Capitol Hill, Schorr encountered Bush while the new CIA boss was on his way to testify before the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee. A wirephoto of an angry Busup on the front page of the Washington Star under the headline: "Another Confronth gesticulating at Schorr woundation." With
that, Schorr's twenty-year career with CBS was over, and he was soon to face a witchhunt by the
House Ethics Committee. Other reporters soon caught on that under the new Bush regime, political
opponents would be slammed. (Schorr later speculated about CIA links to CBS owner William
Paley; there was no need to look any further than the fact that Harriman had helped to create CBSand that Prescott Bush had been a CBS director during the 1950's, giving the Bushman network a
firm presence there.
During these days, the Department of Justice announced that it would not prosecute former CIA
Director Richard Helms for his role in an illegal break-in at a photographic studio in Fairfax,Virginia during 1971. The rationale was from the National Security Act of 1947: "the director of (^)
central intelligence shall be responsible for protecting intelligence sources and methods from
unauthorized disclosure," even if it meant breaking the law to do it. Bush would become a past
master of this "sources and methods" clause, which could be used to cover up almost anyuthing.
The Church Committee was still functioning, and was looking into journalists controlled by the
CIA, which some senators wanted to expose by name. On the same day as Ford's press conference,
Senators Huddleston and Mathias drove out to Langley to confront Bush and demand that he
divulge the names of these CIA media assets. The CIA was "not at liberty to reveal the names,"
Bush told the two senators. Instead, Bush offered documents that generally described the CIA's useof reporters and scholars over the years, but with no names. Senators Baker, Hart, and Mondale then (^)
called Bush and urged that the names be made public. Bush refused.
Bush pointed to his statement, made on February 12 as the first public act of his CIA career,
removing all "full-time or part-time news correspondents accredited by any US news service,newspaper, periodicals, radio or TV network or station" from the CIA payroll. He also claimed that (^)
there were no clergymen or missionaries on the CIA payroll at all. As far as the journalists were
concerned, in April the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Acitivities announced that they had
already caught Bush lying, and that at least 25 journalists and reporters were still on the CIA
payroll, and the CIA was determined to keep them there. Bush had quibbled on the word"accredited." This limited the purge to accredited correspondents issued news credentials. But this (^)
excluded free lance reporters, editors, news executives, and foreign news organizations at all levels.
When dealing with Bush, it pays to read the fine print.
The Bush-Kissinger-Ford counteroffensive against the CongreMarch 5 the CIA leaked the story that the Pike Committee had lost more than 232 secret documentsssional committtes went forward. On (^)
which had been turned over from the files of the executive branch. Pike said that this was another
classic CIA provocation designed to discredit his committee, which had ceased its activity. Bush
denied that he had engineered the leak: "The CIA did not do any such thing. Nothing of that nature
at all," Bush told a reporter to whom he had placed a call to whine out his denial. "My wholepurpose was to avoid an argument with him," said Bush, although he said that "Pike was the cause (^)
of this whole problem under great pressure."
In March Bush had to take action in the wake of the leaking of a CIA report showing that Israel had
between 10 and 20 nucScience Trends Magazine. Church, who had Zionist lobby ties of his own and who was in the midstlear bombs; the report was published by Arthur Kranish, the editor of (^)
of a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, demanded an investigation: "Can you imagine
how a leak of that kind would have been treated if it had come out of the Congress of the United
States!" In retrospect, the report may have been some timely window-dressing for Israeli prowess in
a Ford regime in which Israel's military value as an ally was hotly contested; a little later Gen.