consequence of the stagey hearings of the Church Committee. Spies traditionally function in a gray
world of immunity from such crudities. But the Committee's prolonged focus on CIAGreece left agents there exposed to random vengeance." [fn 20] Staffers of the Church committee activities in (^)
pointed out that the Church committee had never said a word about Greece or mentioned the name
of Welch.
CIA Director Colby first blamed the death of Welch on Countthe name of Welch some months before. The next day Colby backed off, blerspy magazine, which had publishedaming a more general
climate of hysteria regarding the CIA which had led to the assassination of Welch. In his book,
Honorable Men, published some years later, Colby continued to attribute the killing to the
"sensational and hysterical way the CIA investigations had been handled and trumpeted around the
world."
The Ford White House resolved to exploit this tragic incident to the limit. Liberals raised a hue and
cry in response. Les Aspin later recalled that "the air transport plane carrying [Welch's] body circled
Andrews Air Force Base for three-quarters of an hour in order to land live on the 'Today' Show."
Ford waived restrictions in order to allow interrment at Arlington Cemetery. The funeral on January7 was described by the Washington Post as "a show of pomp usually reserved for the nation's most
renowned military heroes." Anthony Lewis of the New York Times described the funeral as "a
political device" with ceremonies "being manipulated in order to arouse a political backlash against
legitimate criticism." Norman Kempster in the Washington Star found that "only a few hours after
the CIA's Athens station chief was gunned down in front of his home, the agency began a subtlecampaign intended to persuade Americans that his death was the indirect result of congressional (^)
investigations and the direct result of an article in an obscure magazine." Here, in the words of a
Washington Star headline, was "one CIA effort that worked."
Between Christmas and New Year's in Kennbunkporthis confrimation, Bush was at work tending and mobilizing key parts of his network. One of these, looking forward to the decisive floor vote on
was a certain Leo Cherne.
Leo Cherne is not a household word, but he has been a powerful figure in the US intelligence
community over the period since World War II. Leo Cherne was to be one of Bush's most importantallies when he was CIA Director and throughout Bush's subsequent career, so it is worth taking a
moment to get to know Cherne better.
Cherne's parents were both printers who came to the US from Romania. In his youth he was a
champion orator of the American Zionist Association, and he has remained a part of B'nai B'rith allhis life. He was trained as an attorney, and he joined the Research Institute of America, a publisher
of business books, in 1936. He claims to have helped to draft the army and navy industrial
mobilization plans for World War II, and at the end of the war he was an economic advisor to Gen.
Douglas MacArthur in Japan. During that time he worked for "the dismantling of the pervasive
control over Japanese society which had been maintained by the Zaibnatsu families," [fn 21] adevised a new Japanese tax structure. Cherne built up a long association with the Industrial Collegend (^)
of the Armed Forces.
Cherne was an ardent Zionist. He is typical to that extent of the so-called "neoconservatives" who
have been prominent in government and policy circles under Reagan-Bush, and Bush. Cherne wasthe founder of the International Rescue Committee, which according to Cherne's own blurb "came
into existence one week after Hitler came to power to assist those who would have to flee from Nazi
Germany...In the years since, we have helped thousands of Jews who have fled from the Iron
Curtain countries, all of them, and have worked to assist in the re-settlement of Jews in Europe and
the United States who have left the Soviet Union."