Interview · moment 9 of 23
Bush's Year as CIA Director and the 'Clean Break' Myth
from Dead President with Russ Baker · #125
Audio-only archive episode — no video to seek.
6 minGuest
Baker explains how George H.W. Bush, despite no intelligence background on paper, was installed as CIA director right after the Church Committee's revelations, positioning him as a supposed reformer while actually being deeply embedded in the agency.
- 29:24George H.W. Bush was installed as CIA director for just one year, right after the agency's Family Jewels scandal and William Colby's confession.
- 30:04The CIA presented Bush as a clean break—a man with no intelligence background who would reform the agency, but this turned out to be completely false.
- 30:27Bush was actually a deep cover CIA asset, which the public never understood the way they understood Putin's KGB background.
- 31:21The guest started by wondering how George W. Bush ever became president and got re-elected, which led him to investigate his father.
- 32:07When asking people how H.W. became president, they said his father was president; when asking how his father became president, they traced it back through vice president to CIA director.
- 32:43H.W. Bush is the only CIA director in American history to become vice president or president—a unique anomaly.
- 32:59Bush was made CIA director at the moment of maximum peril, when the agency faced congressional investigation and proposals to shut it down entirely.
- 33:46A Nixon tape reveals Kissinger calling Bush "a complete idiot" when Nixon proposed sending him to China as ambassador.
- 34:11The guest discovered a hidden relationship between the Bush family and elements controlling banks, and between these networks and the start of Nixon's political career.
- 34:47Bush was their trusted guy installed to manage a crucial cover-up during the CIA's existential crisis in the mid-1970s.
George H. W. BushGeorge W. BushRichard NixonWilliam ColbyHenry KissingerDonald Trump JrIvanka Trump