George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

protege of the very Anglophile Caspar Weinberger, and of Carlucci, a man with strong
links to Operation Democracy and to the Sears, Roebuck interests.
The State Department, too, had its Iran-contra coverup brigade. First came Thomas R.
Pickering, chosen by Bush to take over his old post as US Ambassador to the United
Nations, a job with cabinet rank. When Pickering was US Ambassador to El Salvador
during the 1984-85 period, he helped arrange shipment of more than $1 million of
military equipment to the contras, all during a time when this was forbidden by US law,
according to his own testimony before the Congressional Iran-contra investigating
committees. Pickering did not report any of his doings to the State Department, but
instead kept in close touch with Don Gregg, Felix Rodriguez, and Oliver North of Bush's
retinue. Pickering, when he was ambassador to Israel in 1985-86, was also in on Israeli
third-country arms shipments to Iran that were supposed to secure the release of certain
hostages held in nearby Lebanon. [fn 4] This vulgar, gun-running filibusterer is now the
arrogant spokesman for Bush's New World Order among the five permanent members of
the United Nations Security Council, where he dispenses imperial threats and platitudes.
Still on the Iran-contra coverup honors list we find Reginald Bartholomew, Bush's choice
as Undersecretary of State for security affairs, science, and technology. Bartholomew was
US Ambassador in Beirut in September-November 1985, when an Israeli shipment of
508 US-made TOW antitank missles was followed by the release of Rev. Benjamin Weir,
an American hostage held by the pro-Iranian Islamic Jihad. According to the testimony of
then Secretary of State George Shultz to the Tower Board, Bartholomew was working
closely with Oliver North on a scheme to use Delta Force commandoes to free any
hostages not spontaneously released by Islamic Jihad. According to Shultz, Bartholomew
told him on September 4, 1985 that "North was handling an operation that would lead to
the release of all seven hostages." [fn 5]
Other choice appointments went to long-time members of the Bush network. These
included Manuel Lujan, who was tapped for the Department of the Interior, and former
Rep. Ed Derwinski, who was given the Veterans' Administration, shortly to be upgraded
to a cabinet post. A prominent figure of Bush's first year in office was William Reilly,
tapped to be administrator of the Environmental Portection Agency, the green police of
the regime. Reilly had been closely associated with the oligarchical financier Russell
Train at the US branch of Prince Phillip's World Wildlife Fund and the Conservation
Foundation.
So many top cabinet posts were thus assigned on the basis of direct personal services
rendered to George Bush that the collegial principle of any oligarchic system would
appear to have been neglected. There were relatively few key posts left over for
distribution to political-financial factions who might reasonably expect to be brought on
board by being given a seat at the cabinet table. Richard Thornburgh, a creature of the
Mellon interests who had been given his job under Reagan, was allowed to stay on, but
this led to a constant guerilla war between Thornburgh and Baker with the obvious issue
being the 1996 succession to Bush. Clayton Yeutter went to the Department of
Agriculture because that was what the international grain cartel wanted. The choice of