Nevertheless, the absurd thesis of the Jerusalem Conference was soon regurgitated by several newtop officials of the Reagan Administration. In Alexander Haig's first news conference as Secretary (^)
of State on January 28, 1981, Haig thundered that the Kremlin was trying to "foster, support, and
expand" terrorist activity worldwide through the "training, funding, and equipping" of terrorist
armies. Haig made it official that "international terrorism will take the place of human rights" as the
central international concern of the Reagan Administration. And that meant the KGB.
During 1978 and 1979, the Carter Administration deliberately toppled the Shah of Iran, and
deliberately replaced him with Khomeini. The US had shipped arms to the Shah, and never stopped
such shipments, despite the advent of Khomeini and the taking of US hostages. The continuity of
the arms deliveries, sometimes mediated through IsIn the meantime Bush and his partners in the Israeli Mossad had sealed a pact and signalled it inrael, would later lead into the Iran-contra affair.
public with a new ideological smoke-screen that, they hoped, would cover a new world-wide
upsurge in covert operations during the 1980's.
On November 3, 1979, BusMaine Republican convention in Portland. Bush won by a paper-thin margin of 20 voth bested Sen. Howard Baker in a "beauty contest" straw poll taken at thees out of
1,336 cast, and Maine was really his home state, but the Brown Brothers, Harriman networks at the
New York Times delivered a frontpage lead story with a subhead that read "Bush gaining stature as
'80 contender."
Bush's biggest lift of the 1980 campaign came when he won a plurality in the January 21 Iowa
caucuses, narrowly besting Reagan, who had not put any effort into the state. At this point the
Brown Brothers, Harriman/Skull and Bones media operation went into high gear. That same night
Walter Cronkite told viewers: "George Bush has apparently done what he hoped to do, coming out
of the pack as the principal challenger to front-runner Ronald Reagan."
In the interval between January 21 and the New Hampshire primary of February 26, the Eastern
Liberal Establishment labored mightily to put George Bush into power as president that same year.
The press hype in favor of Bush was overwhelming. Newsweek's cover featured a happy and
smiling Bush talking with his supporters: "BUSH BREAKS OUT OF THE PACK," went theheadline. Smaller picutres showed a scowling Senator Baker and a decidedly un-telegenic Reagan (^)
grimacing before a microphone. The Newsweek reporters played up Bush's plan to redo the Carter
script from 1976, and went on to assert that Bush's triumph in Iowa "raised the serious possibility
that he could accomplish on the Republican side this year what Carter did in 1976--parlay a well-
tuned personal appetite for on-tnomination." So wrote the magazine controlled by the family money of Bushe-ground campaigning into a Long March to his party's Presidentialh's old business
associate Eugene Meyer, and Bush was appreciative; doubly so for the reference to his old friend
Mao.
Time, which had been foundeand a smaller, very cross Reagan, headlined: "BUSH SOARS." The leading polls, always doctoredd by Henry Luce of Skull and Bones, showed a huge, grinning Bush (^)
by the intelligence agencies and other interests, showed a Bush boom: Lou Harris found that
whereas Reagan had led Bush into Iowa by 32-6 nationwide, Bush had pulled even with Reagan at
27-27 within 24 hours after the Iowa result had become known.
Savvy Republican operatives were reported to be flocking to the Bush bandwagon. Even seasoned
observers stuck their necks out; Witcover and Germond wrote in their column of February 22 that
"a rough consensus is taking shape among moderate Republican politicians that George Bush may
achieve a commanding position within the next three weeks in the contest for the Republican
nomination. And those with unresolved reservations about Bush are beginning to wonder privately
frankie
(Frankie)
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