George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

On June 10, 1954, Bush received a letter from Connecticut resident H. Smith Richardson,
owner of Vick Chemical Company (cough drops, Vapo-Rub):
`` ... At some time before Fall, Senator, I want to get your advice and counsel on a
[new] subject--namely what should be done with the income from a foundation
which my brother and I set up, and which will begin its operation in 1956....
''@s1@s4
This letter presages the establishment of the H. Smith Richardson Foundation, a Bush
family-dictated private slush fund which was to be utilized by the Central Intelligence
Agency, and by Vice President Bush, for the conduct of his Iran-Contra adventures.
The Bush family knew Richardson and his wife through their mutual friendship with
Sears Roebuck's chairman, Gen. Robert E. Wood. General Wood had been president of
the America First organization, which had lobbied against war with Hitler Germany. H.
Smith Richardson had contributed the start-up money for America First and had spoken
out against the U.S. `` joining the Communists '' by fighting Hitler. Richardson's wife was
a proud relative of Nancy Langehorne from Virginia, who married Lord Astor and
backed the Nazis from their Cliveden Estate.
General Wood's daughter Mary had married the son of Standard Oil president William
Stamps Farish. The Bushes had stuck with the Farishes through their disastrous exposure
during World War II (see Chapter 3). Young George Bush and his bride Barbara were
especially close to Mary Farish, and to her son W.S. Farish III, who would be the great
confidante of George's presidency.@s1@s5
The H. Smith Richardson Foundation was organized by Eugene Stetson, Jr., Richardson's
son-in-law. Stetson (Skull and Bones, 1934) had worked for Prescott Bush as assistant
manager of the New York branch of Brown Brothers Harriman.
In the late 1950s, the H. Smith Richardson Foundation took part in the `` psychological
warfare '' of the CIA. This was not a foreign, but a domestic, covert operation, carried out
mainly against unwitting U.S. citizens. CIA Director Allen Dulles and his British allies
organized `` MK-Ultra, '' the testing of psychotropic drugs including LSD on a very large
scale, allegedly to evaluate `` chemical warfare '' possibilities. In this period, the
Richardson Foundation helped finance experiments at Bridgewater Hospital in
Massachusetts, the center of some of the most brutal MK-Ultra tortures. These outrages
have been graphically portrayed in the movie, Titticut Follies.
During 1990, an investigator for this book toured H. Smith Richardson's Center for
Creative Leadership just north of Greensboro, North Carolina. The tour guide said that in
these rooms, agents of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Secret Service are trained.
He demonstrated the two-way mirrors through which the government employees are
watched, while they are put through mind-bending psychodramas. The guide explained
that `` virtually everyone who becomes a general '' in the U.S. armed forces also goes
through this `` training '' at the Richardson Center.