catdat
05-19-2004, 06:02 PM
The Best Enemies Money Can Buy
From Hitler To Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden - Insider Connections and the Bush Family's
Partnership with Killers of Americans
Brown Brothers, Harriman - BNL- and the Carlyle Group
By
Michael C. Ruppert
[© Copyright 2001. All Rights Reserved, Michael C. Ruppert and From The Wilderness Publications,
www.copvcia.com. May be reprinted or distributed for non-profit purposes only.]
FTW, Oct. 9, 2001 - Since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon,
major media powerhouses and the increasingly influential alternative media alike have begun to
focus attention on Bush family connections and a long history of arming and financing America's
attackers in the months and years prior to the outbreak of war. Recent stories in the Wall Street
Journal (Sept. 27 & 28, 2001), ABC News (Oct. 1, 2001), as well as a host of reports from
so-called alternative news sources have begun to focus attention on the Bush family's
profit-making role in creating and arming our enemies.
The following is a more comprehensive look at the documented history of these relationships
that will also open some new avenues of inquiry for the press, Congress and the American people.
In a world now filled with biowarfare agents, backpack nuclear devices, and chemical weapons
like Sarin gas -- where there are people in many countries with reasons to oppose the United
States -- the Bush Administration is following predictable strategies in a way that redefines the
concept of brinksmanship. Human survival may depend upon the will and the ability of both the
Congress and the press to focus on these relationships and to take appropriate action. Moreover -
and I am not the first to say this - if a national security priority is to seize the financial assets of
those who support terrorists, then perhaps we should start right here at home.
---
Adolph Hitler
Meticulous research, including U.S. government records from the era, along with
contemporaneous news stories from the New York Times and other papers is presented in the
1992 book entitled, "George Bush, The Unauthorized Biography" by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton
Chaitkin, Published by The Executive Intelligence Review and located at
http://www.tarpley.net/bushb.htm. The following is sourced entirely from Chapter II of this
essential work. [Note: Although FTW does not always agree with conclusions reached by the
Executive Intelligence Review, or its founder Lyndon La Rouche, we have never found a single
flaw in any of their factual research. History is history, no matter who presents it. And this history
is essential to understanding our era.]
George W. Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush, was the Managing Director of the investment bank
Brown Brothers, Harriman from the 1920s through the 1940s. It was Brown Brothers, in
conjunction with Averell Harriman, the Rockefeller family, Standard Oil, the DuPonts, the Morgans
and the Fords who served as the principal funding arm in helping to finance Adolph Hitler's rise to
power starting in 1923. This included direct funding for the SS and SA channeled through a variety
of German firms. Prescott Bush, through associations with the Hamburg-Amerika Steamship line,
Nazi banker Fritz Thyssen (****ounced Tee-sen), Standard Oil of Germany, The German Steel
Trust (founded by Dillon Read founder, Clarence Dillon), and I.G. Farben, used the Union Bank
Corporation to funnel vast quantities of money to the Nazis and to manage their American
interests. The profits from those investments came back to Bush allies on Wall Street. Thyssen is
universally regarded as having been Hitler's private banker and ultimate owner of the Union Bank
Corporation.
Early support for Hitler came from Prescott Bush through the Hamburg-Amerika Steamship line --
also funded by Brown Bothers -- that funneled large sums of money and weapons to Hitler's
storm troopers in the 1920s.
According to Tarpley and Chaitkin, "In May 1933, just after the Hitler regime was consolidated, an
agreement was reached in Berlin for the coordination of all Nazi commerce with the U.S.A. The
Harriman International Company... was to head a syndicate of 150 firms and individuals, to
conduct all exports from Hitler Germany to the United States."
Furthermore, a 1942 U.S. government investigative report that surfaced during 1945 Senate
hearings found that the Union Bank, with Prescott Bush on the board, was an "interlocking
concern" with the German Steel Trust that had produced:
- 50.8% of Nazi Germany's pig iron
- 41.4% of Nazi Germany's universal plate
- 36% of Nazi Germany's heavy plate
- 38.5% of Nazi Germany's galvanized sheet
- 45.5% of Nazi Germany's pipes and tubes
- 22.1% of Nazi Germany's wire
- 35% of Nazi Germany's explosives
The business relationships established by Bush in 1923 continued even after the war started until
they became so offensive and overt as to warrant seizure by the U.S. government under the
Trading with the Enemy Act in 1942.
In 1942, "Under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the government took over Union Banking
Corporation, in which Bush was a director. The U.S. Alien Property Custodian seized Union
Banking Corp.'s stock shares...
"... all of which shares are held for the benefit of... members of the Thyssen family, [and] is
property of nationals... of a designated enemy country."
"On October 28, the government issued orders seizing two Nazi front organizations run by the
Bush-Harriman bank: the Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel
Equipment Corporation."
"Nazi interests in the Silesian-American Corporation, long managed by Prescott Bush and his
father in law George Herbert Walker, were seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act on Nov.
17, 1942..." These seizures of Bush businesses were reported in a number of American papers
including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Prescott Bush went on to become an influential Republican Senator from Connecticut who went
on to be a regular golfing partner of President Dwight Eisenhower. His attorneys were the lawyers
John Foster and Allen Dulles, the later became the CIA Director under Eisenhower.
Saddam Hussein
After becoming President in January 1989, Prescott Bush's son, George Herbert Walker Bush -
father of our current President - authorized a series of programs that not only armed Iraqi
dictator Saddam Hussein but also provided him with technology that assisted in his development
of chemical weapons like Sarin gas, and biological weapons, which he still possesses. Apologists
for Bush (the elder) say that, after the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s left the region unstable, he
was just trying to establish a new balance of power. Not so. Bush directives and policies, including
relationships with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), and the Banca
Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL) were directly and deliberately responsible for creating the army the
U.S. fought in 1991.
A story by Russ W. Baker, in the March/April issue the Colombia Journalism Review (CJR),
provided the most compelling overview of Iraqgate that I have seen.
"ABC News Nightline opened last June 9 with words to make the heart stop ÔIt is becoming
increasingly clear,' said a grave Ted Koppel, Ôthat George Bush, operating largely behind the
scenes throughout the 1980s, initiated and supported much of the financing, intelligence, and
military help that built Saddam's Iraq into the aggressive power that the United States ultimately
had to destroy...
"Why, then, have some of our top papers provided so little coverage?" Baker poignantly asks.
" The result: readers who neither grasp nor care about the facts behind facile imagery like The
Butcher of Baghdad and Operation Desert Storm. In particular, readers who do not follow the
story of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, which apparently served as a paymaster for Saddam's
arms buildup, and thus became a player in the largest bank-fraud case in U.S. history.
"Complex, challenging, mind-boggling stories (from Iran-Contra to the S&L crisis to BCCI)
increasingly define our times: yet we don't appear to be getting any better at telling them...
"Much of what Saddam received from the West was not arms per se, but so-called dual-use
technology -- ultra sophisticated computers, armored ambulances, helicopters, chemicals, and
the like, with potential civilian uses as well as military applications. We've learned that a vast
network of companies, based in the U.S. and abroad, eagerly fed the Iraqi war machine right up
until August 1990, when Saddam invaded Kuwait.
"And we've learned that the obscure Atlanta Branch of Italy's largest bank, Banca Nazionale del
Lavoro, relying partly on U.S. taxpayer-guaranteed loans, funneled $5 billion to Iraq from 1985 to
1989. Some government-backed loans were supposed to be for agricultural purposes, but were
used to facilitate the purchase of stronger stuff than wheat. Federal Reserve and Agriculture
department memos warned of suspected abuses by Iraq, which apparently took advantage of the
loans to free up funds for munitions. U.S. taxpayers have been left holding the bag for what looks
like $2 billion in defaulted loans to Iraq.
"... In fact, we now know that in February 1990, then Attorney General **** Thornburgh
[appointed by George H.W. Bush] blocked U.S. investigators from traveling to Rome and Istanbul
to pursue the case...
"... As New York Times columnist William Safire argued last December 7, ÔIraqgate is uniquely
horrendous: a scandal about the Systematic abuse of power by misguided leaders of three
democratic nations [The U.S., Britain, and Italy] to secretly finance the arms buildup of a dictator."
While Democrat Henry Gonzales, Chairman of the House Banking Committee during the period,
stood as the lone voice from the wilderness in raising alarms about Bush's obvious corruption, the
rest of the Congress sheepishly ignored all the signs demanding immediate action. Gonzales'
voice reportedly fell silent after his empty car was machine-gunned in a Washington suburb in
what passed for a drive-by shooting.
The CJR continues: "Meanwhile, The Village Voice published a major investigation by free-lancer
Murray Waas in its December 18, 1990 issue... "That American troops could be killed or maimed
because of a covert decision to arm Iraq,' Waas wrote, "is the most serious consequence of a U.S.
foreign policy formulated and executed in secret, without the advice and consent of the American public..."
The L.A. Times, on Feb 23, 1992, dug deep enough to find secret National Security Decision
Directives by the Bush Administration in 1989 ordering closer ties with Baghdad and paving the
way for $1 billion in new aid. The Times' series, co-authored with Waas, emphasized that, "buried
deep in a 1991 Washington Press piece - that Secretary of State James Baker, after meeting with
Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz in October 1989, intervened personally to support U.S. government loans guarantees to Iraq."
Baker's CJR report also noted, "On October 3, the [Wall Street] Journal reported [BNL official
Christopher] Drogoul's assertion that the director general of Iraq's Ministry of Industry and Military
Production had told him, ÔWe are all in this together. The intelligence service of the U.S.
government works very closely with the intelligence service of the Iraqi government.' Three
weeks later, the Journal reported that [Henry] Gonzales Ôproduced a phone-book-sized packet of
documents' showing the involvement of U.S. exporting firms... The documents mentioned one...
which designed parts for Iraq's howitzers and was financed through BNL..."
In the wake of highly suspicious anthrax outbreaks in Florida, just miles from where several of
the WTC suicides pilots trained, we add one final note. In his 1998 book "Bringing the War Home"
author William Thomas writes, " Under that same [weapons transfer] program, 19 containers of
Anthrax bacteria were supplied to Iraq in 1988 by the American Type Culture Collection company,
located near Fort Detrick, MD, the site of the US Army's high security germ warfare labs."
The Carlyle Group, the Bushes and bin Laden
The warnings about the Carlyle Group, the nation's 11th largest defense contractor, and the
Bushes came long before the World Trade Center attacks. The Carlyle Group is a closely held
corporation, exempt, for that reason, from reporting its affairs to the Securities and Exchange
Commission. Little is known of what it actually does except that it buys and sells defense
contractors. As of October 4, 2001, it has removed its corporate web site from the World Wide
Web making further investigation through that channel impossible. Its Directors include Frank
Carlucci, former Reagan Secretary of Defense; James Baker, former Bush Secretary of State;
and Richard Darman, a former White House aide to Ronald Reagan and Republican Party
operative.
On March 3, 2001, just weeks after George W Bush's inauguration, the conservative Washington
lobbying group Judicial Watch issued a press release. It said:
"(Washington, D.C.) Judicial Watch, the public interest law firm that investigates and prosecutes
government abuse and corruption, called on former President George Herbert Walker Bush to
resign immediately from the Carlyle Group, a private investment firm, while his son President
George W. Bush is in office. Today's New York Times reported that the elder Bush is an
"ambassador" for the $12 billion private investment firm and last year traveled to the Middle East
on its behalf. The former president also helped the firm in South Korea.
"The New York Times reported that as compensation, the elder Bush is allowed to buy a stake in
the Carlyle Group's investments, which include ownership in at least 164 companies throughout
the world (thereby by giving the current president an indirect benefit). James Baker, the former
Secretary of State who served as President George W. Bush's point man in Florida's election
dispute, is a partner in the firm. The firm also gave George W. Bush help in the early 1990's when
it placed him on one of its subsidiary's board of directors.
"This is simply inappropriate. Former President Bush should immediately resign from the Carlyle
Group because it is an obvious conflict of interest. Any foreign government or foreign investor
trying to curry favor with the current Bush Administration is sure to throw business to the Carlyle
Group. And with the former President Bush promoting the firm's investments abroad, foreign
nationals could understandably confuse the Carlyle Group's interests with the interests of the
United States government," stated Larry Klayman, Judicial Watch Chairman and General Counsel.
"Questions are now bound to be raised if the recent Bush Administration change in policy towards
Iraq has the fingerprints of the Carlyle Group, which is trying to gain investments from other Arab
countries who [sic] would presumably benefit from the new policy," stated Judicial Watch
President Tom Fitton."
Judicial Watch noted that "even the Clinton Administration called on the Rodham brothers to stop
their business dealings in [The former Soviet Republic of] Georgia because those dealings started
to destabilize that country."
Since the WTC attacks the Wall Street Journal has reported (Sept. 28, 2001) that, "George H.W.
Bush, the father of President Bush, works for the bin Laden family business in Saudi Arabia
through the Carlyle Group, an international consulting firm." The senior Bush had met with the bin
Laden family at least twice in the last three years - 1998 and 2000 -- as a representative of
Carlyle, seeking to expand business dealings with one of the wealthiest Saudi families, which
some experts argue, has never fully severed its ties with black sheep Osama in spite of current
reports in a mainstream press that is afraid of offending the current administration.
The Nation, on March 27, 2000 - in a story co-authored by David Corn and Paul Lashmar - wrote,
"In January former President George Bush and former British Prime Minister John Major paid a
social call on Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Abdullah..." This story confirms at least one meeting
between the elder Bush and Saudi leaders, including the bin Ladens. That the bin Ladens attended
this meeting was confirmed in a subsequent September 27, 2001 Wall Street Journal (WSJ) story.
The January 2000 meeting with the bin Ladens was also later confirmed by Bush (the elder's)
Chief of Staff Jean Becker, only after the WSJ presented her with a thank you note sent by Bush
to the bin Ladens after that meeting.
James Baker visited the bin Ladens in 1998 and 1999 with Carlyle CEO Frank Carlucci.
The WSJ story went on to note, "A Carlyle executive said that the bin Laden family committed $2
million through a London investment arm in 1995 in Carlyle Partners II Fund, which raised $1.3
billion overall. The fund has purchased several aerospace companies among 29 deals. So far, the
family has received $1.3 million back in completed investments and should ultimately realize a
40% annualized rate of return, the Carlyle executive said.
"But a foreign financier with ties to the bin Laden family says the family's overall investment with
Carlyle is considerably larger..."
In other words, Osama bin Laden's attacks on the WTC and Pentagon, with the resulting massive
increase in the U.S. defense budget have just made his family a great big pile of money.
More Bush connections appear in relation to the bin Ladens. The WSJ story also notes that,
"During the past several years, the [bin Laden] family's close ties to the Saudi royal family
prompted executives and staff from closely held New York publisher Forbes, Inc. to make two
trips to the family headquarters, according to Forbes Chairman Caspar Weinberger, a former U.S.
Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration. ÔWe would call on them to get their view of
the country and what would be of interest to investors.'"
President G.H.W. Bush pardoned Weinberger for his criminal conduct in the Iran-Contra scandal
in 1989.
Our current President, George W. Bush has also had -- at minimum -- indirect dealings with
Carlyle and the bin Ladens. In 1976 his firm Arbusto Energy was funded with $50,000 from Texas
investment banker James R. Bath who was also the U.S. investment counselor for the bin Laden
family. In his watershed 1992 book, "The Mafia, The CIA and George Bush," award winning Texas
investigative journalist Pete Brewton dug deeply into Bath's background, revealing connections
with the CIA and major fraudulent activities connected with the Savings & Loan scandal that took
$500 billion out of the pockets of American taxpayers. A long-time friend of George W. Bush, Bath
was connected to a number of covert financing operations in the Iran-Contra scandal, which also
linked to bin Laden friend Adnan Khashoggi. One of the richest men in the world, Khashoggi was
the arms merchant at the center of the whole Iran-Contra scandal. Khashoggi, whose connections
to the bin Ladens is more than superficial, got his first business break by acting as middle-man
for a large truck purchase by Osama bin Laden's older brother, Salem.
Another key player in the Bush Administration, Deputy Secretary of Defense Richard Armitage,
left his post as an Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan Administration after a series of
scandals connected to CIA operatives Ed Wilson, Ted Shackley, Richard Secord and Tom Clines
placed him at the brink of criminal indictment and jail. Shackley and Secord are veterans of
Vietnam operations and have long been linked to opium/heroin smuggling. The Armitage scandals
all focused on the illegal provision of weapons and war materiel to potential or actual enemies of
the U.S. and to the Contras in Central America.
Armitage, a former Navy SEAL, who reportedly enjoyed combat missions and killing during covert
operations in Laos during the Vietnam War, has never been far from the Bush family's side.
Throughout his career, both in and out of government, he has been perpetually connected to CIA
drug smuggling operations. Secretary of State Colin Powell, in a 1995 Washington Post story,
called Armitage, "my white son." In 1990, then President Bush dispatched Armitage to Russia to
aid in its "transition" to capitalism. Armitage's Russian work for Bush has been frequently
connected to the explosion of drug trafficking under the Russian Mafias, which became virtual
rulers of the nation afterwards. In the early 1990s Armitage had extensive involvement in Albania
at the same time that the Albanian ally, Kosovo Liberation Army was coming to power and
consolidating its grip, according to The Christian Science Monitor, on 70% of the heroin entering
western Europe. [See FTW Vol. II, No 2 - April 24, 1999]
Armitage and Carlucci are both Board Members of the influential Washington think tank, the
Middle East Policy Council.
The connections continue with Vice President **** Cheney. Amongst the multitude of oil pipeline
construction running through the new war zone is one project - according to a Sept. 19, 2001 Wall
Street Journal story - a joint venture in which the bin Laden family joined with the construction
firm H.C. Price. A researcher named "Phoenix," writing for the Internet news site Rumor Mills
News Agency located at www.rumormillnews.com, reported that Price subsequently changed its
name to Bredero Shaw, Inc. and is now owned by a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation,
Dresser Industries. It was Dresser industries that gave George H.W. Bush his first post war job in
1948. A check of the relevant corporate web sites has confirmed this.
Vice President **** Cheney, who served as Secretary of Defense during Desert Storm, directing
the campaign against Saddam Hussein, was Halliburton's CEO until last year's election.
And, according to a 2000 story from Harper's Magazine, in 1990 our current President, through a
position as a corporate director of Caterair, owned by the Carlyle Group - at a time when the bin
Laden's were invested in Carlyle - had additional connections to the bin Laden family. In addition,
on March 1, 1995, when George W. Bush was Texas governor and a senior Trustee of the
university, the University of Texas Endowment voted to place $10 million in investments with the
Carlyle Group. As to how much of that money went to the bin Ladens we can only guess. But we
do know that there is a long tradition in the Bush family of giving money to those who kill
Americans.
Now, as the people of America are beginning to awaken to what is really being unleashed upon
them, as a few brave souls are asking who's going to get all the money the Bush Administration
is "borrowing" from government coffers and who's going to pay for it - the above history is more
than ominous.
Considering that during the 1980s, under the pretext of fighting a Sandinista regime in Nicaragua
that never once launched an attack on the U.S., these same people oversaw an explosion in U.S.
cocaine consumption that went from 80 metric tons in 1979 to 600 metric tons in 1989 -
considering that the CIA trained and equipped death squads that tortured and murdered hundreds
of thousands of people from Guatemala to Panama - considering that these same people have
brutalized Iraq, leaving portions of it radioactively contaminated by depleted uranium for the next
4 billion years and causing a fivefold increase in the number of childhood leukemia cases amidst
a starving population, one can only wonder what they will produce for the world now given the
context of the World Trade Center attacks.
From Hitler To Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden - Insider Connections and the Bush Family's
Partnership with Killers of Americans
Brown Brothers, Harriman - BNL- and the Carlyle Group
By
Michael C. Ruppert
[© Copyright 2001. All Rights Reserved, Michael C. Ruppert and From The Wilderness Publications,
www.copvcia.com. May be reprinted or distributed for non-profit purposes only.]
FTW, Oct. 9, 2001 - Since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon,
major media powerhouses and the increasingly influential alternative media alike have begun to
focus attention on Bush family connections and a long history of arming and financing America's
attackers in the months and years prior to the outbreak of war. Recent stories in the Wall Street
Journal (Sept. 27 & 28, 2001), ABC News (Oct. 1, 2001), as well as a host of reports from
so-called alternative news sources have begun to focus attention on the Bush family's
profit-making role in creating and arming our enemies.
The following is a more comprehensive look at the documented history of these relationships
that will also open some new avenues of inquiry for the press, Congress and the American people.
In a world now filled with biowarfare agents, backpack nuclear devices, and chemical weapons
like Sarin gas -- where there are people in many countries with reasons to oppose the United
States -- the Bush Administration is following predictable strategies in a way that redefines the
concept of brinksmanship. Human survival may depend upon the will and the ability of both the
Congress and the press to focus on these relationships and to take appropriate action. Moreover -
and I am not the first to say this - if a national security priority is to seize the financial assets of
those who support terrorists, then perhaps we should start right here at home.
---
Adolph Hitler
Meticulous research, including U.S. government records from the era, along with
contemporaneous news stories from the New York Times and other papers is presented in the
1992 book entitled, "George Bush, The Unauthorized Biography" by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton
Chaitkin, Published by The Executive Intelligence Review and located at
http://www.tarpley.net/bushb.htm. The following is sourced entirely from Chapter II of this
essential work. [Note: Although FTW does not always agree with conclusions reached by the
Executive Intelligence Review, or its founder Lyndon La Rouche, we have never found a single
flaw in any of their factual research. History is history, no matter who presents it. And this history
is essential to understanding our era.]
George W. Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush, was the Managing Director of the investment bank
Brown Brothers, Harriman from the 1920s through the 1940s. It was Brown Brothers, in
conjunction with Averell Harriman, the Rockefeller family, Standard Oil, the DuPonts, the Morgans
and the Fords who served as the principal funding arm in helping to finance Adolph Hitler's rise to
power starting in 1923. This included direct funding for the SS and SA channeled through a variety
of German firms. Prescott Bush, through associations with the Hamburg-Amerika Steamship line,
Nazi banker Fritz Thyssen (****ounced Tee-sen), Standard Oil of Germany, The German Steel
Trust (founded by Dillon Read founder, Clarence Dillon), and I.G. Farben, used the Union Bank
Corporation to funnel vast quantities of money to the Nazis and to manage their American
interests. The profits from those investments came back to Bush allies on Wall Street. Thyssen is
universally regarded as having been Hitler's private banker and ultimate owner of the Union Bank
Corporation.
Early support for Hitler came from Prescott Bush through the Hamburg-Amerika Steamship line --
also funded by Brown Bothers -- that funneled large sums of money and weapons to Hitler's
storm troopers in the 1920s.
According to Tarpley and Chaitkin, "In May 1933, just after the Hitler regime was consolidated, an
agreement was reached in Berlin for the coordination of all Nazi commerce with the U.S.A. The
Harriman International Company... was to head a syndicate of 150 firms and individuals, to
conduct all exports from Hitler Germany to the United States."
Furthermore, a 1942 U.S. government investigative report that surfaced during 1945 Senate
hearings found that the Union Bank, with Prescott Bush on the board, was an "interlocking
concern" with the German Steel Trust that had produced:
- 50.8% of Nazi Germany's pig iron
- 41.4% of Nazi Germany's universal plate
- 36% of Nazi Germany's heavy plate
- 38.5% of Nazi Germany's galvanized sheet
- 45.5% of Nazi Germany's pipes and tubes
- 22.1% of Nazi Germany's wire
- 35% of Nazi Germany's explosives
The business relationships established by Bush in 1923 continued even after the war started until
they became so offensive and overt as to warrant seizure by the U.S. government under the
Trading with the Enemy Act in 1942.
In 1942, "Under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the government took over Union Banking
Corporation, in which Bush was a director. The U.S. Alien Property Custodian seized Union
Banking Corp.'s stock shares...
"... all of which shares are held for the benefit of... members of the Thyssen family, [and] is
property of nationals... of a designated enemy country."
"On October 28, the government issued orders seizing two Nazi front organizations run by the
Bush-Harriman bank: the Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel
Equipment Corporation."
"Nazi interests in the Silesian-American Corporation, long managed by Prescott Bush and his
father in law George Herbert Walker, were seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act on Nov.
17, 1942..." These seizures of Bush businesses were reported in a number of American papers
including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Prescott Bush went on to become an influential Republican Senator from Connecticut who went
on to be a regular golfing partner of President Dwight Eisenhower. His attorneys were the lawyers
John Foster and Allen Dulles, the later became the CIA Director under Eisenhower.
Saddam Hussein
After becoming President in January 1989, Prescott Bush's son, George Herbert Walker Bush -
father of our current President - authorized a series of programs that not only armed Iraqi
dictator Saddam Hussein but also provided him with technology that assisted in his development
of chemical weapons like Sarin gas, and biological weapons, which he still possesses. Apologists
for Bush (the elder) say that, after the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s left the region unstable, he
was just trying to establish a new balance of power. Not so. Bush directives and policies, including
relationships with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), and the Banca
Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL) were directly and deliberately responsible for creating the army the
U.S. fought in 1991.
A story by Russ W. Baker, in the March/April issue the Colombia Journalism Review (CJR),
provided the most compelling overview of Iraqgate that I have seen.
"ABC News Nightline opened last June 9 with words to make the heart stop ÔIt is becoming
increasingly clear,' said a grave Ted Koppel, Ôthat George Bush, operating largely behind the
scenes throughout the 1980s, initiated and supported much of the financing, intelligence, and
military help that built Saddam's Iraq into the aggressive power that the United States ultimately
had to destroy...
"Why, then, have some of our top papers provided so little coverage?" Baker poignantly asks.
" The result: readers who neither grasp nor care about the facts behind facile imagery like The
Butcher of Baghdad and Operation Desert Storm. In particular, readers who do not follow the
story of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, which apparently served as a paymaster for Saddam's
arms buildup, and thus became a player in the largest bank-fraud case in U.S. history.
"Complex, challenging, mind-boggling stories (from Iran-Contra to the S&L crisis to BCCI)
increasingly define our times: yet we don't appear to be getting any better at telling them...
"Much of what Saddam received from the West was not arms per se, but so-called dual-use
technology -- ultra sophisticated computers, armored ambulances, helicopters, chemicals, and
the like, with potential civilian uses as well as military applications. We've learned that a vast
network of companies, based in the U.S. and abroad, eagerly fed the Iraqi war machine right up
until August 1990, when Saddam invaded Kuwait.
"And we've learned that the obscure Atlanta Branch of Italy's largest bank, Banca Nazionale del
Lavoro, relying partly on U.S. taxpayer-guaranteed loans, funneled $5 billion to Iraq from 1985 to
1989. Some government-backed loans were supposed to be for agricultural purposes, but were
used to facilitate the purchase of stronger stuff than wheat. Federal Reserve and Agriculture
department memos warned of suspected abuses by Iraq, which apparently took advantage of the
loans to free up funds for munitions. U.S. taxpayers have been left holding the bag for what looks
like $2 billion in defaulted loans to Iraq.
"... In fact, we now know that in February 1990, then Attorney General **** Thornburgh
[appointed by George H.W. Bush] blocked U.S. investigators from traveling to Rome and Istanbul
to pursue the case...
"... As New York Times columnist William Safire argued last December 7, ÔIraqgate is uniquely
horrendous: a scandal about the Systematic abuse of power by misguided leaders of three
democratic nations [The U.S., Britain, and Italy] to secretly finance the arms buildup of a dictator."
While Democrat Henry Gonzales, Chairman of the House Banking Committee during the period,
stood as the lone voice from the wilderness in raising alarms about Bush's obvious corruption, the
rest of the Congress sheepishly ignored all the signs demanding immediate action. Gonzales'
voice reportedly fell silent after his empty car was machine-gunned in a Washington suburb in
what passed for a drive-by shooting.
The CJR continues: "Meanwhile, The Village Voice published a major investigation by free-lancer
Murray Waas in its December 18, 1990 issue... "That American troops could be killed or maimed
because of a covert decision to arm Iraq,' Waas wrote, "is the most serious consequence of a U.S.
foreign policy formulated and executed in secret, without the advice and consent of the American public..."
The L.A. Times, on Feb 23, 1992, dug deep enough to find secret National Security Decision
Directives by the Bush Administration in 1989 ordering closer ties with Baghdad and paving the
way for $1 billion in new aid. The Times' series, co-authored with Waas, emphasized that, "buried
deep in a 1991 Washington Press piece - that Secretary of State James Baker, after meeting with
Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz in October 1989, intervened personally to support U.S. government loans guarantees to Iraq."
Baker's CJR report also noted, "On October 3, the [Wall Street] Journal reported [BNL official
Christopher] Drogoul's assertion that the director general of Iraq's Ministry of Industry and Military
Production had told him, ÔWe are all in this together. The intelligence service of the U.S.
government works very closely with the intelligence service of the Iraqi government.' Three
weeks later, the Journal reported that [Henry] Gonzales Ôproduced a phone-book-sized packet of
documents' showing the involvement of U.S. exporting firms... The documents mentioned one...
which designed parts for Iraq's howitzers and was financed through BNL..."
In the wake of highly suspicious anthrax outbreaks in Florida, just miles from where several of
the WTC suicides pilots trained, we add one final note. In his 1998 book "Bringing the War Home"
author William Thomas writes, " Under that same [weapons transfer] program, 19 containers of
Anthrax bacteria were supplied to Iraq in 1988 by the American Type Culture Collection company,
located near Fort Detrick, MD, the site of the US Army's high security germ warfare labs."
The Carlyle Group, the Bushes and bin Laden
The warnings about the Carlyle Group, the nation's 11th largest defense contractor, and the
Bushes came long before the World Trade Center attacks. The Carlyle Group is a closely held
corporation, exempt, for that reason, from reporting its affairs to the Securities and Exchange
Commission. Little is known of what it actually does except that it buys and sells defense
contractors. As of October 4, 2001, it has removed its corporate web site from the World Wide
Web making further investigation through that channel impossible. Its Directors include Frank
Carlucci, former Reagan Secretary of Defense; James Baker, former Bush Secretary of State;
and Richard Darman, a former White House aide to Ronald Reagan and Republican Party
operative.
On March 3, 2001, just weeks after George W Bush's inauguration, the conservative Washington
lobbying group Judicial Watch issued a press release. It said:
"(Washington, D.C.) Judicial Watch, the public interest law firm that investigates and prosecutes
government abuse and corruption, called on former President George Herbert Walker Bush to
resign immediately from the Carlyle Group, a private investment firm, while his son President
George W. Bush is in office. Today's New York Times reported that the elder Bush is an
"ambassador" for the $12 billion private investment firm and last year traveled to the Middle East
on its behalf. The former president also helped the firm in South Korea.
"The New York Times reported that as compensation, the elder Bush is allowed to buy a stake in
the Carlyle Group's investments, which include ownership in at least 164 companies throughout
the world (thereby by giving the current president an indirect benefit). James Baker, the former
Secretary of State who served as President George W. Bush's point man in Florida's election
dispute, is a partner in the firm. The firm also gave George W. Bush help in the early 1990's when
it placed him on one of its subsidiary's board of directors.
"This is simply inappropriate. Former President Bush should immediately resign from the Carlyle
Group because it is an obvious conflict of interest. Any foreign government or foreign investor
trying to curry favor with the current Bush Administration is sure to throw business to the Carlyle
Group. And with the former President Bush promoting the firm's investments abroad, foreign
nationals could understandably confuse the Carlyle Group's interests with the interests of the
United States government," stated Larry Klayman, Judicial Watch Chairman and General Counsel.
"Questions are now bound to be raised if the recent Bush Administration change in policy towards
Iraq has the fingerprints of the Carlyle Group, which is trying to gain investments from other Arab
countries who [sic] would presumably benefit from the new policy," stated Judicial Watch
President Tom Fitton."
Judicial Watch noted that "even the Clinton Administration called on the Rodham brothers to stop
their business dealings in [The former Soviet Republic of] Georgia because those dealings started
to destabilize that country."
Since the WTC attacks the Wall Street Journal has reported (Sept. 28, 2001) that, "George H.W.
Bush, the father of President Bush, works for the bin Laden family business in Saudi Arabia
through the Carlyle Group, an international consulting firm." The senior Bush had met with the bin
Laden family at least twice in the last three years - 1998 and 2000 -- as a representative of
Carlyle, seeking to expand business dealings with one of the wealthiest Saudi families, which
some experts argue, has never fully severed its ties with black sheep Osama in spite of current
reports in a mainstream press that is afraid of offending the current administration.
The Nation, on March 27, 2000 - in a story co-authored by David Corn and Paul Lashmar - wrote,
"In January former President George Bush and former British Prime Minister John Major paid a
social call on Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Abdullah..." This story confirms at least one meeting
between the elder Bush and Saudi leaders, including the bin Ladens. That the bin Ladens attended
this meeting was confirmed in a subsequent September 27, 2001 Wall Street Journal (WSJ) story.
The January 2000 meeting with the bin Ladens was also later confirmed by Bush (the elder's)
Chief of Staff Jean Becker, only after the WSJ presented her with a thank you note sent by Bush
to the bin Ladens after that meeting.
James Baker visited the bin Ladens in 1998 and 1999 with Carlyle CEO Frank Carlucci.
The WSJ story went on to note, "A Carlyle executive said that the bin Laden family committed $2
million through a London investment arm in 1995 in Carlyle Partners II Fund, which raised $1.3
billion overall. The fund has purchased several aerospace companies among 29 deals. So far, the
family has received $1.3 million back in completed investments and should ultimately realize a
40% annualized rate of return, the Carlyle executive said.
"But a foreign financier with ties to the bin Laden family says the family's overall investment with
Carlyle is considerably larger..."
In other words, Osama bin Laden's attacks on the WTC and Pentagon, with the resulting massive
increase in the U.S. defense budget have just made his family a great big pile of money.
More Bush connections appear in relation to the bin Ladens. The WSJ story also notes that,
"During the past several years, the [bin Laden] family's close ties to the Saudi royal family
prompted executives and staff from closely held New York publisher Forbes, Inc. to make two
trips to the family headquarters, according to Forbes Chairman Caspar Weinberger, a former U.S.
Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration. ÔWe would call on them to get their view of
the country and what would be of interest to investors.'"
President G.H.W. Bush pardoned Weinberger for his criminal conduct in the Iran-Contra scandal
in 1989.
Our current President, George W. Bush has also had -- at minimum -- indirect dealings with
Carlyle and the bin Ladens. In 1976 his firm Arbusto Energy was funded with $50,000 from Texas
investment banker James R. Bath who was also the U.S. investment counselor for the bin Laden
family. In his watershed 1992 book, "The Mafia, The CIA and George Bush," award winning Texas
investigative journalist Pete Brewton dug deeply into Bath's background, revealing connections
with the CIA and major fraudulent activities connected with the Savings & Loan scandal that took
$500 billion out of the pockets of American taxpayers. A long-time friend of George W. Bush, Bath
was connected to a number of covert financing operations in the Iran-Contra scandal, which also
linked to bin Laden friend Adnan Khashoggi. One of the richest men in the world, Khashoggi was
the arms merchant at the center of the whole Iran-Contra scandal. Khashoggi, whose connections
to the bin Ladens is more than superficial, got his first business break by acting as middle-man
for a large truck purchase by Osama bin Laden's older brother, Salem.
Another key player in the Bush Administration, Deputy Secretary of Defense Richard Armitage,
left his post as an Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan Administration after a series of
scandals connected to CIA operatives Ed Wilson, Ted Shackley, Richard Secord and Tom Clines
placed him at the brink of criminal indictment and jail. Shackley and Secord are veterans of
Vietnam operations and have long been linked to opium/heroin smuggling. The Armitage scandals
all focused on the illegal provision of weapons and war materiel to potential or actual enemies of
the U.S. and to the Contras in Central America.
Armitage, a former Navy SEAL, who reportedly enjoyed combat missions and killing during covert
operations in Laos during the Vietnam War, has never been far from the Bush family's side.
Throughout his career, both in and out of government, he has been perpetually connected to CIA
drug smuggling operations. Secretary of State Colin Powell, in a 1995 Washington Post story,
called Armitage, "my white son." In 1990, then President Bush dispatched Armitage to Russia to
aid in its "transition" to capitalism. Armitage's Russian work for Bush has been frequently
connected to the explosion of drug trafficking under the Russian Mafias, which became virtual
rulers of the nation afterwards. In the early 1990s Armitage had extensive involvement in Albania
at the same time that the Albanian ally, Kosovo Liberation Army was coming to power and
consolidating its grip, according to The Christian Science Monitor, on 70% of the heroin entering
western Europe. [See FTW Vol. II, No 2 - April 24, 1999]
Armitage and Carlucci are both Board Members of the influential Washington think tank, the
Middle East Policy Council.
The connections continue with Vice President **** Cheney. Amongst the multitude of oil pipeline
construction running through the new war zone is one project - according to a Sept. 19, 2001 Wall
Street Journal story - a joint venture in which the bin Laden family joined with the construction
firm H.C. Price. A researcher named "Phoenix," writing for the Internet news site Rumor Mills
News Agency located at www.rumormillnews.com, reported that Price subsequently changed its
name to Bredero Shaw, Inc. and is now owned by a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation,
Dresser Industries. It was Dresser industries that gave George H.W. Bush his first post war job in
1948. A check of the relevant corporate web sites has confirmed this.
Vice President **** Cheney, who served as Secretary of Defense during Desert Storm, directing
the campaign against Saddam Hussein, was Halliburton's CEO until last year's election.
And, according to a 2000 story from Harper's Magazine, in 1990 our current President, through a
position as a corporate director of Caterair, owned by the Carlyle Group - at a time when the bin
Laden's were invested in Carlyle - had additional connections to the bin Laden family. In addition,
on March 1, 1995, when George W. Bush was Texas governor and a senior Trustee of the
university, the University of Texas Endowment voted to place $10 million in investments with the
Carlyle Group. As to how much of that money went to the bin Ladens we can only guess. But we
do know that there is a long tradition in the Bush family of giving money to those who kill
Americans.
Now, as the people of America are beginning to awaken to what is really being unleashed upon
them, as a few brave souls are asking who's going to get all the money the Bush Administration
is "borrowing" from government coffers and who's going to pay for it - the above history is more
than ominous.
Considering that during the 1980s, under the pretext of fighting a Sandinista regime in Nicaragua
that never once launched an attack on the U.S., these same people oversaw an explosion in U.S.
cocaine consumption that went from 80 metric tons in 1979 to 600 metric tons in 1989 -
considering that the CIA trained and equipped death squads that tortured and murdered hundreds
of thousands of people from Guatemala to Panama - considering that these same people have
brutalized Iraq, leaving portions of it radioactively contaminated by depleted uranium for the next
4 billion years and causing a fivefold increase in the number of childhood leukemia cases amidst
a starving population, one can only wonder what they will produce for the world now given the
context of the World Trade Center attacks.