PJ 51
CHAPTER 3

REC #2 HATONN

MON., JUNE 22, 1992 2:09 P.M. YEAR 5, DAY 310

MONDAY. JUNE 22. 1992
GEORGE BUSH & CIA
CONTINUED

Please, readers, bear with me while I give a private notation to George Green regarding the earlier mentioned phone call from "a Mr. Resnick".

If you can't see the same paw-prints on this "intelligence" phone call as other "set-ups" then I suggest you take cover--for real. Is the total Intelligence Community this stupid or only self-ap-pointed ones who twist into unfocused childish games for their own purposes? I want to print herein the phone call as now transcribed from the phone recorder. Now, note, readers, that G.G. is UPSET to some extent for the voice leaving the mes-sage was totally "unfriendly", if I might be so observant.

At any rate the message went as follows:

"Hello, my name is Paul Robert Resnick, Jr. I'm calling from my residence 'at the White House' at Ave. in , Pa. I'm calling in regards to the April 14th, 1992 issue (LIBERATOR) vol. 18 no. 13. A-h-h, I'm at area code (---: ----). You can call me collect, if you so desire. This is Paul Resnick, over the Great Seal of the President - - -[message remainder cut off by the ma-chine].

Would "I" be upset? NO--but then, I'm not George Green. Moreover, it only gives clues and information as to who and what is "behind" the foolishness for BOTH HIM AND ME! I suspect that I am getting far more annoyed with this "source" than is G.G. but each of us does that which seems suitable at a given circumstance.

By the way, readers, I find one William Clark (remember--from the San Luis Obispo Connection?? or---) also becoming most annoying as he seems to be able to get one (using initials of J.A.) to clandestinely sign for packages, expresses and other types of material without becoming evident for personal identifi­cation. So be it. By the way, to the caller in point--YOU HAVE THE WRONG IDENTIFICATION FOR THE PERSON WHOSE INFORMATION YOU REALLY WISH TO STOP FROM THE PRINTING! CLOSE, YES--CORRECT? NO!

Now, chela, let us continue where we left off. I can only reas­sure you, precious, that you are in MY shield so do not become faint-of-heart on me now.

AGAIN QUOTING:

The Brown Brothers Harriman/Skull and Bones crowd counter­attacked in favor of Bush, mobilizing some significant re­sources. One was none other than Leon Jaworski, the former Watergate special prosecutor. Jaworski's mission for the Bush network appears to have been to get the Townhouse and related Nixon slush fund issues off the table of the public debate and confirmation hearings. Jaworski speaking at a convention of former FBI special agents meeting in Houston, defended Bush against charges that he had accepted illegal or improper pay­ments from Nixon and CREEP operatives. "This was investi­gated by me when I served as Watergate special prosecutor. I found no involvement of George Bush and gave him full clear­ance. I hope that, in the interest of fairness, the matter will not be bandied about unless something new has appeared on the horizon."

MORE OPPOSITION

Negative mail from both houses of Congress was also coming in to the White House. On November 12, GOP Congressman James M. Collins of Dallas, Texas wrote to Ford: "I hope you will reconsider the appointment of George Bush to the CIA. At this time it seems to me that it would be a greater service for the country for George to continue his service in China. He is not the right man for the CIA."

There was also a letter to Ford from Democratic Congress­man Lucien Nedzi of Michigan, who had been the chairman of one of the principal House Watergate investigating committees. Nedzi wrote as follows: "The purpose of my letter is to express deep concern over the announced appointment of George Bush as the new Director of the Central Intelligence Agency."

***The writing was interrupted at this point.



PJ 51
CHAPTER 4

REC #2 HATONN

WED., JUNE 24, 1992 7:19 A.M. YEAR 5, DAY 313

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 24, 1992
GEORGE BUSH & CIA
CONTINUED

QUOTING CONTINUED:

" His proposed appointment would bring with it inevitable
complications for the intelligence community. Mr. Bush is a man with a recent partisan political past and a probable near-term partisan political future. This is a burden neither the Agency, nor the legislative oversight committee, nor the Execu­tive should have to bear as the CIA enters perhaps the most dif­ficult period of its history.

"Accordingly, I respectfully urge that you reconsider your appointment of Mr. Bush to this most sensitive of positions."

Within just a couple of days of making Bush's nomination public, the Ford White House was aware that it had a significant public relations problem. To get reelected, Ford had to appear as a reformer, breaking decisively with the bad old days of Nixon and the Plumbers. But with the Bush nomination, Ford was putting a former party chairman and future candidate for national office at the head of the entire intelligence community.

Ford's staff began to marshal attempted rebuttals for the at­tacks on Bush. On November 5, Jim Connor of Ford's staff had some trite boiler-plate inserted into Ford's Briefing Book in case he were asked if the advent of Bush represented a move to obstruct the Church and Pike Committees. Ford was told to an­swer that he "asked Director Colby to cooperate fully with the Committee" and "expects Ambassador Bush to do likewise once he becomes Director. As you are aware, the work of both the Church and Pike Committees is slated to wind up shortly." In case he were asked about Bush politicizing the CIA, Ford was to answer; "I believe that Republicans and Democrats who know George Bush and have worked with him know that he does not let politics and partisanship interfere with the performance of public duty." That was a mouthful. "Nearly all of the men and women in this and preceding administrations have had partisan identities and have held partisan party posts....George Bush is a part of that American tradition and he will demonstrate this when he assumes his new duties."

But when Ford in an appearance on a Sunday talk show, was asked if he were ready to exclude Bush as a possible vice-presi­dential candidate, he refused to do so, answering, "I don't think people of talent ought to be excluded from any field of public service." At a press conference, Ford said, "I don't think he's eliminated from consideration by anybody, the delegates or the convention or myself."

BUSH CIA CONFIRMATION HEARINGS

Bush's confirmation hearings got under way on December 15, 1975. Even judged by Bush's standards of today, they con­stitute a landmark exercise in sanctimonious hypocrisy so as­tounding as to defy comprehension.

Bush's sponsor was GOP Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, the ranking Republican on Senator John Stennis's Sen­ate Armed Services Committee. Thurmond unloaded a mawkish panegyric in favor of Bush: "I think all of this shows an interest on your part in humanity, in civic development, love of your country, and willingness to serve your fellow man."

Bush's opening statement was also in the main a tissue of ba­nality and cliches. He indicated his support for the Rockefeller Commission report without having mastered its contents in de­tail. He pointed out that he had attended cabinet meetings from 1971 to 1974, without mentioning who the President was in those days. Everybody was waiting for this consummate pontificator to get to the issue of whether he was going to attempt the vice-presidency in 1976. Readers of Bush's propaganda biographies know that he never decides on his own to run for office, but always responds to the urging of his friends. Within those limits, his answer was that he was available for the second spot on the ticket. More remarkably, he indicated that he had a hereditary right to it--it was, as he said, his "birthright".

Would Bush accept a draft? "I cannot in all honesty tell you that I would not accept, and I do not think, gentlemen, that any American should be asked to say he would not accept, and to my knowledge, no one in the history of this Republic has been asked to renounce his political birthright as the price of confirmation for any office. And I can tell you that I will not seek any office while I hold the job of CIA Director. I will put politics wholly out of my sphere of activities." Even more, Bush argued, his willingness to serve at the CIA reflected his sense of noblesse oblige. Friends had asked him why he wanted to go to Langley at all, "with all the controversy swirling around the CIA, with its obvious barriers to political future?"

Magnanimously, Bush replied to his own rhetorical questions: "My answer is simple. First, the work is desperately important to the survival of this country, and to the survival of freedom around the world. And second, old fashioned as it may seem to some, it is my duty to serve my country. And I did not seek this job but I want to do it and I will do my very best." [H: Getting any ideas yet, that Mr. Bush might just "fudge the truth" a little bit?]

Stennis responded with a joke that sounds eery in retrospect: "If I thought that you were seeking the Vice Presidential nomination or Presidential nomination by way of the route of being Director of the CIA, I would question your judgment most severely." There was laughter in the committee room.

Senators Barry Goldwater and Stuart Symington made clear that they would give Bush a free ride not only out of deference to Ford, but also out of regard for the late Prescott Bush, with whom they had both started out in the Senate in 1952. Senator Thomas McIntyre was more demanding, and raised the issue of enemies list operations, a notorious abuse of the Nixon (and subsequent) administrations:

"What if you get a call from the President, next July or Au-gust, saying 'George, I would like to see you.' You go in the White House. He takes you over in the corner and says, 'Look, things are not going too well in my campaign. This Reagan is gaining on me all the time. Now, he is a movie star of some renown and has traveled with the fast set. He was a Hollywood star. I want you to get any dirt you can on this guy because I need it.'"

What would Bush do? "I do not think that is difficult sir," intoned Bush. "I would simply say that it gets back to character and it gets back to integrity; and furthermore, I cannot conceive of the incumbent doing that sort of thing. But if I were put into that kind of position where you had a clear moral issue, I would simply say 'no' because you see I think, and maybe--I have the advantage as everyone on this committee of 20/20 hindsight, that this agency must stay in the foreign intelligence business and must not harass American citizens, like in Operation Chaos, and that these kinds of things have no business in the foreign intelligence business." This was the same Bush whose 1980 campaign was heavily staffed by CIA veterans, some retired, some on active service and in flagrant violation of the Hatch Act. This is the Vice President who ran Iran-Contra out of his own private office, and so forth.

Gary Hart also had a few questions. How did Bush feel about assassinations? Bush "found them morally offensive and I am pleased the President has made that position very, very clear to the Intelligence Committee..." How about "coups d'etat in various countries around the world?" Hart wanted to know.

"You mean in the covert field?" replied Bush. "Yes." "I would want to have full benefit of all the intelligence. I would want to have full benefit of how these matters were taking place but I cannot tell you, and I do not think I should, that there would never be any support for a coup d'etat; in other words, I cannot tell you I cannot conceive of a situation where I would not support such action." In retrospect, this was a moment of refreshing candor.

ON THE EDGE OF WATERGATE

Gary Hart knew where at least one of Bush's bodies was buried:

Senator Hart: You raised the question of getting the CIA out of domestic areas totally. Let us hypothesize a situation where a President has stepped over the bounds. Let us say the FBI is in­vestigating some people who are involved, and they go right to the White House. There is some possible CIA interest. The President calls you and says, I want you as Director of the CIA to call the Director of the FBI to tell him to call off this opera­tion because it may jeopardize some CIA activities.

Mr. Bush: Well, generally speaking, and I think you are hy­pothecating a case without spelling it out in enough detail to know if there is any real legitimate foreign intelligence aspect...

There it was: the smoking gun tape again, the notorious Bush-Liedtke-Mosbacher-Pennzoil contribution to the CREEP again, the money that had been found in the pockets of Bernard Barker and the Plumbers after the Watergate break-in. But Hart did not mention it overtly, only in this oblique, Byzantine man­ner. Hart went on:

I am hypothesizing a case that actually happened in June 1972. There might have been some tangential CIA interest in something in Mexico. Funds were laundered and so forth.

Mr. Bush: Using a 50-50 hindsight on that case, I hope I would have said the CIA is not going to get involved in that if we are talking about the same one.

Senator Hart: We are.

Senator (Patrick) Leahy: Are there others?

Bush was on the edge of having his entire Watergate past come out in the wash, but the liberal Democrats were already far too devoted to the one-party state to grill Bush seriously. In a few seconds, responding to another question from Hart, Bush was off the hook, droning on about plausible deniability, of all things.

The next day, December 16, 1975, Church, appearing as a witness, delivered his philippie against Bush. After citing evi­dence of widespread public concern about the renewed intrusion of the CIA in domestic politics under Bush, Church reviewed the situation: "So here we stand. Need we find or look to higher places than the Presidency and the nominee himself to confirm the fact that this door of the Vice Presidency in 1976 is left open and that he remains under active consideration for the ticket in 1976? We stand in this position in the close wake of Watergate, and this committee has before it a candidate for Di­rector of the CIA, a man of strong partisan political background and a beckoning political future.

"Under these circumstances I find the appointment astonish­ing. Now, as never before, the Director of the CIA must be completely above political suspicion. At the very least this com­mittee, I believe, should insist that the nominee disavow any place on the 1976 Presidential ticket....0therwise his position as CIA Director would be hopelessly compromised.

"If Ambassador Bush wants to be Director of the CIA, he should seek that position. If he wants to be Vice President, then that ought to be his goal. It is wrong for him to want both posi­tions, even in a Bicentennial year."

It was an argument that conceded far too much to Bush in the effort to be fair. Bush was incompetent for the post, and the ar­gument should have ended there. Church's unwillingness to demand the unqualified rejection of such a nominee no matter what future goodies he was willing temporarily to renounce has cast long shadows over subsequent American history. But even so, Bush was in trouble.

Church was at his ironic best when he compared Bush to a recent chairman of the Democratic National Committee: "...If a Democrat were President, Mr. Larry O'Brien ought not to be nominated to be Director of the CIA. Of all times to do it, this is the worst, right at a time when it is obvious that public confi­dence needs to be restored in the professional, impartial, and nonpolitical character of the agency. So, we have the worst of all possible worlds." Church tellingly underlined that "Bush's birthright does not include being Director of the CIA. It in­cludes the right to run for public office, to be sure, but that is quite a different matter than confirming him now for this partic­ular position."

Church said he would under no circumstance vote for Bush, but that if the latter renounced the '76 ticket, he would refrain from attempting to canvass other votes against Bush. It was an ambiguous position.

Bush came back to the witness chair in an unmistakably whining mood. He was offended above all by the comparison of his august self to the upstart Larry O'Brien: "I think there is some difference in the qualifications," said Bush in a hyperthy­roid rage. "Larry O'Brien did not serve in the Congress of the United States for four years. Larry O'Brien did not serve, with no partisanship, at the United Nations for two years. Larry O'Brien did not serve as the Chief of the U.S. Liaison Office in the People's Republic of China." Not only Bush but his whole cursus honorum was insulted! "I will never apologize," said Bush a few seconds later, referring to his own record. Then Bush pulled out his "you must resign" letter to Nixon: "Now, I submit that for the record that that is demonstrable indepen­dence. I did not do it by calling the newspapers and saying, 'Look, I am having a press conference. Here is a sensational statement to make me, to separate me from a President in great agony."

[H: I can only again warn you-the-people--this man will do anything to achieve HIS GOALS--including bringing down the entire world into this New World Order--One World Government and he is ready to do so RIGHT NOW!!!]

THE FORD LETTER

Bush had been savaged in the hearings, and his nomination was now in grave danger of being rejected by the committee, and then by the full Senate. Later in the afternoon of November 16, a damage control party met at the White House to assess the situation for Ford. According to Patrick O'Donnell of Ford's Congressional Relations Office, the most Bush could hope for was a bare majority of 9 out of 16 votes on the Stennis Com­mittee.

Ford was inclined to give the senators what they wanted, and exclude Bush a priori from the vice-presidential contest. When Ford called George over to the Oval Office on December 18, he already had the text of a letter to Stennis announcing that Bush was summarily ruled off the ticket if Ford were the candidate (which was anything but certain). Ford showed Bush the letter. We do not know what whining may have been heard in the White House that day from a senatorial patrician deprived (for the moment) of his birthright. Ford could not yield; it would have thrown his entire election campaign into acute embarrass­ment just as he was trying to get it off the ground. When George saw that Ford was obdurate, he proposed that the letter be amended to make it look as if the initiative to rule him out as a running mate had originated with Bush. The fateful letter read:

Dear Mr. Chairman:

As we Both know, the nation must have a strong and effective foreign intelligence capability. Just over two weeks ago, on December 7 while in Pearl Harbor, I said that we must never drop our guard nor unilaterally dis­mantle our defenses. The Central Intelligence Agency is essential to maintaining our national security.

I nominated Ambassador George Bush to be CIA Di­rector so we can now get on with appropriate decisions concerning the intelligence community. I need--and the nation needs--his leadership at CIA as we rebuild and strengthen the foreign intelligence community in a manner which earns the confidence of the American people.

Ambassador Bush and I agree that the Nation's imme­diate foreign intelligence needs must take precedence over other considerations and there should be continuity in his CIA leadership. Therefore, if Ambassador Bush is con­firmed by the Senate as Director of Central Intelligence, I will not consider him as my Vice Presidential running mate in 1976.

He and I have discussed this in detail. In fact, he urged that I make this decision. This says something about the man and about his desire to do his job for the nation...

On December 19, this letter was received by Stennis, who announced its contents to his committee. The Committee promptly approved the Bush appointment by a vote of 12 to 4, with Gary Hart, Leahy, Culver and McIntyre voting against him. Bush's name could now be sent to the floor, where a re­crudescence of anti-Bush sentiment was not likely, but could not be ruled out.

Then, two days before Christmas, the CIA chief in Athens, Richard Welch, was gunned down in front of his home by masked assassins as he returned home with his wife from a Christmas party. A group calling itself the "November 19 Or­ganization" later claimed credit for the killing.

Certain networks immediately began to use the Welch assas­sination as a bludgeon against the Church and Pike Committees. An example came from columnist Charles Bartlett, writing in the now-defunct Washington Star: "The assassination of the CIA Station Chief, Richard Welch, in Athens is a direct consequence of the stagy hearings of the Church Committee. Spies tradition­ally function in a gray world of immunity from such crudities. But the Committee's prolonged focus on CIA activities in Greece left agents there exposed to random vengeance." Staffers of the Church committee pointed out that the Church Committee had never said a word about Greece or mentioned the name Welch.

CIA Director. Colby first blamed the death of Welch on Counterspy magazine, which had published the name of Welch some months before. The next day, Colby backed off, blaming a more general climate of hysteria regarding the CIA which had led to the assassination of Richard Welch. In his book, Honor­able Men, published some years later, Colby continued to at­tribute the killing to the "sensational and hysterical way the CIA investigations had been handled and trumpeted around the world."

The Ford White House resolved to exploit this tragic incident to the limit. Liberals raised a hue and cry in response. Les As­pin later recalled that "the air transport plane carrying Welch's body circled Andrews Air Force Base for three-quarters of an hour in order to land live on the Today Show." Ford waived re­strictions in order to allow interment at Arlington Cemetery. The funeral on January 7 was described by the Washington Post as "a show of pomp usually reserved for the nation's most renowned military heroes." Anthony Lewis of the New York Times described the funeral as "a political device" with cere­monies "being manipulated in order to arouse a political back­lash against legitimate criticism", Norman Kempster in the Washington Star found that "only a few hours after the CIA's Athens station chief was gunned down in front of his home, the agency began a subtle campaign intended to persuade Americans that his death was the indirect result of congressional investiga­tions and the direct result of an article in an obscure magazine." Here, in the words of a Washington Star headline, was "one CIA effort that worked".

BUSH AND THE ADL
[PAY ATTENTION!]

Between Christmas and New Year's in Kennebunkport, looking forward to the decisive floor vote on his confirmation, Bush was at work tending and mobilizing key parts of his net­work. One of them was a certain Leo Cherne.

Leo Cherne is not a household word but he has been a powerful figure in the U.S. intelligence community over the period since World War H. Leo Cherne was to be one of Bush's most important allies when he was CIA Director and throughout Bush's subsequent career.

Cherne has been a part of B'nai B'rith all his life. He was and still is an ardent Zionist. He is typical to the extent of the so-called "neoconservatives" who have been prominent in government and policy circles under Reagan-Bush, and Bush. Cherne was the founder of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a conduit for neo-Bukharinite operations between East and West in the Cold War, and it was also reputedly a CIA front organization.

Cherne was a close friend of William Casey, who was working in the Nixon administration as undersecretary of state for economic affairs in mid-1973. That was when Cherne was named to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) by Nixon. On March 15, 1976, Cherne became the chairman of this body, which specializes in conduiting the demands of financiers and related interests into the intelligence community. Cherne, as we will see, would be, along with Bush, a leading beneficiary of Ford's spring 1976 intelligence reorganization.

Bush's correspondence with Cherne leaves no doubt that theirs was a very special relationship. Cherne represented for Bush a strengthening of his links to the Zionist-neoconservative milieu, with options for backchanneling into the Soviet bloc. Bush wrote to Cherne, "I read your testimony with keen interest and appreciation. I am really looking forward to meeting you and working with you in connection with your PFIAB chores. Have a wonderful 1976."

January 1976 was not auspicious for Bush. He had to wait until almost the end of the month for his confirmation vote, hanging there, slowly twisting in the wind. In the meantime, the Pike Committee report was approaching completion, after months of probing and haggling, and was sent to the Government Printing Office on January 23, despite continuing arguments from the White House and from the GOP that the committee could not reveal confidential and secret material provided by the executive branch. On Sunday, January 25, a copy of the report was leaked to Daniel Schorr of CBS News, and was exhibited on television that evening. The following morning, the New York Times published an extensive summary of the entire Pike Committee report.

Despite all this exposure, the House voted on January 29 that the Pike Committee report could not be released. A few days later, it was published in full in the Village Voice, and CBS correspondent Daniel Schorr was held responsible for its appearance. The Pike Committee report attacked Henry Kissinger, "whose comments," it said, "are at variance with the facts." In the midst of this imperial regency over the United States, an un-amused Kissinger responded that "we are facing a new version of McCarthyism". A few days later, Kissinger said of the Pike Committee: "I think they have used classified information in a reckless way, and the version of covert operations they have leaked to the press has the cumulative effect of being totally un-true and damaging to the nation."

Thus, as Bush's confirmation vote approached, the Ford White House, on the one hand, and the Pike and Church Committees on the other, were close to "open political warfare", as the Washington Post put it at the time. One explanation of the leaking of the Pike report was offered by Otis Pike himself on February 11: "A copy was sent to the CIA. It would be to their advantage to leak it for publication." By now, Ford was raving about mobilizing the FBI to find out how the report had been leaked.

On January 19, George Bush was present in the Executive Gallery of the House of Representatives, seated close to the un-fortunate Betty Ford, for the President's State of the Union Address. This was a photo opportunity so that Ford's CIA candidate could get on television for a cameo appearance that might boost his standing on the eve of confirmation.

CONFIRMED AT LAST

Senate floor debate was underway on January 26, and Sena­tor McIntyre lashed out at the Bush nomination as "an insensi­tive affront to the American people".

In further debate on the day of the vote, January 27, Senator Joseph Biden joined other Democrats in assailing Bush as "the wrong appointment for the wrong job at the wrong time." Church appealed to the Senate to reject Bush, a man "too deeply embroiled in partisan politics and too intertwined with the politi­cal destiny of the President himself" to be able to lead the CIA. Goldwater, Tower, Percy, Howard Baker and Clifford Case all spoke up for Bush. Bush's floor leader was Strom Thurmond who supported Bush by attacking the Church and Pike Commit­tees.

Finally it came to a roll call and Bush passed by a vote of 64-27. Church's staff felt they had failed lamentably, having gotten only liberal Democrats and the single Republican vote of Jesse Helms.

It was the day after Bush's confirmation that the House Rules Committee voted 9 to 7 to block the publication of the Pike Committee report. The issue then went to the full House on January 29, which voted, 146 to 124, that the Pike Committee must submit its report to censorship by the White House and thus by the CIA. At almost the same time, Senator Howard Baker joined Tower and Goldwater in opposing the principal fi­nal recommendation of the Church Committee, such as it was--the establishment of a permanent intelligence over sight com­mittee.

Pike found that the attempt to censor his report had made "a complete travesty of the whole doctrine of separation of pow­ers." In the view of a staffer of the Church committee, "all within two days, the House Intelligence Committee had ground to a halt, and the Senate Intelligence Committee had split asun­der over the centerpiece of its recommendations. The White House must have rejoiced; the Welch death and leaks from the Pike Committee report had produced, at last, a backlash against the congressional investigations."

Riding the crest of that wave of backlash was George Bush. The constellation of events around his confirmation prefigures the wretched state of Congress today: a rubber stamp parliament in a totalitarian state, incapable of overriding even one of Bush's 22 vetoes.

On Friday, January 30, Ford and Bush were joined at the CIA auditorium for Bush's swearing-in ceremony before a large gathering of agency employees. Colby was also there: Some said he had been fired primarily because Kissinger thought that he was divulging too much to the congressional committees, but Kissinger later told Colby that the latter's stratagems had been correct.

Colby opened the ceremony with a few brief words: "Mr. President, and Mr. Bush, I have great honor to present you to an organization of dedicated professionals. Despite the turmoil and tumult of the last year, they continue to produce the best intelligence in the world." This was met by a burst of applause. Ford's line was: "We cannot improve this agency by destroying it." Bush promised to make the "CIA an instrument of peace and on object of pride for all our people."

* * *

On this last note of nausea-related lies, let us take a break please.

Hatonn to stand-by. We will continue on this subject when we again sit to pen.