Phoenix, a genocidal crime against humanity which killed tens of thousands of
Vietnamese civilians because they were suspected of working for the Vietcong, or
sometimes simply because they were able to read and write. As for Shackley, there are
also reports that he worked for a time in the late 1960's in Rome, during the period when
the CIA's GLADIO capabilities were being used to launch a wave of terrorism in that
country. Such was the man that Bush chose to appoint to a position of reponsibility in the
CIA. Later, Shackley will turn up as a "speech writer" for Bush during the 1979-80
campaign.
Along with Shackley came his associate and former Miami station second in command,
Thomas Clines, a partner of General Richard Secord and Albert Hakkim during the Iran-
contra operation, convicted in September 1990 on four felony tax counts for not reporting
his ill-gotten gains, and sentenced to 16 months in prison and a fine of $40,000.
During Bush's tenure Shackley's circles were mightliy remoralized. In particular Ed
Wilson, a veteran of Shackley's Miami station, now a retired CIA officer who worked
closely with serving CIA personnel to organize gun running, sex operatives, and other
activities, plied his trade undisturbed. The Wilson scandal, which had grown up on
Bush's watch, would begin to explode only during the tenure of Stansfield Turner, under
Carter.
Another career covert operations man, John Waller, became the Inspector General, the
officer who was supposed to keep track of illegal operations. For legal advice, Bush
turned first to holdover General Counsel Mitchell Rogovin, who had in December 1975
theorized that intelligence activities belonged to the "inherent powers" of the Presidency,
and that no special Congressional egislation was required to permit such things as covert
operations to go on. Later Bush appointed Anthony Lapham, Yale '58, as CIA General
Counsel. Lapham was the scion of an old San Francisco banking family, and his brother
was Lewis Lapham, the editor of Harper's Magazine. Lapham would take a leading role
in the CIA coverup of the Letelier assassination case. [fn 29]
Typical of the broad section of CIA officers who were delighted with their new boss from
Brown Brothers, Harriman/Skull and Bones was Cord Meyer, who had most recently
been the station chief in London from 1973 on, a wild and wooly time in the tight little
island, as we will see. Meyer, a covert action veteran and Watergate operative, writes at
length in his autobiography about his enthusiasm for the Bush regime at CIA, which
induced him to prolong his own career there:
I again seriously thought of retiring from the Agency but the new atmosphere in CIA's Langley
headquarters changed my mind. George Bush had been appointed by President Ford to succeed
Colby as DCI in January, and by the time of my return he had completely dispelled the fears that
had been aroused by his former political connections. Having served in the Congress as a
Republican representative from Texas and having recently been chairman of the Republican
National Committee, he was initially viewed with suspicion as an ambitious politician who might
try to use the Agency for partisan purposes. However, he quickly proved by his performance that
he was prepared to put politics aside and to devote all his considerable ability and enthusiasm to
restoring the morale of an institution that had been battered enough by sucessive investigations.
Instead of reaching outside for defeated Republican candidates to fill key jobs, he chose from