However, when Congress finally agreed to look into the October Surprise case in 1991-92, Republicans were determined to circle the wagons around the then-sitting President George H.W. Bush, who was facing a tough reelection fight against Democrat Bill Clinton.
Rather than welcome any truth-seeking, the Republicans and their media allies went on the attack claiming that the October Surprise case was a baseless "conspiracy theory."
At the time, the Republicans also suggested several reasons why the alibi witness for Oct. 19, 1980, should remain secret. One was that Bush might have been off on a romantic rendezvous and that Democrats simply wanted to pry into the visit as a way to neutralize accounts of Bill Clinton's womanizing.
However, that "tryst" rationale fell apart when I obtained the Secret Service records for Barbara Bush and they showed her on the same trip, with the destination again whited-out.
Then, there was the suggestion that the unidentified Bush family friends were very private people who shouldn't be dragged into the middle of a political controversy. (As it turned out, the Moores were very much public figures, both having worked in the Nixon White House and Richard A. Moore serving as U.S. ambassador to Ireland during the first Bush administration.)
In 1992, as Bush's team continued to stonewall the identity of Bush's "alibi witness," Bush angrily demanded at two news conferences that Congress specifically clear him of the allegations that he had taken a secret trip to Paris in 1980.
Bowing to those pressures in June 1992, Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Indiana, chairman of the House investigative task force, agreed to a curious bargain in which he and a few senior investigators were shown the destination of Bush's supposed afternoon trip on Oct. 19, 1980, but with the proviso that they never interview anyone who was there or disclose any names.
So, without verifying Bush's alibi, the House task force cleared Bush of going to Paris. When I asked Hamilton about this strange agreement this week, in the wake of the National Archives' release of the "Moore Residence" document, he responded through a spokesman that he was "not able to provide any answers" because he no longer has his official records.
Moore's Silence
Though the Oct. 19, 1980, visit could have involved either Moore or his wife or both, the "alibi witness" being kept secret in 1992 had to be Moore, since his wife, Jane Swift Moore, died in 1985.
When I contacted one of Moore's sons, Richard A. Moore Jr., he told me that he didn't think that any of the family's five children were still living in the Rockwood Parkway house in 1980. Nor did he think there would likely be any photographs of the visit since the Bushes were "almost neighbors," often popping in.
But the question remains: If Richard A. Moore could have confirmed that Bush was definitely in Washington on Oct. 19, 1980, not on a secret mission to Paris, why wasn't he questioned? Why was the Bush administration so determined to block the House task force from interviewing Moore?
Moore owed a huge debt to Bush, who had lifted Moore from his Watergate-tainted purgatory in 1989 by appointing him to be U.S. Ambassador to Ireland. Moore would seem to be a friendly witness who would happily want to cover for Bush, if possible.
Which is why Moore's silence in 1992 only adds to the mystery. Moore served in Dublin until June 1992, departing the same month as the battle over withholding his identity was playing out in Washington.
Given Moore's close call with a criminal prosecution for his role in the Watergate cover-up -- he was often in meetings where all the other participants ended up going to jail -- he understandably might have been very leery about lying to Congress even to protect another U.S. president and a personal friend, if Bush indeed had snuck off to Paris.
Another document released to me under my appeal to the National Archives raises further suspicions about Bush's whereabouts on that Sunday. Undated handwritten notes that I found in the files of one of White House counsel Gray's assistants, Ronald Von Lembke, indicate that some of the Secret Service records for Oct. 19, 1980, were missing.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
4
3
2
