George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

The liason between Pipes' Team B and Team A, the official CIA, was provided by John
Paisley, who had earlier served as the liaison between Langley and the McCord-Hunt-
Liddy Plumbers. In this sense Paisley served as the staff director of the Team A-Team B
experiment. Pipes then began choosing the members of Team B. First he selected from a
list provided by the CIA two military men, Lieutenant General John Vogt and Brigadier
General Jasper Welch, Jr., both of the Air Force. Pipes the added seven additional
members: Paul Nitze, Gen. Daniel Graham, the retiring head of the Defense Intelligence
Agency, Professor William van Cleave of the University of Southern California, former
US Ambassador to Moscow Foy Kohler, Paul Wolfowitz of the Arms Control and
Disarmament Agency, Thomas Wolfe of the RAND Corporation, and Seymour Weiss, a
former top State Department official. Two other choices by Pipes were rejected by Bush.
Team B began meeting during late August of 1976. Paisley and Don Suda provided Team
B with the same raw intelligence being used by National Intelligence Officer Howard
Stoertz's Team A. Team B's basic conclusion was that the Soviet military preparations
were not exclusively defensive, but rather represented the attempt to acquire a first-strike
capability that would allow the USSR to unleash and prevail in thermonculear war. The
US would face a window of vulnerability during the 1980's. But it is clear from Pipes'
own discussion of the debate that Team B [fn 53] was less interested in the Soviet Union
and its capabilities than in seizing hegemony in the intelligence and think tank
community in preparation for seizing the key posts in the Republican administration that
might follow Carter in 1980. Pipes was livid when, at the final Team A-Team B meeting,
he was not allowed to sit at Bush's table for lunch. The argument in Team B quarters was
that since the Soviets were turning aggressive once again, the US must do everything
possible to strengthen the only staunch and reliable American ally in the Middle East or
possibly anywhere in the world, Israel. This meant not just that Israel had to be financed
without stint, but that Israel had to be brought into central America, the Far East, and
Africa. There was even a design for a new NATO constructed around Israel, while
junking the old NATO because it was absorbing vital US resources needed by Israel.
By contrast, Team B supporters like Richard Perle, who served as Assistant Secretary of
Defense under Reagan, were later bitterly hostile to the Strategic Defense Initiative,
which was plainly the only rational response to the Soviet buildup, which was very real
indeed. The "window of vulnerability" argument had merit, but the policy conclusions
favored by Team B had none, since their idea of responding to the Soviet threat was, once
again, to subordinate everything to Israeli requirements.
Team A and Team B were supposed to be secret, but leaks appeared in the Boston Globe
in October. Pipes was surprised to find an even more detailed account of Team B and its
grim estimate of Soviet intent in the New York Times shortly after Christmas, but Paisley
told him that Bush and CIA official Richard Lehman had already been leaking to the
press, and urged Pipes to begin to offer some interviews of his own. [fn 54]
Typically enough, Bush appeared on Face the Nation early in the new year to say that he
was "appalled" by the leaks of Team B's conclusions. Bush confessed that "outside
expertise has enormous appeal to me." He refused to discuss the Team B conclusions