The Republicans

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By now Bush was a one-man cleanup squad for the Republicans, the nicest man to send into the nastiest situations, and the CIA, after the Church committee's investigation, was as battered and demoralized an area as the R.N.C. had recently been. Bush, kept in the dark in earlier jobs, was sent to be the restorer of light and order at the CIA, which he largely became. Heavy firings under James Schlesinger and candid revelations to Congress under William Colby had made the agency defensive, and Bush has always been a good restorer of team morale. He spoke more often to Congress and said less than his immediate predecessors. He hired from within the agency and assuaged the fears professional intelligence men have of career politicians. His one offense to the honor of the agency was opening its files extensively to critics outside the Government, and that was done in response to President Ford's effort to placate the growing revolt of right-wingers. They believed the CIA estimates of Soviet strength were understated. Bush appointed a committee of outsiders ("Team B") to use the same evidence CIA professionals had at their disposal and come up with their own estimate of Soviet strength. Four of the nine members of Team B, including its chairman Richard Pipes, would become members of the Committee on the Present Danger, a hard-line anti- detente group. Everyone knew the board was stacked -- Ray Cline, a CIA loyalist, called it a kangaroo court. But its alarmist estimates helped set the stage for the vast defense expenditures that began under Carter and peaked during the buying frenzy at the Reagan Pentagon.

Bush does not even mention Team B in his autobiography. I asked why. "I didn't think of it. Glad to talk about it. I think it was a very worthwhile exercise. Many people misunderstand what the exercise was. It was about challenging the objectivity of the Government -- how objective is it, or how subjective is it. Get two teams -- one of internal people, one of external people -- give each the same information, and do they reach the same conclusion? No. That's why I answer my question as I did -- how do you measure intentions? It is very difficult, different, when you are dealing solely with numbers. And it was a very good, sensible exercise, of which I am proud." But wasn't this a group whose views were predictable? "Sure. But I proved a point there. I proved that the objectivity of intelligence should be challenged. It had nothing to do with whether we were going to change direction." To everyone but Bush, changing direction was the point of the exercise.

At the CIA , with its Skull and Bones tradition of gentlemanly skulduggery, of men who observe a code but are not above grabbing a few crotches if people get in the way, Bush seemed back in his original element, where people play hard and rough but keep to certain rules among themselves. It is interesting that most Watergate and Church committee revelations seemed to bother Bush less than the idea of taping a fellow gentleman's conversation. "I mean that's against my moral grain, to be taping somebody. I can remember standing down here in this building ((the White House)) when I heard about the White House tapes, and felt -- betrayed means that somebody owes me something and thus -- and I think it's broader than that." CIA covert actions do not arouse the same misgivings in this occasionally, dutifully ruthless man.