called the National Strategy Information Center in New York City, a forum where Wall
Street lawyers like Casey could join hands with politicians from Prescott's wing of the
Republican Party, financiers, and the intelligence community. The National Strategy
Information Center provided material for a news agency called Forum World Features, a
CIA proprietary that operated in London, and which was in liaison with the British
Information Research Department, a cold-war propaganda unit set up by Christopher
Mayhew of British intelligence with the approval of PM Clement Attlee. Forum World
Features was part of the network that got into the act during the destabilization of Harold
Wilson for the benefit of Margaret Thatcher. [fn 26]
This Prescott Bush-William Casey think tank promoted the creation of endowed chairs in
strategic analysis, national intelligence, and the like on a number of campuses. The
Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies, later the home of Kissinger,
Ledeen, and a whole stable of ideologues of Anglo-American empire, was in part a result
of the work of Casey and Prescott.
Casey was also an old friend of Leo Cherne. When Cherne was appointed to PFIAB in
the summer of 1973, Casey, who was at that time Nixon's Undersecretary of State for
Economic Affairs, sent Cherne a warm note of congratulations telling how "delighted" he
had been to get the official notice of Cherne's new post. [fn 27]
Casey was also a close associate of George Bush. During 1976, Ford appointed Casey to
PFIAB, where Casey was an enthusiastic supporter of the Team B operation along with
Bush and Cherne. George Bush and Casey would play decisive roles in the secret
government operations of the Reagan years.
As the Republican convention gathered in Detroit in July, 1980, the problem was to
convince Reagan of the inevitability of tapping Bush as his running mate. But Reagan did
not want Bush. He had conceived an antipathy, even a hostility for George. One factor
may have been British liberal Peter Teeley's line about Reagan's "voodoo economics."
But the decisive factor was what Reagan had experienced personally from Bush during
the Nashua Telegraph debate, which had left a lasting and highly derogatory impression.
According to one account of this phase, "ever since the episode in Nashua in February,
Reagan had come to hold the preppy Yankee transplant in, as the late Senator Robert
Kerr of Oklahoma used to say, mimumum high regard. 'Reagan is a very gracious
contestant,' one of his inner circle said, 'and he generally views his opponents with a good
deal of respect. The thing he couldn't understand was Bush's conduct at the Nashua
Telegraph debate. It imprinted with Reagan that Bush was a wimp. He remembered that
night clearly when we had our vice-presidential discussions. He couldn't understand how
a man could have sat there so passively. He felt it showed a lack of courage." And now
that it was time to think about a running mate, the prospective presidential nominee gave
a sympathetic ear to those who objected to Bush for reasons that ran, one of the group
said later, from his behavior at Nashua to 'anit-Trilateralism'" According to this account,
conservatives seeking to stop Bush at the convention were citing their suspicions about a
"'conspiracy' backed by Rockefeller to gain control of the American government." [fn 28]