appointment after another, luncheon engagements, receptions, formal dinners-- at least one
reception and one dinner per day. Sometimes there were three receptions per day-- quite anopportunity for networking with like-minded freemasons from all over the world. Bush also (^)
travelled to Washington for cabinet meetings, and still did speaking engagements around the
country, especially for Republican candidates. "I try to get to bed by 11:30 if possible, " said Bush
in 1971, "but often my calendar is so filled that I fall behind in my work and have to take it home
with me." Bush bragged that he was still a "pretty tough" doublteam up with the pros. But he claimed to love basbeall most. He joked about questions on his pinges player in tennis, good enough to (^)
pong skills, since these were the months of ping pong diplomacy, when the invitation for a US ping
pong team to visit Peking became a part of the preparation for Kissinger's China card. Mainly Bush
came on as an ultra-orthodox Nixon loyalist. Was he a liberal conservative?, asked a reporter.
"People in Texas used to ask me that in the campaigns," replied Bush. "Some even called me aright-wing reactionary. I like to think of myself as a pragmatist, but I have learned to defy being (^)
labelled...What I can say is that I am a strong supporter of the President. If you can tell me what he
is, I can tell you what I am." Barbara liked the Waldorf suite, and the enthusiastic host and hostess
soon laid on a demanding schedule of recepetions, dinners, and entertainments.
Soon after taking up his UN posting, Bush received a phone calle from Assistant Secretary of State
for Middle Eastern Affairs Joseph Sisco, one of Kissinger's principal henchmen. Sisco had been
angered by some comments Bush had made about the Middle East situation in a press conference
after presenting his credentials. Despite the fact that Bush, as a cabinet officer, ranked several levels
above Sisco, Sisco was in effect the voice of Kissinger. Sisco told Bush that it was Sisco who spokefor the United States government on the Middle East, and that he would do both the on-the-record
talking and the leaking about that area. Bush knunckled under, for these were the realities of the
Kissinger years.
Henry Kissinger was now Bush's boss even more than Nixon was, and later, as the Watergatescandal progressed into 1973, the dominion of Kissinger would become even more absolute. During (^)
these years Bush, serving his apprenticeship in diplomacy and world strategy under Kissinger,
became a virtual Kissinger clone in two senses. First, to a significant degree, Kissinger's networks
and connections merged together with Bush's own, foreshadowing a 1989 administration in which
the NSC director and the number two man in the State Department were both Kissinger's businesspartners from his consulting and influence-peddling firm, Kissinger associates. Secondly, Bush
assimilated Kissinger's characteristic British-style geopolitical mentality and approach to problems,
and this is now the epistemology that dictates Bush's own dealing with the main questions of world
politics.
The Kissinger networks in question can be summed up here under four headings. Kissinger was at
once British imperialist, Zionist, Soviet, and Red Chinese in his orientation, all wrapped up in a
parcel of greed, megalomania, and perversion. [fn 9] Kissinger was one of the few persons in the
world who still had anything to teach George Bush in any of these categories.
The most essential level of Kissinger was the British one. This meant that US foreign policy was to
be guided by British imperial geoplitics, in particular the notion of the balance of power: the United
States must always ally with the second strongest land power in the world (Red China) against the
strongest land power (the USSR) in order to preserve the balance of power. This was expressed in
the 1971 -72 Npost. The balance of power, since it rules out a positive engagement for the economic progress ofixon-Kissinger opening to Peking, to which Bush would contribute from his UN (^)
the international community as a whole, has always been a recipe for new wars. Kissinger was in
constant contact with British foreign policy operatives like Sir Eric Roll of S.G. Warburg in
London, Lord Trend, Lord Victor Rothschild, the Barings bank, and others.