For one thing, the LBJ relationship with Brown and Root went back to World War II.
Who then did Lyndon Johnson represent? According to his challenger, only the wealthiest and most influential members of the congressman’s inner circle benefitted from his efforts. For Herman Brown, prominent contractor and co-owner of the massive Brown & Root construction firm, he had pursued and secured numerous profitable wartime contracts. While average constituents had grappled with shortages and government controls during the war, Brown had grown even wealthier building military facilities at taxpayers’ expense. Alvin Wirtz, Johnson's mentor, attorney for both Brown & Root and Humble Oil and Refining Company, and chief counsel of the LCRA, had soaked the river authority for almost $90,000 in legal fees while the congressman stood silently watching.http://www2.austin.cc.tx.us/lpatrick/his2341/Waging_War_With_Regulars.htmlNotice the name of Humble Oil in there? Well, here's the really strange stuff:
In 1961, shortly after George Bush moved to Houston, his company joined a consortium with Dresser Industries and General Dynamics to bid on the "Mohole Project," which was awarded to Brown & Root.
In 1950 Dresser Industries had relocated its headquarters to Dallas with a large branch office in Houston--the center of the oil and gas industry. Before the 1961 Mohole bid, Dresser had rejected the opportunity to acquire Brown & Root, whose chairman, Herman Brown, was the organizer of Houston's own political action committee.
Herman's brother, George R. Brown, was for many years head of the Rice Institute board of governors and was Lyndon Johnson's biggest contributor and fund-raiser.
The Rice board controlled the assets and companies of Howard Hughes, not the least important of which was the patent for the three-cone rolling cutter rock bit. The Rice board members were also intimately involved with the management of Houston-based Humble Oil, a company whose connections with the Rockefeller Standard Oil empire were difficult to hide, especially after Humble co-founder and chairman W. S. Farish became chairman of Jersey Standard prior to World War II.http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=39&contentid=45In other words, the Browns were both pals of LBJ *and* intimately connected with the Bush/Dresser Industries/Humble Oil/W.S. Farish axis. (Farish was the pal of the Bush family who got into trouble in 1942 for not only doing business with the Nazis but supplying them with patents for artificial rubber which were not revealed to the U.S. government.)
I've been puzzling my head over all this for a while, and it still makes no sense to me whatsoever. All I can conclude is that Texas is a very strange place.