President Bush. (Ray Lustig — The Post)

By Bob Woodward
The Washington Post Magazine
Sunday, June 20, 1999; Page 8

President George Bush was sick, almost reduced to tears.

His third son, Neil, who was shy and dyslexic, was under public criticism for his involvement in a Colorado savings and loan association. As far as Bush was concerned, the son was paying part of the price for the father's presidency.

"They're out to get my boy," Bush told White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater, "they're out to get me."

Four years earlier, Neil had joined the board of Silverado Banking, Savings and Loan Association, a high-flying Colorado S&L; Hoping to make a big financial killing, Neil became entangled with other Colorado businessmen, one of whom extended him a $1.2 million line of credit for a company in which Neil had invested only $100 of his personal funds.

Now, in 1990, the S&L bubble had fully burst, a scandal that would cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, and some Democrats and some reporters were attempting to make Neil the public face of one of the largest financial disasters in American history. All three newsmagazines, Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report, referred to Neil as the "poster boy" of the scandal. Neil's problem created a Bush family crisis that cast a pall over the White House years.

Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser, saw how the focus on his son wounded Bush. Scowcroft realized that Bush was stewing about the treatment of Neil, stewing more about it perhaps than about anything else. It all fit Bush's view of the news media, which he blamed for the onslaught of rumor and doubt that he believed had infected Washington.

"You know," Bush told Scowcroft, "they don't have guts enough to come after me, they go after my son who was an innocent victim."

Scowcroft had an additional explanation: Watergate. Had there not been Watergate, he felt, there would have been no legs for almost any of these mini-scandals. It had created the atmosphere that nourished them.

The biggest legacy of Watergate was the independent counsel law that created prosecutors with unlimited time and leeway to dig into allegations against high government officials.

In the third year of his presidency, Bush was still dealing with that legacy. It was spring of 1991, and White House Counsel Boyden Gray had become worried that Iran-contra Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh's investigation – which began in the Reagan administration – was now targeting Bush. Gray brought in a special counsel, William Lytton, an attorney who had helped bail President Reagan out of Iran-contra earlier.

On May 14, Lytton met with Bush. According to Lytton's recollection and his notes of the meeting, he told Bush, "Mr. President, as best I can tell, Walsh is really coming after you." Walsh was working through all the people who were close to Bush. Lytton wanted to wake Bush up to the danger.

In the next several weeks, Lytton systematically canvassed the lawyers who were representing Walsh's targets. On June 12, 1991, Gray and Lytton went to see Bush. The president was seated at his desk in the Oval Office with his jacket off. He was wearing a striped shirt with a white collar. His tie was loosened. It was his 67th birthday. One of his gifts had been a stuffed toy that included a plastic mallet. Upon seeing the lawyers and knowing the subject, Bush removed the mallet.

"Take that, Walsh!" Bush shouted, hitting the plastic mallet on his desk. Bang! Bang! Bang! "Take that, Walsh!" He hit the desk some more, a look of relish and anger on his face.

"I'd like to get rid of this guy," the president said.

Since Richard Nixon's resignation in 1974 the Watergate legacy has altered the prerogatives and daily lives of presidents. Congress has played a more prominent, inquisitorial role. The media has dug deep and incessantly because much had been hidden before. And quite naturally prosecutors and ethics investigators have been more and more determined. Since Richard Nixon's political demise, presidents have inhabited a new world, but they often have seemed not to recognize it.

George Bush had built his career as the patron of other Republican presidents, turning setbacks into opportunities. Nixon had rescued him from defeat in 1970, after he had lost the U.S. Senate race in Texas, appointing him U.N. ambassador. Gerald Ford had made him director of central intelligence, his first major executive post and one with mystique. Reagan had selected him to be vice president after he had lost the nomination. Bush had played by the accepted rules of the Republican Party, and gentlemanly restraint had served him well.

But the same qualities that had helped Bush reach the White House hurt him once he became president. He had not acquired the political skills that many politicians develop through struggle and adversity. As a new president he was not as well-equipped as he should have been to handle the inevitable scrutiny.

A dozen or so investigations of some of those closest to the president took their toll. His first nominee for secretary of defense, former senator John Tower, was rejected by the Senate after stories appeared about Tower's drinking and womanizing. His first nominee to the Supreme Court, David H. Souter, was subjected to rumors that he was gay, and his second, Clarence Thomas, was accused of harassing Anita Hill, a former employee of Thomas's in two federal agencies. Bush's closest aide, chief of staff John Sununu, was forced to resign because of his excessive use of government aircraft for personal travel.

As his own words reveal, these controversies almost dazed Bush. He never seemed to reach a state of peace, relaxation or happiness. The emotional inner life of his presidency was at times consumed with anger and private warfare with the various inheritances left by Watergate.

While Bush has co-authored a book on foreign policy decisions with Scowcroft, the former president has not written his memoirs and says he has no plans to do so. But private dictated entries from Bush's diary were obtained from the records of Joseph diGenova, who served as an independent counsel investigating the mini-scandal that became known as Passportgate. They are quoted here for the first time. In addition, a few diary entries come from a 1998 biography, George Bush: The Life of a Lone Star Yankee, by historian Herbert S. Parmet.

The entries, along with interviews with many of the former president's closest aides and advisers, paint a stark portrait of George Bush's days in office: of a presidency in twilight and of a man isolated, bitter and often confused.

The glare of congressional and media scrutiny complicated Bush's deliberations about the Persian Gulf crisis. In January 1991, Bush met with his national security team to discuss what to do about Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait the previous August.

"So if he gets out without a war, that's okay?" Bush asked his chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell.

"Yes, sir," Powell replied. That was the goal of both the United States and the United Nations – Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait. If there was no war, no U.S. servicemen would be killed, Powell stated, speaking like a good military leader looking out for his troops.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III, a talented, ambitious close friend from Texas and a subtle rival of the president's, said he agreed. Baker wanted to bring home victory through diplomacy. If he could negotiate an Iraqi withdrawal, it would be a monumental personal achievement.

Next Bush and Scowcroft, almost together, jumped on Powell and Baker.

"Don't you realize that if he pulls out, it will be impossible for us to stay," Scowcroft asked. Bush nodded in agreement as Scowcroft spoke. The massive U.S. force – 500,000 troops in all – could not remain in the region indefinitely, Scowcroft said. It would be politically and logistically impossible – and politically insupportable in the United States – to keep the troops there for an extended period. The nightmare would be for Saddam to pull out of Kuwait and move back into Iraq but stay on the border. His army could wait indefinitely, threatening to invade again. The allied coalition needed the chance to destroy Saddam's army or at least to devastate it so it would not be a threat in the near future.

It was sobering, the president agreed, the most sobering reality of the crisis. He had to play all the diplomatic cards. But, he made clear, a diplomatic solution would in fact bring about a larger crisis. Looking squarely at his advisers, the president said plainly, "We have to have a war."

Scowcroft was aware that this understanding could never be stated publicly or be permitted to leak out. Americans were peacemakers, not warmongers. An American president who declared the necessity of war would probably be thrown out of office. But the president's words reflected the stark reality of the Gulf confrontation.

Baker met with Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz on January 9 in Geneva for more than six hours. Bush feared the Iraqis would come up with some kind of gimmicky proposal or maneuver. He was nervous; it was one of his toughest and tensest times as president. Finally Baker called on the secure telephone.

"It's over," Baker told him. The Iraqis would not budge.

In part, Bush was jubilant because it was the best news possible, although he would have to conceal it publicly. But Bush was also totally drained and full of anxiety because he knew the failure of negotiations meant war.

The massive air war directed against Iraq and its military forces lasted 38 days, and the ground war four days. It was a stunning victory for U.S. forces and their commander-in-chief.

Bush was viewed as a president who had been forced into war by Saddam's total refusal to negotiate. That was true, but Bush and Scowcroft knew that by January 1991 it was a war they had to have. The big secret went undisclosed.

Bush didn't want the turmoil of after-action analysis, and he declined to talk in-depth to reporters or authors about the Gulf crisis or the war while in office.

"This is not something I want second-guessing on," Bush told Fitzwater. He wanted the war judged on the outcome, not the process of how he got there, or on who said what to whom. "Hell, they'll be writing about this and before you know it, they'll have us losing the war."

Bush did not trust the Congress or the media to sort out or explain his dilemma and responsibility without sensationalizing. Watergate had made a sober account of the truth by the president almost impossible.

Bush's moment of triumph quickly soured. On March 13, 1991, he complained to his diary about criticism that he had failed to march to Baghdad and bring down Saddam. Bush confided that the press drumbeat about the Gulf War continued – what he called the "sniping, carping, bitching, predictable editorial complaints." It was, the president dictated, "the cynical liberalism that comes down on any president," even though the march-to-Baghdad critique was coming from the right. He said he resented cartoonist Garry Trudeau, a fellow Yale graduate who routinely ridiculed Bush in his "Doonesbury" comic strip. He called Trudeau "a little elitist who is spoiled, derisive, ugly and nasty."

To his dictation machine, Bush added, "Sometimes I really like the spotlight, but I'm tired of it. I've been at the head table for many years, and now I wonder what else is out there."