George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

to the public until an official CIA history was released from secrecy in 1989. But the
CIA's author (who was President Bush's prep school history teacher; see chapter 5) gives
no real details of the Lovett Committee's functioning, claiming: `` The record of the
testimony of the Lovett Committee, unfortunately, was not in the archives of the agency
when this account was written. ''@s5
The CIA's self-history does inform us of the advice that Lovett provided to the Truman
cabinet, as the official War Department intelligence proposal.
Lovett decided that there should be a separate Central Intelligence Agency. The new
agency would `` consult '' with the armed forces, but it must be the sole collecting agency
in the field of foreign espionage and counterespionage. The new agency should have an
independent budget, and its appropriations should be granted by Congress without public
hearings.
Lovett appeared before the Secretaries of State, War and Navy on November 14, 1945.
He spoke highly of the FBI's work because it had `` the best personality file in the world.
'' Lovett said the FBI was expert at producing false documents, an art `` which we
developed so successfully during the war and at which we became outstandingly adept. ''
Lovett pressed for a virtual resumption of the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS)
in a new CIA.
U.S. military traditionalists centered around Gen. Douglas MacArthur opposed Lovett's
proposal.
The continuation of the OSS had been attacked at the end of the war on the grounds that
the OSS was entirely under British control, and that it would constitute an American
Gestapo.@s6
But the CIA was established in 1947 according to the prescription of Robert Lovett, of
Jupiter Island.
• Charles Payson and his wife, Joan Whitney Payson, were extended family members of
Harriman's and business associates of the Bush family.
Joan's aunt, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, was a relative of the Harrimans. Gertrude's
son, Cornelius Vanderbilt (`` Sonny '') Whitney, long-time chairman of Pan American
Airways (Prescott was a Pan Am director), became Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Air
Force in 1947. Sonny's wife Marie had divorced him and married Averell Harriman in
1930. Joan and Sonny's uncle, Air Marshall Sir Thomas Elmhirst, was director of
intelligence for the British Air Force from 1945 to 1947.
Joan's brother, John Hay (`` Jock '') Whitney, was to be ambassador to Great Britain from
1955 to 1961--when it would be vital for Prescott and George Bush to have such a friend.
Joan's father, grandfather and uncle were members of the Skull and Bones secret society.