Tabloid update: "Found! Bush Love Letters to Condi"

Last week's Globe tabloid featured a "world exclusive" cover story promising proof that they've been right all along about former President George W. Bush's marriage-shattering affair with his Secretary of State and former National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

While we don't doubt that they've been right all along, this story doesn't prove it.

"Intimate love notes George Bush sent to his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have been found in a stash of missing White House e-mails," the Globe reports, "insiders believe."

It's true that a stash of missing White House e-mails have been found. On December 15, 2009, the Associated Press reported that computer technicians located 22 million missing White House e-mail messages from 94 days of the Bush administration. The AP got this information from two groups that filed lawsuits over the Bush White House's faulty electronic record-keeping system.

The two groups, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive, said they're settling the lawsuits, which were filed in 2007.

But the e-mails haven't been made public. "It will be 2014 at the earliest before the public sees any of the messages because they must go through the National Archives' process for releasing presidential and agency records," the AP reports.

Nobody talking to the Globe claims to have seen the e-mails personally, but "a pal of the ex-Commander-in-Chief" told the Globe, "George is absolutely panicking" because "he has confided there were a series of e-mails between Condi and him during that time frame that should never see the light of day - NEVER."

The time frame in question is between March 2003 and October 2005, "when sources say the Bush marriage was already strained," the tabloid reports.

"He says during his lowest times he reached out to Condi and talked in detail about his loveless marriage to Laura - and once he even told Condi he wanted her by his side," the Globe's insider reveals.

America Wants To Know is a little skeptical.

According to published reports, President Bush stopped using e-mail when he left Texas and moved into the White House.

In June, 2008, former deputy associate director of the White House Communications Office Jaime Sneider wrote in The Weekly Standard, "George W. Bush told a small group of friends just days before being sworn in, 'Since I do not want my private conversations looked at by those out to embarrass, the only course of action is not to correspond in cyberspace.' In the last eight years, President Bush has not sent a single message. And future presidents are all but certain to follow in his footsteps."

It's just not plausible that President Bush sent embarrassing love notes through the White House e-mail system.

Does that mean the Globe is one hundred percent wrong?

America Wants To Know doesn't think so.

If President Bush wrote embarrassing love notes to Condoleezza Rice, there's at least one person who would have copies of them.

Condoleezza Rice.

She's writing a book, you know. The Associated Press reported last February that Crown Publishers, a division of Random House Inc., will pay her $2.5 million to write three books, starting with "a memoir about her years in the administration of President George W. Bush," due out in 2011. "Rice will combine candid narrative and acute analysis to tell the story of her time in the White House," Crown's press release promised.

Could she be the source for this story? Is she the "pal of the ex-Commander-in-Chief" who talked to the tabloid?

It's not impossible.

Previous stories in the Globe have featured photos of former first lady Laura Bush looking glamorous and lovely, but this one has just one small photo of Mrs. Bush, and she looks like a witch.

The former president, who in the past has been pictured in the Globe looking like a wreck, looks impish and cute in this issue. There are four photos of Mr. Bush and Dr. Rice looking affectionate, two in which he's kissing her cheek, one that shows his arm around her shoulder as they both wave to cameras, and the cover photo, which shows them exchanging knowing looks as if they share an amusing secret.

Even if the former Secretary of State is not the source for the Globe's story, it's plausible that former President Bush is panicked over what might come out in her book, or in the book his wife Laura is writing. A year ago the New York Times reported that Mrs. Bush signed with Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, to write a memoir which will be published this year.

Scribner said the book will offer "an intimate account of Mrs. Bush's life experiences."

So, this much of the Globe's story we can be sure is true: the former president is panicked. With two women in his life writing a "candid narrative" and an "intimate account," any husband would be.


Copyright 2010


Editor's note: Catch up on your tabloid reading with "Suicidal Bush in Therapy!" and "Laura Gets $15M Divorce Pay Off!"