George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

November 3, 1983:
Bush aide Donald Gregg met with Felix Rodriguez to discuss `` the general situation in
Central America. ''@s1@s2
December 1983:
Oliver North accompanied Vice President Bush to El Salvador as his assistant. Bush met
with Salvadoran army commanders. North helped Bush prepare a speech, in which he
publicly called upon them to end their support for the use of `` death squads. '' North later
testified that Bush's speech `` was one of the bravest things I've seen for anybody [sic].
''@s1@s3
Attack from Jupiter
January 1 through March 1984:
The Wall Street Journal of March 6, 1985 gave a de- romanticized version of certain
aquatic adventures in Central America:
Armed speedboats and a helicopter launched from a Central Intelligence Agency `` mother ship''
attacked Nicaragua's Pacific port, Puerto Sandino on a moonless New Year's night in 1984. A
week later the speedboats returned to mine the oil terminal. Over the next three months, they laid
more than 30 mines in Puerto Sandino and also in the harbors at Corinto and El Bluff. In air and
sea raids on coastal positions, Americans flew--and fired from--an armed helicopter that
accompanied the U.S.-financed Latino force, while a CIA plane provided sophisticated
reconaissance guidance for the nighttime attacks. The operation, outlined in a classified CIA
document, marked the peak of U.S. involvement in the four-year guerrilla war in Nicaragua. More
than any single event, it solidified congressional opposition to the covert war, and in the year since
then, no new money has been approved beyond the last CIA checks drawn early [in the] summer
[of 1984].... CIA paramilitary officers were upset by the ineffectiveness of the Contras.... As the
insurgency force grew ... during 1983 ... the CIA began to use the guerrilla army as a cover for its
own small `` Latino '' force.... [The] most celebrated attack, by armed speedboats, came Oct. 11,
1983, against oil facilities at Corinto. Three days later, an underwater pipeline at Puerto Sandino
was sabotaged by Latino [sic] frogmen. The message wasn't lost on Exxon Corp.'s Esso unit
[formerly Standard Oil of New Jersey], and the international giant informed the Sandinista
government that it would no longer provide tankers for transporting oil to Nicaragua. The CIA's
success in scaring off a major shipper fit well into its mining strategy.... The mother ship used in
the mining operation is described by sources as a private chartered vessel with a configuration
similar to an oil-field service and towing ship with a long, flat stern section where helicopters
could land....
The reader may have already surmised that Vice President Bush (with his background in
`` oilfield service '' and his control of a `` top-level committee of the National Security
Council '') sat in his Washington office and planned these brilliant schemes. But such a
guess is probably incorrect--it is off by about 800 miles. On Jupiter Island, Florida, where
the Bush family has had a seasonal residence for the past several decades (see Chapter 4)
is the headquarters of Continental Shelf Associates, Inc. (CSA).@s1@s4