one new job that was more or less guaranteed to keep him off the GOP ticket in 1976. As
CIA Director, if he got that far, he would have to spend "the next six months serving as
point man for a controversial agency being investigated by two major Congressional
committees. The scars left by that experience would put me out of contention, leaving the
spot open for others." [fn 20] Bush suggests that "the Langley thing" was the handiwork
of Donald Rumsfeld, who had a leading role in designing the reshuffle. (Some time later
William Simon confided privately that he himself had been targetted for proscription by
"Rummy," who was more interested in the Treasury than he was in the Pentagon.)
On All Saints' Day, November 1, 1975, Bush received a telegram from Kissinger
informing him that "the President is planning to announce some major personnel shifts on
Monday, November 3, at 7:30 PM, Washington time. Among those shifts will be the
transfer of Bill Colby from CIA. The President asks that you consent to his nominating
you as the new director of the Central Intelligence Agency." [fn 21]
Bush promptly accepted.
NOTES:
- Al Reinert, "Bob and George Go To Washington or The Post-Watergate Scramble" in Texas Monthly,
April 1974. - Bush and Gold, Looking Forward, p. 130.
- Walter Pincus and Bob Woodward, "Presidential Posts and Dashed Hopes," Washington Post, August 9,
- Washington Post, September 16, 1974.
- Washington Post, December 2, 1974.
- See Hassan Ahmed and Joseph Brewda, "Kissinger, Scowcroft, Bush Plotted Third World Genocide,"
Executive Intelligence Review, May 3, 1991, pp. 26-30. - Russell R. Ross ed., Cambodia: A Country Study (Washington, 1990), p. 46.
- Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (Boston, 1982), p. 341. This second volume of Kissinger's memoirs,
published when his close ally Bush had already become vice president, has much less to say about George's
activities, with only one reference to him in more than 1200 pages. We see again that Bush prefers that
most of his actual record remain covert. - Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, p. 367.
- Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, p. 681.
- See William Shawcross, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia (New York,
1987), pp. 360-361.