A hacker who goes by the online alias of "Guccifer" acquired personal photographs and sensitive information about the Bush family by infiltrating the email accounts of friends and family. (The Smoking Gun first reported on the privacy invasion in an extensive expose.)

Hacked email accounts include those belonging to Dorothy Bush Koch (H.W.'s daughter); Willard Heminway, an old family friend from Connecticut; Jim Nantz, noted CBS sportscaster and Houston lover; Barbara Bush's brother; and H.W.'s sister-in-law.

Information gleaned from those accounts piece together the post-presidential lives of both Bush 41 and Bush 43: golf appointments, Dubya's amateur painting hobby, family hang sessions that included Ralph Lauren as well as former President Bill Clinton (who had become so close to H.W. that the family referred to him as "Bubba") and, most recently, the poor health of the patriarch.

George H.W. Bush had been admitted to Methodist Hospital in Houston just after Thanksgiving for health complications related to pneumonia and remained hospitalized for seven weeks due to a lingering cough and a high fever.

At one point he was receiving treatment in the intensive care unit. Meanwhile, the hacked emails reveal, George W. Bush was "thinking about eulogy" while hoping that he was "jumping the gun."

Jean Becker, former president George H.W. Bush's longtime chief of staff who cautioned the media during his hospitalization to "put the harps back in the closet," is reported to have written to Bush's four children in late December, "Your dad's funeral team is having an emergency meeting at 10 a.m. just to go through all the details," a fact that "fell under the broadening category of things NOT TO TELL YOUR MOTHER."

Bush spokesperson Jim McGrath tells CultureMap that the family is unable to comment as the security breach is under criminal investigation. "Guccifer" bragged to the Smoking Gun that he has hacked "hundreds of accounts" and that "The feds" began investigating him a "long time ago."

  

The Smoking Gun