George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

During the Reagan years, Bush was given a much-publicized assignment as head of the
South Florida Task Force and related efforts that were billed as part of a "war on drugs."
In 1975, President Ford had ordered the CIA to collect intelligence on narcotics
trafficking overseas, and also to "covertly influence" foreign offocials to help US antidrug
activities. How well did Bush carry out this critical part of his responsibilities?
Poorly, according to a Justice Department "Report on Inquiry into CIA-Related
Electronic Surveillance Activities," which was compiled in 1976, but which has only
partly come into the public domain. What emerges is a systematic pattern of coverup that
recalls Lapham's spurious arguments in the Leletier case. Using the notorious stonewall
that the first responsibility of the CIA was to shield its own "methods and sources" from
being exposed, the agency expressed fear "that the confidentiality of CIA's overseas
collection methods and sources would be in jeopardy should discovery proceedings
require disclosure of the CIA's electronic surveillance activities." [fn 52] This caused
"several narcotics invesitgations and'or prosecutions...to be terminated."
It was during 1976 that Bush met the Panamanian leader Manuel Antonio Noriega.
According to Don Gregg, this meeting took place on the edges of a luncheon conference
with several other visiting Panamanian officials.
This all makes an impressive catalogue of debacles in the area of covert operations. But
what about the intelligence product of the CIA, in particular the National Intelligence
Estimates that are the centerpiece of the CIA's work. Here Bush was to oversee a
maneuver markedly to enhance the influence of the pro-Zionist wing of the intelligence
community.
As we have already seen, the idea of new procedures allegedly designed to evaluate the
CIA's track record in intelligence analysis had been kicking around in Leo Cherne's
PFIAB for some time. In June, 1976, Bush accepted a proposal from Leo Cherne to carry
out an experiment in "competitive analysis" in the area of National Intelligence Estimates
of Soviet air defenses, Soviet missle accuracy, and overall Soviet strategic objectives.
Bush and Cherne decided to conduct the competitive analysis by commissioning two
separate groups, each of which would present and argue for its own conclusions. On the
one, Team A would be the CIA's own National Intelligence Officers and their staffs. But
there would also be a separate Team B, a group of ostensibly independent outside
experts.
The group leader of Team B was Harvard history professor Richard Pipes, who was
working in the British Museum in London when he was appointed by Bush and Cherne.
Pipes had enjoyed support for his work from the office of Senator Henry Jackson, which
had been one of the principal incubators of a generation of whiz kids and think tankers
whose entire strategic outlook revolved around the stated or unstated premiss of the
absolute primacy of supporting Israel in every imaginable excess or adventure, while
frequently sacrificing vital US interests in the process.