Bush is said to employ a "need to know" approach even with his closest White House collaborators,
keeping each one of them in the dark about what the others are doing. Aides have complained oftheir inability to keep up with Bush's phone calls when he goes into his famous "speed-dialing
mode," in which he can contact dozens of politicians, bankers or world leaders within a couple of
hours. Unauthorized passages of information from one office to another inside the White House
constitute leaks in Bush's opinion, and he has been at pains to suppress them. When information
was given to the press about a planned meeting with Gorbachov, Busadvisers: "If we cannot maintain proper secrecy with this group, we will cut the circle down." h threatened his top-level
Bush routinely humiliates and mortifies his subordinates. This recalls his style in dealing with the
numerous hapless servants and domestics who populated his patrician youth; it may also have been
re-enforced by the characteristic style of Henry Kissinger. If advisers or staff dare to manifestdisagreement, the typical Bush retort is a whining "If you're so damned smart, why are you doi (^) ng
what you're doing and I'm the president of the United States?" [fn 16]
In one sense, Bush's style reflects his desire to seem "absolute and autocratic" in the tradition of the
Romanov tsars and other Byzantine rulers. He refuses to be advised or dissuaded on many issues,relying on his enraged, hypethyroid intuitions. More profoundly, Bush's "absolute and autocratic" (^)
act was a cover for the fact that many of his initiatives, ideas, and policies came from outside of the
United States government, since they originated in the rarified ether of those international finance
circles where names like Harriman, Kravis and Gammell were the coin of the realm. Indeed, many
of Bush's policies came from outside of the United States altogether, and derived from theoligarchical financial circles of the City of London. The classic case will the the Gulf crisis of 1990-
- When the documents on the Bush Administration are finally thrown open to the public, it is s
safe bet that some top British financiers and Foreign Office types will be found to have combined
remarkable access and power with a non-existent public profile.
One of the defining moments in the first year of the Bush's presidency was his reaction to the Tien
An Men massacre of June 4, 1989. No one can forget the magnificent movement of the anti-
totalitarian Chinese students who used the occasion of the funeral of Hu Yaobang in the spring of
1989 to launch a movement of protest and reform against the monstrous dictatorship of Deng Xiao-
ping, Yang Shankun, and Prime Minister Li Peng. As the portrait of the old butcher Mao Tse-tunglooked down from the former imperial palace, the students erected a statue of liberty and filled the (^)
square with the Ode to Joy from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. By the end of May it was clear that
the Deng regime was attempting to pull itself together to attempt a convulsive massacre of its
political opposition. At this point, it is likely that a pointed and unequivocal public warning from
the United States government might have avoided the looming bloody crackdown against thestudents. Even a warning through secret diplomatic channels might have sufficed. Bush undertook (^)
neither, and he must bear responsibility for this blatant omission.
The non-violent protest of the students was then crushed by the martial law troops of the hated and
discredited communist regime. Untold thousands of students were killed outright, and thousandsmore died in the merciless death hunt against political dissidents which followed. Mankind was
horrified. For Bush, however, the main considerations were that Deng Xiao-ping was part of his
own personal network, with whom Bush had maintained close contact since at least 1975. Bush's
devotion to the immoral British doctrine of "geopolitics" further dictated that unless and until the
USSS had totally collapsed as a military power, the US alliance with China as the second strongestland power must be maintained at all costs. Additionally, Bush was acutely sensible to the views on (^)
China policy held by his mentor, Henry Kissinger, whose paw-prints were still to be found all over
US relations with Deng. In the wake of Tien An Men, Kissinger (who had lucrative consulting
contracts with the Beijing regime) was exceptionally vocal in condemning any proposed US
countermeasures against Deng. These were the decisive factors in Bush's reactions to Tien An Men.