combat. Paisley, along with Howard Osborne of the Office of Security, met with the
Plumbers, led by Kissinger operative David Young, at CIA Headquarters in Langley,
Virginia on August 9, 1971. Paisley's important place on the Plumbers' roster is most
revealing, since Paisley was later to become an important appointee of CIA Director
George Bush. In the middle of 1976, Bush decided to authorize a group of experts,
ostensibly from outside of the CIA, to produce an analysis which would be compared
with the CIA's own National Intelligence Estimates on Soviet capabilities and intentions.
The panel of outside experts was given the designation of "Team B." Bush chose Paisley
to be the CIA's "coordinator" of the three subdivisions of Team B. Paisley would later
disappear while sailing on Chesapeake Bay in September of 1978.
In a White House memorandum by David Young summarizing the August 9, 1971
meeting between the Plumbers and the official CIA leaders, we find that Young "met
with Howard Osborn and a Mr. Paisley to review what it was that we wanted CIA to do
in connection with their files on leaks from January, 1969 to the present." There then
follows a fourteen-point list of leaks and their classification, including the frequency of
leaks associated with certain jourmalists, the gravity of the leaks, the frequency of the
leaks, and so forth. A data base was called for, and "it was decided that Mr. Paisley
would get this done by next Monday, August 16, 1971." On areas where more
clarification was needed, the memo noted, "the above questions should be reviewed with
Paisley within the next two days." [fn 23]
The lesser Watergate burglars came from the ranks of the CIA Miami Station Cubans:
Bernard Barker, Eugenio Martinez, Felipe de Diego, Frank Surgis, Virgilio Gonzalez,
and Reinaldo Pico. Once they had started working for Hunt, Martinez asked the Miami
Station Chief, Jake Esterline, if he was familiar with the activities now being carried out
under White House cover. Esterline in turn asked Langley for its opinion of Hunt's White
House position. A reply was written by Cord Meyer, later openly profiled as a Bush
admirer, to Deputy Director for Plans (that is to say, covert operations) Thomas
Karamessines. The import of Meyer's directions to Esterline was that the latter should
"not ...concern himself with the travels of Hunt in Miami, that Hunt was on domestic
White House business of an unknown nature and that the Chief of Station should 'cool
it.'" [fn 24]
During the spring of 1973, George Bush was no longer simply a long-standing member
of the Nixon Cabinet. He was also, de facto, a White House official, operating out of the
same Old Executive Office Building (or old State-War-Navy) which is adjacent to the
Executive Mansion and forms part of the same security compound. As we read, for
example, in the Jack Anderson "Washington Merry-Go- Round" column for March 10,
1973, in the Washington Post: "Washington Whirl- Bush's Office--Republican National
Chairman George Bush, as befitting the head of a party whose coffers are overflowing,
has been provided with a plush office in the new Eisenhower Building here. He spends
much of his time, however, in a government office next to the White House. When we
asked how a party official rated a government office, a GOP spokesman explained that
the office wasn't assigned to him but was merely a visitor's office. The spokesman
admitted, however, that Bush spends a lot of time there." This means that Bush's principal