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Escape From Hicksville

The Bush Library goes downmarket:

“Close to downtown, and the Bush Library...”

He was many things, but in our world Philip Agee will be remembered for his associations with the Bush family.

President Bush senior shared the intelligence community view of Agee’s 70s actions in revealing CIA names and methods, largely from public records.

“In 1989, Vice President George H.W. Bush – a former CIA director – said he had “nothing but disdain” for Mr. Agee: “Those who go around publicizing the names of CIA people abroad are despicable.“

Agee’s acts, and the 1975 assassination of the Athens CIA Station Chief led to the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, an effort after the fact to criminalize what Agee did. The father’s quote later provided a useful club to beat George W. Bush during the investigation into the leaking of Valarie Plame’s name and status with the Agency.

Agee tangled with another Bush as well.

“Mr. Agee sued Bush’s wife, Barbara, over an allegation in her autobiography that Mr. Agee had exposed the CIA’s Greece station chief, Richard Welch, who was later killed by leftist terrorists…She settled the issue by dropping the reference to Mr. Agee, who had not mentioned Welch in his book. Instead, she blamed a magazine Mr. Agee worked for that also named alleged CIA agents. Mr. Agee’s defenders said that Welch’s identity was already known.“

Arson Investigation[Simulation]

“Sleepless In Midland” gets all crime scene investigatory on the Bush home arson.

The blogger seems to believe they found the source of the crime:

“V” for Victory?

“…notice the “V” shape of the fire damage on the wall to the left of the front door suggesting that the heat spread upward from a point on the porch. And you can also see a charred spot on the cement porch that could be the spot where the fire investigators thought the fire originated. So one possible assumption is that an accelerant was poured on the cement porch and set ablaze. But a chemical analysis would be necessary to confirm that.”

Even as a long time fan of blurry grassy knoll action I have to confess I don’t see it.

For the Bush arson completist, the blog does provide a thoughtful link to the town’s press release regarding the fire.

Other Citizen-Journalists share their views.

In other Presidential Hot Spots, the Richard M. Nixon Recreational Center in Hyden Kentucky has had a boiler room fire.

The Rec Center’s 1978 dedication was the scene of one of Nixon’s first public outings after his resignation, visiting the federal fund-loving mountain Republicans of the obscure hamlet.

Home on the Range

First the Cheney office fire, now arson has struck a childhood home of President Bush.

Odessa Texas’s thoughtful recreation of mid-American mid-century middle class splendor has suffered damage to “the green carpet inside the living room, the mid-20th century radio console near the door and the ceiling. Much of the porch roof is burned, and smoke damaged the ceilings throughout the home.”

But hope lives: “The Bush family photos in the northwest bedroom were not damaged”

A youthful George W. Bush moved to Odessa Texas with his parents at age two in 1948. His short-lived encounter with the region lasted but a year, then the family enjoyed a brief sojourn in California. After tasting such delights as Bakersfield and Compton they returned to West Texas in 1950, but this time they settled in the comparative glamour of Midland.

All this too and fro, and what can only be called rootlessness has left multiple Former Bush Homes scattered over the landscape. The family had three addresses in Odessa, then three in Midland before heading to Houston. When George W. Bush lived in Midland eleven years as an adult he had four more addresses.

The fire-damaged home is the only one remaining in Odessa, moved from it’s original location to the backyard of the covering-all-bettingly named “Presidential Museum and Leadership Library,” which bizarrely enough claims to have actually preexisted both Bush Presidencies.

Traditional Odessa rivals down the road in Midland have their own entry in the recreation race. Pledging that “The George W. Bush Childhood Home will be one of the Nation’s first 1950s residential restorations,” the George W. Bush Childhood Home Inc. has visions of raising $7 million to gussy up one of Bush’s Midland homes.

Seven Million Dollars, American

Something Will Turn Up

Things are twice as nice at the Gerald Ford Museum in Grand Rapids. Attendance doubled in the last year.

The Ford is experiencing American’s traditional “death bump” in Presidential Library visiting, as citizens recall old whats-his-name after endless coverage of their “state funerals.”

And not a moment too soon.

“The Gerald R. Ford Library and Museum has seen its attendance plummet nearly 60 percent during the last six years.”

The Ford, as always, holds it’s totemic objects, symbolic items which sending us swirling back to that magical, and above all, decent, time.

Who can forget the fall of Saigon, as evacuees descended from the US Embassy roof to waiting helicopters.

The Berlin Wall stood menacingly when Ford assumed the Presidency, and, um, continued to do so when he left office. And he sent the first US Ambassador to the East German government.

The centerpiece of the Ford Era, the touchstone of an all too brief generation, must be the wheel from the Mayaguez.

The American ship was seized off Cambodia shortly after the fall of Phenom Pen and Saigon. Bombs dropped, Marines died, and sailors were freed. In the Ford myth, repeated at his funeral, he “kicked that Vietnam syndrome” a decade before the elder Bush.

But not really.

“The crew of the Mayaguez was never held on Koh Tang island, the island that was invaded by the US Marine Corps...The Cambodians had announced that they intended to return the vessel, and had indeed done so while the bombardment of Cambodian territory was continuing, during which time the crew was being held unharmed on quite another island, named Rong Sam Lem. President Ford’s statement, claiming credit for the release and attributing it to the intervention on the wrong island, was knowingly false….American casualties were larger than has ever been admitted; twenty-three men were pointlessly sacrificed in a helicopter crash in Thailand that was never acknowledged as part of the operation. Thus, sixty-four servicemen were killed to free forty sailors who had already been let go, and who were not and never had been at the advertised location…As a result of the panic and disorder, three Marines were left behind alive on Koh Tang island, and later captured and murdered by the Khmer Rouge. You will not find the names of Lance Cpl. Joseph Hargrove, Pfc. Gary Hall or Pvt. Danny Marshall on any memorial.”

The Ford statue is another step closer to gracing the Capitol, unless you help.