Considering how the MSM said the '88 election was about character, how did they miss this?
Jennifer Fitzgerald (born Jennifer Ann Isobel Patteson-Knight in 1932) is a retired U.S. diplomat who allegedly had a long-term affair with President George H.W. Bush from the time he was United States ambassador to China which continued while he was Vice President and then President. She served under Bush "in a variety of positions" (as the Washington Post later put it<1>) for much of this time, and her influence on Bush has in turn reportedly led to friction between her and others working for him.<2> She has never spoken about this allegation, and Bush has denied it, but only on one occasion.
The rumored affair, and Fitzgerald's full name, were often well-known to members of the media who had covered Bush and his career but never discussed in public. Veteran New York Times reporter R.W. Apple said her name was "known everywhere, and it is not used".<1> The affair was first publicly reported by LA Weekly in 1988. During the 1988 presidential campaign, Donna Brazile, a campaign aid to Bush's opponent Michael Dukakis, was asked to resign after she told reporters that George H.W. Bush needed to "'fess up" about unsubstantiated rumors of an extra-marital affair. Said Brazile, "The American people have every right to know if Barbara Bush will share that bed with him in the White House."<3>
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Early life
Fitzgerald was born in England and came to the U.S. with her parents as a child. She has been married twice. Beyond that, little is known of her early life.
Fitzgerald and Bush meet
The newly divorced Fitzgerald first met Bush in 1974. She had left a White House position to become Bush's secretary after he was appointed U.S. ambassador to China. Years later, Barbara Bush was still bitter when she complained to author Gail Sheehy that her husband had not even noticed that she had stopped coloring her hair. Bush's later autobiography, Looking Forward, suggests his wife was constantly at his side, but in fact Barbara Bush spent most of 1975 in the U.S.<1>
She resented Fitzgerald because of the considerable influence she came to have over her husband. Some who knew both George Bush and Fitzgerald called her his "office wife."<2>
Later 1970s
When Bush left his ambassadorial post to become Director of Central Intelligence, Fitzgerald went to Langley as his assistant. During this time, Barbara Bush was suffering—she said later—from depression so severe she contemplated suicide on several occasions.<2>
Bush and Fitzgerald parted professional company the next year when Bush left the CIA following the change of administration and returned, temporarily, to the private sector. He arranged for Fitzgerald to stay in public service, however, as a special assistant to former Yale University president Kingman Brewster, then serving as U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom. Conveniently, according to Kitty Kelley, Bush's private-sector post as a corporate director required him to travel to London frequently. Fitzgerald also took frequent vacations back to the U.S., which led to her departure from the post after a year.<2>
1980 presidential campaign
Bush aide and longtime confidant James Baker reportedly threatened to resign from Bush's 1980 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination if Fitzgerald was in any way involved, due to the strong influence she had on him.<2> In turn, Bush reluctantly let her go, but set her up with an office job in New York where he personally paid her salary.<1> Fitzgerald returned as a Bush staff member once he became Ronald Reagan's running mate and the election had been won.
In that position she clashed with another Bush intimate, future Republican National Committee chairman Rich Bond. This time he left, after Bush told him he would not make the same mistake twice.<2>
Vice presidency
According to Kelley, Nancy Reagan, who disliked the Bushes, liked to tell the story of a March 18, 1981 incident involving the then-Vice President and Fitzgerald. That night, security men suddenly went up to Alexander Haig and William French Smith, then Attorney General, while they were having dinner at the Lion d'Or restaurant in Washington with friends and family. The pair departed hastily, then returned after 45 minutes laughing and shaking their heads. Asked what had happened, they explained that Bush had gotten into a car accident while out with Fitzgerald and needed their help keeping the incident off the record.<1> Kelley's publisher's fact checkers went to the extent of contacting someone else who attended that dinner, and confirmed the account.<1> The incident later gave rise to a rumor that Bush had been shot on her doorstep, which the Post ran a lengthy article four days later debunking but without mentioning the allegations that she was his mistress.<4>
Other Washington gossip circulated during the 1980s about Bush and Fitzgerald (briefly married to an older man during this period<1>), who served as "executive assistant" to the Vice President. In one widely-told story, Bush had been visiting Fitzgerald one night at her home near the Chinese embassy, when the building she lived in caught fire. The Secret Service refused to even let city firefighters in the building until Bush's departure via a secluded rear exit could be assured.<2>
In 1984, Bush went to Geneva for disarmament talks. Fitzgerald was one of the accompanying staff. A lawyer from the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency went to her room with some papers for her signature and Bush answered the door.<2>After the talks, it was later claimed that the two shared a cottage on Lake Geneva for several days.<2>
1988 presidential campaign
Bush reassigned Fitzgerald to be his chief lobbyist to Congress as he prepared to run to succeed Reagan. Her influence persisted after her transfer to Capitol Hill, much to the annoyance of other staffers.<2> As the campaign neared, other Republican candidates' operations started whispering about the affair. Lee Atwater was so worried that Newsweek was planning a major story on the affair that he had a special lunch with Evan Thomas and Howard Fineman of the magazine's Washington bureau. Thomas recalls that a nervous Atwater chain smoked throughout and worried about the effect the story would have on the Bush campaign, but did not deny anything. That was left to George W. Bush, who called Fineman up several days later and said "The answer to the big 'A' question is N-O".<1>
On October 20, 1988, Dukakis campaign field director Donna Brazile told a group of reporters that Bush needed to "fess up" about rumors of an extramarital liaison. She resigned from the campaign the following day and Dukakis subsequently made a personal apology to Bush for the remark. Journalists who were aware of the rumors often dealt with them simply by calling Fitzgerald, who never returned the calls. Thus, there was never enough for a story.<1>
Presidency
After Bush won election, Fitzgerald was transferred to the State Department as deputy chief of protocol. Barbara Bush did not want her in the White House.<2> Because James Baker, the new Secretary of State, was the only one who could equal her influence on Bush, the administration decided to put her under his supervision.<2>
Customs incident
In 1990, Fitzgerald, upon her return from an official trip to Argentina for the inauguration of President Carlos Menem, was found by the U.S. Customs Service to have underdeclared the value of a $1,100 fur-lined raincoat and failed completely to declare a $1,300 silver fox cape she had bought there. She was fined $648.
As the Post later reported, the State Department disciplined her with a two-week unpaid suspension. Normally such abuse of diplomatic privilege costs the offenders their jobs. Other State employees believed that Fitzgerald earned a comparative slap on the wrist only by virtue of her relationship with the president.<5> Even that slap was further softened as Fitzgerald reportedly never served the suspension.<1>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Fitzgerald
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