The Consortium
'Prudent' George & the October Surprise Mystery
By Robert Parry
Though 73 years old, George Bush sounded almost boyish in front of the CIA
Old Boys. Caught up in the enthusiasm of the spy agency's 50th anniversary
celebration, he twice mixed up the year that his CIA tenure ended.
"I left CIA in 1997," Bush flubbed, quickly correcting himself. "1977.
Remember Pearl Harbor Day, September 7th." The CIA audience laughed
appreciatively, recalling President Bush's famous gaffe mis-remembering the
"date that will live in infamy" by three months. Bush started again:
"I left CIA in '97. I was approached -- okay make that whatever the heck it
was. 1977." There was more friendly laughter.
When George Bush spoke at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., on Sept. 17, he
was clearly among friends and he made just as clear how passionately he loved
the CIA, an institution which he headed for one year from early 1976 until
President Carter replaced him in January 1977.
"I came here when the agency was under fire, and I saw something remarkably
different than what I thought I would find, given the exposes, the nasty
press coverage, the out-of-control hearings back on Capitol Hill in 1975.
What I found was a great university of talent," Bush choked in a slighted
outrage reminiscent of Richard Nixon.
"I saw dedicated public servants who never got recognition, never got to
sit at the head of the table, never got credit for tremendously significant
accomplishments. ... Patriots who simply wanted to serve this greatest
nation on the face of the Earth."
At CIA in 1976, Bush explained, he had found something that felt like home.
"I was supported from day one, the minute I walked into this place, just as
if I had been working here all my life," he continued with a passion that
few outsiders might have expected from the phlegmatic ex-president.
"The entire agency, and I think Dick Helms knows what I'm saying and maybe
some of the others, was demeaned by the universally negative press coverage
stemming from mistakes made by a handful of people. The people of CIA were
roundly insulted by untutored, aggressive staffers from two committees of
Congress -- many, not all, but many of whom came out here with no respect
for classified information, no understanding that good intelligence,
particularly human intelligence, depends on the protection of sources and
methods.
"And those crusading young zealots treated everyone who they encountered
like renegades at best, criminals at worst, and I'm afraid that some
members of the United States Congress conveyed exactly that same message.
"Many educational institutions across the country, still caught up in some
post-Vietnam trauma, never came to our defense when our recruiters were
insulted and demeaned and in some cases bodily thrown off of the campus.
They just hung up a 'No Trespassing' sign for the CIA. Most so-called
broadminded academicians would not cooperate with anything having to do
with intelligence, and many pusillanimous business people treated CIA
exactly the same way."
Still angry after all these years, Bush gave throaty voice to the spy
agency's embattled mood of those times. His speech also suggested a motive
why he might have been tempted to join an October Surprise plot in 1980
involving other CIA veterans -- out of a sense of loyalty to those
"patriots" and out of an inbred CIA culture that assumed they were the
anonymous protectors of American interests.
'Not Gonna Do It'
For years, the allegation that Bush would have slipped off for a secret
trip to Paris a few weeks before the 1980 election seemed absurd on its
face. Bush, after all, is remembered by millions less for himself than for
Dana Carvey's imitation, quoting a preppyish Bush fussing, "Not gonna do
it. Wouldn't be prudent."
It certainly would not have been prudent for Bush to create a false Secret
Service record of a supposed off-day at his home in Washington on Oct. 19,
1980, so he could jet to Paris for a secret meeting with Iranians. The
accounts of a Bush trip always sent the eyes of investigators rolling
upward in disbelief. But Bush has had trouble, too, corroborating the
accuracy of the Secret Service log that day.
Released only in censored form, the logs put Bush at home during the
daytime, except for a trip to the Chevy Chase Country Club in the morning
and to the home of an unidentified family friend in the afternoon. Bush
relied on those reports in spring of 1992 when he publicly demanded that a
House investigative task force clear him of suspicion that he had traveled
to Paris. The task force was inclined to go along, but struggled to verify
the two trips.
In congressional files from the investigation, I found a six-page report
written by the then-chief counsel of the House Foreign Affairs Committee,
Spencer Oliver. He questioned the accuracy of the Secret Service records
and criticized the Bush administration's stonewalling.
Entitled "Unanswered Questions," the report stated that the Republicans
"have sought to block, limit, restrict and discredit the investigation in
every possible way and have even employed the president of the United
States to lead the attack on this investigation. ... They have attempted to
button up the investigation and to cover up the evidence. The public has a
right to know these things."
Oliver particularly criticized Bush's public demands for exoneration as
"disingenuous ... since the administration has refused to make available
the documents and the witnesses that could finally and conclusively clear
Mr. Bush ... of these serious allegations." Oliver complained that "the
administration has refused -- for nearly two years -- to turn over to
Congress the complete Secret Service records for that weekend."
Plus, Oliver noted that "at least one of the two Secret Service supervisors
who has been made available has lied to investigators in an interview."
Oliver wrote that Secret Service supervisor Leonard Tanis told
investigators that he recalled taking Mr. and Mrs. Bush to the Chevy Chase
club for a brunch with Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart and his wife on
Oct. 19. But the task force found that none of the other agents on Bush's
detail remembered such a trip.
Tanis's story then fell apart when Mrs. Bush's Secret Service records were
checked and showed her going not to the country club, but to the C&O Canal's
jogging path. Stewart was dead by 1992, but his widow also denied that she
had brunch with the Bushes that morning.
The 'Tryst Alibi'
That left the afternoon trip, but the Bush administration was refusing to
release the name of that alibi witness. According to a source close to the
investigation, Republicans suggested that Bush had visited a girl friend
that afternoon -- the "tryst alibi" -- and that the Democrats wanted the
information simply to embarrass the president before the 1992 election.
But the "tryst alibi" was undercut, too, by Mrs. Bush's Secret Service logs
which showed her going to the same address at the same time. To Oliver and
other skeptics, the question this time was whether George Bush was on the
trip to the family friend's house at all.
Finally, in late June 1992, the Bush administration agreed to give the name
of the family friend confidentially to the senior counsel of the House task
force, but only if the task force agreed not to question the witness and
promised to keep the name secret. The deal also required that the Democrats
clear Bush.
Oliver, who was not formally part of the task force, wrote his six-page
report to protest the unusual terms being imposed by the Bush White House.
Oliver urged that all relevant documents and witnesses be subpoenaed.
"Until these steps are taken, this matter can never be finally resolved,"
he wrote.
But Oliver lost the behind-the-scenes battle. Rep. Lee Hamilton, the
Democratic chairman of the task force, agreed to the odd Republican terms.
The witness' name was turned over, but the witness was never questioned
and the name has never been made public. In a preliminary task force report
on July 1, 1992, Bush was exonerated.
"All credible evidence leads to the conclusion that President Bush was in
the United States continuously during the October 18-22 time period and
not attending secret meetings in Paris, France," Hamilton stated.
But the possibility that Bush's enduring loyalty to the CIA -- as well as
the intense political pressures of fall 1980 -- lured George Bush into a
secret trip to Paris has, as Oliver predicted, never been full resolved. ~
Copyright (c) 1997
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