Was George H.W. Bush involved in the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan?, page 1

When a President is assassinated, it is the Vice President who has the most to gain, for in the event of a Presidential assassination, the Vice President will become the most powerful man in the world.

This is not a new story at all, but it was not covered properly in its day. There was no World Wide Web, or blogs, or internet forums to question it.

Here is the short of it:

It was little reported that George H.W. Bush was a close friend and prior business partner with Hinckley's father, and that John Hinckley was even a childhood friend of the Bush children (including the current President).

The link below has a compilation of articles, beginning with one from The Associated Press.

www.freerepublic.com
Source: The Associated Press
Published: March 31, 1981

The family of the man charged with trying to assassinate President Reagan is acquainted with the family of Vice President George Bush and had made large contributions to his political campaign, the Houston Post reported today.

The newspaper said in a copyright story, Scott Hinckley, brother of John
W. Hinckley Jr., who allegedly shot Reagan, was to have dined tonight in Denver at the home of Neil Bush, one of the vice president's sons.

The newspaper said it was unable to reach Scott Hinckley, vice president
of his father's Denver-based firm, Vanderbilt Energy Corp., for comment. Neil Bush lives in Denver, where he works for Standard Oil Co. of Indiana.

Please visit the link provided for the complete story.

Here is succinct collage from various sources:

Alexander Haig asserted, "I'm in control here" -- Haig was a Reagan loyalist, distrustful of Bush, and opposed Regan's selection of Bush as a running mate. Prior to the assassination attempt on Reagan, it had been law that the Secretary of State would head any investigation into any assassination or attempted assassination against a sitting President, for the obvious reason that a Vice President had the most to gain by an assassination, and therefore would have a conflict of interest to head such an investigation. When Reagan entered office, in his very first month he signed an executive order relating to Presidential security procedures. Unknown to Haig, a line item in this executive order changed that law, and explicitly put the Vice President in charge of investigating any assassinations or assassination attempts. As former director of the CIA, this security procedures order was authored by George H.W. Bush. When Haig attempted to head an investigation into Hinckley, Bush confronted him with the change of law (hence Haig's proclamation). Bush's investigation lasted only a few days, and determined that Hinckley was a lone "crazed" gunman. Case closed.

[edit on 26-10-2004 by John bull 1]