started out in the Senate in 1952. Senator McIntyre was more demanding, and raised the issue of
enemies' list operations, a notorious abuse of the Nixon (and subsequent) administratio ns:
"What if you get a call from the President, next July or August, saying 'George, I would like to see
you.' You go in the White House. He takes you over in the corner and says, 'look, things are not
going too well in my campaign. This Reagan is gaining on me all the time. Now, he is a movie star
of some renown and has traveled with the fast set. He was a Holywood star. I want you to get anydirt you can on this guy because I need it."
What would Bush do? "I do not think that is difficult, sir," intoned Bush. "I would simply say that
it gets back to character and it gets back to integrity; and furthermore, I cannot conceive of the
incumbent doing that sort of thing. But if I were put into that kind of posmoral issue, I would simply say "no," because you see I think, and maybe-- I have the advantages asition where you had a clear (^)
everyone on this committee of 20-20 hindsight, that this agency must stay in the foreign intelligence
business and must not harass American citizens, like in Operation Chaos, and that these kinds of
things have no business in the foreign intelligence business." This was the same Bush whose 1980
campaign was heavily staffed by CIAviolation of the Hatch Act. This is the vice-president who ran Iran-contra out of his own private veterans, some retired, some on active service and in flagrant
office, and so forth.
Gary Hart also had a few questions. How did Bush feel about assassinations? Bush "found them
morally offensive and I am pleased the President has made that position very, very clear to theIntelligence Committee..." How about "coups d'etat in various countries around the world," Hart (^)
wanted to know?
"You mean in the covert field," replied Bush. "Yes." "I would want to have full benefit of all the
intelligence. I would want to have full benefit of how these matters were taking place but I cannottell you, and I do not think I should, that there would never be any support for a coup d'etat; in other (^)
words, I cannot tell you I cannot conceive of a situation where I would not support such action." In
retrospect, this was a moment of refreshing candor.
Gary Hart knew where at least one of Bush's bodies was buried: Senator Hart: You raised the question of getting the CIA out of domestic areas totally. Let us
hypthesize a situation where a President has stepped over the bounds. Let us say the FBI is
investigating some people who are involved, and they go right to the White House. There is some
possible CIA interest. The President calls you and says, I want you as Director of the CIA to call the
Director of the FBI to tell him to call off this operation because it may jeopardize some CIAactivities.
Mr. Bush. Well, generally speaking, and I think you are hypothecating a case without spelling it out
in enough detail to know if there is any real legitimate foreign intelligence aspect... [...]
There it was: the smoking gun tape again, the notorious Bush-Lietdtke-Mosbacher-Pennzoil
contribution to the CREEP again, the money that had been found in the pockets of Bernard Barker
and the Plumbers after the Watergate break-in. But Hart did not mention it overtly, only in this
oblique, Byzantine manner. Hart went on: "I am hypothesizing a case that actually happened in
June, 1972. Twere laundered and so forth." here might have been some tangential CIA interest in something in Mexico. Funds
Mr. Bush. Using a 50-50 hindsight on that case, I hope I would have said the CIA is not going to
get involved in that if we are talking about the same one.
Senator Hart. We are.