The theme that came to mind today as I was reading the news was:
HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF:
Although I've written about this, the following article gives more
information on The Bush Family history with Hitler, Binladin and the
BCCI scandal.
The Bush Family has had businesses seized before by the US
government under the TRADING WITH THE ENEMY ACT.
Will it happen again?
BUSH FAMILY'S DIRTY LITTLE SECRET:
President’s oil companies funded by Bin Laden family and wealthy
Saudis who financed Osama bin Laden.
President Bush recently signed an executive order to freeze the US
financial assets of corporations doing business with Osama bin Laden.
He described the order as a "strike on the financial foundation
of the global terror network.”
"If you do business with terrorists, if you support or succor
them, you will not do business with the United States," said
President Bush.
He didn’t say anything about doing business with a terrorist’s
brother or his wealthy financier.
When President George W. Bush froze assets connected to Osama bin
Laden, he didn’t tell the American people that the terrorist
mastermind’s late brother was an investor in the president’s
former oil business in Texas. He also hasn’t leveled with the
American public about his financial connections to a host of shady
Saudi characters involved in drug cartels, gun smuggling, and
terrorist networks.
Doing business with the enemy is nothing new to the Bush family.
Much of the Bush family wealth came from supplying needed raw
materials and credit to Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. Several business
operations managed by Prescott Bush - the president’s grandfather -
were seized by the US government during World War II under the Trading
with the Enemy Act.
On October 20, 1942, the federal government seized the Union
Banking Corporation in New York City as a front operation for the
Nazis. Prescott Bush was a director. Bush, E. Roland Harriman, two
Bush associates, and three Nazi executives owned the bank’s shares.
Eight days later, the Roosevelt administration seized two other
corporations managed by Prescott Bush.
The Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel
Equipment Corporation, both managed by the Bush-Harriman bank, were
accused by the US federal government of being front organizations for
Hitler’s Third Reich. Again, on November 8, 1942, the federal
government seized Nazi-controlled assets of Silesian-American
Corporation, another Bush-Harriman company doing business with Hitler.
Doing business with the bin Laden empire, therefore, is only the
latest extension of the Bush family’s financial ties to unsavory
individuals and organizations. Now that thousands of American citizens
have died in terrorist attacks and the nation is going to war, the
American people should know about George W. Bush’s relationship with
the family of Osama bin Laden.
Salem bin Laden, Osama’s older brother, was an investor in
Arbusto Energy, the Texas oil company started by George W. Bush.
Arbusto means “Bush” in Spanish. Salem bin Laden died in an
airplane crash in Texas in 1988.
Sheik Mohammed bin Laden, the family patriarch and founder of its
construction empire, also died in a plane crash. Upon his death in
1968, he left behind 57 sons and daughters, the offspring he sired
with 12 wives in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. About a
dozen brothers manage Bin Laden Brothers Construction, one of the
largest construction firms in the Middle East.
Fresh out of Harvard Business School, young George W. Bush returned
to Midland, TX, in the late 1970s to follow his father’s footsteps
in the oil business. Beginning in 1978, he set up a series of limited
partnerships – Arbusto ’78, Arbusto ’79, and so on, to drill for
oil.
One of President Bush’s earliest financial backers was James
Bath, a Houston aircraft broker. Bath served with President Bush in
the Texas Air National Guard. Bath has a mysterious connection to the
Central Intelligence Agency.
According to a 1976 trust agreement, Salem bin Laden appointed
James Bath as his business representative in Houston. Revelation about
Bath’s relationship with the bin Laden financial empire and the CIA
was made public in 1992 by Bill White, a former real estate business
partner with Bath.
White informed federal investigators in 1992 that Bath told him
that he had assisted the CIA in a liaison role since 1976, the same
year former President George Herbert Walker Bush served as director of
the CIA.
During a bitter legal fight between White and Bath, the real estate
partner disclosed that Bath managed a portfolio worth millions of
dollars for Sheik Khalid bin Mahfouz and other wealthy Saudis.
Among the investments made by Bath with Mahfouz’s money was the
Houston Gulf Airport.
A powerful banker in Saudi Arabia, Mahfouz was one of the largest
stockholders in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International. BCCI
was a corrupt global banking empire operating in 73 nations and was a
major financial and political force in Washington, Paris, Geneva,
London, and Hong Kong. Despite the appearance of a normal banking
operation, BCCI was actually an international crime syndicate
providing “banking services” to the Medellin drug cartel, Pamama
dictator Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein, terrorist mastermind Abu
Nidal, and Khun Sa, the heroin kingpin in Asia’s Golden Triangle.
The BCCI scandal implicated some of the biggest political names in
Washington, both Democrats and Republicans, during the first Bush
White House. The bank was accused of laundering money for drug
cartels, smuggling weapons to terrorists, and using Middle Eastern oil
money to influence American politicians.
The chief of the Justice Department’s criminal division under
former President Bush was Robert Mueller. Because the major players
came out of the scandal with slaps on the wrists, many critics accused
Mueller of botching the investigation.
Mr. Mueller was recently appointed by President George W. Bush as
the new Director of the FBI, replacing Louis Freeh who did nothing
while William Jefferson Clinton allowed the Red Chinese to loot our
national security secrets.
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a division of
the Justice Department, reviewed allegations by Bill White in 1992
that James Bath funneled money from wealthy Middle Eastern businessmen
to American companies to influence the policies of the Reagan and Bush
administrations.
Robert Mueller, the new FBI chief, was in a senior position at the
Justice Department at the time of the review.
White told a Texas court in 1992 that Bath and the Justice
Department had “blackballed” him professionally and financially
because he refused to keep quiet about his knowledge of an Arabic
conspiracy to launder Middle Eastern money into the bank accounts of
American businesses and politicians.
In sworn depositions, Bath admitted he represented four wealthy
Saudi Arabian businessmen as a trustee. He also admitted he used his
name on their investments and received, in return, a five percent
stake in their business deals.
Indeed, Texas tax documents revealed that Bath owned five percent
of Arbusto ’79 Ltd., and Arbusto ’80 Ltd. Bush Exploration Company
controlled the limited partnerships, the general partnership firm
owned by young George W. Bush.
Although George W. Bush’s Texas oil ventures were financial
failures, his financial backers recovered their investments through a
series of mergers and stock swaps. He changed Arbusto’s name to Bush
Exploration, then merged the new firm into Spectrum 7 Energy
Corporation in 1984.
The Bush-controlled oil business eventually ended up being folded
into Harken Energy Corp., a Dallas-based corporation. Mr. Bush joined
Harken as a director in 1986 and was given 212,000 shares of Harken
stock. Bush used his White House connections to land a lucrative
contract for the obscure Harken Energy Corp. with the Middle Eastern
government of Bahrain.
On June 20, 1990, George W. Bush sold his Harken stock for $848,000
and paid off the loan he took out to buy his small share in the Texas
Rangers. The Bahrain deal was brokered by David Edwards, a close pal
to Bill Clinton and a former employee of Stephens Inc. Shortly after
Bush sold his stock, Harken’s fortunes nose-dived when Saddam
Hussein invaded Kuwait. Some critics claim young George was tipped off
in advance by his father about the soon-coming Gulf War.
George W. Bush, however, worked wonders for Harken Energy Corp.
before the stock collapsed. Using the Bush family name, he managed to
bring much-needed capital investment to the struggling firm. George W.
Bush traveled to Little Rock, AR, to attend a meeting with Jackson
Stephens, a powerful Arkansas tycoon who help bankroll the state
campaigns of young Bill Clinton.
He first gained political prominence as a fund-raiser for President
Jimmy Carter.
Stephens was also deeply involved in the BCCI scandal by helping
the corrupt bank take control of First American Bank in Washington,
DC.
Jack Stephens didn’t need an introduction to young George W. Bush.
Mary Anne Stephens, his wife, managed Vice President George Bush’s
1988 presidential campaign in Arkansas. S
tephens Inc., the well connected brokerage firm owned by Jack
Stephens, donated $100,000 to a Bush campaign fundraising dinner in
1991. When George W. Bush won the contested Florida election in 2000,
Jack Stephens made a substantial contribution to the Bush
inauguration.
Recently, former President Bush played golf on April 11, 2001, with
Jack Stephens at the Jack Stephens Youth Golf Academy in Little Rock.
The former president told Stephens, “Jack, we love you and we are
very, very grateful for what you have done.”
Perhaps the former president was thanking him for the money
Stephens provided young George W. Bush. Stephens arranged for a $25
million investment from the Union des Banques Suisses. The Swiss Bank
held the minority interest in the Banque de Commerce et de Placements,
a Geneva based subsidiary of BCCI.
Both Stephens and Abdullah Taha Bakhsh, a wealthy and
well-connected Saudi real estate investor, signed the financial
transaction. The Geneva transaction was paid through a joint venture
between the Union Bank of Switzerland and its Geneva branch of BCCI.
The BCCI connection, therefore, linked George W. Bush with Saudi
banker Khaled bin Mahfouz. Known in Arab circles as the “king’s
treasurer,” Mahfouz held a 20 percent take in BCCI between 1986 and
1990.
Mahfouz is no stranger to the Bush family. He was a big investor in
the Carlyle Group, a defense-industry investment group with deep
connections to the Republican Party establishment. Former President
Bush is a former member of the company’s board of directors. George
W. Bush also held shares in Caterair, a Carlyle subsidiary. Sami
Baarma, a powerful player in the Mahfouz-owned Prime Commercial Bank
of Pakistan, is a member of the Carlyle Group’s international
advisory board.
President Bush certainly is aware of that his former Saudi sugar
daddy is still financing Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network. USA
Today newspaper reported in 1999 that a year after bin Laden’s
attacks on US embassies in Africa, Khaled bin Mahfouz and other
wealthy Saudis were funneling tens of millions of dollars each year
into bin Laden’s bank accounts.
Five top Saudi businessmen ordered the National Commercial Bank to
transfer personal funds and $3 million pilfered from a Saudi pension
fund to the Capitol Trust Bank in New York City. The money was
deposited into the Islamic Relief and Blessed Relief - Islamic
charities operating in the US and Great Britain as fronts for Osama
bin Laden.
The Capitol Trust Bank is run by Mohammad Hussein al-Amoudi. His
lawyer is Democratic Party bigwig Vernon Jordan, close friend of
former President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.
Abdullah Taha Bakhsh, the Arab who cosigned the $25 million cash
infusion into George W. Bush’s Harken Energy Corporation, appointed
Talat Othman to manage his 17.6 percent share in Harken Energy Corp.
Othman, a native Palestinian, is president and CEO of Dearborn
Financial Inc. – an investment firm in Arlington Heights, IL.
Bakhsh also bought a 9.6 percent stake in Worthen Banking
Corporation, the Arkansas bank controlled by Jack Stephens. Abdullah
Bakhsh’s share was the identical percentage as the amount of shares
sold by Mochtar Riady, the godfather of the wealthy Indonesian family
with close ties to the Chinese communists, Bill Clinton and evangelist
Pat Robertson. Bakhsh is represented by Rogers & Wells, a
well-connected Republican law firm in New York whose partners include
former Secretary of State William P. Rogers.
Independent investigator reporter David Twersky reported in the
early 1990s that Othman had a seat on Harken’s board of directors
and met three times in the White House with President George Herbert
Walker Bush. Organized by Chief of Staff John Sununu, Othman’s first
meeting with President Bush at the White House was in August 1990,
just days after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.
There exist to this day an Arab-Texas connection. Khalid bin
Mahfouz, financier of both George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden, still
maintains a palatial estate in Houston, TX. Former President George
Bush also lives in Houston.
James Bath, Texas political confidant of George W. Bush, managed to
obtain a $1.4 million loan from Mahfouz in 1990. Bath and Mahfouz,
along with former Secretary of Treasury John Connally, were also
co-investors in Houston’s Main Bank. Bath was also president of
Skyway Aircraft Leasing Ltd, a Texas air charter company registered in
the Cayman Islands.
Copyright: American Freedom News. September 2001
