Bush. Powell was otherwise a protege of the very Anglophile Caspar Weinberger, and of Carlucci, a
man with strong links to Operation Democracy and to the Sears, Roebuck interests.
The State Department, too, had its Iran-contra coverup brigade. First came Thomas R. Pickering,
chosen by Bush to take over his old post as US Ambassador to the United Nations, a job with
cabinet rank. When Pickering was US Ambassador to El Salvador during the 1984-85 period, he
helped arrange shipment of more than $1 million of mtime when this was forbidden by US law, according to his own testimony before the Congreilitary equipment to the contras, all during assional (^)
Iran-contra investigating committees. Pickering did not report any of his doings to the State
Department, but instead kept in close touch with Don Gregg, Felix Rodriguez, and Oliver North of
Bush's retinue. Pickering, when he was ambassador to Israel in 1985-86, was also in on Israeli third-
country arms shipments to Iran that were supposed to secure the release of certain hostages held innearby Lebanon. [fn 4] This vulgar, gun-running filibusterer is now the arrogant spokesman for
Bush's New World Order among the five permanent members of the United Nations Security
Council, where he dispenses imperial threats and platitudes.
Still on the Iran-contra coverup honorsUndersecretary of State for security affairs, science, and technology. Ba list we find Reginald Bartholomew, Bush's choice asrtholomew was US
Ambassador in Beirut in September-November 1985, when an Israeli shipment of 508 US-made
TOW antitank missles was followed by the release of Rev. Benjamin Weir, an American hostage
held by the pro-Iranian Islamic Jihad. According to the testimony of then Secretary of State George
Shultz to the Tower Board, Bartholomew was working closely with Oliver North on a scheme touse Delta Force commandoes to free any hostages not spontaneously released by Islamic Jihad.
According to Shultz, Bartholomew told him on September 4, 1985 that "North was handling an
operation that would lead to the release of all seven hostages." [fn 5]
Other choice appointments went to long-time members of the Bush network. These includedManuel Lujan, who was tapped for the Department of the Interior, and former Rep. Ed Derwinski, (^)
who was given the Veterans' Administration, shortly to be upgraded to a cabinet post. A prominent
figure of Bush's first year in office was William Reilly, tapped to be administrator of the
Environmental Portection Agency, the green police of the regime. Reilly had been closely
associated with the oligarchical financier Russell Train at the US branch of Prince Phillip's WorldWildlife Fund and the Conservation Foundation.
So many top cabinet posts were thus assigned on the basis of direct personal services rendered to
George Bush that the collegial principle of any oligarchic system would appear to have been
neglected. There were relatively few key posts left over for distribution to political-financialfactions who might reasonably expect to be brought on board by being given a seat at the cabinet (^)
table. Richard Thornburgh, a creature of the Mellon interests who had been given his job under
Reagan, was allowed to stay on, but this led to a constant guerilla war between Thornburgh and
Baker with the obvious issue being the 1996 succession to Bush. Clayton Yeutter went to the
Department of Agriculture because that was what the international grain cartel wanted. The choiceof Jack Kemp, a 1988 presidential candidate with a loyal conservative-populist base, for Housing
and Urban Development appeared inspired more by Bush's desire to prevent a challenge from
emerging on his right in the GOP primaries of 1992 than by the need to cater to an identifiable
financier faction. The tapping of Reagan's Secretary of Education, William Bennett, a leading right
wing ideologue and possible presidential prospect, to be Drug Czar, is a further example of thesame thinking. The selection of Elizabeth Hanford Dole to be Secretary of Labor was dictated by (^)
similar intra-GOP considerations, namely the need to placate the angry Republican Minority
Leader, Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, a darling of Dwayne Andreas of Archer-Daniels-Midland and the
rest of the grain cartel.