Poppy's Crime Spree

Adam Trueblood Commentary	Index
Poppy’s Crime Spree With George W. Bush firmly secured as one of the most polarizing American presidents in memory, it is easy to view George Bush senior in a favorable light. He is often described as an internationalist, as a moderate, as an unwilling proponent of US military force abroad. Some who have met him describe him as having a gentle, avuncular presence. One is tempted to accept the façade and by contrast, to view the first president Bush as a more restrained, charitable version of his son George W. This old-fashioned, diplomatic demeanor is what makes a closer reading of his career in government similar to an unmasking of a criminal whose real face has been obscured by a trail of deft intrigues. In a larger sense, George HW Bush’s career coincides to a high degree with the US government’s most shameful covert operations, scandals, and criminal foreign policies. With his Yale pedigree and experience as an international businessman as the head of Zapata Petroleum Corporation, George Bush was an excellent candidate for intelligence work. After the Kennedy assassination, The Nation magazine reported that “Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency” had been involved in assessing the reaction in Florida to the president’s death. The Nation went on to confirm through a source at the CIA that Bush Sr. had begun operating on behalf of the CIA by 1960 or 1961. It is possible that Bush’s CIA involvement began even earlier, as his first job had been with Dresser Industries, a firm linked to CIA chief Allen Dulles and to Bush’s father Prescott Bush, who had organized the position on behalf of his son. George HW Bush’s clandestine activities in Latin America may have begun as early as 1954, when Zapata Petroleum began international operations with Zapata Offshore, the same year in which CIA director Allen Dulles embarked on his project to overthrow Guatemalan president Arbenz. In any event, by the time of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in early 1961, George Bush was likely part of the CIA and furthermore was a passionate critic of the new Castro regime. His uncle George Herbert Walker had had direct interests in Cuba due to his position as Director of the enterprise West Indies Sugar, which was nationalized by the Castro government in 1960. The Bay of Pigs plan was hatched during the Eisenhower administration’s last years, but was not undertaken until the first month’s of Kennedy’s presidency. An interesting exercise for a statistician would be to analyze the possibility of the following “coincidences” without the operational presence of one George HW Bush. The CIA operation in Cuba, run by CIA Director Allen Dulles, was code named “Operation Zapata”. Secondly, the name of one of the ships used in the invasion force was the “Barbara J”, Bush’s wife’s name. Another ship was christened the “Houston”, Zapata Petroleum’s base of operations. The invasion proved a fiasco, with about 1,200 of the 1,500 men in the US trained force being taken prisoner by Castro’s army. An interesting legacy of the Bay of Pigs invasion is the connection to the Watergate scandal, as most of the Watergate “plumbers” were Bay of Pigs veterans such as Howard Hunt, Bernard Barker, Rolando Martinez, Felix Rodriguez and Virgilio Gonzalez. The extent of Bush’s further involvement in the CIA during the 1960’s is unknown, but his public career began to flourish with his election as US congressman and later appointment to be ambassador the UN in the early 1970’s. By the time of Watergate, Bush was Chairman of the Republican National Committee, after having become a protégé of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger during his time as UN ambassador. Along with his business partner in Zapata, William Liedtke, and Senator John Connoly, Bush was most likely an integral part of the group of “Texans” that Nixon ranted about as the capital source for the Watergate operation. Bush and his partner Liedtke had in 1960 set up a Mexican oil services firm called Permargo that was to drill off the coast of Mexico, and the two had developed extensive connections in the Mexican business community. At the end of 1972, Liedtke as Nixon’s regional finance chairman in Houston raised $700,000 in contributions that were then laundered through the Bush-Liedtke connections in Mexico, specifically an attorney named Manuel Daguerre. These funds were then provided to the Watergate burglars to fund their operation. Nixon referred to this on the Watergate tapes when he said (speaking of the funds): “It isn't from the committee though, from Stans? Yeah. It is. It's directly traceable and there's some more through some Texas people that went to the Mexican bank which can also be traced to the Mexican bank-- they'll get their names today. And…well, I mean, there's no way--I'm just thinking if they don't cooperate, what do they say? That they were approached by the Cubans. That's what Dahlberg has to say, the Texans too…” A House of Representatives committee chaired by Wright Patman later confirmed the money trail linking Watergate to funding from Liedtke. In October of 1972, the members of the House Banking and Currency Committee chaired by Patman voted 20-15 against continuing the investigation, over Patman’s objection, and therefore allowed the members of The Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) to avoid testimony about the money trail. Under the Ford administration Bush was appointed Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, with his confirmation coming at the end of 1975. A review of all of the exposed clandestine activities of the CIA from this time is not possible, but just focusing on Latin America it is clear that Bush’s tenure coincided with some of the CIA’s most reprehensible activities. This was the time of Operation Condor, a plan conceived with US oversight to enable Latin American dictatorships in South America to better repress more progressive elements of society, in particular liberal groups consisting of students, workers, and intellectuals. The Argentine junta lasted from 1976 to 1983 and was responsible for over 30,000 murders, while Pinochet’s regime lasted well into the 1990’s and has been blamed for the deaths of over 5,000 Chileans. The US intelligence services, in particular the CIA, worked with these notorious despots to identify and eliminate members of groups in opposition to the ruling military powers. One brazen act was the assassination of Orlando Letelier, former foreign minister of the Salvador Allende government in Chile, which took place in 1976 in Washington D.C. Both Bush and Henry Kissinger had been advised by cable about the impending arrival of the two Chilean intelligence agents who eventually murdered Letelier. The CIA was quick to absolve Pinochet’s government and its intelligence service DINA of any responsibility, as the NY Times reported on October 12, 1976: “[Ford Administration] intelligence officials said it appeared that the FBI and the Central Intelligence Agency had virtually ruled out the idea that Mr. Letelier was killed by agents of the Chilean military junta....[They] said they understood DINA was firmly under the control of the government of Gen. Augusto Pincohet and that killing Mr. Letelier could not have served the junta's purposes....The intelligence officials said a parallel investigation was pursuing the possibility that Mr. Letelier had been assassinated by Chilean left-wing extremists as a means of disrupting United States relations with the military junta.” The CIA’s loyalties were clear, whether in relation to Director Bush’s support for Pinochet, or other tyrants such as Somoza in Nicaragua and Stroessner in Paraguay. By early 1977, Carter had been elected president and Bush was not offered a continued tenure at the CIA. He returned to the private sector until his political career was resurrected with Reagan’s election in 1980. The main scandals of the Reagan years, the October Surprise of 1980 and Iran Contra, were essentially a projects directed from within the shadowy world of US intelligence, and in both cases Bush’s fingerprints were again all too present. Before the 1980 election there were opportunities to release the 52 hostages kept in the US embassy in Iran, yet Bush and his intelligence operatives found a way to delay the release until after the election, thereby preventing Carter with a boost in popularity that might ensure his reelection. Several individuals present at meetings held Paris in October 1980 have claimed that Bush and William Colby were present to meet with representatives of Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, apparently to strike a deal according military supplies to the Iranians. The Iran Contra scandal, during which Bush claimed to be “out of the loop”, was a pet project of the Special Situation Group chaired by Bush from 1981 to 1989. His deputies such as Oliver North and Richard Secord dutifully took the fall, yet the evidence pointing to Bush’s involvement is compelling. Bush was extremely well connected in the Middle East due to his intelligence activities and oil ventures, and in Nicaragua he was linked to the anti-Sandinista “contra” forces through his previous ties to Somoza. In this scheme US arms were shipped to Iran, an act prohibited by US law, and the proceeds were then used to fund the Nicaraguan “contras”, a practice also prohibited by US law. Bush at this time brought CIA operatives such as Donald Gregg and Felix Rodgriguez to Washington to assist him in the shadowy operations he had running, in particular in Central America. Not only were the contras being armed in Nicaragua, but Bush was also aiding the repressive government of El Salvador in its “counter-insurgency” efforts. Declassified documents show that Bush was clearly involved in the planning stages for Iran Contra and that his advisor Gregg and, in many cases, Bush himself, was in continual contact with Felix Rodriguez, who was later exposed as the operational manager of the entire operation in Nicaragua. Rodriguez was exposed in 1986 when a cargo plane headed for the contras was shot down, and the American pilot taken prisoner. Rodriguez was identified by his alias “Max Gomez”. As the Washington Post reported, “Gomez has said that he met with Bush twice and has been operating in Nicaragua with the Vice President's knowledge and approval.” However, Bush escaped indictment and the Tower Commission declined to diligently investigate the numerous Bush connections to Iran Contra. Absent an indictment for his Iran Contra dealings, Bush was again free to pursue his ultimate political ambition. With his election in 1988, the door was opened for him to further involve the US in the covert operations in the Middle East and Latin America, regions where he had apparently developed an expertise. In the Middle East he managed to support both the Iranian and Iraq regimes in their ongoing war, providing Saddam Hussein with much of the military strength and intellectual capital that he used to lethal effect against the Iranians and his own Kurds. The insurgents in Iraq still benefit today from this arms buildup engineered by the US during Bush’s time as vice-president and president. After a dubious meeting between Bush’s envoy April Gillespie and Saddam in 1990, in which Saddam was apparently given the green light for his territorial ambitions in Kuwait, Bush turned the table on his former friend and embarked on the first Iraq war. In Central America Bush similarly turned on a former client, Manuel Noriega, and under the pretext of a law enforcement matter invaded Panama in December 1990, causing the deaths of over 5,000 Panamanians. April 2005 The sources for this article include "Fortunate Son" by J.H. Hatfield, "American Dynasty" by Kevin Phillips, "The Mafia, CIA and George Bush" by Pete Brewton, and "The Unauthorized Biography of George Bush" by Webster Tarpley.