George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

During the first few weeks of Bush's tenure, the Ford administration was gripped by a
"first strike" pyschosis. This had nothing to do with the Soviet Union, but was rather
Ford's desire to pre-empt any proposals for reform of the intelligence agencies coming
out of the Pike or Church committees with a pseudo-reform of his own, premissed on his
own in-house study, the Rockefeller report, which recommended an increase of secrecy
for covert operations and classified information. Since about the time of the Bush
nomination, an interagency task force armed with the Rockefeller commission
recommendations had been meeting under the chairmanship of Ford's counselor Jack O.
Marsh. This was the Intelligence Coordinating Group, which included delegates of the
intelligence agencies, plus NSC, OMB, and others. This group worked up a series of final
recommendations that were given to Ford to study on his Christmas vacation in Vail,
Colorado. At this point Ford was inclined to "go slow and work with Congress."
But on January 10 Marsh and the intelligence agency bosses met again with Ford, and the
strategy began to shift towards pre-empting Congress. On January 30, Ford and Bush
came back from their appearance at the CIA auditorium swearing in session and met with
other officials in the Cabinet Room. Attending besides Ford and Bush were Secretary of
State Kissinger, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, Attorney General Levi, Jack Marsh, Phil
Buchen, Brent Scowcroft, Mike Duval, and Peter Wallison representing Vice President
Rockefeller, who was out of town that day. [fn 33] Here Ford presented his tentative
conclusions for further discussion. The general line was to pre-empt the Congress, not to
cooperate with it, to increase secrecy, and to increase authoritarian tendencies.
Ford scheduled a White House press conference for the evening of February 17. In an
atmosphere of intense last-minute haggling over bureaucratic prerogative, Bush was
careful to meet with Leo Cherne to consolidate his relations with both Cherne and
PFIAB. Cherne's memo of February 6 shows that he asked Bush to "make sure that we on
the board are not surprised." Cherne stressed the need to know as much as possible about
changes in the Sino-Soviet relationship and the need to upgrade economic intelligence,
which, he lamented, was becoming flabbier as the oil crisis and the accompanying shocks
to the international monetary system receded. Cherne was for declassifying whatever
could be declassified, a bureaucratic posture that could not go wrong. Cherne thought that
the "Pike Commission has a poor staff, issued a dreadful final report, but it did in the
course of its inquiry ask the right questions." These, Cherne told Bush, should be
answered. Cherne also wanted to set up "non-punitive regular monitoring" to evaluate the
successes and failures of the intelligence community. This proposal should be noted, for
here we have the germinal idea for Team B, which Bush set up a few months later to
evaluate the agency's record in judging the strategic intentions and capabilities of the
USSR. [fn 34]
In his press conference of February 17, Ford scooped the Congress and touted his
bureaucratic reshuffle of the intelligence agencies as the most sweeping reform and
reorganization of the United States intelligence agencies since the passage of the National
Security Act of 1947. "I will not be a party to the dismantling of the CIA or other
intelligence agencies," he intoned. He repeated that the intelligence community had to
function under the direction of the National Security Council as if that were something