GEORGE WAS THERE
Hunter, Jane
ALTHOUGH THE TAUNT "WHERE WAS George?" became something of a joke during the 1988 presidential campaign, President-elect Bush was not, as he claimed, "out of the loop" in the Iran-contra...
...5 John Mattes, a Federal public defender in Miami during the secret contra support operations, maintains that Bush's son Jeb "was the man to see if you wanted to aid the contras...
...7. "More on Bush-Noriega," Newsweek, Oct...
...Gregg put his CIA colleague from Vietnam days, Felix Rodriguez, in charge of coordinating contra airlifts at Ilopango Air Base in El Salvador, where, according to several sources, Rodriguez represented himself as an emissary of the Vice President...
...8. Thames Television This Week, cited by AP, "British TV takes on Bush," Sacramento Bee, Sept...
...Manuel Noriega's links to drug trafficking...
...Appointed in 1975, when the Ford Administration needed a new face to calm Congressional fury over revelations about the Agency's practices, Bush allowed his covert operatives to keep him "out of the loop...
...3, 1988...
...Gregg was reportedly a lead player in a successful effort in early 1983, by staffers of the Vice President's office and the National Security Council, to "wrest control" of Central America policy from the State Department.' Bush himself, according to one recent report, assented to a 1982 request from CIA director Casey to let his office be used as a cover for the secret resupply of the contras...
...Gregg memo reproduced in People's Daily World, April 2, 1988...
...Scott Armstrong and Jeff Nason, "Company Man," Mother Jones, Oct...
...Roberto Diaz Herrera, former second-in-command of the Panama Defense Forces, has said that during a December 1983 meeting Bush told Noriega he was aware of his activities and asked him to support the contra effort.' Noriega claims to have pictures and tape recordings linking Bush to the training of contras in Panama, Diaz asserts...
...2. Howard Kohn and Vicki Monks, "The Dirty Secrets of George Bush...
...3. Emerson, Secret Warriors, p. 128...
...22, 1988...
...Logs from the Vice President's office show that Rodriguez met 17 times with members of Bush's staff, three times with the Vice President in attendance...
...9. New Republic, Sept...
...LTHOUGH THE PRESIDENT-ELECT ACquired the reputation of a complaisant front man as he trudged through each station on his distinguished r6sum6, Bush's service as CIA director was hardly innocuous...
...After Noriega's activities became a big story in the United States, he engaged WashOut of the loop...
...Spencer went on to work for the Bush-Quayle campaign...
...UPI, May 15, 1988...
...Consequently, he had little to tell Congress...
...Rolling Stone, Nov...
...22, 1986...
...He not only kept information on ex-agent Edwin Wilson (later convicted for selling arms to Libya) from Congress, he also impeded criminal investigations of Wilson, of the assassination of former Chilean Ambassador Orlando Letelier, and of former CIA Director Richard Helms (for lying to Congress about Agency involvement in the 1973 coup in Chile...
...Indeed, Bush was fully briefed on the Administration's arms sales to Iran, and, long before Oliver North became a household word, an unauthorized contra resupply operation was operating out of the Vice President's office under the direction of his national security adviser Donald Gregg, formerly a high-ranking CIA officer...
...If George Bush's presence was wraithlike as he went on his way and no fingerprints were left, that is a testament to his aides and associates-who have earned themselves a place in the Bush Administration...
...But Col...
...George Was There 1. Steven Emerson, Secret Warrt iors, (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1988), pp...
...contact in Central America...
...On November 3, 1983, Brenneke insists, Gregg assured him that he should "by all means cooperate...
...Intelligence operative Richard Brenneke says that when he asked if the Harari network's arms dealing was authorized by the Administration, it was Gregg's name and number that the Mossad station chief in Guatemala gave him...
...SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1988 m Cn a) -4 -I as a) ington lobbyist Stuart Spencer to advise him "on matters that included federal investigations of Panamanian involvement in the drug trade...
...19, 1988...
...6 There have been no firm answers to the many questions raised during the 1988 campaign about the President-elect's knowledge of Gen...
...While he was chairman of the Dade County Republican Party Jeb Bush reportedly raised private funds for the contras...
...125-126...
...4. Quote from New York Times, Oct...
...6. Kohn and Monks, "The Dirty Secrets...
...5. Jim Redden, "Burning Bush," Willamette Week (Portland), July 14-20, 1988...
...became something of a joke during the 1988 presidential campaign, President-elect Bush was not, as he claimed, "out of the loop" in the Iran-contra affair...
...26, 1988, quoted by Guardian (New York), Oct...
...Both Richard Brenneke and former Panama official Jos6 Bland6n identified Rodriguez as the Harari network's U.S...
...31, 1988...
...Although Bush has protested that "the only discussions I have ever had with Felix relate to El Salvador," a memo from Gregg, released by the Iran-contra committee and dated April 16, 1986, refers to a May 1 meeting at which Rodriguez was to brief Bush on "resupply of the contras...
Vol. 22 • August 1988 • No. 5
