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Intro­duc­tion: Jour­nal­ist Russ Baker has authored Fam­ily of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America’s Invis­i­ble Gov­ern­ment and the Hid­den His­tory of the Last 50 Years–a poten­tially deci­sive, multi-generational polit­i­cal his­tory and analy­sis of the Bush fam­ily. In this sec­ond of six inter­views, Baker stretches out with analy­sis of one of the many inves­tiga­tive break­throughs in his land­mark volume.

His career ris­ing with the bur­geon­ing devel­op­ment of the Amer­i­can South­west and Texas in par­tic­u­lar, George H.W. Bush was inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the power net­works that assas­si­nated Pres­i­dent Kennedy. Bush’s behav­ior with regard to that event and his appar­ent attempts at obfus­cat­ing his activ­i­ties on 11/22/1963 are sug­ges­tive of guilt.

Review­ing ele­ments of dis­cus­sion from FTR #711, the broad­cast notes that through­out the career of George H.W. Bush, one finds the influ­ence of the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity, many of the ele­ments of which were cen­trally involved in the events of 11/22/1963. His stew­ard­ship of Zap­ata Off­shore Petro­leum was typ­i­cal in that regard. Zap­ata, as well as many of the intelligence-connected Wall Street inter­ests whose bid­ding Poppy did, were deeply con­cerned over U.S. pol­icy toward Castro’s Cuba. Zap­ata appears to have served as a front for var­i­ous CIA oper­a­tions against Cas­tro, as well as for the pure col­lec­tion of intelligence.

Chron­i­cling Bush’s rise and point of entree to the power elite of Dal­las, Baker reviews the activ­i­ties of Henry Neil Mal­lon. Some­thing of a pro­fes­sional god­fa­ther to Poppy, Mal­lon helped Bush gain trac­tion in the milieu that ran afoul of Pres­i­dent Kennedy. Mal­lon founded the Dal­las World Affairs Coun­cil, a pol­icy forum for (among other inter­ests) rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the petro­leum and defense indus­tries, whose influ­ence in Texas was grow­ing with the momen­tum of the Cold War, and whose wrath JFK incurred with his policies.

A vig­or­ous Russ­ian exile com­mu­nity took root in Dal­las, pros­per­ing in the petro­leum and defense indus­tries, as well as Cold War pol­i­tics and intel­li­gence mat­ters. George H.W. Bush was close to many of these White Rus­sians, George De Mohren­schildt, in par­tic­u­lar. Born to a fam­ily that man­aged the Baku Oil fields for the Noble Fam­ily, the De Mohren­schildt clan was involved with anti-Soviet intrigue, espi­onage and the petro­leum busi­ness dat­ing back to the con­clu­sion of the First World War. In addi­tion to net­work­ing with the milieu of the Bush fam­ily, De Mohrenschildt’s acquain­tances included Jackie Kennedy’s family–both set of acquain­tances dat­ing to the period between the World Wars.

De Mohren­schildt became an appar­ent intel­li­gence babysit­ter for Lee Har­vey Oswald after he returned from the U.S.S.R., help­ing to posi­tion him as the patsy for Kennedy’s slaying.

Another of Bush’s key acquain­tances in Dal­las was Jack Alston Chrich­ton, an oil­man deeply involved with intel­li­gence mat­ters. Run­ning for Gov­er­nor of Texas at the same timethat Poppy was run­ning for U.S. Sen­a­tor, Chrich­ton headed up an army intel­li­gence reserve unit whose ranks included many high rank­ing mem­bers of the Dal­las Police Depart­ment, includ­ing Chief Lump­kin, who was in the lead car in Kennedy’s fatal motor­cade and whose actions on that day raise ques­tions about his pos­si­ble involve­ment in the mur­der. Chrich­ton and Lumpkin’s supe­rior Lieu­tenant Colonel George Whit­meyer (in charge of Army reserve units in East Texas) was also in the lead car.

Chrich­ton was also instru­men­tal in arrang­ing for some of the White Russ­ian com­mu­nity in Dal­las to act as trans­la­tors for Marina Oswald in the imme­di­ate after­math of the shooting.These trans­la­tors dis­torted Marina’s state­ments in such a way as to accen­tu­ate Oswald’s alleged guilt. It is worth not­ing that Chrich­ton had estab­lished a Cold War com­mu­ni­ca­tions bunker in the base­ment of a build­ing in down­town Dal­las. Baker spec­u­lates that this instal­la­tion may have served as a com­mu­ni­ca­tions hub in the assassination.

Curi­ously, Poppy Bush has never been able to sat­is­fac­to­rily account for his pres­ence and actions in Dal­las on 11/22/1963. (It is said that all peo­ple who were of the age of con­scious­ness when Pres­i­dent Kennedy was killed remem­ber where they were and what they were doing when they heard JFK had been killed. That appar­ently does NOT include Poppy Bush.) Attend­ing an oil drillers’ pro­fes­sional con­fer­ence in Dal­las the evening before the assas­si­na­tion, he may well have been in “the big D” on the morn­ing of the killing, as well.

Baker details Poppy’s attempts at cov­er­ing his tracks, both with a phone call to the FBI pro­vid­ing him­self with alibi, as well as a curi­ous let­ter allegedly penned by Bar­bara Bush as she was hav­ing her hair done and in which she records her thoughts upon hear­ing that Kennedy had been killed. In that let­ter, Ms. Bush notes her husband’s asso­ci­a­tion with the Ulmers, who were in town at the time. A long time CIA coup spe­cial­ist, Al (hus­band of Doris, Barbara’s friend) was in Dal­las at the time of the assas­si­na­tion. Bar­bara also mis­spells the name of Joe Zeppa, a Dal­las oil man on whose pri­vate plane Bush had flown into Dal­las. Both the curi­ous behav­ior of Zeppa on that day and Barbara’s spelling of their friend’s name as “Zeppo” seem designed to throw inves­ti­ga­tors off.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: For­mer CIA direc­tor Allen Dulles’ pres­ence in Dal­las in Octo­ber of 1963, sup­pos­edly to pro­mote a book; the CIA’s curi­ous hir­ing of another man named George Bush, quite pos­si­bly to dis­tract from a memo refer­ring to a “George Bush” of the CIA who was mon­i­tor­ing anti-Castro Cuban reac­tion to Kennedy’s killing; syn­op­sis of the actions of the Kennedy admin­is­tra­tion that infu­ri­ated the inter­ests who com­mit­ted the assas­si­na­tion; Gen­eral D.H. Byrd, Kennedy foe, head of the Civil Air Patrol (in which cadet Lee Har­vey Oswald met David Fer­rie) and owner of the build­ing from which Oswald sup­pos­edly fired the fatal shot; Byrd’s removal of the win­dow from which Oswald sup­pos­edly fired the fatal shot and his [Byrd’s] sub­se­quent reassem­bly of the win­dow at his pri­vate res­i­dence; Abra­ham Zapruder’s asso­ci­a­tion with De Mohrenschild’s wife and his par­tic­i­pa­tion on Henry Neil Mallon’s Dal­las World Affairs Coun­cil; Dal­las Mayor Earle Cabell, brother of Gen­eral C.P. Cabell, fired by JF K (along with Allan Dulles); Prescott Bush’s hatred of JFK, whom he “never for­gave” for pol­icy indis­cre­tions; Prescott Bush’s rela­tion­ship with Allen Dulles; Richard Nixon’s curi­ous pres­ence in Dal­las on 11/22/1963, cour­tesy of the Pepsi Cola com­pany; the inter­ests of the cola bot­tlers in Cuban affairs (deriv­ing from Cuba’s impor­tance in the sugar business.)