa saw no women ('make-up
was perfect -- you had to check their legs to make sure they weren't a
woman'). "The polygraph test which Lisa took only centered around sexual
abuse committed by Jarrett Webb. At that time, she had said only general
things about Larry's trips (i.e. where they went, etc.). She only began
talking about her involvement in prostitution during those trips on 3/25/86....
"Lisa also accompanied Mr. and Mrs. King and Prince on trips to Chicago,
N.Y. and Washington, D.C. beginning when she was 15 years old. She missed
twenty-two days of school almost totally due to these trips. Lisa was taken
along on the pretense of being Prince's babysitter. Last year she met V.P.
George Bush and saw him again at one of the parties Larry gave while on
a Washington, D.C. trip. At some of the parties there are just men (as
was the case at the party George Bush attended) -- older men and younger
men in their early twenties. Lisa said she has seen sodomy committed at
those parties.... "At these parties, Lisa said every guest had a bodyguard
and she saw some of the men wearing guns. All guests had to produce a card
which was run through a machine to verify who the guest was, in fact, who
they said t hey were. And then each guest was frisked down before entering
the party." / Note #7 The details of the accusations against Mr. Bush are
known to be in the hands of the FBI. A Franklin Committee report stated:
"Apparently she [Lisa] was contacted on December 19 [1988] and voluntarily
came to the FBI offices on December 30, 1988. She was interviewed by Brady,
Tucker and Phillips. "She indicates that in September or October 1984,
when [Lisa] Washington was fourteen or fifteen years of age, she went on
a trip to Chicago with Larry King and fifteen to twenty boys from Omaha.
She flew to Chicago on a private plane. "The plane was large and had rows
of two seats apiece on either side of the interior middle aisle. "She indicates
that King got the boys from Boys Town and the boys worked for him. She
stated that Rod Evans and two other boys with the last name of Evans were
on the plane. Could not recall the names of the other boys. "The boys who
flew to Chicago with Washington and King were between the ages of fifteen
and eighteen. Most of the boys were black but some were white. She was
shown a color photograph of a boy and identified that boy as being one
of the boys on the plane. She could not recall his name. "She indicates
that she was coerced to going on the trip by Barbara Webb. "She indicates
that she attended a party in Chicago with King and the male youths. She
indicated George Bush was present. "She indicates that she set [sic] at
a table at the party while wearing nothing but a negligee. She stated that
George Bush saw her on the table. She stated she saw George Bush pay King
money, and that Bush left the party with a nineteen year old black boy
named Brent." Lisa said the party George Bush attended was in Chicago in
September or October 1984. According to the "Chicago Tribune" of October
31, 1984, Bush was in Illinois campaigning for congressional candidates
at the end of October. Lisa added more details on the Chicago trip, and
told why she was sure it was George Bush she had seen. According to a May
8, 1989 report by investigator Jerry Lowe, "Eulice [Lisa] indicated that
she recognized George Bush as coming to the party and that Bush had two
large white males with him. Eulice indicated Bush came to the party approximately
45 minutes after it started and that he was greeted by Larry King. Eulice
indicated that she knew George Bush due to the fact that he had been in
political campaigns and also she had observed a picture of Bush with Larry
King at Larry King's house in Omaha." There is no question that Lisa and
Tracey Webb were abused in the way they claimed. But, in keeping with the
alleged pattern of coverup, a Washington County, Nebraska judge in December
1990 dismissed all charges against their abusers, Jarrett and Barbara Webb.
The judge ignored presented testimony of the 1986 report by Boys Town official
Julie Walters. The report stated: "Lisa was given four polygraph tests
administered by a state trooper at the State Patrol office on Center Street
in Omaha. The state trooper, after Lisa's testing was completed, told [another
foster parent] he tried to 'break Lisa down,' but he was convinced she
was telling the truth." / Note #8 Furthermore, numbers of foster care officials
and youth workers debriefed the sisters. All of them fully believed not
only their general story of abuse, but specifically their account of Bush's
involvement. The March 1986 report on Bush was incorporated into the Foster
Care Review Board's official report presented to the Senate Franklin Committee
and to law enforcement. As Kathleen Sorenson wrote in a report dated May
1, 1989, "This was long before he [Bush] was President. It seems like there
were more exciting people to 'lie' about if that's what they were doing."
/ Note #9 Notes for Chapter XXI 1. For Bush's "war on drugs," see Jack
Anderson and Dale Van Atta, "How Bush Commanded the War on Drugs," "Washington
Post," June 20, 1988; Lawrence Lifschultz, "Bush, Drugs and Pakistan: Inside
the Kingdom of Heroin," "The Nation," Nov. 14, 1988; "Drug Czars We Have
Known," "The Nation," Feb. 27, 1989; and Robert A. Pastor and Jorge Castaneda,
"Limits to Friendship: The United States and Mexico" (New York: Knopf,
dist. by Random House), p. 271. 14, 1988. 2. See the cover of "Newsweek,"
Oct. 19, 1987, "Fighting the 'Wimp Factor,'|" which portrays Bush at the
controls of "Fidelity." A similar photo appears facing p. 223 in George
Bush and Victor Gold, "Looking Forward" (New York: Doubleday, 1987). 3.
See Thomas Burdick and Charlene Mitchell, "Blue Thunder" (New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1990), p. 229. The following account of the relations between
Bush and Aronow relies upon this remarkable study. 4. "Ibid.," p. 182.
5. "Ibid.," p. 18. 6. "Ibid.," p. 34. 7. "Ibid.," p. 71. 8. "Ibid.," p.
95. 9. "Ibid.," p. 103. 10. "Ibid.," pp. 326-27. 11. "Ibid.," pp. 351,
357. Notes for Chapter XXII 1. "Washington Times," Aug. 9, 1989. 2. "Washington
Times," July 7, 1989. 3. "Pronto" (Barcelona, Spain), Aug. 3, 1991 and
Aug. 10, 1991. 4. "Omaha World-Herald," July 23, 1989. 5. On July 11, 1990,
during the course of his investigations, Gary Caradori, 41, died in the
crash of his small plane, together with his 8-year-old son, after a mid-air
explosion whose cause has not yet been discovered. A skilled and cautious
pilot, Caradori told friends repeatedly in the weeks before his death that
he feared his plane would be sabotaged. 6. "Gentleman's Quarterly," December
1991. 7. Report, written on March 25, 1986 by Julie Walters and authenticated
by her in an interview in 1990. 8. Report, early 1989, compiled by Jerry
Lowe, the first investigator for the Franklin Committee of the Nebraska
State Senate. 9. A book recently published on the Nebraska affair by a
former Republican state senator and decorated Vietnam veteran, John W.
De Camp, "The Franklin Cover-Up: Child Abuse, Satanism and Murder in Nebraska"
(Lincoln, Nebraska: AWT, Inc., 1992) tells the whole story. "XXIII: Bush
Takes the Presidency" George Bush's quest for the summit of American political
power was so sustained and so unrelenting that it is impossible to assign
the beginning of his campaign for President to any specific date. It is
more accurate to report that his entire tenure as Vice President was consumed
by the renovation and expansion of his personal and family network for
the purpose of seizing the presidency at some point in the future. During
this phase, Bush was far more concerned with organizational and machine-building
matters thanwith ideology or public relations. For most of the 1980s, it
was convenient for Bush to cultivate the public profile of a faithful and
even obsequious deputy to Reagan, while using the office of the vice president
to build a national and international overt/covert power cartel. Bush had
no regional constituency in any of the half-dozen places he tried to call
home; his "favorite son" appeal was diluted all over the map. He had no
base among labor, blacks, or in the cities, like the Kennedy apparat. Blue-blooded
financiers gravitated instinctively to Bush; and his lifeline to the post-Meyer
Lansky mob was robust indeed; and these were important factors, although
not enough by themselves to win an election. Bush's networks could always
tilt the media in his favor, but the Reagan experience had provided a painful
lesson of how inadequate this could be against a clever populist rival.
Otherwise, Bush's base was in the government, where eight years of patient
work had packed the executive branch, the Congress and its staffs, and
the judiciary with Bushmen. Nor was it only that Bush lacked a loyal base
of support. He also had very high negatives, meaning that there were a
lot of people who disliked him intensely. Such animosity was especially
strong among the ideological Reaganite conservatives, whom Bush had been
purging from the Reagan administration from early on. There would prove
to be very little that Bush could do to lower his negative response rate,
so the only answer would be to raise the negatives of all rival candidates
on both sides of the partisan divide. This brutal i mperative for the Bush
machine has contributed significantly to the last half decade's increase
in derogation and vilification in American life. Bush's discrediting campaigns
would be subsumed within the "anything goes" approach advocated by the
late Lee Atwater, the organizer of Reagan's 1984 campaign, who had signed
on with Bush well in advance of 1988. The "Washington Post" went after
Bush as "the Cliff Barnes of American politics," a reference to a character
in the TV soap opera "Dallas," whom the "Post" found "blustering, opportunistic,
craven, and hopelessly ineffective all at once." Others, foreshadowing
the thyroid revelations of 1991, talked about Bush's "hyperkinesis." Even
the unsavory George Will commented that "the optimistic statement 'George
Bush is not as silly as he frequently seems' now seems comparable to Mark
Twain's statement that Wagner's music is better than it sounds." / Note
#1 More than anything, Bush wanted an early endorsement from Reagan, in
order to suppress or at least undercut challenges to his presumptive front-runner
status from GOP rivals in the primaries; it was already clear that Senator
Bob Dole might be the most formidable of these. Bush feared Dole's challenge,
and desperately wanted to be anointed as Reagan's heir-apparent as soon
as possible before 1988. But Reagan had apparently not gotten over the
antipathy to Bush he had conceived during the "Nashua Telegraph" debate
of 1980. According to a high-level Reagan administration source speaking
in the summer of 1986, "more than once the President [told Bush], 'Obviously,
I'm going to stay neutral until after the convention, and then I'm going
to work for whichever candidate comes out on top.'|" / Note #2 Despite
Bush's "slavish devotion," Reagan wanted to keep the door open to his good
friend, Senator Paul Laxalt of Nevada, whom Reagan apparently thought was
getting ready to run for President. One can imagine Bush's rage and chagrin.
Reagan stubbornly refused to come out for Bush until the endorsement could
no longer help him in the Republican primaries. Reagan chose to wait until
Super Tuesday was over and the rest of the Republican field had been mathematically
eliminated. Reagan actually waited until Bob Dole, the last of Bush's rivals,
had dropped out. Then Reagan ignored the demands of Bush's media handlers
and perception-mongers and gave his endorsement in the evening, too late
for the main network news programs. The scene was a partisan event, a very
large GOP congressional fundraising dinner. Reagan waited to the end of
the speech, explained that he was now breaking his silence on the presidential
contest, and in a perfunctory way said he would support Bush. "I'm going
to work as hard as I can to make Vice President George Bush the next President
of the United States," said old Ron. There were no accolades for Bush's
real or imagined achievements, no stirring kudos. Seasoned observers found
Reagan's statement "halfhearted ... almost grudging." / Note #3 The Wimp
Factor Reagan's endless reticence meant that Bush had to work especially
hard to pander to the right wing, to those people whom he despised but
nevertheless needed to use. Here Bush stooped to boundless public degradation.
In December 1985, Bush went to Canossa by accepting an invitation to a
dinner in Manchester, New Hampshire held in honor of the late William Loeb,
the former publisher of the Manchester "Union Leader". We have already
documented that old man Loeb hated Bush and worked doggedly for his defeat
in 1980. Still, Bush was the "soul of humility," and he was willing to
do anything to be able to take power in his own name. Bush gave a speech
full of what the "Washington Post" chose to call "self-deprecating humor,"
but what others might have seen as groveling. Bush regaled 500 Republicans
and rightists with a fairy tale about having tried in 1980 to woo Loeb
by offering rewards of colored watchbands, LaCoste shirts, and Topsider
shoes to anyone who could win over Bill Loeb. The items named were preppy
paraphernalia which Loeb and many others found repugnant. Some of the assembled
right-wingers repeated the line from the Doonesbury comic strip according
to which Bush "had placed his manhood in a blind trust." Loeb's widow,
Nackey Scripps Loeb, was noncommittal. "We have decided on a candidate
for 1988 -- whoever best fights for the Reagan agenda," she announced.
"Whether that person is here tonight remains to be seen," she added. /
Note #4 Lawfully, Bush had earned only the contempt of these New Hampshire
conservatives. In October 1987, when the New Hampshire primary season was
again at hand, Mrs. Loeb rewarded Bush for his groveling with a blistering
attack that featured reprints of Bill Loeb's 1980 barbs: "a preppy wimp,
part of the self-appointed elite," and so forth. Mrs. Loeb wrote, "George
Bush has been Bush for 63 years. He has been Ronald Reagan's errand boy
for just the last seven. Without Ronald Reagan he will surely revert to
the original George Bush." Mrs. Loeb repeated her late husband's 1980 advice:
"Republicans should flee the presidential candidacy of George Bush as if
it were the black plague itself." / Note #5 All of this culminated in the
devastating "Newsweek" cover story of October 19, 1987, "Fighting the 'Wimp
Factor.'|" The article was more analytical than hostile, but did describe
the "crippling handicap" of being seen as a "wimp." Bush had been a "vassal
to Kissinger" at the United Nations and in Beijing, the article found,
and now even Bush's second-term chief of staff said of Bush, "He's emasculated
by the office of vice president." To avoid appearing as a television wimp,
Bush had "tried for the past 10 years to master the medium, studying it
as if it were a foreign language. He has consulted voice and television
coaches. He tried changing his glasses and even wearing contact lenses....
Bush's tight, twangy voice is a common problem. Under stress, experts explain,
the vocal cords tighten and the voice is higher than normal and lacks power."
According to "Newsweek", 51 percent of Americans found that "wimp" was
a "serious problem" for Bush. The "Newsweek" "wimp" cover soon had Bush
chewing the carpet at the Naval Observatory. Bush's knuckle-dragging son,
George W. Bush, called the story "a cheap shot" and added menacingly: "...
I'd like to take the guy who wrote that headline out on that boat," i.e.,
the Aronow-built "Fidelity" in which Bush was depicted on the "Newsweek"
cover -- which sounded very much like a threat. George W. Bush also called
"Newsweek" Washington bureau chief Evan Thomas to inform him that the Bush
campaign had officially cut off all contact with "Newsweek" and its reporters.
The decision to put "Newsweek" out of business was made by candidate Bush
personally, and aborted a plan by "Newsweek" to publish a book on the 1988
campaign. The press got the message: Portray Bush in a favorable light
or face vindictive and discriminatory countermeasures. Big Bucks for Bush
Bush campaigns have always advanced on a cushion of money, and the 1988
effort was to push this characteristic to unheard-of extremes. In keeping
with a tradition that had stretched over almost three decades, the Bush
campaign finance chairman was Robert Mosbacher, whose Mosbacher Energy
Corporation is one of the largest privately held independent oil companies
in Texas. Mosbacher's net personal worth is estimated at $200 million.
During the 1988 campaign, Mosbacher raised $60 million for the Bush campaign
and $25 million for the Republican National Committee. Bush's big money
campaigning was especially dependent upon Texas oilmen, whose largesse
he required to stoke his political machine. Bush was running a political
action committee called the Fund for America's Future, which raised $3.9
million in off-year 1985, a hefty sum. Of that take, about a fifth was
raised from 505 Texas donors, with Texans giving more than the residents
of any other state. Some $135,095 of Bush's money harvest came from persons
who could be clearly identified as oil industry figures, and the rakeoff
here was probably much greater. The Primary Campaign James Baker w as the
titular head of the Bush campaign, but the person responsible for the overall
concepts and specific tactics of the Bush campaign was Lee Atwater, a political
protege of Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. Thurmond had been
a Democrat, then a Dixiecrat in 1948, then a Democrat again, and finally
a Republican. The exigencies of getting elected in South Carolina on the
GOP ticket had taught Thurmond to reach deeply into that demagogue's bag
of tricks called the wedge issues. Under Thurmond's tutelage, Atwater had
become well versed in the essentials of the Southern Strategy, the key
to that emergent Republican majority in presidential elections which Kevin
Phillips had written about in 1968. Atwater had also imbibed political
doctrine from the first practitioner of the Southern Strategy, the dark-jowled
Richard M. Nixon himself. In January 1983, for example, Lee Atwater, at
that time deputy director of the White House office of political affairs
(and a creature of the Bush-Baker connection), met with Nixon for three
and a half hours in Columbia, South Carolina. Nixon held forth on three
points: the decisive political importance of the Sun Belt, the numerical
relations within the Electoral College, and the vast benefits of having
no primary competition when seeking reelection. In 1988 as well, Nixon
was brought in to be the "spiritus rector" of the Bush campaign. During
March of 1988, when it was clear that Bush was going to win the nomination,
Nixon "slipped into town" to join George Bush, Bar, and Lee Atwater for
dinner at the Naval Observatory. This time it was Bush who received a one-hour
lecture from Nixon on the need to cater to the Republican right wing, the
imperative of a tough line on crime in the streets, and the Soviets (again
to propitiate the rightists), to construct an independent identity only
after the convention, and to urge Reagan to campaign actively. And of course,
where Nixon shows up, Kissinger cannot be far away. / Note #6 1988 saw
another large-scale mobilization of the intelligence community in support
of Bush's presidential ambitions. The late Miles Copeland, a high-level
former CIA official who operated out of London during the 1980s, contributed
a piece frankly titled "Old Spooks for Bush" to the March 18, 1988 issue
of "National Review". Bush and Atwater feared all their competition. They
feared former Governor Pierre DuPont of Delaware because of his appeal
to liberal and blue-blooded Republicans who might otherwise automatically
gravitateto Bush. They feared New York Congressman Jack Kemp because of
his appeal to the GOP right wing and to blue-collar Reagan Democrats, and
because of what they viewed as his disturbing habit of talking about the
Strategic Defense Initiative and similar issues. They feared that Senator
Bob Dole of Kansas, with his "root canal economics" and right-wing populism,
and his solid backing from the international grain cartel, might appear
more credible to the Wall Street bankers than Bush as an enforcer of austerity
and sacrifices. But at the same time, they knew that Bush had more money
to spend and incomparably more state-by-state organization than any of
his GOP rivals, to say nothing of the fabled Brown Brothers Harriman media
edge. Bush also ruled the Republican National Committee with Stalin-like
ferocity, denying these assets to all of his rivals. This allowed Bush
to wheel toward the right in 1986-87 to placate some of his critics there,
and then move back toward the center by the time of the primaries. But
all the money and the organization could not mask the fact that Bush was
fundamentally a weak candidate. This began to become obvious to Atwater
and his team of perception mongers as the Iowa caucuses began to shape
up. These were the caucuses that Bush had so niftily won in 1980. By 1988,
Bush's Iowa effort had become complicated by reality, in the form of a
farm crisis that was driving thousands of farmers into bankruptcy every
week. Farm voters were now enraged against the avuncular thespian Ronald
Reagan and were looking for a way to send a message to the pointy-headed
set in Washington, D.C. Bush's Iowa campaign was dripping with lucre, but
this now brought forth resentment among the grim and grey-faced rural voters.
In mid-October 1987, five of the six declared Republican candidates attended
a traditional Iowa GOP rally in Ames, just north of Des Moines, on the
campus of Iowa State University. Televangelist Pat Robertson surprised
all the others by mobilizing 1,300 enthusiastic supporters for the Saturday
event. The culmination of this rally was a presidential straw poll, which
Robertson won with 1,293 votes to 958 for Dole. Bush trailed badly with
864. This was the occasion for Bush's incredible explanation of what had
happened: "A lot of people that support me, they were off at the air show,
they were at their daughters' coming out parties, or teeing up at the golf
course for that all-important last round." / Note #7 Many Iowans, including
Republicans, had to ask what a debutante cotillion was, and began to meditate
on the fact that they were not socially acceptable. But most concluded
that George Bush was the imperial candidate from another planet, bereft
of the foggiest notion of their lives and their everyday problems. During
the buildup to the Iowa caucus, Bush continued to dodge questions on Iran-Contra.
The famous "tension city" encounter with Dan Rather took place during this
time. Lee Atwater considered that performance Bush's defining event for
the campaign, a display which made him look like John Wayne, Clint Eastwood,
and Gary Cooper, especially in the South, where people like a pol who "can
kick somebody's ass" and where that would make a big difference on Super
Tuesday. But Bush's handlers were nevertheless shocked when Dole won the
Iowa caucuses with 37 percent of the vote, followed by Pat Robertson with
25 percent. Bush managed only a poor show, with 19 percent, a massive collapse
in comparison with 1980, when he had been far less known to the public.
Bush had known that defeat was looming in Iowa, and he had scuttled out
of the state and gone to New Hampshire before the results were known. Bush
was nevertheless stunned by his ignominious third-place finish, and he
consulted with Nick Brady, Lee Atwater, chief of staff Craig Fuller, and
pollster Bob Teeter. Atwater had boasted that he had built a "fire wall"
in the southern Super Tuesday states that would prevent any rival from
seizing the nomination out of Bush's grasp, but the Bush image-mongers
were well awarethat a loss in New Hampshire might well prove a fatal blow
to their entire effort, the advantages of money, networks, and organization
notwithstanding. Atwater accordingly ordered a huge media buy of 1,800
gross rating points, enough to ensure that the theoretical New Hampshire
television viewer would be exposed to a Bush attack ad 18 times over the
final three days before the election. The ad singled out Bob Dole, judged
by the Bushmen as their most daunting New Hampshire challenger, and savaged
him for "straddling" the question of whether or not new taxes ought to
be imposed. The ad proclaimed that Bush "won't raise taxes," period. It
was during this desperate week in New Hampshire that Bush became indissolubly
wedded to his lying and demagogic "no new taxes" pledge, which he repudiated
with considerable fanfare during the spring of 1990. When Bush had arrived
in Manchester the night of the disastrous Iowa result, New Hampshire Governor
John Sununu, his principal supporter in the state, had promised a nine-point
victory for Bush in his state. Oddly enough, that turned out to be exactly
right. The final result was 38 percent for Bush, 29 percent for Dole, 13
percent for Kemp, 10 percent for DuPont, and 9 percent for Robertson. In
the South Carolina primary, the Bushmen were concerned about a possible
threat from television evangelist Pat Robertson, who had mounted his major
effort in the Palmetto state. Robertson was widely known through his appearances
on his Christian Broadcasting Network. Shortly before the South Carolina
vote, a scandal became publi c which involved another television evangelist,
Jimmy Swaggart, a close friend of Robertson and an active supporter of
Robertson's presidential campaign. Swaggart admitted to consorting with
a prostitute, and this caused a severe crisis in his ministry. Jim Bakker
of the PTL television ministry had already been tainted by a sex scandal.
Pat Robertson accused the Bush campaign of orchestrating the Swaggart revelations
at a time that would be especially advantageous to their man. Talking to
reporters, Robertson pointed to "the evidence that two weeks before the
primary ... it suddenly comes to light." Robertson added that the Bush
campaign was prone to "sleazy" tricks, and suggested that his own last-place
finish in New Hampshire was "quite possibly" the result of "dirty tricks"
by the Bush campaign. Bush responded by dismissing Robertson's charges
as "crazy" and "absurd." Robertson had been linking Bush to the "international
banking community" in his South Carolina campaigning. / Note #8 True to
his Southern Strategy, Atwater had "front-loaded" Bush's effort in the
southern states with money, political operatives, and television, straining
the legal limit of what could be spent during the primary season as a whole.
A few days before Super Tuesday came the South Carolina primary. The state's
governor, Caroll Campbell, was a former customer of Lee Atwater. Strom
Thurmond was for Dole, but his endorsement proved to be valueless. Here
Bush got all the state's 37 delegates by scoring 48 percent of the vote
to 21 percent for Dole, 19 percent for Robertson, and 11 percent for Kemp.
Then, in the March 8 Super Tuesday polling, Bush scored an across-the-board
triumph, winning in Florida, Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky,
Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Virginia,
Missouri, and Maryland, plus Massachusetts and Rhode Island outside of
the region. With this, Bush took 600 of 803 delegates at stake that day.
Four and a half million Republicans had voted, the best turnout ever in
southern GOP primaries. When Bush beat Dole by a three-to-two margin in
Illinois, supposedly a part of Dole's base, it was all over. Bush prepared
for the convention and the choice of a vice president. The Wedge Issues
Campaign The Bush campaign of 1988 had no issues, but only demagogic themes.
These were basically all on the table by June, well before the Republican
convention. The first was the pledge of no new taxes, later embroidered
with the Clint Eastwood tough-guy overtones of "Read My Lips -- No New
Taxes." The other themes reflected Atwater's studies of how to drive up
the negatives of Bush's Democratic opponent, who would be Massachusetts
Governor Michael Dukakis. Very early on, Bush began to harp on Dukakis's
veto of a bill requiring teachers to lead their class each day in the pledge
of allegiance. Speaking in Orange County, California on June 7, Bush said:
"I'll never understand, when it came to his desk, why he vetoed a bill
that called for the pledge of allegiance to be said in the schools of Massachusetts.
I'll never understand it. We are one nation under God. Our kids should
say the pledge of allegiance." / Note #9 This theme lent itself very well
to a highly cathexized visual portrayal, with flags and bunting. Atwater
was assisted in these matters by Roger Ailes, a television professional
who had been the executive producer of the Mike Douglas Show by the time
he was 27 years old. That was in 1967, when he was hired by Richard Nixon
and Leonard Garment. Between them, Atwater and Ailes would produce the
modern American television equivalent of a 1930s Nuremburg party rally.
At about this time, the Bush network we have seen in operation at the "Reader's
Digest" since the 1964 campaign conveniently printed an article about a
certain Willie Horton, a black convicted murderer who was released from
a Massachusetts jail on a furlough, and then absconded to Maryland, where
he raped a white woman and stabbed her fiance. The Massachusetts furlough
program had been started by Republican Governor Frank Sargent, but this
meant nothing. Bush was to use Willie Horton in the same way that Hitler
and the Nazis exploited the grisly crimes of one Harmann, a serial killer
in Germany of the early 1930s, in their calls for law and order. In Illinois
in mid-June, Bush began to talk about how Dukakis let "murderers out on
vacation to terrorize innocent people." As packaged by Bush's handlers,
it was thoroughly racist without being nominally so, like Nixon's "crime
in the streets" shorthand for racist backlash during the 1968 campaign.
Later, Bush would embroider this theme with his demand for the death penalty,
his own Final Solution to the problem of criminals like Willie Horton.
To crown this demagogy, George H.W. Bush of Skull and Bones portrayed Dukakis
as an elitist insider: "Governor Dukakis, his foreign-policy views born
in Harvard Yard's boutique, would cut the muscle of our defense." Bush's
frequent litany of "liberal Massachusetts governor" was shameless in its
main purpose of suggesting that Bush himself was "not" a liberal. When
Bush arrived in New Orleans for the Republican National Convention, he
was accompanied by Baker, Teeter, Fuller, Atwater, Ailes, and James Baker's
Girl Friday, Margaret Tutwiler. Up to this point, Bush's staff had expected
him to generate a little suspense around the convention by withholding
the name of his vice presidential choice until the morning of the last
day of the convention, when Bush could share his momentous secret with
the Texas caucus and then tell it to the world. Bush's vetting of vice
presidents was carried out between Bush and Robert Kimmitt, the Washington
lawyer and Baker crony who later joined Baker's ruling clique at the State
Department, before being put up for ambassador to Germany when Vernon Walters
quit in the spring of 1991. Bush and Kimmitt reviewed the obvious choices:
Kemp was out because he lectured Bush on the SDI and was too concerned
about issues. Dole was out because he kept sniping at Bush with his patented
sardonic zingers. Elizabeth Dole was a choice to be deemed imprudent. John
Danforth, Pete Domenici, Al Simpson, and some others were eliminated. Many
were the possible choices who had to be ruled out not because of lack of
stature, but because they might seem to have more stature than Bush himself.
Quayle had shown up on lists prepared by Fuller and Ailes. Ed Rollins,
attuned to the Reagan Democrats, could not believe that Quayle was being
seriously considered. But now, at Belle Chase Naval Air Station north of
New Orleans, Bush told his staff that he had chosen Dan Quayle. Not only
was it Quayle, but Bush's thyroid was now in overdrive: He wanted to announce
his selection within hours. Quayle was contacted by telephone and instructed
to meet Bush at the dock in New Orleans when the paddle-wheel steamer "Natchez"
brought Bush down the Mississippi to that city's Spanish Plaza. Why J.
Danforth Quayle? Quayle turned up at the dock in a state of inebriated
euphoria, grabbing Bush's arm, prancing and capering around Bush. As soon
as the dossiers on Quayle came out, a few questions were posed. Had his
Senate office been a staging point for Contra resupply efforts? One of
the Iran-Contra figures, Rob Owen, had indeed worked for Quayle, but Quayle
denied everything. Had Quayle, now a hawk, been in Vietnam? Tom Brokaw
asked Quayle if he had gotten help in joining the National Guard as a way
of ducking the draft. Quayle stammered that it had been 20 years earlier,
but maybe "phone calls were made." Then Dan Rather asked Quayle what his
worst fear was. "Paula Parkinson," was the reply. This was the woman lobbyist
and "Playboy" nude model who had been present with Quayle at a wild weekend
at a Florida country club back in 1980. The Bush image-mongers hurriedly
convened damage control sessions, and Quayle was given two professional
handlers, Stuart Spencer and Joe Canzeri. After a couple of Bush-Quayle
joint appearances before groups of war veterans to attempt to dissipate
Quayle's National Guard issue, Quayle was then shunted into the secondary
media ma rkets under the iron control of his new handlers. Although Bush's
impulsive proclamation of his choice of Quayle does indeed raise the question
of the hyperthyroid snap decision, the choice of Quayle was not impulsive,
but rather perfectly coherent with Bush's profile and pedigree. Bush told
James Baker that Quayle had been "my first and only choice." / Note #1
/ Note #0 Bush's selection of political appointees is very often the product
of Bush-Walker family alliances over more than a generation -- as in the
case of Baker, Brady, Boy Gray, and Henry Kravis -- or at least of a long
and often lucrative business collaboration, as in the case of Mosbacher.
The choice of Quayle lies somewhere in between, and was strengthened by
a deep ideological affinity in the area of racism. J. Danforth Quayle's
grandfather was Eugene C. Pulliam, who built an important press empire
starting with his purchase of the Atchison (Kansas) "Champion" in 1912.
The bulk of these papers were in Indiana, the home state of the Pulliam
clan, and in Arizona. "Gene" Pulliam had died in 1975, but his newspaper
chain was worth an estimated $1.4 billion by the time Dan Quayle became
a household word. Old Gene was a firm opponent of racial integration. When
Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968, Gene Pulliam sent a note
to the editors of his papers in Indianapolis, Indiana ordering them not
to give the King tragedy "much exposure" because he considered the civil
rights leader a "rabble rouser." He instructed that the news of King's
death be summarized in as few words as possible and relegated to the bottom
of the front page. The Bush-Quayle alliance thus reposed first of all on
a shared premise of racism. Quayle is known to the vast majority of the
American public as a virtual cretin. Quayle is the first representative
of the post-war Baby Boom to advance to national elective office. Unfortunately,
he seems to exhibit some of the mental impairment that is known to overtake
long-term, habitual marijuana users. Quayle was admitted by the University
of Indiana Law School in violation of that school's usual policy of rejecting
all applicants with an academic average of less than 2.6. He wanted to
be a lawyer because he had heard that "lawyers make lots of money and do
little," as he told his fraternity brothers at De Pauw. As it turned out,
the dean of admissions at the University of Indiana Law School was one
G. Kent Frandsen, who was a Republican city judge in Lebanon, Indiana,
a town where the Pulliam family controls the local newspaper. He had always
been endorsed by the Pulliam interests. Two years later, Frandsen would
officiate at the marriage of J. Danforth Quayle to Marilyn Tucker. Still
later, Frandsen would serve as Quayle's campaign manager in Boone County
during the 1986 Senate race. It was thus no surprise that Frandsen was
willing to admit Dan Quayle to law school as part of a program for disadvantaged
students, primarily those from the black community. After all this, it
may appear as a miracle that Dan Quayle was ever able to obtain a law degree.
J. Danforth's receipt of that degree appears to have been mightily facilitated
by the plutocratic Quayle family, who made large donations to the law school
each year during Dan's time as a law student. What were Quayle's pastimes
during his law school years? According to one account, they included recreational
drugs. During the summer of 1988, a Mr. Brett Kimberlin told Dennis Bernstein
and a radio audience of WBAI in New York that he had first met J. Danforth
during this period at a fraternity party at which marijuana was indeed
being consumed. "He found out that I had marijuana available at the time,"
said Kimberlin. "It was good quality, and he asked if I had any for sale....
I thought it was kind of strange. He looked kind of straight. I thought
he might be a narc [DEA agent] at first. But we talked and I felt a little
more comfortable, and finally I gave him my phone number and said, 'Hey,
well, give me a call.' He called me a couple weeks later, and said, 'Hey,
this is DQ. Can we get together?' and I said 'Yes, meet me at the Burger
Chef restaurant.' We struck up a relationship that lasted for 18 months.
I sold him small quantities of marijuana for his personal use about once
a month during that period. He was a good customer. He was a friend of
mine. We had a pretty good relationship. He always paid cash.... When him
and Marilyn got married in 1972, I gave him a wedding present of some Afghanistan
hashish and some Acapulco gold." / Note #1 / Note #1 Kimberlin repeated
these charges in a pre-election interview on NBC News on November 4, 1988.
Kimberlin was a federal prisoner serving time in Tennessee after conviction
on charges of drug smuggling and explosives. Later that same day, Kimberlin
was scheduled to address a news conference by telephone conference call.
But before Kimberlin could speak to the press, he was placed in solitary
confinement, and was moved in and out of solitary confinement until well
after the November 8 presidential election. A second attempted press conference
by telephone hookup on the eve of the election did not take place, because
Kimberlin was still being held incommunicado. On August 6, 1991, U.S. District
Judge Harold H. Greene ruled that the allegations made by Kimberlin against
U.S. Bureau of Prisons Director J. Michael Quinlan were "tangible and detailed"
enough to justify a trial. Kimberlin had accused Quinlan of ordering solitary
confinement for him when it became clear that his ability to further inform
the media about Quayle's drug use would damage the Bush-Quayle effort.
The trial is still pending as of our publication date. In March 1977, Congressman
Dan Quayle contributed an article to the Fort Wayne, Indiana "News-Sentinel"
in which he recommended that Congress take a "serious" look at marijuana
decriminalization. In April 1978, Quayle repeated this proposal, specifying
he supported decriminalization for first-time users. / Note #1 / Note #2
The Last Lap The final stages of the campaign were played out amid great
public indifference. Some interest was generated in the final weeks by
a matter of prurient, rather than policy interest: Rumors were flying of
a Bush sex scandal. This talk, fed by the old Jennifer Fitzgerald story,
had surfaced during 1987 in the wake of the successful covert operation
against Gary Hart. The gossip became intense enough that George W. Bush
asked his father if he had been guilty of philandering. The young Bush
reported back to the press that "the answer to the Big A [adultery] question
is N-O." Lee Atwater accused David Keene of the Dole campaign of helping
to circulate the rumor, and Keene, speaking on a television talk show,
responded that Atwater was "a liar." Shortly thereafter, a "sex summit"
was convened between the Bush and Dole camps for the purpose of maintaining
correct GOP decorum even amidst the acrimony of the campaign. / Note #1
/ Note #3 Evans and Novak opined that "Atwater and the rest of the Bush
high command, convinced that the rumors would soon be published, reacted
in a way that spelled panic to friend and foe alike." On June 17, 1987,
Michael Sneed of the "Chicago Sun-Times" had written that "several major
newspapers are sifting ... reported dalliances of Mr. Boring." / Note #1
/ Note #4 But during that summer of 1987, the Brown Brothers Harriman/Skull
and Bones networks were powerful enough to suppress the story and spare
Bush any embarrassment. In the end, the greatest trump card of Bush's 1988
campaign was Bush's opponent Michael Dukakis. There is every reason to
believe that Dukakis was chosen by Bush Democrat power brokers and the
Eastern Establishment bankers primarily because he was so manifestly unwilling
and unable seriously to oppose Bush. Many are the indications that the
Massachusetts governor had been selected to take a dive. The gravest suspicions
are in order as to whether there ever was a Dukakis campaign at all. Well
before Dukakis received the nomination, supporters of Lyndon LaRouche in
the National Democratic Policy Committee called attention to the indications
of per sonal and mental instability in Dukakis's personal history, but
the Democratic Convention in Atlanta chose to ignore these highly relevant
issues. As the NDPC leaflet pointed out, "There is strong evidence that
Michael Dukakis suffers from a deep-seated mental instability that could
paralyze him, and decapitate our government, in the event of a severe economic
or strategic crisis. This is a tendency for psychological breakdown in
a situation of adversity and perceived personal rejection." / Note #1 /
Note #5 The best proof of the validity of this assessment is the pitiful
election campaign that Dukakis then conducted. The NDPC leaflet had warned
that the GOP would exploit this obvious issue, and Reagan soon made his
celebrated quip, "I'm not going to pick on an invalid," focusing intense
public attention on Dukakis's refusal to release his medical records. The
colored maps used by the television networks on the night of November 8
presented a Bush victory which, although less convincing than Reagan's
two landslides, nevertheless seemed impressive. A closer examination of
the actual vote totals reveals a much different lesson: Even in competition
with the bumbling and craven Dukakis campaign, Bush remained a pitifully
weak candidate who, despite overwhelming advantages of incumbency, money,
organization, years of enemies-list operations, a free ride from the controlled
media, and a pathetic opponent, just managed to eke out a hair's breadth
margin. Bush had won 53 percent of the popular vote, but if just 535,000
voters in 11 states (or 600,000 voters in nine states) had switched to
Dukakis, the latter would have been the winner. The GOP had ruled the terrain
west of the Mississippi for many moons, but Bush had managed to lose three
Pacific states: Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii. Bush won megastates like
Illinois and Pennsylvania by paper-thin margins of 51 percent, and the
all-important California vote, which went to Bush by just 52 percent, had
been too close for George's comfort. Missouri had also been a 52 percent
close call for George. In the farm states, the devastation wrought by eight
years of GOP free enterprise caused both Iowa and Wisconsin to join Minnesota
in the Democratic column. Chronically depressed West Virginia was having
none of George. In the oil patch, the Democrats posted percentage gains
even though Bush carried these states: In Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana
the Democratic presidential vote was up between 7 and 11 percent compared
to the Mondale disaster of 1984. In the Midwest, Dukakis managed to carry
four dozen counties that had not gone for a Democratic presidential contender
since 1964. All in all, half of Bush's electoral votes came from states
in which he got less than 55.5 percent of the two-party vote, showing that
there was no runaway Bush landslide. The voter turnout hit a new postwar
low, with just 49.1 percent of eligible voters showing up at the polls,
significantly worse than the Harry Truman-Thomas Dewey matchup of 1948,
when just 51 percent had deemed it worthwhile to vote. This means that
Bush expected to govern the country with the votes of just 26.8 percent
of the eligible voters in his pocket. Bush had won a number of southern
states by lop-sided margins of about 20 percent, but this was correlated
in many cases with very low overall voter turnout, which dipped below 40
percent in Georgia and South Carolina. A big plus factor for George was
the very low black voter turnout in the South, where a significant black
vote had helped the Democrats retake control of the Senate in 1986. Among
those Republicans who had succeeded in winning the White House in two-way
races (excluding years like 1948 or 1968, when the totals were impacted
by Henry Wallace and Strom Thurmond's Dixiecrats, or by George Wallace),
Bush's result was the weakest since fellow Skull and Bones alumnus William
Howard Taft in 1908. / Note #1 / Note #6 Notes for Chapter XXIII 1. George
Will column, Jan. 30, 1986, in George Will, "The Morning After" (New York:
Free Press London, Collier-MacMillan, 1986), p. 254. 2. Jack Anderson and
Dale Van Atta, "Bush Waits and Hopes for Reagan Nod," "Washington Post,"
Aug. 18, 1986. 3. Jack W. Germond and Jules Witcover, "Whose Broad Stripes
and Bright Stars: The Trivial Pursuit of the Presidency, 1988" (New York:
Warner Books, 1989), p. 156. 4. "Bush Proves Successful in Ticklish Appearance,"
"Washington Post," Dec. 12, 1985. 5. "New Hampshire Chill," "Washington
Post," Oct. 11, 1987. 6. For Bush in the 1988 campaign, see "Whose Broad
Stripes and Bright Stars." 7. "Washington Post," Oct. 16, 1987. 8. "Robertson
Links Bush to Swaggart Scandal," "Washington Post," Feb. 24, 1988. 9. "Whose
Broad Stripes and Bright Stars," p. 161. 10. "Whose Broad Stripes and Bright
Stars," p. 385. 11. Joel Bleifuss, "In Short," "In These Times," Nov. 16-22,
1988, p. 5, cited by Arthur Frederick Ide, "Bush-Quayle: The Reagan Legacy"
(Irving, Texas: Scholars Books, 1989), pp. 55-56. 12. "Ibid." 13. "Washington
Post," July 1, 1987. 14. "Washington Post," June 26, 1987. 15. See "Is
Dukakis the New Senator Eagleton?" in "Dukakis's Mental Health: An Objective
Assessment," "Executive Intelligence Review Reprint," Aug. 15, 1988, p.
8. 16. See Kevin Phillips, "The Politics of Rich and Poor" (New York: Random
House, 1990), p. 215; "Facts on File," Nov. 11, 1988; and Paul R. Abramson,
John H. Aldrich and David W. Rohde, "Change and Continuity in the 1988
Elections" (Washington: Congressional Quarterly, 1991). "XXIV: The End
of History" ""If the Emperor Tiberius -- George Bush -- is elected, this
country will become a fascist state in the first year he is in office,
I guarantee it." -- Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., April 15, 1988 campaign speech
in Buffalo, N.Y." George Bush's inaugural address of January 21, 1989,
was on the whole an eminently colorless and forgettable oration. The speech
was for the most part a rehash of the tired demagogy of Bush's election
campaign, with the ritual references to "a thousand points of light" and
the hollow pledge that when it came to the drug inundation which Bush had
supposedly been fighting for most of the decade, "This scourge will stop."
Bush talked of "stewardship" being passed on from one generation to another.
There was almost nothing about the state of the U.S. economy. Bush was
preoccupied with the "divisiveness" left over from the Vietnam era, and
this he pledged to end in favor of a return to bipartisan consensus between
the President and the Congress, since "the statute of limitations has been
reached. This is a fact: The final lesson of Vietnam is that no great nation
can long afford to be sundered by a memory." There is good reason to believe
that Bush was already contemplating the new round of foreign military adventures
which were not long in coming. The characteristic note of Bush's remarks
came at the outset, in the passages in which he celebrated the triumph
of the American variant of the bureaucratic-authoritarian police state,
based on usury, which chooses to characterize itself as "freedom": "We
know what works: Freedom works. We know what's right: Freedom is right.
We know how to secure a more just and prosperous life for man on Earth
-- through free markets, free speech, free elections, and the exercise
of free will unhampered by the state. / Note #1 After the inauguration
ceremonies at the Capitol were completed, George and Barbara Bush descended
Pennsylvania Avenue toward the White House in a triumphant progress, getting
out of their limousine every block or two to walk among the crowds and
savor the ovations. George Bush, imperial administrator and bureaucrat,
had now reached the apex of his career, the last station of the "cursus
honorum": the chief magistracy. Bush now assumed leadership of a Washington
bureaucracy that was increasingly focused on itself and its own aspirations,
convinced of its own omnipotence and infallibility, of its own manifest
destiny to dominate the world. It was a heady moment, full of the stuff
of megalomaniac delusion. Imperial Washington was now aware of the increasing
symptoms of collapse in the Soviet Empire. The feared adversary of four
decades of cold war was collapsing. Germany and Japan were formidable economic
powers, but they were led by a generation of politicians which had been
well schooled in the necessity of following Anglo-Saxon orders. France
had abandoned her traditional Gaullist policy of independence and sovereignty,
and had returned to the "suivisme" of the old Fourth Republic under Bush's
freemasonic brother Francois Mitterrand. Opposition to Washington's imperial
designs might still come from leading states of the developing sector,
from India, Brazil, Iraq and Malaysia, but the imperial administrators,
puffed up with their xenophobic contempt for the former colonials, were
confident that these states could be easily defeated, and that the Third
World would meekly succumb to the installation of Anglo-American puppet
regimes in the way that the Philippines and so many Latin American countries
had during the 1980s. Bush assembled a team of his fellow Malthusian bureaucrats
and administrators from among those officials who had staffed Republican
administrations going back to 1969, the year that Nixon chose Kissinger
for the National Security Council. Persons like Scowcroft, James Baker,
Carla Hills, and Bush himself had, with few exceptions, been in or around
the federal government and especially the executive branch for most of
two decades. All the great issues of policy had been solved under Nixon,
Ford and Reagan; the geopolitical situation was being brought under control;
all that remained was to consolidate and perfect the total administration
of the world according to the policies and procedures already established,
while delivering mass consensus through the same methods that had just
proven unbeatable in the presidential campaign. The Bush team was convinced
of its own inherent superiority to the Mandarin Chinese, the Roman and
Byzantine, the Ottoman, the Austrian, the Prussian, the Soviet, and to
all other bureaucratic-authoritarian regimes that had ever existed on the
planet. Pride goeth ever before a fall. The imperial functionaries of the
Bush team had chosen to ignore certain gross facts, most importantly the
demonstrable bankruptcy and insolvency of their own leading institutions
of finance, credit and government. Their ability to command production
and otherwise to act upon the material world was in sharp decline. How
long would the American population remain in its state of stupefied passivity
in the face of deteriorating standards of living that were now falling
more rapidly than at any time in the last 20 years? And now, the speculative
orgy of the 1980s would have to be paid for. Even their advantage over
the crumbling Soviet empire was ultimately only a marginal, relative, and
temporary one, due primarily to a faster rate of collapse on the Soviet
side; but the day of reckoning for the Anglo-Americans was coming, too.
This was the triumphalism that pervaded the opening weeks of the Bush administration.
Bush gave more press conferences during the transition period than Reagan
had given during most of his second term; he reveled in the accoutrements
of his new office, and gave the White House press corps all the photo opportunities
and interviews they wanted, to butter them up and get them in his pocket.
These fatuous delusions of grandeur were duly projected upon the plane
of the philosophy of history by an official of the Bush administration,
Francis Fukuyama, the deputy director of the State Department Policy Planning
Staff, the old haunt of Harrimanites like Paul Nitze and George Kennan.
In the winter of 1989, during Bush's first hundred days in office, Fukuyama
delivered a lecture to the Olin Foundation which was later published in
"The National Interest" quarterly under the title of "The End of History?"
/ Note #2 Imperial administrator Fukuyama had studied under the reactionary
elitist Allan Bloom, and was conversant with the French neo-Enlightenment
semiotic (or semi-idiotic) school of Derrida, Foucault and Roland Barthes,
whose "zero degree of writing" Fukuyama may have been striving to attain.
Above all, Fukuyama was a follower of Hegel in the interpretation of the
French postwar neo-Hegelian Alexandre Kojeve. Fukuyama qualifies as the
official ideologue of the Bush regime. His starting point is the "unabashed
victory of economic and social liberalism," meaning by that the economic
and political system reaching its maturity under Bush -- what the State
Department usually calls "democracy." "The triumph of the West, of the
Western idea, is evident first of all in the total exhaustion of viable
systematic alternatives to Western liberalism.... The triumph of the Western
political idea is complete. Its rivals have been routed.... Political theory,
at least the part concerned with defining the good polity, is finished.
The Western idea of governance has prevailed.... What we may be witnessing
is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period
of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point
of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western
liberal democracy as the final form of human government." According to
Fukuyama, communism as an alternative system had been thoroughly discredited
in the U.S.S.R., China, and the other communist countries. Since there
are no other visible models contending for the right to shape the future,
he concludes that the modern American state is the "final, rational form
of society and state." There are of course large areas of the world where
governments and forms of society prevail which diverge radically from Fukuyama's
Western model, but he answers this objection by explaining that backward,
still historic parts of the world exist and will continue to exist for
some time. It is just that they will never be able to present their forms
of society as a credible model or alternative to "liberalism." Since Fukuyama
presumably knew something of what was in the Bush administration pipeline,
he carefully kept the door open for new wars and military conflicts, especially
among historical states, or between historical and post-historical powers.
Both Panama and Iraq would, according to Fukuyama's typology, fall into
the latter category. Thus, in the view of the early Bush administration,
the planet would come to be dominated more and more by the "universal homogenous
state," a mixture of "liberal democracy in the political sphere combined
with easy access to VCRs and stereos in the economic." The arid banality
of that definition is matched by Fukuyama's dazzling tribute to "the spectacular
abundance of advanced liberal economies and the infinitely diverse consumer
culture." Fukuyama, it turns out, is a resident of the privileged enclave
for imperial functionaries that is northeast Virginia, and so has little
understanding of the scope of U.S. domestic poverty and immiseration: For
Fukuyama, writing at a moment when American class divisions were more pronounced
than at any time in human memory, "the egalitarianism of modern America
represents the essential achievement of the classless society envisaged
by Marx." As a purveyor of official doctrine for the Bush regime, Fukuyama
is bound to ignore 20 years of increasing poverty and declining standards
of living for all Americans which have caused an even greater retrogression
for the minority population. It is not far from the End of History to Bush's
later slogans of the New World Order and the imperial Pax Universalis.
It is ironic but lawful that Bush should have chosen a neo-Hegelian as
apologist for his regime. Hegel was the arch-obscurantist, philosophical
dictator, and saboteur of the natural sciences; he was the ideologue of
Metternich's Holy Alliance system of police states in the post-1815 oligarchic
restoration in Europe imposed by the Congress of Vienna. When we mention
Metternich, we have at once brought Bush's old patron Kissinger into play,
since Metternich is well known as his ego ideal. Hegel deified the bureaucratic-authoritarian
state machinery of which he was a part as the final embodiment of rationality
in h uman affairs, beyond which it was impossible to go. Hegel told intellectuals
to be reconciled with the world they found around them, and pronounced
philosophy incapable of producing ideas for the reform of the world. The
Bush regime thus took shape as a bureaucratic-authoritarian stewardship
of the financial interests of Wall Street and the City of London. Many
saw in the Bush team the patrician financiers of the Nelson Rockefeller
administration that never was. The groups in society which were to be served
were so narrowly restricted that the Bush administration often looked like
a government that had totally separated itself from the underlying society
and had constituted itself to govern in the interests of the bureaucracy
itself. Since Bush was irrevocably committed to carrying forward the policies
that had been consolidated and institutionalized during the previous eight
years, the regime became more and more rigid and inflexible. Active opposition,
or even the dislocations occasioned by administration policies were therefore
dealt with by the repressive means of the police state. The Bush regime
could not govern, but it could indict, and the Discrediting Committee was
always ready to vilify. Some observers spoke of a new form of Bonapartism
"sui generis," but the most accurate description for the Bush combination
was the "administrative fascism" coined by political prisoner Lyndon LaRouche,
who was thrown in jail just seven days after the Bush inauguration. The
Bush Cabinet Bush's cabinet reflected several sets of optimizing criteria:
The best way to attain a top cabinet post was to belong to a family that
had been allied with the Bush-Walker clan over a period of at least half
a century, and to have served as a functionary or fundraiser for the Bush
campaign. This applied to Secretary of State James Baker III, Treasury
Secretary Nicholas Brady, Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher, and Bush's
White House counsel and top political adviser, C. Boyden Gray. A second
royal road to high office was to have been an officer of Kissinger Associates,
the international consulting firm set up by Bush's lifelong patron, Henry
Kissinger. In this category we find Gen. Brent Scowcroft, the former chief
of the Kiss. Ass. Washington office, and Lawrence Eagleburger, the dissipated
wreck who was named to the number two post in the State Department, Undersecretary
of State. Eagleburger had been the president of Kissinger Associates. The
ambassadorial (or proconsul) list was also rife with Kissingerian pedigrees:
a prominent one was John Negroponte, Bush's ambassador to Mexico. Overlapping
with this last group were the veterans of the 1974-77 Ford administration.
National Security Council Director Brent Scowcroft, for example, was simply
returning to the job that he had held under Ford as Kissinger's alter ego
inside the White House. Dick Cheney, who eventually became secretary of
defense, had been Ford's White House chief of staff. Cheney had been executive
assistant to the director of Nixon's Office of Economic Opportunity way
back in 1969. In 1971, he had joined Nixon's White House staff as Don Rumsfeld's
deputy. >From 1971 to 1973, Cheney was at the Cost of Living Council, working
as an enforcer for the infamous Phase II wage freeze in Nixon's "Economic
Stabilization Program." The charming Carla Hills, who became Bush's trade
representative, had been Ford's Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
William Seidman and James Baker (and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan
Greenspan, a Reagan holdover who was the chairman of Ford's Council of
Economic Advisers) had also been in the picture under Gerry Ford. Bush
also extended largesse to those who had assisted him in the election campaign
just concluded. At the top of this list was Governor John Sununu of New
Hampshire, who would have qualified as the modern Nostradamus for his exact
prediction of Bush's 9 percent margin of victory over Dole in the New Hampshire
primary -- unless he had helped to arrange it with vote fraud. Another
way to carry off a top plum in the Bush regime was to have participated
in the coverup of the Iran-Contra scandal. The leading role in that coverup
had been assumed by Reagan's own blue ribbon commission of notables, the
Tower Commission, which carried out the White House's own in-house review
of what had allegedly gone wrong, and had scapegoated Don Regan for a series
of misdeeds that actually belonged at the doorstep of George Bush. The
members of that board were former GOP Senator John Tower of Texas, Gen.
Brent Scowcroft, and former Sen. Edmund Muskie, who had been secretary
of state for Carter after the resignation of Cyrus Vance. Scowcroft, who
shows up under many headings, was ensconced at the NSC. Bush's original
candidate for secretary of defense was John Tower, who had been the point
man of the 1986-87 coverup of Iran-Contra during the months before the
congressional investigating committees formally got into the act. Tower's
nomination was rejected by the Senate after he was accused of being drunken
and promiscuous by Paul Weyrich, a Buckleyite activist, and others. Some
observers thought that the Tower nomination had been deliberately torpedoed
by Bush's own discrediting committee so as to avoid the presence of a top
cabinet officer with the ability to blackmail Bush. Perhaps Tower had overplayed
his hand. In any case, Dick Cheney, a Wyoming congressman with strong intelligence
community connections, was speedily nominated and confirmed after Tower
had been shot down. Another Iran-Contra veteran in line to get a reward
was Bush's former national security adviser, Don Gregg, who had served
Bush since at least the time of the 1976 Koreagate scandal. Gregg, as we
have seen, was more than willing to commit the most maladroit and blatant
perjury in order to save his boss from the wolves (see Chapter 17). Later,
when William Webster retired as director of the CIA, there were persistent
rumors that the hyperthyroid Bush had originally demanded that Don Gregg
be nominated to take his place. According to these reports, it required
all the energy of Bush's handlers to convince the President that Gregg
was too dirty to pass confirmation; Bush relented, but then announced to
his dismayed and exhausted staff that his second and non-negotiable choice
for Langley was Robert Gates, the former CIA Deputy Director who had been
working as Scowcroft's number two at the National Security Council. As
it turned out, the Bush Democrats in the Senate proved more than willing
to approve Gates. The Dismal Hundred Days Bush's first 100 days in office
fulfilled Fukuyama's prophecy that the End of History would be "a very
sad time." If "post-history" meant that very little was accomplished, Bush
filled the bill. Three weeks after his inauguration, Bush addressed a joint
session of the Congress on certain changes that he had proposed in Reagan's
last budget. The litany was hollow and predictable: Bush wanted to be the
Education President, but was willing to spend less than a billion dollars
of new money in order to do it. He froze the U.S. military budget, and
announced a review of the previous policy toward the Soviet Union. This
last point meant that Bush wanted to wait to see how fast the Soviets would
in fact collapse before he would even discuss trade normalization, which
had been the perspective held out to Moscow by Reagan and others. Bush
said he wanted to join with Drug Czar William Bennett in "leading the charge"
in the war on drugs. Bush also wanted to be the Environmental President.
This was a far more serious aspiration. Shortly after the election, Bush
had attended the gala centennial awards dinner of the very oligarchical
National Geographic Society, for many years a personal fiefdom of the feudal-minded
Grosvenor family. Bush promised the audience that night that there was
"one issue my administration is going to address, and I'm talking about
the environment." Bush confided that he had been coordinating his plans
with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and that he had agreed with
her on the necessity for "international cooperation" on green iss ues.
"We will support you," intoned Gilbert Grosvenor, a fellow Yale alumnus,
"... Planet Earth is at risk." / Note #6 In order to be the Environmental
President, Bush was willing to propose a disastrous Clean Air Act that
would drain the economy of hundreds of billions of dollars over time in
the name of fighting acid rain. Bush's first hundred days coincided with
the notable phenomenon of the "greening" of Margaret Thatcher, who had
previously denounced environmentalists as "the enemy within," and fellow
travelers of the British Labour Party and the loonie left. Thatcher's resident
ideologue, Nicholas Ridley, had referred to the green movement in Britain
as "pseudo-Marxists." But in the early months of 1989, allegedly under
the guidance of Sir Crispin Tickell, the British ambassador to the United
Nations, Thatcher embraced the orthodoxy that the erosion of the ozone
layer, the greenhouse effect and acid rain -- every one of them a pseudo-scientific
hoax -- were indeed at the top of the list of the urgent problems of the
human species. Thatcher's acceptance of the green orthodoxy permitted the
swift establishment of a total environmentalist-Malthusian consensus in
the European Community, the Group of 7 and other key international forums.
Characteristically, Bush followed Thatcher's lead, as he would on so many
other issues. During the first 100 days, Bush called for the elimination
of all chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) by the end of the century, thus accepting
the position assumed by the European Community as a result of Mrs. Thatcher's
turning green. Bush told the National Academy of Sciences that new "scientific
advancements" had permitted the identification of a serious threat to the
ozone layer; Bush stressed the need to "reduce CFCs that deplete our precious
upper atmospheric resources." A treaty had been signed in Montreal in 1987
that called for cutting the production of CFCs by one half within a ten-year
period. "But recent studies indicate that this 50 percent reduction may
not be enough," Bush now opined. Senator Albert Gore, Jr. of Tennessee
was calling for complete elimination of CFCs within five years. Here a
pattern emerged that was to be repeated frequently during the Bush years:
Bush would make sweeping concessions to the environmentalist Luddites,
but would then be denounced by them for measures that were insufficiently
radical. This would be the case when Bush's Clean Air Bill was going through
the Congress during the summer of 1990. After Bush's appearance before
the Congress with his revised budget, the new regime exploited the honeymoon
to seal a sweetheart contract with the rubber-stamp congressional Democrats,
who under no circumstances could be confused with an opposition. The de
facto one-party state was alive and well, personified by milquetoast Senator
George Mitchell of Maine, the Democrats' majority leader. The collusion
between Bush and the Democratic leadership involved new sleight of hand
in order to meet the deficit-reduction targets stipulated by the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings
law. This involved mobilizing more than $100 billion from surpluses in
the Social Security, highway and other special trust funds which had not
previously been counted. The Democrats also went along with a $28 billion
package of asset sales, financing tricks, and unspecified new revenues.
They also bought Bush's rosy economic forecast of higher economic growth
and lower interest rates. Senate Majority Leader Mitchell, accepting his
pathetic rubber-stamp role, commented only that "much sterner measures
will be required in the future." Since the Democrats were incapable of
proposing an economic recovery program in order to deal with the depression,
they were condemned to give Bush what he wanted. This particular swindle
would come back to haunt all concerned, but not before the spectacular
budget debacle of October 1990. In the spring of 1990, according to an
estimate by Sid Taylor of the National Taxpayers' Union, the total potential
liabilities of the federal government exceeded $14 trillion. At that point,
the official national debt totaled $2.8 trillion, but this estimate included
the commitments of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation,
the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Pension Benefit Guarantee
Corporation, and other agencies. Bush's inability to pull his regime together
for a serious round of domestic austerity was not appreciated by the crowd
at the Bank for International Settlements in Geneva. Evelyn Rothschild's
London "Economist" summed up the international banking view of George's
temporizing on this score with its headline, "Bush Bumbles." A few weeks
into the new administration, it was the collapse of the FSLIC, studiously
ignored by the waning Reagan administration, that reached critical mass.
On February 6, 1989, Bush announced measures that his image-mongers billed
as the most sweeping and significant piece of financial legislation since
the creation of the Federal Reserve Board on the eve of World War I. This
was the savings and loan bailout, a new orgy in the monetization of debt
and a giant step toward the consolidation of a neo-fascist corporate state.
At the heart of Bush's policy was his refusal to acknowledge the existence
of an economic crisis of colossal proportions, which had among its symptoms
the gathering collapse of the real estate market after the stock market
crash of October 1987. The sequence of a stock market panic, followed by
a real estate and banking crisis, closely followed the sequence of the
Great Depression of the 1930s. But Bush violently rejected the existence
of such a crisis, and was grimly determined to push on with more of the
same. This meant that the federal government would simply take control
of the savings banks, the majority of which were bankrupt or imminently
bankrupt. The depositors might get their money, but the result would be
the debasement of the currency and a deepening depression all around. In
the process, the U.S. government would become one of the main owners of
real estate, buildings, and the worthless junk bonds that had been spewed
out by Bush's friend Henry Kravis and his partner Michael Milken during
the heady days of the boom. The federal government would create a new world
of bonded debt to pay for the savings banks that would be seized. When
Bush announced his bailout that February, he stated that $40 billion had
already been poured into the S&L sinkhole, and that he proposed to
issue an additional $50 billion in new bonds through a financing corporation,
a subsidiary of the new Resolution Trust Corporation. By August 1989, when
Bush's legislation had been passed, the estimated cost of the S&L bailout
had increased to $164 billion over a period of ten years, with $20 billion
of that scheduled to be spent by the end of September 1989. Within a few
months, Bush was forced to increase his estimates once again. "It's a whale
of a mess, and we'll see where we go," Bush told a group of newspaper editorial
writers at the White House in mid-December. "We've had this one refinancing.
I am told that that might not be enough." By this time, academic experts
were suggesting that the bailout might exceed the administration's $164
billion by as much as $100 billion more. Every new estimate was swiftly
overtaken by the ghastly spectacle of a real estate market in free fall,
with no bottom in sight. The growing public awareness of this situation,
compounded by the ongoing bankruptcy of the commercial banking system as
well, would lead in July 1990 to a very ugly public relations crisis for
the Bush regime around the role of the President's son Neil Bush, in the
insolvency of the Silverado Savings and Loan of Denver, Colorado. One of
the obvious reasons for Bush's enthusiastic choice of war in the Persian
Gulf was the need to get Neil Bush off the front page. But even the Gulf
war bought no respite in the collapse of the real estate markets and the
chain-reaction bankruptcies of the savings banks: By the summer of 1991,
federal regulators were seizing S&Ls at the rate of just under one
every business day, and the estimates of the total pr ice tag of the bailout
had ballooned to over $500 billion, with every certainty that this figure
would also be surpassed. / Note #7 The carnage among the S&Ls did not
prevent Bush from seeking an increase in the U.S. contribution to the International
Monetary Fund, the main agency of a world austerity that claims upwards
of 50 million human lives each year as the needless victims of its Malthusian
conditionalities. The members of the IMF had been debating an increase
in the funds each member must pay into the IMF (which has been bankrupt
for years as a matter of reality), with Managing Director Michel Camdessus
proposing a 100 percent increase, and Britain and Saudi Arabia arguing
for a much smaller 25 percent hike. Bush attempted to mediate and resolve
the dispute with a proposal for a 35 percent increase, equal to an $8 billion
additional payment by the U.S. This sum was equal to more than three times
the yearly expenditure for the highly successful Women, Infants and Children
(WIC) program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, savagely cut during
Bush's first year, which attempted to provide a high-protein and balanced
food supplement to mothers and their offspring. / Note #8 As the depression
deepened, Bush had only one idea: to reduce the capital gains tax rate
from 28 percent to 15 percent. This was a proposal for a direct public
subsidy to the vulture legions of Kravis, Liedtke, Pickens, Milken, Brady,
Mosbacher, and the rest of Bush's apostles of greed. The Bushmen estimated
that a capital gains tax reduction in this magnitude would cost the Treasury
some $25 billion in lost receipts over six years, a crass underestimate.
These funds, argued the Bushmen, would then be invested in high-tech plant
and equipment, creating new jobs and new production. In reality, the funds
would have flowed into bigger and better leveraged buyouts, which were
still being attempted after the crash of the junk bond market with the
failure of the United Airlines buyout in October 1989. But Bush had no
serious interest in, or even awareness of, commodity production. His policies
had now brought the country to the brink of a financial panic in which
75 percent of the current prices of all stocks, bonds, debentures, mortgages,
and other financial paper would be wiped out. If there was a constant note
in Bush's first year in office, it was a callously flaunted contempt for
the misery of the American people. During the spring of 1989, the Congress
passed a bill that would have raised the minimum wage in interstate commerce
from $3.55 per hour to$4.55 per hour by a series ofincrements over three
years. This legislation would even have permitted a subminimum wage that
could be paid to certain newly hired workers over a 60-day training period.
Bush vetoed this measure because the $4.55 minimum wage was 30 cents an
hour higher than he wanted, and because he demanded a subminimum wage for
all new employees for the first six months on the job, regardless of their
previous experience or training. On June 14, 1989, the House of Representatives
failed to override this veto, by a margin of 37 votes. (Later, Bush signed
legislation to raise the minimum wage to $4.25 per hour over two years,
with a subminimum training wage applicable only to teenagers and only during
the first 90 days of the teenagers' employment, with the possibility of
a second 90-day training wage stint if they moved on to a different employer.)
/ Note #9 This was the same George Bush who had proposed $164 billion for
bankrupt S&Ls, and $8 billion for the International Monetary Fund,
all without batting an eye. This is also the George Bush who, customarily
during holiday periods, joins his millionaire crony William Stamps ("Auschwitz")
Farish III at his Lazy F Ranch near Beeville, Texas, for the two men's
traditional holiday quail hunt. This is the same William Stamps Farish
III whose grandfather, the president of Standard Oil of New Jersey, had
financed Heinrich Himmler. William Stamps Farish III's investment bank
in Houston, W.S. Farish & Co., had at one time managed the blind trust
into which Bush had placed his personal investment portfolio. Farish was
rich enough to vaunt five addresses: Beeville, Texas; Lane's End Farm in
the Versailles, Kentucky bluegrass; Florida, and two others. Farish's hobby
for the past several decades has been the creation of his own top-flight
farm for the raising of thoroughbred horses, the 3,000-acre Lazy F Ranch,
with its ten horse barns and four sumptuous residences. Over the years,
Farish has saddled winners in the 1972 Preakness and the 1987 Belmont Stakes,
and bred 80 stakes winners over the past decade. Farish, who is married
to Sarah Sharp, the daughter of a Du Pont heiress, had worked with Bush
as an aide during the 1964 Senate campaign. Farish III is rich enough to
extend his largesse even to Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, probably
the richest individual in the world. The queen regularly visits Farish's
horse farm, traveling by Royal Air Force jetliner to the Blue Grass Airport
in Lexington, Kentucky, accompanied by mares which Her Majesty wishes to
breed with Farish's million-dollar prize stallions. Farish magnanimously
waives the usual stud fees for the queen, resulting in an estimated savings
to Her Majesty of some $800,000. Smear, Scandal and Sanctions For George
Bush, the exercise of power has always been inseparable from the use of
smear, scandal, and the final sanctions of police-state methods against
political rivals and other branches of government. A classic example was
the Koreagate scandal of 1976, unleashed with the help of Bush's long-time
retainer, Don Gregg. It will be recalled that Koreagate included the toppling
of Democratic Speaker of the House Carl Albert of Oklahoma, who quietly
retired from the House at the end of 1976. That was in the year when Bush
had returned from Beijing to Langley. Was it merely coincidence that, in
the first year of Bush's tenure in the White House, not just the Democratic
Speaker of the House, but also the House Majority Whip, were driven from
office? The campaign against Speaker of the House Jim Wright was spearheaded
by Georgia Republican Congressman Newt Gingrich, a typical "wedge issue"
ideologue of the GOP's Southern Strategy. Gingrich's campaign against Wright
could never have succeeded without systematic support from the news media,
who regularly trumpeted his charges and lent him a wholly undeserved importance.
Gingrich's pretext was a story about the financing of a small book in which
Wright had collected some of his old speeches, which Gingrich claimed had
been sold to lobbyists in such a way as to constitute an unreported gift
in violation of the House rules. One of Gingrich's first steps when he
launched the assault on Wright during 1988 was to send letters to Bush
and to Assistant Attorney General William Weld, whose family investment
bank, White Weld, had purchased Uncle Herbie Walker's G.H. Walker &
Co. brokerage when Bush's favorite uncle was ready to retire. Newt Gingrich
wrote: "May I suggest, the next time the news media asks about corruption
in the White House, you ask them about corruption in the Speaker's office?"
A similar letter went out from the "Conservative Campaign Fund" to all
GOP House candidates with the message: "We write to encourage you to make
... House Speaker Jim Wright a major issue in your campaign." / Note #1
/ Note #1 Bush placed himself in the vanguard of this campaign. When Bush,
in the midst of his presidential campaign, was asked by reporters about
the investigation of Reagan Attorney General Edwin Meese (no friend of
Bush) concerning his dealings with the Wedtech Corporation, he replied:
"You talk about Ed Meese. How about talking about what Common Cause raised
against the Speaker the other day? Are they going to go for an independent
counsel so the nation will have this full investigation? Why don't people
call out for that? I will right now. I think they ought to." / Note #1
/ Note #2 Reagan followed Bush's lead in calling for Wright to be investigated.
In January-February 1989, the House took under consideration a pay increase
f or members. Both Reagan and Bush had endorsed such a pay increase, but
Lee Atwater, now installed at the Republican National Committee, launched
a series of mailings and public statements to make the pay increase into
a new wedge issue. It was a brilliant success, with the help of a few old
Prescott Bush strings pulled on key talk show hosts across the country.
Bush accomplished the coup of thoroughly destabilizing the Congress at
the outset of his tenure. Jim Wright was hounded out of office and into
retirement a few months later, followed by Tony Coelho, the Democratic
Whip. What remained was the meek Tom Foley, a pliable rubber stamp, and
Richard Gephardt, who briefly got in trouble with Bush during 1989, but
who found his way to a deal with Bush that allowed him to rubber-stamp
Bush's "fast track" formula for the free trade zone with Mexico, which
effectively killed any hope of resistance to that measure. The fall of
Jim Wright was a decisive step in the domestication of the Congress by
the Bush regime. Bush was also able to rely on an extensive swamp of "Bush
Democrats" who would support his proposals under virtually all circumstances.
The basis of this phenomenon was the obvious fact that the national leadership
of the Democratic Party had long been a gang of Harrimanites. The Brown
Brothers Harriman grip on the Democratic Party had been represented by
W. Averell Harriman until his death, and after that was carried on by his
widow, Pamela Churchill Harriman, the former wife of Sir Winston Churchill's
alcoholic son, Randolph. The very extensive Meyer Lansky/Anti-Defamation
League networks among the Democrats were oriented toward cooperation with
Bush, sometimes directly, and sometimes through the orchestration of gang
vs. countergang charades for the manipulation of public opinion. A special
source of Bush strength among southern Democrats is the cooperation between
Skull and Bones and southern jurisdiction freemasons in the tradition of
the infamous Albert Pike. These southern jurisdiction freemasonic networks
have been most obviously decisive in the Senate, where a group of southern
Democratic senators has routinely joined with Bush to block overrides of
Bush's many vetoes, or to provide a pro-Bush majority on key votes like
the Gulf war resolution. Bush's style in the Oval Office was described
during this period as "extremely secretive." Many members of Bush's staff
felt that the President had his own long-term plans, but refused to discuss
them with his own top White House personnel. During Bush's first year,
the White House was described as "a tomb," without the usual dense barrage
of leaks, counter-leaks, trial balloons, and signals which government insiders
customarily employ to influence public debate on policy matters. Bush is
said to employ a "need to know" approach even with his closest White House
collaborators, keeping each one of them in the dark about what the others
are doing. Aides have complained of their inability to keep up with Bush's
phone calls when he goes into his famous "speed-dialing mode," in which
he can contact dozens of politicians, bankers or world leaders within a
couple of hours. Unauthorized passages of information from one office to
another inside the White House constitute leaks in Bush's opinion, and
he has been at pains to suppress them. When information was given to the
press about a planned meeting with Gorbachov, Bush threatened his top-level
advisers: "If we cannot maintain proper secrecy with this group, we will
cut the circle down." Bush routinely humiliates and mortifies his subordinates.
This recalls his style in dealing with the numerous hapless servants and
domestics who populated his patrician youth; it may also have been reinforced
by the characteristic style of Henry Kissinger. If advisers or staff dare
to manifest disagreement, the typical Bush retort is a whining "If you're
so damned smart, why are you doing what you're doing and I'm the President
of the United States?" / Note #1 / Note #3 In one sense, Bush's style reflects
his desire to seem "absolute and autocratic" in the tradition of the Romanov
czars and other Byzantine rulers. He refuses to be advised or dissuaded
on many issues, relying on his enraged, hyperthyroid intuitions. More profoundly,
Bush's "absolute and autocratic" act is a cover for the fact that many
of his initiatives, ideas and policies came from outside of the U.S. government,
since they originated in the rarefied ether of those international finance
circles where names like Harriman, Kravis, and Gammell are the coin of
the realm. Indeed, many of Bush's policies come from outside of the United
States altogether, deriving from the oligarchical financial circles of
the City of London. The classic case is the Gulf crisis of 1990-91. When
the documents on the Bush administration are finally thrown open to the
public, it is a safe bet that some top British financiers and Foreign Office
types will be found to have combined remarkable access and power with a
non-existent public profile. Notes for Chapter XXIV 1. "Washington Post,"
Jan. 21, 1991. 2. For Fukuyama's "End of History," see "The National Interest,"
Summer 1989, and Henry Allen, "The End. Or Is It?" "Washington Post," Sept.
27, 1989. 6. "Bush's Earthly Pursuits," "Washington Post," Nov. 18, 1988.
7. See the transcript of Bush's statement and news conference, "Washington
Post," Feb. 7, 1989; "With Signs and Ceremony, S&L Bailout Begins,"
"Washington Post," Aug. 10, 1989; and "Bush: S&Ls May Need More Help,"
"Washington Post," Dec. 12, 1989. 8. "Bush Backs Increase in IMF Funds,"
"Washington Post," Nov. 23, 1989. 9. See House Democratic Study Group,
Special Report No. 101-45, "Legislation Vetoed by the President," p. 83.
11. John M. Barry, "The Ambition and the Power" (New York: Viking Press,
1989) pp. 621-22. 12. "Ibid." 13. "Bush: The Secret Presidency," "Newsweek,"
Jan. 1, 1990. "XXIV: The End of History" One of the defining moments in
the first year of the Bush presidency was his reaction to the Tiananmen
massacre of June 4, 1989. No one can forget the magnificent movement of
the antitotalitarian Chinese students, who used the occasion of the funeral
of Hu Yaobang in the spring of 1989 to launch a movement of protest and
reform against the monstrous dictatorship of Deng Xiaoping, Yang Shankun,
and Prime Minister Li Peng. As the portrait of the old butcher Mao Zedong
looked down from the former imperial palace, the students erected a statue
of liberty and filled the square with the Ode to Joy from Beethoven's Ninth
Symphony. By the end of May, it was clear that the Deng regime was attempting
to pull itself together to attempt a convulsive massacre of its political
opposition. At this point, it is likely that a pointed and unequivocal
public warning from the U.S. government might have avoided the looming
bloody crackdown against the students. Even a warning through secret diplomatic
channels might have sufficed. Bush undertook neither, and he must bear
responsibility for this blatant omission. The nonviolent protest of the
students was then crushed by the martial law troops of the hated and discredited
Communist regime. Untold thousands of students were killed outright, and
thousands more died in the merciless death hunt against political dissidents
which followed. Mankind was horrified. For Bush, however, the main considerations
were that Deng Xiaoping was part of his own personal network, with whom
Bush had maintained close contact since at least 1975. Bush's devotion
to the immoral British doctrine of "geopolitics" further dictated that,
unless and until the U.S.S.R. had totally collapsed as a military power,
the U.S. alliance with China as the second-strongest land power must be
maintained at all costs. Additionally, Bush was acutely sensitive to the
views on China policy held by his mentor, Henry Kissinger, whose paw-prints
were still to be found all over U.S. relations with Deng. In the pre-1911
imperial court of China, the etiquette of the Forbidden City required that
a person approaching the throne of the "Son of Heaven" must prostrate himself
before that living deity, touching both hands and the forehead to the floor
three times. This is the celebrated "kow-tow." And it was "kow-tow" which
sprang to the lips and pens of commentators all over the world as they
observed Bush's elaborate propitiation of the Deng regime. Even cynics
were astounded that Bush could be so deferential to a regime that was obviously
so hated by its own population that it had to be considered as being on
its last legs. In a press conference held on June 9, in the immediate wake
of the massacre, Bush astounded even the meretricious White House press
corps by his mild and obsequious tone toward Deng and his cohorts. Bush
limited his retaliation to a momentary cutoff of some military sales. That
would be all: "I'm one who lived in China; I understand the importance
of the relationship with the Chinese people and with the government. It
is in the interest of the United States to have good relations...." / Note
#1 / Note #4 This was the wimp with a vengeance, groveling and scraping
like Neville Chamberlain before the dictators, but there was more to come.
As part of his meek and pathetic response, Bush had pledged to terminate
all "high-level exchanges" with the Deng crowd. With this public promise,
Bush had cynically lied to the American people. Shortly before Bush's invasion
of Panama in December, it became known that Bush had dispatched the two
most prominent Kissinger clones in his retinue, NSC Chairman Brent Scowcroft
and Undersecretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, on a secret mission to
Beijing over the July 4th weekend, less than a month after the massacre
in Tiananmen. The story about Scowcroft and Eagleburger, both veterans
of Kissinger Associates, spending the glorious Fourth toasting the butchers
of Beijing was itself leaked in the wake of a high-profile public mission
to China involving the same Kissingerian duo that started December 7, 1989.
Bush's cover story for the second trip was that he wanted to get a briefing
to Deng on the results of the Bush-Gorbachov Malta summit, which had just
concluded. The second trip was supposed to lead to the quick release of
Chinese physicist and dissident Fang Lizhi, who had taken refuge in the
U.S. embassy in Beijing during the massacre; this did not occur until some
time later. The news of Bush's secret diplomacy in favor of Deng caused
a widespread wave of sincere and healthy public disgust with Bush, but
this was shortly overwhelmed by the jingoist hysteria that accompanied
Bush's invasion of Panama. Bush's handling of the issue of the immigration
status of the Chinese students who had enrolled at U.S. universities also
illuminated Bush's character in the wake of Tiananmen. In Bush's pronouncements
in the immediate wake of the massacre, he absurdly asserted that there
were no Chinese students who wanted political asylum here, but also promised
that the visas of these (non-existent) students would be extended so that
they would not be forced to return to political persecution and possible
death in mainland China. It later turned out that Bush had neglected to
promulgate the executive orders that would have been necessary. In response
to Bush's prevarication about the lives and well-being of the Chinese students,
the Congress subsequently passed legislation that would have waived the
requirement that holders of J-visas, the type commonly obtained by Chinese
students, be required to return to their home country for two years before
being able to apply for permanent residence in the U.S. Bush, in an act
of loathsome cynicism, vetoed this bill. The House voted to override by
a majority of 390 to 25, but Bush Democrats in the Senate allowed Bush's
veto to be sustained by a vote of 62 to 37. Bush, squirming under the broad
public obloquy brought on by his despicable behavior, finally issued regulations
that would temporarily waive the requirement of returning home for most
of the students. Noriega and the Thornburgh Doctrine George Bush's involvement
with Panama goes back to operations conducted in Central America and the
Caribbean by Senator Prescott Bush's Jupiter Island Harrimanite cabal.
For the Bush clan, the cathexis of Panama is very deep, since it is bound
up with the exploits of Theodore Roosevelt, the founder of twentieth-century
U.S. imperialism, which the Bush family is determined to defend to the
farthest corners of the planet. For it was Theodore Roosevelt who had used
the U.S.S. "Nashville" and other U.S. naval forces to prevent the Colombian
military from repressing the U.S.-fomented revolt of Panamanian soldiers
in November 1903, thus setting the stage for the creation of an independent
Panama and for the signing of the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty, which created
a Panama Canal Zone under U.S. control. Roosevelt's "cowboy diplomacy"
had been excoriated in the U.S. press of those days as "piracy." Theodore
Roosevelt had in December 1904 expounded his so-called "Roosevelt Corollary"
to the Monroe Doctrine, in reality a complete repudiation and perversion
of the anticolonial essence of John Quincy Adams's original warning to
the British and other imperialists. The self-righteous Teddy Roosevelt
had stated, "Chronic wrongdoing ... may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately
require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere
the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the
United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing
or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power." / Note
#1 / Note #8 The old imperialist idea of Theodore Roosevelt was quickly
revived by the Bush administration during 1989. Through a series of actions
by Attorney General Richard Thornburgh, the U.S. Supreme Court, and CIA
Director William Webster, the Bush regime arrogated to itself a sweeping
carte blanche for extraterritorial interference in the internal affairs
of sovereign states, all in open defiance of the norms of international
law. These illegal innovations can be summarized under the heading of the
"Thornburgh Doctrine." The Federal Bureau of Investigation arrogated to
itself the "right" to search premises outside of U.S. territory and to
arrest and kidnap foreign citizens outside of U.S. jurisdiction, all without
the concurrence of the judicial process of the other countries whose territory
was thus subject to violation. U.S. armed forces were endowed with the
"right" to take police measures against civilians. The CIA demanded that
an Executive Order prohibiting the participation of U.S. government officials
and military personnel in the assassination of foreign political leaders,
which had been issued by President Ford in October 1976, be rescinded.
There is every indication that this presidential ban on assassinations
of foreign officials and politicians, which had been promulgated in response
to the Church and Pike Committees' investigations of CIA abuses, has indeed
been abrogated. To round out this lawless package, an opinion of the U.S.
Supreme Court issued on February 28, 1990 permitted U.S. officials abroad
to arrest (or kidnap) and search foreign citizens without regard to the
laws or policy of the foreign nation subject to this interference. Through
these actions, the Bush regime effectively staked its claim to universal
extraterritorial jurisdiction, the classic posture of an empire seeking
to assert universal police power. The Bush regime aspired to the status
of a world power "legibus solutus," a superpower exempted from all legal
restrictions. / Note #1 / Note #9 The hostility of the U.S. government
against General Noriega was occasioned first of all by Noriega's refusal
to be subservient to the U.S. policy of waging war against the Sandinista
regime. This was explained by Noriega in an interview with CBS journalist
Mike Wallace on February 4, 1988, in which General Noriega described the
U.S. campaign against him as a "political conspiracy of the Department
of Justice." General Noriega described a visit to Panama on December 17,
1985 by Admiral John Poindexter, then the chief of the U.S. National Security
Council, who demanded that General Noriega join in acts of war against
Nicara gua, and then threatened Panama with economic warfare and political
destabilization when Noriega refused to go along with Poindexter's plans:
"Noriega: Poindexter said he came in the name of President Reagan. He said
that Panama and Mexico were acting against U.S. policy in Central America
because we were saying that the Nicaragua conflict must be settled peacefully.
And that wasn't good enough for the plans of the Reagan administration.
The single thing that will protect us from being economically and politically
attacked by the United States is that we allow the Contras to be trained
in Panama for the fight against Nicaragua. "Wallace: He told you that you
would be economically attacked if you didn't do that? "Noriega: It was
stated, Panama must expect economic consequences. Your interest was that
we should aid the Contras, and we said 'no' to that." Poindexter outlined
plans for a U.S. invasion of Nicaragua that would require the fig leaf
of participation of troops from other countries in the region: "Noriega:
Yes, they wanted to attack Nicaragua and the only reason it hadn't already
happened was that Panama was in the way, and all they wanted was that Panama
would open the way and make it possible for them to continue their plans."
According to Noriega's adviser, Panamanian Defense Forces Captain Cortiso,
"[the U.S.] wanted that Panamanian forces attack first. Then we would receive
support from U.S. troops." / Note #3 / Note #7 It was in this same December
1985 period that Bush and Don Gregg met with Ambassador Briggs to discuss
Noriega's refusal to follow dictation from Washington. According to Gregg
in his deposition in the Christic Institute lawsuit, "I think we [i.e.,
Bush and Gregg] came away from the meeting with Ambassador Briggs with
the sense that Noriega was a growing problem, politically, militarily,
and possibly in the drug area." When pressed to comment about Noriega's
alleged relations to drug trafficking, Gregg could only add: "It would
have been part of the general picture of Noriega as a political problem,
corruption, and a general policy problem.... I don't recall any specific
discussion of Noriega's involvement in drugs," Gregg testified. / Note
#2 / Note #2 In this case it is quite possible that Don Gregg is for once
providing accurate testimony: The U.S. government decision to begin interference
in Panama's internal affairs for the overthrow of Noriega had nothing to
do with questions of drug trafficking. It was predicated on Noriega's rejection
of Poindexter's ultimatum demanding support for the Nicaraguan Contras,
themselves a notorious gang of drug-pushers enjoying the full support of
Bush and the U.S. government. In addition to the question of Contra aid,
another rationale for official U.S. rage against Noriega had emerged during
1985. Panamanian President Nicky Barletta, a darling of the State Department
and a former vice president of the genocidal World Bank, attempted to impose
a package of conditionalities and economic adjustment measures dictated
by the International Monetary Fund. This was a package of brutal austerity,
and riots soon erupted in protest against Barletta. Noriega refused to
comply with Barletta's request to use the Panamanian military forces to
put down these anti-austerity riots, and the IMF austerity package was
thus compromised. Barletta was shortly forced out as President. During
1986-87, Noriega cooperated with U.S. law enforcement officials in a number
of highly effective antidrug operations. This successful joint effort was
documented by letters of commendation sent to Noriega by John C. Lawn,
at that time head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. On February
13, 1987, Lawn wrote to Noriega: "Your longstanding support of the Drug
Enforcement Administration is greatly appreciated. International police
cooperation and vigorous pursuit of drug traffickers are our common goal."
Later in the same year, Lawn wrote to Noriega to commend the latter's contributions
to Operation Pisces, a joint U.S.-Panamanian effort against drug-smuggling
and drug money laundering. Panamanian participation was facilitated by
a tough new law, called Law 23, which contained tough new provisions against
drug money laundering. Lawn's letter to Noriega of May 27, 1987 includes
the following: "As you know, the recently concluded Operation Pisces was
enormously successful: many millions of dollars and many thousands of pounds
of drugs have been taken from the drug traffickers and international money
launderers.... "Again, the DEA and officials of Panama have together dealt
an effective blow against drug dealers and international money launderers.
Your personal commitment to Operation Pisces and the competent, professional,
and tireless efforts of other officials in the Republic of Panama were
essential to the final positive outcome of this investigation. Drug dealers
throughout the world now know that the profits of their illegal operations
are not welcome in Panama. The operation of May 6 led to the freezing of
millions of dollars in the bank accounts of drug dealers. Simultaneously,
bank papers were confiscated that gave officials important insights into
the drug trade and the laundering operations of the drug trade. The DEA
has always valued close cooperation, and we are prepared to proceed together
against international drug dealers whenever the opportunity presents itself."
/ Note #2 / Note #4 By a striking coincidence, it was in June 1987, just
one month after this glowing tribute had been written, that the U.S. government
declared war against Panama, initiating a campaign to destabilize Noriega
on the pretexts of lack of democracy and corruption. On June 30, 1987,
the U.S. State Department demanded the ouster of General Noriega. Elliott
Abrams, the assistant secretary of state for Latin American affairs, later
indicted for perjury in 1991 for his role in the Iran-Contra scandal and
coverup, to which he pled guilty, made the announcement. Abrams took note
of a resolution passed on June 23 by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
demanding the creation of a "democratic government" in Panama, and officially
concurred, thus making the toppling of Noriega the official U.S. policy.
Abrams also demanded that the Panamanian military be freed of "political
corruption." These were precisely the destabilization measures which Poindexter
had threatened 18 months earlier. The actual timing of the U.S. demand
for the ouster of Noriega appears to have been dictated by resentment in
the U.S. financial community over Noriega's apparent violation of certain
taboos in his measures against drug money laundering. As the "New York
Times"commente d on August 10, 1987: "The political crisis follows closely
what bankers here saw as a serious breach of bank secrecy regulations.
Earlier this year, as part of an American campaign against the laundering
of drug money, the Panamanian government froze a few suspect accounts here
in a manner that bankers and lawyers regarded as arbitrary." These were
precisely the actions lauded by the DEA's John Lawn. On August 12, 1987,
Noriega responded to the opposition campaigns fomented by the U.S. inside
Panama by declaring that the aim of Washington and its Panamanian minions
was "to smash Panama as a free and independent nation. It is a repetition
of what Teddy Roosevelt did when he militarily attacked following the separation
of Panama from Colombia." On August 13, 1987, the "Los Angeles Times" reported
that U.S. Assistant Attorney General Stephen Trott, who had headed up the
Department of Justice "Get Noriega" Task Force for more than a year, had
sent out orders to "pull together everything that we have on him [Noriega]
in order to see if he is prosecutable." This classic enemies-list operation
was clearly aimed at fabricating drug charges against Noriega, since that
was the political spin which the U.S. regime wished to impart to its attack
on Panama. In February 1988, Noriega was indicted on U.S. drug charges,
despite a lack of evidence and an even more compelling lack of jurisdiction.
This indictment was quickly followed by economic sanctions, an emba rgo
on trade and other economic warfare measures that were invoked by Washington
on March 2, 1988. All of these measures were timed to coincide with the
"Super Tuesday" presidential preference primaries in the southern states.
During the spring of 1988, the Reagan administration conducted a negotiation
with Noriega with the declared aim of convincing him to relinquish power
in exchange for having the drug charges against him dropped. In May, Michael
G. Kozak, the deputy assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs,
had been sent to Panama to meet with Noriega. Bush had come under attack
from other presidential candidates, especially Dukakis, for being soft
on Noriega and seeking a plea bargain with the Panamanian leader. Bush
first took the floor during the course of an administration policy-making
meeting to advocate an end of the bargaining with Noriega. According to
press reports, this proposal was "hotly contested." Then, in a speech in
Los Angeles, Bush made one of his exceedingly rare departures from the
Reagan line, by announcing with a straight face that a Bush administration
would not "bargain with drug dealers" at home or abroad. / Note #2 / Note
#5 Bush's interest in Noriega continued after he had assumed the presidency.
On April 6, 1989, Bush formally declared that the government of Panama
represented an "unusual and extraordinary threat" to U.S. national security
and foreign policy. He invoked the National Emergencies Act and the International
Emergency Act to declare a state of "national emergency" in this country
to meet the menace allegedly posed by the nationalists of little Panama.
The May 1, 1989 issue of "U.S. News and World Report" revealed that Bush
had authorized the expenditure of $10 million in CIA funds for operations
against the Panamanian government. These funds were obviously to be employed
to influence the Panamanian elections, which were scheduled for early May.
The money was delivered to Panama by CIA bagman Carlos Eleta Almaran, who
had just been arrested in Georgia on charges of drug trafficking. On May
2, with one eye on those elections, Bush attempted to refurbish his wimp
image with a blustering tirade delivered to the David Rockefeller-controlled
Council of the Americas in which he stated: "Let me say one thing clearly.
The U.S.A. will not accept the results of fraudulent elections that serve
to keep the supreme commander of the Panamanian armed forces in power."
This made clear that Bush intended to declare the elections undemocratic
if the pro-Noriega candidates were not defeated. The CIA's $10 million
and other monies were used to finance an extensive covert operation which
aimed at stealing the elections on May 7. The U.S.-supported Civic Democratic
Alliance, whose candidate was Guillermo Endara, purchased votes, bribed
the election officials, and finally physically absconded with the official
vote tallies. Because of the massive pattern of fraud and irregularities,
the Panamanian government annulled the election. Somewhere along the line,
the usual U.S.-staged "people power" upsurge had failed to materialize.
The inability of Bush to force through a victory by the anti-Noriega opposition
was a first moment of humiliation for the would-be Rough Rider. Speaking
at the commencement ceremonies of Mississippi State University in Starkville,
Mississippi, Bush issued a formal call to the citizens and soldiers of
Panama to overthrow Noriega, asserting that "they ought to do everything
they can to get Mr. Noriega out of there." Asked whether this was a call
for a military coup against Noriega, Bush replied: "I would love to see
them get him out of there. Not just the PDF -- the will of the people of
Panama." Bush elaborated that his was a call for "a revolution...." During
this period, Admiral William Crowe, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs
of Staff, attempted to convince the U.S. commander in Panama, Gen. Frederick
F. Woerner, to accept a brigade-sized reinforcement of 3,000 troops in
addition to the 12,000 men already stationed in Panama. Woerner declined
the additional men, which the Pentagon had intended to dispatch with great
fanfare in an attempt to intimidate Noriega and his triumphant supporters.
Operation Blue Spoon At this point, the Pentagon activated preparations
for Operation Blue Spoon, which included a contingency plan to kidnap Noriega
with the help of a Delta Force unit. There were discussions about whether
an attempt could be made to abduct Noriega with any likelihood of success;
it was concluded that Noriega was very wily and exceedingly difficult to
track. It was in the course of these deliberations that Defense Secretary
Cheney is reported to have told Crowe, "You know, the President has got
a long history of vindictive political actions. Cross Bush and you pay,"
he said, supplying the names of a few victims and adding: "Bush remembers
and you have to be careful." / Note #2 / Note #6 Thus intimidated by Bush,
the military commanders concurred in Bush's announcement of a brigade-sized
reinforcement for Woerner, plus the secret dispatch of Delta Forces and
Navy Seals. On July 17, Bush approved a plan to "assert U.S. treaty rights"
by undertaking demonstrative military provocations in violation of the
treaty. Woerner was soon replaced by Gen. Maxwell Reid "Mad Max" Thurman,
who would bring no qualms to his assignment of aggression. Thurman took
over at the Southern Command on September 30. In the wake of this tirade,
the U.S. forces in Panama began a systematic campaign of military provocations.
In July, the U.S. forces began practicing how to seize control of important
Panamanian military installations and civilian objectives, all in flagrant
violation of the Panama Canal Treaty. On July 1, for example, the town
of Gamboa was seized and held for 24 hours by U.S. troops, tanks, and helicopters.
The mayor of the town and 30 other persons were illegally detained during
this "maneuver." In Chilibre, the U.S. forces occupied the key water purification
plant serving Panama City and Colon. On August 15, Bush escalated the rhetoric
still further by proclaiming that he had the obligation "to kidnap Noriega."
Then, during the first days of October, there came an abortive U.S.-sponsored
coup attempt, followed by the public humiliation of George Bush, who had
failed to measure up to the standards of efficacy set by Theodore Roosevelt.
The provocations continued all the way up to the December 20 invasion.
In his speech delivered at 7:20 a.m. on December 21, 1989 announcing the
U.S. invasion, Bush said: "Many attempts have been made to resolve this
crisis through diplomacy and negotiations. All were rejected by the dictator
of Panama, Gen. Manuel Noriega, an indicted drug trafficker. "Last Friday,
Noriega declared his military dictatorship to be in a state of war with
the United States and publicly threatened the lives of Americans in Panama.
The very next day forces under his command shot and killed an unarmed American
serviceman, wounded another, arrested and brutally beat a third American
serviceman and then brutally interrogated his wife, threatening her with
sexual abuse. That was enough." / Note #2 / Note #7 Bush Orders Holocaust
The U.S. military operations, which got under way just after midnight on
Tuesday, were conducted with unusual ferocity. Mad Max Thurman sent in
the new Stealth and A-7 fighter-bombers, and AC-13 gunships. The neighborhood
around Noriega's Comandancia, called El Chorillo, was bombarded with a
vengeance and virtually razed, as was the working-class district of San
Miguelito, and large parts of the city of Colon. U.S. commanders had been
instructed that Bush wished to avoid U.S. casualties at all costs, and
that any hostile fire was to be answered by overwhelming U.S. firepower,
without regard to the number of civilian casualties that this might produce
among the Panamanians. Many of the Panamanian civilian dead were secretly
buried in unmarked mass graves during the dead of night by the U.S. forces;
many other bodies were consumed in the holocaust of fires that leveled
El Chorillo. The Institute of Seismology counted 417 bomb bu rsts in Panama
City alone during the first 14 hours of the U.S. invasion. For many days
there were no U.S. estimates of the civilian dead (or "collateral damage"),
and eventually the Bush regime set the death toll for Panamanian noncombatants
at slightly over 200. In reality, as "Executive Intelligence Review" and
former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark pointed out, there had been approximately
5,000 innocent civilian victims, including large numbers of women and children.
U.S. forces rounded up 10,000 suspected political opponents of "democracy"
and incarcerated them in concentration camps, calling many of them prisoners
of war. Many political prisoners were held for months after the invasion
without being charged with any specific offense, a clear violation of the
norms of "habeas corpus." The combined economic devastation caused by 30
months of U.S. sanctions and economic warfare, plus the results of bombardments,
firefights and torchings, had taken an estimated $7 billion out of the
Panamanian economy, in which severe poverty was the lot of most of the
population, apart from the "rabiblanco" bankers who were the main support
for Bush's intervention. The bombing left 15,000 homeless. The Endara government
purged several thousand government officials and civil servants under the
pretext that they had been tainted by their association with Noriega. Perhaps
not by accident, the new U.S. puppet regime could only be described as
a congeries of drug pushers and drug money launderers. The most succinct
summary was provided by the "International Herald Tribune" on February
7, 1990, which reported: "The nation's new President Guillermo Endara has
for years been a director of one of the Panamanian banks used by Colombia's
drug traffickers. Guillermo Ford, the Second Vice President and chairman
of the banking commission, is a part owner of the Dadeland Bank of Florida,
which was named in a court case two years ago as a central financial institution
for one of the biggest Medellin money launderers, Gonzalo Mora. Rogelio
Cruz, the new Attorney General, has been a director of the First Interamericas
Bank, owned by Rodriguez Orejuela, one of the bosses of the Cali Cartel
gang in Colombia." The portly Guillermo Endara was also the business partner
and corporate attorney of Carlos Eleta Almaran, the CIA bagman already
mentioned. Eleta Almaran, the owner of the Panamanian branch of Philip
Morris Tobacco was arraigned in Bibb County, Georgia in April 1989 by DEA
officials, who accused him of conspiracy to import 600 kilos of cocaine
per month into the U.S., and to set up dummy corporations to launder the
estimated $300 million in profits this project was expected to produce.
Eleta was first freed on $8 million bail; after the "successful" U.S. invasion
of Panama, all charges against him were ordered dropped by Bush and Thornburgh.
As for Endara's first vice president, Ricardo Arias Calderon, his brother,
Jaime Arias Calderon, was president of the First Interamericas Bank when
that bank was controlled by the Cali Cartel. Jaime Arias Calderon was also
the co-owner of the Banco Continental, which laundered $40 million in drug
money, part of which was used to finance the activities of the anti-Noriega
opposition. Thus, all of Bush's most important newly installed puppets
were implicated in drug-dealing. The invasion presented some very difficult
moments for Bush. From the beginning of the operation late on December
20, until Christmas Eve, the imposing U.S. martial apparatus had proven
incapable of locating and capturing Noriega. The U.S. Southern Command
was terrorized when a few Noriega loyalists launched a surprise attack
on U.S. headquarters with mortars, scattering the media personnel who had
been grinding out their propaganda. There was great fear through the U.S.
command that Noriega had successfully implemented a plan for the PDF to
melt away to arms caches and secret bases in the Panamanian jungle for
a prolonged guerrilla warfare effort. As it turned out, Noriega had failed
to give the order to disperse. At War With the Vatican Then, on the evening
of December 24, it was reported that Noriega, armed with an Uzi machine
gun, had made his way unchallenged and undetected to the Papal Nunciature
in Panama City where he had asked for and obtained political asylum. The
standoff that then developed encapsulated the hereditary war of the Bush
family with the Holy See and the Roman Catholic Church. For eight days,
U.S. troops surrounded the Nunciature, which they proceeded to bombard
with deafening decibels of explicitly satanic heavy metal and other hard
rock music, which, according to some reports, had been personally chosen
by Mad Max Thurman in order to "unnerve Noriega and the Nuncio," Monsignor
LaBoa. At the same time, Bush ordered the State Department to carry out
real acts of thuggery in making threatening representations to the Holy
See. It became clear that Roman Catholic priests, nuns, monks and prelates
would soon be in danger in many countries of Ibero-America. Nevertheless,
the Vatican declined to expel Noriega from the Nunciature in accordance
with U.S. demands. Bush's forces in Panama had shown they were ready to
play fast and loose with diplomatic immunity. A number of foreign embassies
were broken into by U.S. troops while they were frantically searching for
Noriega, and the Cuban and Nicaraguan embassies were ringed with tanks
and troops in a ham-handed gesture of intimidation. It is clear that in
this context, Bush contemplated the storming of the Nunciature by U.S.
forces. In Panama City, the Endara-Ford-Arias Calderon forces mobilized
their BMW base and hired hundreds of those who had nothing to eat for militant
demonstrations outside of the Nunciature. These were liberally seeded with
U.S. special forces and other commandos in civilian clothes. As the demonstrations
grew more menacing, and the U.S. troops and tanks made no move to restrain
them, it was clear that the U.S. forces were preparing to stage a violent
but "spontaneous" assault by the masses on the Nunciature that would include
the assassination of Noriega and the small group of his co-workers who
had accompanied him into that building. At about this time, Monsignor LaBoa
warned Noriega, "you could be lynched like Mussolini." Noriega appears
to have concluded that remaining in the Nunciature meant certain death
for himself and his subordinates at the hands of the U.S. commandos operating
under the cover of the mob. LaBoa and the others on the staff of the Nunciature
would also be in grave danger. On January 3, 1990, after thanking LaBoa
and giving him a letter to the Pope, Noriega, dressed in his general's
uniform, left the Nunciature and surrendered to General Cisneros. A Crime
and a Failure In Bush's speech of December 20 he had offered the following
justification for his act of war, Operation Just Cause: "The goals of the
United States have been to safeguard the lives of Americans, to defend
democracy in Panama, to combat drug trafficking, and to protect the integrity
of the Panama Canal Treaty." If these were the goals, then Bush's invasion
of Panama must be counted not only a crime, but also a failure. On April
5, 1991, newspapers all over Ibero-America carried details of a new report
by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration confirming that the U.S.-installed
puppet President of Panama, Guillermo Endara, had been an officer of at
least six companies which had been demonstrably implicated in laundering
drug money. These were the Banco General, the Banco de Colombia, the Union
Bank of Switzerland, the Banco Aleman, the Primer Banco de Ahorros, Sudameris,
Banaico and the Banco del Istmo. The money laundered came from a drug-smuggling
ring headed up by Augusto Falcon and Salvador Magluta of Colombia, who
are reported to have smuggled an average of one ton of cocaine per month
into Florida during the decade 1977-87, including many of the years during
which Bush's much-touted South Florida Task Force and related operations
were in operation. With the puppet President so heavily implicated in the
activity of the international drug mafia, it can be no surprise that the
plague of illegal drugs has markedly worsened in the wake of Bush's invasion.
According to the London "Independent" of March 5, 1991, "statistics now
indicate that since General Noriega's departure, cocaine trafficking has,
in fact, prospered" in the country. On March 1, the State Department had
conceded that the turnover of drug money laundered in Panama had at least
regained the levels attained before the 1989 invasion. According to the
"Los Angeles Times" of April 28, 1991, current levels of drug-trafficking
in Panama "in some cases exceed" what existed before the December 20 invasion,
and U.S. officials "say the trend is sharply upward and includes serious
movements by the Colombian cartels into areas largely ignored under Noriega."
Bush's invasion of Panama has done nothing to fight the scourge of illegal
narcotics. Rather, the fact that so many of Bush's hand-picked puppets
can be shown to be top figures in the drug mafia suggests that drug-trafficking
through Panama toward the United States has increased after the ouster
of Noriega. If drug shipments to the United States have increased, this
exposes Bush's pledge to "protect the lives of Americans" as a lie. As
far as the promise of democracy is concerned, it must be stressed that
Panama has remained under direct U.S. military dictatorship and virtual
martial law until this writing in the late autumn of 1991, two years after
Bush's adventure was launched. The congressional and local elections that
were conducted during early 1991 were thoroughly orchestrated by the U.S.
occupation forces. Army intelligence units interrogated potential voters,
and medical battalions handed out vaccines and medicines to urban and rural
populations to encourage them to vote. Every important official in the
Panamanian government from Endara on down has U.S. military "liaison officers"
assigned on a permanent basis. These officers are from the Defense Department's
Civic Action-Country Area Team (or CA-CAT), a counterinsurgency apparatus
that parallels the "civic action" teams unleashed during the Vietnam War.
CA-CAT officers supervise all government ministries and even supervise
police precincts in Panama City. The Panamanian Defense Forces have been
dissolved, and the CA-CAT officers are busily creating a new constabulary,
the Fuerza Publica. Radio station and newspaper editors who spoke out against
the U.S. invasion or criticized the puppet regime were jailed or intimidated,
as in the case of the publisher Escolastico Calvo, who was held in concentration
camps and jails for some months after the invasion without an arrestwarrant
and without specificcharges. Trade union rights are non-existent: After
a demonstration by 100,000 persons in December 1990 had protested growing
unemployment and Endara's plans to "privatize" the state sector by selling
it off for a song to the "rabiblanco" bankers, all of the labor leaders
who had organized the march were fired from their jobs, and arrest warrants
were issued against 100 union officials by the government. In the wake
of Bush's invasion, the economy of Panama has not been rebuilt, but has
rather collapsed further into misery. The Bush administration has set as
the first imperative for the puppet regime the maintenance of debt service
on Panama's $6 billion in international debt. Debt service payments take
precedence over spending on public works, public health, and all other
categories. Bush had promised Panama $2 billion for post-invasion reconstruction,
but he later reduced this to $1 billion. What was finally forthcoming was
just $460 million, most of which was simply transferred to the Wall Street
banks in order to defray the debt service owed by Panama. The figure of
$460 million scarcely exceeds the $400 million in Panamanian holdings that
were supposedly frozen by the United States during the period of economic
warfare against Noriega, but which were then given to the New York banks,
also for debt service payments. As far as the integrity of the Panama Canal
Treaty signed by Torrijos and Carter, and ratified by the U.S. Senate,
is concerned, on February 7, 1989, Rep. Philip Crane (R-Il.) introduced
a House Joint Resolution, with 26 co-sponsors, to express "the sense of
the Congress that the President or the Congress should abrogate the Panama
Canal Treaties of 1977 and the Neutrality Treaty." Then on March 21, 1991,
Senator Larry Craig (R-Id.), together with Rep. Philip Crane on the House
side, introduced a concurrent resolution, calling on George Bush to renegotiate
the Canal Treaties "to permit the United States Armed Forces to remain
in Panama beyond Dec. 31, 1999, and to permit the U.S. to act independently
to continue to protect the Panama Canal" -- i.e., for the United States
to keep a military presence in Panama indefinitely. These resolutions are
still pending before the Congress. Thus, on every point enumerated by Bush
as basic to his policy -- the lives of Americans, Panamanian democracy,
anti-drug operations, and the integrity of the treaty -- Bush has obtained
a fiasco. Bush's invasion of Panama will stand as a chapter of shame and
infamy in the recent history of the United States. Notes for Chapter XXIV
14. Transcript of President Bush's press conference, "Washington Post,"
June 9, 1989. 18. "Congressional Record," 58th Congress, 3rd session, p.
19. 19. See "Police State and Global Gendarme: The United States under
the Thornburgh Doctrine," "American Leviathan: Administrative Fascism under
the Bush Regime," (Wiesbaden: EIR News Service, 1990), pp. 61-102. 21.
"Panama: Atrocities of the 'Big Stick,'|" in "American Leviathan", pp.
39-40. 22. For Gregg's testimony on Bush-Noriega relations, see "Testimony
on Bush Meeting With Panama Ambassador," "New York Times," May 21, 1988.
24. "American Leviathan," pp. 41-42. 25. "Bush Presses to Cut Off Talks
with Noriega," "Washington Post," May 20, 1988. 26. Bob Woodward, "The
Commanders" (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991), p. 89. 27. Text of President
Bush's Address, "Washington Post," Dec. 21, 1989. ------------------------------------------------
(This file was found elsewhere on the Internet and uploaded to the Patriot
FTP site by S.P.I.R.A.L., the Society for the Protection of Individual
Rights and Liberties. E-mail alex@spiral.org)
The End