within the organization among men who had demonstrated their competence through long careers
in intelligence work. He leaned over backward to protect the objectivity and independence of the
Agency's estimates and to avoid slanting the results to fit some preconceived notion of what the
President wanted to hear.^On the other hand, his close relationship to Ford [Bush was a regular tennis doubles partner with
Ford] and the trust that the President obviously had in him gave Bush an access to the White
House and an influence in the wider Washington bureaucracy that Colby had never enjoyed. Not
only did morale improve as a result, but through Bush the Agency's views carried new weight and
influence in the top reaches of the Ford Administration. In effect, I found on my return that the
working environment at the Agency was far better than I had imagined it to be from my exposed
position abroad and I determined to stay on for a period before retiring. Bush and "Hank" Knoche,
the newly appointed deputy director, asked me to serve as a special assistant, and gave me as first
assignment the task of reviewing the entire structure of the intelligence community to determine
the adequacy of the arrangements for providing strategic warning against an attack on the United
States and for handling major international crises. [fn 30]This all sounds like a Bush campaign brochure, but it is typical of the intelligence
community forces loyal to Bush; as for Cord Meyer, it may be that he developed the
design for the Special Situation Group which Bush chaired from March, 1981 to January,
1989, through which Bush ran Iran-Contra and all of the other significant covert
operations and coups of the entire Reagan era.
And what did other CIA officers, such as intelligence analysts, think of Bush? A common
impression is that he was a superficial lightweight with no serious interest in intelligence.
Deputy Director for Science and technology Carl Duckett, who was ousted by Bush after
three months, commented that he "never saw George Bush feel he had to understand the
depth of something....[he] is not a man tremendously dedicated to a cause or ideas. He's
not fervent. He goes with the flow, looking for how it will play politically." According to
Maurice Ernst, the head of the CIA's office of economic research from 1970 to 1980,
"George Bush doesn't like to get into the middle of an intellectual debate...he liked to
delegate it. I never really had a serious discussion with him on economics." Another
former CIA aide to Bush who wanted to remain anonymous observed that "it was an
approach remarkably similar to what a younger, more active Ronald Reagan might have
done." Hans Heymann was Bush's National Intelligence Officer for Economics, and he
remembers having been impressed by Bush's Phi Beta Kappa Yale degree in economics.
As Heymann later recalled Bush's response, "He looked at me in horror and said, 'I don't
remember a thing. It was so long ago, so I'm going to have to rely on you.'" [fn 31]
Other CIA employees remember Bush as a manager who would not grapple with
concepts, but who rather saw himself as a problem solver and consensus builder who
would try to resolve difficulties by getting people into a room to find a compromise basis
of agreement. In reality, much of this was also a calculated pose. No one has ever
accused Bush of profundity on any subject, except perhaps race hatred, but his
disengaged stance appears as an elaborate deception to conceal his real views from the
official chain of command.
In the meantime, the scuttlebut around Langley and the Pentagon was, according to a
high CIA official, that "the CIA and DOD will love George Bush and Don Rumsfeld