BUSH OPENED UP TO SECRET YALE SOCIETY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-01448R000401580058-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 25, 2012
• Sequence Number: 58
• Publication Date: August 7, 1988
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Bush Opened Up
To Secret Yale Society
Turning Points in a Life Built on Alliances
By Bob Woodward
and Walter Pincus
Washington Pat Star Writers
Late one night 40 years ago,
locked in the windowless
building on High Street in
New Haven that is the home of
Skull and Bones, Yale's most
secretive student club, George
Herbert Walker Bush presented
his life history, or "LH," as it is
called by Bones men.
Each year 15 Yale juniors are
"tapped" to join Skull and Bones
by the 15 graduating seniors in
the society. In Bush's day
selection to Bones was perhaps
the ultimate honor for a Yale
undergraduate. On that night,
Bush was supposed to tell all,
hold nothing back about his life.
The "LH" was a central feature of
the formalized ritual of
self-examination within the
closely knit organization.
Bush, then 23, held the group
in thrall with the story of the
most dramatic episode-almost
the last episode-of his life. He
told them how, more than three
years earlier, on Sept. 2, 1944,
the Navy plane he was piloting
was shot down during a bombing
run over the island of Chichi Jima
in the Pacific. As the World War
II plane, a TBM Avenger,
plummeted toward the ocean,
Bush bailed out. He later was
rescued by a U.S. submarine
patrolling nearby. But Bush's two
crewmen died.
One of them was Lt. (j.g.)
William G. (Ted) White, an
iofficer not trained as a naval
aviator, who had been begging to
go for a ride on a combat mission
in the turret gunner's seat; Bush
and the squadron commander let
him go. White had been a Bush
family friend. He also was a
Bones man, Class of 1942.
" 'I wish I hadn't let him go,' "
Thomas W.L. (Lud) Ashley, a
fellow Bones man, quoted Bush
as saying that night. Bush "was
heartbroken. He had gone over it
in his mind 100,000 times and
concluded he couldn't have done
anything .... He didn't feel
guilty about anything that
happened on the plane .... But
the incident was a source of real
grief to him."
"It tore him up, real anguish,"
Ashley said. "It was so fresh in
his mind. He had a real friendship
with this man. . . . "
Ashley said he can still recall
vividly Bush's "description of how
small that atoll was, how
vulnerable he was flying in at low
altitude. Everything had been
routine up until then, everything
had probably been routine since
he'd joined the Navy. In fact, it
had been routine since he'd been
born. Now, all of a sudden, it
wasn't routine. He described the
quiet kind of hysteria being in the
front of the plane [as the pilot),
not seeing the two in the back,
the smoke, losing control of the
plane, the anguish as you lose
altitude and don't see motion,
nothing, no effort to eject [by the
two crewmen], then the horrible
moment when you go yourself or
you don't go."
Bush has told that story in
public since, in his autobiography
and elsewhere, but never with
the self-scrutiny and obvious pain
that he shared in Skull and Bones
that night. Apparently, Bush was
able to open up to that group in a
way he has rarely been able to
duplicate in 25 years in public
life, and his relationships with his
classmates in Skull and Bones
The Washington Post
The New York Times
The Washington Times
The Wall Street Journal
The Christian Science Monitor
New York Daily News
USA Today
The Chicago Tribune
have continued to be an
important part of his life for 40
years. As recently as three years
ago, at a time when Bush seemed
uncertain about his own political
identity and future, four
members of the group had dinner
with him in Washington to buck
him up, as several put it.
Like his experience in Skt_..;,...
and Bones, many of the important
turning points in Bush's life have
not been fully explored. The only
recent full-length treatment of
Bush's life is his autobiography,
"Looking Forward," which was
published last year. It did not
even mention some important
moments in Bush's 64 years,
including his membership in the
Yale society. Skull and Bones is
part of the story of George Bush
as a privileged Yankee
aristocrat-an aspect of his life
that Bush the politician has
always played down.
More than 200 people were
interviewed for this series of
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articles, and extensive records of Bush's career in pol-
itics were culled from the presidential archives of
Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R.
Ford. These interviews and documents reveal many
new details about important moments in Bush's long
career until the time he became Ronald Reagan's vice
president.
Records at the Johnson library show that in preparing
to run for a Senate seat in Texas in 1970, Bush, the
Republican, avidly cultivated the support of Johnson,
the Democrat. The Nixon archives reveal that after
Bush lost that race he accepted a job on the Nixon
White House staff, but then talked his way into the
more prestigious post of United Nations ambassador.
In 1974 Bush hoped-more fervently than he ever
let on-to be chosen as Gerald Ford's vice president.
He knew he was the first choice of leading Republicans
in a private White House survey-255 backed Bush,
while 181 preferred Nelson A. Rockefeller, who got the
job. To flee the Watergate "stench" in Washington, as a
close friend put it, Bush then asked for the job of U.S.
envoy to China, though he knew he would play no sig-
nificant role in China policy (then dominated by Secre-
tary of State Henry A. Kissinger, who repeatedly put
Bush in his place during the Nixon-Ford years).
Within months of his arrival in Beijing, Bush began
looking for a way back to Washington so he would be
positioned to be chosen as Ford's running mate in the
1976 election. Ford again frustrated that dream when
he appointed flush director of the Central
gency, then quickly acquieced to the eman s of Dem__
oc r~senators that he promise not to put Bush on the
'76 GOP ticket.
Before he was first elected to Congress Bush worked
in the oil business, and made nearly $1 million from the
sale of his Zapata Off-Shore Co. in 1966. Since then,
records show, most of his private earnings and success-
ful investments have come from opportunities provided
by friends.
Fora quarter-centuryin public life Bush has perse-
vered, pleasing the presidents he served as best he
could, rarely complaining, always deferring, accumu-
lating friends and frequently subordinating his own
views.
Bush's enduring ties to his Skull and Bones class-
mates illustrate another little-appreciated aspect of his
personality: Throughout his life Bush has forged a se-
ries of strong personal allegiances that have been crit-
ically important to him personally, and to his rise. In-
deed, friends and associates from every phase of his life
agreed that relationships with other people have always
beed much more important to Bush than political ideas,
policy preferences or any abstract intellectual concern.
"Family, Yale, country, our group, these were the
driving forces .... He works at it ... they are one
extended family" for Bush, said Valleau Wilkie Jr., an-
other member of the Bones Class of 1948.
"A drilling rig can disappear off the face of the Earth,
you can go down in the polls," his son, George W. Bush,
said in a recent interview, but friendship "doesn't waver
with the polls. It is there and consistent." For Bush, his
son said, these relationships provide a "permanency" in
life that is absent from politics.
CONTINUED
For example, in 1970, two Houston friends lost their
wives to cancer at almost the same time. Both were
despondent. One night Bush gathered up these two
friends and took them to dinner, expressed his concern
for both and gently suggested that they had to let go of
the past, focus on their children. Bush regularly stayed
in touch with these friends and helped them get over
their grief. Both say he has earned their enduring grat-
itude and friendship.
One of the men is James A. Baker III, who Friday
announced he will give up his job as secretary of the
treasury to become Bush's campaign chairman. The
other is Robert A. Mosbacher, Bush's chief fund-raiser
since 1970.
Family has always been extremely important to
Bush. Echoes from the life of his famous father, Sen.
Prescott Bush (R-Conn.), recur throughout Bush's life.
Prescott Bush went to Yale, played first base on the
varsity baseball team, belonged to Skull and Bones,
served in the military at an early age, set out on his own
in business after Yale, then moved into public service-
and Bush followed precisely the same path.
According to friends and family, the presence of Pre-.
scott Bush has always loomed over George Bush's -life;
the son frequently mentions his father to this day. His
mother, 87, also has been a powerful influence, accord-
ing to friends. A strong, outspoken woman, she instilled
good manners and competitiveness in her offspring.
"He is a product of Victorian parents in a modern
world " said Ashley, Bush's -Yale classmate. "That's go-
ing to give you a different person. You didn't challenge
your parents. They were unassailable .... He was not
brought up to be independent."
Bush's accounts of various periods in his life "are of-
ten off 10 to 30 aercent," said a longtime Bush associ-.
ate who asked not to be identified. "part of this is shy-
ness, and the [Bush} family ethic of 'Don't brag,' but
,there is a certain reserve, even secretiveness ... the
inner turmoil is not conveyed."
Some of Bush's personal traits have been obscured
by his public image. For years politicians have consid-
ered his experience in a series of senior government
posts his biggest asset; the resume candidate, he has
been called. But interviews and newly discovered
records indicate that Bush often got those jobs for rea-
sons that had little to do with their subject matter.
President Nixon sent Bush to the U.N. to be a spokes-
man for him in New York; President Ford sent him to III China as a consolation prize er pis Rockefeller to
be vice President then ask to take over the
ause of his a it to soo ess and follow or-
ers. Once on the ~o , according to past associates,
$ush rarely tried to master the subject matter and of-
ten remained detached, delegating major issues to his
aides and letting others conduct the real policy debates.
Bush's aides and friends repeatedly said that Bush
does not have an ego problem, and can step back and let
others handle details.
According to numerous associates, past and present,
Bush has in common with his current boss, Ronald Rea-
gan, a limited attention span. "You have to stand be-
tween him and the window or he will spend his whole
time looking out the window, day-dreaming," said one
frustrated official after an economics briefing for Bush.
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Bush has always spent considerable energy on per-
sonal gestures. He writes notes by the hundreds, both
to political associates and old friends, and will make a
telephone call the moment one is recommended to him
by an aide. But Bush rarely keeps personal lists of re-
minders of things to do, according to his intimates; he
reacts to immediate stimuli, not to a strategy or plan
thought out in advance.
A former administration official who worked closely
with Bush and Reagan observed that Bush approaches
an issue in its own frame, not in a larger context. "He
can settle a problem, but not look ahead five years from
now."
Bush has won a reputation as a successful operator,
smoothing troubled waters and resolving conflicts suc-
cessfully in his past jobs, but he has left few if any mon-
uments to his tenure in the House of Representatives.
at the CIA, the U.N. the U.S. mission to China or the
vice presidency; no laws or major policy c nges are
remembered as George Bush's personal contribution.
Bush declined to be interviewed for these articles.
"I've been so thoroughly explored that I doubt they
[Post reporters] can add a new dimension to it," Bush
said last week when asked why he wouldn't sit down for
an interview. "I don't know that I can contribute any '
thing to it."
But members of Bush's Bones delegation-people
who have been close to him since college-were willing
to discuss their friend, contrary to the traditional se-
crecy that surrounds Skull and Bones activities. Bush
has maintained his undergraduate pledge of secrecy; he
won't discuss Skull and Bones, just as he has generally
declined to discuss himself in any intimate way. These
Yale classmates provide a glimpse of the private man
who has been hidden from public view.
The relationships that were formed in the "Tomb,"
the large mausoleum-like building where the society's
meetings took place each Thursday and Sunday night
during the academic year, have had a strong place in
Bush's fife, according to all 11 of his fellow Bonesmen
who are still alive.
Several described in some detail the ritual in the or-
ganization that builds the bonds. Before giving his We
history, each member had to spend a Sunday night re-
viewing his sex life in a talk known in the Tomb as CB,
or "connubial bliss," a term from the 19th century an-
nals of the society.
"The first time you review your sex life .... We
went all the way around among the 15," said Lucius H.
Biglow Jr., a retired Seattle attorney. "That way you
get everybody committed to a certain extent. So when
we came around to round two [the "LH"], you knew
where you stood .... It was a gradual way of building
confidence."
The sexual histories helped break down the normal
defenses of the members, according to several of the
members from his class. William J. Connelly Jr., another
member from Bush's class, said, "In Skull and Bones we
all stand together, 15 brothers under the skin. [It is]
the greatest allegiance in the world."
Memento Mori-Latin for "Remember that you must
die." It is one of the phrases that is part of the lore in
the 156-year-old Skull and Bones ritual. Said one of
Bush's group, "Skull and bones is the theme, the basis,
because when all is said and done, we're all going, no
one is immortal .... It's like the scholastics of the Mid-
dle Ages who kept a skull around to remind themselves
they are mortal."
Several members also recall tempos fugit--time
flies-another Latin phrase that appears in a_ hymn
written for the society in the 19th century. The Bones-
men say they read it as another reminder of their mor-
tality, and the importance of the brotherhood in this
short life. .
The society has been almost a family tradition. Be-
sides Bush's father, a member of Bones, Class of 1917,
another member was Neil Mallon, head of Dresser In-
dustries,. Who gave Bush his first job out of Yale. Bush's
oldest son, George W. Bush, a156 was in Bones, Class of
1968, as were about a half-dozen other Bush family
members.
One or more of the members of Bush's own Bones
group have been involved in many of the major turning
points in Bush's personal and political life. Several pro-
vided comfort when Bush's daughter, Robin, died from
leukemia in the early 19509, all have offered advice on
his political career, and a few have raised money for his
campaigns. One invested $40,000 in Bush's Zapata oil
company in the early 1950s, later selling his investment
for nearly a 300 percent profit. Another who invested
in Zapata came out with enough profit to make a down
payment on a house.
On Feb. 21, 1981, a month after Bush was sworn in
as vice president, 12 of the surviving Bonesmen, their
wives and the widows of two members, gathered in
Washington for a weekend reunion, including a Satur-
day night dinner at the vice president's mansion.
John E. Caulkins, a Michigan banker, read a poem he
had written, with a stanza about each member.
Bush's-using the vice president's childhood nick-
name-referred to "Old Poppy, our own V.P."
The next day the group went on a tour of the Oval
Office, Bush's office and the Capitol.
In 1985, four members of the delegation gathered
again with Bush in Washington under less celebratory
circumstances. A half-dozen Republicans were gearing
up to challenge Bush for the 1988 Republican presiden-
tial nomination, and the vice president's inglorious
1984 campaign against Democratic vice presidential
nominee Geraldine A. Ferraro had tarnished his image.
"It was a period when Bush was getting the crap kicked
out of him," said Ashley, who served as a Democratic
member of Congress from Ohio for 26 years until 1980.
Thomas W. Moseley of the Bones group said he re-
ceived a call from Ashley, who said, "We're going to
throw a dinner party for [Bush]. He's not having any
fun, the job is grating on him." Moseley added, "You
CONTINUED
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could see it was gnawing on him. It was to be a buck.
him-up dinner. He felt alone."
Had Bush compromised himself by hewing to the
Reagan line on every issue? members of the group won-
dered. Had he submerged his true personal and political
self so much that he would never make himself distin-
guishable from his president and project the necessary
sense of command?
Bush, Ashley, Moseley, Caulkins and a fifth member
of their Bones class, Samuel S. Walker Jr., with their
wives, met for dinner at Ashley's house in Northwest
Washington on Saturday, Oct. 5. 1985.
The
anddi s unexpectedly turned into a traditional
Skulll personal discussion and
cross-examination. Ashley recalled, "Moseley, a true
believer in the magic that is woven by these relation
ships ... stands up and says, 'Let's repair to the inner
sanctum.' Bush was all for it and said, 'Why not, why
not? Everyone else seemed to want to do it, so I acqui-
esced. It was an hour, everyone was heard from.
[There] was a flow of communication. [Bush] was as
vulnerable and as much a target as anyone and he han-
dled it with apparent candor. The question was, 'What
are you doing? and how was it sitting with him."
Bush seemed anxious for this chance to unburden
himself. Ashley said, "Bush rejoiced. He was almost the
first one to go into the den, the library I have there. He
welcomed the questions .... He was aware of the di-
lemma of being Ronald Reagan's vice president."
Ashley said Bush expressed surprise at "the tone and
substance of the attacks on him" in the press. Bush ac-
knowledged that serving as vice president put him in
"gridlock," Ashley recalled. Bush said he was deter-
mined to run for president, that he knew how hard this
would be, and that he would soon establish his own po-
litical identity.
Moseley said the purpose of the session in the library
was "to go back to the wellspring of understanding ....
I craved it, [Bush] craved it .... Being vice president
for years, well, you feel the foot in your back."
According to Walker, the session was "a chance to
talk personally ... talk about his political identity. He
answered in a straightforward way. [The others] felt he
had so many pressures on him. It was really difficult to
let go and be himself, if only he were able to handle
himself with fewer inhibitions."
"If there is a flaw in Bush," Ashley said, "it is the level
at which he accepts compromise .... It is now hard to
know bow honest he is with himself. It's hard to account
for his silence [on issues he cares about]. He's learned
to rationalise a lot more than ever before, which just
brings him into the company of those of us who got
there earlier .... It's hard to make the case that the
last seven years have made him any stronger."
These old friends of Bush feel strongly that the
warm, attentive classmate they know does not emerge
from the TV screen, or from his performance on the
public stage. The real Bush, they said repeatedly, is a
considerate, generous person.
San Francisco stockbroker George H. Pfau Jr. said of
Bush, "He generally calls on New Year's. I don't hear
from anyone in my family, but I hear from George
Bush."
Moseley said that in 1981 Bush took him to Camp
David for a weekend of "shooting, bowling, napping,
going to the movies, dinner, breakfast .... He swept
me into all that hoopla of flying on a helicopter and
motorcades.
Richard G. Mack is one of the three members of the
Bones Bass who has died. Made had a tumor when Bush
was living in Houston and went to the acclaimed medical
facilities there for three operations before he died.
Said Pfau, "George and Barbara stayed with him every
step of the way. They were mother, father, brother and
sister to him until he died."
Bush was the best man at Pfau's first wedding. After a
divorce, Pfau remarried in 1975 when Bush was in China
with the U.S. mission. It was a cushy job and there wasn't
much to do." Pfau recalled. Heard his new wife went to
China for their honeymoon and stayed with the Bushes.
"It was the best visit we've ever had. He didn't have
much to do and we rode bikes around Peking .. -- "
Moseley counts at least 85 communications from
Bush-letters, notes, cards-in the last 21 years. The
last was June 9, answering Moseley's inquiry about
which Bush campaign committee could most effectively
use his contribution. Bush replied, referring Moseley to
a campaign official.
"Got to run," Bush wrote to Moseley and his wife
Jane, "but not before I say thanks for all you do. With
you and Jane on our side, Bar and I will never lose."
Std` mmareber William F. Poewrs Jr.. coxtributed to
this report
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