George 'Poppy' Bush and the JFK Assassination

A witness has surfaced to offer clarity on an enduring mystery surrounding the 41st president

Left: A man identified in the underground documentary “JFK to 9/11: Everything Is a Rich Man’s Trick” (2014) as George H. W. Bush in front of the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. Right: Possibly the same man (left) turned toward the camera. (Credit: William Allen/Portal to Texas History)

Researchers of President Kennedy’s assassination have long been familiar with an FBI memorandum dated Nov. 29, 1963, referring to “Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency.” Controversy and conspiracy theory developed after researcher and journalist Joseph McBride discovered the memo in 1988 and published an article about it in The Nation on July 16 that year. A New York Times report a couple of days later also featured the story.

Back then, the CIA faced a barrage of questions concerning Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush’s history with the Agency. The Republican National Convention, at which Bush (nicknamed “Poppy”) would receive his party’s nomination for president, was less than a month away. Having once served as a U.S. congressman and ambassador to the United Nations, Bush had also briefly held the directorship of the CIA. Had the GOP nominee concealed not only a longer professional affiliation with the Agency but a link to the murder of a Democratic predecessor 25 years earlier as well?

Now, a witness from the night of Nov. 23, 1963, also mentioned in the FBI memorandum, has contacted the Mary Ferrell Foundation (MFF) to try to lend clarity to the mystery with a signed statement. That statement, by William M. Edwards — a 95-year-old retiree of the Air Force, DIA and Army — appears on the MFF website and is reproduced below.

Mysterious Memo

In the 1963 memorandum, the FBI cites its own sources in expressing the view that the State Department erred in its assessment of the post-assassination situation within the pro- and anti-Castro Cuban communities in Miami. Contrary to State’s analysis, the FBI concluded that the pro-Castro community both regretted that JFK had been killed and also feared it might suffer reprisals for it.

However, while the murder stunned the entire Cuban community (one among several suspected culprits in the ambush in Dealey Plaza), the Bureau anticipated no immediate changes in the behavior of either its pro-Castro or anti-Castro constituents.

Regarding the above analysis, the relevant passage mentioning Bush reads:

The substance of the foregoing information was orally furnished to Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency and Captain William Edwards of the Defense Intelligence Agency on November 23, 1963, by Mr. W. T. Forsyth of this Bureau.

Viewed in isolation, the memo raises no eyebrows. The FBI had investigated the situation and reported it to two other intelligence agencies. Not long after the assassination, the CIA itself launched its own inquiry into the possible role of Cuban exiles (the results of which, incidentally, have never been made public). But the memorandum attracted special interest against the backdrop of the 1988 presidential election campaign.

Excerpt from Nov. 29, 1963, memorandum from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to the U.S. State Department referring to “Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency.” (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Bush’s tenure as Director of Central Intelligence for less than a year from 1976-1977 was already public knowledge. However, no hint of previous employment with the Agency prior to that brief appointment had ever emerged. The Nov. 29, 1963, FBI memo naturally generated the suspicion. Was the appointment more than just political? Did Bush have a career with the CIA going back as far as the assassination of President Kennedy?

George H. W. Bush’s campaign denied the suggestion, branding press articles on the FBI memo a simple case of mistaken identity. Following an internal check, the CIA responded publicly that while a “George Bush” had been an employee in 1963, the individual in question was named George William Bush. He had worked the night desk shift at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, in late 1963, and he would have been the standard recipient for the kind of telephone advisory described in the FBI memo.

An Associated Press report in the High Point Enterprise newspaper on July 20, 1988, denying that George H.W. Bush worked for the CIA at the time of JFK’s death. (Credit: The High Point Enterprise/newspapers.com)

The claim of mistaken identity failed to win universal acceptance. Within the JFK research community, speculation endured that the FBI memo had indeed disclosed some sort of special relationship between President Bush and the CIA, even in his earliest years as an ambitious businessman. The alleged relationship between Bush and the CIA at that time, many believed, may have involved anti-Castro activities.

ARRB Inquiry

In an affidavit during a lawsuit brought against the CIA by the Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC) in 1988, George William Bush confirmed his employment on the date in question and also verified his assignment as a watch desk officer on the relevant date. But he had no recollection of any communication from the FBI. As he said:

“I do not recognize the contents of the memorandum as information furnished to me orally or otherwise during the time I was at the CIA. In fact, during my time at the CIA, I did not receive any oral communications from any government agency of any nature whatsoever. I did not receive any information relating to the Kennedy assassination during my time at the CIA from the FBI. Based on the above, it is my conclusion that I am not the Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency referred to in the memorandum.”

The issue ultimately came to the attention of the Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB), which operated in the 1990s and made its own inquiries with the CIA. The ARRB documented the responses, confirming a basic case of misidentification. On Nov. 23, 1963, former CIA employee George William Bush had indeed worked as a CIA watch officer on shift.

Couldn’t that be an end to the matter?

Many have remained skeptical. Russ Baker, author of a book discussing the affair, “Family of Secrets” (2009), published an article in Salon on the occasion of George H. W. Bush’s death in 2018. It highlights the CIA’s ties not only to the 41st president but also to his son (later the 43rd president) George W. Bush going back to 1953, when Bush the younger was only 18 years old. But he never proves George H. W. Bush was that “Mr. George Bush.”

Cross-checking statements of the CIA and George William Bush should have entailed questioning the other individual the FBI memo described as orally informed about the Cuban community — William Edwards of the DIA. Edwards has now come forward.

A Retired DIA Officer Speaks

In offering to share his experience of Nov. 23, 1963, with the Mary Ferrell Foundation, Edwards confirms that he actually was consulted about the issue, even if the original news stories on the FBI memo made no mention of him. Edwards says that McBride did call him and pushed him to say it was the future president who had taken the call. He says he refused, and McBride’s published article then omitted his tale altogether.

Edwards describes working the duty shift as a watch officer at the National Military Command Center, covering the phones in a very chaotic environment and taking ongoing calls from all sorts of individuals and offices.

Calls which seemed to have significant and possibly actionable information were logged; others were not. He did not leave his duty desk, received no special briefings, and did not feel that the FBI’s Cuban community telephone call stood out as having any special significance among hundreds of others. All in all, his story of that day appears quite consistent with that of George William Bush, who didn’t remember the affair at all.

Following is Edwards’ written statement.

William Edwards: Subject: Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Federal Bureau of Investigation, November 29, 1963

Summary

The FBI message of November 29, 1963, regarding the relatively inconsequential activities of anti-Castro Cubans in response to the assassination of President Kennedy, was one of several hundred reports received by my team of intelligence officers on duty at the Defense Intelligence Agency alert desk on November 23, 1963. It was not remarkable at the time, but took on considerable weight in 1988 during the runup to the presidential election. A monumental case of indiscriminate inference, several journalists pursued (fruitlessly as it turned out) the idea that George Herbert Walker Bush was an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1963.

Discussion

The cause célèbre resulted from this statement: “The substance of the foregoing information was orally furnished to Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency and Captain William Edwards of the Defense Intelligence Agency on November 23, 1963 ... .”

In 1988, Joseph McBride of The Nation magazine came across this FBI report in a tranche of several thousand JFK-assassination documents recently released. McBride undertook to learn if this George Bush was George Herbert Walker Bush, then a candidate for president of the United States. That July, in the first of two articles in The Nation, he broached this idea, noted the denials by a Bush spokesman on the question of “was he or wasn’t he” that Bush, and attempted to unravel the equivocal responses of the CIA. McBride stated that the Captain Edwards of the Defense Intelligence Agency had not been located at press time. Subsequently McBride reached me by telephone and was disappointed to learn that the FBI-ese “orally furnished” — which had led him (and others) to conclude that Bush and I together had attended a briefing — was grossly misleading. I had received the “briefing” by telephone, as presumably “George Bush” had also. In his second article, McBride made no mention of having located me, much less the cold water I had poured on this once hot topic.

Conclusion

For anyone who wishes to pursue the matter, I have come to a fairly definite conclusion as to who that “George Bush” was. It’s a rather long and tortuous trail, probably not worth anyone’s time, except as it reveals the duplicity inherent in almost any CIA utterance on even the most innocuous subject. I’ll just say here: in my opinion, “George” was NOT George Herbert Walker Bush; however, my conclusion in this isolated case is not dispositive of the larger question, was the 41st President of the United States ever an agent of the CIA, a charge that his repeated denials — often contradictory and ambiguous — failed to satisfy for a number of authors.

Our Take

JFK Facts contacted Joseph McBride and invited him to respond to Mr. Edwards’ claim that he was unduly ignored, specifically:

(1) Did Edwards share his thoughts with you (McBride) previously, and if so, did you have a reason for not including them in your reporting?

(2) Do you have general thoughts today about the identity of the George Bush in the memo?

McBride replied immediately that he could not remember precise details, but after checking his files on the episode, wrote the following:

1) My first of two 1988 articles in The Nation on George H. W. Bush’s early unacknowledged ties to the CIA, “The Man Who Wasn’t There: ‘George Bush,’ C.I.A. Operative,” July 16/23, refers to Captain William Edwards of the Defense Intelligence Agency, who is mentioned in the accompanying November 29, 1963, FBI memo by J. Edgar Hoover as having received a November 23 FBI briefing about the reaction of the anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Miami to the assassination of President Kennedy. “Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency” was also listed as having received such a briefing on that date. My article states, “Efforts to locate Captain Edwards by press time were unsuccessful.” My followup article, “Where Was George? (cont.),” in the August 13 issue, refers to Capt. Edwards but does not include an interview quotation from Capt. Edwards or any other quotation from him.

2) As my second article in The Nation discusses, I interviewed George William Bush, whom the CIA had identified as the “Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency” mentioned in the November 29, 1963, FBI memo by J. Edgar Hoover as having been briefed about the reaction of the anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Miami to the assassination of President Kennedy. George William Bush had been a low-level CIA employee in 1963 but denied to me that he had received the briefing referred to in the FBI memo. When I read him the Hoover memo about the FBI briefing, his response was, “Is that the other George Bush?”

Best wishes,

Joseph McBride

It appears from McBride’s response that he definitely did not reach Edwards before the first of his two articles appeared in print. Whether he ever spoke to Edwards at all is not addressed.

Meanwhile, George William Bush, formerly of the CIA, died in 1999 at the age of 60. A copy of his U.S. government ID card, included with the affidavit, shows he was born in May 1939, making him only 24 years old on Nov. 23, 1963.

A poor-resolution copy of a government ID card for George William Bush, issued in 1980, by the Department of Health and Human Services (Credit: AARC)

It’s worth repeating Edwards’ point that none of the above negates the idea that the CIA had knowledge of or utilized George H. W. Bush and his oil company assets before he became director in January 1976. His company, Zapata Offshore, owned an oil rig used as a staging ground and training platform for anti-Castro Cuban rebels. The company also acted as nominal paymaster for Cubans participating in raids on the island (the real paymaster being the CIA). Businessman Bush’s CIA connections look very real.

George Herbert Walker Bush also gained notoriety for his inability (he claimed) to remember exactly where he was when President Kennedy was shot. In fact, he had awoken in a Dallas hotel room on the morning of Nov. 22, 1963, and caught a plane to Tyler, Texas, for a Kiwanis Club luncheon. A Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, he was running to unseat Ralph Yarborough, a pro-JFK Democrat. Bush was thus already touring the state, competing for the Republican nomination he would win.

An ad for George H.W. Bush’s campaign for the U.S. Senate in Texas, published in The Victoria Advocate on Nov. 1, 1964. (Credit: Victoria Advocate/newspapers.com)

Bush’s ignorance seems incredible in light of an FBI memo that emerged later, assuming it reflects fact. The document says that, upon learning that President Kennedy had been assassinated, Bush called the FBI to report hearsay: a local man had talked of murdering JFK “when he comes to Houston.” Late in a heated political campaign, was this a “dirty tricks” stunt by Texas opponents to sow undue suspicion about Candidate Bush?

Excerpt from Nov. 22, 1963, FBI memorandum to the Bureau’s Houston field office relaying a report from George H.W. Bush on a hearsay tip related to the assassination. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

We also feel it worth noting that Bush was president when Congress passed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 (JFK Records Act) and delivered it to him to sign into law. Had it not been for the bill’s unanimous passage, Bush would surely have vetoed it. He signed under protest, supporting the legislation’s main goals but not its “narrow basis for nondisclosure of national security information.” He said such provisions of the act hampered presidential authority that “cannot be limited by statute.”

In delivering a eulogy for former President Gerald Ford in January 2007, Bush said of the man who had appointed him to head the CIA:

"After a deluded gunman assassinated President Kennedy, our nation turned to Gerald Ford and a select handful of others to make sense of that madness. And a conspiracy theorist can say what they will, but the Warren Commission report will always have the final definitive say on this tragic matter. Why? Because Gerry Ford put his name on it, and Gerry Ford's word was always good."

A bizarre smirk crosses Bush’s face immediately after he utters the words “deluded gunman.” Whatever that means, long before Bush delivered a posthumous tribute to his former patron, authoritative assassination researchers already viewed Ford as having played a cynically dishonest role in the Warren Commission investigation.

President Ford Spoke of a JFK Plot, Says Former French President

In sum, while these anecdotes might be blots on Bush’s character, they don’t mean he was involved in the assassination. And again, we still have no evidence of his employment by the CIA at the time it happened. True, he did the public trust no favors in being less than forthcoming about his whereabouts on Nov. 22, 1963. At the same time, with the recent revelations of William Edwards, the FBI appears less likely than it already did to have briefed the future president on the reaction of Miami-based Cubans to JFK’s death.