George H. W. Bush was one of many career CIA officers that KGB officers inside the CIA enlisted as unwitting assets and targeted for political office.
George Bush’s KGB handlers constantly touted him for the “Vice Presidency” with the ultimate goal of assassinating the President to catapult Bush into the “Presidency.”
When Bush lost the Republican nomination to Ronald Reagan in 1980, Reagan’s advisers “heavily pressured” him to choose Bush as a running mate, and President Reagan was shot sixty-nine days after he and Bush took the oath of office. The KGB infiltration was exposed less than three years after they failed to catapult Bush into the Presidency.
The KGB officers had Bush entering the political arena for the first time in 1964 when he ran for a U.S. Senate seat in Texas, while they had another CIA officer, Senator Barry Goldwater, running for President. Bush’s Senate campaign culminated at a Republican rally in San Antonio, Texas on Saturday, October 31, 1964, where fellow CIA officer and Republican Presidential nominee Barry Goldwater was the main speaker.
Three days before CIA officers Bush and Goldwater would go down to defeat in their respective races, Barry Goldwater “singled out” Bush “as a bright hope on the political horizon.”
CIA officer and KGB asset George Bush was then targeted for either the Presidency or the Vice Presidency in the next seven Presidential elections, all of which is detailed in this chapter.
Two years after his 1964 Senatorial loss, CIA officer George Bush was elected to Congress as a Representative from Houston. He took the oath of office on January 3, 1967.
His meteoric rise began on June 5, 1968, seven months before his first Congressional term would expire. On that day, a Washington Post headline read: “Young Texas Congressman Bush Gets Nixon Look As Running Mate.”
Evans and Novak, well-known syndicated columnists for decades, wrote that prominent Evangelist Billy Graham told Richard Nixon that he should choose freshman Congressman George Bush as his 1968 running mate.
Evans and Novak called it “an unusual suggestion” and said it “violates all the rules for picking running mates,” because Bush “has neither a national reputation nor a bloc of delegates to offer Nixon.”
They went on to state, “Nevertheless, Billy Graham’s suggestion was by no means the last Nixon heard of Bush. A quiet Bush-for-Vice President campaign has developed in business and Congressional circles. What’s more, Nixon himself definitely is interested and is considering Bush as a possibility . . . . Moreover, the Texas business establishment is beating the drums for Bush. In one New York meeting with contributors, Nixon received a Bush sales pitch from a Texas industrialist. Another Texas businessman has fired off appeals for Bush to key Nixon supporters, including board chairman George Champion of Chase Manhattan.
“The latest talk about Bush heard by Nixon came last weekend in Atlanta from Rep. Fletcher Thompson of Georgia, a freshman Congressman elected with Bush. Informing Nixon of wide interest in a Nixon-Bush ticket by younger Republican Congressmen, Thompson told Nixon that the combination’s appeal would cross sectional lines . . . . Nixon was interested . . . . There is at least a chance, long shot though it is, that George Bush is the one.”
The CIA enlisted “Evangelist Billy Graham” as an asset more than a year before Graham initiated the “Bush for Vice President” campaign. One month after it was exposed that the CIA launders money by channeling it through foundations, a Time magazine article stated that the CIA had financed Billy Graham’s trip to Latin America, and the New York Times quoted Graham as saying he would “‘try to find out’ if the CIA had funded the trip without his knowledge.”
In November 1968, five months after the KGB’s first attempt to have Bush chosen for the Vice Presidential spot failed, Bush was re-elected to Congress.
Less than halfway through his second term, he was again being targeted for the United States Senate, and it soon became clear that the Senate was supposed to be a springboard into the Vice Presidency, which, in turn, was supposed to be a springboard into the Presidency.
President Richard Nixon’s Chief of Staff, H. R. Haldeman, who kept a diary of what took place in the Nixon White House, wrote that on December 16, 1969, people at the White House were concerned about “losing at least a couple” of the 1970 Senate races, one of which included “George Bush in Texas.”
Ten months later, there was a concerted effort inside the White House to bolster Bush’s prospects in his Senate race and in the next two Presidential elections.
On October 27, 1970, one week before Bush would go down to defeat in his second run at the United States Senate, the Washington Post reported: “President Nixon is going to Texas in hopes of finding his running mate for 1972 and the Republican Presidential candidate for 1976 . . . . That seems far-fetched, but it is the firm conviction of men ‘intimately’ involved in White House political operations that 46-year-old Rep. George Bush of Houston will be that man, if he can, with the President’s help, win his close Senate race next week.”
The Post detailed the unhappiness with Nixon’s Vice President, Spiro Agnew, and noted five possible replacements, adding, “Within this group, Bush is the standout; so much so that Mr. Nixon considered him for Vice President in 1968 when he was just a freshman Congressman.”
In advancing George Bush’s continuing meteoric rise, the article said several positive things about Bush and then added: “His appeal would be more than regional . . . . But his biggest political asset and his greatest attraction to Mr. Nixon is simply the fact that he is a Texan with a chance to carry that vital state.
“It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of Texas to 1972 Republican plans . . . . And that is why, strange as it sounds, Wednesday’s Presidential visit to Texas may without exaggeration be called a milestone in the next two Presidential elections.”
Bush’s loss of his second Senate bid in 1970 derailed efforts to get him onto the 1972 Presidential ticket, but in a prime example of CIA officers using their influence to advance their colleagues up through the ranks, CIA officer George Bush’s “political” career made significant leaps during the Nixon and Ford Administrations.
On December 11, 1970, a short thirty-eight days after Bush lost his second Senate bid, President Nixon announced the appointment of Congressman George Bush to be the United States Ambassador to the United Nations.
CIA officer George Bush, ostensibly nothing more than a former oilman who lost Senate races in 1964 and 1970 and served only four years in Congress, now had an “official cover” with the State Department as U.N. Ambassador, also known as a “diplomatic cover.”
A New York Times editorial was highly critical of it, stating: “There seems to be nothing in his record that qualifies him for this highly important position. The chief of the American mission at the United Nations should be either an outstanding diplomat or someone of demonstrated national stature who has ready access to the President. Mr. Bush is a novice in diplomacy . . . . He is unknown nationally.
“In fact, the choice of Mr. Bush is only the latest oddity in a bizarre chapter that began with the newspaper report of the imminent appointment to the United Nations post of Daniel P. Moynihan, the President’s counselor on urban problems. That was a surprise to the present ambassador, Charles W. Yost, a distinguished career diplomat who had acceded to Mr. Nixon’s request two years ago to serve ‘for the duration.’” (Like Republicans George Bush and Barry Goldwater, future Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan was a CIA officer and a KGB asset.)
But replacing U.N. Ambassador Charles Yost, the “distinguished career diplomat” who agreed to serve “for the duration,” was not President Nixon’s idea. It was Bush’s idea.
Two days before the appointment, Nixon Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman wrote that Nixon “definitely wanted to bring Bush into the White House on a general basis” and “called Bush in and gave him the pitch on taking a White House job.” But George Bush, the two-term Congressman who had just lost his second Senate bid a few weeks earlier, was “clearly disappointed” that the President of the United States was now offering him a job at the White House “because he had been hoping for the UN spot.”
Haldeman wrote that in Bush’s meeting with Nixon, Bush told the President “what he’d like to do at the UN in the way of really being an advocate for the President, not only at the UN, but in the overall New York community.” Bush “made such a good pitch” that Nixon was persuaded to give him the UN post. Nixon “decided this was, in fact, a better use of Bush than having him at the White House. This really does work out better because it gives Bush a more prestigious appointment and a seat in the Cabinet.”
The CIA clearly has influence in the right places, and one month after losing his second consecutive Senate race, Nixon “definitely wanted” to give Bush a “White House job.” CIA officer George H. W. Bush then persuaded the President of the United States that instead of giving him a lowly White House job, he should give him “a more prestigious appointment and a seat in the Cabinet.”
Bush could now more easily gather intelligence on Nixon and the inner workings of Nixon’s Cabinet, more so than if he were shuttered in an office somewhere in the White House. As noted in Chapter 1, a CIA officer’s job, whether using an “official cover” or a “nonofficial cover,” is to gather intelligence and conduct secretive operations.
KGB efforts to get Bush into the Vice Presidency picked up again in 1974 and 1975. Bush, himself, knew precisely what buttons to push as he worked in conjunction with his KGB handlers and other CIA officers at the White House. Renegade CIA officers will use a person’s trust to advance the CIA’s agenda.
(Bush’s meteoric rise to be continued in next post)
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