George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

document revealing the existence of a secret part of the U.S. government had somehow
gotten into the bibliography being used by Senator Jackson. The unit was Gray's `` 5412
Group '' within the administration, officially but secretly in charge of approving covert
action. Under Gray's guidance, Ike `` |`was clear and firm in his response' that Jackson's
staff not be informed of the existence of this unit [emphasis in the original]. ''@s1@s7
Several figures of the Eisenhower administration must be considered the fathers of this
permanent covert action monolith, men who continued shepherding the monster after its
birth in the Eisenhower era:
• Gordon Gray, the shadowy assistant to the President for national security affairs,
Prescott Bush's closest executive branch crony and golf partner along with Eisenhower.
By 1959-60, Gray had Ike's total confidence and served as the Harrimanites' monitor on
all U.S. military and non-military projects.
British intelligence agent Kim Philby defected to the Russians in 1963. Philby had gained
virtually total access to U.S. intelligence activities beginning in 1949, as the British secret
services' liaison to the Harriman-dominated CIA. After Philby's defection, it seemed
obvious that the aristocratic British intelligence service was in fact a menace to the
western cause. In the 1960s, a small team of U.S. counterintelligence specialists went to
England to investigate the situation. They reported back that the British secret service
could be thoroughly trusted. The leader of this `` expert '' team, Gordon Gray, was the
head of the counterespionage section of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory
Board for Presidents John Kennedy through Gerald Ford.
• Robert Lovett, Bush's Jupiter Island neighbor and Brown Brothers Harriman partner,
from 1956 on a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Lovett
later claimed to have criticized--from the `` inside ''--the plan to invade Cuba at the Bay
of Pigs. Lovett was asked to choose the cabinet for John Kennedy in 1961.
• CIA Director Allen Dulles, Bush's former international attorney. Kennedy fired Dulles
after the Bay of Pigs invasion, but Dulles served on the Warren Commission, which
whitewashed President Kennedy's murder.
• C. Douglas Dillon, neighbor of Bush on Jupiter Island, became Undersecretary of State
in 1958 after the death of John Foster Dulles. Dillon had been John Foster Dulles's
ambassador to France (1953-57), coordinating the original U.S. covert backing for the
French imperial effort in Vietnam, with catastrophic results for the world. Dillon was
Treasury Secretary for both John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.
• Ambassador to Britain Jock Whitney, extended family member of the Harrimans and
neighbor of Prescott Bush on Jupiter Island. Whitney set up a press service in London
called Forum World Features, which published propaganda furnished directly by the CIA
and the British intelligence services. Beginning in 1961, Whitney was chairman of the
British Empire's `` English Speaking Union. ''
• Senator Prescott Bush, friend and counselor of President Eisenhower.
Bush's term continued on in the Senate after the Eisenhower years, throughout most of
the aborted Kennedy presidency.