During 1978 and 1979, the Carter Administration deliberately toppled the Shah of Iran,
and deliberately replaced him with Khomeini. The US had shipped arms to the Shah, and
never stopped such shipments, despite the advent of Khomeini and the taking of US
hostages. The continuity of the arms deliveries, sometimes mediated through Israel,
would later lead into the Iran-contra affair. In the meantime Bush and his partners in the
Israeli Mossad had sealed a pact and signalled it in public with a new ideological smoke-
screen that, they hoped, would cover a new world-wide upsurge in covert operations
during the 1980's.
On November 3, 1979, Bush bested Sen. Howard Baker in a "beauty contest" straw poll
taken at the Maine Republican convention in Portland. Bush won by a paper-thin margin
of 20 votes out of 1,336 cast, and Maine was really his home state, but the Brown
Brothers, Harriman networks at the New York Times delivered a frontpage lead story
with a subhead that read "Bush gaining stature as '80 contender."
Bush's biggest lift of the 1980 campaign came when he won a plurality in the January 21
Iowa caucuses, narrowly besting Reagan, who had not put any effort into the state. At this
point the Brown Brothers, Harriman/Skull and Bones media operation went into high
gear. That same night Walter Cronkite told viewers: "George Bush has apparently done
what he hoped to do, coming out of the pack as the principal challenger to front-runner
Ronald Reagan."
In the interval between January 21 and the New Hampshire primary of February 26, the
Eastern Liberal Establishment labored mightily to put George Bush into power as
president that same year. The press hype in favor of Bush was overwhelming.
Newsweek's cover featured a happy and smiling Bush talking with his supporters:
"BUSH BREAKS OUT OF THE PACK," went the headline. Smaller picutres showed a
scowling Senator Baker and a decidedly un-telegenic Reagan grimacing before a
microphone. The Newsweek reporters played up Bush's plan to redo the Carter script
from 1976, and went on to assert that Bush's triumph in Iowa "raised the serious
possibility that he could accomplish on the Republican side this year what Carter did in
1976--parlay a well-tuned personal appetite for on-the-ground campaigning into a Long
March to his party's Presidential nomination." So wrote the magazine controlled by the
family money of Bush's old business associate Eugene Meyer, and Bush was
appreciative; doubly so for the reference to his old friend Mao.
Time, which had been founded by Henry Luce of Skull and Bones, showed a huge,
grinning Bush and a smaller, very cross Reagan, headlined: "BUSH SOARS." The
leading polls, always doctored by the intelligence agencies and other interests, showed a
Bush boom: Lou Harris found that whereas Reagan had led Bush into Iowa by 32-6
nationwide, Bush had pulled even with Reagan at 27-27 within 24 hours after the Iowa
result had become known.
Savvy Republican operatives were reported to be flocking to the Bush bandwagon. Even
seasoned observers stuck their necks out; Witcover and Germond wrote in their column
of February 22 that "a rough consensus is taking shape among moderate Republican