Q: What do you make of the fact that George Bush, Sr. can't remember what he was doing the day JFK was assassinated?
A: Richard Pruett
Answered Jan 8, 2017
We shouldn't make too much of the fact that George H.W. "Poppy" Bush can't remember what he was doing at the time he learned that JFK was shot. After all, he's now well advanced in his years, suffering from dementia, as well as Parkinson's Disease. He no longer even recognizes Michelle Obama. Also, it's now been 53 years since Dallas. He’s lucky just to be alive, let alone remember the details of an alibi he fabricated so long ago, even one designed to hide his participation in the assassination of the President of the United States!
GHWB didn't even remember that he was in Dallas that day. According to FBI records, he had called the FBI 75 minutes after the assassination, claiming to be calling from Tyler, Texas--less than 100 miles from Dallas--with a tip that a Mr. James Parrott might have made some sort of vague threat against the president in 1961. Parrott denied he'd ever made a threat, and his mother claimed he'd been home with her in Houston all day on Nov. 22. Parrott just happened to be a political opponent of Bush, who was then running for the Senate. And yet thirty years later this same Parrott was working on GHWB's reelection campaign against Bill Clinton. Mighty big of Parrott to put aside the fact that Bush had tried to finger him for killing Kennedy! Or was Parrott's memory just as bad as Poppy's? The FBI's written record of the call noted that Bush had said he could be reached at the Dallas Sheraton in the event the FBI had any questions.
I guess the FBI didn't have any questions. But I have a few. First, of all, was Bush calling from Tyler, or was he really calling from Dallas, and how would the FBI know? Second, how can they be certain it was Bush making the phone call? Third, isn't that a photo of GHWB standing in one of his customary poses on the steps of the Texas School Book Depository, being questioned by police within minutes of the shooting?
In fact, isn't that actually GHWB in the process of being arrested? Dallas Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig was later quoted as saying: "Jim also asked me about the arrests made in Dealey Plaza that day. I told him I knew of twelve arrests, one in particular made by R.E. Vaughn of the Dallas Police Department. The man Vaughn arrested was coming from the Dal-Tex Building across from the Texas School Book Depository. The only thing which Vaughn knew about him was that he was an independent oil operator from Houston, Texas. The prisoner was taken from Vaughn by Dallas Police detectives and that was the last that he saw or heard of the suspect."
Well, folks were jeering anyone coming out of the Dal-Tex Building, and Bush didn't belong in the building, which might have seemed suspicious. The detectives in the corrupt DPD jumped in to give Bush a safety escort from the crime scene. That's one explanation. Or maybe it was just another independent oil operator from Houston, Texas, who seemed like a noteworthy arrest but never actually made it to booking -- thanks, it seems, to a higher-level intervention -- while, at the same time, his Doppelgänger just happened to be photographed on the scene with police.
Bush was 39 years old at the time. He was chairman of the Harris County (Houston) GOP and quite outspoken in his criticisms of Pres. Kennedy as he campaigned for the Senate seat his father, Prescott Bush, was vacating. He remembers that he was "somewhere in Texas" at the time of the assassination, which narrows it down to about a quarter-million square miles. And now we know that it was in or near Dallas, according to the tipster claiming to be Bush and giving his home address to the FBI, which narrows the area down very substantially. But, really, GHWB forgets he was in Dallas on the very day the President was shot there?
Bush's press office at first claimed now-Vice President Bush had never made the call. It challenged the authenticity of the FBI report. Then, several days later, an aide--always an aide--conceded that, well, Bush "does not recall" making the phone call.
The President was just murdered, Bush was in the same city that day, he called the FBI with a tip, but 15 years later, he's forgotten that he'd even called the FBI?
I was an eight-year old boy, stationed with my family in Germany, in November 1963. It was evening when the news of the shooting broke. My mother and I were alone, glued to the radio, then wept together when JFK's death was announced. That was 53 years ago. Yet, it seems that experience left a deeper impression on me than it did a 39-year old candidate for the U.S. Senate who was actually in Dallas that day and had even called the FBI with a tip about a possible assassin!
Bush never explained it. So let me ask you. Which rings true to you -- that Bush suffered from amnesia, Altzheimer's, or consciousness of guilt?
In his 1987 autobiography, Looking Forward, GWHB said his appointment to become CIA Director in 1975 under Pres. Gerald Ford had been "a real shocker,'' since his background was that of a ''non-professional outsider - and a politician to boot.'' He further noted, though: 'I'd come to the C.I.A. with some general knowledge of how it operated.'' This poor, humble absent-minded man seems to have forgotten that he'd worked for CIA for years, ever since he was recruited by CIA straight out of Skull and Bones at Yale. He seems to have forgotten who he had established Zapata Oil with CIA agent Thomas J Devine as a cover for his work with Richard Nixon, E. Howard Hunt, George de Mohrenschildt, and others laying preparations for the CIA's planned invasion of Cuba, using Cuban exiles landed at Cuba's Bay of Pigs. Two of the ships involved in Bay of Pigs were the Barbara and Houston. The CIA name for the project was later revealed as Operation Zapata. Were they all just coincidences, do you suppose?
Well, here's another funny coincidence for you. It didn't seem terribly newsworthy at the time, apparently, even though GHWB was then running for election as president against Michael Dukakis, but GHWB's earlier CIA cover was blown in 1988. Granted, we've just suffered through a particularly nasty election cycle, but even in earlier, more genteel times, one would think that the revelation that one of the candidates had perjured himself to the Congress by claiming no CIA links--when he was, in fact, a long-time CIA agent--might have been been made into an issue, or at least mentioned by the opposition. And yet, when reporter Joseph McBride found a memo under FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's own hand, noting how, on Nov. 23, 1963, "George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency" had been briefed with others regarding post-assassination sentiments in the Cuban-American community, the story didn't even cause a ripple.
This memo indicated both that Bush was already fairly senior CIA and that he was involved in issues pertaining to the U.S. Cuban community, as were Lee Harvey Oswald and so many of those accused of being the real participants in the conspiracy. Of course, Bush denied the report--through an aide, naturally--claiming he'd never joined the agency until 1975 ...as its director, no less. The aide said "it must have been another George Bush."
Bill Devine, a spokesman for the CIA (any relation to Thomas J.?) declined to comment, citing agency policy never to confirm or deny allegations of employment. But the agency soon broke its own policy — GHWB is a special case, I guess. Spokeswoman Sharon Basso said the FBI document "apparently" referred to a different former employee, George William Bush, who it couldn't locate.
With its thousands of employees and billions of dollars, the CIA couldn't locate George William Bush, but McBride could. He was working for the federal government. George William Bush swore an affidavit explaining that he'd worked for the CIA only as a low-level employee for a brief span of time during this period and had never received this, or indeed any other high-level, briefing. He sounded quite categorical about it. No mumbling about not being able to recall.
The story goes that George H.W. Bush once remarked: "if the American people knew what we'd done, they'd chase us down the street and lynch us." It seems like he must have been remembering SOMEthing! But was it with a sense of guilt ...or of gloating?
Something seemed to cross his mind when he was giving the eulogy for Pres. Ford. Ford, you'll recall, was the former FBI agent who won a seat in Congress and then was chosen by LBJ to serve on the Warren Commission. On the Commission he acted as FBI Director Hoover's proxy, even helping to concoct the Single Bullet Theory. Pres. Nixon named Ford his Vice President at the height of Watergate, and Ford returned the favor by pardoning Nixon soon after becoming president. Bush (GHW, not George William) declared that "after a deluded gunman assassinated President Kennedy, our nation turned to Gerald Ford and a select handful of others to make sense of that madness." It's just that Bush momentarily broke into a broad grin as he intoned the words "deluded gunman." A broad grin during a somber eulogy at the mention of "deluded gunman?" This is the sort of thing trained interviewers refer to as a micro-expression, the significance of which is that it almost reflexively belies the speaker's true feelings. As poor as Bush's memory has been, something seemed to jog his memory when he mentioned "deluded unman," and it was something he found amusing.
In fact, the American people had not turned "to Gerald Ford and the select handful of others to make sense of [the] madness." It was Lyndon Johnson, the man with the greatest means, opportunity and motive to arrange the assassination and cover-up, who selected the Commissioners, and only for the purpose of obfuscating the truth.
Maybe Bush had forgotten that, too. But somehow, I doubt it.
Thanks for reminding.
The Republican Party must NEVER AGAIN nominate a Bush, a Romney or a McCain.
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