by Kitty Kelley
Senator Frank Church of Idaho, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, did not disappoint. The Democrat blasted George as “the poorest choice possible.” Church stated that an ambitious politician like Bush should not be put in control of the government’s intelligence agencies. As CIA director, George would also be director of Central Intelligence, which meant he would be the President’s coordinator for the country’s entire intelligence apparatus and oversee the intelligence activities of every federal agency, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Office, National Imagery and Mapping Agency, and diplomatic intelligence at the State Department. Church charged that the White House was using George’s appointment to further his political ambitions. Democratic Senator Thomas McIntyre of New Hampshire declared the nomination “an insensitive affront to the American people.”
Senator Church argued that the position of CIA director was too important to be a “political parking spot” for an ambitious politician. The agency needed a director who was independent of political pressure when advising the President, rather than one who hoped to be the President’s running mate. George, who was transparently ambitious, had never demonstrated political independence. He argued that he had recommended resignation to President Nixon, but as Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont noted, that recommendation came quite late in the day.
During George’s two days of hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee, he would not withdraw from consideration as Vice President, which inflamed resistance on both sides of the aisle and caused David Cohen, president of Common Cause, to withhold his endorsement: “A CIA head who is ready to consider high elective office less than one year after his appointment will be perceived to service the short-term political needs of a sitting president rather than the duties of the agency and the best interests of the nation.”
Senator Church offered to mute his opposition if George would remove himself from political consideration in 1976. George refused, adding, “To my knowledge no one in the history of the Republic has been asked to renounce his political birthright as the price of confirmation for any office.” Democratic Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri urged him to change his position and promise that if confirmed, he would stay on the job for at least two years. George, who had never come this close to the vice presidency before, would not budge. “If I was offered the nomination,” he said, “I can’t tell you I wouldn’t accept it.”
Even so, the Senate committee voted 12–4 to confirm George as director of the CIA. But three of the four members voting against him signed a minority report, stating:
Rightly or wrongly, the public will be understandably suspicious of the potential for political abuse of the agency by a director who once chaired one of the major political parties. We cannot, and should not, ignore this public reaction, for it can undermine the rebuilding of confidence so necessary if the CIA is to fulfill its proper role.
We are also concerned that Mr. Bush’s nomination sets a precedent of political appointments to a post that should be completely insulated from political considerations.
After the President read the minority report, he sensed trouble for full confirmation. He drafted a letter to the chairman of the committee, stating in part: “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.”
President Ford called George in to approve the letter, and George asked the President to say that it was his idea to forfeit political consideration in 1976, not the President’s. Ford, who had granted Rockefeller this courtesy when he forced him to not seek reelection as Vice President, now did the same for George. The President added to his letter of December 18, 1975: “He and I had 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.”
“That was about the shortest-lived campaign for V.P. in history,” Barbara wrote to a society columnist at the Washington Star.
George, who later wondered if he had not played into a wily scheme by Ford to deprive him of the vice presidency, was confirmed by the Senate (64–27) on January 27, 1976.
As a precondition to accepting the President’s appointment, George had insisted on bringing Jennifer Fitzgerald with him to the CIA as his confidential assistant. A memo in the Ford Presidential Library dated November 23, 1975, indicated that his demand was to be met: “Please advise me as soon as you have completed office space arrangements for George Bush and Miss Fitzgerald. JOM [John O. Marsh, White House lawyer] has maintained close contact with Bush and wants to give him the details of whatever accommodations are set up.”
George was sworn in by Justice Potter Stewart (Yale 1937), a close family friend whose wife, Andy, was Barbara Bush’s best friend. George invited five hundred people to attend his swearing-in ceremony. After the oath, the President accompanied him into the main building of the CIA to greet about one thousand employees who could not attend the swearing-in ceremony because of the presence of the press.
Being named CIA director finally gave George what he had always wanted: a real seat at the table. He had been begging for “cabinet status” ever since he was appointed UN Ambassador. He had been allowed to attend a few meetings then and later as chairman of the National Republican Committee, but now he was finally entitled to a regular place within the cabinet, as well as on the National Security Council. Just sitting in the dugout with the varsity seemed to be enough for George.
“The guy never said a word during NSC meetings,” recalled Roger Molander, who received his Ph.D. in engineering science and nuclear engineering from the University of California at Berkeley. Molander’s principal area of responsibility in the NSC was strategic nuclear-arms control, and he observed George on a regular basis. “He was a total cipher. He came into the NSC meetings, sat down, and never said a word. Nothing. No proposals. No rebuttals. No initiatives. Nothing. I was there from the end of Nixon [1972], all of Ford [1976], and through Carter [1980], and I can tell you that George Bush was not even a bit player in any of those meetings. Ever. The most memorable dynamic was between the big brains of Henry Kissinger and James Schlesinger . . . Bush was a nonentity.”
While George did not impress the President’s counselors, he wowed the CIA’s beleaguered bureaucrats. “He was perfect for the agency,” said Osborne Day (Yale 1943). “I’d retired from the CIA by the time George took over, but I’ve known him and his family for years, and I can tell you the guys in the Outfit [the insiders’ term for the CIA] loved him . . . He was temperamentally suited for the job, more so than most of the damn fools the White House sent over. First of all, George already knew a lot of the fellows there. After all, he had gone to Yale, and Yale has always been the agency’s biggest feeder . . . In my Yale class alone there were thirty-five guys in the agency.”
The late Robin Winks, author of Cloak and Gown, an examination of Ivy League predominance in U.S. intelligence work, said that the Office of Strategic Services and the CIA wanted “young men with high grades, a sense of grace, with previous knowledge of Europe . . . and ease with themselves, a certain healthy self-respect and independent means . . . Oh, yes, and good social connections.” He said that Yale was a great place to look for such characteristics, which is also why people said that OSS stood for “Oh So Social.”
Professor Winks said most Ivy Leaguers (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Cornell, Penn, Brown, and Columbia) met the elite qualifications for intelligence work, but Yale had an advantage, because of its system of residential colleges, plus its secret societies, particularly Skull and Bones. For many years Yale contributed more men to “the Outfit” than any other Ivy League school. In fact, the Yale University library was once used as an overseas cover for an intelligence operation run by the OSS, and most of the mythic spy figures, from James Jesus Angleton to Richard McGarrah Helms, were Ya
lies. But in the wake of the Church hearings, both Angleton and Helms were driven from the agency.
“You can understand why George fit in so well at the CIA,” said Osborne Day, “when you understand that he was one of them . . . and they loved him.”
George approached every job he ever had with the exuberance of a carney barker. At the CIA, he knew he was supposed to restore agency morale. He began with a media offensive to try to make the CIA more palatable to the public. Within his first two weeks on the job he scheduled editorial conferences in New York City and Washington, D.C., with The New York Times, the Daily News, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Time, the Washington Star, and Women’s Wear Daily.
A CIA memo from the Time luncheon on February 23, 1976, indicated that the magazine had submitted a story for agency approval. When the agency objected, Time canceled the story. The CIA information specialist Angus Thuermer briefed George on the matter:
Murray Gart [acting editorial director] is the one who cancelled—when we gave him the implications of the story—a piece about CIA Chiefs of Stations: ’twas to have been a little series of thumbnail sketches. Horrible. We have been able to help Time on a corporate basis, as it were, when their businessmen junkets around the world have taken place. Gart was terribly concerned about the businessmen’s security in the Middle East, for example. Our people kept alert.
A cozy relationship had existed for many years between news organizations and the CIA, which had once used reporters as secret agents. The agency also had sent employees abroad under the cover of being accredited to American news organizations. These revelations roiled newsrooms as journalists felt their credibility had been compromised. George urged the news organizations to “bury the past” and keep the names of their reporter-spies secret.
When William S. Paley, the chairman of CBS, invited George for lunch on February 4, 1976, he did so as a courtesy to his friendship with George’s late father. Prescott had helped financially structure the company when he was at Brown Brothers Harriman and served on the CBS board for many years. The luncheon, supposed to be a lovefest, quickly turned into a slugfest when George was challenged about the CIA policy of using American reporters as spies. He tried to play down the seriousness of a journalist’s serving two masters and stressed that the agency would keep the names secret. The CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite objected.
“The names should be put on the table for the protection of those not guilty of such behavior,” he said.
Sensing the outrage—and knowing how important it was, personally and professionally, to keep the media on his side—George returned to the agency, where CIA lawyers quickly retooled the policy. The next day George announced that the CIA would no longer hire newsmen working for American publications to do undercover work; nor would the agency recruit clergy to help gather intelligence: “It is the agency policy not to divulge the names of cooperating Americans. In this regard the CIA will not make public now or in the future the names of any cooperating journalists or churchmen.”
George said he did not think using reporters and clergymen for spy purposes was improper but he did recognize the unique position of religion and press freedom in the Constitution. He said the new CIA ban was simply “to avoid any appearance of improper use by the agency.”
A few days later George, still working the media, appeared on Meet the Press and talked about the role of the CIA in the nation’s security. Watching him was the singer Frank Sinatra, who decided he would offer his services to the agency. Sinatra told his television producer, Paul W. Keyes, to arrange a meeting for him with the director. George was intrigued by Sinatra’s proposition and agreed to fly to New York City the next day. He invited the singer and his producer for drinks at his brother’s apartment in Gracie Square. He then called Jonathan.
“Are you ready for some guests, including Frank Sinatra, in your apartment at 6:30 p.m.?”
George had hoped to keep his meeting with Sinatra out of the press because he did not want to deal with the political consequences of socializing with a man known to be connected to organized crime. Sinatra had introduced John F. Kennedy to Judith Campbell Exner. She had testified before the Church Intelligence Committee that Sinatra also had introduced her to the Chicago mobster Sam Giancana. Her sexual adventures with all three men established a direct link between the White House and the Mafia. She later would claim to have carried messages from Kennedy to Giancana to assassinate Fidel Castro. In light of these gangland ties, the director of the CIA might have thought twice before meeting with Frank Sinatra, but George could hardly wait to meet the Mafia’s favorite movie star.
George showed up early at his brother’s apartment on February 23, 1976, accompanied not by Barbara but by Jennifer Fitzgerald. They had flown together from Washington to New York City on a government plane.
“It was a great evening,” recalled Jonathan Bush. “Sinatra made a very sincere and generous offer to help the CIA in any way possible. He said he was always flying around the world and meeting with people like the Shah of Iran and eating dinner with Prince Philip and socializing with the royal family of Great Britain. He emphasized time and again that his services were available and that he wanted to do his part for his country . . . I thought it was kind of nice of Frank Sinatra. He was very natural and I was spellbound.”
The sixty-one-year-old singer talked about his childhood in Hoboken, New Jersey, and spoke with great feeling about his family and his love of children and his love of country.
“We all feel that way,” said George.
When Sinatra offered again to put his personal contacts to work for the good of the United States, George tried to be humorous. “There is some special work you could do for us in Australia, Frank.”
Luckily for George, the singer, known for his violent temper, laughed at the allusion to his much-publicized concert tour. Sinatra had lacerated Australia’s press as “a bunch of bums and parasites who have never done an honest day’s work in their life.” He called the men “a bunch of fags” and the women “buck-and-a-half hookers.” His coarse comments caused such an uproar that the country’s 114 unions went on strike, and the stagehands, waiters, and transport workers refused to work for him, forcing Sinatra to cancel his tour.
Over drinks that evening the singer dazzled the Bush brothers, who were enthralled to be in his presence. “We felt like applauding after he left,” Jonathan said. “We had a big laugh about it and then we all got smashed.”
Up to that point, George’s closest contact with Hollywood had been Jerry Weintraub, the producer. They had become friends when Weintraub married the singer Jane Morgan, who grew up in Kennebunkport, not far from the Bushes’ summer retreat. The producer became George’s staunchest supporter in Hollywood, where he entertained the Bushes at dinner parties and raised thousands of dollars for George’s various political campaigns, and later for those of young George.
From the outside George Herbert Walker Bush looked as straight as a rep tie, but over the years he had tiptoed outside the confines of his regimented world to walk on the wild side. “He liked to sneak out here to make the rounds with Jerry and hang out with movie stars,” said a well-known screenwriter. Years later, Weintraub was dubbed by Spy magazine as George Bush’s “most embarrassing friend.” George called him “Mr. Hollywood.”
George was equally entranced with being director of the CIA. “It’s the most exciting job I’ve had to date,” he told friends. He signed personal letters “Head Spook.” Like a little boy with a Halloween costume, he even tested agency disguises by wearing a red-haired wig, false nose, and thick glasses to conduct an official meeting. “He got a big kick out of that,” said Osborne Day.
George monitored all media references to the agency and did not hesitate to request secret files. According to CIA memos released under the Freedom of Information Act, he seemed especially curious about information pertaining to the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
In one memo, dated September 15, 1976, he asked h
is deputy director to look into the news accounts that linked Lee Harvey Oswald’s assailant, Jack Ruby, to the mobster Santos Trafficante. Bush wrote: “A recent Jack Anderson story referred to a November 1963 CIA cable, the subject matter of which had some UK journalist observing Jack Ruby visiting Trafficante in jail (in Cuba). Is there such a cable? If so, I would like to see it.”
In a memo dated September 9, 1976, George asked about another Jack Anderson column that said CIA records showed the former CIA Director John McCone had briefed Lyndon Johnson about the JFK assassination and suggested that “the Cubans may have been behind the assassination.” George wrote in the margin of the column: “Is this true?”
A few days later he received a five-page CIA memorandum that disputed the allegations.
Still another memo, dated October 4, 1976, concerned an article saying that contrary to sworn testimony by Richard Helms, there was a CIA document that indicated a low-level CIA official had once considered using Oswald as a source of intelligence information about the Soviet Union. George wrote: “Will this cause problems for Helms?”
Years later, when George became President of the United States, he would deny making any attempt to review the agency files on the JFK assassination. When he made this claim, he did not realize that the agency would release eighteen documents “in full” and “in part” that showed he had indeed, as CIA director, requested information—not once but several times—on a wide range of questions surrounding the Kennedy assassination.
As CIA director, George testified before Congress fifty-one times during his 355-day tenure. By then he had perfected the “bending” and “stretching” of truth that he had first noted in his RNC diary. George was as smooth as an eel slithering through oil. His lies on behalf of the CIA ranged from outright falsehoods and adamant denials to obfuscations and evasive omissions.
