From: covici@ccs.covici.com (John Covici)
Reply-To: covici@ccs.covici.com
Newsgroups: alt.activism
Subject: Unauthorized Biography of George Bush: part 24
Date: 1 Oct 92 20:57:28 GMT
Organization: Covici Computer Systems

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{XVIII: The Attempted Coup d'Etat
of March 30, 1981} 


For Bush, the vice-presidency was
not an end in itself, but merely
another stage in the ascent toward the
White House. With the help of his Brown
Brothers Harriman/Skull and Bones
network, Bush had now reached the point
where but a single human life stood
between him and the presidency. 
   Ronald Reagan was 70 years old
when he took office, the oldest man
ever to be inaugurated as President.
His mind wandered; long fits of slumber
crept over his cognitive faculties. His
custom was to delegate all
administrative decisions to the cabinet
members, to the executive departments
and agencies. Policy questions were
delegated to the White House staff, who
prepared the options and then guided
Reagan's decisions among the
pre-defined options. This was the staff
that composed not just Reagan's
speeches, but the script of his entire
life. 
   But sometimes Reagan was capable
of lucidity, and even of inspired
greatness, in the way a thunderstorm
can momentarily illuminate a darkling
countryside. Reagan's greatest moment
of conceptual clarity came in his
television speech of March 23, 1983 on
the Strategic Defense Initiative, a
concept that had been drummed into the
Washington bureaucracy through the
indefatigable efforts of Lyndon
LaRouche and a few others. The idea of
defending against nuclear missiles, of
not accepting Mutually Assured
Destruction, and of using such a
program as a science driver for rapid
technological renewal was something
Reagan permanently grasped and held
onto, even under intense pressure. 
   In addition, during the early
years of Reagan's first term, there
were enough Reaganite loyalists in the
administration, typified by William
Clark, to cause much trouble for the
Bushmen. But as the years went by, the
few men like Clark whom Reagan had
brought with him from California would
be ground up by endless bureaucratic
warfare, and their replacements, like
McFarlane at the NSC, would come more
and more from the ranks of the
Kissingerians. Unfortunately, Reagan
never developed a plan to make the SDI
an irreversible political and budgetary
reality, and this critical shortcoming
grew out of Reagan's failed economic
policies, which never substantially
departed from Carter's. 
   But apart from rare moments like
the SDI, Reagan tended to drift. Don
Regan called it ``the guesswork
presidency''; for Al Haig, frustrated
in his own lust for power, it was
government by an all-powerful staff.
Who were the staff? At first, it was
thought that Reagan would take most of
his advice from his old friend Edwin
Meese, his close associate from
California days, loyal and devoted to
Reagan, and sporting his Adam Smith
tie. But it was soon evident that the
White House was really run by a troika:
Meese, Michael Deaver, and James Baker
III, Bush's man. 
   Deaver gravitated by instinct
toward Baker; Deaver tells us in his
memoirs that he was a supporter of Bush
for vice president at the Detroit
convention. This meant that James
Baker-Michael Deaver became the
dominant force over Ron and over Nancy;
George Bush, in other words, already
had an edge in the bureaucratic
infighting. 
   Thus it was that White House Press
Secretary James Brady could say in
early March 1981: ``Bush is functioning
much like a co-President. George is
involved in all the national security
stuff because of his special background
as CIA director. All the budget working
groups he was there, the economic
working groups, the Cabinet meetings.
He is included in almost all the
meetings.''@s1 
   During the first months of the
Reagan administration, Bush found
himself locked in a power struggle with
Gen. Alexander Haig, whom Reagan had
appointed to be secretary of state. 
   Inexorably, the Brown Brothers
Harriman/Skull and Bones networks went
into action against Haig. The idea was
to paint him as a power-hungry
megalomaniac bent on dominating the
administration of the weak figurehead
Reagan. This would then be supplemented
by a vicious campaign of leaking by
James Baker and Michael Deaver,
designed to play Reagan against Haig
and vice-versa, until the rival to Bush
could be eliminated. 
   Three weeks into the new
administration, Haig concluded that
``someone in the White House staff was
attempting to communicate with me
through the press,'' by a process of
constant leakage, including leakage of
the contents of secret diplomatic
papers. Haig protested to Meese, NSC
chief Richard Allen, James Baker and
Bush. Shortly thereafter, Haig noted
that ``Baker's messengers sent rumors
of my imminent departure or dismissal
murmuring through the press.'' ``Soon,
a `senior presidential aide' was quoted
in a syndicated column as saying, `We
will get this man [Haig] under
control.'|''@s2 It took more than a
year for Baker and Bush to drive Haig
out of the administration. Shortly
before his ouster, Haig got a report of
a White House meeting during which
Baker was reported to have said, ``Haig
is going to go, and quickly, and we are
going to make it happen.''@s3 
   Haig's principal bureaucratic ploy
during the first weeks of the Reagan
administration was his submission to
Reagan, on the day of his inauguration,
of a draft executive order to organize
the National Security Council and
interagency task forces, including the
crisis staffs, according to Haig's
wishes. Haig refers to this document as
National Security Decision Directive 1
(NSDD 1), and laments that it was never
signed in its original form, and that
no comparable directive for structuring
the NSC interagency groups was signed
for over a year. Ultimately a document
called NSDD 1 would be signed,
establishing a Special Situation Group
(SSG) crisis management staff chaired
by Bush. Haig's draft would have made
the secretary of state the chairman of
the SSG crisis staff in conformity with
Haig's demand to be recognized as
Reagan's ``vicar of foreign policy.''
This was unacceptable to Bush, who made
sure, with the help of James Baker and
probably also Deaver, that Haig's draft
of NSDD 1 would never be signed. 
   The struggle between Haig and Bush
culminated toward the end of Reagan's
first 100 days in office. Haig was
chafing because the White House staff,
meaning James Baker, was denying him
access to the President. Haig's NSDD 1
had still not been signed. Then, on
Sunday, March 22, Haig's attention was
called to an elaborate leak to reporter
Martin Schram that had appeared that
day in the {Washington Post} under the
headline ``White House Revamps Top
Policy Roles; Bush to Head Crisis
Management.'' Haig's attention was
drawn to the following paragraphs: 
``Partly in an effort to
bring harmony to the Reagan high
command, it has been decided that Vice
President George Bush will be placed in
charge of a new structure for national
security crisis management, according
to senior presidential assistants. This
assignment will amount to an
unprecedented role for a vice president
in modern times.... 
   ``Reagan officials emphasized that
Bush, a former director of the CIA and
former United Nations ambassador, would
be able to preserve White House control
over crisis management without
irritating Haig, who they stressed was
probably the most experienced and able
of all other officials who could serve
in that function. 
   ``|`The reason for this [choice of
Bush] is that the secretary of state
might wish he were chairing the crisis
management structure,' said one Reagan
official, `but it is pretty hard to
argue with the vice president being in
charge.'|''@s4
   Haig says that he called Ed Meese
at the White House to check the truth
of this report, and that Meese replied
that there was no truth to it. Haig
went to see Reagan at the White House.
Reagan was concerned about the leak,
and reassured Haig: ``I want you to
know that the story in the {Post} is a
fabrication. It means that George would
sit in for me in the NSC in my absence,
and that's all it means. It doesn't
affect your authority in any way.'' 
   But later the same afternoon,
White House Press Secretary James Brady
read the following statement to the
press: ``I am confirming today the
President's decision to have the Vice
President chair the Administration's
`crisis management' team, as a part of
the National Security Council
system.... President Reagan's choice of
the Vice President was guided in large
measure by the fact that management of
crises has traditionally--and
appropriately--been done in the White
House.''@s5 
   In the midst of the Bush-James
Baker cabal's relentless drive to seize
control over the Reagan administration,
John Warnock Hinckley, Jr. carried out
his attempt to assassinate President
Reagan on the afternoon of March 30,
1981. George Bush was visiting Texas
that day. Bush was flying from Fort
Worth to Austin in his Air Force Two
Boeing 707. 
   In Austin, Bush was scheduled to
deliver an address to a joint session
of the Texas state legislature. It was
Al Haig who called Bush and told him
that the President had been shot, while
forwarding the details of Reagan's
condition, insofar as they were known,
by scrambler as a classified message.
Haig was in touch with James Baker III,
who was close to Reagan at George
Washington University hospital. Bush's
man in the White House situation room
was Admiral Dan Murphy, who was standing
right next to Haig. Bush agreed with
Haig's estimate that he ought to return
to Washington at once. But first his
plane needed to be refueled, so it
landed at Carswell Air Force Base near
Austin. 
   Bush says that his flight from
Carswell to Andrews Air Force Base near
Washington took about two and one-half
hours, and that he arrived at Andrews
at about 6:40 p.m. Bush says he was
told by Ed Meese that the operation to
remove the bullet that had struck
Reagan was a success, and that the
President was likely to survive. 
   Back at the White House, the
principal cabinet officers had
assembled in the Situation Room and had
been running a crisis management
committee during the afternoon. Haig
says he was at first adamant that a
conspiracy, if discovered, should be
ruthlessly exposed: ``Remembering the
aftermath of the Kennedy assassination,
I said to Woody Goldberg, `No matter
what the truth is about this shooting,
the American people must know
it.'|''@s6 
   In his memoir Defense Secretary
Caspar Weinberger recalls, that ``at
almost exactly 7:00, the Vice President
came to the Situation Room and very
calmly assumed the chair at the head of
the table.''@s7 Bush asked Weinberger
for a report on the status of U.S.
forces, which Weinberger furnished. 
   Another eyewitness of these
transactions was Don Regan, who records
that ``the Vice President arrived with
Ed Meese, who had met him when he
landed to fill him in on the details.
George asked for a condition report: 1)
on the President; 2) on the other
wounded; 3) on the assailant; 4) on the
international scene.... After the
reports were given and it was
determined that there were no
international complications and no
domestic conspiracy, it was decided
that the U.S. government would carry on
business as usual. The Vice President
would go on TV from the White House to
reassure the nation and to demonstrate
that he was in charge.''@s8 
   As Weinberger recounts the same
moments: ``[Attorney General William
French Smith] then reported that all
FBI reports concurred with the
information I had received; that the
shooting was a completely isolated
incident and that the assassin, John
Hinckley, with a previous record in
Nashville, seemed to be a `Bremmer'
type, a reference to the attempted
assassin of George Wallace.''@s9 
   Those who were not watching
carefully here may have missed the fact
that just a few minutes after George
Bush had walked into the room, he had
presided over the sweeping under the
rug of the decisive question regarding
Hinckley and his actions: Was Hinckley
a part of a conspiracy, domestic or
international? Not more than five hours
after the attempt to kill Reagan, on
the basis of the most fragmentary early
reports, before Hinckley had been
properly questioned, and before a full
investigation had been carried out, a
group of cabinet officers chaired by
George Bush had ruled out {a priori}
any conspiracy. Haig, whose memoirs
talk most about the possibility of a
conspiracy, does not seem to have
objected to this incredible decision. 
   From that moment on, ``no
conspiracy'' became the official
doctrine of the U.S. regime and the
most massive efforts were undertaken to
stifle any suggestion to the contrary. 

   The Conspiracy
 
   Curiously enough, press accounts
emerging over the next few days
provided a {prima facie} case that
there had been a conspiracy around the
Hinckley attentat, and that the
conspiracy had included members of
Bush's immediate family. Most of the
overt facts were not disputed, but were
actually confirmed by Bush and his son
Neil. 
   On Tuesday, March 31, the {Houston
Post} published a copyrighted story
under the headline: ``Bush's Son Was to
Dine with Suspect's Brother.'' The lead
paragraph read as follows: ``Scott
Hinckley, the brother of John Hinckley,
Jr., who is charged with shooting
President Reagan and three others, was
to have been a dinner guest Tuesday
night at the home of Neil Bush, son of
Vice President George Bush, the
{Houston Post} has learned.'' 
   According to the article, Neil
Bush had admitted on Monday, March 30
that he was personally acquainted with
Scott Hinckley, having met with him on
one occasion in the recent past. Neil
Bush also stated that he knew the
Hinckley family, and referred to large
monetary contributions made by the
Hinckleys to the Bush 1980 presidential
campaign. Neil Bush and Scott Hinckley
both lived in Denver at this time.
Scott Hinckley was the vice president
of Vanderbilt Energy Corporation, and
Neil Bush was employed as a landman for
Standard Oil of Indiana. John W.
Hinckley, Jr., the would-be assassin,
lived on and off with his family in
Evergreen, Colorado, not far from
Denver. 
   Neil Bush was reached for comment
on Monday, March 30, and was asked if,
in addition to Scott Hinckley, he also
knew John W. Hinckley, Jr., the
would-be killer. ``I have no idea,''
said Neil Bush. ``I don't recognize any
pictures of him. I just wish I could
see a better picture of him.'' 
   Sharon Bush, Neil's wife, was also
asked about her acquaintance with the
Hinckley family. ``I don't even know
the brother,'' she replied, suggesting
that Scott Hinckley was coming to
dinner as the date of a woman whom
Sharon did know. ``From what I know and
have heard, they [the Hinckleys] are a
very nice family ... and have given a
lot of money to the Bush campaign. I
understand he [John W. Hinckley, Jr.]
was just the renegade brother in the
family. They must feel awful.'' 
   It also proved necessary for
Bush's office to deny that the Vice
President was familiar with the
``Hinckley-Bush connection.'' Bush's
press secretary, Peter Teeley, said
when asked to comment: ``I don't know a
damn thing about it. I was talking to
someone earlier tonight, and I couldn't
even remember his [Hinckley's] name.
All I know is what you're telling me.'' 
   On April 1, 1981, the {Rocky
Mountain News} of Denver carried Neil
Bush's confirmation that if the
assassination attempt had not happened
on March 30, Scott Hinckley would have
been present at a dinner party at Neil
Bush's home the night of March 31.
According to Neil, Scott Hinckley had
come to the home of Neil and Sharon
Bush on January 23, 1981 to be present
along with about 30 other guests at a
surprise birthday party for Neil, who
had turned 26 one day earlier. Scott
Hinckley had come ``through a close
friend who brought him,'' according to
this version, and this same close
female friend was scheduled to come to
dinner along with Scott Hinckley on
that last night of March, 1981. 
   ``My wife set up a surprise party
for me, and it truly was a surprise,
and it was an honor for me at that time
to meet Scott Hinckley,'' said Neil
Bush to reporters. ``He is a good and
decent man. I have no regrets
whatsoever in saying Scott Hinckley can
be considered a friend of mine. To have
had one meeting doesn't make the best
of friends, but I have no regrets in
saying I do know him.'' 
   Neil Bush told the reporters that
he had never met John W. Hinckley, Jr.,
the gunman, nor his father, John W.
Hinckley, Sr., president and chairman
of the board of Vanderbilt Energy
Corporation of Denver. But Neil Bush
also added that he would be interested
in meeting the elder Hinckley: ``I
would like [to meet him]. I'm trying to
learn the oil business, and he's in the
oil business. I probably could learn
something from Mr. Hinckley.'' 
   Neil Bush then announced that he
wanted to ``set straight'' certain
inaccuracies that had appeared the
previous day in the {Houston Post}
about the relations between the Bush
and Hinckley families. The first was
his own wife Sharon's reference to the
large contributions from the Hinckleys
to the Bush campaign. Neil asserted
that the 1980 Bush campaign records
showed no money whatever coming in from
any of the Hinckleys. All that could be
found, he argued, was a contribution to
that ``great Republican,'' John
Connally. 
   The other issue the {Houston Post}
had raised regarded the 1978 period,
when George W. Bush of Midland, Texas,
Neil's oldest brother, had run for
Congress in Texas's 19th Congressional
District. At that time, Neil Bush had
worked for George W. Bush as his
campaign manager, and in this
connection Neil had lived in Lubbock,
Texas during most of the year. This
raised the question of whether Neil
might have been in touch with gunman
John W. Hinckley, Jr. during that year
of 1978, since gunman Hinckley had
lived in Lubbock from 1974 through
1980, when he was an intermittent
student at Texas Tech University there.
Neil Bush ruled out any contact between
the Bush family and gunman John W.
Hinckley, Jr. in Lubbock during that
time. 
   The previous day, elder son George
W. Bush had been far less categorical
about never having met gunman Hinckley.
He had stated to the press: ``It's
certainly conceivable that I met him or
might have been introduced to him.... I
don't recognize his face from the
brief, kind of distorted thing they had
on TV, and the name doesn't ring any
bells. I know he wasn't on our staff. I
could check our volunteer rolls.'' 
   Neil Bush's confirmation of his
relations with Scott Hinckley was
matched by a parallel confirmation from
the Executive Office of the Vice
President. This appeared in the
{Houston Post}, April 1, 1981 under the
headline, ``Vice President Confirms his
Son was to have Hosted Hinckley
Brother.'' Here the second-string press
secretary, Shirley M. Green, was doing
the talking. ``I've spoken to Neil,''
she said, ``and he says they never saw
[Scott] Hinckley again [after the
birthday party]. They kept saying
`we've got to get together,' but they
never made any plans until tonight.''
Contradicting Neil Bush's remarks, Ms.
Green asserted that Neil Bush knew
Scott Hinckley ``only slightly.'' 
   Later in the day, Bush spokesman
Peter Teeley surfaced to deny any
campaign donations from the Hinckley
clan to the Bush campaign. When asked
why Sharon Bush and Neil Bush had made
reference to large political
contributions from the Hinckleys to the
Bush campaign, Teeley responded, ``I
don't have the vaguest idea.'' ``We've
gone through our files,'' said Teeley,
``and we have absolutely no information
that he [John W. Hinckley, Sr.] or
anybody in the family were
contributors, supporters, anything.'' 
    Once the cabinet had decided that
there had been no conspiracy, all such
facts were irrelevant anyway. There is
no record of Neil Bush, George W. Bush,
or Vice President George H.W. Bush ever
having been questioned by the FBI in
regard to the contacts described. They
never appeared before a grand jury or a
congressional investigating committee.
Which is another way of saying that by
March 1981, the United States
government had degenerated into total
lawlessness, with special exemptions
for the now-ruling Bush family.
Government by law had dissolved. 

   Haig Is Out

   The media were not interested in
the dinner date of Neil Bush and Scott
Hinckley, but they were very interested
indeed in the soap opera of what had
gone on in the Situation Room in the
White House during the afternoon of
March 30. Since the media had been
looking for ways to go after Haig for
weeks, they simply continued this line
into their coverage of the White House
scene that afternoon. Haig had appeared
before the television cameras to say:
``Constitutionally, gentlemen, you have
the President, the Vice President, and
the Secretary of State, in that order,
and should the President decide that he
wants to transfer the helm he will do
so. He has not done that. As of now, I
am in control here, in the White House,
pending the return of the Vice
President and in close touch with him.
If something came up, I would check
with him, of course.'' 
   The ``I'm in control here'' story
on Haig was made into the leitmotif for
his sacking, which was still a year in
the future. Reagan's own ghostwritten
biography published the year after he
left office gives a good idea what
James Baker and Michael Deaver fed the
confused and wounded President about
what had gone on during his absence:
``On the day I was shot, George Bush
was out of town and Haig immediately
came to the White House and claimed he
was in charge of the country. Even
after the vice-president was back in
Washington, I was told he maintained
that he, not George, should be in
charge. I didn't know about this when
it was going on. But I heard later that
the rest of the cabinet was furious.
They said he acted as if he thought he
had the right to sit in the Oval Office
and believed it was his constitutional
right to take over--a position without
any legal basis.''@s1@s0
 
   This fantastic account finds no
support in the Regan or Weinberger
memoirs, but is a fair sample of the
Bushman line. 

   Manchurian Candidate?
 
   What also interested the media
very much was the story of John W.
Hinckley, Jr.'s obsession with the
actress Jodie Foster, who had played
the role of a teenage prostitute in the
1976 movie {Taxi Driver.} The
prostitute is befriended by a taxi
driver, Travis Bickle, who threatens to
kill a Senator who is running for
President in order to win the love of
the girl. Young John Hinckley had
imitated the habits and mannerisms of
Travis Bickle. 
   When John Hinckley, Jr. had left
his hotel room in Washington, D.C. on
his way to shoot Reagan, he had left
behind a letter to Jodie Foster: 
   Dear Jodie, 
   There is a definite possibility
that I will be killed in my attempt to
get Reagan. It is for this reason that
I am writing you this letter now. As
you well know by now, I love you very
much. The past seven months I have left
you dozens of poems, letters, and
messages in the faint hope you would
develop an interest in me.... Jodie,
I'm asking you to please look into your
heart and at least give me the chance
with this historical deed to gain your
respect and love. 
   I love you forever. 
   [signed] John Hinckley@s1@s1
 
   In 1980, Jodie Foster was enrolled
at Yale University in New Haven,
Connecticut, as an undergraduate.
Hinckley spent three weeks in September
1980 in a New Haven hotel, according to
the {New York Daily News}. In early
October, he spent several days in New
Haven, this time at the Colony Inn
motel. Two bartenders in a bar near the
Yale campus recalled Hinckley as having
bragged about his relationship with
Jodie Foster. Hinckley had been
arrested by airport authorities in
Nashville, Tennessee on October 9, 1980
for carrying three guns, and was
quickly released. Reagan had been in
Nashville on October 7, and Carter
arrived there on October 9. The
firearms charge on the same day that
the President was coming to town should
have landed Hinckley on the Secret
Service watch list of potential
presidential assassins, but the FBI
apparently neglected to transmit the
information to the Secret Service. 
   In February 1981, Hinckley was
again near the Yale campus. During this
time, Hinckley claimed that he was in
contact with Jodie Foster by mail and
telephone. Jodie Foster had indeed
received a series of letters and notes
from Hinckley, which she had passed on
to her college dean. The dean allegedly
gave the letters to the New Haven
police, who supposedly gave them to the
FBI. Nevertheless, nothing was done to
restrain Hinckley, who had a record of
psychiatric treatment. Hinckley had
been buying guns in various locations
across the United States. Was Hinckley
a Manchurian candidate, brainwashed to
carry out his role as an assassin? Was
a network operating through the various
law enforcement agencies responsible
for the failure to restrain Hinckley or
to put him under special surveillance? 
   The FBI soon officially
rubber-stamped the order promulgated by
the cabinet that no conspiracy be
found: ``There was no conspiracy and
Hinckley acted alone,'' said the
bureau. Hinckley's parents' memoir
refers to some notes penciled by
Hinckley which were found during a
search of his cell and which ``could
sound bad.'' These notes ``described an
imaginary conspiracy--either with the
political left or the political right
... to assassinate the President.''
Hinckley's lawyers, from Edward Bennett
Williams's law firm, said that the
notes were too absurd to be taken
seriously, and they have been
suppressed.@s1@s2 
   In July 1985, the FBI was
compelled to release some details of
its investigation of Hinckley under the
Freedom of Information Act. No
explanation was offered of how it was
determined that Hinckley had acted
alone, and the names of all witnesses
were censored. According to a wire
service account, ``The file made no
mention of papers seized from
Hinckley's prison cell at Butner, North
Carolina, which reportedly made
reference to a conspiracy. Those
writings were ruled inadmissible by the
trial judge and never made
public.''@s1@s3 
   The FBI has refused to release 22
pages of documents concerning
Hinckley's ``associates and
organizations,'' 22 pages about his
personal finances, and 37 pages about
his personality and character. The
Williams and Connally defense team
argued that Hinckley was insane,
controlled by his obsession with Jodie
Foster. The jury accepted this version,
and in July 1982, Hinckley was found
not guilty by reason of insanity. He
was remanded to St. Elizabeth's mental
hospital where he remains to this day
with no fixed term to serve; his mental
condition is periodically reviewed by
his doctors. 

   Bush Takes Over
 
   Bush took up the duties of the
presidency, all the while elaborately
denying, in his self-deprecating way,
that he had in fact taken control.
During the time that Reagan was
convalescing, the President was even
less interested than usual in detailed
briefings about government operations.
Bush's visits to the chief executive
were thus reduced to the merest
courtesy calls, after which Bush was
free to do what he wanted. 
   Bush's key man was James Baker
III, White House chief of staff and the
leading court favorite of Nancy Reagan.
During this period, Michael Deaver was a wholly
controlled appendage of Baker, and
would remain one for as long as he was
useful to the designs of the Bushmen. 
   And Baker and Deaver were not the
only Bushmen in the White House. There
were also Bush campaign veterans David
Gergen and Jay Moorhead. In the
cabinet, one Bush loyalist was
Secretary of Commerce Malcolm
Baldridge, who was flanked by his
assistant secretary, Fred Bush
(apparently not a member of the George
Bush family). The Bushmen were strong
in the sub-cabinet: Here were Assistant
Secretary of State for East Asian and
Pacific Affairs John Holdridge, who had
served Bush on his Beijing mission
staff and during the 1975 Pol Pot caper
in Beijing; and Assistant Secretary of
State for Congressional Affairs Richard
Fairbanks; with these two in Foggy
Bottom, Haig's days were numbered. At
the Pentagon was Henry E. Catto, the
assistant secretary of defense for
public affairs; Catto would later be
rewarded by Bush with an appointment as
U.S. ambassador to the Court of St.
James in London, the post that foreign
service officers spend their lives
striving to attain. Bush was also
strong among the agencies: His pal
William H. Draper III, son of the Nazi
banker, was the chairman and president
of the Export-Import Bank. Loret Miller
Ruppe, Bush's campaign chairman in
Michigan, was director of the Peace
Corps. 
   At the Treasury, Bush's cousin,
John Walker, would be assistant
secretary for enforcement. When the
BCCI scandal exploded in the media
during 1991, William von Raab, the
former director of the U.S. Customs,
complained loudly that, during Reagan's
second term, his efforts to ``go
after'' BCCI had been frustrated by
reticence at the Treasury Department.
By this time, James Baker III was
secretary of the treasury, and Bush's
kissing cousin, John Walker, was an
official who would have had the primary
responsibility for the intensity of
such investigations. 
   At the Pentagon, Caspar
Weinberger's deputy assistant secretary
for East Asia, Richard Armitage, was no
stranger to the circles of Shackley and
Clines. Bush's staff numbered slightly
less than 60 during the early spring of
1981. He often operated out of a small
office in the West Wing of the White
House where he liked to spend time
because it was ``in the traffic
pattern,'' but his staff was
principally located in the Old
Executive Office Building. Here Bush
sat at a mammoth mahogany desk which
had been used in 1903 by his lifetime
ego ideal, the archetypal liberal
Republican extravagant, Theodore
Roosevelt. 
   During and after Reagan's
recovery, Bush put together a machine
capable of steering many of the
decisions of the Reagan administration.
Bush had a standing invitation to sit
in on all cabinet meetings and other
executive activities, and James Baker
was always there to make sure he knew
what was going on. Bush was a part of
every session of the National Security
Council. Bush also possessed guaranteed
access to Reagan, in case he ever
needed that: Each Thursday Reagan and
Bush would have lunch alone together in
the Oval Office. 
   Each Tuesday, Bush attended the
weekly meeting of GOP committee
chairmen presided over by Senate
Majority Leader Howard Baker at the
Senate. Then Bush would stay on the
Hill for the weekly luncheon of the
Republican Policy Committee hosted by
Senator John Tower of Texas. 
   Prescott's old friend William
Casey was beginning to work his
deviltry at Langley, and kept in close
touch with Bush. 

   The Attempt on the Pope
 
   Forty-four days after the
attempted assassination of Reagan,
there followed the attempt to
assassinate Pope John Paul II during a
general audience in St. Peter's Square
in Rome. During those 44 days, Bush had
been running the U.S. government. It
was as if a new and malignant evil had
erupted onto the world stage, and was
asserting its presence with an
unprecedented violence and terror. Bush
was certainly involved in the attempt
to cover up the true authors of the
attentat of St. Peter's Square. An
accessory before the fact in the
attempt to slay the pontiff appears to
have been Bush's old cohort Frank
Terpil, who had been one of the
instructors who had trained Mehmet Ali
Agca, who fired on the Pope. 
   After a lengthy investigation, the
Italian investigative magistrate,
Ilario Martella, in December 1982
issued seven arrest warrants in the
case, five against Turks and two
against Bulgarians. Ultimate
responsibility for the attempt on the
Pope's life belonged to Yuri Andropov
of the Soviet KGB. On March 1, 1990,
Viktor Ivanovich Sheymov, a KGB officer
who had defected to the West, revealed
at a press conference in Washington,
D.C. that as early as 1979, shortly
after Karol Woityla became Pope, the
KGB had been instructed through an
order signed by Yuri Andropov to gather
all possible information on how to get
``physically close to the Pope.''@s1@s4 
   According to one study of these
events, during the second week of
August 1980, when the agitation of the
Polish trade union Solidarnosc was at
its height, the Pope had dispatched a
special emissary to Moscow with a
personal letter for Soviet President
Leonid Brezhnev. The Pope's message
warned the Soviet dictator that if the
Red Army were to invade Poland, as then
seemed imminent, the Pope would fly to
Warsaw and lead the resistance. It is
very likely that shortly after this the
Soviets gave the order to eliminate
Pope John Paul II.@s1@s5 
   With the Vatican supporting Judge
Martella in his campaign to expose the
true background of Ali Agca's assault,
it appeared that the Bulgarian
connection, and with it the
Andropov-KGB connection, might soon be
exposed. But in the meantime, Brezhnev
had died, and had been succeeded by the
sick and elderly Konstantin Chernenko.
Bush was already in the ``you die, we
fly'' business, representing Reagan at
all important state funerals, and
carrying on the summit diplomacy that
belongs to such occasions. Bush
attended Brezhnev's funeral in November
1982, and conferred at length with Yuri
Andropov. Chernenko was a transitional
figure, and the Anglo-American elites
were looking to KGB boss Andropov as a
desirable successor with whom a new
series of condominium deals at the
expense of peoples and nations all over
the planet might be consummated. For
the sake of the condominium, it was
imperative that the hit against the
Pope not be pinned on Moscow. There was
also the scandal that would result if
it turned out that U.S. assets had also
been involved within the framework of
derivative assassination networks. 
   During the first days of 1983,
Bush lodged an urgent request with
Monsignor Pio Laghi, the apostolic
pro-nuncio in Washington, in which Bush
asked for an immediate private audience
with the Pope. By February 8, Bush was
in Rome. According to reliable reports,
during the private audience Bush
``suggested that John Paul should not
pursue quite so energetically his own
interest in the plot.''@s1@s6 
   Bush's personal intervention had
the effect of supplementing and
accelerating a U.S. intelligence
operation that was already in motion to
sabotage and discredit Judge Martella
and his investigation. On May 13, 1983,
the second anniversary of the attempt
on the Pope's life, Vassily Dimitrov,
the first secretary of the Bulgarian
embassy in Rome, expressed his
gratitude: ``Thanks to the CIA, I feel
as if I were born again!''@s1@s7 
   Bush consistently expressed
skepticism on Bulgarian support for
Agca. On December 20, 1982, responding
to the Martella indictments, Bush told
the {Christian Science Monitor}:
``Maybe I speak defensively as a former
head of the CIA, but leave out the
operational side of the KGB--the
naughty things they allegedly do:
Here's a man, Andropov, who has had
access to a tremendous amount of
intelligence over the years. In my
judgment, he would be less apt to
misread the intentions of the U.S.A.
That offers potential. And the other
side of that is that he's tough, and he
appears to have solidified his
leadership position.'' 
   According to one study, the German
foreign intelligence service (the
Bundesnachrichtendienst) believed at
this time that ``a common link between
the CIA and the Bulgarians''
existed.@s1@s8 
   Martella was convinced that Agca
had been sent into action by Sergei
Antonov, a Bulgarian working in Rome.
According to author Gordon Thomas,
Martella was aware that the White
House, and Bush specifically, were
determined to sabotage the exposure of
this connection. Martella brought Agca
and Antonov together, and Agca
identified Antonov in a line-up. Agca
also described the interior of
Antonov's apartment in Rome. ``Later,
Martella told his staff that the CIA or
anyone else can spread as much
disinformation as they like; he is
satisfied that Agca is telling the
truth about knowing Antonov.''@s1@s9 
   Later, U.S. intelligence networks
would redouble these sabotage efforts
with some success. Agca was made to
appear a lunatic, and two key Bulgarian
witnesses changed their testimony. A
campaign of leaks was also mounted. In
a bizarre but significant episode, even
New York Senator Al D'Amato got into
the act. D'Amato alleged that he had
heard about the Pope's letter warning
Brezhnev about invading Poland while he
was visiting the Vatican during early
1981: As the {New York Times} reported
on February 9, 1983, ``D'Amato says he
informed the CIA about the letter and
identified his source in the Vatican
when he returned to the U.S. from a
1981 trip to Rome.'' Later, D'Amato was
told that the Rome CIA station had
never heard anything from Langley about
his report of the Pope's letter. ``I
gave them important information and
they clearly never followed it up,''
complained D'Amato to reporters. 
   In February 1983, D'Amato visited
Rome once again on a fact-finding
mission in connection with the Agca
plot. He asked the U.S. embassy in Rome
to set up appointments for him with
Italian political leaders and law
enforcement officials, but his visit
was sabotaged by U.S. Ambassador
Maxwell Raab. The day before D'Amato
was scheduled to leave Washington, he
found that he had no meetings set up in
Rome. Then an Italian-speaking member
of the staff of the Senate Intelligence
Committee, who was familiar with the
Agca investigation and who was
scheduled to accompany D'Amato to Rome,
informed the Senator that he would not
make the trip. D'Amato told the press
that this last-minute cancellation was
due to pressure from the CIA. 
   Much to D'Amato's irritation, it
turned out that George Bush personally
had been responsible for a rather
thorough sabotage of his trip. D'Amato
showed the Rome press ``a telegram from
the American Ambassador in Rome urging
him to postpone the visit because the
embassy was preoccupied with an
overlapping appearance by Vice
President Bush,'' as the {New York
Times} reported. This was Bush's
mission to warn the Pope not to pursue
the Bulgarian connection. D'Amato said
he was shocked that no one on the CIA
staff in Rome had been assigned to
track the Agca investigation. 
   The CIA station chief in Rome
during the early 1980s was William
Mulligan, a close associate of former
CIA Deputy Assistant Director for
Operations Theodore Shackley. Shackley,
as we have seen, was a part of the Bush
for President campaign of 1980. 
   Mehmet Ali Agca received training
in the use of explosives, firearms, and
other subjects from the ``former'' CIA
agent Frank Terpil. Terpil was known to
Agca as ``Major Frank,'' and the
training appears to have taken place in
Syria and in Libya. 
   Agca's identification of Terpil
had been very precise and detailed on
Major Frank and on the training
program. Terpil himself granted a
television interview, which was
incorporated into a telecast on his
activities and entitled ``The Most
Dangerous Man in the World,'' broadcast
in January 1982, during which Terpil
described in some detail how he had
trained Agca. Shortly after this,
Terpil left his apartment in Beirut,
accompanied by three unidentified men,
and disappeared. Terpil and Ed Wilson
had gone to Libya and begun a program
of terrorist training at about the time
that George Bush became the CIA
director. Wilson was indicted for
supplying explosives to Libya, for
conspiring to assassinate one of
Qaddafi's opponents in Egypt, and for
recruiting former U.S. pilots and Green
Berets to work for Qaddafi. Wilson was
later lured back to the U.S. and
jailed. Frank Terpil presumably
continues to operate, if he is still
alive. Was Terpil actually a triple
agent? 
   What further relation might George
Bush have had to the attempt to take
the life of the Pope? 

 Notes for Chapter XVI
 

   1.
 Clay F. Richards, ``George
Bush: `co-president' in the Reagan
administration,'' United Press
International, March 10, 1981.
 
   2.
 Alexander Haig, {Caveat} (New
York: MacMillan, 1984), p. 115.
 
   3.
 {Ibid.,} p. 302.
 
   4.
 {Washington Post,} March 22,
1981.
 
   5.
 Haig, {op. cit.,} pp. 144-45.
 
   6.
 Haig, {op. cit.,} p. 151.
 
   7.
 Caspar Weinberger, {Fighting
for Peace} (New York: Warner Books,
1990), p. 94.
 
   8.
 Donald T. Regan, {For the
Record} (New York: Harcourt, Brace,
Jovanovich, 1988), p. 168.
 
   9.
 Weinberger, {op. cit.,} p. 95.
 
   10.
 Ronald Reagan, {An American
Life} (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1990), p. 271.
 
   11.
 Jack and JoAnn Hinckley,
{Breaking Points} (Grand Rapids: Chosen
Books, 1985), p. 169.
 
   12.
 {Ibid.,} p. 215.
 
   13.
 Judy Hasson, United Press
International, July 31, 1985.
 
   14.
 {Washington Post,} March 2,
1990.
 
   15.
 See Gordon Thomas, {Pontiff}
(New York: Doubleday, 1983).
 
   16.
 Gordon Thomas, {Averting
Armageddon} (New York: Doubleday,
1984), p. 74.
 
   17.
 ``American Leviathan,'' {op.
cit.}
 
   18.
 {Ibid.,} p. 268.
 
   19.
 {Ibid.,} p. 75.
 
                            


----
         John Covici
          covici@ccs.covici.com