Was George "Poppy Boyington" Bush a War Criminal?

Did Ensign George Herbert Walker Bush commit a war crime as a Navy pilot during World War II?

He may have. But because of the cautious decisions made by at least three major U.S. news organizations, voters didn't hear the story before the 1992 election. Bush's crash-and-burn presidential performance sealed his electoral fate anyway. But the gusto with which journalists reported on Bill Clinton's Viet Nam-era actions seems to be at odds with how a potential bombshell of a story about Bush's war record was handled.
Here's the scoop, as reported - finally - by Harper's Magazine in its September 1993 issue:
On July 25, 1944, Ensign Bush - then a rookie pilot - was flying a mission in the Palau Islands in the South Pacific. His squadron encountered a Japanese trawler, which Bush and the crew of a second fighter plane succeeded in sinking.
No problem, so far. But then, two lifeboats carrying survivors from the enemy trawler were "strafed" - that is, attacked by machine-gun fire from planes in Bush's squadron. Shooting at unarmed people in such a way is considered a war crime under international law, Harper's reported.
Details of the bombing raid come from a "naval action report" that a federal researcher found in 1991 but withheld because he did not want to undermine Bush during the Gulf War, Harper's said. But when Bush started making an issue out of Clinton's military past during the 1992 campaign, the researcher gave the document to a California freelance reporter, according to Harper's. The reporter, thinking that the story was out of her league, gave the Navy report to some "key" journalists in October, about three weeks before election day.
U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times said they tried their best to nail down whether Bush actually shot at the Japanese survivors but that they couldn't confirm the story to their satisfaction, according to Harper's. It seems the 1944 Navy memo is unclear about whether it was Bush's plane or another member of Bush's squadron that shot at the lifeboats. The wording, however, seems to indicate that both planes fired at the survivors, Harper's said.
Harper's argues that the freelance reporter could have given the document to non-U.S.-based news organizations, which usually are not hampered by the self-imposed censorship that American reporters exhibit when it comes to printing dirt on U.S. chief executives. By the same token, said MIT historian John Dower, "If the same kind of document had surfaced implicating the prime minister of Japan in a war crime, American journalists would have gone to town on it."
The response about the incident that Harper's got from Bush's Houston office: "No comment."




Waco Investigator Knows How to Cover it Up

The involvement of a cover-up specialist in the federal investigation of the Branch Davidian debacle is raising disturbing questions about what the Justice Department may be up to.

Mark Richard, a top advisor to Attorney General Janet Reno on the Waco case, is known for his ability to deflect scrutiny of shady government operations when the heat gets too close, the Portland Free Press reported in its spring issue.
Richard, for example, intervened when the Justice Department was investigating CIA agent Edwin Wilson's alleged selling of weapons to Libya's Mohamar Qadafi in the 1980s, the Free Press reported. Richard also was sent by then-Attorney General Ed Meese to look over Iran-contra investigations that likely would have unearthed the involvement of the CIA in cocaine and drug smuggling, the Free Press said.
"Whenever Richard shows up in a situation like this, you can be quite sure it is not a normal situation," Daniel Sheehan, general counsel for the Christic Institute, said recently on a Portland radio show. "It is not a situation which is, in fact, what it appears to be on its face."
Sheehan has built a career around investigating government conspiracies, most notably the Iran-contra affair and its related side-scandals. He said Richard's name has turned up during several investigations undertaken by the Christic Institute, a non-profit human-rights and social-justice organization based in Washington, D.C.
"That is what Mark Richard's job is: To keep the law from being enforced in an objective and neutral manner," the Free Press quoted Sheehan as saying.



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- Compiled by Free Press staff



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Contents on this page were published in the September , 1993 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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