The Man Who Killed Kennedy

by Roger Stone, Mike Colapietro

  In 1963, George “Poppy” Bush was serving as Chairman of the Harris County (Houston) Republican Committee and was warming up for a 1964 US Senate bid. There, he presided over a rift in the local GOP between the country club moderates who had migrated to Houston and a deeply conservative faction aligned with the John Birch Society. Despite the Bush family’s longtime closeness to the Rockefellers, Bush would join his fellow Texans for Barry Goldwater in 1964 and asked his Senator father to withhold his endorsement of Rockefeller.4

  In the 1964 Republican senate primary, Bush was opposed by Jack Cox, who had made a valiant run as the Republican candidate for Governor in 1962, and Robert Morris, who served on the chief counsel of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Internal Security through the 1950s. Morris ran for the Republican US Senate nomination in 1964 and 1970 and was defeated both times. Bush defeated Cox in the runoff, 62–38 percent, to win the GOP nomination. Morris endorsed Cox nonetheless.

  Bush waged a spirited and peripatetic campaign. To his credit, he refused to write off African–American or Mexican-American votes. Bush ran to the right: He denounced the United Nations and pledged to vote against Kennedy on civil rights. Like Barry Goldwater, he argued federal enforcement of civil rights was a violation of states’ rights. Although Bush got two hundred thousand more votes in the state than Barry Goldwater, more than any Republican ever had, Texans voted the ticket led by their native son Lyndon Johnson. Bush was trounced by Senator Ralph Yarborough.

  In 1985, a memo dated November 29, 1963 from FBI director Hoover came to light in which he discussed reactions among Cuban exiles to the JFK assassination. Hoover said, “George Bush of the CIA had been briefed … .”

  In 1988, reporting for The Nation, Joseph McBride asked Vice President George Bush’s office for comment. Bush’s representatives claimed that he “didn’t know what you are talking about.” Bush also said it “must be another George Bush.”

  At first, the CIA said that there was no employee named George Bush at the CIA in 1963. After McBride wrote his story, the CIA would change theirs. There was a George William Bush detailed from another agency in 1963, but the CIA could not find him. McBride didn’t have trouble finding him—he was still on the payroll. George William Bush said that he had been detailed only briefly to the agency and denied knowing anything about a briefing regarding anti-Castro elements and what they might do in the wake of Kennedy’s murder. In fact, George William Bush was a lowly clerk. Did the CIA plant this George Bush as a “cut-out” to shield the real George Bush?

  In 1988, a second FBI document was revealed. In a memo from Houston FBI agent in charge, Graham Kitchel, (whose brother George Kitchel was a Bush political supporter and friend), it was reported that George Bush had called the Houston FBI bureau with a tip on November 22, 1963 at 1:58 p.m., only six minutes after Walter Cronkite would announce to the world that JFK was dead. This memo makes Bush’s claim that he could not remember where he was on November 22, 1963 all the more incredible.

  Before leaving for Dallas, Bush called the Houston FBI field office at 1:45 p.m. and promptly identified himself and his location in Tyler, Texas. “Bush stated that he wanted [the call] to be kept confidential but wanted to furnish hearsay that he recalled hearing in recent days … He stated that one James Milton Parrott has been talking of killing the president when he comes to Houston.”

  Bush dropped a dime on an unemployed twenty-four-year-old Air Force veteran who had been honorably discharged, albeit upon the recommendation of a psychiatrist. During questioning, Parrott acknowledged that he was a member of the Texas Young Republicans and had been active in picketing members of the Kennedy administration. He also insisted that he had not threatened the president’s life.

  Parrott was a member of the ultra-rightwing John Birch Society and had vigorously opposed Bush during his campaign for GOP chairman of Harris County—a major offense to Bush running for a minor office, and he never forgot the offender. Parrott had been painting “Bush for Senate? signs when the FBI arrived to question him. Ironically, Parrott would surface again—as a volunteer for George Bush’s 1988 Presidential campaign. Was Parrott also a Patsy?

  Here’s how Poppy covered his tracks on that day: George registered himself and Barbara Bush for a two-night stay at the Dallas Sheraton November 21 and 22. On the morning of November 22, after their first night in Dallas, they flew by private plane to Tyler, Texas, about one hundred miles away, where the GOP Senate candidate was to speak at a local Kiwanis Club luncheon.

  According to an eyewitness account published in Kitty Kelley’s The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty, Bush had just started to speak when news of the shooting reached the club. “I gave the news to the president of the club, Wendell Cherry, and he leaned over to tell George that wires from Dallas confirmed President Kennedy had been assassinated,” Aubrey Irby recalled in the book.

  “George stopped his speech and told the audience what had happened. ‘In view of the president’s death,’ he said, ‘I consider it inappropriate to continue with a political speech at this time. Thank you very much for your attention.’ Then he sat down.”

  Who could forget such a moment? More importantly, why would Bush lie about it? Because he was attempting to cover his trail and make a plausible denial case against personal involvement, just as CIA agents are instructed?

  In 1994, Barbara Bush, or “Bar” as she was known, published, Barbara Bush: A Memoir, in which she revealed the actual “letter” that she had written on the very day, at the very moment, that Kennedy was shot. The letter has plenty of details, but curiously does not mention George H. W. Bush’s call to Hoover’s boys in Houston.

  “On November 22, 1963, George and I were in the middle of a several-city swing. I was getting my hair done in Tyler, Texas, working on a letter home.

  “Dearest family, Wednesday, I took Doris Ulmer out for lunch. They were here from England, and they had been so nice to George in Greece. That night we went to … .”

  I am writing this at the Beauty Parlor, and the radio says that the president has been shot. Oh Texas—my Texas—my God—let’s hope it’s not true. I am sick at heart as we all are. Yes, the story is true and the Governor also. How hateful some people are.

  Since the beauty parlor, the president has died. We are once again on a plane. This time a commercial plane. Poppy picked me up at the beauty parlor—we went right to the airport, flew to Ft. Worth and dropped Mr. Zeppo off (we were on his plane) and flew back to Dallas. We had to circle the field while the second presidential plane took off. Immediately, Pop got tickets back to Houston, and here we are flying home. We are sick at heart. The tales the radio reporters tell of Jackie Kennedy are the bravest I’ve ever heard. The rumors are flying about that horrid assassin. We are hoping that it is not some far-right nut, but a “commie” nut. You understand that we know they are both nuts, but just hope that it is not a Texan and not an American at all.

  I am amazed by the rapid-fire thinking and planning that has already been done. LBJ has been the president for some time now—two hours at least and it is only 4:30.

  My dearest love to you all,

  Bar

  Exactly to whom this letter was mailed has never been made clear and the original is not known to exist.

  Note the jab at LBJ. Bar had no idea. The documents reversing JFK’s Vietnam policies were drafted before his death and were executed on November 23.5

  On the night of November 21, 1963, “Poppy” attended an oil contractors’ association meeting in Dallas, and he stayed for drinks afterward. This would seem to preclude his presence at a party at the home of Clint Murchison, which Oliver Stone made iconic in his movie Nixon. I believe this Murchison affair did take place, and I believe that Nixon was there but left early. I think LBJ did come late. Jack Ruby would supply the girls to entertain the business and government titans, according to Brown.

  Barbara said that their friend Zappo’s private plane transported them to Tyler. This was, in fact, oilma
n Joe Zeppa, partners with Bush friend John Alston Crichton in a private offshore drilling company. Swashbuckling rightwing oilman Jack Crichton had deep ties to Army intelligence and the events of November 22, 1963. Fabian Escalante, the chief of a Cuban counterintelligence unit during the late 1950s and early 1960s, George Bush and Jack Crichton, both Texas oilmen, gathered the necessary funds for the operation to assassinate Castro. In fact, Crichton is woven into the fabric of the Kennedy assassination.

  The Bush’s entertaining a spy and his wife is yet another curious Agency tie. According to Barbara Bush, she and her husband had lunch with longtime CIA operative Alfred Ulmer and his wife Dorothy during the week of November 22. Thus, George and Barbara were drinking Bloody Marys with an expert on assassination and coup d’état only days before the assassination of JFK. This is particularly curious in view of the fact that Bush would deny any connection to the CIA prior him becoming director in 1975.

  In 1966, Texas Republicans won a surprise victory in court mandating congressional redistricting. A new Houston district was carved for Bush—it was “country club” and heavily Republican. George H. W. Bush would go to Congress and quickly become a water-carrier for Big Oil, a defender of the oil-depletion allowance and a proponent of the Texas defense contractors. Prescott Bush pulled strings to get his son appointed to the powerful Ways and Means Committee, a key assignment with real fundraising potential for another Senate race.

  Bush and his father were major backers of Richard Nixon in his 1968 comeback bid. Together with Texas business associates Hugh Liedke and Robert Mosbacher, the Bush’s raised big money for Nixon’s bid. Once Nixon was nominated, Bush would mount the first of his drives to be selected for vice president. Although only in Congress four years, George and Prescott Bush orchestrated an effort to get major party figures to urge Nixon to take “Poppy” as his running mate. Prescott Bush would get Tom Dewey, instrumental in Nixon’s own selection as vice president, to urge Nixon to take the young Texan on the ticket. Texas Senator John Tower, elected in a special election to fill Johnson’s senate seat in 1961, pushed Bush with Nixon. So did the CEOs of Chase Manhattan, J. P. Stevens, and Pennzoil. Of course, Brown Brother Harriman weighed in.

  William Middendorf, II, a longtime GOP fundraiser for Barry Goldwater, Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Reagan who later served as Secretary of the Navy, claimed that he had worked the 1968 GOP convention to line up support for Bush. On the day after Nixon was nominated, Middendorf said that his associate, New York financier Jerry Milbank, went to Nixon’s hotel room to talk about the vice presidential choices. “It was pretty early, I think it was about 7:30, I think it was his bedroom, actually, reading the paper. I said we’ve got delegates pretty much lined up for George, and it looks like he’d be a very popular choice among the delegates,” Middendorf recalled. “That’s when he told me that, ‘Oh, gee, fellas, I’m going with my man Spiro T. Agnew,’” the little-known governor of Maryland who would later resign in a scandal.6

  Prescott Bush was furious with Nixon’s passing over Poppy for the little-known Agnew; he would share his anger in a letter to Tom Dewey, the Eastern Kingmaker who had “made” Eisenhower.7

  Warming up for a rematch with Yarborough, Bush courted LBJ on the theory that, once out of office, LBJ would rally the Texas Bourbon Democrats against his hated enemy, Yarborough. In 1970, Bush was the only Republican member of the Texas congressional delegation to see LBJ off at Andrews Air Force base rather than attend Nixon’s inaugural festivities. Bush traveled to the LBJ ranch to seek Johnson’s “advice” about leaving his House seat to challenge Yarborough. Johnson would urge him to run, saying that the difference between the House and Senate was like the difference between “chicken salad and chicken shit.” After he landed a seat on the House Ways and Means Committee, many of the oil barons who had financed LBJ’s career became Bush donors. As he had in 1964, Bush also raised hundreds of thousands from well-connected donors back East.

  Bush’s election to the Senate in 1970 was considered a cakewalk. The Ways and Means seat brought vast fundraising capability, Texas had moved right, the Republican Party in Texas had grown, and Yarborough was out of step with the new Texas. Bush was again opposed in the Republican Primary by Robert Morris. This time, the primary was a rout. Bush won with 96,806 votes (87.6 percent) to Morris’s 13,654 ballots (12.4 percent). Morris would move back to New Jersey where he had already run once in the Republican primary for the Senate in 1958 against Representative Robert W. Kean, veteran congressman and father of future New Jersey governor Tom Kean. Morris ran again in 1982—and lost again—to the stunning Hungarian-American mayor of Montclair, Mary Mochary.

  Bush had the nomination, but LBJ and his protégé John Connally were lying in wait to sandbag him.

  Lloyd Bentsen, a conservative Democrat who served in the House with Johnson and was his neighbor on the Pedernales River, jumped into the Democratic Primary. John Connally made thirty-second TV ads endorsing Bentsen. LBJ told Bush that he was “neutral,” but Johnson’s friends did his bidding. Yarborough lost the Democratic primary in an upset.

  Poppy had prepared for six years for a race against Yarborough. Now, he faced a smooth Bourbon Democrat to his right. An attempt to get Democrat liberals to cross over for Bush fizzled. Bentsen ran well with Mexican-Americans and blacks yet held conservative Democrats, who would have deserted Yarborough.

  Bush brought in Harry Trealeven who, with the skillful Roger Ailes, remade Nixon’s TV image in 1968—no small feat. Trealeven staged the penultimate modern media campaign, showing Bush as handsome, friendly, energetic, and glamorous. This “Kennedyesque” appeal was devoid of substance to attract both pro–Nixon conservatives and liberals upset with the Yarborough loss. Bush’s slogan “He Can Do More” boasted of his “connections.” Bush was depicted as dashing here and there, jacket slung over his shoulder, playing touch football. He outspent Bentsen—even Nixon sent $100,000 from his secret Townhouse fund. This particular gift would come back to bite “Poppy.”

  Bush’s brother Jonathan Bush said that George was “getting in position to run for president.”8 Peter Roussel, Bush’s highly regarded press aide from 1970 to 1974 said “There were high hopes for him in that race. It was one of the premier races of that year, and a lot of people thought, well, Bush is going to win this Senate race, and there’s probably a good chance that’ll be the stepping stone for him ultimately going to run for president.”9 Bush lost, however.

  I attended John Jay High School in Katonah, New York with Marvin Pierce II, or “Peter” Pierce as he was called. I ran with Peter—he was a crazy motherfucker. George H. W. Bush was Peter’s uncle—his father, Jim Pierce, was Barbara Bush’s brother. I drank a lot of beer, smoked a lot of marijuana, and drove a lot of cars too fast with “Pete,” who was a big supporter of his uncle in the 1970 Texas Senate race.

  I was volunteering for the New York campaign of Jim Buckley for the Senate at the time, and I recall spending election night with Pete. We were in his car, drinking beer and listening to returns on the radio. I was exultant because Conservative Party nominee Jim Buckley was winning a three-way race with liberal Republican Charles Goodell and Democrat Richard Ottinger. Bill Brock won in Tennessee. J. Glen Beall snagged a Senate seat in Maryland, Lowell Weicker (then a Nixon man) won in Connecticut over Reverend Joe Duffy, a far-left anti-war Democrat and disgraced incumbent Tom Dodd running as an Independent. Then came the news out of Texas: Bush had lost to Lloyd Bentsen, a creation of LBJ and John Connally.

  Peter was inconsolable. “My uncle said LBJ is a prick. Years of kissing his ass, and he decides to settle an old score—and screw George Bush in the mean time,” he said. I was a Bush man, too, and had written him a letter telling him that I would come to Texas in the summer to volunteer for his Senate campaign. I got a response from his assistant Tom Lias brushing me off, so instead I did volunteer work for Buckley all summer.

  “My uncle is going to be president someday,” Pete said. At that time, I doubted he was rig
ht. Pete was later badly injured in a car crash in which his female passenger died. He passed away in 2012.

  As a victim of two unsuccessful Senate campaigns, Bush’s political future was in doubt. For the next eighteen years, he was not in control of his political career. He was well suited to advance his career by serving others in administrative posts, but it seemed a dead end. When Nixon offered him an insignificant job as assistant to the president, Bush made his case for more.

  When Bush heard that Nixon Treasury Secretary David Kennedy was leaving, he inquired of the president for the job. He was shocked to learn that his nemesis John Connally would be taking that job. “Bush hated Connally,” David Keene, Bush’s 1980 political honcho told me at the time. Bush sold Nixon on going to the UN as ambassador. Poppy got to brush up his foreign policy credentials and attend endless cocktail parties. He wrote notes, kept in touch with his friends, and bided his time.

  Kissinger and Nixon both considered Bush a lightweight. He was never told of the back channel communiqués with the Communist Chinese. He staked himself out at the UN as a hardliner for Nationalist China and against the Reds. Poppy was kept in the dark about Nixon’s visit to China. George and Barbara Bush lived blissfully ignorant in a sumptuous double apartment at the Waldorf Towers, with Herbert Hoover and Mrs. Douglas MacArthur as their neighbors.

  Bob Dole served Nixon well as chairman of the Republican National Committee. Day-to-day operations were run by co-chair Thomas B. Evans, Jr., later a Delaware Congressman and an important early supporter of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Nixon decided to sack Dole for no other good reason other than he had gotten beaten up for attacking Democrats on behalf of Nixon. The president asked Bush to take Dole’s place. “Dole is still pissed about it,” Scott Reed, the Kansas Senator’s 1996 campaign manager, told me in 2013.