Back when George H. W. Bush was running for the White House, high-level Republicans were reportedly concerned about his perceived lack of gravitas. It may be hard to imagine now, with the elder Bush’s heft contrasted to that of the younger, but so it was. One of the phrases in print about him (aside from the epithets developed in George F. Will’s office) was “all resume and no substance."

In other words, former President Bush had held a series of government positions but made little impact.  Ironically, one position in which he had notable impact seems to be something not many people were able to talk about.  From 1976 to 1977, George H. W. Bush was director of the Central Intelligence Agency, appointed by President Gerald Ford. 

His main apparent contribution there, aside from shielding the Agency from investigation by the Church Committee as much as possible, is one we’re still paying for today:  the creation of a special entity called “Team B.”

The issue at hand was the strength of the U.S.S.R. – a broad question with unimaginably huge ramifications for the duration of the Cold War.  As we know by now, official estimates of Soviet military strength far outstripped the reality, to such an extent that the swift collapse of the Soviet Union took many nominally expert observers by surprise.  While the inflated estimates were being pumped out for public consumption, however, U.S. “defense” and “intelligence” spending was kept on track to meet the purported threat.

As my late father commented when the Berlin Wall finally fell, “The military-industrial complex keeps rolling along” (cf. the old song about caissons, which he used to hum).  One of the wheels in this process, as we now know, was none other than the creation supervised by Mr. Bush, called “Team B.”  The crux was that CIA intelligence was turning up information that called the vaunted Soviet strength into some doubt.  In a pattern that went on for some years, the CIA was concerned about the discrepancies between conflicting estimates.  “Team B” was staffed not by the CIA but by people outside it, who generated their own estimates of Soviet strength, and was pushed by Reagan’s foreign intelligence advisory board.  The CIA seems not to have been pleased with it.  One CIA analyst who scrutinized the team’s work was found dead; his homicide has apparently never been solved.

But – and this will probably surprise no one – the team got its message out, or at least got its message up through administration channels to where it was most useful and was welcomed most warmly.

In a nutshell, what they did was basically keep the Cold War going as long as possible, even while it and the then-Soviet Union were on their last legs.

When the Cold War at last ended, even for public consumption, some of the same personnel – as we now know – began casting about for a new “global” entity to take its place.  Some media figures who have devoted little attention to other questions affecting public safety and public health instantly became exercised about weapons that might be stolen from the former U.S.S.R. and then acquired by terrorists.

A valid concern, of course.  But the same folks with so much to say about “terrorists” are much less voluble on equally somber issues including land mines, toxic waste, radioactive materials in private hands, etc.