George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

oversight of the intelligence agencies. The bill being discussed had a provision to outlaw
assassinations of foreign officials and to punish violations with life in prison. The
measure would also have prohibited covert operations involving "torture," "the creation
of epidemics of diseases," and "the creation of food or water shortages or floods." Bush
and Knoche both objected to the ban on assassinations (which Colby accepted), and both
were critical of the entire bill. Knoche said his fear was that if enacted the bill might
create "a web woven so tight around the average intelligence officer that you're going to
deaden his creativity."
Bush denounced the Senate bill for its "excessive" reporting requirements. "The Congress
should be informed, fully informed, but it ought not to micro-manage the intelligence
business," protested Bush. He was especially indignant about a provision that would have
required notification of the House and Senate oversight committees every time a US
intelligence agency wanted to stipulate an agreement with a foreign intelligence agency,
or domestic security service. "I don't believe that kind of intimate disclosure is essential,"
said Bush. Bush was convinced that "some US sources are drying up because foreign
services don't believe the US Congress can keep secrets." This, from the man who had
leaked the Team B report to the New York Times, and then had gone on television to say
that he was appalled.
Bush urged the senators to drop language in the bill that would have severed the DCI post
from the CIA. Bush warned vehemently that an intelligence czar sitting in the White
House "and separated from his CIA troops...would be virtually isolated. He needs the
CIA as his principal source of support to be most effective. And the CIA needs its head to
be the chief foreign intelligence adviser to the president." [fn 3]
A few months later he participated in a singular round table organized by the Washington
Quarterly of the Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies with none
other than Michael Ledeen as moderator. (Ledeen, who vaunted intimate connections to
Israeli intelligence, was later one of the central figures in the mid-1980's acceleration of
US arms shipments to Iran.) In this round table, Bush was joined by former DCIs Richard
Helms and William Colby as well as by Ray Cline.
According to Bush there was "an underlying feeling on the part of the American people
that we must have clandestine services." Above all he regretted "that some of the thrust of
the legislation before the Hill is still flogging CIA for something that was long corrected,
or that never happened." Even Hollywood was against the CIA, Bush thought, "and you
get movies and television programs and it has a very sinister kind of propagandistic
overtone." Here Bush wanted to defend his own record: "I'll give you one example that
happened on my watch: One of these rather ribald magazines described a purported
destabilization effort against [Prime Minister Michael] Manley in Jamiaca." "But," said
Bush with that self-righteous whine, "it never happened. There wasn't any truth in it."
An important question came from Ledeen: "Is the agency penetrated?" Bush was ready to
admit that it might be: "Nobody is saying that there's nothing." "How about double