told him that Bush and CIA official Richard Lehman had already been leaking to the
press, and urged Pipes to begin to offer some interviews of his own. [fn 54]
Typically enough, Bush appeared on Face the Nation early in the new year to say that he
was "appalled" by the leaks of Team B's conclusions. Bush confessed that "outside
expertise has enormous appeal to me." He refused to discuss the Team B conclusions
themselves, but did say that he wanted to "gun down" speculation that the CIA had
leaked a tough estimate of the USSR's military buildup in order to stop Carter from
cutting the defense budget. That speculation "just couldn't be further from the truth," said
Bush, who was thus caught lying neither for the first nor last time in his existence. As if
by compulsive association, Bush went on: "That gets to the integrity of the process. And I
am here to defend the integrity of the intelligence process. The CIA has great integrity. It
would never take directions from a policymaker-- me or anybody else--in order to come
up with conclusions to force a President-elect's hand or a President's hand," pontificated
Bush with Olympian hypocrisy.
For his part, Henry Kissinger, within a year or two, in an interview with the London
Economist, embraced key aspects of the Team B position.
Congress soon got into the act, and George Bush testified at a closed hearing of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee on January 18, 1977. It turned out that Team B and
its "worst-case" scenario enjoyed strong support from Hubert Humphrey, Clifford Case,
and Jacob Javits. Later it also became clear that Adlai Stevenson, the chiarman of the
Senate Intelligence Committee Subcommittee on Collection, Production, and Quality of
Intelligence was also supportive of Team B, along with many other senators such as
Moynihan and Wallop. Gary Hart was hostile, but Percy was open to dialogue with Team
B.
After the Team B conclusions had been bruited around the world, Pipes became a leading
member of the Committee on the Present Danger, where his fellow Team B veteran Paul
Nitze was already ensconced, along with Eugene V. Rostow, Dean Rusk, Lane Kirkland,
Max Kampelman, Richard Allen, David Packard, and Henry Fowler. About 30 members
of the Committee on the Present danger went on to become high officials of the Reagan
Administration.
Ronald Reagan himself embracedthe "window of vulerability" thesis, which worked as
well for him as the bomber gap and missle gap arguments had worked in previous
elections. When the Reagan Administration was being assembled, Bush and James Baker
had a lot to say about who got what appointments. Bush was the founder of Team B, and
that is the fundamental reason which such pro-Zionist neoconservatives as Max
Kampelman, Richard Perle, Steven Bryen, Noel Koch, Paul Wolfowitz and Dov Zakem
showed up in the Reagan Administration. For in one of his many ideological
reincarnations, George Bush is also a neoconservative himself. What counted for Team B
was to occupy the offices, and to dominate the debate. Team B greatly influenced the
strategic assumptions and rhetoric of the first Reagan Administration; their one