'GEORGE BUSH,' C.I.A. OPERATIVE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-01448R000401580069-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 23, 2012
• Sequence Number: 69
• Publication Date: July 16, 1988
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/23: CIA-RDP99-01448R000401580069-6
THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE
FILE ONLY
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
T~l~no.v -
`GEORGE
BUSH; C.I.A.
OPERATIVE
JOSEPH MCBRIDE
Vice President George Bush's resume is his most
highly touted asset as a candidate. But a recently'
discovered F.B.I. memorandum raises the
possibility that, like many resumes, it omits
some facts the applicant would rather not talk
about: specifically, that he worked for the Cen-
tral Intelligence Agency in 1963, more than a
decade before he became its director.
The F.B.I. memorandum, dated November 29,
1963, is from Director J. Edgar Hoover to the
State Department and is subject-headed "Assas-
sination of President John F. Kennedy Novem-
ber 22, 1963." In it, Hoover reports that the
Bureau had briefed "Mr. George Bush of the
Central Intelligence Agency" shortly after the
assassination on the reaction of Cuban
exiles in Miami. A source with dose connec-
tions to the intelligence community confirms
that Bush started working for the agency in 1960
or 1961, using his oil business as a cover for
clandestine activities.
Informed of this memorandum, the Vice Pres-
ident's spokesman, Stephen Hart, asked, "Are
you sure it's the same George Bush?" After talk-
ing to the Vice President, Hart quoted him as
follows: "I was in Houston, Texas, at the time
and involved in the independent oil drilling busi-
ness. And I was running for the Senate in late
'63." "Must be another George Bush," added
Hart.
Because the Vice President's response seemed
something of a non-denial denial (he described
what else he was doing rather than specifically
denying C.I.A. involvement), I put the following
queries to him via Hart:
Did you do any work with or for the C.I.A. prior to the
time you became its director?
If so, what was the nature of your relationship with the
agency, and how long did it last?
Did you receive a briefing by a member of the F.B.I. on
anti-Castro Cuban activities in the aftermath of the assas-
sination of President Kennedy?
Half an hour later, Hart called me back to say that he had
not spoken again to the Vice President about the matter, but
would answer the questions himself. The answer to the first
question was no, he said, and so he would skip number two.
To the third, he repeated Bush's answer quoted above, but
added that Bush had also said, "I don't have any idea of
what he's talking about." However, when Bush's denial was
read back to him, Hart said he preferred that it not be
quoted directly, explaining, "It's a week old now, and I'm
going off my notes." When I reminded him that we wanted
to quote Bush directly, Hart said, "I am a spokesman. How-
ever you want to write it, the answer is no" regarding Bush's
alleged 1963 involvement with the C.I.A.
"This is the first time I've ever heard this," C.I.A.
spokesman Bill Devine said when confronted with the alle-
gation of the Vice President's involvement with the agency
in the early 1960s. "IT see what I can find out and call you
back." The next day Devine called back with the terse offi-
cial response: "I can neither confirm nor deny." Told what
the Vice President's office had said, and asked if he could
check whether there had been another George Bush in the
C.I.A., Devine seemed to become a bit nonplussed: "Twenty-
seven years ago? I doubt that very much. In any event, we
just have a standard policy of not confirming that anyone is
involved with the C.I.A."
Richard Helms, who was deputy director for plans at the
agency in 1963, said the appearance of Bush's name in the
memo "must have been some kind of misprint. I don't recall
anyone by that name working for the agency.... He cer-
tainly never worked for me." _
Page
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/23: CIA-RDP99-01448R000401580069-6
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/23: CIA-RDP99-01448R000401580069-6
Hoover's memo, which was written to the director of the
State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research,
was buried among the 98,755 pages of F.B.I. documents
released to the public in 1977 and 1978 as a result of
Freedom of Information Act suits. It was written to sum-
marize the briefing given to Bush and Capt. William Ed-
wards of the Defense Intelligence Agency by the F.B.I.'s
W.T. Forsyth on November 23, the day after the assassina-
tion, when Lee Harvey Oswald was still alive to be inter-
rogated about his connections to Cuban exiles and the
C.I.A. The briefing was held, according to the F.B.I. direc-
tor, because the State Department feared that "some mis-
guided anti-Castro group might capitalize on the present
situation and undertake an unauthorized raid against Cuba,
believing that the assassination of President John F. Ken-
nedy might herald a change in U.S. policy, which is not
true." Hoover continues:
Our sources and informants familiar with Cuban matters in
the Miami area advise that the general feelirng in the anti-
Castro Cuban community is one of stunned disbelief and,
even among those who did not entirely agree with the Presi-
dent's policy concerning Cuba, the feeling is that the Pres-
ident's death represents a great low not only to the U.S. but to
all of Latin America. Those sources know of no plans for un-
authorized action against Cuba.
An informant who has furnished reliable information in
the past and who is. dose to a small pro-Castro group in
Miami has advised that these individuals are afraid that the
assassination of the President may result in strong repressive
measures being taken against than and, although pro-Castro
in their feelings, regret the assassination.
The substance of the foregoing information was orally
furnished to Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence
Agency....
(We attempted to locate William T. Forsyth, but learned
that he is dead. Forsyth worked out of the Washington
F.B.I. headquarters and was best known for running the in-
vestigation of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the
Bureau's subversive control section. Efforts to locate Cap-
tain Edwards by press time were unsuccessful.)
Vice President Bush's autobiography, Looking Forward,
written with Victor Gold (Doubleday, 19S7), is vague to the
point of being cryptic about his activities in the early 1960x,
when he was running the Houston-based Zapata Off-Shore
Company. ("Running an offshore oil company," he writes,
"would mean days spent on or over water; not only the Gulf
of Mexico but oceans and seas the world over.") But the
1972 profile of Bush in Current Biography provides more
details of his itinerary in those years: "Bush travelled
throughout the world to sell Zapata's oil-drilling services.
Under his direction it grew to be a multimillion-dollar con-
cern, with operations in Latin America, the Caribbean, the
Middle East, Japan, Australia; and Western Europe." And
according to Nicholas King's George Bush: A Biography,
Zapata was concentrating its business in the Caribbean and
off South America in the early 1960s, a piece of information
that meshes neatly with the available data on Bush's early
C.I.A. responsibilities.
Bush's duties with the C.I.A. in 1963 -whether he was an
agent, for example, or merely an "asset"-cannot be deter-
mined from Hoover's memo. However, the intelligence
source (who worked with the agency in the late 1950s and'
through the 1960s) said of the Vice President: "I know he
was involved in the Caribbean. I know he was involved in
the suppression of things after the Kennedy assassination:
There was a very definite worry that some Cuban groups
were going to move against Castro and attempt to blame it
on the C.I.A."
The initial reaction of Senator Frank Church, chair of the
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, to the firing of
William Colby and the naming of Bush as Director of Cen-
tral Intelligence in 1975 was to complain that it was part of a
pattern of attempts by President Gerald Ford (a former
member of the Warren commission) to impede the Church
committee's nearly concluded investigation into C.I.A.
assassination plots, with which Colby was cooperating but
which Ford was trying vainly to keep secret.
Bush's autobiography skips capriciously over the period
of the early 1960s, easing back into coherence only when he
makes his official entry into public life as chair of the Harris
County, Texas, Republican Party in 1963-64, runs unsuccess-
fully for the Senate in 1964 against Democratic incumbent
Ralph Yarborough, quits the oil business in 1966 and be.
comes the victorious candidate for Congress from Houston,
serving two terms before losing the 1970 Senate race to
Lloyd Bentsen, who had defeated Yarborough in the pri-
mary. Asked recently about Bush's early C.I.A. connec-
tions, Yarborough said, "I never hard anything about it. It
doesn't surprise me. What surprised me was they picked him
for Director of Central Intelligence-how in hell he was ap-
pointed head of the C.I.A. without any experience or
knowledge." Hoover's memo "explains something to me
that I've always wondered about. It does make sense to have
a trained C.I.A. man, with experience, appointed to the job."
Bush's appointment as the agency's director in 1975 was
widely criticized because, as Bush writes, "Bill Colby, a pro-
fessional in the intelligence field, was being replaced by a
nonprofmional outsider-and a politician to boot." Senator
Church commented: "It appears as though the White House
may be using this important post merely as a grooming
room before he is brought on stage next year as a vice-
presidential running mate." Speaking against the appoint-
ment, Church said he knew of "no particular reason why
CO 4TUMU
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/23: CIA-RDP99-01448R000401580069-6
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/23: CIA-RDP99-01448R000401580069-6
[Bush] is qualified" for the job; Bush himself characterised,
the appointment as a "real shocker." In his autobiography
Bush points out, "I'd come to the CIA with some general
knowledge of how it operated." His remark in the book that
his "Overseas contacts as a businessman" helped qualify him
for the controversial appointment by President Nixon to the
post of ambassador to the United Nations could also refer
to previous C.I.A. experience. Agents often adopt the cover
of a businessman. And business people have also served as
informants for the agency, passing along information picked
up on their travels.
Bush's C.I.A. connections might throw new light on his
knowledge of the contra funding and supply operation, and
his alleged knowledge of contra drug smuggling and the ac-
tivities of General Noriega. It is worth noting in this context
that, as Leslie Cockburn writes in Out of Control, "The
anti-Castro C.I.A. team in Florida were already drawing at-
tention to their drug-smuggling activities by 1963," and that
it was Felix Rodriguez, the C.I.A. "alumnus who wore Che
Guevara's watch and counted George Bush among his
friends," who allegedly coordinated a $10 million payment
to the contras by the Colombian cocaine cartel.
"Do the American people really want to elect a former
director of the C.I.A. as their President?" Tom Wicker
asked in The New York Times on April 29. "That's hardly
been discussed so far; but it seems obvious that a C.I.A.
chief might well be privy to the kind of `black' secrets that
could later make him-as a public figure-subject to black-
mail. Given the agency's worldwide reputation for covert in-
tervention and political meddling, moreover, one of its
former directors in the White House certainly would be the
object of suspicion and mistrust in numerous parts of the
globe. And well he might be."
It was characteristic of George Bush, when sworn in as
Director of Central Intelligence in 1976, to declare: "I am
determined to protect those things that must be kept secret,
and I am more determined to protect those unselfish and
patriotic people who, with total dedication, serve their
country, often putting their lives on the line, only to have
some people bent on destroying this agency expose their
names."
Bush has absorbed the code of the C.I.A. well, and he
may feel that he is duty-bound to draw a veil of secrecy over
his activities of the early 1960s. But now, as candidate for
the presidency, he has a higher duty of honesty to the
American people. If the man who would be President has a
longstanding history of involvement in covert activities,
then the people are entitled to know about it. Thus far Bush
has refused to directly deny such involvement. Either he is
intentionally misleading us, or he is a victim of mistaken identi-
ty. If it's the latter, he or President Reagan should instruct
the gnomes of Langley to turn over the personnel records of
the other George Bush. The claims of national security pale
beside the overriding national interest in the truth.
Joseph McBride is the author of a biography of Frank
Capra, to be published by Alfred A. Knopf.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/23: CIA-RDP99-01448R000401580069-6