This page came up in a Google search I was doing on something else, it's Chapter 17 of Tarpley's Unauthorized Biography. Very instructive reading. It covers some of the antics and players (incl various CIA assets) in Bush's 1980 campaign, how Bush got selected as Reagan's VP, the October Surprise and much more. Many familiar names.... Lengthy, but definitely worth reading -- especially in light of Bush2 and his "re-election" campaign, what they're capable of, etc. (One of these days I'm going to have to actually read this whole Tarpley book.)
http://www.the7thfire.com/bush16.htmHere's a little tease which IMO shows how deceit and propagandistic lies, as well as defense of the indefensible run in the family (they're really got it down to a fine art):
But first let us review some of Bush's public activities during the pre-campaign interlude. In April, 1978 Bush appeared along with E. Henry Knoche and William Colby at Senate hearings on proposed legislation to modify the methods by which Congress exercised oversight of the intelligence agencies.
The bill being discussed had a provision to outlaw assassinations of foreign officials and to punish violations with life in prison. The measure would also have prohibited covert operations involving "torture," "the creation of epidemics of diseases," and "the creation of food or water shortages or floods." Bush and Knoche both objected to the ban on assassinations (which Colby accepted), and both were critical of the entire bill. Knoche said his fear was that if enacted the bill might create "a web woven so tight around the average intelligence officer that you're going to deaden his creativity."
Bush denounced the Senate bill for its "excessive" reporting requirements. "The Congress should be informed, fully informed, but it ought not to micro-manage the intelligence business," protested Bush. He was especially indignant about a provision that would have required notification of the House and Senate oversight committees every time a US intelligence agency wanted to stipulate an agreement with a foreign intelligence agency, or domestic security service. "I don't believe that kind of intimate disclosure is essential," said Bush. Bush was convinced that "some US sources are drying up because foreign services don't believe the US Congress can keep secrets." This, from the man who had leaked the Team B report to the New York Times, and then had gone on television to say that he was appalled.
Bush urged the senators to drop language in the bill that would have severed the DCI post from the CIA. Bush warned vehemently that an intelligence czar sitting in the White House "and separated from his CIA troops...would be virtually isolated. He needs the CIA as his principal source of support to be most effective. And the CIA needs its head to be the chief foreign intelligence adviser to the president."
A few months later he participated in a singular round table organized by the Washington Quarterly of the Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies with none other than Michael Ledeen as moderator. (Ledeen, who vaunted intimate connections to Israeli intelligence, was later one of the central figures in the mid-1980's acceleration of US arms shipments to Iran.) In this round table, Bush was joined by former DCIs Richard Helms and William Colby as well as by Ray Cline.
According to Bush there was "an underlying feeling on the part of the American people that we must have clandestine services." Above all he regretted "that some of the thrust of the legislation before the Hill is still flogging CIA for something that was long corrected, or that never happened." Even Hollywood was against the CIA, Bush thought, "and you get movies and television programs and it has a very sinister kind of propagandistic overtone." Here Bush wanted to defend his own record: "I'll give you one example that happened on my watch: One of these rather ribald magazines described a purported destabilization effort against Manley in Jamiaca." "But," said Bush with that self-righteous whine, "it never happened. There wasn't any truth in it."