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7 george h. W. Bush President George H. W. Bush seemed ambivalent about the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) at the beginning of his term. His experience with the board during the Team B exercise of the 1970s reportedly colored his views, as did the board’s outspokenness about the difficulties of verifying the START treaty.1 As a result, he made no changes to the Reagan PFIAB and issued no executive orders (EOs) concerning the board, and it lay dormant for the first eighteen months of his presidency. The members of Reagan’s board remained on the official roster, and the staff continued to work on projects initiated during the Reagan administration. There is, however, no evidence that the board held meetings or received new tasks from the Bush White House. Other high-ranking members of the administration also had doubts about the utility of the board. Secretary of State James Baker reportedly supported abolishing the PFIAB because he disliked its access to the president and its potential as an alternative source of advice.2 Further, he regarded those appointed to the PFIAB as merely receiving a reward for political favors. He could not name one example of the board doing something that improved U.S. intelligence. One former cabinet member told us that Baker believed that there were already too many overlapping organizations in American intelligence.3 Thus, there was little pressure on the president from his most senior advisers to make use of the board. Moreover, during the first year of President Bush’s tenure, the PFIAB found itself in the center of media and congressional controversy—an unusual position for the normally low-profile and secretive advisory body. The controversy centered around the divisive figure of Henry Kissinger, a Reagan appointee who remained on the official PFIAB roster. In April 1989, the New York Times released a special report describing the possible conflicts of interest between Kissinger’s membership on the board and the activities of his consulting firm, Kissinger Associates.4 The article concerned Kissinger, but it also called into question the activities 264 • PRIVILEGED and CONFIDENTIAL of Scowcroft, the new national security adviser, and Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, who both were consultants for Kissinger Associates. The report alleged that Kissinger regularly examined arms control issues with the PFIAB while at the same time advising clients who built or maintained missile systems for the U.S. military.5 Finally, an unnamed PFIAB member also charged that Kissinger took classified documents from board meetings in violation of security regulations.6 Despite Kissinger’s long association with the Grand Old Party, conservative Republicans in Congress took the lead in calling for an investigation of his activities.7 During Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on the matter in May 1989, Senator Jesse Helms said of Kissinger : “He’s up to his armpits in deals with foreign countries. . . . He’s not the king; he doesn’t have to serve on this board.”8 In September 1989, both the House and the Senate Intelligence committees submitted reports on the fiscal year 1990 Intelligence Authorization Bill that directed the president to issue regulations on the use of classified information by the PFIAB.9 Congress also began to consider bills that would make PFIAB members’ financial statements public. Although board members had always been required to file financial disclosure statements when they joined the board, the reports had previously been kept confidential. In December 1989, Kissinger found himself in the media spotlight again, this time over Bush’s decision to send a diplomatic delegation to Beijing in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Regardless of the true extent of Kissinger’s involvement in this controversial decision to engage the Communist regime despite its atrocious human rights record , some critics thought they detected his influence behind it. In the wake of this controversy, Congress resumed debate on the bills requiring public financial disclosure for all PFIAB members, bills that Bush had earlier threatened to veto.10 Although Kissinger vehemently denied ever advising his clients on issues related to arms control and disputed the claim that his service on the board and his business activities caused any conflict of interest, congressional and media scrutiny continued to build. As a result, in January 1990, he submitted his resignation from the PFIAB on the grounds that he was too busy to serve. He did mention , however, that he would be pleased to continue to offer informal advice to the president.11...

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