Interview · moment 4 of 14
How Poppy Bush Became CIA Director
from Live From The NY Comedy Festival (with Russ Baker) · #80
Audio-only archive episode — no video to seek.
7 minGuest
Russ traces how George H.W. Bush rose to CIA director despite no qualifications, revealing his family was already embedded with the agency, discusses Yale/CIA/Wall Street pipeline traditions, and jokes about aristocratic families designating a child to be a spy.
- 9:27George H.W. Bush claimed his first CIA involvement was as director in the 1970s, but the book reveals he was connected to the agency from its genesis.
- 10:51Tim traces the investigation back to wondering how George W. Bush became president when his major accomplishment was getting rich people to buy the Texas Rangers baseball team so he could wave at games.
- 11:55The father, despite being "kind of a doofus," somehow became president after serving as vice president, which came after becoming CIA director.
- 12:25New York Times articles presented Bush as a "surprise choice" for CIA director, claiming he was selected for his good looks and congressional background during a period of intense CIA scrutiny.
- 12:48The CIA had just admitted to killing people, overthrowing governments, conducting MKUltra mind control experiments, and the Church Committee was investigating them when Bush was appointed.
- 13:23They put a guy with no experience in intelligence in charge of the CIA, and the media didn't even question it.
- 13:56The author discovered through research that Bush actually was already in the CIA before becoming director, but was presented to the public as an outsider coming in to clean things up.
- 14:19Bush wasn't an outsider at all—he was part of the cover-up and one of the CIA's most loyal people with a long history of doing weird stuff.
- 14:52Everyone who attended Yale in the 1940s worked for the CIA, and wealthy families had a tradition of assigning one child to be a lawyer, one an educator, one a priest, and eventually one a spy.