George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

By September, Bush could boast in public that he had won the immediate engagement:
his adversaries in the Congressional investigating committees were defeated. "The CIA,"
Bush announced, "has weathered the storm." "The mood in Congress has changed," he
crowed. "No one is campaigning against strong intelligence. The adversary thing, how we
can ferret out corruption, has given way to the more serious question how we can have
better intelligence."
As Bush never tired of repeating, that meant more covert operations. In the middle of
October, Bush spoke once again on this matter to the Texas Mid-Continent Oil and Gas
Association: "We would be stupid to give up covert operations and we are not going to
do it as long as I have anything to say about it." Bush claimed that covert operations
consumed only 2% of the entire CIA budget but that such operations were necessary
because "not everybody is going to play by Marquis of Queensbury rules."
Such was the public profile of Bush's CIA tenure up until about the time of the
November, 1976 elections. If this had been the whole story, then we might accept the
usual talk about Bush's period of uneventful rebuilding and morale boosting while he was
at Langley. We might share the conclusions of one author that "Bush was picked because
he could be trusted to provide no surprises. Amiable and well-liked by old CIA hands, he
sincerely believed in the agency and its mission. Bush soothed Congress, tried to restore
confidence and morale and Langley, and avoided delving too deeply into the agency's
darker recesses." [fn 36] Or, we might acceptthe following edifying summary: '[Bush]
had a fundamental loyalty to the agency and its people even though he was an outsider.
He was a man with a strong sense of obligation downward. Under him the people of the
CIA soon realized that they were not going to be served up piecemeal. He probably did
more for agency morale and standing in Congress than any DCI since Allen Dulles.
Unlike Colby, who was loyal to the ideal of the CIA rather than to the people, Bush was
committed to both. He was a genuine conservative in his politics and his approach,
conveying no touch of originality, and was not a man to take initiatives. People knew
exactly where they stood with him. He was a classic custodian, and it was this quality that
Ford had recognized in him. For Bush being DCI was 'the best job in Washington.'" [fn
37] The spirit of the red Studebaker school of idolatry, we see, had followed Bush to
Langley and thence into many standard histories of the CIA.
Reality looked different. The administration Bush served had Ford as its titular head, but
most of the real power, especially in foreign affairs, was in the hands of Kissinger. Bush
was more than willing to play along with the Kissinger agenda.
The first priority was to put an end to such episodes as contempt citations for Henry
Kissinger. Thanks to the presence of Don Gregg as CIA station chief in Seoul, South
Korea, that was easy to arrange. This was the same Don Gregg of the CIA who would
later serve as Bush's national security advisor during the second vice presidential term,
and who would manage decisive parts of the Iran-contra operations from Bush's own
office. Gregg knew of an agent of the Korean CIA, Tongsun Park, who had for a number
of years been making large payments to members of Congress, above all to Democratic
members of the House of Representatives, in order to secure their suppport for legislation