Noah's Ark - Nov. 22, 1963

[Octafish]

6. What George H. W. Bush said on the White House ''smoking gun'' tape...

From "The Unauthorized Biography of George Bush"...

EXCERPT...

During the preparation of the present work, there was one historical moment
which more than any other delineated the character of George Bush. The
scene was the Nixon White House during the final days of the Watergate
debacle. White House officials, including George Bush, had spent the
morning of that Monday, August 5, 1974 absorbing the impact of Nixon's
notorious "smoking gun" tape, the recorded conversation between Nixon and
his chief of staff, H.R. Haldemann, shortly after the original Watergate
break-in, which could now no longer be withheld from the public. In that
exchange of June 23, 1972, Nixon ordered that the CIA stop the FBI from
further investigating how various sums of money found their way from Texas
and Minnesota via Mexico City to the coffers of the Committee to Re-Elect
the President (CREEP) and thence into the pockets of the "Plumbers"
arrested in the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate building.
These revelations were widely interpreted as establishing a "prima facie"
case of obstruction of justice against Nixon. That was fine with George,
who sincerely wanted his patron and benefactor Nixon to resign. George's
great concern was that the smoking gun tape called attention to a
money-laundering mechanism which he, together with Bill Liedtke of
Pennzoil, and Robert Mosbacher, had helped to set up at Nixon's request.
When Nixon, in the "smoking gun" tape, talked about "the Texans" and "some
Texas people," Bush, Liedtke, and Mosbacher were among the most prominent
of those referred to. The threat to George's political ambitions was great.

The White House that morning was gripped by panic. Nixon would be gone
before the end of the week. In the midst of the furor, White House
Congressional liaison William Timmons wanted to know if everyone who needed
to be informed had been briefed about the smoking gun transcript. In a
roomful of officials, some of whom were already sipping Scotch to steady
their nerves, Timmons asked Dean Burch, "Dean, does Bush know about the
transcript yet?"

"Yes," responded Burch.

"Well, what did he do?" inquired Timmons.

"He broke out into assholes and shit himself to death," replied Burch.

In this exchange, which is recorded in Woodward and Bernstein's "The Final
Days," we grasp the essential George Bush, in a crisis, and for all
seasons.

SOURCE: http://www.padrak.com/alt/BUSHBOOK_1.html

Thank you, RobertEarl! Very much appreciate what you said about the Flock's team.