Department of Justice was investigating Congressmen Bob Leggett and Joseph Addabbo for
allegedly accepting bribes from the Korean government. Both men were linked to Suzi ParkThomson, who had been hosting parties of the Korean Embassy. Later it turned out that Speaker of (^)
the House Carl Albert had kept Suzi Park Thomson on his payroll for all of the six years that he had
been Speaker. Congressmen Hanna, Gallagher, Broomfield, Hugh Carey, and Lester Wolf were all
implicated. The names of Tip O'Neill, Brademas, and McFall also came up. The New York Times
estimated that as many as 115 Congressmen were involved.
In reality the number was much lower, but former Watergate Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski was
brought back from Houston to become special prosecutor for this case as well. This underlined the
press line that "the Democrats' Watergate" had finally arrived. It was embarrassing to the Bush CIA
when Tongsun Park's official agency file disappeared for several months, and finally tuned up shornof key information on the CIA officers who had been working most closely with Park. Eventually
Congressman Hanna was convicted and sent to jail, while Congressman Otto Passman of Louisiana
was acquitted, largely because he had had the presence of mind to secure a venue in his own state.
A number of other congressmen quit, and it is thought that the principal reason for the decision by
Democratic Speaker of the House Carl Albert to retire at the end of 1976 wbeen touched by the breath of this scandal, which would go into the chronicles as "Koreagate." Withas the fact that he had (^)
this, most of the Congress was brought to heel. We note in passing that when George Bush takes a
step up the ladder in Washington, the Speaker of the House is likely to be ousted. Ask Jim Wright.
An interesting sidelight of Koreagate involves then CongreSecretary of Veteran's Affairs. An article in the Wall Street Journal during this period alleged thatssman Edward Derwinksi, today Bush's
federal investigators suspected Derwinksi of informing the Korean CIA that one of their officers
was about to defect to the US for the purpose of cooperating with the Koregate investigations.
Derwinski denied the accusations, and he was never prosecuted. [fn 38]
With that, the Congress was terrorized and brought to heel. In this atmosphere, Bush moved to
reach a secret foreign policy consensus with key Congressional leaders of both parties of the one-
party state. According to two senior government officials involved, limited covert operations in
such places as Angola were continued under the pretext that they were necessary for phasing out the
earlier, larger, and more expensive operations. Bush's secret deal was especially successful with thepost-Church Senate Intelligence Committee. Because of the climate of restoration that prevailed, a
number of Democrats on this committee concluded that they must break off their aggressive
inquiries ("the adversary thing") and make peace with Bush, according to reports of remarks by two
senior members of the committee staff. The result was an interregnum during which the Senate
committee would neither set specific reporting requirements, nor attempt to pass any bindinglegislation to restrict CIA covert and related activity. In return, Bush would pretend to make a few (^)
disclosures to create a veneer of cooperation. [fn 39] These 1976 deals set the stage for many of the
foreign intelligence monstrosities of the Jimmy Carter era. Ever since, the pretense of
Congressional oversight over the intelligence community has been a mockery.
One theatre of covert operations in which Bush became involved was Angola. Here a civil war had
erupted in 1974 with the end of Portuguese colonial rule, pitting the US-backed UNITA of Jonas
Savimbi and the FNLA of Holden Roberto against the Marxist MPLA. In December, 1975 the
Senate passed the Clark Amendment, designed to cut off US funding for the military factions. The
Clark Amendment passed the House, and a ban on CIAFebruary 9, 1976. The chief of the CIA Angola task force, John Stockwell, later wrote that after operations in Angola became law on (^)
February 9, the CIA kept sending planeloads of weapons from Zaire to UNITA forces in Angola,
despite the fact that this was now illegal. There were at least 22 of such flights. Also in February,
the Bush CIA began making large cash payoffs "to anyone who had been associated with our side
of the Angolan war." This meant that President Mobutu of Zaire got $2 million which he was