George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

Warming to the subject, Bush continued: "Let me give you some examples of this kind of
left wing extremism. Averell Harriman-- surely not known for his reactionary views--
speaking at Cornell University, talking about Viet Nam before a crowd that calls "Liar!"
[They] booed him to the state he could hardly finish, and finally he got so frustrated he
asked, 'How many in the audience are communists?' And a bunch of people there --small
I will admit--held up their hands."
So extremists, for Bush, were those who assailed Rockefeller and Harriman.
Bush defended the House Committe on Unamerican Activities against the demonstrations
organized by James Foreman and SNCC, commiserated with a State Department official
who had been branded a fascist at Iowa State, and went on to assail the Berkeley "filthy
speech" movement. As an example of the "pure naivete" of civil rights leaders, he cited
Coretta Scott King who "managed to link global peace and civil rights, somehow
managed to tie these two things together philosophically" -- which Bush professed not to
fathom. "If we can be non-violent in Selma, why can't we be non-violent in Viet Nam,"
Ossie Davis had said, and Bush proposed he be awarded the "green Wiener" for his
"absurd theory," for "what's got to be the fuzziest thinking of the year."
Beyond this inevitable obsession with race, Bush was frankly a hawk, frankly for
escalation, opening the door to nuclear weapons in Viet Nam only a little more subtly
than he had the year before: "And so I stand here as one who says I will back up the
President and military leaders no matter what weapons they use in Southeast Asia."
During 1964, 1965 and 1966, Bush was still functioning as the full- time president of
Zapata Offshore, although some of his co-workers complained that he was even less
single-minded about making money. During this period, the company's operations were
rapidly expanding and LeTourneau's Vicksburg yard turned out a series of offshore
drilling platforms, including some of new design. Business had been good during 1964,
with net income up 85% over the previous year. Bush wrote in the 1964 Zapata
Petroleum Annual Report: "The offshore drilling industry in which we operate continues
strong and active, with virtually all equipment in the Gulf of Mexico employed 100% of
the time. Furthermore, other market around the world are active, and new markets are
opening up."
The latest LeTourneau drilling platform was the MAVERICK, which was at that time the
largest self-elevating drilling barge in action anywhere in the world. The self-elevating
barges were mobile rigs with legs that rested on the bottom of the ocean. "The maximum
depth of water in which self-elevating barges can work is limited by the length of their
legs," Bush reminded the shareholders. Maverick went to work for the California
Company. The MAVERICK design was so promising, Bush told the shareholders, that
Zapata had completed negotiations to build two new rigs of the MAVERICK class,"
which would go to work for Shell. Gulf oil was also anxious to hire one of Zapata's new
rigs.