CHAPTER 2

George Bush merely rode into the White House on the coattails of President Reagan. The November election witnessed the lowest voter turnout in any presidential election since 1924. Bush harked on the Willie Horton case in his negative ads, illustrating that Michael Dukakis was soft on crime. Yet Bush himself had no basic policy proposals and made no promises except: “Read my lips; no new taxes.” This promise was to cost him reelection four years later.

When Bush was inaugurated, he immediately was faced with a national debt of $2.86 trillion. He continued on a spending spree to rank alongside Reagan as one of the two biggest spenders in American history. Four years later the debt had risen to $4.1 trillion, an average increase of $410 billion per year.

Bush’s first embarrassment involved a scandal which involved vice presidential nominee Dan Quayle just prior to the November 1988 election. However, nothing surfaced until after the election. A federal prisoner, Brett Kimberlin in an Illinois penitentiary, was silenced by the Bureau of Prisons for political purposes. The article reported that Kimberlin made allegations that he had sold marijuana to then vice presidential candidate, Dan Quayle, just prior to the 1988 election. When the press began to pay attention to those allegations, the Bureau of Prisons took a number of actions to silence him.

Approximately one month before the 1988 presidential election Brett Kimberlin, who was incarcerated in federal prison since 1979, talked to National Public Radio reporter Nina Totenberg about his allegations of selling marijuana to vice president Dan Quayle in the 1970s. Shortly thereafter, Totenberg, without disclosing Kimberlin as the source, asked the deputy press secretary of the Bush-Quayle campaign, Mark Goodin, to comment on the allegations. When Goodin declined to comment without more information on who was making the allegations, Totenberg provided a signed affidavit from Kimberlin.

On November 3, 1988, five days before the presidential election, NBC News asked the prison warden at El Reno, Oklahoma, where Kimberlin was incarcerated, for an on-camera interview with Kimberlin. Prison authorities offered to schedule the interview on Wednesday of the following week, its regular scheduling day for media interviews. Because that day would be after the election, NBC asked that the interview take place before the election.

Kimberlin was released from detention the following day. He later attempted to give an interview to a group of reporters by telephone. He was then seized in his cell by six guards, handcuffed, marched to the detention unit in the cold, strip-searched and placed in a small cell. Prison officials issued the order, “No more calls for this inmate.” This order has been described by El Reno officials as unusual. Kimberlin remained in administrative detention for a week until well after the election. A month later, when the press again began to pay attention to Kimberlin’s allegations, the bureau again returned him to administrative detention. The Bureau of Prisons violated prison rules in its effort to silence Kimberlin.

The Bush team’s goal was to keep Kimberlin’s allegations out of the 1988 campaign, since it obviously would have serious consequences. The most senior officials in the Bush-Quayle campaign --Jim Baker, Lee Atwater, Fred Fielding, Stu Spencer and Joe Canzeri, as well as Quayle himself -- knew about Kimberlin's allegations and his efforts to publicize them. The House of Representatives Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management attempted to investigate these allegations. The Justice Department denied them the right to interview key people under oath as to the facts pertaining to the cancellation of Kimberlin's press conference and his detentions by the Bureau of Prisons.