$30,000 to Bush's 1988 campaign.
In 1978, Bush crony and cabinet member Robert Mosbacher, a veteran of the Lietdtke-CREEP
money transfers, devised a scheme to set up a partnership to buy some small barges to transport
petroleum products. Bush invested $50,000 in this deal, which had netted him some $115,373 in
income by 1988, when Bush's share had increased in value to $60,000. In 1988 it was forecast that
this investment would continue to pay $20,000 pealso sank $50,000 into this deal, and has been rewarded by similar handsome payoffs. Mosbacherr year for the foreseeable future. James Baker III
commented that this barge caper had turned out to be a "very, very good investment."
But Bush's main preoccupation during these years was to assemble a political machine with which
he could bludgeon his way to power. After his numerous frustrations of the past, Bush was resolvedto organize a campaign that would go far beyond the innocuous exercise of appealing for citizens'
votes. If such a machine were actually to succeed in seizing power in Washington, tendencies
towards the edification of an authoritarian police state with marked totalitarian tendencies would
inevitably increase.
But first let us review some of Bush's public activities during the pre-campaign interlude. In April,
1978 Bush appeared along with E. Henry Knoche and William Colby at Senate hearings on
proposed legislation to modify the methods by which Congress exercised oversight of the
intelligence agencies. The bill being discussed had a provision to outlaw assassinations of foreign
officials and to punish violations with life in prison. The measure would also have prohibited covertoperations involving "torture," "the creation of epidemics of diseases," and "the creation of food or
water shortages or floods." Bush and Knoche both objected to the ban on assassinations (which
Colby accepted), and both were critical of the entire bill. Knoche said his fear was that if enacted
the bill might create "a web woven so tight around the average intelligence officer that you're going
to deaden his creativity."
Bush denounced the Senate bill for its "excessive" reporting requirements. "The Congress should be
informed, fully informed, but it ought not to micro-manage the intelligence business," protested
Bush. He was especially indignant about a provision that would have required notification of the
House and Senate oversight committees every time a US intelligence agency wanted to stipulate anagreement with a foreign intelligence agency, or domestic security service. "I don't believe that kind (^)
of intimate disclosure is essential," said Bush. Bush was convinced that "some US sources are
drying up because foreign services don't believe the US Congress can keep secrets." This, from the
man who had leaked the Team B report to the New York Times, and then had gone on television to
say that he was appalled.
Bush urged the senators to drop language in the bill that would have severed the DCI post from the
CIA. Bush warned vehemently that an intelligence czar sitting in the White House "and separated
from his CIA troops...would be virtually isolated. He needs the CIA as his principal source of
support to be most effective. And the CIA needs its head to be the chief foreign intelligence adviserto the president." [fn 3]
A few months later he participated in a singular round table organized by the Washington Quarterly
of the Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies with none other than Michael
Ledeen as moderator. (Ledeen, who vaunted intimate connections to Israeli intelligence, was laterone of the central figures in the mid-1980's acceleration of US arms shipments to Iran.) In this
round table, Bush was joined by former DCIs Richard Helms and William Colby as well as by Ray
Cline.
According to Bush there was "an underlying feeling on the part of the American people that we