BFEE Factbook: GW Bush, James R Bath & House of bin Laden

[Octafish]

Those interested in learning about how George W Bush and Ossama bin Laden go waaaaaaaay back need to know about James R Bath.

Bath was the middleman who represented and handled the US business interests of Khalid bin Mahfouz in the United States. Bin Mahfouz is a brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden. Mahfouz (and by many indications several other Gulf billionaires) helped bail out two of Bush's failed businesses, Arbusto Oil and HARKEN Energy. No theory, it's criminal evidence!


QUESTIONABLE TIES
Tracking bin Laden's money flow leads back to Midland, Texas

by Wayne Madsen

On September 24, President George W. Bush appeared at a press conference in the White House Rose Garden to announce a crackdown on the financial networks of terrorists and those who support them. “U.S. banks that have assets of these groups or individuals must freeze their accounts,” Bush declared. “And U.S. citizens or businesses are prohibited from doing business with them.”

But the president, who is now enjoying an astounding 92 percent approval rating, hasn’t always practiced what he is now preaching: Bush’s own businesses were once tied to financial figures in Saudi Arabia who currently support bin Laden.

In 1979, Bush’s first business, Arbusto Energy, obtained financing from James Bath, a Houstonian and close family friend. One of many investors, Bath gave Bush $50,000 for a 5 percent stake in Arbusto. At the time, Bath was the sole U.S. business representative for Salem bin Laden, head of the wealthy Saudi Arabian family and a brother (one of 17) to Osama bin Laden. It has long been suspected, but never proven, that the Arbusto money came directly from Salem bin Laden. In a statement issued shortly after the September 11 attacks, the White House vehemently denied the connection, insisting that Bath invested his own money, not Salem bin Laden’s, in Arbusto.

In conflicting statements, Bush at first denied ever knowing Bath, then acknowledged his stake in Arbusto and that he was aware Bath represented Saudi interests. In fact, Bath has extensive ties, both to the bin Laden family and major players in the scandal-ridden Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI) who have gone on to fund Osama bin Laden. BCCI defrauded depositors of $10 billion in the ’80s in what has been called the “largest bank fraud in world financial history” by former Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. During the ’80s, BCCI also acted as a main conduit for laundering money intended for clandestine CIA activities, ranging from financial support to the Afghan mujahedin to paying intermediaries in the Iran-Contra affair.

CONTINUED...

http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/25/25/feature3.shtml


Want to know how Bath and Bush got to know one another? Check out this US government document, ordering Bush and Bath to stand down from flight duty after they missed out on physicals. Gee. I wonder if anybody at NIGHTLINE knows they started drug testing pilots right around that time?

[thebaghwan]

1. Please-What does BFEE stand for?

n/t

[LincolnMcGrath]

2. BUSH FAMILY EVIL EMPIRE

I just go with "THE BUSH CRIME FAMILY" myself.

[Octafish]

4. Bush Organized Crime Family also is accurate...

... They both have a nice ring to it. Can't wait to see all these gangsters frog-marched into Leavenworth.

Toward that happy day, here's more on the subject:

George W. Bush's Dubious Friends

Intelligence Newsletter, 2 March 2000
Posted at globalresearch.ca 1 October 2001

Texas governor George W. Bush's campaign to become the Republican candidate in this November's presidential ballot could shortly run into turbulence because of new information about his past. Indeed, among the figures Bush dealt with indirectly when he ran oil companies was Saudi banker Khaled Bin Mahfouz who, Intelligence Newsletter has learned, is currently under house arrest in a hospital in Taef at the behest of the American authorities. The latter are looking into contributions Mahfouz is said to have made to welfare associations close to terrorist Ussama Bin Laden. Considered as the "king's treasurer," Mahfouz was recently forced to sharply reduce his stake in the National Commercial Bank, one of the biggest in the kingdom. Many in Arab financial circles see this as a harbinger of his disgrace. Mahfouz's name was linked to the scandal involving the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) , in which he held a 20% interest between 1986-1990. The BCCI was accused in senator John- Kerry's report of money-laundering and of financing terrorist groups and covert spy operations before it was wound up on July 5, 1991, with a $ 12 billion loss to its customers. Mahfouz was also linked to a case involving fake passports in Ireland in 1997 that forced Irish foreign minister Ray Burke to resign.

In 1987 Mahfouz's representative in the U.S., Abdullah Taha Bakhsh, acquired an 11.5% stake in a company in which the Bush was a shareholder, director and adviser, Harken Energy. Bush played a central role in Harken which had his previous oil business, Spectrum 7 Energy Corporation, in 1986. Spectrum 7, in which Bush was boss and held 13.8%, had previously bought up the first firm Bush founded, Arbusto Energy Inc. in 1984. An American banker named Jacksen Stephens who was to also be deeply involved in the BCCI affair moved in 1987 to invest $ 25 million in Harken. The transaction took place in Geneva with the money was paid through a joint venture set up between the Union des Banques Suisses and the Geneva branch of the BCCI; the financial accord was signed by both Stephens and Bakksh. Other links between Bush and Mahfouz can be found through investments in the Carlyle Group, an American investment firm managed by a board on which former president George Bush himself sat. The younger Bush personally held shares in one of the components of the Carlyle group, the Caterair company, between 1990-94. And Carlyle today ranks as a leading contributor to Bush's electoral campaign. On Carlyle's advisory board figures the name of Sami Baarma, director of the Pakistani financial establishment Prime Commercial Bank that is based in Lahore and owned by Mafouz.

A second figure with an ambiguous part in Bush's financial past is Texas businessman James Bath. Considered as very close to the CIA, he appeared for the first time at Bush's side in 1978 when the latter made his first, unsuccessful run for the governorship. (He wouldn't try again until 1994, when he won). Bath helped to finance his campaign at the time and later bought into two of Bush's companies, Arbusto 79 Ltd and Arbusto 80 Ltd, affiliates of the Arbusto Energy oil exploration company founded by "W" in 1977. Under a mandate signed in 1976, Bath represented the financial interests of the Saudi Arabian sheikh Salem Bin Laden in the United States. Father of Ussama Bin Laden, Salem died in 1988. Thanks to his connections with Saudi business circles Bath obtained a $ 1.4 million loan from Mahfouz in 1990.

These ties reflect many of the strategic issues that prevailed in the 1970s and 80s. The highly influential Bin Laden family in Saudi Arabia helped to bankroll Islamic movements fighting the Russians in Afghanistan, with the blessings and participation of Washington (Ussama Bin Laden was given special training in covert operations in that context). But policy at the time also consisted of de-stabilizing the Moslem republics on the southern rim of the USSR by fomenting unrest on their borders.

SOURCE:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/INL110A.html

[Cleita]

6. Why don't we just put them all on Alcatraz and let them

fend for themselves. Make them fish for their food. Don't send a boat or helicopter there for fifty years and then go back to see who survived and who got eaten.

[Octafish]

8. That's nice, Cleita. I'd vote to add 24/7 Webcams in every cell...

... I mean cave. It would be better than they deserve.



Here's a treasure trove of stuff from our friends at Scoop in NZ:

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0303/S00071.htm

[RainDog]

16. Bush takes a CIA Bath-- Perle hearts Kashoggi--

Interesting article...

the part which talks about Bath and Baby Bush as AWOL b/c of recruitment to the CIA...

I'm inclined to see Bush's AWOL moment as another example of affirmative action for unworthy and incompetent kids of the rich who bilk the taxpayer and get away with it simply because they have the money to avoid their share of responsibility...as undemocratic as you can get...Because I would bet money, if I had any, that Poppy had baby Bush "reassigned" to CIA so that the peckerhead didn't even have to stay in the Nat'l Guard. Baby Bush is so incompetent, the only thing he would have been useful for is to grease wheels to collect money for dirty deals. Bag man Baby Bush.


----

this part is very pertinent now since Perle and Wolfie have subverted America's military might for a regional war in Iraq. Are we paying for a war for Israel? Are we working for Likud and their efforts to quash any hope for peace while they continue to allow settlements? Is Perle the American mouth for war criminal Ariel Sharon?

pertinent, too, because of the new Perle manifesto which wants America to invade and inflame the entire middle east. gee, if another country did this to us because of the unelected leader we have, and the fundamentalist nuts influencing our govt...would we think they were justified?

the US need to be a peace broker in the Middle East, not a war broker. We need to work to settle the Israeli/Palestinian issue in order to achieve a safer world for all the world's children, especially our own, of course, but not merely our own.

---

Richard Perle Is A Spy

And while we are on the subject of the Dim Son's strange friends, and who is spying for whom it is worthwhile reminding the world that Richard Perle, one of the lead architects of the present crisis (as opposed to the Dim Son, whose role is presumably trigger monkey), was fired from his job with Senator Jackson's office in the 1970s because he was caught passing classified material to the government of Israel.

See… Google Search On Perle And Jackson

It is further worth noting that Perle (and fellow White House hawk Paul Wolfowitz) were both on the list of officials implicated in assisting Jonathan Pollard to spy for the Israeli Government in 1985.

See… Google Search On Perle Wolfowitz and Pollard

----

And Perle is anti-semetic??? He's calling Sy Hersh a terrorist because Hersh reveals Perle's war profiteering and association with Iran-Contra, BCCI, terrorism funding Adnan Kashoggi?
----

Richard Perle Is A Also War Profiteer

Lets assume for arguments sake that passing secrets to the Israeli's is not enough to disqualify this clown (and close Bush/Rumsfeld adviser) from involvement in organising a military adventure destined to forever alter the nature of our world. Then there is also this:

Sy Hersh from the New Yorker magazine has written an excellent expose concerning recent dealings by Richard Perle. Take it away Sy:


"Perle is also a managing partner in a venture-capital company called Trireme Partners L.P., which was registered in November, 2001, in Delaware. Trireme’s main business, according to a two-page letter that one of its representatives sent to Khashoggi last November, is to invest in companies dealing in technology, goods, and services that are of value to homeland security and defense. The letter argued that the fear of terrorism would increase the demand for such products in Europe and in countries like Saudi Arabia and Singapore.

The letter mentioned the firm’s government connections prominently: “Three of Trireme’s Management Group members currently advise the U.S. Secretary of Defense by serving on the U.S. Defense Policy Board, and one of Trireme’s principals, Richard Perle, is chairman of that Board.” The two other policy-board members associated with Trireme are Henry Kissinger, the former Secretary of State (who is, in fact, only a member of Trireme’s advisory group and is not involved in its management), and Gerald Hillman, an investor and a close business associate of Perle’s who handles matters in Trireme’s New York office. "

See… Sy Hersh's article ( http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/ ) for much more on Perle.

But Perle of course - street fighter that he is - did not take this lying down and when the allegation of his attempting to profiteer from fear was made on CNN replied by Calling Sy Hersh a "terrorist".

[Octafish]

23. Thanks, RainDog! Trireme's an interesting name...

That's what the Greeks called their state-of-the art man-o-war. It featured three banks of oarsmen. Big difference is, unlike today's all-volunteer Navy, theirs were manned by slaves.

Imagine Bush bleating us on, as Cheney beats the drum. "Ramming speed."

The sum total of all their economic, military and social policies is to create a world domnated by the haves and have-nots. Guess who'll be master and who'll be slave? So, yeh. Trireme's quite appropriate.

------------

Besides asking BCCI-IranContra-October Surprise veteran Adnan Khashoggi for $100 million, government official in the US and Israel and business in both places Richard Perle approached Canadia media baron Conrad Black for a smaller sum, $2.5 million. He got the money. Henry Kissinger is in big with the PNAC crowd, "serving" on several boards and such with Perle. Pretty good bet Black's in tight with these such people.

From Krugman (who refers to Noah's decent "Six Degrees of Adnan Khashoggi" article):

Citizen Conrad's friends

EXCERPT...

Inevitably the list includes both Henry Kissinger and Richard Perle, whom I hereby propose (stealing an idea from Slate’s Tim Noah) as the subject of a parlor game about cronyism, along the lines of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. The former Pentagon official, who has close ties to Donald Rumsfeld, has enthusiastically embraced the advantages of being both a businessman and a policy insider. His prestigious if part-time official position on the Defense Policy Board provides him with credibility, and at least the suggestion of both inside information and policy influence. This has led to lucrative consulting deals, and has attracted investments in his venture capital fund, Tri-reme Partners.

Last August, in a moment of supreme synergy, Perle, wearing his defense-insider hat, co- wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed praising the Pentagon’s controversial Boeing tanker deal. He didn’t disclose Boeing’s $2.5-million in- vestment in Trireme.

Sure enough, Hollinger also invested $2.5 million in Trireme, which is advised by Lord Black. In addition, Perle was paid more than $300,000 a year and received $2 million in bonuses as head of a Hollinger subsidiary. It’s good to have friends.

The real surprise, though, is that two prominent journalists, William Buckley and George Will, were also regular paid advisers to Hollinger. Now, I thought there were rules here. First, if you’re a full-time journalist, you shouldn’t be in that kind of relationship. Second, whoever you are, if you write a favorable article about someone with whom you have a personal or financial connection -- like Perle’s piece on the tanker deal or Will’s March column praising Lord Black’s wisdom -- you disclose that connection. But I guess the old rules no longer apply.

CONTINUED...

http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/NewsStory.aspx?section=Opinion&OID=41064

[goforit]

3. Wow!!!!!................Follow the money gets more than money.

This is quite the connection and supports the mihop theory
and that OBL still works for Bushco.

Thank you much!!!!!!

:tinfoilhat:

[blm]

5. Thank John Kerry. Octafish does.

;) Kerry is the one who exposed all these connections in BCCI and IranContra.

[Octafish]

7. Thanks, blm! Knowing these crooks are THIS close to the pen...

...(holds two fingers an inch apart) makes me want to try all the harder to get this stuff out. Why JK's campaign strategists don't agree now is the time to do so is beyond me. Certainly — Kerry knows several orders of magnitude more about this than I do, but I do know the best protection he — and the country — can get is to expose these truths to the public ASAFP. The Truth won't divide or bring down the country. Getting rid of these bastards will strengthen us.

[Minstrel Boy]

9. When Jim Bath arrived in Houston in 1965,

he was 29 years old and looking for a job. In the next 20 years, Bath would:

1. become good friends and do business with George W Bush, the President's son;

2. go into the real estate business with Lan Bentsen, the senator's son;

3. work for Edward du Pont's Atlantic Aviation;

4. take as a partner a former Atlantic Aviation executive who was a board member of an organization that provided aircraft for relief help to the Contras;

5. become trustee for Khalid bin Mafouz and Salem bin Laden. bin Mafouz owned a Saudi bank that provided financing to Adnan Khashoggi around the time of the Khashoggi-Ghorbanifar arms-for-hostages transactions with the Iranians and whose highest-profile member was indicted in the summer of 1992 on fraud charges relating to the collapse of BCCI. bin Mafouz is Osama's brother-in-law and an al Qaeda financier;

6. form a Cayman Islands company whose other principals were also in a Cayman company that was a key intermediary in Oliver North's "Enterprise" in moving private donations to the Contras;

7. became an asset of the CIA, reportedly recruited by George Bush himself;

8. provide office space for Reza Pahlavi, the late Shah of Iran's son (who, known as the Baby Shah, was in contact with the CIA, which was providing some support to his backers;

9. form a company with a former Air America (ie, CIA) pilot;

10. own stock in Charter Bank, whose directors included E Trine Starnes, Jr, a big Contra supporter and large borrower from Neil Bush's Silverado Savings; and

11. get a sweetheart gas contract at Houston's Ellington Field from the Department of Defense. (Defense was paying millions more than it should have to buy aviation fuel from Bath's company Southwest Airport Services. The Houston Post reported it was charging military aircraft up to 40 cents a gallon more than the Air National Guard was paying for fuel from the Defense Fuel Supply Center. It added up to more than $12 million in contract overruns.)

Info thanks to Pete Brewton's The Mafia, CIA & George Bush. The Bush refers to George Herbert Walker, but it needn't.

:toast: to another important thread, Octafish!

[Octafish]

10. That's one great book, Minstrel Boy!

Thanks for taking the time and making the effort to get that typed into the virtual record. Brewton did a hellacious amount of work, documentingthe S&L crisis and how it benefitted Team Bush, the big cheeses and those connected to the CIA — the BFEE.

America: Read and Learn.

Those Who Love America and Democracy: Print and Distribute.

PS: Thanks for the kind words, too! You're no slouch when it comes to fighting the BFEE!

EDIT: Oops! Almost forgot... A little more Brewton:


The Mafia, CIA and George Bush

EXCERPT...

The original subscribers to Cotopax, who then turned Skyways Aircraft Leasing over to (James R.) Bath, were Cayhaven Corporate Services, Ltd., of George Town, Grand Cayman; David G. Bird of George Town; and Grant J. R. Stein of George Town. Bird and Stein are both directors of Cayhaven Corporate Services and attorneys with W. S. Walker & Company, a law firm in George Town headed by William S. Walker.

Cayhaven Corporate Services and Bird were two of the three subscribers to a Cayman Islands company called I.C., Inc., which was incorporated April 26, 1985. I.C. sits right in the middle of a chart drawn by Oliver North, and found by investigators in North's White House safe, that shows the private network that provided support and money to the Contras. Here's how it worked:

The money started with donations to Spitz Channell's National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty (NEPL). Then it was wired from NEPL's account at Palmer National Bank to the account of IBC, a Washington, D.C., public relations company formed by Republican operative Richard Miller at another Washington bank. Next, IBC wired the money to I.C. in the Cayman Islands, which then transferred a majority of it to the Swiss bank account used by North's "Enterprise" to fund the Contras.

On March 7, 1987, the Washington Post published the only account of these transactions. It called the flow of money a "circuitous route" and then stated: "It is not clear from the documents who is behind I.C., Inc., the Cayman Islands company, or why it was needed to transfer the money." Apparently no investigator with the Tower Commission probe of Iran-Contra or the congressional Iran-Contra committees was able, or even tried, to get to the bottom of I.C. either.

CONTINUED...

http://www.webcom.com/~pinknoiz/covert/brewton.html

[Minstrel Boy]

11. Good to remember the S&L "failure" was no such thing:

it was a massive transfer of wealth, and the looting was perpetrated in large part by those familiar tentacles of the Octopus, organized crime and the CIA.

From Defrauding America by Rodney Stitch:

"Losses of approximately half a trillion dollars have been the estimated direct cost of just the savings and loan debacle. But where did the money go? ... My CIA sources tell me that many of the funds looted by the CIA, organized crime, and such groups as the Denver group have been hidden in offshore financial institutions. Some of the funds that have gone overseas have returned to the United States through foreign shell corporations, buying up vast quantities of US real estate and assets."

Neil Bush's Denver-based Silverado Bank Savings & Loan funded many covert CIA assets, and many of its huge losses were the direct result of CIA activities. "Because of heavy CIA involvement in Silverado," Stitch writes, the Justice Department "protected the Silverado gang against meaningful prosecution."

[Octafish]

12. Under cover of darkness, much evil was transpired...

Under cover of national security, near-infinite evil was created.

These are the same Monsters our fathers and grandfathers fought in World War 2. Except now, they are homegrown, having been born here, but with their small minds filled with ideas from Mein Kampf, Grover Norquist and The Bell Curve. And they are computerized, funded by laundering drug money.


The S & L Bailout:

$32 billion every year for 30 years

excerpted from the book

Take the Rich Off Welfare

by Mark Zepezauer and Arthur Naiman
Odonian Press, 1996

EXCERPT...

Whatever truth there is to that rumor the "defraud me" sign worked. J. William Oidenburg bought State Savings of Salt Lake City for $10.5 million, then had it pay him $55 million for a piece of land he'd bought for $874,000.

With the help of a shadowy figure named Herman K. Beebe, who served a year for bank fraud, Don Dixon bought Vernon Savings and Loan-one of the nation's healthiest-then set up a series of corporations for it to loan money to. Four years later, he left Vernon $1.3 billion in debt.

Beebe also had money in Silverado Savings, an S&L partly owned by President Bush's son Neil. Silverado told a prospective borrower he couldn't have $10 million; instead, he should borrow $15 million and buy $5 million in Silverado stock.

Although federal examiners knew Silverado was leaking cash as early as 1985, it wasn't closed down until December 1988, a month after Bush was elected president. Because Silverado kept leaking cash for those three years, it ended up costing taxpayers more than a billion dollars.

CONTINUED TO SOME MAJOR TREASON...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Corporate_Welfare/S&L_Bailout.html

LOTS MORE HERE...

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3330.htm

[seemslikeadream]

17. "Failure" no such thing

Mr. Savings and Loan himself Howard Ahmanson inherited his money from his father, owner of Home Savings & Loan (during the S&L scandal of the Reagan years, Home's investors, mostly small family investments, lost over $150 million dollars. No one went to jail). In addition to funding PACs and think tanks, Howard Jr. parlayed his fortune into the majority stock of a business called American Information Systems (AIS) started by two enterprising brothers, Todd and Bob Urosevich. AIS later merged with Business Records Corporation (BRC) and became Election Systems & Solutions (ES&S. ES&S is the number one provider of touch-screen voting machines. Their website claims that their products were used in collecting 56% of the national vote in the last presidential elections.

Todd Urosevich is now Vice President of ES&S. Strangely enough, brother Bob moved on to head the second largest computerized vote-counting business, Global Election System, recently purchased by ATM and security giant Diebold. (They now have both the Ohio and Georgia contracts.) In a round table swap of incestuous patronage the previous executives of Global moved on to head the third largest vote-counting company in the nation Advanced Voting Systems. Combined, these three corporations will process nearly 80% of the next nationwide elections.

"My purpose is total integration of biblical law into our lives"
Howard Ahmanson

Theonomic Reconstructionism is a belief that the only true authority is God's, that allegiance to biblical laws TRUMPS that of civic law and that the Kingdom of Heaven needs to be built on Earth before Jesus will come again. In addition to that, homosexuals should be put to death, women should be banned from civic office, apostates and heretics should be stoned to death and their is a great need for more Christian politicians.
www.tabletnewspaper.com/politics/73_tftgk.html

[SpiralHawk]

37. The tentacles of the Octopus are long and grasping

http://www.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/octopus.html

UNTANGLING THE OCTOPUS

by Steve Mizrach


October Surprise, Iran-Contra, Noriega, Iraqgate, and BCCI

Before he died in an ineptly performed (and dubious) 'suicide,' the young journalist Danny Casolaro was working on a book that he claimed tied together many of the 'gates' and 'miniscandals' surrounding the Bush presidency. The book identified the web which tied all the scandals together as the "Octopus," a mythical creature with tentacles stretching everywhere.

Perhaps the birth of the Octopus lies in the 1980 Presidential election; and its growth occurred under the eight years of the Reagan presidency.

Casolaro soon found that the Octopus may have consisted of a 'shadow government' apparatus that went back even further than Bush and Reagan. But what's left of his notes seem primarily to focus on events in the 80s and 90s.

<snip>

One man who may have known a great deal about the Iran-Contra business was Manuel Noriega, whose name came up in the 1988 Dukakis-Bush debates.

Noriega knew about the Contra drug pipeline, because he was a pusher, himself, while on the CIA payroll throughout the 1980s.

During his trial in Miami in 1989 some testimony emerged which suggested he knew something about the Central American end of the Iran-Contra affair and where some on the missing money may have 'disappeared' into.


HEY -- WHERE'S MANNY NORIEGA? WHAT'S HE UP TO THESE DAYS? INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW.

[Octafish]

38. Manny may be undergoing experimental treatment...

... that requires he remain sedated. One thing's for sure, Baby Doc Bush isn't going to be pardoning this ex-business partner of the BFEE.

Stuff about Manny that is seldom mentioned in the mainstream press...


THE RESUMÉ OF MANUEL NORIEGA,

THE MOST FAMOUS GRADUATE OF THE SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS

EXCERPT...

50s-60s Spy for US, informing on colleagues in his socialist party, and on leftist students at his Peruvian military academy. — New York Times, 9/28/88

1967 Finishes courses at SOA including Infantry Officer, Combat Intelligence Officer, Military Intelligence (Counter-Intelligence Officer Course), and Jungle Operations. An instructor calls him "outstanding." — John Dinges, Our Man in Panama, 1991

1971 US has "hard evidence" of his heavy involvement in drug trafficking, "sufficient for indictment". Nixon sets in motion initial plans for his assassination. — Frontline (PBS), 1/30/90

1970-76 Meanwhile, Noriega is in the pay of the CIA and the Pentagon, reportedly receiving more than $100,000 per year. — Newsweek, 1/15/90

1976 CIA Director George Bush gives him a VIP tour of CIA headquarters in Washington; he resides with Bush's Deputy Director. — Dinges

CONTINUED...

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~lormand/poli/soa/panama.htm


And there's the nice resources at ThirdWorldTraveler.com...

Panama

from the book

The CIAs Greatest Hits

by Mark Zepezauer

EXCERPT...

Nothing Noriega did seemed to upset the CIA. If he smuggled cocaine on contra supply planes ...well, he wasn't the only one. If he beheaded a political opponent who accused him of drug running...well, he was just being firm.

If he used violence and fraud to steal the 1984 Panamanian elections...well, we couldn't have been more pleased with the outcome.

By 1989, however, the love affair was over. Noriega had angered his handlers by waffling on his opposition to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and he was showing other disquieting signs of disobedience. In December 1989, US troops invaded Panama to "arrest" Noriega, slaughtering 2,000 - 4,000 innocent civilians in the process.

What changed after the invasion? Violence, fraud and drug trafficking continued unabated. But, unlike Noriega, Panama's new rulers knew how to follow orders, and agreed to reconsider the Torrijos treaties, under which all US military bases in Panama would be shut down by the year 2000. (In 1994, Torrijos' and Noriega's old party was voted back in-so look for more CIA sabotage.)

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA%20Hits/Panama_CIAHits.html

[seemslikeadream]

40. Bush Bath and Beyond

1972 difficult year for the blue flake buddies :pals:, just can't comply with the new physical requirements. :scared: :scared:

[underpants]

19. ???Wasn't Bath also involved in the Rangers stadium land deal???

I could have sworn that he was involved (middle man with Tx. legislature?) in that.

[Octafish]

34. Remember the late Jim "Fortunate Son" Hatfield?

He died* after writing about the BFEE, specifically his last article talked about Bush Jr being afraid of attack from hijacked aircraft at the G8 summit in Italy in the summer of 2001. Odd how Hatfield also wrote about Smirk's coke thing, baseball stadium thing and BCCI connected laundered money thing.

From an interview with Hatfield...

EXCERPT...

This is how the story goes. Four years ago, St. Martin's press published a book by author James H. Hatfield called " Fortunate Son" it's about the life of George W. Bush. The book examines Bush's past, how he made his millions including from the Texas Rangers baseball team, building of the stadium, millions he made in dubious insider stock swaps to his connections to the BCCI scandal.

SNIP...

J. H. HATFIELD: Yeah. He’s made a lot of money by—being bailed out by his dad’s friends. For example. his first company Arbusto. One of the major investors was James Bath who had connections to the BCCI scandal and Osama Bin Laden family. And why would somebody invest in the son of a vice-presidents first little oil company. I mean you have to have an interest. Just like right now, he’s raised 70 million dollars. When he gets to the White House, if he gets to the White House, you’re naïve if you don’t think those corporate people who got him there, they’ll want something in return.

AMY GOODMAN: His oil company ‘Arbusto’ is Spanish for Bush?

J. H. HATFIELD:Spanish for bush

AMY GOODMAN: Now, You mentioned Osama Bin Laden. Can you talk about what you think those connections are?

J. H. HATFIELD:Well, not just myself. I also document ed the book that a couple of award-winning former Time correspondents wrote a book on BCCI and they also mentioned Bath. They said that the 50 thousand dollars that he invested in Arbusto had to come from BCCI because he didn’t have any money on his own. And from the connections he had with the Osama Bin Laden family. So…

CONTINUED...

http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/8-12-03/discussion.cgi.20.html

* A suicide, so the police report. BTW, I'll try and find a copy of his last article. As you and most good DUers know — It's no joke. Bush Knew.

[Octafish]

35. Hatfield's Last Article...talked about air-attack BEFORE 9-11!

Why would Osama bin Laden want to kill Dubya,
his former business partner?

By James Hatfield

Editor's note: In light of last week's horrific events and the Bush administration's reaction to them, we are reprising the following from the last column Jim Hatfield wrote for Online Journal prior to his tragic death on July 18:

July 3, 2001—There may be fireworks in Genoa, Italy, this month, too.

A plot by Saudi master terrorist, Osama bin Laden, to assassinate Dubya during the July 20 economic summit of world leaders, was uncovered after dozens of suspected Islamic militants linked to bin Laden's international terror network were arrested in Frankfurt, Germany, and Milan, Italy, in April.

German intelligence services have stated that bin Laden is covertly financing neo-Nazi skinhead groups throughout Europe to launch another terrorist attack at a high-profile American target—his first since the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen last October.

According to counter-terrorism experts quoted in Germany's largest newspaper, the attack on Dubya might be a James Bond-like aerial strike in the form of remote-controlled airplanes packed with plastic explosives.

CONTINUED...

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/Hatfield-R-091901/hatfield-r-091901.html

Pretty well-informed reportage. Odd how many journalists die who write about the BFEE. Oh well. There's safety in numbers, eh DU?

[blm]

42. Hatfield had it figured out.

That's why they couldn't afford to have him talking.

[Octafish]

45. You know it, blm. A few people figured out the BFEE!

Fewer still are those brave enough to name the monster and stand up in public against it. Like Jim Hatfield, Daniel "Danny" Casolaro is one, naming the BFEE "The Octopus." Like Hatfield, Casolaro paid for his knowledge with his life.

You know: It really is saddening to think how few DUers know anything about the sheer enormity of the treason that is the Bush Family Evil Empire. For those who don't know the story, here's a most telling part:


COINCIDENTAL DEATHS OR PARALLEL MURDERS?

Casolaro's death was promptly linked to that of other journalists in
Guatemala and Chile. On January 29, 1991, Lawrence Ng, a stringer for the London Financial Times, was found shot dead in the bathtub of his Guatemala City apartment. Ng had been probing BCCI connections to arms sales in Guatemala. <11> Jack Anderson and Dale Van Atta have attempted to link Casolaro's death to that of British aviation writer Jonathan Moyle -- also ruled a suicide when he was found in March 1990 hanging in the closet of his hotel room in Santiago, Chile. <12> Moyle was looking into the activities of Chilean arms dealer Carlos Cardoen, who figures prominently in the Inslaw case.

Anderson and Van Atta take seriously the possibility that both
reporters were murdered and that both had been tracking the same "octopus." <13> Both were investigating the activities of Cardoen, a suspected conduit for arms sold to Iraq. According to an affidavit filed in the Inslaw case, Cardoen also played a role in the sale of Inslaw's purloined software to Iraq. <14>

SNIP...

THE INSLAW MORASS

The most politically volatile side of this story is Casolaro's extensive investigation into the Inslaw case. Elliot Richardson is legal counsel to the Washington, D. C. - based computer software company, Inslaw. Widely respected for his ethics and legal expertise, Richardson quit as Nixon's Attorney General in 1973 rather than carry out the order to fire Watergate Special Prosecutor Archbald Cox. In a recent radio interview, Richardson was asked if he believed Casolaro killed himself. He answered:

I don't. I think everything we know makes it much more likely that he was eliminated by a person or persons unknown who feared that he was about to disclose information that would be severely damaging... he told separately that he had in hand or ready, significant hard evidence pointing to the connections between Inslaw and these other events . He said he was going to West Virginia to get additional evidence that would really lock this whole picture into place. Now, that I think is the most significant piece of information we have. There's no reason to suppose that he was lying to his friends. Why should he? And there's no reasonto suppose that they lied in saying that this is what he told them. <16>

CONTINUED...

http://www.american-buddha.com/mystery.death.htm

[Trajan]

13. Kudos to Karenina !!! ,,,,

WE here at DU are SO blessed with such patriots as Wayne Madsen, William Pitt, and Dear Bev Harris ....

[Karenina]

14. There seems to be some confusion here...

LOL!!! I am a great fan of Wayne Madsen but we are NOT the same person.
Last year when I kicked a thread encouraging folks go to meet him in D.C. someone got a little confused. :silly:

[susu369]

15. Let's keep this on the front burner

Deserves a good morning kick

:kick:

The BCCI may well be the Achilles heel of this evil group....

[blm]

18. It is....you are 100% right. And they know it.

That is why they needed Kerry knocked out in the primary to keep him OFF the national stage.

[meow2u3]

41. In the 80's, the press called the BCCI

Bank of Criminals and Crooks International!

[Octafish]

44. Bank of Crooks and Commerce International...

... was the phrase introduced into the lexicon by Robert Gates, George Poppy Bush's CIA Director in Congressional testimony. Wonder why the Media Mafia stopped talking about it? Here's some background that helps answer "why":


B.C.C.I.: Bank of Crooks and Criminals International
U.S GOVERNMENT ONE OF ITS BIGGEST CUSTOMERS

by Brian Downing Quig

Early last month regulators in 62 countries shut down the BANK OF CREDIT AND COMMERCE INTERNATIONAL. The July 29, 1991 issue of TIME MAGAZINE boldly proclaimed on its cover "THE WORLD'S SLEAZIEST BANK: How B.C.C.I. and its "black network" became a financial supermarket for crooks and spies --- and how the U.S. is trying to cover up its role." Read this issue.

I never thought I would be recommending a TIME MAGAZINE cover story on a drug money laundering bank with CIA ties. I can't find anything wrong with this most detailed account. If I had written this article few would have believed it. If it can be accepted that this material, presented by a magazine whose largest stock-holder is the Rockefeller controlled CHASE MANHATTAN BANK (a 5.5% controlling interest the last time I checked) is approximate to the truth, then a more profound lesson can be erected on this foundation.

SNIP...

B.C.C.I. maintained what its insiders called a "black network" which was engaged in international bribery, blackmail, and assassination of government officials at the highest levels. The CIA used B.C.C.I. to facilitate funding of the Contras, illegal arms sales to Iran and Iraq as well as the arms supply to the Afghan resistance. The Justice Department up to four days ago was obstructing the investigation. One bank employee said when B.C.C.I. wanted to make a point, they might send an uncooperative person the severed hand of his brother with the rings still on the fingers. These are powerful charges.

B.C.C.I. maintained accounts for Contra leader Adolfo Calero and Sandanista leader, Daniel Ortega, as well as such disparate figures as Noriega, Saddam, Marcos, Adnan Khashoggi, the PLO, the Mossad and the governments of China, Argentina, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Peru. There is a very important lesson to be drawn from the fact that here was this international bank which was facilitating both right-terrorists and left-terrorists. THE RIGHT-TERRORISTS AND THE LEFT TERRORISTS ARE FINANCED AND DIRECTED BY THE SAME INTERESTS!!

CONTINUED...

http://www.decentria.com/bcci.html

[grannylib]

20. Passing it all along (again) to media outlets, local and national; maybe

if several of us do it, there would be more impact...
I send stuff like this to CNN, MSNBC, etc. and to my local papers/tv

[Octafish]

24. Thank you, grannylib! The Hoove was not a nice man...

This is the kind of stuff most people don't hear about, even those whose job it is to know, like journalists. Why? Is it because they are intellectually lazy? In part. The main reason is the conspiracy is too monstrous.

"The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous, he refuses to believe that it exists."

— J Edgar Hoover

This links to an excellent overview of Hoover's FBI:

http://www.fortunecity.com/westwood/vivienne/438/rants125.html



SOURCE:

http://www.guerrillacampaign.com/bush.htm

[Octafish]

47. J Edgar Hoover said George H W Bush worked for CIA in 1963.

Most DUers recognize the significance of that year. Here's the FBI document in which The Hoove fingers Poppy:



No wonder the so-and-so is so sensitive about "outing" CIA agents. Seems Papa Doc Bush knows from first-hand "experience."

[KansDem]

21. To date...

...has Bush explained why he had bin Laden's siblings rounded up and flown out of the US a day or so after the 9/11 attacks when all commercial aircraft was grounded?

...even before the FBI could question them?

[blm]

22. nope.

Kerry brought it up in an editorial last month and the rest of the media never acknowledged it.

http://www.forward.com/issues/2003/03.12.12/oped1.html

>>>>>
One would think that an American president who threatens the world by announcing "you're either with us or you're with the terrorists" would be particularly troubled by the actions of the Saudi regime. But then one would be underestimating the hypocrisy that has become the hallmark of the Bush administration.

This president refuses to come clean on his administration's relationship with the Saudi royal family. Shortly after the September 11 attacks, when airplanes were still grounded, the White House allowed a Saudi charter flight to round up members of the bin Laden family and leave the country without time for an investigation.

Beyond Secretary of State Colin Powell admitting that the flights were "coordinated within the government," the Bush administration has said nothing about why this flight was allowed. Shockingly, we have an administration that is ready and willing to rifle through the e-mails and library books of innocent Americans in the name of fighting terrorism, but refused to trouble the bin Laden family for a moment of its time as it fled America after the worst terrorist attack in our history.

Some may argue that the ties that bind us to Saudi Arabia are inescapable, that our energy dependence on Middle Eastern oil will never allow us to pressure the Saudi regime to reform. I say that this is only true if we allow it to be.
>>>>>

[dusty64]

25. Interesting.

Funny how the tangled webs tying bin laden and others to the likes of chimp and norquist are completely ignored by our Pravda press. Sounds a lot like the definition of treason to me, yet it is completely ignored. Would be nice if some of our Democratic candidates would start educated the public about stuff like this and try to jam it through the media propaganda filter.

[seemslikeadream]

26. Maybe Kevin Phillips has been doing some research here! Octafish

First Review Book list

November 11,2003

There are many Bush-bashing books out there, but this one is quite different. Ivins, Franken and Conason, among others, have focused on the current president's administration. This book, written, by a former Republican strategist, is more wide-ranging, more scholarly and in many ways ,pre disturbing. Focusing on the last four generations of Bush men, Phillips brings the reader into the secretive upper echelons of the American power establishment, where connections are made in Ivy League clubs, and he shows how members of that old-boy network become the policymakers of the country. In the case of the Bushes, this resulted not only in money and power but also in links to the CIA, the energy industry, and the military-industrial complex - links that have shaped this country's national and foreign policy for decades. Phillips explains the Bushes' relationship with Enron and the House of Saud in eyebrow-raising detail and adds confirming information about troubling claims, including the notion that the Reagan-Bush ticket arranged that American captives would not be released from Iran until Reagan took office.

Kirkus Reviews
November 15, 2003

A corrupt dynasty founded on conquest, lies and the certainty that ruler equals divine agent. Ancient China? Imperial Rome?

No, argues onetime Republican party operative and latter-day liberal firebrand Phillips: It's now installed in Washington, by way of Connecticut and Texas. The power of the Bush dynasty, writes Phillips, extends for four generations, and its scions have been intimately involved in three of the 20th century's chief growth industries: intelligence, energy and national security. "If there are other families who have more fully epitomized and risen alongside the hundred-year emergence of the military industrial complex, the post 1945 national security state, and the 21th century imperium," he writes "no one has identified them." Fudging the truth, whether over the release of Iranian hostages or the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, is an essential skill in such an enterprise, Phillips argues, and the Bushes (and their Walker kin) are the master of deception. Clandestine skills, money laundering, and perhaps even election-fixing also figure heavily on the family resume, as do other talents essential to covert action but useless in nation building and humane governace.

http://www.americandynasty.net/reviews.htm

[blm]

27. I have got to get that book.

.

[seemslikeadream]

28. Kevin Phillips will be on C-SPAN 2 again

12:00PM ET This Sunday and maybe other times this weekend. It is a must see.

[Ivote]

29. THANK YOU!

Ive been looking for this for 3 days now.
Try to keep this kicked.
There was another thread last night where people were calling c-span asking them to re-air it. Ive been going to their site and so far they havent listed it on the web.
THANK YOU c-span.
www.brevardforclark.com

[blm]

30. we try to keep these threads kicked

because the biggest achilles heel BushInc. has is BCCI and its connections to 9-11.

Everyone should know about it, be concerned and do what they can to bring it forward.

[Octafish]

32. Have you seen Phillips' Rolling Stone interview? He lets Bush have it!

Unless we stop the BFEE, we're in for some deep doo-doo. An excellent read, the speech of a well ordered mind...

The House of Bush
Rep. strategist Kevin Phillips on the Bush family's hunger for power

By Eric Bates

EXCERPT...

Q: Royal house? Isn't that a bit of a stretch?

Phillips: The family has made a big deal of the notion that it is descended from royalty. Burke's Peerage even got involved in the last election, saying that Bush won because he had the most royal ancestry. The Bushes eat this stuff up. They don't need democracy -- they feel entitled by ancestry. For them, the presidency is something that can be won with a Supreme Court decision.

SNIP...

Q: Religion played a major role in W's victory. How does his relationship to the religious right differ from, say, Reagan's?

In moral terms, Reagan wasn't exactly running the Bluenose Express -- he was the first American president to be married to two different Hollywood movie stars. He knew how to put on a good show when he was talking to the religious right, but there wasn't a whole lot they were going to get out of him. And when it came to Bush's father, the religious right thought he was some guy with striped pants who came from these schools where their fathers had been janitors. They didn't relate to him at all.

George W. is another story. He's a guy who's been born again, who believes in a lot of what the religious right does. He's Reagan quadrupled in terms of his holier-than-thou, I'm-the-Messiah attitude. He sort of fell into national politics serving as his father's representative to the religious right in 1986. It was right around the time that he was finding religion himself -- and the time that fundamentalists and evangelicals, having made their big splash with Reagan, were beginning to institutionalize power within the state Republican parties and a national framework. George W. spent enormous amounts of time with these people, and he learned how to walk the walk and talk the talk. He is able to be so strong with the religious right because he got inside their whole setup. He can figure out how much to give them to get them on his side and keep them under control. For the first time in history, the president of the United States is the acknowledged leader of the religious right.

CONTINUED MUST READ...

http://www.rollingstone.com/features/nationalaffairs/featuregen.asp?pid=2751

[Octafish]

33. Hey, seemslikeadream! Phillips is the SOURCE for a lot of BFEE info...

... Remember the stuff he wrote with Joe Conason in Harper's in spring of 2000? These guys WARNED America, yet the mighty Whorelitzer belched zilch. Figures. They're part of the BFEE.

NOTES ON A NATIVE SON.

Harper's Magazine, Feb, 2000, by Joe Con(a)son, Kevin P. Phillips


I. THE GEORGE W. BUSH SUCCESS STORY

A heartwarming tale about baseball, $1.7 billion, and a lot of swell friends

EXCERPT...

With assistance from his uncle Jonathan Bush, a personable Wall Street financier, George W. assembled a limited partnership of two dozen investors. The Arbusto partners included George W.'s grandmother Dorothy Bush; Rite Aid drugstores chairman Lewis Lehrman, then a rising force in New York Republican politics; William Draper III, a corporate executive and family friend who was later appointed to head the Export-Import Bank; and James Bath, a mysterious Houston aircraft broker who appears to have been fronting for several Saudi Arabian sheiks.

About $3 million poured into Arbusto, producing little oil and no profits but expansive tax shelters. In 1982, George W. changed his company's infelicitous name to Bush Exploration Oil Co. His father by this time was vice president of the United States, but the new company name didn't improve the son's luck or alter the fact that petroleum prices were sinking while interest rates were rising. More than once, Bush's venture was near ruin when wealthy benefactors suddenly appeared with fresh cash. The most generous was Philip Uzielli, an old Princeton buddy of James Baker III, the family friend then serving as chief of staff in the Reagan White House. For the sum of $1 million, Uzielli bought 10 percent of the company at a time in 1982 when the entire enterprise was valued at less than $400,000.

Soon Uzielli's million was gone, too. But just as his company was heading toward failure, George W. met William DeWitt and Mercer Reynolds, a pair of Ohio investors with their own small oil firm, called Spectrum 7. DeWitt, who had graduated from Yale a few years earlier than Bush, happened to be the son of the former owner of the Cincinnati Reds, and he shared Bush's passion for baseball. After a quick courtship the Spectrum 7 partners agreed to merge with Bush Exploration, naming George W. as chairman and CEO and awarding him a substantial share of stock. Although the vice president's son helped Spectrum 7 to raise additional money, catastrophic losses continued. During a six-month period in 1986, Spectrum 7 lost $400,000, and the partners feared creditors would foreclose their remaining assets.

Once more George W. attracted a financial savior. That September, Spectrum 7 was acquired by Harken Energy Corporation, a medium-sized, diversified company. After Bush joined Harken, the largest stock position and a seat on its board were acquired by Harvard Management Company, the private firm that invests the university's endowment. The Harken board gave Bush $600,000 worth of the company's publicly traded stock, plus a seat on its board of directors and a consultancy that paid him up to $120,000 a year. His partners understood perfectly what had happened. As Spectrum 7's former president, Paul Rea, recalled later, the Harken directors "believed having George's name there would be a big help to them."

CONTINUED MUST READ...

http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m1111/1797_300/59086099/print.jhtml

[nomatrix]

31. Don't foget the sealing of records

White House delays release of Reagan papers for third time http://www.rcfp.org/news/2001/0907reagan.html

"Some say Bush might have some cause for worry because some of his top aides and his father, then vice president, all worked under Reagan. These aides include Secretary of State Colin Powell, Budget Director Mitchell Daniels Jr., White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and several others."

September 7, 2001

[blm]

39. absolutely....

now, what would BushInc. do to keep Kerry from being the nominee? The media manipulated our entire primary to make it into the chaos it is today.

[Beam Me Up]

36. Friday Kick n/t

:kick:

[SpiralHawk]

43. A Primer on Inslaw

http://www.copi.com/articles/inslaw_primer.html

(Danny Casolaro) had been investigating the Inslaw case, a tangled affair of government perfidy and international intrigue that has been in litigation since 1983. In his explorations, he found out about possibly related scandals -- BCCI, S&Ls, Iran-contra, the "October surprise" -- but until two weeks ago, he had found nothing about Inslaw. Then, he joyfully told friends, he hit bingo. One more interview and the case was cracked.

Suicides do not tell their intimates within days of taking the hemlock that they are "ecstatic" or "euphoric." Casolaro did. Nor do they attend family birthday parties, as Danny Casolaro was planning to do hours before he died. The last known call was to his mother in Fairfax (VA). He told her he was on Interstate 81 in Pennsylvania. He would be late, but he was headed home. A manic-depressive might then kill himself. Nobody ever suggested Danny Casolaro was one.

[Karenina]

46. Body Count Continually Increasing

:kick: