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In reply to the discussion: Why was Reagan not impeached for Iran Contra? [View all]Octafish
(55,745 posts)105. George Herbert Walker Bush.
George Bush Takes Charge: The Uses of Counter-Terrorism
By Christopher Simpson
Covert Action Quarterly 58
A paper trail of declassified documents from the Reagan‑Bush era yields valuable information on how counter‑terrorism provided a powerful mechanism for solidifying Bush's power base and launching a broad range of national security initiatives.
During the Reagan years, George Bush used "crisis management" and "counter‑terrorism" as vehicles for running key parts of the clandestine side of the US government.
Bush proved especially adept at plausible denial. Some measure of his skill in avoiding responsibility can be taken from the fact that even after the Iran‑Contra affair blew the Reagan administration apart, Bush went on to become the "foreign policy president," while CIA Director William Casey, by then conveniently dead, took most of the blame for a number of covert foreign policy debacles that Bush had set in motion.
The trail of National Security Decision Directives (NSDDS) left by the Reagan administration begins to tell the story. True, much remains classified, and still more was never committed to paper in the first place. Even so, the main picture is clear: As vice president, George Bush was at the center of secret wars, political murders, and America's convoluted oil politics in the Middle East.
SNIP...
Reagan and the NSC also used NSDDs to settle conflicts among security agencies over bureaucratic turf and lines of command. It is through that prism that we see the first glimmers of Vice President Bush's role in clandestine operations during the 1980s.
SNIP...
NSDD 159. MANAGEMENT OF U.S. COVERT OPERATIONS, (TOP SECRET/VEIL‑SENSITIVE), JAN. 18,1985
The Reagan administration's commitment to significantly expand covert operations had been clear since before the 1980 election. How such operations were actually to be managed from day to day, however, was considerably less certain. The management problem became particularly knotty owing to legal requirements to notify congressional intelligence oversight committees of covert operations, on the one hand, and the tacitly accepted presidential mandate to deceive those same committees concerning sensitive operations such as the Contra war in Nicaragua, on the other.
[font color="green"]The solution attempted in NSDD 159 was to establish a small coordinating committee headed by Vice President George Bush through which all information concerning US covert operations was to be funneled. The order also established a category of top secret information known as Veil, to be used exclusively for managing records pertaining to covert operations.
The system was designed to keep circulation of written records to an absolute minimum while at the same time ensuring that the vice president retained the ability to coordinate US covert operations with the administration's overt diplomacy and propaganda.
Only eight copies of NSDD 159 were created. The existence of the vice president's committee was itself highly classified.[/font color] The directive became public as a result of the criminal prosecutions of Oliver North, John Poindexter, and others involved in the Iran‑Contra affair, hence the designation "Exhibit A" running up the left side of the document.
CONTINUED...
CovertAction Quarterly no 58 Fall 1996 pp31-40.
By Christopher Simpson
Covert Action Quarterly 58
A paper trail of declassified documents from the Reagan‑Bush era yields valuable information on how counter‑terrorism provided a powerful mechanism for solidifying Bush's power base and launching a broad range of national security initiatives.
During the Reagan years, George Bush used "crisis management" and "counter‑terrorism" as vehicles for running key parts of the clandestine side of the US government.
Bush proved especially adept at plausible denial. Some measure of his skill in avoiding responsibility can be taken from the fact that even after the Iran‑Contra affair blew the Reagan administration apart, Bush went on to become the "foreign policy president," while CIA Director William Casey, by then conveniently dead, took most of the blame for a number of covert foreign policy debacles that Bush had set in motion.
The trail of National Security Decision Directives (NSDDS) left by the Reagan administration begins to tell the story. True, much remains classified, and still more was never committed to paper in the first place. Even so, the main picture is clear: As vice president, George Bush was at the center of secret wars, political murders, and America's convoluted oil politics in the Middle East.
SNIP...
Reagan and the NSC also used NSDDs to settle conflicts among security agencies over bureaucratic turf and lines of command. It is through that prism that we see the first glimmers of Vice President Bush's role in clandestine operations during the 1980s.
SNIP...
NSDD 159. MANAGEMENT OF U.S. COVERT OPERATIONS, (TOP SECRET/VEIL‑SENSITIVE), JAN. 18,1985
The Reagan administration's commitment to significantly expand covert operations had been clear since before the 1980 election. How such operations were actually to be managed from day to day, however, was considerably less certain. The management problem became particularly knotty owing to legal requirements to notify congressional intelligence oversight committees of covert operations, on the one hand, and the tacitly accepted presidential mandate to deceive those same committees concerning sensitive operations such as the Contra war in Nicaragua, on the other.
[font color="green"]The solution attempted in NSDD 159 was to establish a small coordinating committee headed by Vice President George Bush through which all information concerning US covert operations was to be funneled. The order also established a category of top secret information known as Veil, to be used exclusively for managing records pertaining to covert operations.
The system was designed to keep circulation of written records to an absolute minimum while at the same time ensuring that the vice president retained the ability to coordinate US covert operations with the administration's overt diplomacy and propaganda.
Only eight copies of NSDD 159 were created. The existence of the vice president's committee was itself highly classified.[/font color] The directive became public as a result of the criminal prosecutions of Oliver North, John Poindexter, and others involved in the Iran‑Contra affair, hence the designation "Exhibit A" running up the left side of the document.
CONTINUED...
CovertAction Quarterly no 58 Fall 1996 pp31-40.
Then, Poppy Bush pardoned his fellow conspirators.
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It is a club, and you sure as hell are not part of it. But if you wanna feel really left
Jackie Wilson Said
Mar 2016
#1
Impeached and jailed. But he wasnt because of that club you talk about, funny
Jackie Wilson Said
Mar 2016
#8
It is a club and RW Dems like Lee Hamilton are just as much a part as Reagan. Perhaps more.
leveymg
Mar 2016
#65
Because Reagan went on television and confessed to trading arms for hostages
Tony_FLADEM
Mar 2016
#2
"My heart and my best intentions still tell me that is true. But the facts and the evidence
StevieM
Mar 2016
#28
The Democrats were afraid to go after Saint Ronnie. At times Democrats can be craven.
BillZBubb
Mar 2016
#4
They knew what his mental capacity was and also knew and feared the BFEE behind the scenes.
libtodeath
Mar 2016
#6
The media was uncomfortable with it - they knew then he was showing signs of serious
blm
Mar 2016
#7
Took this nation off its path of citizen democracy and put it on the road towards full-on fascism.
blm
Mar 2016
#92
I"ve often wondered why Mena is the one part of Clinton's past that the most rabid Repubs wouldn't
Boomerproud
Mar 2016
#47
At the time, one news correspondent opined that the U. S. populace "gave him a pass."
John1956PA
Mar 2016
#15
What I understand is they questioned him about it and he didn't know anything..this was
shraby
Mar 2016
#23
Years later George W. Bush gave Poindexter a job in the War on Terror after 9/11
StevieM
Mar 2016
#34
Right. Poindexter made sure the trail (apparently) ended with him, unlike the Watergate hearings,
Mc Mike
Mar 2016
#37
Because imbeciles believed his grandpa act that he "didn't know anything about it"
tabasco
Mar 2016
#40
His grandpa act put a friendly face on the mafia that was running the country.
tabasco
Apr 2016
#109
Because William Casey, the person that authorized the weapons for hostages...
Lochloosa
Mar 2016
#49
Reagan was suffering from dementia. Bush Sr. was in all likelihood the real President.
jalan48
Mar 2016
#54
He and a lot of his cabinet used the now famous "I can't recall" defense under questioning....
Spitfire of ATJ
Mar 2016
#61
Because they knew in advance to make sure he couldn't be. No one implicated him.
L. Coyote
Mar 2016
#62
When prosecutor Walsh (a Republican) realized how advanced Reagan's alzheimer's was he decided ...
raindaddy
Mar 2016
#64
Because then, as now, the dc dems are gutless appeasers. Every republican president since Nixon
Doctor_J
Mar 2016
#66
Open and shut case for high treason (which, not sorry Repubs, Iran-Contra very much was).
HughBeaumont
Mar 2016
#85
they couldnt, everyone would have seen how far his dementia had progressed.
Viva_La_Revolution
Mar 2016
#90