THE ULTIMATE LOYALIST

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-01448R000401580046-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 25, 2012
• Sequence Number: 46
• Publication Date: August 22, 1988
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/25: CIA-RDP99-01448R000401580046-1
Newsweek _
Time P a2
U.S. News & World Report
Date -2-7 Alrzv If9f
The Ultimate Loyalist
From Andover to Texas to the CIA, George Bush has been a hard
man to dislike, no matter what others were doing around him
By Garry Wills
A leading feature in this
year's presidential race has
been the competitive drama-
tization of each candidate's
concern about the problem
of drugs. Border visits with the Coast
Guard (to squint suspiciously at fishing
trawlers) were alternated with sessions at
schools and clinics (following Nancy Rea-
gan's nicely charted rounds). No more en-
terprising effort was mounted on
this front than the Vice Presi-
dent's appearances at Chaffey
High School in Ontario, Calif.,
just before that state's primary.
It took the form of three as-
saults-a role-playing exercise,
a box lunch with students who
were addicts or were affected by
addiction, and a speech to the
student body.
In the first session, George
Bush was lectured on the dan-
gers of "enabling behavior," that
unwillingness to recognize the
signs of addiction by which
friends or teachers tacitly con-
done a pervasive drug culture.
Bush, with much prompting
from an officious young director
of the program, is to enact a
teacher's concern for a student
who has been nodding off in
class. The Vice President, cast-
ing his eyes uncertainly to the
outer ring of reporters, asks
what the other "students" will
be doing while he approaches
the woman teacher playing the
student's role. "They will proba-
bly be listening," the director re-
sponds. The point is to demon-
strate awareness of what is going
on, to break the unvoiced con-
spiracy of acceptance. Bush and
the "student" wince toward each
other asymptotically, oozing
what the one hopes is concern and the
other hopes is deference. "Touch her,"
says the director, "on the shoulder."
Breaking the perimeter of mutual embar-
rassment. Bush makes the merest contact
and murmurs inaudibly something about
her family. As a whistle-blower, the Vice
President has been miscast.
That became even clearer when he
took the central seat in the Leonardo-
esque composition of a dozen or so lunch-
ers around a long table. Early on, Bush
tried to put himself at ease by telling the
students, all brimming with horror stories
they are encouraged to tell, "I don't want
to talk about what you don't want to."
This left the sandwich-room disciples
speechless for a moment, each about to be
deprived of some carefully prepared item
of testimony. But so strong was their sense
of mission that soon, despite
Bush's signals of anxiety not to
hear, they were topping one an-
other with bad things that had
happened to them or their sib-
lings as a result of drugs. Bush
nodded his head in obvious sym-
pathy and assured them again,
"If any of these questions put
you on the spot, don't answer it."
In his speech after lunch,
Bush told the student body, "I
heard this morning about some-
thing called `enabling behav-
ior'-what other people do to
make you think it's O.K. to use
drugs." Bush later assured me
the words were literally true for
him-he had not encountered
the term enabling behavior till
that day at Chaffey High, de-
spite service in the President's
task force on drugs.
CONTCt~ ~
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A FALSE PERCEPTION
OF WEAKNESS
People who are surprised, re-
peatedly. by what George Bush
does not know should keep in
mind the keen investigator of the
lunch-box last-supper scene at
Chaffey. He literally did not
want to hear a young teenager
tell him about his brother's death
from an overdose. Asked in the
1980 campaign what he consid-
ered his greatest fault, he an-
swered: "Oh, Lord. Stretch out
on the old psychiatrist's couch
... I guess maybe my weakest at-
tribute is that sometimes I trust
people too long." What, the re-
porter pursued him, does that
mean? "I dunno. I guess it means I don't
always believe that people are out to get
me. And that doesn't make me as suspi-
cious as sometimes I should be ... But that
doesn't mean it's a bad quality at all."
Despite the Bertie Wooster inconse-
quent twists of a statement like that, there
is nothing soft about George Bush. That
became apparent late in the 1980 cam-
paign. By that time, Bush was part of the
Reagan ticket; the long contest was tak-
ing its toll and the goofiness bred of con-
finement in the campaign plane was turn-
ing malicious. One particularly frayed
television producer took to making faces
at Bush, pleased at the discovery that this
disconcerted him. The producer escalated
his silly war of little indignities, blocking
the aisle at one point, pretending to talk to
someone else, while Bush tried to pass
him. Without a word, Bush grabbed him
by the crotch, steered him aside, and
passed on. George Bush is authentically
nice enough to put one's teeth on edge; but
he does not like to be made fun of, and he
especially does not like to lose.
Those who maintain, against the
false popular assumption, that
George Bush is tough point
rightly to his war record. John F.
Kennedy managed to get his tor-
pedo boat cloven by a slower,
clumsier craft, and his father
made of it an epic saga (with the
help of John Hersey). George
Bush had four planes that mal-
functioned or were shot out from
under him (each one with the
name of his fiancee Barbara
painted on its fuselage) and went
back and back, on 58 missions.
The wrenching exhilarations of
that time have been captured on
the pages of Samuel Hynes' new
book, Flights of Passage. Like
Bush, Hynes enlisted at 18,
trained with faulty equipment,
flew searches in the Pacific for
downed comrades and married
his sweetheart on leave. His
book evokes the odd combina-
tion of empowerment and im-
permanence that lit the nights of
carousal and darkened the
mornings of takeoff. After a cer-
tain point in training, every
landing was dangerous, per-
formed tail first even on land to
acquire the skills for grabbing at
a pitching carrier deck-skills
Bush used when he had to land
tail first in the ocean to give his
crew time to scramble out on the
wing when a faulty oil line
downed his plane right after
takeoff.
Bush loves Hynes' book, and
sent him fan letters, though they
have never met, saying the only
difference between his war
(Navy Air Corps) and Hynes'
His parents, Phillips Andover Acade-
my and the war-the three being much
the same thing for him-made George
Bush what he is. His family was made up
of fiercely competitive athletes. Golfing's
Walker Cup is named-like George Her-
bert Walker Bush himself-for the polo-
playing grandfather who established that
event. George's mother, still alive and en-
ergetic (like her four siblings), was a
championship tennis player and deter-
mined swimmer. His father, Senator Pres-
cott Bush, silent at the family table, was
already thinking ahead to the golf course
he attended with the same dutifulness he
brought to Greenwich, Conn., town meet-
ings. Hart Leavitt, a retired master who
taught George and his older brother Pres-
cott at Andover, says he found Senator
Bush, a Wall Street banker, too imposing
to address with ease. The Bush children
were even more intimidated. I asked Bush
if he found it hard to differ from. his fa-
ther. "It never occurred to me to differ. I
mean, he was up here [lifts right hand as
far as he can], and I was this little guy
down here." Frank DiClemente, a coach
(Marine Air Corps) was clean linen. Navy
carriers have decorum as well as dangers.
But onshore, Bush lived in the world vivid-
ly described by Hynes as full of booze,
womanizing and raunchy songs. Bush, de-
scribing the book to me. singled out this as-
pect of it as extraordinarily accurate-
"the experience in the bars, and the experi-
ence in the singing, and the experience of
his [Hynes'] macho guy." But I relayed
Hynes' difficulty in imagining George
Bush singing round after round of The
F ing Great Wheel. Bush is amazed that
this image should amaze people: "I do sing
it-I did sing it. And how I correct public
misperceptions I don't know, and I really
don't think I've got time to try. But, you
know, ask the guys I was with in the Navy.
That's the way to do that. Go to the oil
fields and talk to them. Don't believe the
inside-the-sophisticated-boardroom per-
ception of somebody fitting into a mold." It
is hard to fit George Bush into a mold. The
riddle is not merely that he is both unneces-
sarily nice and improbably tough, but that
he can rise to genuine nobility of perfor-
mance and sink to casual ruthlessness.
CONTINUED
and friend to both "Pressy" and
"Poppy" (as George was known
then), wanted to exchange anec-
dotes with the father about
Pressy's sports adventures, but
"all he wanted to know was, Is
he toeing the mark?" The most
revealing thing George has ever
said about his father occurs in
the letter he wrote to Hynes,
where he compares his own fa-
ther with Hynes' for being un-
able to express love. Bush, 6 ft. 2
in., would never consider his
own feats the equal of his fa-
ther's-who was 6 ft. 4 in., of
commanding presence and with
a record in wartime, at Yale,
and in Washington that seemed
to transcend criticism. The utter
probity of his father is so obvious
to Bush that even when the older
man went into partisan politics,
it was-according to his son-
for nonpartisan reasons. He ran
as a Republican, during a time
of Democratic dominance, to
keep the two-party system alive.
Andover stood grimly in
loco parentis during Bush's time
there. In fact, it was even less
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yielding than his parents in in-
sistence upon duty. Founded on
Andover Hill during the Ameri-
can Revolution, the Phillips
Academy had its seal designed
by Paul Revere. Its self-impor-
tance comes across nicely in an
editorial written during Bush's
senior year (1942), when the
country was at war. "President
Roosevelt's speech to the nation
last night was not, by any
means, directed solely at Ando-
ver. but it cannot be denied that many of
the things that he said are of utmost im-
portance here on the hill." The key word
is "solely." The school, like many Eastern
preparatory establishments, lived on the
cult of its martyrs from World War I. Me-
morial Tower, dedicated to those fallen
aristocrats, dominates the campus.
SPORTS OVER
STUDIES
Bush spent five years at Andover, since he
lost part of his junior year to a bad flu epi-
demic. He reached his adult height early,
which left him rather gawky when at rest.
But he was a graceful first baseman, and
he was the agile star center of the soccer
team, a team with a proud history at the
Phillips Academy. In a pompous book en-
tirely devoted to sports there, it is noted,
"Poppy Bush's play
throughout the season
ranked him as one of An-
dover's all-time soccer
greats." In the 1942 class
poll, he ranked among the
top four students in six
different categories: Best
All-Round Fellow, Best
Athlete, Most Respected,
Most Popular, Handso-
mest, and Most Faculty
Drag. (This last, in recog-
nition of faculty populari-
ty, because Bush was so
gladly submissive to the
ordeals of sarcasm that a
student with poor grades
was expected to put up
with.)
Bush was one of the
student deacons for the
Sunday chapel services.
More important, he was
the president of the "S. of
I." (the Society of Inqui-
ry), the most serious reli-
gious body on campus,
one that dated from aboli-
tionist days and has
merged with the Y.M.C.A.
in more recent times. Dur-
ing ? Bush's tenure, the
group sent money to a
Christian medical mission in Labrador.
So there may be a theological basis for
Bush's later assertion that his thoughts
turned, after being shot down in war, to
"Mother and Dad and the strength I got
from them-and God and faith and the
separation of church and state." S. of I.
theology leaned heavily toward the provi-
dential nature of institutions, not least
that of Phillips Andover.
George Bush was not nearly as suc-
cessful in studies as in sports. When I
asked him what books had shaped his life,
he answered Hynes' Flights ofPassage-a
rather late entry. Asked for earlier influ-
ences, he said, "Well, we had a lot of
obligatory reading when I was young-
afoby Dick, Catcher in the Rye, Gentle-
man 's Agreement. They shaped my [life],
in various ways. How? I had to go back
and give a book review on each of those
when I was 17." Actually, two of those
three books were written after he was 17,
but the reviews he remembers were writ-
ten for Hart Leavitt, who taught English
composition. The grade Bush earned was
67 (60 was flunking). "He showed no
imagination or originality," Leavitt re-
members, though praising his manners
and pleasantness.
CATCHING THE
WESTERN ITCH
Bush, always on the go, was not remem-
bered for much "dicking," the Andover
term for those bull sessions that teenagers
engage in when, they begin to discover
ideas. He remembers even fewer books
from Yale than from Andover. When I
talked to him about current books, he
said, "I said, `Barbara, now I'm going out
with Jimmy Baker to the wilderness'
[their fishing trip during the Democratic
convention], and she said, `You ought to
do something. Don't take any papers-
you ought to read.' And I said (shrug-
ging], `Read? Oh, what am I gonna read?'
And so she gave me Tom Wolfe's book,
which I (shudder]-too FAT! And I abso-
lutely loved it. I'm almost at the end. I'm
on page 500 and something; it is extraor-
dinary." Perhaps it is best that Bush end-
ed this desultory search for remembered
book titles by confessing, "But I can't-
Garry, I don't read that much."
The most famous master of Bush's
time, Arthur ("Doc") Darling, liked to say
that fear was the basis of education, and
he took pride in the number of students he
flunked, as well as in the school's high
rate of expulsions. The code of the school
was that self-importance as a group de-
pended on constant self-abasement of the
individuals within the group. The privi-
leged class, fearing its children will turn
out spoiled, inflict such schools on them as
effete cures. Surrogate parents are hired
who will be less subject to favoritism in
Further cdren "toe the
general lesson,
rich kids are often condemned to summer
jobs of grueling if brief exposure to man-
ual work. Bush's ordeal was work at a
farm camp run by Coach
DiClemente, who still
marvels at the way Bush
pitched into the most sor-
did aspects of his assign-
ment-like shoveling
horse manure out of the
barn, a task that may have
prepared him better than
he knew for later
assignments.
From glory in war to
glory at Yale was another
easy step for Bush. He at-
tended the school when
God and Man. (but not
Woman) were regnant in
the eyes of everyone but.
Bush's overlapping Bull-
dog, William Buckley.
Like other veterans, they
had undergraduating to
catch up on. They were
grown men for whom
even the silly games of
Skull and Bones were seri-
ous; in the club's sanctum
in a windowless building
on High Street, Bush went
through the rituals of re-
vealing the intimate se-
crets of his life and sexual
history in a series of se-
.
t s
ter sessions known asLH(life history)
and CB (connubial bliss).
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After graduating from Yale, Bush
succumbed to an itch of the Eastern privi-
leged that Nelson Aldrich has recently
described in his book Old Money-the
Teddy Roosevelt yearning to go West and
do something physical. Bush presented
the matter to himself less as an opportuni-
ty than an ordeal-he thought first of
farming, and only then of physical work
in oil fields. It was a way of continuing the
effete cure on a grander scale; the ironic
thing in Bush's case is that the cure would
just confirm, in some people's eyes, the
ailment. Luckily, Bush had enough mon-
ey to indulge his urge, under the
pretext that it was done in order
to make money. How little that
motive was actually at work ap-
pears from the easy way he gave
up the enterprise when it prom-
ised to bring in serious returns. In
his autobiography, which plays
down Andover and the East, the
move to Texas is described in
terms of the physical work he un-
dertook when the natives were
too shrewd to get caught doing it.
THE SPIRIT OF THE
SUMMER JOB
Like many outsiders after the
war, he went first to Odessa and
then to Midland, in the raw west-
ern part of Texas where the
Permian oil pool was being div-
vied up by eager investors. So
many Ivy Leaguers were moving
onto the dusty fields that new
streets were being laid out with
names like Princeton Avenue.
Bush brought his air of civic duty
to places that did not have exact-
ly the ethos of Greenwich town
meetings. He was clearly inter-
ested in politics from the outset,
and Playwright Larry L. King,
then working for the local Con-
gressman J.T. Rutherford, kept
an eye on Bush as a Republican
threat, "You know, just to load
up and be ready." That Bush
would consider running from
Midland, soon to become a cen-
ter of John Birch activism, might
seem strange, given his father's
patrician Republican back-
ground, but Bush, who never con-
vincingly took on Texas manner-
the minimum fortune for a Texas busi-
nessman (under a million) and moved to
Houston, he ran for the Senate in Barry
Goldwater's year, 1964, berating the vil-
lains of Midland and Odessa, as well as of
Houston-Walter Reuther, the U.N. and
Martin Luther King.
This was a period when Eastern Es-
tablishment Republicans were figures of
hate and ridicule to "real" Republicans
who backed Goldwater, the year Charles
Percy and George Romney were lumped
with Nelson Rockefeller as traitors to
the party. Yet here, in Houston, was a
Republican looking more like a Salton-
stall than a Lyndon Johnson, but who
was as hard as Barry against the 1964
Civil Rights Act. Once again, Bush was
extending the spirit of the tough summer
job. Rich kids are supposed to go out and
join the workers in the field, but they are
also supposed to come home by Labor
Day. Bush was staying on, going native.
In undertaking this unrequited love af-
fair with Texas, Bush tried too hard, too
embarrassingly, to be what he was not,
and found it impossible to maintain his
own dignity or gain his neighbors' re-
spect. He was putting himself in line for
a long series of humiliations. His yeam-
it much thought. Belonging mat-
tered more than weighing the is-
sues at stake. He was not going to
"dick" much about ideas. There
were games to be won (he tried to
set up a soccer league in Texas)
and clubs to be organized. Few
suspect George Bush of mean-
ness. The fault must have been
intellectual. At any rate, some-
thing fatal was lost and would
never be retrieved when Prescott
Bush's son ran a Barry Goldwa-
ter race in 1964. He admitted to
an Episcopal priest that he had
gone too far to the right in his
urge to win.
No man had a better eye for
the usable Eastern Establish-
ment Republican than Richard
Nixon. He loved to manipulate
those he suspected of despising
him. He took early notice of
George Bush's organizational
work in the 1950s, encouraged
his Goldwater phase and cam-
paigned for him in 1964. Bush in
his early oil travels lived briefly
in Nixon's hometown of Whitti-
er
Calif B
t th
i
i
,
u
e t
e w
th Nixon
tng to be a Texan has a kind of noble was deeper than that. The ex-
mystery to it and such a pathetic persis- Vice President of the early 1960s, while
tence that Texans like Journalist Molly cultivating Goldwaterites, was also ac-
Ivins turn him down wistfully, wishing quiring a covey of "walking gentlemen" to
they did not have to. "I think created escort him back onto the public scene-
Texans are just as good as birth Texans," young talents like Robert Finch and Wil-
she says. "Most of those who died at the liam Ruckelshaus. Bush was one of this
Alamo had come from somewhere else. circle-and one who would fall for Nix-
But Bush has to know that there are on's own locker-room bravado as a politi-
three things a Texan does not do. We do cal style. It did not work well for Nixon,
not use `summer' as a verb. We do not but he managed to persuade some people,
wear blue ties with little green whales on including Bush, that they could do it bet-
them. And we do not call trouble 'doo- ter (Bush actually does it worse).
doo.' We're not setting the standards When Bush reached Congress two
high. But there they are." years later, he showed signs of reverting
Why did Bush choose a cultural dis- to type. He was concerned about family
placement he could never make convinc- planning. In 1968, after trying to amend
ing? Abasement training at Andover can- the civil rights bill on open 'housing, he
not have gone that deep. He spoke of voted for it, much to the disgust of his
f
i
orm
ng a vital Republican Party
in the Democratic state of Texas,
as if he were his father disinter-
estedly keeping the two-party
system alive. But Prescott Bush
brought high standards to the
Senate-opposing Joseph Mc-
Carthy, championing civil rights
bills-and later criticized the war
iet Nam
George Bush
.
en-
isms, accepted the values of Midland tered
en-life County as unquestioningly as he had 1964 Civil public
Act. He went
those of Andover. When he had acquired native without much principle,
perhaps because he had not given
constituents. But Nixon won the nomina-
tion later that year and reasserted his
mastery over Bush, holding out for a
while a hope of the vice presidency (the
first of Bush's lunges at an office others
try to evade). When Prescott Bush ad-
vised his son against running for the Sen-
ate in 1970, Nixon urged him on, financ-
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ing his race with an illegal campaign fund
and promising him a Government job if
he lost.
The job Bush asked for and got was to
go to the U.N., where he was to represent
Taiwan's hapless effort to remain a mem-
ber while Kissinger and Nixon were mak-
ing that impossible by their secret deal-
ings with the People's Republic of China.
Bush was not informed of their policy,
which made his impassioned U.N.
speeches part of a charade. I asked if he
felt betrayed. "No, I didn't feel betrayed. I
would like to have known what was going
on ... but not betrayed-
that's too strong a word."
After his Senate loss to
Lloyd Bentsen in 1970, Bush
saw all the upward paths to
elective office blocked in Tex-
as, and decided to risk his fu-
ture with Nixon and diploma-
cy. Secret notes in the Nixon
archives show that Bush ad-
mitted, after serving in the
U.N., that he could hardly go
back and run for office in the
state where he had begun his
career by denouncing the
U.N. Less clear was that tak-
ing favors from Richard Nix-
on was a way of getting in line
for trouble. Barbara Bush
seems to have sensed this
when she warned her husband
not to let Nixon saddle him
with the chairmanship of the
Republican National Com-
mittee. This was during the
shake-up following Nixon's
re-election in 1972, when Wa-
tergate was a faint under-
ground rumble. Nixon, in the
flush of victory, was going to
do wonders, mainly by firing
or demoting almost everyone
in sight-but not George
Bush. "He'd do anything for
the cause," Nixon privately
told John Ehrlichman. The qualification
for service in the second term was spelled
out with ruthless clarity: "Not brains,
loyalty."
NICE MAN,
NASTY SITUATIONS
Bush went to meet the President with a
request for a preferred office-Deputy
Secretary of State. He suggested himself
as one who "can tiptoe between Henry
Kissinger and William Rogers." But Nix-
on wanted to keep that role to himself. He
tested Bush by asking for the names of
loyalists and disloyalists in the U.N. and
related agencies. Bush, according to notes
that Journalist Nicholas Lemann has un-
earthed from the Nixon archives, com-
plied. Then Nixon gave Bush the job he
least desired, the one Barbara had warned
him against, sweetening his offer with the
promise of a Cabinet post after the 1974
elections. Bush told his disappointed wife,
..Boy, you just cant turn down a Presi-
dent." The notes tell a grimmer story. He
left the sessions with Nixon. saying, "Let
me think about it. I'll do what you tell me.
Not all that enthralled with R.N.C. but I'll
do it."
What he was taking on, without real-
izing it, was defense of the party during
the worst days of Watergate. Bush was the
ultimate loyalist, out around the country
raising morale, defending the President,
blaming everything on Democrats and
the press. He assured all doubters that the
President had told him there was no cov-
er-up. I asked him if he felt betrayed
when he-found out that was not true: "I
felt thoroughly disillusioned, to have been
told that there was nothing to this, there
were no more, you know, smoking guns or
whatever these horrible things were. And,
uh, I felt very much-betrayal is a word I
don't particularly use, but this wasn't
right, and I've so stated many times."
As a reward for his service under fire,
Bush hoped that President Ford would
give him the job dangled as part of Nix-
on's original wooing process, the vice
presidency. But that went to Nelson
Rockefeller, and Bush-ironically, given
his denunciation of the People's Republic
when he was at the U.N.-became Amer-
ica's envoy to China.
By now Bush was a one-man cleanup
squad for the Republicans, the nicest man
to send into the nastiest situations, and
the CIA, after the Church committee's in-
vestigation, was as battered and demoral-
ized an area as the R.N.C. had recently
been. Bush, kept in the dark in earlier
jobs, was sent to be the restorer of light
and order at the CIA, which he largely be-
came. Heavy firings under James Schle-
singer and candid revelations to Congress
under William Colby had made the agen-
cy defensive, and Bush has always been a
good restorer of team morale. He spoke
more often to Congress and said less than
his immediate predecessors. He hired
from within the agency and
assuaged the fears profession-
al intelligence men have of ca-
reer politicians. His one of-
fense to the honor of the
agency was opening its files
extensively to critics outside
the Government, and that was
done in response to President
Ford's effort to placate the
growing revolt of right-wing-
ers. They believed the CIA
estimates of Soviet strength
were understated. Bush ap-
pointed a committee of out-
siders ("Team B") to use the
same evidence CIA profes-
sionals had at their disposal
and come up with their own
estimate of Soviet strength.
CONTINUED
Four of the nine members of
Team B, including its chair-
man Richard Pipes, would
become members of the
Committee on the Present
Danger, a hard-line anti-
detente group. Everyone
knew the board was
stacked-Ray Cline, a CIA
loyalist, called it a kangaroo
court. But its alarmist esti-
mates helped set the stage for
the vast defense expenditures
that began under Carter and
peaked during the buying
frenzy at the Reagan Pentagon.
Bush does not even mention Team
B in his autobiography. I asked why. "I
didn't think of it. Glad to talk about it.
I think it was a very worthwhile exer-
cise. Many people misunderstand what
the exercise was. It was about challeng-
ing the objectivity of the Government-
how objective is it, or how subjective is
it. Get two teams-one of internal peo-
ple, one of external people-give each
the same information, and do they
reach the same conclusion? No. That's
why I answer my question as I did-
how do you measure intentions? It is
very difficult, different, when you are
dealing solely with numbers. And it was
a very good, sensible exercise, of which
I am proud." But wasn't this a group
whose views were predictable? "Sure.
But I proved a point there. I proved
that the objectivity of intelligence
should be challenged. It had nothing to
do with whether we were going to
change direction." To everyone but
Bush, changing direction was the point
of the exercise.
At the CIA , with its Skull and Bones
tradition of gentlemanly skulduggery, of
men who observe a code but are not above
grabbing a few crotches if people get in
the way, Bush seemed back in his original
element, where people play hard and
rough but keep to certain rules among
themselves. It is interesting that most Wa-
tergate and Church committee revela-
tions seemed to bother Bush less than the
idea of taping a fellow gentleman's con-
versation. "I mean that's against my mor-
al grain, to be taping some-
body. I can remember
standing down here in this
building [the White House]
when I heard about the
White House tapes, and
felt-betrayed means that
somebody owes me some-
thing and thus-and I think
it's broader than that." CIA
covert actions do not arouse
the same misgivings in this
occasionally, dutifully ruth-
less man.
By 1980 Bush was ready
to make a desperate try for
the White House. He had
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primarily an appointi\,e
resume to run on, but it was
an equivocal recommenda-
tion. He seemed less the fel-
low who had held all these
jobs than the man who
would consent to do them.
Once a walking gentleman
has cast his lot with Richard
Nixon over the years, even
Andover straightforward-
ness can begin to look like
invincible patsydom. It was in the 1980
campaign that Bush's later manner was
established in people's minds-that mish-
mash of cultures partly assimilated, that
belongingness more yearned for than
achieved, that having had too little effect
in too many places-so that different
styles stumble over one another and inter-
rupt his words when he tries to speak. He
had developed a highly idiosyncratic
style, surpassed only by Al Haig's. He was
now the man who could say at Auschwitz,
"Boy, they were big on crematoriums,
weren't they?"
But other traits, more admirable,
showed up in 1980 as well-persistence,
competitiveness, an unwillingness to
quit. William Sloane Coffin, once Yale's
chaplain, was an Andover classmate of
Bush's and fellow Bones member at Yale,
though they took separate paths after-
ward. (Coffin is now the head of SANE/
FREEZE, an antinuclear organization.)
When Bush visited Yale during Coffin's
chaplainship, he sent word he would like
to play some squash with his old class-
mate. "Bring him on," Coffin crowed.
They played a few games, Coffin win-
ning and Bush getting more determined
to win. Coffin was ready to call it a day,
but Bush kept asking for one more game.
Recalls Coffin: "Word got around the
gym that Left and Right were meeting
on the center court, and we had quite
an audience by the end, but George
wouldn't give up." Jim Baker found he
had the same problem getting Bush to
give up in 1980, to withdraw from the
presidential race in time to position him-
self as a vice-presidential candidate.
Bush does not yield easily, something
he proved in his scrappy comeback
after finishing behind both Robert Dole
and Pat Robertson in this year's Iowa
caucuses.
THE CONSUMMATE
VICE PRESIDENT
In the Vice President's office, Bush's basic
decency resurfaced. He brought dignity to
the ceremonial parts of the office and han-
dled himself with great composure during
the assassination attempt on Reagan.
When Ray Cline and others tried to advise
him on assembling a staff of his own, Bush
rightly said policy should be made in other
offices; he was to be the President's confi-
dant, not his competitor. But he did culti-
vate good relations with right-wing groups,
which considered him suspect for his oppo-
sition to Reagan in the 1980 primaries.
Thus when Bush spoke to the contra con-
tributors cultivated by Carl ("Spitz") Chan-
nell, Channell planned to tap the same peo-
ple for donations to Bush's future campaign
needs. This was lust one of many ties Bush's
office had with right-wingers concerned
about Nicaragua's "freedom fighters."
Although he met with Contra Supplier
Felix Rodriguez, and his own security ad-
viser Donald Gregg knew details of the con-
tra supply operation by August 1986 that he
did not consider "vice-presidential," Bush
denies all knowledge of that activity. I asked
him if he felt betrayed, as many Americans
did, that U.S. arms were sold to the Ayatul-
lah. "I don't think you ought to use the word
betrayed, but that shouldn't have hap-
pened-not the selling of the arms, but the
divergence of funds to some of the contras."
Describing his own discovery that funds had
been diverted, Bush said, "The minute I
heard that, I- Whoops! Strong!'
The Vice President has
avoided lengthy questioning
over his relations with the
contras. He has made public
his agreement with the Presi-
dent that arms should have
been sold to Iranian moder-
ates, though he had some
problems with the participa-
tion of a foreign government
in a covert operation and
with the chances of the cover
being blown. For the rest, he
is the terrorism and crisis-
control specialist who knew
little about what was going
on among White House
friends and staff members. It
would have taken "clairvoy-
ant hindsight," he claims, for
him to have stopped the con-
tra diversion.
When I asked Barbara
Bush how the vice presidency
had changed her husband,
she said it had mellowed him.
He takes things less personal-
ly. Yet there now seems
something violated beneath
his affability. He has been so many things
to so many people, he embodies so many
cultural divisions, that his crooked smile,
though still winning, seems to fork across
his face like a jagged crevice or fault line.
He boasts of having lived in seven states
and calls himself a Texan, though most
people think of him as Eastern.
Bush assured me he was more at peace
with himself and with his critics-before
bringing up his critics and angrily dismiss-
ing them. He is used to being liked, and
(o.
with good reason. What, after all, is wrong
with a man who has done community ser-
vice from the time he organized for the
missions as president of S. of I.'? What is
there to criticize in the model family man
and loyal servitor to his party, the devoted
friend to many estimable people, the inher-
itor of a popular President's completed sec-
ond term? It is hard to dislike George Bush,
no matter what others were doing around
him. Perhaps the worst charge that can be
brought against him is what they call, at
Chaffey High, enabling behavior. ^
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