Date: Mon Jan  4 03:44:17 est 1993
From: "John Covici" <covici@ccs.covici.com>
Message-Id: <2b47f8eb.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 20
Status: O
{XVI: CIA Director} 


In late 1975, as a result in
particular of his role in Watergate,
Bush's confirmation as CIA director was
not automatic. And though the debate at
his confirmation was superficial, some
senators, including in particular the
late Frank Church of Idaho, made some
observations about the dangers inherent
in the Bush nomination that have turned
out in retrospect to be useful. 
   The political scene on the home
front, from which Bush had been so
anxious to be absent during 1975, was
the so-called ``Year of Intelligence,''
in that it had been a year of intense
scrutiny of the illegal activities and
abuses of the intelligence community,
including CIA domestic and covert
operations. On December 22, 1974, the
{New York Times} published the first of
a series of articles by Seymour M.
Hersh, which relied on leaked reports
of CIA activities assembled by Director
James Rodney Schlesinger to expose
alleged misdeeds by the agency. 
   It was widely recognized at the
time that the Hersh articles were a
self-exposure by the CIA that was
designed to set the agenda for the
Ford-appointed Rockefeller Commission,
which was set up a few days later, on
January 4. The Rockefeller Commission
was supposed to examine the malfeasance
of the intelligence agencies and make
recommendations about how they could be
reorganized and reformed. In reality,
the Rockefeller Commission proposals
would reflect the transition of the
structures of the 1970s toward the
growing totalitarian tendencies of the
1980s. 
   While the Rockefeller Commission
was a tightly controlled vehicle of the
Eastern Anglophile Liberal
Establishment, congressional
investigating committees were impaneled
during 1975 whose proceedings were
somewhat less rigidly controlled. These
included the Senate Intelligence
Committee, known as the Church
Committee, and the corresponding House
committee, first chaired by Rep. Lucien
Nedzi (who had previously chaired one
of the principal Watergate-era probes),
and then (after July) by Rep. Otis
Pike. One example was the Pike
Committee's issuance of a contempt of
Congress citation against Henry
Kissinger for his refusal to provide
documentation of covert operations in
November 1975. Another was Church's
role in leading the opposition to the
Bush nomination. 
   The Church Committee launched an
investigation of the use of covert
operations for the purpose of
assassinating foreign leaders. By the
nature of things, this probe was led to
grapple with the problem of whether
covert operations sanctioned to
eliminate foreign leaders had been
re-targeted against domestic political
figures. The obvious case was the
Kennedy assassination. 
   Frank Church--who, we must keep
in mind, was himself an ambitious
politician--was especially diligent in
attacking CIA covert operations, which
Bush would be anxious to defend. The
CIA's covert branch, Church thought,
was a ``self-serving apparatus.''
``It's a bureaucracy which feeds on
itself, and those involved are
constantly sitting around thinking up
schemes for [foreign] intervention
which will win them promotions and
justify further additions to the
staff.... It self-generates
interventions that otherwise never
would be thought of, let alone
authorized.''@s1 
   It will be seen that, at the
beginning of Bush's tenure at the CIA,
the congressional committees were on
the offensive against the intelligence
agencies. By the time that Bush
departed Langley, the tables were
turned, and it was the Congress which
was the focus of scandals, including
Koreagate. Soon thereafter, the
Congress would undergo the assault of
Abscam. 
   Preparation for what was to become
the ``Halloween massacre'' began in the
Ford White House during the summer of
1975. The Ford Library in Ann Arbor,
Michigan preserves a memo from Donald
Rumsfeld to Ford dated July 10, 1975,
which deals with an array of possible
choices for CIA director. Rumsfeld had
polled a number of White House and
administration officials and asked them
to express preferences among
``outsiders to the CIA.''@s2 
   Dick Cheney of the White House
staff proposed Robert Bork, followed by
Bush and Lee Iacocca. Among the
officials polled by Cheney was Henry
Kissinger, who suggested C. Douglas
Dillon, Howard Baker and Robert Roosa.
Nelson Rockefeller was also for C.
Douglas Dillon, followed by Howard
Baker, and James R. Schlesinger.
Rumsfeld himself listed Bork, Dillon,
Stanley Resor, Lee Iacocca and Walter
Wriston, but not Bush. The only
officials putting Bush on their
``possible'' lists, other than Cheney,
were Jack O. Marsh, a White House
counselor to Ford, and David Packard.
When it came time for Rumsfeld to sum
up the aggregate number of times each
person was mentioned, minus one point
for each time a person had been
recommended against, among the names on
the final list were the following:
Robert Bork (rejected in 1987 for the
Supreme Court), John S. Foster of PFIAB
(formerly of the Department of
Defense), C. Douglas Dillon, Stanley
Resor, and Robert Roosa. 
   It will be seen that Bush was not
among the leading candidates, perhaps
because his networks were convinced
that he was going to make another
attempt for the vice-presidency and
that therefore the Commerce Department
or some similar post would be more
suitable. The summary profile of Bush
sent to Ford by Rumsfeld found that
Bush had ``experience in government and
diplomacy'' and was ``generally
familiar with components of the
intelligence community and their
missions'' while having management
experience. Under ``Cons'' Rumsfeld
noted: ``RNC post lends undesirable
political cast.'' 
   As we have seen, the CIA post was
finally offered by Ford to Edward
Bennett Williams, perhaps with an eye
on building a bipartisan bridge toward
a powerful faction of the intelligence
community. But Williams did not want
the job. Bush, originally slated for
the Department of Commerce, was given
the CIA appointment. 
   The announcement of Bush's
nomination occasioned a storm of
criticism, whose themes included the
inadvisability of choosing a Watergate
figure for such a sensitive post so
soon after that scandal had finally
begun to subside. References were made
to Bush's receipt of financial largesse
from Nixon's Townhouse fund and related
operations. There was also the question
of whether the domestic CIA apparatus
would get mixed up in Bush's expected
campaign for the vice-presidency. These
themes were developed in editorials
during the month of November 1976,
while Bush was kept in Beijing by the
requirements of preparing the Ford-Mao
meetings of early December. To some
degree, Bush was just hanging there and
slowly, slowly twisting in the wind.
The slow-witted Ford soon realized that
he had been inept in summarily firing
William Colby, since Bush would have to
remain in China for some weeks and then
return to face confirmation hearings.
Ford had to ask Colby to stay on in a
caretaker capacity until Bush took
office. The delay allowed opposition
against Bush to crystallize to some
degree, but his own network was also
quick to spring to his defense. 
   Former CIA officer Tom Braden,
writing in the {Fort Lauderdale News},
noted that the Bush appointment to the
CIA looked bad, and looked bad at a
time when public confidence in the CIA
was so low that everything about the
agency desperately needed to look good.
Braden's column was entitled ``George
Bush, Bad Choice for CIA Job.'' 
   Rowland Evans and Robert Novak,
writing in the {Washington Post},
commented that ``the Bush nomination is
regarded by some intelligence experts
as another grave morale deflator. They
reason that any identified politician,
no matter how resolved to be
politically pure, would aggravate the
CIA's credibility gap. Instead of an
identified politician like Bush ...
what is needed, they feel, is a
respected non-politician, perhaps from
business or the academic world.''
   The {Washington Post} came out
against Bush in an editorial entitled
``The Bush Appointment.'' Here the
reasoning was that this position
``should not be regarded as a political
parking spot,'' and that public
confidence in the CIA had to be
restored after the recent revelations
of wrongdoing. 
   After a long-winded argument, the
conservative columnist George Will came
to the conclusion that Ambassador Bush
at the CIA would be ``the wrong kind of
guy at the wrong place at the worst
possible time.'' 
   Senator Church viewed the Bush
appointment in the context of a letter
sent to him by Ford on October 31,
1975, demanding that the committee's
report on U.S. assassination plots
against foreign leaders be kept secret.
In Church's opinion, these two
developments were part of a pattern,
and amounted to a new stonewalling
defense by what Church had called ``the
rogue elephant.'' Church issued a press
statement in response to Ford's letter
attempting to impose a blackout on the
assassination report. ``I am astonished
that President Ford wants to suppress
the committee's report on assassination
and keep it concealed from the American
people,'' said Church. Then, on
November 3, Church was approached by
reporters outside of his Senate hearing
room and asked by Daniel Schorr about
the firing of Colby and his likely
replacement by Bush. Church responded
with a voice that was trembling with
anger. ``There is no question in my
mind but that concealment is the new
order of the day,'' he said. ``Hiding
evil is the trademark of a totalitarian
government.''@s3
   The following day, November 4,
Church read Leslie Gelb's column in the
{New York Times} suggesting that Colby
had been fired, among other things,
``for not doing a good job containing
the congressional investigations.''
George Bush, Gelb thought, ``would be
able to go to Congress and ask for a
grace period before pressing their
investigations further.'' A {Washington
Star} headline of this period summed up
this argument: ``CIA Needs Bush's PR
Talent.'' Church talked with his staff
that day about what he saw as an
ominous pattern of events. He told
reporters: ``First came the very
determined administration effort to
prevent any revelations concerning NSA,
their stonewalling of public hearings.
Then came the president's letter. Now
comes the firing of Colby, Mr.
Schlesinger, and the general belief
that Secretary Kissinger is behind
these latest developments.'' For
Church, ``clearly a pattern has emerged
now to try and disrupt this [Senate
Intelligence Committee] investigation.
As far as I'm concerned, it won't be
disrupted,'' said Church grimly. 
   One of Church's former aides,
speech writer Loch K. Johnson,
describes how he worked with Church to
prepare a speech scheduled for delivery
on November 11, 1975, in which Church
would stake out a position opposing the
Bush nomination: ``The nomination of George
Bush to succeed Colby disturbed him and
he wanted to wind up the speech by
opposing the nomination.... He hoped to
influence Senate opinion on the
nomination on the eve of Armed Services
Committee hearings to confirm Bush. 
   ``I rapidly jotted down notes as
Church discussed the lines he would
like to take against the nomination.
`Once they used to give former
national party chairmen [as Bush had
been under President Nixon] postmaster
generalships--the most political and
least sensitive job in government,' he
said. `Now they have given this former
party chairman the most sensitive and
least political agency.' Church wanted
me to stress how Bush `might
compromise the independence of the
CIA--the agency could be
politicized.'|'' 
   Some days later, Church appeared
on the CBS program {Face the Nation.}
He was asked by George Herman if his
opposition to Bush would mean that
anyone with political experience would
be {a priori} unacceptable for such a
post. Church replied: ``I think that
whoever is chosen should be one who has
demonstrated a capacity for
independence, who has shown that he can
stand up to the many pressures.''
Church hinted that Bush had never stood
up for principle at the cost of
political office. Moreover, ``a man
whose background is as partisan as a
past chairman of the Republican Party
does serious damage to the agency and
its intended purposes.''@s4 
   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. 
   ``... [H]is 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.''@s5 
   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 ``has 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.''@s6 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.''

   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
cliche@aas. 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 question: ``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.''@s7 
   Stennis responded with a joke that
sounds eerie 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 August, 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 advantages 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'e@aatat 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'e@aatat; 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. 
   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 philippic 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....
Otherwise 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:
``... [I]f 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.'|'' 

   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.@s8 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 this 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.''@s9
Staffers of the Church Committee
pointed out that the Church Committee
had never said a word about Greece or
mentioned the name of 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

   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 these 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 II. 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 that
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 financier 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,'' Bush
wrote. 
   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 his imperial regency over
the United States, an unamused
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 untrue and damaging to
the nation.''@s1@s0 
   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 unfortunate 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, with
Lowell Weicker of Connecticut voting
present. Church's staff felt they had
failed lamentably, having gotten only
liberal Democrats and the single
Republican vote of Jesse Helms.@s1@s1 
   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 oversight
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.''@s1@s2 
   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 the 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.@s1@s3
Ford's line was: ``We cannot improve
this agency by destroying it.'' Bush
promised to make the ``CIA an instrument of
peace and an object of pride for all
our people.'' 

Notes for Chapter XVI
 

   1.
 Nathan Miller, {Spying for
America} (New York: Paragon House,
1989), p. 399.
 
   2.
 Gerald R. Ford Library, Richard
B. Cheney Files, Box 5.
 
   3.
 See Loch K. Johnson, {A Season
of Inquiry: The Senate Intelligence
Investigation} (University Press of
Kentucky, 1985), pp. 108-9.
 
   4.
 {Ibid.}, pp. 115-16.
 
   5.
 Nedzi to Ford, Dec. 12, 1975,
Ford Library, John O. Marsh Files, Box
1.
 
   6.
 {Ibid.}
 
   7.
 U.S. Senate, Committee on
Armed Services, Nomination of George
Bush to be Director of Central
Intelligence, Dec. 15-16, 1975, p. 10.
 
   8.
 Memo of Dec. 16, 1975 from
O'Donnell to Marsh through Friedersdorf
on the likely vote in the Stennis
Senate Armed Services Committee. Ford
Library, William T. Kendall Files, Box
7.
 
   9.
 For an account of the
exploitation of the Welch incident by
the Ford administration, see Johnson,
{op. cit.}, pp. 161-62.
 
   10.
 For an account of the leaking
of the Pike Committee Report and the
situation in late Jan. and Feb. 1976,
see Daniel Schorr, {Clearing the Air}
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977)
especially pp. 179-207, and Johnson,
{op. cit.}, pp. 172-91.
 
   11.
 Johnson, {op. cit.}, p. 180.
 
   12.
 {Ibid.}, p.
182.
 
   13.
 Thomas Powers, {The Man Who
Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the
CIA} (New York: Knopf, 1979), p. 12.
 
----         John Covici
          covici@ccs.covici.com