Art from The Progressive, March, 1990.
The term “lying in state” is often used when former leaders are commemorated after death. The same phrase is rarely applied when those leaders are in office, conducting affairs of the state under a veil of secrecy and deception.
Such was the case with George Herbert Walker Bush, the forty-first President, whose long career in the halls of power, as well as the darkened rooms of the Central Intelligence Agency, were shrouded in a series of untruths.
Bush’s public career began with evidence of his possible role in the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba as, at minimum, a “CIA business asset.” He went on to achieve notoriety as chair of the Republican National Committee, and the last defender of Richard Nixon in the Watergate conspiracy.
Bush was rewarded for his loyalty with an appointment as chief of the U.S. Liaison Office in the People's Republic of China (the U.S. did not have formal diplomatic relations at the time, so he could not be “ambassador”). Contemporaneous accounts relate that he spent time meeting with Chinese activists opposed to the leadership of Chairman Mao Zedong. In 1976, Bush was appointed as Director of Central Intelligence, replacing William Colby who was faulted for being too open with Congress.
George H.W. Bush first appears in the pages of The Progressive in his role as Vice President under Ronald Reagan. In an investigative report titled “The Bush Connection” in May 1987, journalist Allan Nairn wrote, “George Bush’s links to the contras first became an issue last October after the Eugene Hasenfus supply plane was shot down over Nicaragua.” But as far back as 1983, according to Nairn’s report, Bush “sent a former CIA agent to Honduras to work as a combat adviser for the Nicaraguan contras.”
The former agent,” Nairn wrote, “carried a letter of recommendation from Bush’s national security adviser, Donald P. Gregg.” As the Iran-Contra investigations unfolded, Bush was regularly mentioned, although never indicted. As Nairn reports, “Congressional investigators say participants in the contra supply network claim that Vice President Bush’s office received intelligence reports on the progress of the clandestine arms deliveries.”
“George Bush’s office served as a clearinghouse for private arms sales to the contras, says one arms dealer.”
In another article the following year titled “George Bush’s Secret War,” Nairn reported, “George Bush’s office served as a clearinghouse for private arms sales to the contras, says one arms dealer.” He noted that Gregg’s denials of involvement in his sworn testimony in a court hearing were “directly contradicted by a September 18, 1984, memo he wrote to Vice President Bush, entitled ‘Funding for the Contras.’ The memo, classified SECRET, says, ‘In response to your question, Dewey Clarridge supplied the following information.’ Clarridge was the CIA official in charge of contra covert operations who oversaw the preparation of the so-called contra assassination manual.”
According to Nairn, the memo “goes on to discuss military and political aspects of the contra war and mentions private fundraising efforts for the contras. Gregg writes in the memo that ‘a very rough estimate would be that they [the contras] have received about $1.5 million [from private sources]. This is based on what we know of contra purchases of gasoline, ammunition, etc.’ ”
In November 1988, Bush was elected President of the United States, succeeding the two-term Ronald Reagan. His campaign was marked by the infamous use of a TV ad referring to Willie Horton, a convicted murderer who committed additional crimes while on furlough release. The ad was produced by an associate of Roger Ailes, media consultant for the Bush campaign, who went on to head Fox News in 1996. One of Bush’s last acts as President would be the Christmas 1992 pardon of six Iran-Contra figures including Duane R. “Dewey” Clarridge.
On December 20, 1989, George Bush launched an invasion of Panama known as “Operation Just Cause.” As then-editor Erwin Knoll wrote in The Progressive in February 1990, “No single action of the Bush Administration so disgraces the United States as the December invasion of Panama. It was illegal and unwarranted, and the President callously ordered it to bolster his own domestic ratings—no matter the cost in lives to American soldiers, Panamanian soldiers, and Panamanian civilians.”
Whole neighborhoods in Panama’s capital city were leveled. The invasion officially ended January 31, 1990, but U.S. troops remained to pacify. Molly Ivins used her March 1990 column to talk about the post-invasion pacification program.
“Having upset every living person between the Rio Grande and Tierra del Fuego with one more display of our respect for the sovereignty of other nations,” she wrote, “our only President then proposed to settle everyone down by dispatching the ineffable [Vice President] Dan Quayle on a peace mission. To tell them all they looked like happy campers to him.”
In August of the same year, Bush began a series of actions that led to an even more devastating war against Iraq in January-February 1991. A report by the United Nations said the damage caused by the war was “near apocalyptic.”
Writing of the war’s aftermath in May 1991, in a column called “When Casualties Don’t Count,” Allan Nairn said, “For Washington, the Iraqi deaths did not count. George Bush viewed them only as a public-relations problem, which he deemed surmountable.”
Nairn continued, “Washington could have achieved its official aim of getting Iraq out of Kuwait through negotiations, and it could have stopped the war after the Iraqis retreated. But Washington insisted on full military assault and triumph to achieve its unofficial goals, primarily the reassertion of U.S. military dominance. . . . For this, the United States was willing to kill an unlimited number of Iraqis.”
“For Washington, the Iraqi deaths did not count. George Bush viewed them only as a public-relations problem, which he deemed surmountable.”
Assessed Nairn, “Bush’s assault on Iraq furthered the evolution of this concept and showed that it was possible to stage gigantic conventional attacks without shedding much American blood by substituting airborne munitions for U.S. combat troops.”
In his ominous concluding paragraph, Nairn sized up how “common criminals like George Bush” manage to stay in power by fabricating constant crises:
“The American state lives under constant tension, depending for much of its political legitimacy on values which it undermines every day. In such a situation, mere facts can be explosive, for if Americans find out what their Government is doing, they will become potential enemies of the state.”