BUSH AND THE CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-01448R000401580043-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 25, 2012
• Sequence Number: 43
• Publication Date: September 7, 1988
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/25: CIA-RDP99-014488000401580043-4
RADIO N REPORTS, ~N~.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 (301j 656-4068
PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF 482-6790
ATTN: Pat
The Today Show
sTAT1oN W R C T V
NBC Network
September 7, 1988 7:15 AM ~ITy Washington, DC
SUBJECT B u s h a n d t h e C I A
JANE PAULEY: If George Bush is elected President come
November, he will be the only American President ever to have
served as the Director of the CIA. Not much is known about
Bush's tenure as the country's chief spymaster, which is the
topic this morning of NBC's national political correspondent, Ken
Bode, who is in our Washington Newsroom.
Good morning, Ken.
KEN BODE: Good morning.
Until now, Bush's time at the CIA has been little more
than a line on his resume. By its nature, the CIA is shrouded in
secrecy, and the Vice President has refused to talk about it.
Today a lengthy article appears on "Bush and the CIA" in Mother
Jones Magazine. It's written by Scott Armstrong and Jeff Nason,
two journalists who specialize in reporting on intelligence
activities.
What did George Bush actually do as CIA Director? What
happened while he was there? And what do those who worked with
him say about his leadership?
Those are some of the things the article covers.
[Film clip of Bush's swearing-in at CIA Director.]
BODE: January, 1976: George Bush takes over at CIA;
the agency under attack in the press, under investigation on
Capitol Hill; morale low.
Armstrong and Nason conducted over a hundred interviews
OFFICES iN WASHINGTON D.C. ? NEW YORK ? LOS ANGELES ? CHICAGO ? DETROIT ? AND OTHER PRINCIPAL CITIES
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with people who worked for or with George Bush, asking how did he
operate.
SCOTT ARMSTRONG: We looked at not only the one year
that Bush was Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, but we
looked at the previous five years. We looked at the period when
he'd been at the U. N. We looked at the period when he was in
China. What we found was remarkably consistent. Here was a man
who was virtually totally deferential to his aides. He literally
turned over the store, in the case of the CIA, to his aides.
BODE: Bush focused on rebuilding morale from the
GEORGE BUSH: It's a slanderous outrage to the
professionals with him I'm privileged to work in CIA.
BODE: Also on restoring CIA credibility in Congress.
For this, and only this, the authors give Bush high marks.
JEFF NASON: Well, he established a really good, sound
relationship with the lawmakers on the Hill who were -- who were
focusing in on the intelligence community and the CIA, in
particular. Some of those people on the Hill at the time told us
that he became more or less a member of the club, somebody that
they could trust.
BODE: February. President Gerald Ford issues an
executive order reorganizing American intelligence. CIA Director
Bush has no influence on the results. Armstrong says Bush really
had little to do with running the CIA.
ARMSTRONG: The operational decisions were made at least
once, sometimes two, sometimes three layers below Bush. Many of
them never filtered up to him at all. He was, for all practical
purposes, out of the loop on virtually everything.
BODE: "Out of the loop":
what's that mean?
ARMSTRONG: George Bush uses the phrase "out of the
loop" to refer to lack of operational control, a lack of
operational responsibility for things that he's involved in. He
used it in the case of Iran-contra.
What we found was that George Bush has made a career of
being out of the loop.
BODE: June, 1976. A wave of international terrorism
begins; American Ambassador to Lebanon Francis Malloy assassin-
ated. September: former Chilean Ambassador, Orlando Letelier,
blown up in broad daylight in downtown Washington. It became
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/25: CIA-RDP99-014488000401580043-4
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obvious that rogue foreign intelligence agencies from places like
Chile, Iran, South Africa and South Korea were operating un-
restrained in the U. S. Armstrong and Nason say they were
illegally harassing, wire-tapping, beating and kidnaping their
exiled populations here, but Bush decided to look the other way.
ARMSTRONG: And when he looked around and decided to ask
his people "How do we collect information on terrorism?," they
said "We do it through cooperative foreign intelligence
agencies." And so Bush was reluctant to crack down on the very
same people that he was going to rely on for information about
foreign terrorism.
BODE: In October, a Cuban civilian airliner was blown
up off Barbados. Anti-Castro Cubans with links to the CIA were
implicated. Also that fall, the CIA learned that one of its
former agents, Edwin Wilson, was training Libyan terrorists,
planning to sell Red-Eye missiles to Libya. The authors say Bush
did the least he could to help the Justice Department investigate
such activities.
ARMSTRONG: While he cooperated with the Department of
Justice in the investigations, it appears that he was dragging
his feet throughout much of the investigations. It appears that
he did what he could to prevent information from coming out. Any
of those things could explode on him at a future point after he
became President.
BODE: In sum, the authors describe George Bush as a CIA
Director who professional spies loved because he let the agency
run itself; who did a good job testifying for the CIA on Capitol
Hill, but who did little to curb internal CIA abuses and nothing
to restrain foreign intelligence agents operating in the United
States .
ARMSTRONG: I think that for George Bush, his year at
the Central Intelligence Agency has to be a major minus for him.
BODE: NBC provided the Vice President's office with an
advanced copy of the Armstrong-Nason article. We asked them to
provide a spokesman to comment on the characterizations and
conclusions in the article, but they declined.
Back to New York.
PAULEY: All right, Ken. Thank you. Coming up now, 22
after the hour.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/25: CIA-RDP99-014488000401580043-4