FAMILY OF SECRETS, RUSS BAKER

From The Washington Post

by trying to explain everything, to create a unified field theory of American tragedy that has the Bushes as the key actors and beneficiaries

Baker's cornerstone is a memo, J. Edgar Hoover says the FBI spoke to "Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency" after John F. Kennedy's assassination. Baker then scrutinizes the elder Bush's movements on Nov. 22, 1963. On the morning of the assassination, he was in Dallas, then flew to Tyler, Tex., to speak at a luncheon (the speech was cancelled when the shooting was reported; Baker notes that Bush remained "supremely well composed''), then flew back to Dallas and on to Houston, but not before phoning the FBI from Tyler to report his suspicions that a Republican Party activist might have been involved in the killing. Add in a handful of Bush associates who had interesting (and in one case downright bizarre) connections to the event, the author's general distrust of right-wing oilmen,

But the Nation asked George H.W. Bush in 1988 if he were the person Hoover was referring to, and a spokesman for the then-vice president said no. The CIA produced another George Bush who had been on its staff at the time of the assassination, although that guy also denied having dealt with the FBI.



advances the possibility that the elder Bush was at least a minor asset to the CIA, and maybe more,

Bush became the CIA's director in 1976

scrutinizes the elder Bush's movements on Nov. 22, 1963. On the morning of the assassination, he was in Dallas