''Does this picture make me look guilty?''

[Octafish]

69. Agents for Bush

Agents for Bush

The 1980 Campaign

by Bob Callahan
Covert Action Information Bulletin

George Bush owed his recent political fortune to several old CIA friends, chiefly Ray Cline, who had helped to rally the intelligence community … and started … "Agents for Bush."

Bill Peterson of the Washington Post wrote in a March 1, 1980 article, "Simply put, no presidential campaign in recent memory – perhaps ever – has attracted as much support from the intelligence community as (has) the campaign of former CIA director George Bush."

George Bush’s CIA campaign staff included Cline, CIA Chief of Station in Taiwan from 1958 to 1962; Lt. Gen. Salm V. Wilson and Lt. Gen. Harold A. Aaron, both former Directors of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Also included were retired Gen. Richard Stillwell, once the CIA’s Chief of Covert Operations for the Far East, and at least 25 other retired Company directors, deputy directors and, or, agents.

… Angelo Codevilla, informed a congressional committee that was "aware that active duty agents of the CIA worked for the George Bush primary election campaign.

… Ray Cline claimed that he had been promoting the pro-CIA agenda that Bush had embraced for years, and that he had found the post Church-hearings criticism had died down some time ago. "I found there was a tremendous constituency for the CIA when everyone in Washington was still urinating all over it," Cline said. … "It’s panned out almost too good to be true. The country is waking up just in time for George’s candidacy. …

In July 1979 George Bush and Ray Cline attended a conference in Jerusalem. … (with) leaders of Israel, Great Britain and the United States. … The Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism was hosted by the Israeli government and … most of Israel’s top intelligence officers … were in attendance. …

… The Israelis were angry with Carter because his administration had recently released its annual report on human rights wherein the Israeli government was taken to task for abusing the rights of the Palestinian people on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. …

The Republican delegation was led by George Bush. It included Ray Cline and Major Gen. George Keegan (former USAF intelligence chief) and Harvard professor Richard Pipes.

Looking for a mobilizing issue to counter the Carter-era themes of détente and human rights, the Bush people began to explore the political benefits of embracing the terrorism/anti-terrorism theme.

… Ray Cline developed the theme that terror was not a random response. … but rather an instrument of East bloc policy adopted after 1969 when the KGB persuaded the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to accept the PLO as a major political instrument in the Mideast and to subsidize its terrorist policies by freely giving money, training, arms and coordinated communications. …

… Within days after the conference the new propaganda war began in earnest. On July 11, 1979, the International Herald Tribune featured a lead editorial entitled "The Issue is Terrorism," which quoted directly from conference speeches. …

SOURCE: Covert Action Information Bulletin No.33(Winter 1990) "The Bush Issue"

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History doesn't seem to repeat so much anymore; it vibrates on one resonant frequency. The people who call the shots see to it.