FOREIGN AGENTS Chapter Three

“The question everyone wants answered is how a cold-blooded murderer ever got out in the first place,”

The Lawrence Eagle-Tribune April, 1987

One afternoon in late May of 1988, the 6' 9” Jim Pinkerton, leader of the 35 “nerds” doing Opposition Research for the Vice President George Bush Presidential campaign, was reading the transcript of the New York Democratic Presidential Primary debate. 

By then it was clear Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis would be the Democratic nominee, and early polls gave him a 17 point lead over Bush. 

But Jim read something in Al Gore's remarks which tweaked his interest. He called Reagan White House Staffer Andrew Hill "Andy" Card  (above) who was from the bay state, to ask about the “furlough issue.”

Jim Pinkerton explained later, “Card said, Yes, this has been a huge thing up here...The Boston Globe had run stories on this, the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune had run something like one hundred thirty stories.   They won a Pulitzer Prize (abive) ... it was just sort of totally hiding in plain sight...it was just like discovering gold.” 

When Pinkerton told his boss, campaign manager, “boy wonder” Lee Atwater said, "By the time we’re finished, they’re going to wonder whether Willie Horton is Dukakis’s running mate.”  And  Communications Director Roger Ailes promised to “Strip the bark off that little bastard (Dukakis)”, adding, “The only question is whether we depict Willie Horton with a knife in his hand or without it.” Within days, Horton's threatening mug shot was hanging at Bush''s 15^th street, D.C. headquarters.

Roger Eugene Ailes (above) came into politics as a two time Emmy winning talk show producer with a "boundless propensity for fabulism and a bottomless ego.” 

The talk show brought Ailes (above, left) into contact with Richard Nixon (above, right), who after a few hours listening to Roger, appointed him his Executive for Television.  Privately Ailes had a cynical view of his new client. “He looks like somebody hung him in a closet overnight and he jumps out in the morning with his suit all bunched up and starts running around saying, ‘I want to be president.’"

In the words of Jim Pinkerton, with Nixon, Ailes was,  part Don Rickles, part psychiatrist and part motivational football coach".,  During the 1968 campaign,  instead of doing standard interviews with heavyweight journalists Ailes designed “town hall” meetings,  hosted by local anchors and filled with carefully chosen voters who would ask Nixon softball questions. Historian Rick Perlstein explained the events were not staged, rather, “They were fixed”.

It also highlighted Roger's insight into the creation of news, what came to be called his “Orchestra Pit Theory". “If you have two guys on a stage and one guy says, "I have a solution to the Middle East problem," and the other guy falls in the orchestra pit, who do you think is going to be on the evening news?” Or as Roger rephrased it during the '84 campaign, “ What would a journalist rather cover? New TV ads or the latest proposal to change the capital gains tax?"

Working closely with Ronald Reagan, Ailes became known as “Dr. Feelgood” because of his ability to reassure and coach the candidate through difficult situations. It was Ailes who counseled that facts were not important. “You get elected”, he told Reagan, “on themes”. As Mary Matalin, a longtime Republican campaign strategist remembered, “"Roger always had the clearest vision...When you came to a strategy impasse...I can’t remember a single incident where he lost a fight."

Having chosen to highlight the issues of furloughs – among others - the next step was to convince their client, Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush (above) that he needed to play rough. The Bush family had been wealthy since Samuel Prescott Bush took over the Buckeye Steel Company in 1908 and bought a summer vacation home in Kennebunkport, Maine. 

And although Bush had earned the Distinguished Flying Cross in World War II (above) and been a successful businessman, and politician, he was what Atwater called a "cocktail party Republican", a large step removed from the blood thirsty front line fighters like himself.. 

So Ailes rented an office in a shopping mall in the "quintessentially suburban” town of Paramus, New Jersey (above), where he ran a series of focus groups, testing the public impressions of Bush and Dukakis. It seems likely that while these groups were also “fixed”.

As expected and intended the groups did not have good news for Bush. They reinforced the “Curse of Martin Van Buren”, the last Vice President who had won election to Presidency in his own right back in 1836. Atwater explained the current dilemma. “We’re 17 points back,” said Atwater, “and (Dukakis will) pick up 10 more points at their convention and we won’t win. Even with a good campaign, we won’t win.” After this presentation, Atwater said, “it was an easy sell.”

Atwater (above) would later explain to an interviewer what “it” was. “You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can't say "nigger"...So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now...fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes...” When the interviewer asked if Atwater was admitting the “conservative strategy” was just racism dressed up in new clothes, Lee responded, “You all don't quote me on this.”

By now, William Horton (above)  was inmate number 189-1821 at the Jessup Correctional Institute, south of Baltimore. He had been sentenced to 2 life terms plus 85 years by Maryland Judge Vincent Fema. 

Massachusetts had requested Horton's return to finish his life sentence, but Judge Fema said, "I'm not prepared to take the chance that Mr. Horton might again be furloughed or otherwise released. This man should never draw a breath of free air again." It was as if the judge were writing ads for the Republicans.

And Horton's victims were still trapped in prisons Horton had created for them. They never returned to their home, selling it at a loss. Although they went ahead with their marriage plans 2 months after the assault, Angela Barnes constantly carries a knife in her purse, and keeps one in her beside table. She admits to even taking the weapon into the bathtub with her. She thinks, if faced with a similar situation, with a gun to her head, “I think I'd say 'Go ahead, shoot me'. I don't want to go through this again”. 

Since that horrific night in 1987, Clifford Barnes has never gotten a full night's sleep.  He would later demand, “Ask Dukakis if he wants Willie Horton in his basement”  But when the couple had approached Governor Micheal Dukakis to discuss the state's furlough program, he refused to meet with them. It was as if Dukakis was writing ads for the Republicans.

Now all the Bush team needed to find the right person to create the perfect ad that mixed race and prison furloughs to destroy the Democrat candidate,

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