Date: Mon Jan  4 03:42:51 est 1993
From: "John Covici" <covici@ccs.covici.com>
Message-Id: <2b47f893.ccs@ccs.covici.com>
Reply-To: "John Covici" <covici@ccs.covici.com>
Organization: Covici Computer Systems
To: uunet!css.itd.umich.edu!pauls@uunet.UU.NET
Subject: Unauthorized Biography of George Bush: Part 17
Status: O
Chapter 13 Part 2

CHAIRMAN GEORGE IN WATERGATE 

During the
spring of 1973, George Bush was no
longer simply a long-standing member of
the Nixon cabinet. He was also, de
facto, a White House official,
operating out of the same Old Executive
Office Building, which is adjacent to
the Executive Mansion and forms part of
the same security compound. As we read
in the Jack Anderson column for March
10, 1973, in the {Washington
Post}: ``Republican National
Chairman George Bush, as befitting the
head of a party whose coffers are
overflowing, has been provided with a
plush office in the new Eisenhower
Building here. He spends much of his
time, however, in a government office
next to the White House. When we asked
how a party official rated a government
office, a GOP spokesman explained that
the office wasn't assigned to him but
was merely a visitor's office. The
spokesman admitted, however, that Bush
spends a lot of time there.'' This
means that Bush's principal office was
in the building where Nixon most liked
to work; Nixon had what was called his
``hideaway'' office in the Old
Executive Office Building. 
   As to the state of George's
relations with Nixon at this time, we
have the testimony of a ``Yankee
Republican'' who had known and liked
father Prescott, as cited by journalist
Al Reinert: ``I can't think of a man
I've ever known for whom I have greater
respect than Pres Bush ... I've always
been kind of sorry his son turned out
to be such a jerk. George has been
kissing Nixon's ass ever since he came
up here.''@s2@s5 Reinert comments that
``when Nixon became president, Bush
became a teacher's pet,'' ``a
presidential favorite, described in the
press as one of `Nixon's men.'|'' 

   Bush's Role
 
   On the surface, George was an
ingratiating sycophant. But he
dissembled. The Nixon White House would
seem to have included at least one
highly placed official who betrayed his
President to Bob Woodward of the
{Washington Post,} making it possible
for that newspaper to repeatedly
outflank Nixon's attempts at
stonewalling. This was the celebrated,
and still anonymous, source Woodward
called ``Deep Throat.'' 
   Al Haig has often been accused of
having been the figure of the Nixon
White House who provided Woodward and
Bernstein with their leads. If there is
any consensus about the true identity
of Deep Throat, it would appear to be
that Al Haig is the prime suspect.
However, there is no conclusive
evidence about the true identity of the
person or persons called Deep Throat,
assuming that such a phenomenon ever
existed. As soon as Haig is named, we
must become suspicious: The propaganda
of the Bush networks has never been
kind to Haig. Haig and Bush, as leading
clones of Henry Kissinger, were locked
on a number of occasions into a kind of
sibling rivalry. On the one hand, it
cannot be proven that Haig was Deep
Throat. On the other hand, George Bush
has frequently escaped any scrutiny in
this regard. It may therefore be
useful, as a kind of {reductio ad
absurdum} permitting us a fresh
approach to certain long-standing
Watergate enigmas, to ask the question: 
   Could Bush have been Deep Throat? 
   Or, could Bush have been one part
of a composite of sources which
Woodward has chosen to popularize as
his legendary Deep Throat? Or, could
Bush have been a source who chose to
use Deep Throat as his cut-out? 
   The novelty of Bush as Deep Throat
is not due to any objective
circumstance, but rather to the
selective omissions of sources,
journalists, press organs, publishers,
and editors, none of whom is immune to
the influence of the Skull and
Bones/Brown Brothers, Harriman
powerhouse we have already seen in
action so many times. Some years after
Nixon's fall, {Time} magazine listed
what it considered to be the possible
sources for the leaks attributed by
``Woodstein'' to Deep Throat. These
were: Richard Nixon, Rose Mary Woods,
Alexander Haig, Charles Colson, Stephen
Bull, Fred Buzhardt, Leonard Garment,
and Samuel Powers.@s2@s6 Woodward and
Bernstein do not list Bush among the
Cast of Characters in {All the
President's Men,} although he was a
member of the Nixon cabinet. In these
authors' later book, {The Final Days,}
he does appear. But the exclusion of
Bush from the list of suspects is
arbitrary and highly suspicious,
especially on the part of {Time}
magazine, founded by Henry Luce of
Skull and Bones.
   Discounting the coverups, both
crude and sophisticated, we can state
that Bush is a plausible candidate to
be Deep Throat, or to be one of his
voices if these should prove to be
multiple. What intimate of Nixon, what
cabinet member and quasi-White House
official had a better line of
communication to the Wall Street
investment banking circles who were the
prime movers of the overthrow of Nixon?
Who had a better working relationship
with Henry Kissinger, the chief
immediate beneficiary of Nixon's
downfall? Who had links to the dirty
tricks and black operations divisions
of the CIA, especially to the Miami
station? Whose business partner and
cronies had financed the CREEP? And who
could count on the loyalty of a
far-flung freemasonic network ensconced
in positions of power in the media, the
courts, the executive branch, the
Congress, and law enforcement agencies?
Surely Bush is more than a plausible
candidate; by any realistic reckoning,
he is a formidable candidate. 
   In terms of the immediate tactical
mechanics of the Watergate scandal,
Bush possessed undeniable trump cards.
The first was his long-standing family
and business relationship with the
owners of the {Washington Post,} the
flagship news organ of the scandal. The
paper was controlled by Katherine Meyer
Graham, and both her father, Eugene
Meyer, and her late husband, Philip
Graham, had been among the investers of
the Bush-Overbey oil firm in 1951-52.
With Eugene Meyer, Bush says, he ``had
other oil-business dealings over the
years, most of them profitable, all
enjoyable.''@s2@s7 In addition, there
are a few details of the personal
background of reporter Bob Woodward
which may suggest a covert link to
Chairman George. Woodward was a naval
intelligence officer with a government
security clearance of the highest level
(``top secret crypto''). He was
specifically one of the briefers sent
by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to provide
verbal intelligence and operational
summaries for top officials, including
those of the National Security Council.
Woodward was also, like Bush, a
graduate of Yale, where he took his
degree in 1965. Also like Bush,
Woodward had been a member of a Yale
secret society. Woodward had not been
tapped for Skull and Bones, however; he
had joined Book and Snake, thought to
be among the four most prestigious of
these masonic institutions. Book and
Snake, like Scroll and Key and Wolf's
Head, functions as a satellite of Skull
and Bones, receiving as members the
best young oligarchs not culled by
Skull and Bones. Dean Acheson, of
Wolf's Head, for example, was an asset
of the political-financial faction
headed up by Averell Harriman of Skull
and Bones. 
   Some delving into the details of
the Deep Throat-Woodward relationship
may further substantiate the Bush
candidacy. If we wish literally to
believe what Woodward recounts, we
obtain the following picture of his
contacts with Deep Throat. First we
have a series of telephone contacts
between June 19 and October 8, 1972.
Even if we posit that Bush was busily
fulfilling his diplomatic commitments
in New York City on the days when he
was not attending cabinet meetings in
Washington, there is no practical
reason why Bush could not have provided
the tips Woodward describes. Then we
have the legendary late-night garage
meetings, starting Monday, October 9,
1972, and repeated on Saturday, October
21, and Friday, October 27, with a
further likely garage meeting in late
December. Since all of these but the
first were on weekends, there is no
reason to conclude that they could not
have been accommodated within Bush's
U.N. schedule. Any time after December
12, 1972 (the date Bush's GOP
appointment was announced), his
presence in Washington would have fit
easily into the reorientation of his
work schedule toward his new job at the
White House. A garage meeting in
January 1973, a bar meeting in
February, phone calls in April, another
garage meeting in May, and a further
one in November--none of this would
have presented any difficulty.
   What does Woodward tell us about
Deep Throat? ``The man's position in
the Executive Branch was extremely
sensitive.'' ``Deep Throat had access
to information from the White House,
Justice, the FBI and CRP. What he knew
represented an aggregate of hard
information flowing in and out of many
stations.'' He was someone whom
Woodward had known for some time: ``His
friendship with Deep Throat was
genuine, not cultivated. Long before
Watergate, they had spent many evenings
talking about Washington, the
government, power.''@s2@s8 Deep Throat
was a man who ``could be rowdy, drink
too much, overreach. He was not good at
concealing his feelings, hardly ideal
for a man in his position.'' Could this
be the precursor of the Bush of Panama,
the Gulf, and civil rights
controversies, unable to suppress
periodic episodes of public rage?
Perhaps. We also learn from Woodward
that Deep Throat was ``an incurable
gossip.'' Perhaps this can be related
to Bush's talent as a mimic, described
by Fitzhugh Green.@s2@s9 
   It was on May 16, 1973 Deep Throat
told Woodward: ``Everyone's life is in
danger.'' He added that ``electronic
surveillance is going on and we had
better watch it.'' Who is doing it?
Bernstein asked. ``CIA,'' was
Woodward's reply. Woodward typed a
summary of Deep Throat's further
remarks, including these comments:
``The covert activities involve the
whole U.S. intelligence community and
are incredible. Deep Throat refused to
give specifics because it is against
the law. The cover-up had little to do
with the Watergate, but was mainly to
protect the covert operations.''@s3@s0
But what were the covert operations to
which Deep Throat so dramatically
refers? 

 Enter Lou Russell
 
   One of the major sub-plots of
Watergate, and one that will eventually
lead us back to the documented public
record of George Bush, is the relation
of the various activities of the
Plumbers to the wiretapping of a group
of prostitutes who operated out of a
brothel in the Columbia Plaza
Apartments, located in the immediate
vicinity of the Watergate
buildings.@s3@s1 Among the customers of
the prostitutes there appear to have
been a U.S. Senator, an astronaut, A
Saudi prince (the Embassy of Saudi
Arabia is nearby), U.S. and South
Korean intelligence officials, and
above all, numerous Democratic Party
leaders whose presence can be partially
explained by the propinquity of the
Democratic National Committe offices in
the Watergate. The Columbia Plaza
Apartments brothel was under intense
CIA surveillance by the Office of
Security/Security Research Staff
through one of their assets, an aging
private detective out of the pages of
Damon Runyon who went by the name of
Louis James Russell. Russell was,
according to Hougan, especially
interested in bugging a hotline phone
that linked the DNC with the nearby
brothel. During the Watergate
break-ins, James McCord's recruit to
the Plumbers, Alfred C. Baldwin, would
appear to have been bugging the
telephones of the Columbia Plaza
brothel. 
   Lou Russell, in the period between
June 20 and July 2, 1973, was working
for a detective agency that was helping
George Bush prepare for an upcoming
press conference. In this sense,
Russell was working for Bush. 
   Russell is relevant because he
seems (although he denied it) to have
been the fabled sixth man of the
Watergate break-in, the burglar who got
away. He may also have been the burglar
who tipped off the police, if indeed
anyone did. Russell was a harlequin who
had been the servant of many masters.
Lou Russell had once been the chief
investigator for the House Committee on
Un-American Activities. He had worked
for the FBI. He had been a stringer for
Jack Anderson, the columnist. In
December 1971, he had been an employee
of General Security Services, the
company that provided the guards who
protected the Watergate buildings. In
March of 1972, Russell had gone to work
for James McCord and McCord Associates,
whose client was the CREEP. Later,
after the scandal had broken, Russell
worked for McCord's new and more
successful firm, Security Associates.
Russell had also worked directly for
the CREEP as a night watchman. Russell
had also worked for John Leon of Allied
Investigators, Inc., a company that
later went to work for George Bush and
the Republican National Committee.
Still later, Russell found a job with
the headquarters of the McGovern for
President campaign. Russell's lawyer
was Bud Fensterwald, and sometimes
Russell performed investigative
services for Fensterwald and for
Fensterwald's Committee to Investigate
Assassinations. In September 1972, well
after the scandal had become notorious,
Russell seems to have joined with one
Nick Beltrante in carrying out
electronic countermeasures sweeps of
the DNC headquarters, and during one of
these he appears to have planted an
electronic eavesdropping device in the
phone of DNC worker Spencer Oliver
which, when it was discovered,
refocused public attention on the
Watergate scandal at the end of the
summer of 1972. 
   Russell was well acquainted with
Carmine Bellino, the chief investigator
on the staff of Sam Ervin's Senate
Select Committee on Presidential
Campaign Practices. Bellino was a
Kennedy operative who had superintended
the seamy side of the JFK White House,
including such figures as Judith Exner,
the President's alleged paramour.
Later, Bellino would become the target
of George Bush's most revealing public
action during the Watergate period.
Bellino's friend, William Birely, later
provided Russell with an apartment in
Silver Spring, Maryland, a new car, and
sums of money. 
   Russell had been a heavy drinker,
and his social circle was that of the
prostitutes, whom he sometimes
patronized and sometimes served as a
bouncer and goon. His familiarity with
the brothel milieu facilitated his
service for the Office of Security,
which was to oversee the bugging and
other surveillance of Columbia Plaza
and other locations. 
   Lou Russell was incontestably one
of the most fascinating figures of
Watergate. How remarkable, then, that
the indefatigable ferrets Woodward and
Bernstein devoted so little attention
to him, deeming him worthy of mention
in neither of their two books. Woodward
and Bernstein met with Russell, but had
ostensibly decided that there was
``nothing to the story.'' Woodward
claims to have seen nothing in Russell
beyond the obvious ``old drunk.''@s3@s2 
   The FBI had questioned Russell
after the DNC break-ins, probing his
whereabouts on June 16-17 with the
suspicion that he had indeed been one
of the burglars. But this questioning
led to nothing. Instead, Russell was
contacted by Carmine Bellino, and later
by Bellino's broker Birely, who set
Russell up in the new apartment (or
safe house) already mentioned, where
one of the Columbia Plaza prostitutes
moved in with him. 
   By 1973, minority Republican
staffers at the Ervin committee began
to realize the importance of Russell to
a revisionist account of the scandal
that might exonerate Nixon to some
extent by shifting the burden of guilt
elsewhere. On May 9, 1973, the Ervin
committee accordingly subpoenaed
Russell's telephone, job, and bank
records. Two days later, Russell
replied to the committee that he had no
job records or diaries, had no bank
account, made long-distance calls only
to his daughter, and could do nothing
for the committee. 
   On May 16-17, Deep Throat warned
Woodward that ``everybody's life is in
danger.'' On May 18, while the staff of
the Ervin committee were pondering
their next move vis-a-vis Russell,
Russell suffered a massive heart
attack. This was the same day that
McCord, advised by his lawyer and
Russell's, Fensterwald, began his
public testimony to the Ervin committee
on the coverup. Russell was taken to
Washington Adventist Hospital, where he
recovered to some degree and
convalesced until June 20. Russell was
convinced that he had been the victim
of an attempted assassination. He told
his daughter after leaving the hospital
that he believed that he had been
poisoned, that someone had entered his
apartment and ``switched pills on
me.''@s3@s3 
   Leaving the hospital on June 20,
Russell was still very weak and pale.
But now, although he remained on the
payroll of James McCord, he also
accepted a retainer from his friend
John Leon, who had been engaged by the
Republicans to carry out a
counterinvestigation of the Watergate
affair. Leon was in contact with Jerris
Leonard, a lawyer associated with
Nixon, the GOP, the Republican National
Committee, and with Chairman George
Bush. Leonard was a former assistant
attorney general for civil rights in
the Nixon administration. Leonard had
stepped down as head of the Law
Enforcement Assistance Administration
(LEAA) on March 17, 1973. In June 1973,
Leonard was special counsel to George
Bush personally, hired by Bush and not
by the RNC. Leonard says today that his
job consisted in helping to keep the
Republican Party separate from
Watergate, deflecting Watergate from
the party ``so it would not be a party
thing.''@s3@s4 As Hougan tells it,
``Leon was convinced that Watergate was
a set-up, that prostitution was at the
heart of the affair, and that the
Watergate arrests had taken place
following a tip-off to the police; in
other words, the June 17 burglary had
been sabotaged from within, Leon
believed, and he intended to prove
it.''@s3@s5 ``Integral to Leon's theory
of the affair was Russell's
relationship to the Ervin committee's
chief investigator, Carmine Bellino,
and the circumstances surrounding
Russell's relocation to Silver Spring
in the immediate aftermath of the
Watergate arrests. In an investigative
memorandum submitted to GOP lawyer
Jerris Leonard, Leon described what he
hoped to prove: that Russell, reporting
to Bellino, had been a spy for the
Democrats within the CRP, and that
Russell had tipped off Bellino (and the
police) to the June 17 break-in. The
man who knew most about this was Leon's
new employee, Lou Russell.'' 
   Is it possible that Jerris Leonard
communicated the contents of Leon's
memorandum to the RNC and to its
chairman George Bush during the days
after he received it? It is possible.
But for Russell, the game was over: On
July 2, 1973, barely two weeks after
his release from the hospital, Russell
suffered a second heart attack, which
killed him. He was buried with quite
suspicious haste the following day. The
potential witness with perhaps the
largest number of personal ties to
Watergate protagonists, and the witness
who might have redirected the scandal,
not just toward Bellino, but toward the
prime movers behind and above McCord
and Hunt and Paisley, had perished in a
way that recalls the fate of so many
knowledgeable Iran-Contra figures. 
   With Russell silenced forever,
Leon appears to have turned his
attention to targeting Bellino, perhaps
with a view to forcing him to submit to
questioning about his relationship to
Russell. Leon, who had been convicted
in 1964 of wiretapping in a case
involving El Paso Gas Co. and Tennessee
Gas Co., had weapons in his own
possession that could be used against
Bellino. During the time that Russell
was still in the hospital, on June 8,
Leon had signed an affidavit for Jerris
Leonard in which he stated that he had
been hired by Democratic operative
Bellino during the 1960 presidential
campaign to ``infiltrate the
operations'' of Albert B. ``Ab''
Hermann, a staff member of the
Republican National Committee. Leon
asserted in the affidavit that although
he had not been able to infiltrate
Hermann's office, he observed the
office with field glasses and employed
``an electronic device known as `the
big ear' aimed at Mr. Hermann's
window.'' Leon recounted that he had
been assisted by former CIA officer
John Frank, Oliver W. Angelone and
former congressional investigator Ed
Jones in the anti-Nixon 1960
operations. 
   Leon collected other sworn
statements that all went in the same
direction, portraying Bellino as a
Democratic dirty tricks operative
unleashed by the Kennedy faction
against Nixon. Joseph Shimon, who had
been an inspector for the Washington
Police Department, told of how he had
been approached by Kennedy operative
Oliver W. Angelone, who alleged that he
was working for Bellino, with a request
to help Angelone gain access to the two
top floors of the Wardman Park Hotel
just before they were occupied by Nixon
on the eve of the Nixon-Kennedy
television debate. Edward Murray Jones,
then living in the Philippines, said in
his affidavit that he had been assigned
by Bellino to tail individuals at
Washington National Airport and in
downtown Washington.@s3@s6 According
to Hougan, ``these sensational
allegations were provided by Leon to
Republican attorneys on July 10, 1973,
exactly a week after Russell's funeral.
Immediately, attorney Jerris Leonard
conferred with RNC Chairman George
Bush. It appeared to both men that a
way had been found to place the
Watergate affair in a new perspective,
and, perhaps, to turn the tide. A
statement was prepared and a press
conference scheduled at which Leon was
to be the star witness, or speaker.
Before the press conference could be
held, however, Leon suffered a heart
attack on July 13, 1973, and died the
same day.''@s3@s7 
   Two important witnesses, each of
whom represented a threat to reopen the
most basic questions of Watergate, dead
in little more than a week! Bush is
likely to have known of the import of
Russell's testimony, and he is proven
to have known of the content of Leon's.
Jerris Leonard later told Hougan that
the death of John Leon ``came as a
complete shock. It was ... well, to be
honest with you, it was frightening. It
was only a week after Russell's death,
or something like that, and it happened
on the very eve of the press
conference. We didn't know what was
going on. We were scared.''@s3@s8
Hougan comments: ``With the principal
witness against Bellino no longer
available, and with Russell dead as
well, Nixon's last hope of diverting
attention from Watergate--slim from the
beginning--was laid to rest forever.'' 

   Diversion and Damage Control
 
   But George Bush went ahead with
the press conference that had been
announced, even if John Leon, the
principal speaker, was now dead.
According to Nixon, Bush had been
``privately pleading for some action
that would get us off the defensive''
since back in the springtime.@s3@s9 On
July 24, 1973, Bush made public the
affidavits by Leon, Jones, and Shimon
which charged that the Ervin committee
chief investigator Carmine Bellino had
recruited spies to help defeat Nixon
back in 1960. ``I cannot and do not
vouch for the veracity of the
statements contained in the
affidavits,'' said Bush, ``but I do
believe that this matter is serious
enough to concern the Senate Watergate
committee, and particularly since its
chief investigator is the subject of
the charges contained in the
affidavits. If these charges are true,
a taint would most certainly be
attached to some of the committee's
work.''
   Bush specified that on the basis
of the Shimon and Leon affidavits, he
was ``confident'' that Jones and
Angelone ``had bugged the Nixon space
or tapped his phones prior to the
television debate.'' He conceded that
``there was corruption'' in the ranks
of the GOP. ``But now I have presented
some serious allegations that if true
could well have affected the outcome of
the 1960 presidential race. The
Nixon-Kennedy election was a real
cliff-hanger, and the debates bore
heavily on the outcome of the people's
decision.'' Bush rejected any charge
that he was releasing the affidavits in
a bid to ``justify Watergate.'' He
asserted that he was acting in the
interest of ``fair play.'' 
   Bush said that he had taken the
affidavits to Sen. Sam Ervin, the
chairman of the Senate Watergate
Committee, and to GOP Sen. Howard
Baker, that committee's ranking
Republican, but that the committee had
failed to act so far. ``I haven't seen
much action on it,'' Bush added. When
the accuracy of the affidavits was
challenged, Bush replied, ``We've heard
a lot more hearsay bandied about the
[Watergate] committee than is presented
here. I'd like to know how serious it
is. I'd like to see it looked into,''
said Bush. He called on Sam Ervin and
his committee to probe all the charges
forthwith. Bush was ``convinced that
there is in fact substance to the
allegations.'' 
   In 1991, the Bush damage control
line is that events relating to the
``October Surprise'' deal of the
Reagan-Bush campaign with the Khomeini
mullahs of Iran to block the freeing of
the U.S. hostages are so remote in the
past that nobody is interested in them
anymore. But in 1973, Bush thought that
events of 1960 were highly relevant to
Watergate. 
   Bellino labeled Bush's charges
``absolutely false.'' ``I categorically
and unequivocally deny that I have ever
ordered, requested, directed, or
participated in any electronic
surveillance whatsoever in connection
with any political campaign,'' said
Bellino. ``By attacking me on the basis
of such false and malicious lies, Mr.
Bush has attempted to distract me from
carrying out what I consider one of the
most important assignments of my life.
I shall continue to exert all my
efforts to ascertain the facts and the
truth pertinent to this
investigation.'' 
   Here Bush was operating on several
levels of reality at once. The
implications of the Russell-Leon
interstices would be suspected only in
retrospect. What appeared on the
surface was a loyal Republican mounting
a diversionary attack in succor of his
embattled President. At deeper levels,
the reality might be the reverse: the
stiffing of Nixon in order to defend
the forces behind the break-in and the
scandal. 
   Back in April, as the Ervin
committee was preparing to go into
action against the White House, Bush
had participated in the argument about
whether the committee sessions should
be televised or not. Bush discussed
this issue with Senators Baker and
Brock, both Republicans who wanted the
hearings to be televised--in Baker's
case, so that he could be on television
himself as the ranking Republican on
the panel. Ehrlichman, to whom Bush
reported in the White House, mindful of
the obvious potential damage to the
administration, wanted the hearings not
televised, not even public, but in
executive session with a sanitized
transcript handed out later. So Bush,
having no firm convictions of his own,
but always looking for his own
advantage, told Ehrlichman he
sympathized with both sides of the
argument, and was ``sitting happily on
the middle of the fence with a picket
sticking up my you know what. I'll see
you.''@s4@s0 But Nixon's damage control
interest had been sacrificed by Bush's
vacillating advocacy.... 
   Bush had talked in public about
the Ervin committee during a visit to
Seattle on June 29 in response to
speculation that Nixon might be called
to testify. Bush argued that the
presidency would be diminished if Nixon
were to appear. Bush was adamant that
Nixon could not be subpoenaed and that
he should not testify voluntarily.
Shortly thereafter, Bush had demanded
that the Ervin committee wrap up its
proceedings to ``end the speculation''
about Nixon's role in the coverup.
``Let's get all the facts out, let's
get the whole thing over with, get all
the people up there before the
Watergate committee. I don't believe
John Dean's testimony.''@s4@s1 
   Senator Sam Ervin placed Bush's
intervention against Carmine Bellino in
the context of other diversionary
efforts launched by the RNC. Ervin,
along with Democratic Senators Talmadge
and Inouye were targeted by a campaign
inspired by Bush's RNC which alleged
that they had tried to prevent a full
probe of LBJ intimate Bobby Baker back
in 1963. Later, speaking on the Senate
floor on October 9, 1973, Ervin
commented: ``One can but admire the
zeal exhibited by the Republican
National Committee and its journalistic
allies in their desperate effort to
invent a red herring to drag across the
trail which leads to the truth
concerning Watergate.''@s4@s2 
   But Ervin saw Bush's Bellino
material as a more serious assault.
``Bush's charge distressed me very much
for two reasons. First, I deemed it
unjust to Bellino, who denied it and
whom I had known for many years to be
an honorable man and a faithful public
servant; and, second, it was out of
character with the high opinion I
entertained of Bush. Copies of the
affidavits had been privately submitted
to me before the news conference, and I
had expressed my opinion that there was
not a scintilla of competent or
credible evidence in them to sustain
the charges against Bellino.''@s4@s3 
   Sam Dash, the chief counsel to the
Ervin committee, had a darker and more
detailed view of Bush's actions: ``In the midst of the pressure
to complete a shortened witness list by
the beginning of August, a nasty
incident occurred that was clearly
meant to sidetrack the committee and
destroy or immobilize one of my most
valuable staff assistants--Carmine
Bellino, my chief investigator. On July
24, 1973, the day after the committee
subpoena for the White House tapes was
served on the President, the Republican
national chairman, George Bush, called
a press conference.... Three days
later, as if carefully orchestrated,
twenty-two Republican senators signed a
letter to Senator Ervin, urging the
Senate Watergate Committee to
investigate Bush's charges and calling
for Bellino's suspension pending the
outcome of the investigation. Ervin was
forced into a corner, and on August 3
he appointed a subcommittee consisting
of Senators Talmadge, Inouye, and
Gurney to investigate the charges. The
White House knew that Carmine Bellino,
a wizard at reconstructing the receipts
and expenditures of funds despite
laundering techniques and the
destruction of records, was hot on the
trail of Herbert Kalmbach and Bebe
Rebozo. Bellino's diligent, meticulous
work would ultimately disclose
Kalmbach's funding scheme for the White
House's dirty tricks campaign and
unravel a substantial segment of
Rebozo's secret cash transactions on
behalf of Nixon.''@s4@s4
   Dash writes that Bellino was
devastated by Bush's attacks,
``rendered emotionally unable to work
because of the charges.'' 
   The mechanism targeted by Bellino
is of course relevant to Bill Liedtke's
funding of the CREEP described above.
Perhaps Bush was in fact seeking to
shut down Bellino solely to defend only
himself and his confederates. 
   Members of Dash's staff soon
realized that there had been another
participant in the process of
assembling the material that Bush had
presented. According to Dash, ``the
charges became even murkier when our
staff discovered that the person who
had put them together was a man named
Jack Buckley. In their dirty tricks
investigation of the 1972 presidential
campaign, Terry Lenzner and his staff
had identified Buckley as the
Republican spy, known as Fat Jack, who
had intercepted and photographed
Muskie's mail between his campaign and
Senate offices as part of Ruby I (a
project code named in Liddy's Gemstone
political espionage plan).'' It would
appear that Fat Jack Buckley was now
working for George Bush. Ervin then
found that Senators Gurney and Baker,
both Republicans, might be willing to
listen to additional charges made by
Buckley against Bellino. Dash says he
``smelled the ugly odor of blackmail on
the part of somebody and I did not like
it.'' Later, Senators Talmadge and
Inouye filed a report completely
exonerating Bellino, while Gurney
conceded that there was no direct
evidence against Bellino, but that
there was some conflicting testimony
that ought to be noted. Dash sums up
that in late November 1973, ``the
matter ended with little fanfare and
almost no newspaper comment. The
reputation of a public official with
many years' service as a dedicated and
incorruptible investigator had been
deeply wounded and tarnished, and
Bellino would retire from federal
service believing--rightly--that he had
not been given the fullest opportunity
he deserved to clear his good name.'' 
   Another Bush concern during the
summer of 1973 was his desire to
liquidate the CREEP, not out of
moralistic motives, but because of his
desire to seize the CREEP's $4
millon-plus cash surplus. During the
middle of 1973, some of this money had
already been used to pay the legal fees
of Watergate conspirators, as in the
case of Maurice Stans.@s4@s5 
   During August, Bush went into an
offensive of sanctimonious moralizing.
Bush appears to have concluded that
Nixon was doomed, and that it was
imperative to distance himself and his
operation from Nixon's impending
downfall. On the NBC {Today} show,
Bush objected to John D. Ehrlichman's
defense before the Ervin committee of
the campaign practice of probing the
sex and drinking habits of political
opponents. ``Crawling around in the
gutter to find some weakness of a man,
I don't think we need that,'' said
Bush. ``I think opponent research is
valid. I think if an opponent is
thought to have done something
horrendous or thought to be unfit to
serve, research is valid. But the idea
of just kind of digging up dirt with
the purpose of blackmail or
embarrassing somebody so he'd lose, I
don't think that is a legitimate
purpose,'' postured Bush. By this time
Ehrlichman, who had hired retired cops
to dig up such dirt, had been thrown to
the wolves.@s4@s6 
   A couple of days later, Bush
delivered a speech to the American Bar
Association on ``The Role and
Responsibility of the Political
Candidate.'' His theme was that
restoring public trust in the political
system would require candidates who
would set a higher moral tone for their
campaigns. ``A candidate is responsible
for organizing his campaign well--that
is, picking people whom he trusts,
picking the right people.'' This was an
oblique but clear attack on Nixon, who
had clearly picked the wrong people in
addition to whatever else he did. Bush
was for stricter rules, but even more
for ``old-fashioned conscience'' as the
best way to keep politics clean. He
again criticized the approach which set
out to ``get dirt'' on political
adversaries--again a swipe at Nixon's
notorious ``enemies list'' practices.
Bush said that there were ``gray areas
in determining what was in good
taste.'' Bush has never been noted for
his sense of self-irony, and it appears
that he was not aware of his own
punning reference to L. Patrick Gray,
the acting FBI Director who had
``deep-sixed'' Howard Hunt's
incriminating records and who had then
been left by Ehrlichman to ``hang
there'' and to ``twist slowly, slowly
in the wind.'' Bush actually commented
that Ehrlichman's comments on Gray had
been in questionable taste.@s4@s7 
   The next day Bush was at it again,
announcing that he was reopening an
investigation into alleged courses in
dirty tricks taught by the GOP to
college Republicans in weekend seminars
during 1971 and 1972. Bush pledged to
``get to the bottom'' of charges that
the College Republican National
Committee, with 1,000 campus clubs and
100,000 members listed had provided
instruction in dirty tricks. ``I'm a
little less relaxed and more concerned
than when you first brought it to our
attention,'' Bush told
journalists.@s4@s8 
   Bush had clearly distanced himself
from the fate of the Nixon White House.
By the time Spiro Agnew resigned as
Vice President on October 10, 1973,
Bush praised Agnew for his ``great
personal courage'' while endorsing the
resignation as ``in the best interest
of the country.''@s4@s9 
   Later the same month came Nixon's
``Saturday night massacre,'' the firing
of Special Prosecutor Cox and the
resignation of Attorney General Elliot
Richardson and his deputy, William
Ruckelshaus. To placate public opinion,
Nixon agreed to obey a court order
compelling him to hand over his White
House tapes. Bush had said that Nixon
was suffering from a ``confidence
crisis'' about the tapes, but now
commented that what Nixon had done
``will have a soothing effect. Clearly
it will help politically.... Hopefully,
his move will cool the emotions and
permit the President to deal with
matters of enormous domestic and
international concern.''@s5@s0 
   Later, in November, Bush bowed out
of a possible candidacy in the 1974
Texas gubernatorial race. Speculation
was that ``the specter of Watergate''
would have been used against him, but
Bush preferred sanctimonious
explanations. ``Very candidly,'' he
said, ``being governor of Texas has
enormous appeal to me, but our
political system is under fire and I
have an overriding sense of
responsibility that compels me to
remain in my present job.'' Bush said
that Watergate was ``really almost ...
nonexistent'' as an issue in the Texas
race. ``Corruption and clean government
didn't show up very high at all,'' he
concluded.@s5@s1 
   In May of 1974, after a meeting of
the Republican congressional leadership
with Nixon, Bush told his friend
Congressman Barber Conable that he was
considering resigning from the RNC. A
few days later, John Rhodes, who had
replaced Gerald Ford as House Minority
Leader when Ford was tapped by Nixon
for the vice-presidency, told a meeting
of House Republicans that Bush was
getting ready to resign, and if he did
so, it would be impossible for the
White House to ``get anybody of stature
to take his place.''@s5@s2 
   But even in the midst of the final
collapse, Bush still made occasional
ingratiating gestures to Nixon. Nixon
pathetically recounts how Bush made him
an encouraging offer in July 1974,
about a month before the end: ``There
were other signs of the sort that
political pros might be expected to
appreciate: NC Chairman George Bush
called the White House to say that he
would like to have me appear on a
fund-raising telethon.''@s5@s3 This is
what Bush was telling Nixon. But during
this same period, Father John
McLaughlin of the Nixon staff asked
Bush for RNC lists of GOP diehards
across the country for the purpose of
generating support statements for
Nixon. Bush refused to provide them.@s5@s4 

   The Smoking Gun
 
   On August 5, 1974, the White House
released the transcript of the
celebrated ``smoking gun'' taped
conversation of June 23, 1972 in which
Nixon discussed ways to frustrate the
investigation of the Watergate
break-ins. Chairman George was one of
the leading Nixon administration
figures consulting with Al Haig in the
course of the morning. When Bush heard
the news, he was very upset,
undoubtedly concerned about all the
very negative publicity that he himself
was destined to receive in the blowback
of Nixon's now-imminent downfall. Then,
after a while, he calmed down somewhat.
One account describes Bush as
``somewhat relieved'' by the news that
the tape was going to be made public.
``Finally there was some one thing the
national chairman could see clearly.
The ambiguities in the evidence had
been tearing the party apart, Bush
thought.''@s5@s5 At this point, Bush
became the most outspoken and militant
organizer of Nixon's resignation, a
Cassius of the Imperial Presidency. 
   A little later, White House
Congressional liaison William Timmons
wanted to make sure that everyone had
been fully briefed about the
transcripts going out, and he turned to
Nixon's political counselor Dean Burch.
``Dean, does Bush know about the
transcript yet?'' Timmons asked. Burch
replied, ``Yes.'' ``Well, what did he
do?'' Timmons asked. 
   ``He broke out in assholes and
shit himself to death,'' was Burch's
answer.@s5@s6
      
   Notes for Chapter 13
 
   25.
 Al Reinert, ``Bob and George
Go to Washington or The Post-Watergate
Scramble,'' {Texas Monthly,} April
1974.
 
   26.
 ``Deep Throat: Narrowing the
Field,'' {Time,} May 3, 1976, pp.
17-18.
 
   27.
 Bush and Gold, {op. cit.,} pp.
65-66.
 
   28.
 Bernstein and Woodward, {All
the President's Men} (New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1974), pp. 72, 130-31.
 
   29.
 Green, {op. cit.,} p. 80.
 
   30.
 Bernstein and Woodward, {All
the President's Men,} p. 318.
 
   31.
 The question of the Columbia
Plaza Apartments is a central theme of
Jim Hougan's {Secret Agenda, op. cit.}
We have also relied on Hougan's version
of the Russell-Leon-Bellino subplot
described below.

   32.
 Hougan, {op. cit.,} pp. 324.
 
   33.
 {Ibid.,} p. 370.
 
   34.
 Interview of Jerris Leonard
with Anton Chaitkin, Aug. 26, 1991.
 
   35.
 Hougan, {op. cit.,} p. 374-75.
 
   36.
 See Jules Witcover,
``Political Spies Accuse Committee
Investigator,'' {Washington Post,} July
25, 1973, and John Geddie, ``Bush
Alleges Bugs,'' {Dallas News,} July 25,
1973. See also Victor Lasky, {It Didn't
Start with Watergate} (New York: Dial
Press, 1977), pp. 41-55.
 
   37.
 Hougan, {op. cit.,} p. 376.
Notice that the day of Leon's death was
also the day that White House staffer
Butterfield told congressional
investigators of the existence of
Nixon's taping system.
 
   38.
 {Ibid.}
 
   39.
 Richard Nixon, {The Memoirs of
Richard Nixon} (New York: Warner Books,
1979), p. 811.
 
   40.
 Walter Pincus and Bob
Woodward, ``Presidential Posts and
Dashed Hopes,'' {Washington Post,} Aug.
9, 1988.
 
   41.
 {Washington Post,} July 12,
1973.
 
   42.
 Sam J. Ervin, Jr., {The Whole
Truth} (New York: Random House, 1980),
p. 28.
 
   43.
 {Ibid.,} p. 29.
 
   44.
 Samuel Dash, {Chief Counsel}
(New York: Random House, 1976), p. 192.
 
   45.
 Evans and Novak, July 11,
1973.
 
   46.
 {Washington Post,} Aug. 7,
1973.
 
   47.
 {Washington Post,} Aug. 9,
1973.
 
   48.
 {Washington Post,} Aug. 10,
1973.
 
   49.
 {Washington Post,} Oct. 11,
1973.
 
   50.
 {Washington Post,} Oct. 24,
1973.
 
   51.
 {Washington Post,} Nov. 17,
1973.
 
   52.
 Bernstein and Woodward, {The
Final Days,} pp. 159, 176.
 
   53.
 Nixon, {op. cit.,} p. 1042.
 
   54.
 Green, {op cit.,} p. 135.
 
   55.
 Bernstein and Woodward, {The
Final Days,} p. 368.
 
   56.
 {Ibid.,} p. 369.
 
----         John Covici
          covici@ccs.covici.com