Later writers have marvelled at Bush's achievement in getting a seat on Ways and Means.
For John R. Knaggs, this reflected "the great potential national Republicans held for
George Bush." The Houston Chronicle, which had supported Briscoe in the election,
found that with this appointment "the GOP was able to point up to the state one benefit of
a two-party system." [fn 8]
In this case, unlike so many others, we are able to establish how the invisible hand of
Skull and Bones actually worked to procure Bush this important political plum. This is
due to the indiscretion of the man who was chairman of Ways and Means for many years,
Democratic Congressman Wilbur D. Mills of Arkansas. Mills was hounded out of office
because of an alcoholism problem, and later found work as an attorney for a tax law firm.
Asked about the Bush appointment to the committee he controlled back in 1967, Mills
said: "I put him on. I got a phone call from his father telling me how much it mattered to
him. I told him I was a Democrat and the Republicans had to decide; and he said the
Republicans would do it if I just asked Jerry Ford." Mills said that he had asked Ford and
John W. Byrnes of Wisconsin, who was the ranking Republican on Ways and Means, and
Bush was in, thanks once again to Daddy Warbucks, Prescott Bush. [fn 9]
Wilbur Mills may have let himself in for a lot of trouble in later years by not always
treating George with due respect. Because of Bush's obsession with birth control for the
lower orders, Mills gave Bush the nickname "Rubbers," which stuck with him during his
years in Congress. [fn 10] Poppy Bush was not amused. One day Mills might ponder in
retrospect, as so many others have, on Bush's vindictiveness.
On one occasion Mills prolonged the questioning of Walter Reuther of the UAW, who
was appearing as a witess in hearings before the committee, to let George Bush get a few
questions in and look good for the home-town press. Mills' career in public life was
destroyed during the Ford Presidency when he was found cavorting drunk in public with
the dancer Fanny Foxe. This came in an era when the Church and Pike committees of
Congress had been pounding the CIA, and when George Bush was about to take over as
CIA Director. The fall of Wilbur Mills, together with the Koreagate scandal of alleged
Congressional influence peddling, appeared at the time as retaliation designed to knock
the Congress on the defensive.
George and Barbara claim to have bought a home on Hillbrook Lane in northwest
Washington sight unseen over the telephone from Sen. Milward Simpson of Wyoming,
the father of Sen. Al Simpson, the current GOP minority whip. Later the family moved to
Palisade Lane.
Bush's Congressional office in the Longworth Building was run by administrative
assistant Rose Zamaria, with Pete Roussel acting as the Congressman's presse secretary,
and Jim Allison and Aleene Smith also on the staff. Bush says that his closest cronies in
those day included Bill Steiger of Wisconsin, Rep. Sonny Mongomery of Mississippi,
liberal Republican Barber Conable of New York (later attacked as "Barbarian Cannibal"
in some developing countries when he was President of the World Bank in the Reagan-