Bush, Nixon & Kennedy

I was reading American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush by Kevin Phillips recently when I came across something startling. Before I get to that, though, some mention should be made of who Kevin Phillips is. He is a long-time Republican political theorist who worked for Richard Nixon. Although Phillips has contempt for the Bush family, he is no left-wing conspiracy theorist. So when I came across this passage my ears perked up. While discussing whether or not George H. W. Bush was in the CIA during the Bay of Pigs era, Phillips quoted Bruce Adamson several times. Here, for example:

Bruce Adamson added that “George Bush and Edwin Pauley (both CIA) were both listed in 1054-55 in (CIA asset) George de Mohrenschildt’s personal address book, which I obtained a copy [of] from the West Palm Beach Sheriff’s office in 1992.”

Why is that startling? Well, one thing Phillips doesn’t mention is that George de Mohrenshildt was Lee Harvey Oswald’s handler in the intelligence world. Adamson has been one of the researchers who suggest that George H. W. Bush was involved in the John Kennedy assassination! Surely an establishment figure like Kevin Phillips would not go there. Well, the next sentence reads,

In 1988, Project Censored, a journalistic consortium based in California, chose the probability of George H. W. Bush being a CIA asset in 1963, when he ran Zapata Offshore, as one of the “top 10 censored”stories that year. (p. 205)

Why mention 1963 specifically here? An FBI memo from J. Edgar Hoover from November 29, 1963 was uncovered stating that Bush “of the CIA” was briefed on the Kennedy assassination, specifically the reaction of the Cuban exile community in Miami to it. Philips had already discussed the fact that George Bush senior’s grandfather, George Herbert Walker, had extensive holdings in Batista-era Cuba and the family lost a lot of money (the value of their holding company, West Indies Sugar fell from $53 million to nothing between 1957 and 1960) when these operations were nationalized by Castro. Bush’s role in the CIA seemed to be to use his various Zapata business shells to fund the Bay of Pigs operation in 1961. The Bay of Pigs, of course, was a complete fiasco for the CIA and they always blamed Kennedy for it. Phillips mentions all those facts except for the last one. By choosing the sources he did for this chapter Phillips seems to keep circling around the central issue, pointing at it without addressing it, while offering hints here and there. Was Bush involved in the Kennedy assassination? Of course there is not enough evidence for someone like Kevin Phillips to make such an accusation but others have. See this from Signs of the Times and this from Xymphora as well as this by Paul Kangas and this biography of Bush by Webster Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin.

There was a passage in Nixon’s transcribed Watergate tapes where Nixon and his aides are in his office talking about how to coverup the White House ties of the Watergate burglars. Nixon at one point suggests telling the CIA to call the FBI off the case because if they don’t, it might bring up “the whole Bay of Pigs thing.” Now in his memoirs, top Nixon aide Bob Haldeman wrote that Nixon used the phrase “the whole Bay of Pigs thing” as a code for the Kennedy assassination. Here’s something else that’s interesting. Nixon was not too impressed with George Bush the First but Bush’s father brought Nixon into politics, and Bush was not only connected to the CIA-Cuban exile axis and Skull and Bones but was also fiercely ambitious. Nixon made him the head of the Republican National Committee, then Ambassador to the UN. He pushed himself into top-level cabinet position in spite of that and was jockeying fiercely for the Vice-President position that Gerald Ford got, knowing that that would lead to the presidency. Bush was actually the one in Nixon’s inner circle who pushed the hardest for Nixon to resign. Bush then missed out to Nelson Rockefeller for the VP position under Ford but was made CIA director where he was in a position to cover up “the whole Bay of Pigs thing.”

Was Nixon set up in Watergate by that cabal? A lot of evidence points to that. In the Nixon tapes, there is one meeting right after the Watergate burglars were arrested and Nixon was asking who was arrested and when he was told that E. Howard Hunt was one of the burglars he said something like, “Hunt was involved? Oh, [expletive deleted].” As for E.Howard Hunt, go here for an amazing interview last year in Slate.com. In it Hunt was asked about the Kennedy assassination. This is how it went:

Slate: I know there is a conspiracy theory saying that David Atlee Phillips—the Miami CIA station chief—was involved with the assassination of JFK.

Hunt: [Visibly uncomfortable] I have no comment.

Slate: I know you hired him early on, to work with you in Mexico, to help with Guatemala propaganda.

Hunt: He was one of the best briefers I ever saw.

Slate: And there were even conspiracy theories about you being in Dallas the day JFK was killed.

Hunt: No comment.

This is very odd. He was a professional liar; that’s what covert agents are. Why didn’t he just say ‘no’ to the question. Why “no comment.” It’s almost as if he wants us to know but can’t come out and say it. It would be nice to see someone ask George H. W. Bush about it.