Ex-President George Bush Accused of War Crimes

8/2/2019 Ex-President George Bush Accused of War Crimes

1/6

CURRENT ISSUE | WEB LINKS PAGE | READER'S COMMENTS | BACK TO FLAME HOME PAGE |

COMPLETE INDEX OF ALL ISSUES

Co-editors: Sen Mac Mathna John Heathcote

Consulting editor: Themistocles Hoetis

Field Correspondent: Allen Hougland

E-mail: [email protected]

Ex-President George H. Bush accused of warcrimes and political killings

Sen Mac Mathna

War on Drugs:

Counterinsurgency

Operations in

Colombia

George Bushoversaw covert

CIA operations?

Kennedy: TheGeorge Bush

Connection

George Bush: TheCIA memo said to

link him to the

Kennedy

assassination

Accusation no 1: Bush alleged to have killed Japanese

fishermen

Former US president and CIA chief George H. Bush, the father of the

current US President George W. Bush, has been accused throughout his life

of being involved either with terrorism, the Mafia, and drug trafficking,

either during his time as CIA director (1976-1977) or his term as Vice


2/6

George H.W. Bush,

the CIA & a Case

of State

Terrorism: A new

CIA report revealsclose ties between

the CIA under

director GeorgeH.W. Bush and the

mastermind of a

1976 terroristbombing in

Washington, D.C.

By Robert Parry.

September 23,

2000

GEORGE BUSH:

THEUNAUTHORIZED

BIOGRAPHY - PART

6 of 8 - CHAPTER

16 CIA DIRECTOR

The murder ofOrlando Letelier:

Press clippings

Ex-President Bush

Fears NoriegaRelease by Jane

Sutton

Imperialism: CIA

Style

President (1980-1988) or President (1989-1992). Apart from his alleged

involvement in the CIA during the Kennedy assassination, he is also said

to have carried out violations of the Geneva Convention as a US fighter

pilot during the war. He was alleged to have killed Japanese trawler men

in a lifeboat whilst a fighter-pilot during the second world war. The latestperson to make these allegations is the former Panamanian dictator and

CIA stooge, General Manuel Noriega, who is presently serving a 40 year jail

sentence in the USA. Calling Bush a "cold blooded killer", he repeats thestory that Bush had found Japanese trawler men in a lifeboat, who all had

their hands up, but Bush shot them anyway. According to The Observer,

Bush has always refused to respond to accusations that he killed Japanesetrawler men whose ship he sunk in 1944.(1)

In his interview with The Observer, Noreiga also alleged that Bush, when

he was CIA chief in 1976, was responsible for a bomb blast in Panama that

destroyed a car owned by William Drummond, a prominent US resident of

the American occupied Canal Zone. He was a vocal critic of the

negotiations between the US and Panama, and the blast was said to have

been "arranged" by the CIA in an attempt to pressurise US residents to endtheir resistance to the treaty. Noreiga says:

"the US embassy in Panama didn't known about 'Bush's scheme'

and got nervous . . . so Bush had to calm the embassy down -

he created a problem to solve a problem".

Bush denies Noreiga's claims.

Bush was CIA director from 1976 until 1977. Some background information

on this period discussed by William Blum in The CIA: A Forgotten History.

During the mid-seventies, the CIA poured money into the Cuban exileterrorist groups such as Omega 7 and Alpha 66, who used the US soil as a

"safe haven" to launch attacks on Cuba and it's perceived supporters in the

US. In 1976, a bomb was discovered at the New York Academy of Musicshortly before a celebration of the 1959 Cuban Revolution was about to

begin and a bombing of the Lincoln centre after the Cuban ballet had

performed.

Japan indicts Bush as war criminal

In early 1997, Bush was further indicted as a alleged war criminal by theJapanese government. This was in response to the US decision to bar 16

Japanese citizens from the USA for alleged war crimes committed during

the second world war. A Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hiroshi

Hashimoto announced that 10 American's would be barred from Japan for

their "war crimes, crimes against humanity, and violations of human

rights". Top of the list was George Bush for "the murder of hundreds ofthousands of innocent civilians, including thousands of children, in attacks

on Iraq and Panama" in 1990 and 1988. The other alleged war criminals

were: General's Colin Powell and "Stormin" Norman Schwarzkopf, former


3/6

Presidents Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and other US military and

government figures such as Colonel Oliver North, Henry Kissinger, Robert

MacNamara, CIA director John Deutch and Elliot Abrams.(5)

Accusation no 2: Echoes of Lockerbie - the bomb that blew

up a Cuban airliner in 1976

But by far the most serious act of terrorism alleged against the CIA, whenBush was it's chief, was the blowing up of a Cuban Airlines plane shortly

after it took of from Barbados on 6th October 1976. The attack, which was

claimed by a then new Cuban exile terrorist group called CORU, killed 73people, including the entire Cuban Olympic championship fencing team.

(2)

Proof has recently emerged of the lengths that the CIA would go to carry

out acts of terrorism against civilian targets and, even more pertinently,

how the agency was prepared to fabricate evidence "providing irrevocable

proof" that Cuba was responsible for terrorist actions which they knewCuba was not involved in. The Guardian reported the existence of

Operation Dirty Trick - a plan to blame Cuba for any mishap during John

Glenn's pioneering Earth orbit flight on February 20th 1962. This would be

accomplished by "manufacturing various pieces of evidence" which would

"prove" electronic interference by Cuba. This evidence was among 1500

pages of classified documents released by the Assassination RecordsReview Board - the agency that oversees the release of papers connected

with the murder of President Kennedy in 1963.

In a March 1962, an U.S. army memorandum entitled Possible Actions to

Provoke, Harass or Disrupt Cuba suggested "downing a US plane andblaming it on Mr Castro", or showing "convincingly that a Cuban aircraft

has shot down a chartered civilian airliner". It also proposed sinking a U.S.

warship - and presumably killing their own servicemen - "which could be

blamed on Cuba". The CIA would use Cuban exile terrorists who would fly

close to the island to "distract local pilots with radio conversation's with

the aim of causing the crash".

The memo also proposed developing a strategy of tension with exile

groups that involved a plan to "sink a boatload of Cubans en route forFlorida". This has the U.S. planning acts of treason and piracy on the high

seas as well as indiscriminate terrorist acts against civilian airliners in it'sambition to remove the popular government of President Castro, and

replace it with the mobsters and autocrats who supported the Batista

regime until the revolution in 1959.(3)

Accusation no 3: involvement in the murder of Orlando

Letelier and Ronni Moffitt in 1976

This is relevant because when Bush was CIA director, Salvador Allende's


4/6

former ambassador to the USA, Orlando Letelier and his assistant Ronni

Moffitt were murdered on September 21st, 1976, when a remote-

controlled bomb ripped apart Letelier's car as they drove down

Massachusetts Avenue, a stately section of Washington known as Embassy

Row. Allende, the world's first democratically elected Marxist Presidentwas ousted in a bloody CIA-backed coup that lead to his assassination in

1973. The attack on Letelier was later attributed to CORU.

Within four months of forming in 1976, CORU claimed to have killed 76

people in North and South America, including Letelier. CORU were later

described as a terrorist group which had "the active support of the CIA".

CORU members also had close links with Chile's feared secret police, DINA,which was also implicated in the murder of Letelier. Two Cuban exiles and

a US citizen were later charged with Letelier's murder.(4) Many CORU

members served with the CIA's contra terrorist movement in Nicaragua.

Under George Bush, the CIA leaked a false report that not only cleared

Chile's military dictatorship - it pointed the FBI in the wrong direction. The

bogus CIA assessment, was spread through Newsweek magazine and otherAmerican media outlets, was planted despite CIA's now admitted

awareness at the time that Chile was participating in Operation Condor, a

cross-border campaign targeting political dissidents, and the CIA's own

suspicions that the Chilean junta was behind the terrorist bombing in

Washington, according to the author Robert Parry writing on the websiteconsortiumnews.com.

In a 21-page report to Congress on September 18th 2000, the CIA officially

acknowledged for the first time that the mastermind of the terrorist

attack, Chilean intelligence chief Manuel Contreras, was a paid asset of

the CIA. The new report was issued almost 24 years to the day after themurder Letelier and Moffitt. In the new report, the CIA also acknowledged

publicly for the first time that it consulted Contreras in October 1976about the Letelier assassination. The report added that the CIA was aware

of the alleged Chilean government role in the murders and included that

suspicion in an internal cable the same month.

Bush, who is the father of the current Republican nominee for the

presidency, has never explained his role in putting out the false cover

story that diverted attention away from the real terrorists. Nor has Bushexplained what he knew about the Chilean intelligence operation in the

weeks before Letelier and Moffitt were killed. In 1988, Parrysaid that

when the then-Vice President Bush was citing his CIA work as an important

part of his government experience, he submitted questions to him asking

about his actions in the days before and after the Letelier bombing. Bush's

chief of staff, Craig Fuller, wrote back, saying Bush "will have no comment

on the specific issues raised in your letter."

Accusation no 3: knowledge of state terrorism in Italy


5/6

In February 2000, according to The Guardian (6), Bush may be called to

give evidence in a terrorism trial, amid claims that the "CIA knew of a

rightwing bombing campaign in Italy 30 years ago". Four neo-fascist

suspects are accused of planting a bomb in Milan on December 12th 1969,

killing 16 people. It is widely accepted that this bombing, and subsequent

attacks (like the Bologna railway massacre in 1980), were part of a

"strategy of tension" to destabilse the country and "reduce electoralsupport for the Communist party". One of the suspects, Carlo Digilio is

alleged, like his father, to have been a CIA informant. An investigating

judge, Guido Salvini said that:

American agents were responsible for promoting the strategyof tension, even though they did not intervene directly but

through orgainsations whose actions could not be traced to

them.

Apparently, a key issue in the trial is whether US agents were aware of

preparations for the bombing and "did nothing", or worse, as thenewspaper noted, "they promoted it". Thus, the court is to decide whetherto call all the CIA heads from 1960 to the present, including Bush, to

testify. According to Puppet Masters: The Political Use of Terrorism in

Italy by Philip Willan (Constable, London, 1993), Bush is alleged to had a

close relationship with Lucio Gelli, the infamous head of the P2 masonic

lodge. Gelli said in an interview, in which he was careful to claim that he

had only met Bush in 1981, not when he was CIA director in 1976, that heonce spent a whole week with George Bush at the time of his inauguration

as Vice President in 1981. Willan wonders:

"What could the two men, who had only just met, havediscussed for an entire week ?"

Two years after Bush left the CIA, the Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro was

murdered in May 1978, ostensibly by the Red Brigades, and in September1978, the Pope died in disputed circumstances. Puppet Masters details

how the first phase of state terrorism, which lasted in Italy until 1974, was

"Characterized by right-wing terrorism and, in particluar, by

indiscriminate bombings against the public"

Willan shows how this strategy of tension was the result of secret NATOaccords and was "sanctioned at the highest level of the Atlantic Alliance" -something the CIA would have been closely involved in. Thus, the reason

why Bush could be called to give evidence in Italy.

One thing that the Bush family is said to be worried about is the release of

General Manuel Noriega from jail in the USA. If this happens he could spill

on the beans on the CIA's links to the cocaine industry in Latin America

that played such a vital role in the arming and financing of the Contraterrorists in Nicaragua during the 1980's. Also, their is the possibility that,


6/6

at last, the CIA and ex-President Bush will be held to account for the

murder in Washington of Letelier and their support for the coup in Chile

that bought the fascist General Pinochet to power.

References

1. The Observer Review, 22nd July 1997.

2. The CIA: A Forgotten History. Zed Books, London, England, 1986.William Blum, Pp 212-213.

3. The Guardian, 20th November 1997.

4. Deadly Secrets: The CIA&endash;Mafia War against Castro and the

Assassination of JFK. Warren Hinckle, William Turner. Thunder's MouthPress, New York, USA, 1982, Pp Iii&endash;Iiii.

5. Lobster33, Summer 1997.

6. The Guardian, 16th February 2000.

CURRENT ISSUE | WEB LINKS PAGE | READER'S COMMENTS | BACK TO FLAME HOME PAGE |

COMPLETE INDEX OF ALL ISSUES

Ex-President George Bush Accused of War Crimes

Documents

Transcript of Ex-President George Bush Accused of War Crimes