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Mon, 04 Jan 1993 03:41:33 est
Date: Mon Jan 4 03:41:24 est 1993
From: "John Covici" <
[email protected]>
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Reply-To: "John Covici" <
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Organization: Covici Computer Systems
To:
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Subject: Unauthorized Biography of George Bush: Part 14
Status: O
X-Status:
CHAPTER 12
UNITED NATIONS AMBASSADOR, KISSINGER
CLONE
At this point in his career,
George Bush entered into a phase of
close association with both Richard
Nixon and Henry Kissinger. As we will
see, Bush was a member of the Nixon
cabinet from the spring of 1971 until
the day that Nixon resigned. We will
see Bush on a number of important
occasions literally acting as Nixon's
speaking tube, especially in
international crisis situations. During
these years, Nixon was Bush's patron,
providing him with appointments and
urging him to look forward to bigger
things in the future. On certain
occasions, however, Bush was upstaged
by others in his quest for Nixon's
favor. Then there was Kissinger, far
and away the most powerful figure in
the Washington regime of those days,
who became Bush's boss when the latter
became the U.S. ambassador to the
United Nations in New York City. Later,
on the campaign trail in 1980, Bush
would offer to make Kissinger secretary
of state in his administration.
Bush was now listing a net worth
of over $1.3 million@s1, but the fact
is that he was now unemployed, but
anxious to assume the next official
post, to take the next step of what in
the career of a Roman Senator was
called the {cursus honorum,} the
patrician career, for this is what he
felt the world owed him.
Nixon had promised Bush an
attractive and prestigious political
plum in the executive branch, and it
was now time for Nixon to deliver.
Bush's problem was that in late 1970
Nixon was more interested in what
another Texan could contribute to his
administration. That other Texan was
John Connally, who had played the role
of Bush's nemesis in the elections just
concluded, by virtue of the
encouragement and decisive support
which Connally had given to the Bentsen
candidacy. Nixon was now fascinated by
the prospect of including the
right-wing Democrat Connally in his
cabinet in order to provide himself
with a patina of bipartisanship, while
emphasizing the dissension among the
Democrats, strengthening Nixon's
chances of successfully executing his
Southern Strategy a second time during
the 1972 elections.
The word among Nixon's inner
circle of this period was ``The Boss is
in love,'' and the object of his
affections was Big Jawn. Nixon claimed
that he was not happy with the stature
of his current cabinet, telling his
domestic policy advisor John Ehrlichman
in the fall of 1970 that ``Every
cabinet should have at least one
potential President in it. Mine
doesn't.'' Nixon had tried to recruit
leading Democrats before, asking
Senator Henry Jackson to be secretary
of defense and offering the post of
United Nations ambassador to Hubert
Humphrey.
Within hours after the polls had
closed in the Texas Senate race, Bush
received a call from Charles Bartlett,
a Washington columnist who was part of
the Prescott Bush network. Bartlett
tipped Bush to the fact that Treasury
Secretary David Kennedy was leaving,
and urged him to make a grab for the
job. Bush called Nixon and put in his
request. After that, he waited by the
telephone. But it soon became clear
that Nixon was about to recruit John
Connally, and with him, perhaps, the
important Texas electoral votes in
1972. Secretary of the Treasury! One
of the three or four top posts in the
cabinet! And that before Bush had been
given anything for all of his useless
slogging through the 1970 campaign! But
the job was about to go to Connally.
Over two decades, one can almost hear
Bush's whining complaint.
This move was not totally
unprepared. During the fall of 1970,
when Connally was campaigning for
Bentsen against Bush, Connally had been
invited to participate in the Ash
Commission, a study group on government
re-organization chaired by Roy Ash.
``This White House access was
dangerously undermining George Bush,''
complained Texas GOP chairman
O'Donnell. A personal friend of Bush
on the White House staff named Peter
Flanigan, generated a memo to White
House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman with
the notation: ``Connally is an
implacable enemy of the Republican
party in Texas, and, therefore,
attractive as he may be to the
President, we should avoid using him
again.'' Nixon found Connally an
attractive political property, and had
soon appointed him to the main White
House panel for intelligence
evaluations: ``On November 30, when
Connally's appointment to the Foreign
Intelligence Advisory Board was
announced, the senior Senator from
Texas, John Tower, and George Bush were
instantly in touch with the White House
to express their `extreme' distress
over the appointment.@s2 Tower was
indignant because he had been promised
by Ehrlichman some time before that
Connally was not going to receive an
important post. Bush's personal plight
was even more poignant: ``He was out of
work, and he wanted a job. As a
defeated senatorial candidate, he hoped
and fully expected to get a major job
in the administration. Yet the
administration seemed to be paying more
attention to the very Democrat who had
put him on the job market. What gives?
Bush was justified in asking.''@s3
The appointment of Connally to
replace David Kennedy as secretary of
the Treasury was concluded during the
first week of December 1970. But it
could not be announced without causing
an upheaval among the Texas Republicans
until something had been done for lame
duck George. On December 7, Nixon
retainer H.R. Haldeman was writing
memos to himself in the White House.
The first was: ``Connally set.'' Then
came: ``Have to do something for Bush
right away.'' Could Bush become the
director of NASA? How about the Small
Business Administration? Or the
Republican National Committee? Or then
again, he might like to be White House
congressional liaison, or perhaps
undersecretary of commerce. As one
account puts it, ``since no job
immediately came to mind, Bush was
assured that he would come to the White
House as a top presidential adviser on
something or other, until another
fitting job opened up.''
Bush was called to the White House
on December 9, 1970 to meet with Nixon
and talk about a post as assistant to
the President ``with a wide range of
unspecified general responsibilities,''
according to a White House memo
initialed by H.R. Haldeman. Bush
accepted such a post at one point in
his haggling with the Nixon White
House. But Bush also sought the U.N.
job, arguing that there ``was a dirth
[sic] of Nixon advocacy in New York
City and the general New York area that
he could fill that need in the New York
social circles he would be moving in as
ambassador.@s4 Nixon's U.N. ambassador
had been Charles Yost, a Democrat who
was now leaving. But the White House
had already offered that job to Daniel
Patrick Moynihan, who had accepted.
But then Moynihan decided that
he did not want the U.N. ambassador
post after all, and, with a sigh of
relief, the White House offered it to
Bush. Bush's appointment was announced
on December 11, Connally's on December
14.@s5 In offering the post to Bush,
Haldeman had been brutally frank,
telling him that the job, although of
cabinet rank, would have no power
attached to it. Bush, stressed
Haldeman, would be taking orders
directly from Kissinger. Bush says
he replied, ``even if somebody who took the job
didn't understand that, Henry Kissinger
would give him a twenty-four hour crash
course on the subject.''@s6
Nixon told his cabinet and the
Republican congressional leadership on
December 14, 1970 what had been in the
works for some time: that Connally was
``coming not only as a Democrat but as
Secretary of the Treasury for the next
two full years.'' Even more humiliating
for Bush was the fact that our hero had
been on the receiving end of Connally's
assistance. As Nixon told the cabinet:
``Connally said he wouldn't take it
until George Bush got whatever he was
entitled to. I don't know why George
wanted the U.N. appointment, but he
wanted it so he got it.'' Only this
precondition from Connally, by
implication, had finally prompted Nixon
to take care of poor George. Nixon
turned to Senator Tower, who was in the
meeting: ``This is hard for you. I am
for every Republican running. We need
John Tower back in 1972.'' Tower
replied: ``I'm a pragmatic man. John
Connally is philosophically attuned to
you. He is articulate and persuasive. I
for one will defend him against those
in our own party who may not like
him.''@s7
There is evidence that Nixon
considered Connally to be a possible
successor in the presidency. Connally's
approach to the international monetary
crisis then unfolding was that ``all
foreigners are out to screw us and it's
our job to screw them first,'' as he
told C. Fred Bergsten of Kissinger's
National Security Council staff.
Nixon's bumbling management of the
international monetary crisis was one
of the reasons why he was Watergated,
and Big Jawn was certainly seen by the
financiers as a big part of the
problem. Bush was humiliated in this
episode, but that is nothing compared
to what later happened to both Connally
and Nixon. Connally would be indicted
while Bush was in Beijing, and later he
would face the further humilation of
personal bankruptcy. In the view of
James Reston, Jr., ``George Bush was to
maintain a smoldering, visceral dislike
of Connally, one that lasted well into
the 1980s.''@s8 As others discovered
during the Gulf war, Bush is
vindictive.
Confirmed by the Senate
Bush appeared before the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee for his pro
forma and perfunctory confirmation
hearings on February 8, 1971. It was a
free ride. Many of the Senators had
known Prescott Bush, and several were
still Prescott's friends. Acting like
friends of the family, they gave Bush
friendly advice with a tone that was
congratulatory and warm, and avoided
any tough questions. Stuart Symington
warned Bush that he would have to deal
with the ``duality of authority''
between his nominal boss, Secretary of
State William Rogers, and his real
boss, NSC chief Kissinger. There was
only passing reference to Bush's
service of the oil cartel during his
time in the House, and Bush vehemently
denied that he had ever tried to
``placate'' the ``oil interests.''
Claiborne Pell said that Bush would
enhance the luster of the U.N. post.
On policy matters, Bush said that
it would ``make sense'' for the U.N.
Security Council to conduct a debate on
the wars in Laos and Cambodia, which
was something that the United States
had been attempting to procure for some
time. Bush thought that such a debate
could be used as a forum to expose the
aggressive activities of the North
Vietnamese. No senator asked Bush about
China, but Bush told journalists
waiting in the hall that the question
of China was now under intensive study.
The {Washington Post} was
impressed by Bush's ``lithe and
youthful good looks.'' Bush was easily
confirmed.
At Bush's swearing-in later in
February, Nixon, probably anxious to
calm Bush down after the strains of the
Connally affair, had recalled that
President William McKinley had lost an
election in Ohio, but neverthless gone
on to become President. ``But I'm not
suggesting what office you should seek
and at what time,'' said Nixon. The day
before, Senator Adlai Stevenson III of
Illinois had told the press that Bush
was ``totally unqualified'' and that
his appointment had been ``an insult''
to the U.N. Bush presented his
credentials on March 1.
Then Bush, ``handsome and trim''
at 47, moved into a suite at the
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan, and
settled into his usual hyperkinetic,
thyroid-driven lifestyle. The
{Washington Post} marveled at his
``whirlwind schedule'' which seemed
more suitable for a ``political
aspirant than one usually associated
with a diplomat.'' He rose every
morning at 7:00 A.M., and then mounted
his exercycle for a twelve-minute
workout while taking in a television
news program that also lasted exactly
twelve minutes. He ate a small
breakfast and left the Waldorf at 8:00,
to be driven to the U.S. mission to the
U.N. at Turtle Bay where he generally
arrived at 8:10. Then he would get the
overnight cable traffic from his
secretary, Mrs. Aleene Smith, and then
went into a conference with his
executive assistant, Tom Lais. Later
there would be meetings with his two
deputies, Ambassadors Christopher
Phillips and W. Tapley Bennett of the
State Department. Pete Roussel was also
still with him as publicity man.
For Bush, a 16-hour work day was
more the rule than the exception. His
days were packed with one appointment
after another, luncheon engagements,
receptions, formal dinners--at least
one reception and one dinner per day.
Sometimes there were three receptions
per day--quite an opportunity for
networking with like-minded freemasons
from all over the world. Bush also
traveled to Washington for cabinet
meetings, and still did speaking
engagements around the country,
especially for Republican candidates.
``I try to get to bed by 11:30 if
possible, '' said Bush in 1971, ``but
often my calendar is so filled that I
fall behind in my work and have to take
it home with me.'' Bush bragged that he
was still a ``pretty tough'' doubles
player in tennis, good enough to team
up with the pros. But he claimed to
love baseball most. He joked about
questions on his ping pong skills,
since these were the months of ping
pong diplomacy, when the invitation for
a U.S. ping pong team to visit Beijing
became a part of the preparation for
Kissinger's China card.
Mainly, Bush came on as an
ultra-orthodox Nixon loyalist. Was he a
liberal conservative? asked a reporter.
``People in Texas used to ask me that
in the campaigns,'' replied Bush.
``Some even called me a right-wing
reactionary. I like to think of myself
as a pragmatist, but I have learned to
defy being labeled.... What I can say
is that I am a strong supporter of the
President. If you can tell me what he
is, I can tell you what I am.'' Barbara
liked the Waldorf suite, and was
an enthusiastic hostess.
Soon after taking up his U.N.
posting, Bush received a phone call
from Assistant Secretary of State for
Middle Eastern Affairs Joseph Sisco,
one of Kissinger's principal henchmen.
Sisco had been angered by some comments
Bush had made about the Middle East
situation in a press conference after
presenting his credentials. Despite the
fact that Bush, as a cabinet officer,
ranked several levels above Sisco,
Sisco was in effect the voice of
Kissinger. Sisco told Bush that it was
Sisco who spoke for the United States
government on the Middle East, and that
he would do both the on-the-record
talking and the leaking about that
area. Bush knuckled under, for these
were the realities of the Kissinger
years.
Kissinger's Clone
Henry Kissinger was now Bush's
boss even more than Nixon was, and
later, as the Watergate scandal
progressed into 1973, the dominion of
Kissinger would become even more
absolute. During these years Bush,
serving his apprenticeship in diplomacy
and world strategy under Kissinger,
became a virtual Kissinger clone in two
senses. First, to a significant degree,
Kissinger's networks and connections
merged together with Bush's own,
foreshadowing a 1989 administration in
which the NSC director and the number
two man in the State Department were
both Kissinger's business partners from
his consulting and influence-peddling
firm, Kissinger Associates. Secondly,
Bush assimilated Kissinger's
characteristic British-style
geopolitical mentality and approach to
problems, and this is now the
epistemology that dictates Bush's own
dealing with the main questions of
world politics.
The most essential level of
Kissinger was the British one.@s9 This
meant that U.S. foreign policy was to
be guided by British imperial
geopolitics, in particular the notion
of the balance of power: The United
States must always ally with the second
strongest land power in the world (Red
China) against the strongest land power
(the U.S.S.R.) in order to preserve the
balance of power. This was expressed in
the 1971-72 Nixon-Kissinger opening to
Beijing, to which Bush would contribute
from his U.N. post. The balance of
power, since it rules out a positive
engagement for the economic progress of
the international community as a whole,
has always been a recipe for new wars.
Kissinger was in constant contact with
British foreign policy operatives like
Sir Eric Roll of S.G. Warburg in
London, Lord Victor Rothschild, the
Barings bank and others.
On May 10, 1982, in a speech
entitled ``Reflections on a
Partnership'' given at the Royal
Institute of International Affairs at
Chatham House in London, Henry
Kissinger openly expounded his role and
philosophy as a British
agent-of-influence within the U.S.
government during the Nixon and Ford
years:
``The British were so
matter-of-factly helpful that they
became a participant in internal
American deliberations, to a degree
probably never before practiced between
sovereign nations. In my period in
office, the British played a seminal
part in certain American bilateral
negotiations with the Soviet
Union--indeed, they helped draft the
key document. In my White House
incarnation then, I kept the British
Foreign Office better informed and more
closely engaged than I did the American
State Department.... In my negotiations
over Rhodesia I worked from a British
draft with British spelling even when I
did not fully grasp the distinction
between a working paper and a
Cabinet-approved document.''
Kissinger was also careful to
point out that the United States must
support colonial and neo-colonial
strategies against the developing
sector:
``Americans from Franklin
Roosevelt onward believed that the
United States, with its `revolutionary'
heritage, was the natural ally of
people struggling against colonialism;
we could win the allegiance of these
new nations by opposing and
occasionally undermining our European
allies in the areas of their colonial
dominance. Churchill, of course,
resisted these American pressures....
In this context, the experience of Suez
is instructive.... Our humiliation of
Britain and France over Suez was a
shattering blow to these countries'
role as world powers. It accelerated
their shedding of international
responsibilities, some of the
consequences of which we saw in
succeeding decades when reality forced
us to step into their shoes--in the
Persian Gulf, to take one notable
example. Suez thus added enormously to
America's burdens.''
Kissinger was the high priest of
imperialism and neocolonialism,
animated by an instinctive hatred for
Indira Gandhi, Aldo Moro, Ali Bhutto,
and other nationalist world leaders.
Kissinger's British geopolitics simply
accentuated Bush's own fanatically
Anglophile point of view, which he had
acquired from father Prescott and
imbibed from the atmosphere of the
family firm, Brown Brothers Harriman,
originally the U.S. branch of a British
counting house.
Kissinger was also a Zionist,
dedicated to economic, diplomatic, and
military support of Israeli aggression
and expansionism to keep the Middle
East in turmoil, so as to prevent Arab
unity and Arab economic development
while using the region to mount
challenges to the Soviets. In this he
was a follower of British Prime
Minister Benjamin Disraeli and Lord
Balfour. In the 1973 Middle East war
which he had connived to unleash,
Kissinger would mastermind the U.S.
resupply of Israel and would declare a
U.S.-worldwide thermonuclear alert. In
later years, Kissinger would enrich
himself through speculative real estate
purchases on the West bank of the
Jordan, buying up land and buildings
that had been virtually confiscated
from defenseless Palestinian Arabs.
Kissinger was also Soviet in a
sense that went far beyond his
sponsorship of the 1970s detente, SALT
I, and the ABM treaty with Moscow.
Polish KGB agent Michael Goleniewski is
widely reported to have told the
British government in 1972 that he had
seen KGB documents in Poland before his
1959 defection which established that
Kissinger was a Soviet asset. According
to Goleniewski, Kissinger had been
recruited by the Soviets during his
Army service in Germany after the end
of World War II, when he had worked as
a humble chauffeur.
Kissinger had allegedly been
recruited to an espionage cell called
ODRA, where he received the code name
of ``BOR'' or ``COLONEL BOR.'' Some
versions of this story also specify
that this cell had been largely
composed of homosexuals, and that
homosexuality had been an important
part of the way that Kissinger had been
picked up by the KGB. These reports
were reportedly partly supported by
Golitsyn, another Soviet defector. The
late James Jesus Angleton, the CIA
counterintelligence director for 20
years up to 1973, was said to have been
the U.S. official who was handed
Goleniewski's report by the British.
Angleton later talked a lot about
Kissinger being ``objectively a Soviet
agent.'' It has not been established
that Angleton ever ordered an active
investigation of Kissinger or ever
assigned his case a codename.@s1@s0
Kissinger's Chinese side was very
much in evidence during 1971-73 and
beyond; during these years he was
obsessed with anything remotely
connected with China and sought to
monopolize decisions and contacts with
the highest levels of the Chinese
leadership. This attitude was dictated
most of all by the British mentality
and geopolitical considerations
indicated above, but it is also
unquestionable that Kissinger felt a
strong personal affinity for Zhou
Enlai, Mao Zedong, and the other
Chinese leaders, who had been
responsible for the genocide of 100
million of their own people after 1949.
Kissinger possessed other
dimensions in addition to these,
including close links to the Zionist
underworld. These will also loom large
in George Bush's career.
For all of these Kissingerian
enormities, Bush now became the
principal spokesman. In the process, he
was to become a Kissinger clone.
The China Card
The defining events in the
first year of Bush's U.N. tenure
reflected Kissinger's geoplitical
obsession with his China card. Remember
that in his 1964 campaign, Bush had
stated that Red China must never be
admitted to the U.N. and that if Beijing
ever obtained the Chinese seat on the
Security Council, the U.S.A. must depart
forthwith from the world body. This
statement came back to haunt him once
or twice. His stock answer went like
this: ``That was 1964, a long time ago.
There's been an awful lot changed
since.... A person who is unwilling to
admit that changes have taken place is
out of things these days. President
Nixon is not being naive in his
China policy. He is recognizing the
realities of today, not the realities
of seven years ago.''
One of the realities of 1971 was
that the bankrupt British had declared
themselves to be financially unable to
maintain their military presence in the
Indian Ocean and the Far East, in the
area ``East of Suez.'' Part of the
timing of the Kissinger China card was
dictated by the British desire to
acquire China as a counterweight to
India in this vast area of the world,
and also to insure a U.S. military
presence in the Indian Ocean, as seen
later in the U.S. development of an
important base on the island of Diego
Garcia.
On a world tour during 1969, Nixon
had told President Yahya Khan, the
dictator of Pakistan, that his
administration wanted to normalize
relations with Red China and wanted the
help of the Pakistani government in
exchanging messages. Regular meetings
between the United States and Beijing
had gone on for many years in Warsaw,
but what Nixon was talking about was a
total reversal of U.S. China policy. Up
until 1971, the U.S.A. had recognized
the government of the Republic of China
on Taiwan as the sole sovereign and
legitimate authority over China. The
United States, unlike Britain, France,
and many other Western countries, had
no diplomatic relations with the
Beijing Communist regime.
The Chinese seat among the five
permanent members of the United Nations
Security Council was held by the
government in Taipei. Every year in the
early autumn there was an attempt by
the non-aligned bloc to oust Taipei
from the Security Council and replace
them with Beijing, but so far this vote
had always failed because of U.S.
arm-twisting in Latin America and the
rest of the Third World. One of the
reasons that this arrangement had
endured so long was the immense
prestige of R.O.C. President Chiang
Kai-shek and the sentimental popularity
of the Kuomintang with the American
electorate. There still was a very
powerful China lobby, which was
especially strong among right-wing
Republicans of what had been the Taft
and Knowland factions of the party, and
which Goldwater continued. Now, in the
midst of the Vietnam War, with U.S.
strategic and economic power in
decline, the Anglo-American elite
decided in favor of a geopolitical
alliance with China against the Soviets
for the foreseeable future. This meant
that the honor of U.S. commitments to
the R.O.C. had to be dumped overboard
as so much useless ballast, whatever
the domestic political consequences
might be. This was the task given to
Kissinger, Nixon, and George Bush.
The maneuver on the agenda for
1971 was to oust the R.O.C. from the
U.N. Security Council and assign their
seat to Beijing. Kissinger and Nixon
calculated that duplicity would
insulate them from domestic political
damage: While they were opening to
Beijing, they would call for a ``two
Chinas'' policy, under which both
Beijing and Taipei would be represented
at the U.N., at least in the General
Assembly, despite the fact that this
was an alternative that both Chinese
governments vehemently rejected. The
U.S.A. would pretend to be fighting to
keep Taipei in the U.N., with George
Bush leading the fake charge, but this
effort would be defeated. Then the
Nixon administration could claim that
the vote in the U.N. was beyond its
control, comfortably resign itself to
Beijing in the Security Council, and
pursue the China card. What was called
for was a cynical, duplicitous
diplomatic charade in which Bush would
have the leading part.
This scenario was complicated by
the rivalry between Secretary of State
Rogers and NSC boss Kissinger. Rogers
was an old friend of Nixon, but it was
of course Kissinger who made foreign
policy for Nixon and the rest of the
government, and Kissinger who was
incomparably the greater evil. Between
Rogers and Kissinger, Bush was
unhesitatingly on the side of
Kissinger. In later congressional
testimony, former CIA official Ray
Cline tried to argue that Rogers and
Bush were kept in the dark by Nixon and
Kissinger about the real nature of the
U.S. China policy. The implication is
that Bush's efforts to keep Taiwan at
the U.N. were in good faith. According
to Cline's fantastic account, ``Nixon
and Kissinger actually `undermined' the
department's efforts in 1971 to save
Taiwan.''@s1@s1 Rogers may have
believed that helping Taiwan was U.S.
policy, but Bush did not. Cline's
version of these events is an insult to
the intelligence of any serious person.
The Nixon-era China card took
shape during July 1971 with Kissinger's
``Operation Marco Polo I,'' his secret
first trip to Beijing. Kissinger says in
his memoirs that Bush was considered a
candidate to make this journey, along
with David Bruce, Elliot Richardson,
Nelson Rockefeller, and Al Haig.@s1@s2
Kissinger first journeyed to India, and
then to Pakistan. From there, with the
help of Yahya Khan, Kissinger went on
to Beijing for meetings with Zhou Enlai
and other Chinese officals. He returned
by way of Paris, where he met with
North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho
at the Paris talks on Indo-China.
Returning to Washington, Kissinger
briefed Nixon on his understanding with
Zhou. On July 15, 1971 Nixon announced
to a huge television and radio audience
that he had accepted ``with pleasure''
an invitation to visit China at some
occasion before May of 1972. He lamely
assured ``old friends'' (meaning Chiang
Kai-shek and the R.O.C. government on
Taiwan) that their interests would not
be sacrificed. Later in the same year,
between October 16 and 26,
Kissinger undertook operation ``Polo
II,'' a second, public visit with Zhou
in Beijing to decide the details of
Nixon's visit and hammer out what was
to become the U.S.-P.R.C. Shanghai
Communique, the joint statement issued
during Nixon's stay. During this visit,
Zhou cautioned Kissinger not to be
disoriented by the hostile Beijing
propaganda line against the U.S.A.,
manifestations of which were everywhere
to be seen. Anti-U.S. slogans on the
walls, said Zhou, were meaningless,
like ``firing an empty cannon.'' Nixon
and Kissinger eventually journeyed to
Beijing in February 1972.
U.N. `Two Chinas' Farce
It was before this backdrop that
Bush waged his farcical campaign to
keep Taiwan in the U.N. The State
Department had stated through the mouth
of Rogers on August 2 that the United
States would support the admission of Red
China to the U.N., but would oppose the
expulsion of Taiwan. This was the
so-called ``two Chinas'' policy. In an
August 12 interview, Bush told the
{Washington Post} that he was working
hard to line up the votes to keep
Taiwan as a U.N. member when the time
to vote came in the fall. Responding to
the obvious impression that this was a
fraud for domestic political purposes
only, Bush pledged his honor on Nixon's
commitment to ``two Chinas.'' ``I know
for a fact that the President wants to
see the policy implemented,'' said
Bush, apparently with a straight face,
adding that he had discussed the matter
with Nixon and Kissinger at the White
House only a few days before. Bush said
that he and other members of his
mission had lobbied 66 countries so
far, and that this figure was likely to
rise to 80 by the following week.
Ultimately Bush would claim to have
talked personlly with 94 delegations to
get them to let Taiwan stay, which a
fellow diplomat called ``a quantitative
track record.''
Diplomatic observers noted that
the U.S. activity was entirely confined
to the high-profile ``glass palace'' of
the U.N., and that virtually nothing
was being done by U.S. ambassadors in
capitals around the world. But Bush
countered that if it were just a
question of going through the motions
as a gesture for Taiwan, he would not
be devoting so much of his time and
energy to the cause. The main effort
was at the U.N. because ``this is what
the U.N. is for,'' he commented. Bush
said that his optimism about keeping
the Taiwan membership had increased
over the past three weeks.@s1@s3
By late September, Bush was saying
that he saw a better than 50-50 chance
that the U.N. General Assembly would
seat both Chinese governments. By this
time, the official U.S. position as
enunciated by Bush was that the
Security Council seat should go to
Beijing, but that Taipei ought to be
allowed to remain in the General
Assembly. Since 1961, the U.S. strategy
for blocking the admission of Beijing
had depended on a procedural defense,
obtaining a simple majority of the
General Assembly for a resolution
defining the seating of Beijing as an
Important Question, which required a
two-thirds majority in order to be
implemented. Thus, if the U.S.A. could
get a simple majority on the procedural
vote, one-third plus one would suffice
to defeat Beijing on the second vote.
The General Assembly convened on
September 21. Bush and his aides were
running a ludicrous full-court press on
scores of delegations. Twice a day,
there was a State Department briefing
on the vote tally. ``Yes, Burundi is
with us.... About Argentina we're not
sure,'' etc. All this attention got
Bush an appearance on {Face the
Nation,} where he said that the
two-Chinas policy should be approved
regardless of the fact that both Beijing
and Taipei rejected it. ``I don't think
we have to go through the agony of
whether the Republic of China will
accept or whether Beijing will accept,''
Bush told the interviewers. ``Let the
United Nations for a change do
something that really does face up to
reality and then let that decision be
made by the parties involved,'' said
Bush with his usual inimitable
rhetorical flair.
The U.N. debate on the China seat
was scheduled to open on October 18; on
October 12, Nixon gave a press
conference in which he totally ignored
the subject, and made no appeal for
support for Taiwan. On October 16,
Kissinger departed with great fanfare
for Beijing. Kissinger says in his
memoirs that he had been encouraged to
go to Beijing by Bush, who assured him
that a highly publicized Kissinger trip
to Beijing would have no impact whatever
on the U.N. vote. On October 25, the
General Assembly defeated the U.S.
resolution to make the China seat an
Important Question by a vote of 59 to
54, with 15 abstentions. Ninety minutes
later came the vote on the Albanian
resolution to seat Beijing and expel
Taipei, which passed by a vote of 76 to
35. Bush then cast the U.S. vote to
seat Beijing, and then hurried to escort
the R.O.C. delegate, Liu Chieh, out of
the hall for the last time. The General
Assembly was the scene of a jubilant
demonstration led by Third World
delegates over the fact that Red China
had been admitted, and even more so
that the United States had been defeated. The
Tanzanian delegate danced a jig in the
aisle. Henry Kissinger, flying back
from Beijing, got the news on his
teletype and praised Bush's ``valiant
efforts.''
Having connived in selling Taiwan
down the river, it was now an easy
matter for the Nixon regime to fake a
great deal of indignation for domestic
political consumption about what had
happened. Nixon's spokesman Ron Ziegler
declared that Nixon had been outraged
by the ``spectacle'' of the ``cheering,
handclapping, and dancing'' delegates
after the vote, which Nixon had seen as
a ``shocking demonstration'' of
``undisguised glee'' and ``personal
animosity.'' Notice that Ziegler had
nothing to say against the vote, or
against Beijing, but concentrated the
fire on the Third World delegates, who
were also threatened with a cutoff of
U.S. foreign aid.
This was the line that Bush would
slavishly follow. On the last day of
October, the papers quoted him saying
that the demonstration after the vote
was ``something ugly, something harsh
that transcended normal disappointment
or elation.'' ``I really thought we
were going to win,'' said Bush, still
with a straight face. ``I'm so ...
disappointed.'' ``There wasn't just
clapping and enthusiasm'' after the
vote, he whined. ``When I went up to
speak I was hissed and booed. I don't
think it's good for the United Nations
and that's the point I feel very
strongly about.'' In the view of a
{Washington Post} staff writer, ``the
boyish looking U.S. ambassador to the
United Nations looked considerably the
worse for wear. But he still conveys
the impression of an earnest fellow
trying to be the class valedictorian,
as he once was described.''@s1@s4
Bush expected the Beijing
delegation to arrive in new York soon,
because they probably wanted to take
over the presidency of the Security
Council, which rotated on a monthly
basis. ``But why anybody would want an
early case of chicken pox, I don't
know,'' said Bush.
When the Beijing delegation did
arrive, Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister
Ch'aio Kuan-hua delivered a maiden
speech full of ideological bombast
along the lines of passages Kissinger
had convinced Zhou to cut out of the
draft text of the Shanghai communique
some days before. Kissinger then
telephoned Bush to say in his own
speech that the United States regretted
that the Chinese had elected to
inaugurate their participation in the
U.N. by ``firing these empty cannons of
rhetoric.'' Bush, like a
ventriloquist's dummy, obediently
mouthed Kissinger's one-liner as a kind
of coded message to Beijing that all
the public bluster meant nothing
between the two secret and increasingly
public allies.
Notes
1.
In 1970, Bush's portfolio
included 29 companies in which he had
an interest of more than $4,000. He had
10,000 shares of American General
Insurance Co., 5,500 shares of American
Standard, 200 shares of AT&T, 832
shares of CBS, and 581 shares of
Industries Exchange Fund. He also held
stock in the Kroger Company, Simplex
Wire and Cable Co. (25,000 shares),
IBM, and Allied Chemical. In addition,
he had created a trust fund for his
children.
2.
James Reston, Jr., {The Lone
Star: The Life of John Connally} (New
York: Harper & Row, 1989), p. 380.
3.
William Safire, {Before the
Fall} (New York: Doubleday, 1977), p.
646.
4.
Walter Pincus and Bob Woodward,
``Presidential Posts and Dashed
Hopes,'' {Washington Post,} Aug. 9,
1988.
5.
Reston, {op. cit.,} p. 382.
6.
George Bush and Victor Gold,
{Looking Forward} (New York: Doubleday,
1987), p. 110.
7.
For the Nixon side of the Bush
U.N. appointment, see William Safire,
{op. cit.,} especially ``The President
Falls in Love,'' pp. 642 {ff.}
8.
Reston, {op. cit.,} p. 382.
Reston (pp. 586-87) tells the story of
how, years later in the 1980 Iowa
caucuses campaign when both Bush and
Connally were in the race, Bush was
enraged by Connally's denigration of
his manhood in remarks to Texans that
Bush was `all hat and no cattle.' Bush
was walking by a television set in the
Hotel Fort Des Moines when Connally
came on the screen. Bush reached out
toward Connally's image on the screen
as if to shake hands. Then Bush
screamed, ``Thank you, sir, for all the
kind things you and your friends have
been saying about me!'' Then Bush
slammed his fist on the top of the set,
yelling ``That prick!''
9.
On Kissinger, see Scott
Thompson and Joseph Brewda, ``Kissinger
Associates: Two Birds in the Bush,''
{Executive Intelligence
Review,} March 3, 1989.
10.
Tom Mangold, {Cold
Warrior}, (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1991), p. 305.
11.
See Tad Szulc, {The Illusion
of Peace} (New York: Viking Press,
1978), p. 498.
12.
Henry Kissinger, {White
House Years} (Boston: Little,
Brown, 1979), p. 715.
13.
Szulc, {op. cit.,} p. 500, and
{Washington Post,} Aug. 12, 1971.
14.
{Washington Post,} Oct. 31,
1971.
---- John Covici
[email protected]
