Russ Baker has the story at WhoWhatWhy.
I don’t think George H.W. Bush was involved in the assassination of JFK. Baker’s reporting casts doubt on the already dubious claim that Bush was in Dealey Plaza when JFK was killed.
But Baker demonstrates that Bush, as an oil company executive, collaborated with the CIA in advancing schemes of regime change in Latin American in the 1950s and 1960a.
That’s why President Ford’s appointment of Bush as CIA Director in 1976 was not problematic for the agency’s upper ranks. CIA directors who come from outside the clandestine service usually meet resistance from within. Stansfield Turner, CIA director under President Carter, and James Woolsey, CIA director under Bill Clinton, both had this experience.
Not George H.W. Bush. He was also an outsider in the sense that he did not build his career in the CIA but his previous collaboration with the agency made him a known quantity and acceptable choice to the agency’s leadership. He served for one year as the Agency came under fire for surveillance of American citizens and plots to assassinate foreign leaders.
In 1988, Bush became the only American president to have served as CIA director.
See: Bush and the JFK Hit, Part 2: Skull and Bones Forever – WhoWhatWhy.
Leslie,
I just retrieved this article. You state: “the Bush family has been subjugated for decades to far more powerful forces, and not the other way around.”
Please name names! By whom/what “far more powerful force” has the Bush family been “subjugated for decades,” not the other way around.
References appreciated, of course!
Carola, I appreciate that this is a sensitive issue with followers of Russ Baker and “Family of Secrets.” I respect his opinion on a number of topics. I have read his book recently in the context of my own research, and personally, I came away with the concern that some who are not doing their own research could be persuaded to draw a general conclusion without understanding that the Bush family has been subjugated for decades to far more powerful forces, and not the other way around. It think that It’s tricky territory to get the two confused.
My reference to George Herbert Walker would be emblematic of that concern. To deal with Walker by naming him as related to Harriman interests, co-funding Zapata, and setting Neil Mallon up with Dresser is stopping short of the confronting the power his ilk were wielding.
My challenge of Russ Baker’s work around the Bush family per se as they might relate to the assassination of John Kennedy has always been that such an extreme focus could detract from the broader picture of the military-industrial-intelligence complex by suggesting that “The Bush’s” alone had the power and influence to authorize, plan & execute, and cover-up the assassination of President Kennedy. I understand the difficulties of meeting publishers’ expectations, but to implicate Samuel, Prescott, and GHW (and failing to emphasize the role of George H. Walker – the St. Louis Banker in the family who was a huge force behind the scenes) in events leading to and including the assassination of a US president without taking apart the apparatus they represented is a failure in journalism in my view.
You obviously did not read Family of Secrets, or you would not make those assertions. The book massively documents the larger apparatus in play, and in no way suggests an isolated role of the Bush clan. Also, the book deals with George Herbert Walker.
“He served for one year as the Agency came under fire for surveillance of American citizens and plots to assassinate foreign leaders.”
That sentence makes it seem that GHWB was part of the CIA when it “came under fire.” But he was put in by Ford to restore confidence and credibility AFTER the Agency scandals.
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What could G.H.W. Bush conceivably have had to do with the JFK assassination? Why not speculate on the motives and involvement of everybody with even the most torturous possible involvement with the C.I.A.?
Does being a Yale man constitute grounds for assuming that someone would be involved in a conspiracy to shoot JFK?