Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr, President Trump's nominee to return to the post, presented two starkly different images at his U.S. Senate confirmation hearing on Jan. 15 in Washington, DC. 

Barr, 68 (shown in a screengrab), stressed through his words and manner the appearance of an independent lawyer dedicated to public service and a "rule of law" according to relatively neutral principles on the conservative side of the political mainstream with his principles honed by his long experience and integrity.

These, nationwide cable audiences saw throughout the day, included Barr's respect and friendship for such former U.S. Justice Department colleagues as the current Special Counsel Robert Mueller III and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

Barr's Republican supporters on the Senate Judiciary Committee eagerly promoted that Barr persona, which is most likely to maximize Barr's votes for confirmation. The supporters include the new chairman of the Republican-controlled committee, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, below right.

Barr's other persona was that of a pushy supplicant eager to butter up President Trump with dubious legal theories granting the president strong protections from federal corruption and similar investigations. Those probes most notably involve Mueller's ongoing probe Russian influence helping enable Trump's 2016 presidential election victory, among other alleged misconduct or crime.

Support for that version of Barr's motives arose primarily from questions and comments by committee Democrats. Such questions came from those who cited Barr's previous written and verbal statements. The gist was that Barr sent an unsolicited memo to Trump's White House staff arguing that Mueller has been abusing his authority in unconstitutional ways.

Some have described Barr's public statements as a campaign for the post. Separately, some questioned Barr's statement to a New York Times reporter that prosecution of Hillary Clinton for a uranium deal approved by the Obama administration was more justified than the current inquiry over Mueller.

Barr would supervise Mueller if confirmed as attorney general and could fire Mueller.

So, the question remained at the end of the day: which, if either image, previews for the public how the real William Barr would act if confirmed?

The Justice Integrity Project will explore the possibilities in depth during this confirmation process. 

We begin with excerpts below on selected news stories and commentaries early this week about the nominee's confirmation process.

During a tense, emotional hearing on Dec. 20, a federal judge rejected conflicting government recommendations and ordered a two-month jail sentence for a former longtime U.S. Senate staff member for lying to FBI agents investigating leaks of confidential information to journalists.

Former Senate Intelligence Commission staff member James A. Wolfe, 58, received the sentence in Washington, DC’s federal court after U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson rejected the Justice Department’s unusual request for greatly increased punishment and an even more unusual plea for leniency by top leaders of the Senate committee.

The case’s drama included the defendant’s tearful apologies for wrongdoing that cost him both his job and threatened his marriage because the FBI exposed how Wolfe, shown in a file photo from an appearance on C-SPAN discussing security issues, had been having an affair with a young reporter.

Wider implications included prosecutors’ claims that Wolfe’s actions endangered national security and the judge’s detailed analysis of why the deserved jail time but far less than prosecutors had been seeking.

The judge, shown below right in a file photo, rejected the government’s theory that Wolfe, the Senate committee’s director of security for three decades, endangered national security in a way that deserved a vast elevation of his culpability under federal sentencing guidelines.

She said that she would sentence him purely on the charge of lying in his plea agreement, but then said that he deserved jail time in part because he had violated his position of responsibility.

This reporter covered in person the sentencing and also the sentencing hearing two days previously in a nearby courtroom for former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who also had pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents.

Wolfe’s attorneys had cited as examples of leniency Flynn’s case, and the probation terms for former Clinton National Security advisor Sandy Berger (for removing classified documents from the National Archives) and for former Obama CIA Director David Petraeus (for disclosure of classified information to his lover and biographer Paula Broadwell).

The judge noted, however, that Berger and Petraeus had pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges, unlike Wolfe.

Flynn’s sentencing has been postponed until March after U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, left, surprised litigants and commentators alike by denouncing Flynn.

Sullivan expressed doubt that Flynn should avoid jail time as prosecutors had recommended because of Flynn's extraordinary cooperation with the probe of Special Counsel Robert Mueller into the Trump administration.

This concludes a four-part Justice Integrity Project series on life and legacy of the President George H.W. Bush, who died on Nov. 30. Bush is shown below right in an official photo from his term as president from 1989 to 1993.

The material in this Part 4 covers his presidential decision-making involving the Iraq War, his overall domestic program of deregulation and an overall historical assessment. The material is excerpted from this editor's book Presidential Puppetry: Obama, Romney and Their Masters (2015 updated edition).

The material in Part 4, highlighted below in red, is taken from the chapter  'George H.W. Bush: Poppy's Seed and Bitter Harvest' (Part 2). 'Poppy'' was the late president's nickname among his family.

• Introduction and News Clippings (Part 1)
• Poppy's Progress (Part 2)
• Texas Politics, Bush-Style
• Deep In the Heart of Washington Intrigue
• Refueling In Houston
• White House Years and Fears
• Iran-Contra
• Deregulation
• Iraq War
• The Rest of the Story

Presidential Puppetry charted recent presidents' secret ties to the nation's elite private sector power structure (including major media organizations), which sometimes work collaboratively with the CIA and FBI operational arms.

These professional ties helped enable the chosen political aspirants to establish support for their careers in ways that most of their political competitors and the public would never know, thus undermining the voting process (and implicating the corporate-owned media in a failure to inform).

The book included three chapters about the Bush family. The one about the late president, the focus of this series, was "George H.W. Bush: Poppy's Seed and Bitter Harvest."  Preceding that chapter in Presidential Puppetry is a chapter about Poppy's father, "Prescott Bush: Roots of the Bushes."

Following that in the book is a chapter about the more recent Bush president, "George W. Bush: Shameless, Heartless and Selected — Not Elected."

From the Chapter: 'George H.W. Bush: Poppy's Seed and Bitter Harvest'

Deregulation

Chief Justice William Rehnquist, a Republican appointee, swears in President George H. W. Bush in 1989 as the incoming president's wife, Barbara, looks on.

The central domestic purpose of the Reagan-Bush administration was to implement free market, free trade, and other deregulatory theories that supposedly hobbled the U.S. economy at the time. As with Iran-Contra’s radical cuts in constitutional checks and balances, Poppy Bush was at the center of the deregulatory changes that helped reposition the nation’s economic structure to align better with the perceived golden age of fewer government restrictions, as in the Roaring Twenties.

This continues a Justice Integrity Project series on life and legacy of the President George H.W. Bush, who died on Nov. 30. He is shown below right in an official photo from his term as president from 1989 to 1993.

The material in this Part 3 covers his family life and career as he advanced from Texas politics to the national stage in Washington as a congressman, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, director of the Republican National Committee, U.S. envoy to China, CIA director and vice president to Ronald Reagan. The material is excerpted from this editor's book Presidential Puppetry: Obama, Romney and Their Masters (2015 updated edition).

This segment, Part 3, covers the late president's biography highlighted below in red, taken from the book chapter  'George H.W. Bush: Poppy's Seed and Bitter Harvest' (Part 2). 'Poppy'' was the late president's nickname amongst family.

• Introduction and News Clippings (Part 1)
  
• Poppy's Progress (Part 2)
  
• Texas Politics, Bush-Style
• Deep In the Heart of Washington Intrigue
• Refueling In Houston
• White House Years and Fears
• Iran-Contra
• Iraq War
• Deregulation
• The Rest of the Story

Presidential Puppetry charted recent presidents' secret ties to the nation's elite private sector power structure (including major media organizations), which sometimes work collaboratively with the CIA and FBI operational arms. These professional ties helped enable the chosen aspirants to establish support for their political careers in ways that most of their political competitors and the public would never know, thus undermining the voting process (and implicating the corporate-owned media in a failure to inform).

The book included three chapters about the Bush family. The one about the late president, the focus of this series, was "George H.W. Bush: Poppy's Seed and Bitter Harvest."  Preceding that chapter in Presidential Puppetry is a chapter about Poppy's father, "Prescott Bush: Roots of the Bushes." Following that in the book is a chapter about the more recent Bush president, "George W. Bush: Shameless, Heartless and Selected — Not Elected."

From the Chapter: 'George H.W. Bush: Poppy's Seed and Bitter Harvest'

Texas Politics, Bush-Style

Poppy Bush fathered six children. The oldest was the future president George, born in 1946. The next, Robin, died of leukemia in 1953 at age of nearly four. Barbara Bush [shown above in a family photo with her husband and four of the children] says it turned her hair prematurely white. A second son, John Ellis “Jeb” Bush was born in 1953.

After the family moved to Houston in 1959, Poppy became active in Texas Republican politics. His initial post was as Harris County GOP finance chairman. This enabled him to leverage his financial contacts, and prepare for a losing Senate campaign against Democrat Ralph Yarborough in 1964. Bush aimed lower for his next campaign, and won a Houston congressional seat in 1966. By then a millionaire, he exited from Zapata Offshore by selling his shares to fellow Yale Bonesman Robert Gow.

President Nixon persuaded Bush to run again for the Senate in 1970, and rewarded him after another losing effort with an appointment to become the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. As a consolation prize for Nixon twice bypassing him as a vice presidential nominee, Bush became Republican National Committee chairman in 1973.

Because the corporate-owned media have published only partial truths regarding life of the late President George H.W. Bush the Justice Integrity Project is providing what's most important about the rest of the story. The late president, who died on Nov. 30, is shown below left in an official photo used during his term from 1989 to 1993.

The material in this series is excerpted from this reporter's book Presidential Puppetry: Obama, Romney and Their Masters (2015 updated edition).

Presidential Puppetry charted the secret ties of recent presidents to the nation's elite private sector power structure (including major media organizations), which sometimes work collaboratively with the CIA and FBI operational arms.

One of the book's central findings was to document via more than 1,100 endnotes that all recent presidents between President Jimmy Carter and Donald Trump established covert ties to the CIA or FBI before they entered politics.

These professional ties helped enable the chosen aspirants to establish support for their political careers in ways that most of their political competitors and the public would never know, thus undermining the voting process (and implicating the media in a failure to inform).

The book included three chapters about the Bush family. The one about the late president, the focus of this series, was "George H.W. Bush: Poppy's Seed and Bitter Harvest," which draws on the late president's nickname "Poppy."

Immediately before that in Presidential Puppetry is a chapter about Poppy's father, "Prescott Bush: Roots of the Bushes," describing Prescott Bush's path from the Yale's Skull and Bones Society to helping finance Hitler's chief financier, Fritz Thyssen.

Prescott (shown during his college years at Yale) avoided wide exposure for his Hitler ties and won a U.S. Senate seat from Conncticut and becoming one of President Eisenhower's closest friends in Washington. The two are shown together in the White House Oval office, with Prescott at right.

The other Presidential Puppetry chapter picks up from the series below and describes the more recent Bush president, "George W. Bush: Shameless, Heartless and Selected — Not Elected."

From the Chapter: 'George H.W. Bush: Poppy's Seed and Bitter Harvest' (Part 2)

The series, from the Justice Integrity Project:

• Introduction and News Clippings
• Poppy's Progress (This column)
• Texas Politics, Bush-Style
• Deep In the Heart of Washington Intrigue
• Refueling In Houston
• White House Years and Fears
• Iran-Contra
• Deregulation
• Iraq War
• The Rest of the Story
• Poppy’s Progress

The corporate-owned mainstream media have provided only partial truths regarding life of President George H.W. Bush, below left, whose death on Nov. 30 led to days of prominent coverage of his career and positive aspects of its lasting impact. 

Our Justice Integrity Project excerpted prominently on these pages such accolades over the past week. Now it's time for the rest of the story, which draws heavily from the three chapters about the Bush family in our 2013 book Presidential Puppetry: Obama, Romney and Their Masters, which documented the secret ties of America's recent presidents with the power structure.

Excerpted below is the introduction to our chapter "George H.W. Bush: Poppy's Seed and Bitter Harvest," which draws on the late president's nickname "Poppy." Immediately before that in the book is a chapter about his father, "Prescott Bush: Roots of the Bushes," and his son, "George W. Bush: Shameless, Heartless and Selected — Not Elected."

The "Poppy" chapter will be excerpted in several parts here over coming days.

All of efforts at historical understanding are too important to delay or leave to hand-picked courtiers of the powerful whom the major media put before us. Several major national problems afflicting the United States have direct roots to little-known aspects of the Bush dynasty and the 41st president (1989-1993) in particular, as will be seen in the last segment of our multi-part series.

These problems include ongoing Middle Eastern wars, blight in our major cities caused by Iran-Contra smuggling, and that smuggling's contribution to instability in Central America fostering immigration from there to the United States.

Another result traceable to this president and this family is a notable advance in the growing culture of "elite deviance," whereby wealthy, well-connected insiders are spared the consequences of their actions, whether it is Bush family members who helped bring on the multi-billion-dollar Savings and Loan scandal of the 1980s or the Iran-Contra criminals whom the 41st president pardoned with the support of his Attorney General William P. Barr, right, whom Trump has just nominated (doubtless in hope of the same kind of gentle treatment justified by high-sounding legal principles).  

We begin with an introduction from Presidential Puppetry to "Bush 41."

An appendix excerpts major recent stories about the death, drawn primarily from major mainstream print publications but interspersed with a several independent commentaries that largely support our themes in this series. This editor is amplifying these themes also on The Midnight Writer News Show, a radio broadcast from downstate Illinois and hosted by S.T. Patrick. The show scheduled for broadcast next week was recorded as Episode 105 on Dec. 9, 2018.

Such research comes from many sources, of course. We recognize as essential for this series those dedicated researchers, law enforcers and whistleblowers who have contributed to book-length portraylals of the late president. Among those recognized below from the independent sphere are:

Texas Tech professor Peter Brewton, a former Houston Post reporter who authored The Mafia, CIA and George Bush. Among others are the following independent-spirited authors;

Russ Baker (Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, The Powerful Forces That Put It In The White House, And What Their Influence Means For America

Daniel Hopsicker, Barry and the Boys: The CIA, The Mob, and America's Secret History);

Robert Parry (Secrecy And Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq;

Kevin Phillips; American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush;

Barbara Honegger (October Surprise: Did the Reagan-Bush election campaign sabotage President Carter's attempts to free the American hostages in Iran?);

Peter Dale Scott (shown at right) (American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan);

Jonathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott, and Jane Hunter (The Iran Contra Connection: Secret Teams and Covert Operations in the Reagan Era);

Craig Unger (House of Bush / House of Saud: The Secret Relations Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties);

Terry Reed and John Cummings (Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA); and

Webster Griffin Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin (George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography)