Cherne was also on good terms with Sir Percy Craddock, the British intelligence
coordinator, and Sir Leonard Hooper.
Cherne was a raving hawk during the Vietnam war, when he was associated with the as
yet unreconstructed Kissinger clone Morton Halperin in the American Friends of
Vietnam. Along with John Connally, Cherne was a co-chair of Democrats for Nixon in
- He had been a founding member of Herman Kahn's Hudson Institute, a school for
Kissingerian Strangeloves, and has always been a leader of New York's Freedom House.
Cherne was also big on Robert O. Anderson's National Commission on Coping with
Interdependence and on Nelson Rockefeller's Third Century Corporation.
Cherne was a close friend of William Casey, who was working in the Nixon
Administration as Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs in mid-1973. That was
when Cherne was named to the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB)
by Nixon. On March 15, 1976, Cherne became the chairman of this body, which
specializes in conduiting the demands of financier and related interests into the
intelligence community. Cherne, as we will see, would be along with Bush a leading
beneficiary of Ford's spring, 1976 intelligence re-organization.
To top it all off, Cherne has always been something of a megalomaniac. His self-serving
RIA biographical sketch culminates: "Political scientist, economist, sculptor, lawyer,
foreign affairs specialist-- any one and all of these descriptions fit Leo Cherne. A
Renaissance man born in the 20th century, he is equally at home in fields of fine arts,
public affairs, industry, economics, or foreign policy."
Bush's correspondence with Cherne leaves no doubt that theirs was a very special
relationship. Cherne represented for Bush a strengthening of his links to the Zionist-
neoconservative milieu, with options for backchanneling into the Soviet block. So on
New Year's Eve Bush's thoughts, perhaps stimulated by his awareness of what help the
Zionist lobby could give to his still embattled nomination, went out to Leo Cherne in one
of his celebrated handwritten notes: "I read your testimony with keen interest and
appreciation. I am really looking forward to meeting you and working with you in
connection with your PFIAB chores. Have a wonderful 1976," Bush wrote.
January 1976 was not auspicious for Bush. He had to wait until almost the end of the
month for his confirmation vote, hanging there, slowly twisting in the wind. In the
meantime, the Pike Committee report was approaching completion, after months of
probing and haggling, and was sent to the Government Printing Office on January 23,
despite continuing arguments from the White House and from the GOP that the
committee could not reveal confidential and secret material provided by the executive
branch. On Sunday January 25, a copy of the report was leaked to Daniel Schorr of CBS
News, and was exhibited on television that evening. The following morning, the New
York Times published an extensive summary of the entire Pike Committee report, which
this newspaper had also received.