Knoche was then deputy director of the Office of Current Intelligence, which produces ongoing
assessments of international events for the President and the NSC. After 1972, KIntelligence Directorate's Office of Strategic Research, charged with evaluating strategic threats tonoche headed the (^)
the US. In 1975, Knoche had been a special liaison between Colby and the Rockefeller
Commission, as well as with the Church and Pike Committees. This was a very sensitive post, and
Bush clearly looked to Knoche to help him deal with continuing challenges coming from the
Congress. In the fall of 1975, Kcoordination and management of the intelligence community. According to some, Knoche was tonoche had become the number two on Colby's staff for the (^)
function as Bush's "Indian guide" through the secrets of Langley; he knew "where the bodies were
buiried." Otherwise, Knoche was known for his love of tennis.
Knoche was highly critical of Colby's policy of handing over limited amounts of classified materialto the Pike and Church committees, while fighting to save the core of covert operations. Knoche
told a group of friends during this period: "There is no counterintelligence any more." This implies
a condemnation of the Congressional committees with whom Knoche had served as liaison, and can
also be read as a lament for the ousting of James Jesus Angleton, chief of the CIA's
Counterintelligence operations until 1975 and director of the mail-opening operation that had beenexposed by various probers. [fn 26]
Here was a deputy who could protect Bush's flank with his Congressional tormentors, who would
call Bush to the Hill more than fifty times during his approximately one year of CIA tenure. He
would also appear to have had enough athe defect that Governor Scranton had pointed out years before- the lack of administrative ability.dministrative experience to run things, shielding Bush from
Nevertheless, Woodward and Pincus [fn 27] portray the Knoche appointment as getting mixed
reviews within the CIA, and quote Admiral Daniel J. Murphy's view that the Knoche nomination
was "not popular." For Woodward and Pincus Knoche was "a personable, tennis-playing giant of a
man."
The Admiral Daniel J. Murphy just mentioned was Bush's deputy director for the intelligence
community, and later became Bush's chief of staff during his first term as vice president. Much
later, in November, 1987, Murphy visited Panama in the company of South Korean businessman
and intelligence operative Tongsun Park, and met with Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega. Murphy wlater obliged to testify to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about his meeting with Noriega.as
Murphy claimed that he was only in Panama to "make a buck," but there are indications that he was
carrying messages to Noriega from Bush. Tongsun Park, Murphy's ostensible business associate,
will soon turn out to have been the central figure of the Koreagate scandal of 1976, a very important
development on Bush's CIA watch. [fn 28]
Other names on the Bush flow chart included holdover Edward Proctor and then Bush appointee
Sayre Stevens in the slot of Deputy Director for Intelligence; holdover Carl Duckett and then Bush
appointee Leslie Dirks as Deputy Director for Science and Technology; John Blake, holdover as
Deputy Director for AWilliam Wells, Deputy Director for Odministration; and holdover William Nelson, followed by Busperations. h appointee
William Wells as Deputy Director for Operations was a very significant choice. He was a career
covert operations specialist who had graduated from Yale a few years before Bush. Wells soon
acquired his own deputy, recommended by him and approved by BusTheodore Shackley, whose title thus became Associate Deputy Director for Coveh: this was the infamousrt Operations. (^)
Shackley later emerged as one of the central figures of the Iran-contra scandal of the 1980's. He is
reputedly one of the dominant personalities of a CIA old boys' network known as The Enterprise,
which was at the heart of Iran-contra and the other illegal covert operations of the Reagan-Bush
years.