We recall that it was in April, 1987, that the Donna Rice incident precipitated the
collapse of the Gary Hart campaign, which until that time had been the rival effort from
which George Bush had the most to fear. What a coincidence therefore that in April,
1991, again in the springtime before the presidential election year, that a hecatomb of
George's enemies began and continued into the summer.
One classic case was the William Kennedy Smith affair. During February and March of
1991, Washington heard rumors that Senator Edward Kennedy had embarked upon a
weight reduction plan involving a rigorous liquid diet, and that he was beginning to shed
dozens of pounds with the perspective of testing the waters for a presidential bid.
Unfortunately for Senator Kennedy, his profile as a womanizer was as pronounced as
Gary Hart's, and south Florida pulchritude was again destined to highlight this tragic
flaw. While Senator Kennedy was visiting the Kennedy family compound in Palm Beach,
Florida during the Easter weekend, a series of events took place which led to the filing of
a charge of sexual battery, the Florida term for rape, against the senator's nephew,
William Kennedy Smith. The resulting protracted scandal effectively scuttled any
presidential ambitions that Senator Kennedy might have had; even his senate seat was
now in danger.
The alleged victim in this case was named by NBC televisions news and The New York
Times as Patricia Bowman of Jupiter, Florida, the locality with which the Bush family
has had such a long association. Patricia Bowman is also known in the Jupiter-Palm
Beach area as Patricia O'Neil after her stepfather, Michael G. O'Neil, also of Jupiter. [fn
1] Michael G. O'Neil is the former chairman of the General Tire and Rubber Company, a
firm traditionally controlled by the O'Neil family. He is also the former chairman of
Aerojet General Corporation, a General Tire subsidiary. Aerojet General is a leader
manufacturer of rockets and missles. The McNeil Corporation of Akron, Ohio, a General
Tire supplier, had employed Patricia Bowman’s mother before marrying Mr. O'Neil.
Mr. O'Neil's career was seriously threatened during the 1970's when he became
embroiled in a potentially disastrous bribery case, similar in some ways to the Lockheed
scandal. On May 10, 1976, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) brought
charges against his company, alleging it had made illegal political contributions, bribed
foreign government officials, broekn currency laws and falsified financial reports by
neglecting to report illegal slush funds. [fn 2] The alleged foreign bribes involved an
attempt to get the compnay off the list of firms boycotted by Arab nations because of
their dealings with Israel, a matter of intense interest to the Israeli Mossad and the Anglo-
American intelligence agencies.
At the time Mr. O'Neil's problems arose, George Bush was the Director of the CIA. At
that time, the director of enforcement at the SEC was a certain Stanley Sporkin, an
extremely close political ally of the former SEC chairman, William Casey. Later, in
1981, when Sporkin's mentor William Casey would become the CIA Director, and while
George Bush was vice president and co-director of all covert operations, Sporkin was
named by Casey to be the General Counsel to the CIA. In those days, Bush, Casey, and
Sporkin were something of a troika in the intelligence community.