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Go to 6112
http://www.skolnicksreport.com/greenspan1.html
GREENSPAN REPORTEDLY BRIBES AND
AIDS BUSH IN GOLD SWINDLES, Part One

by Sherman H. Skolnick

More than three hundred reportedly authentic secret Federal Reserve wire transfer records show how the Chairman of America's private central bank has apparently bribed and aided in corrupt deeds George Herbert Walker Bush and his family, all over a period of time. Later, Greenspan reportedly jointly with Bush and a swarm of major financial entities, derived a horrific benefit in a major gold swindle.

In clandestine meetings, over a period of months, the reportedly genuine documents were turned over to our research and investigation group by government officials clearly in an inside position to possess and confirm such data.

A conversation at one such meeting, "Tell Sherman, if you or he ever reveals our identity, we are all dead, everyone one of us. Also in jeopardy of life and limb would be more than eight others in key government and financial positions." Some of the records purport to have the wire transfer signature of A. Greenspan whose term as Commissar of the Federal Reserve was renewed in the new century. Because he is like a corrupt Soviet dictator, answerable to no one, we coined the term, "Alan Redspan".

The document delivery team were assured of confidentiality by our past record. As the founder/chairman of our group, Citizen's Committee to Clean Up the Courts, since 1963, I have been imprisoned some eight times in four decades, not for committing crimes, but for so-called "contempt of court", for refusing to reveal the identity of long-reliable sources of high-level corruption data turned over to us on the sly. Our sources, cross-checked with others, and backed up by over one million documents already in our possession, have enabled us, over a period of decades, to set off, what some describe, as the biggest judicial bribery scandals in U.S. history.

Briefly stated, this includes the downfall we caused in 1969, of Illinois' highest tribunal, the Illinois Supreme Court, with half the high court being put to the wall. In the 1970s, our work led to the jailing for bribery of the highest level sitting federal judge in U.S. history, a federal appeals judge in Chicago who had also been former State Governor and his aide, former head of the Illinois Department of Revenue, the tax collectors. 7th Circuit Federal Appeals Judge Otto Kerner, Jr., went on all the media and said "Skolnick is a liar". Kerner died an ex-convict, convicted as I accused him to his face, as is our long-time policy. From 1983 to 1993, our work set off a series of scandals, by which 20 local judges and 40 lawyers were sent to prison for bribery, including the Chief Judge of the Traffic Court, who in a taped interview said, "Mr. Skolnick, you are imagining things, there is no corruption in this courthouse."

The Federal Reserve wire transfer data, which is also corroborated by matters already in our possession, among other things, confirms the following:

[1] That George Herbert Walker Bush, starting back at the time he was Vice President and continuing long thereafter, reportedly corruptly benefitted from Billions and Billions of dollars transferred at the behest, of among others, Alan Greenspan, to private corporations worldwide, in which the Elder Bush apparently has a beneficial interest, and/or is a major stock or bond holder, and/or is a kingpin therein, in other capacities. Included are enterprises in Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Hong Kong, Denmark, England, Red China, Taiwan, Japan, and Germany, among others. Some of the purported secret wire transfers of massive amounts were jointly for the Elder Bush and his brother Prescott, a financial broker in New England. According to published accounts, Prescott Bush arranged vast, unsavory deals with the Japanese mafia, the Yakuza, as well as dictator-types in Red China including reportedly with the top officials of the Red Chinese Secret Police [who also operate greatly in North America].

[2] Holding as well a large beneficial interest, and/or as major stock or bond holder in those accounts has been Jackson Stephens, the Little Rock-based bond broker, largest such operation outside of Wall Street. Stephens, tied reportedly to the ethnic Chinese gangsters like the Riady family interwoven with Clinton and Ollie North and the dope traffic, has been a major backer of Sludge Willie. The nefarious worldwide reputed corrupt deals of the Stephens family have been covered up by Alan Redspan and what some call the highly secretive, conspiratorial Federal Reserve.

[3] Some of the firms and enterprises to which the massive wire transfer assets were sent, are reportedly CIA proprietary operations set up by Bush as the head and former head of America's secret political police. [Now a Chicago-based bankruptcy expert, William A. Brandt, Jr., has been a worldwide expert in quietly terminating CIA proprietaries once their espionage function is completed, as shown by documents released under Freedom of Information by the U.S. Justice Department. Brandt's activities overlapped those of the Elder Bush.]

[4] Some of the billions and billions of dollars of reputed wire transfers went for the beneficial interest of the Elder Bush, and his son Neil, an official of a CIA proprietary, disguised as Denver-based Silverado Savings & Loan Association. The S & L went under and Neil Bush should have been sent to prison for causing the downfall by reportedly misusing large amounts of federal-insured thrift agency funds. On the other hand, as accused in stories in the press in Spain, the Elder Bush and his sons George W. Bush [Texas Governor] and Jeb Bush [Florida] Governor and Jeb's wife, a native of Columbia, are reportedly incriminated through huge money laundering of dope proceeds through banks owned by criminals in Spain. Dope proceeds reportedly from Columbia, Morocco, Portugal, and Italy. We publicized the quiet arrest in Chicago in January, 2000, of the reputed Bush family cocaine bank money laundry wizard, Giorgio Pelossi, a prominent Swiss accountant. Visit our website: http://www.skolnicksreport.com for the details.

The Elder Bush has been with the CIA since at least 1959, when he helped set up Zapata Petroleum Co., later called Zapata Offshore, with upwards of 600 branches worldwide in international hotspots for the reported purpose of gathering intelligence for the spy agency. Some news sources have contended that Zapata's offshore drilling rigs, located beyond the U.S. jurisdiction limit, are reported centers for transferring large quantities of illicit drugs and other contraband.

[5]Some of the reportedly huge secret wire transfers were for, or with the Elder Bush jointly with the Queen of England, through her accounts in the British Monarchy's Coutts Bank, London. The secret account numbers are contained in some of the more than 300 apparently authentic Federal Reserve wire transfer records. The British Monarchy has long been accused as being worldwide kingpins in the narcotics traffic, going back 150 years starting with the Opium Wars in China.

[6] Others of the more than 300 documents, relate to a situation started in the 1970s, when the Elder Bush arranged to overthrow the Iraqi government by political assassination. Bush helped install Saddam Hussein. Others of those and other documents relate to the decade, 1980 to 1990, when the Elder Bush was a secret private business partner of Saddam Hussein in extorting billions of dollars per year from the weak sheikdoms in the Persian Gulf---oil industry kick-backs, to supposedly assure security. A little-known Federal lawsuit in Chicago dealt with the secret partner of Saddam Hussein, namely George Herbert Walker Bush. I and my associates were the only journalists attending the federal appeals court hearing. I later did an exclusive group of interviews with the participants, confirming that Bush and Saddam were private business partners in extortion of the sheikdoms. Only one populist paper dared publish the details in 1991 of my interviews on the federal case.

In a typical sort of falling out of business partners, Bush suckered Saddam Hussein into seizing a portion of Kuwait long challenged by Saddam as being a Iraqi province and part of Saddam's oilfields. Bush used a top U.S. official to mislead Saddam into thinking the U.S. would not intervene in this local quarrel with the former British colony. Bush was the one, on behalf of U.S. oil drilling interests, that helped develop the Kuwaiti oilfields, following the 1961 relinquishing of British sovereignty. In its simplest form, the 1990-91, Persian Gulf conflict was a falling out of private business partners.

The result of this treachery? Great loss of life of ordinary soldiers. Upwards of 150 thousand young Iraqis died in the conflict, some buried alive by U.S. war bulldozers. President Bush ordered U.S. warplanes to shoot in the back, the retreating Iraqi soldiers proceeding under a white flag of surrender. It was the most horrendous murder of surrendering troops in world history. The German massacre of some 80 U.S. troops surrendering in World War 2 during the Battle of the Bulge, was a small matter by comparison. [Our public access Cable TV Program in 1991 was about the only TV Show in America that dared discuss this matter.]

Following the Persian Gulf War, some 15,000 U.S. troops died from the mysterious malady, called Gulf War Syndrome, which the Pentagon denies is happening. Ex-GIs continue to die from the strange ailments, and the total deaths and debilitating diseases amount to more than 20 per cent as casualties of all the Americans serving in the military in the Persian Gulf 1990-91, more than 100 thousand American soldiers as casualties.

Having been apparently massively bribed and aided in corrupt deeds over a period of years, the Elder Bush owed Alan Redspan and others important favors. Bush has been a potentate in one form or another, with Canadian Barrick Gold. The Bank of England, jointly with the Queen of England who reportedly shared accounts with the Elder Bush at Coutts Bank, London, and three or more major financial entities, orchestrated a vicious attack on gold in 1999. Together, they drove down the price of gold to about 252 dollars per ounce, more than 30 dollars per ounce BELOW THE COST OF PRODUCTION of the most efficient gold mines, such as in Canada.

Reportedly helping this unlawful attack on gold, gold mines, and gold mine workers, forbidden by U.S. Anti-Trust Laws, have been the following among others:

===Goldman Sachs, one of the world's largest bond and gold trading houses. Cynics, knowing these facts, call them "Goldman Sucks". Goldman Sachs has been so much into short selling deals of gold, that in the October, 1999 gold crisis, they were reportedly considering invoking the contract provision called "Force Majeure", used to avoid complying with a contract because of wars, hurricanes, revolutions, and such. The Federal Reserve has through various dirty tricks bailed out Goldman Sachs repeatedly.

===Bank of America, big in foreign exchange trading, called ForEx, [long ago called Bank of Italy, in America] they were reportedly part of the "knock down the price of gold" group.

===Bank of England, jointly with the Queen of England, offering for auction or sale gold that neither one apparently really owns, but is actually a huge gold horde stolen upon the downfall of the Soviet regime and whisked away to Dutch custody at a Swiss airport for speedy transport wheresoever requested. Bank of America is owned jointly by the Vatican, the Jesuits, and the Rothschilds. Joining them in recent years as major owners have reportedly been the Japanese mafia, the Yakuza, big in the U.S. dope traffic, and owning most every bank in California.

The purpose of the gold attack was to drive down the price of gold, among other things, to help bail out six hedge funds that have been more than a trillion dollars underwater in derivatives gambling, that is asset swaps. The bankrupt hedge funds, when gold is low-priced, can obtain gold loans for as little as one per cent interest. Were the hedge funds disaster scenario to be more public, it might set off a melt-down of the financial system of the Western world.

Reportedly at the behest of Bush, Barrick became part of a complicated trick of forward leasing of gold. A sort of short selling of gold. Thus sold short has been more than ten thousand tons of gold, more than four years of total world gold production. Gold has been called by some, "The Killer Yellow Metal", for the type of situations it can cause. In February, 2000, Barrick, Bush, and the anti-gold gang, reportedly again sought to stop the precious metal from going up to a more fair market price, such as 600 dollars per ounce.

The disclosures of the reputed secret Federal Reserve wire transfer records could torpedo the pirate ship of which Alan Redspan is a treasonous Captain joined by reputed super-crook the Elder Bush and his family and others in their gang. All together, they are part of the big gold swindle of the new century.

Click the links below to view a few samples of the more than three hundred apparently authentic Federal Reserve secret wire transfer records that tend to incriminate Bush, Redspan, the Queen of England, the Bank of England, and others.


Go to 6111
http://www.infowars.com/articles/world/tsunami_bomb_nz_devestating_secret.htm
Tsunami bomb NZ's devastating war secret

New Zealand Herald | June 30, 2000
By Eugene Bingham
Top-secret wartime experiments were conducted off the coast of Auckland to perfect a tidal wave bomb, declassified files reveal.

An Auckland University professor seconded to the Army set off a series of underwater explosions triggering mini-tidal waves at Whangaparaoa in 1944 and 1945.

Professor Thomas Leech's work was considered so significant that United States defence chiefs said that if the project had been completed before the end of the war it could have played a role as effective as that of the atom bomb.

Details of the tsunami bomb, known as Project Seal, are contained in 53-year-old documents released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Papers stamped "top secret" show the US and British military were eager for Seal to be developed in the post-war years too. They even considered sending Professor Leech to Bikini Atoll to view the US nuclear tests and see if they had any application to his work.

He did not make the visit, although a member of the US board of assessors of atomic tests, Dr Karl Compton, was sent to New Zealand.

"Dr Compton is impressed with Professor Leech's deductions on the Seal project and is prepared to recommend to the Joint Chiefs of Staff that all technical data from the test relevant to the Seal project should be made available to the New Zealand Government for further study by Professor Leech," said a July 1946 letter from Washington to Wellington.

Professor Leech, who died in his native Australia in 1973, was the university's dean of engineering from 1940 to 1950.

News of his being awarded a CBE in 1947 for research on a weapon led to speculation in newspapers around the world about what was being developed.

Though high-ranking New Zealand and US officers spoke out in support of the research, no details of it were released because the work was on-going.

A former colleague of Professor Leech, Neil Kirton, told the Weekend Herald that the experiments involved laying a pattern of explosives underwater to create a tsunami.

Small-scale explosions were carried out in the Pacific and off Whangaparaoa, which at the time was controlled by the Army.

It is unclear what happened to Project Seal once the final report was forwarded to Wellington Defence Headquarters late in the 1940s.

The bomb was never tested on a full scale, and Mr Kirton doubts that Aucklanders would have noticed the trials.

"Whether it could ever be resurrected ... Under some circumstances I think it could be devastating."


Go to 6110
http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/story36.html
Indonesia: Five More Years of Living Dangerously
By Jerry Meldon

As May drew to a close, leading U.S. dailies gave front-page coverage to France's national election. But readers had to scour the international briefs for election news about much larger Indonesia -- a country of striking importance to U.S. corporations interested in cheap labor, minerals and oil.

Then again, perhaps the dearth of news reflected the foreordained result of Indonesia's mock exercise in democracy. Millions of anti-government protesters -- including the 133 who died when arson gutted a Borneo mall on May 23 -- also must have known that there was no hope for change following the vote on May 29.

Indeed, whether or not anyone voted for President Suharto's party, "Golkar" -- and three-quarters of the voters reportedly did -- the parliament is certain to name the 75-year-old Suharto or his hand-picked successor as president for the next five years. The deck was stacked. Under Indonesia's complex election laws written by Suharto's allies, the pro-Suharto military (read Golkar) will pick 7.5 percent of the parliament and the ruling party from the previous parliament (Golkar) will select 50 percent.

The election charade guaranteed that Suharto will continue to rule the world's fourth most populous nation -- of 200 million -- with an iron hand, as he has for three decades, since a 1965 coup that led to one of history's worst bloodbaths. Since then, Suharto's armed forces also have crushed independence movements on three of Indonesia's larger islands, as the Mobutu-esque Suharto and his family have amassed a fortune estimated at $40 billion.

Through those three decades of Indonesians living dangerously, Uncle Sam has remained Suharto's steadfast friend, viewing him as a Cold War bulwark against Asian communism. And now with American oil companies exploring for oil off the coast of East Timor and Indonesia's booming economy providing cheap labor for U.S. manufacturers, the White House sees the vast archipelago as it does China: an emerging market first, a police state second.

The official relations between Washington and Jakarta were not always so warm. Suharto's predecessor, Sukarno, was considered unacceptably neutral in the Cold War, refusing to take the U.S. side as it confronted the spread of communism in China, Korea and Indochina. Sukarno saw little gain for Indonesia and other Asian countries which had lived under European colonialism and then Japanese occupation.

After the Japanese collapse in 1945, Sukarno, a staunch nationalist, stepped forward as the first president of the Republic of Indonesia and resisted efforts by the Dutch to reestablish control over their old colony.

In 1949, after a series of violent clashes with independence forces, the Dutch relinquished their colonial claim. The world recognized Indonesia as an independent nation and Sukarno as its leader. Suharto, meanwhile, had collaborated with the Dutch as he had with the Japanese occupiers.

Over the next decade, Sukarno struggled to achieve effective political control over the archipelago which consists of 13,000 islands and a diverse population, including the world's largest Moslem community. But Sukarno frequently annoyed Washington because he adopted a neutral stance in the Cold War and promoted anti-colonialism throughout the Third World. In 1957, his government also began to seize foreign-owned plantations and industries, while promoting ambitious development projects.

Concerned about Sukarno's political direction and the powerful Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), President Eisenhower ordered the CIA to foment a coup in 1958. The coup failed, but its planning linked the CIA and Pentagon with Suharto and other Indonesian military officers who saw an opening to power.

In the early 1960s, as the CIA took the point leading the United States into the Indochina wars, politicians back in Washington pointed to Indonesia as a key "domino" that would fall to communism if Vietnam toppled. In Indonesia, the CIA also was hard at work, cementing ties with anti-communist military officers.

On Oct. 1, 1965 a series of dramatic events began that would permanently alter Washington-Jakarta relations -- and the lives of millions of Indonesians. That morning, under circumstances still shrouded in mystery, junior Indonesian military officers kidnapped and murdered six generals they believed were preparing a CIA-sponsored coup. The rebel officers then occupied parts of Jakarta.

General Suharto claimed the rebels were in league with the PKI, and he counter-attacked with troops loyal to the senior officers. By nightfall, Suharto's troops had managed to subdue the junior officers and were effectively in control of the capital.

In events later fictionalized in the movie, The Year of Living Dangerously, Suharto followed up his military success by overthrowing Sukarno and launching a nationwide purge of suspected communists. Soldiers, police and pro-Suharto vigilantes slaughtered an estimated half a million Indonesians in what an official CIA report called "one of the worst mass murders of the twentieth century." Many of the victims were peasants and workers who supported the PKI, plus their families. Others were ethnic Chinese who were targeted primarily for economic and racial reasons.

Pleased that the troublesome Sukarno was out of the way, the U.S. government hailed the transfer of power and muted any criticism of the massacres which left the rivers of Indonesia running red with blood. Initially, Washington denied playing any role in the coup. But in 1990, U.S. diplomats admitted to a reporter that they had handed lists of suspected communists to the rampaging Indonesian army.

Robert Martens, who headed the Jakarta embassy team that compiled the lists, told Kathy Kadane of States News Service: "It really was a big help to the army. ... I probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that's not all bad. There's a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment."

When the States News story appeared in 1990, the reaction of the Washington press corps was telling. In a Washington Post column, senior editorial writer Stephen S. Rosenfeld accepted that American officials had lent a hand to "this fearsome slaughter" and then proceeded to justify the Indonesian massacre. Rosenfeld argued that the slaughter "was and still is widely regarded as the grim but earned fate of a conspiratorial revolutionary party that represented the same communist juggernaut that was on the march in Vietnam."

In a column fittingly entitled "Indonesia 1965: The Year of Living Cynically?" Rosenfeld reasoned that "either the army would get the communists or the communists would get the army, it was thought; Indonesia was a domino, and the PKI's demise kept it standing in the free world. ... Though the means were grievously tainted, we -- the fastidious among us as well as the hard-headed and cynical -- can be said to have enjoyed the fruits in the geopolitical stability of that important part of Asia, in the revolution that never happened."

With "a little shaking of the head, a little wondering about the bloody ways of history," Rosenfeld judged that Indonesia's massacre "is a good one to turn over to the historians." To Rosenfeld, it also was a positive sign of American maturity that the States News story caused little public stir when it appeared in 1990. "Not too many people these days can summon up the outrage that was the common coin of protests in the Vietnam War period," Rosenfeld wrote. [WP, July 13, 1990]


More Death
For the Indonesians and their neighbors, the three decades of Suharto rule are not so easily forgotten. In December 1975, Suharto's forces invaded the recently liberated Portuguese colony of East Timor. On a visit to Jakarta the day before, President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger gave the invasion a wink and a nod, according to an article by John Pilger in the British journal, The New Statesman [Sept. 22, 1995].

The clearance was just one more favor to a strategic ally. But the hapless East Timorese resisted the invasion, at a cost of 200,000 lives, one-third of their population.

Suharto's repression of the East Timorese continues to this day, although receiving little attention from the U.S. media. One exception came in November 1991 when Indonesian forces made the mistake of including Americans among their victims. Soldiers used M-16 rifles to bash the heads of on-the-scene reporters, including Amy Goodman of Pacifica radio and Allan Nairn of the New Yorker magazine who suffered a broken skull. The troops then opened fire, killing 271 peaceful demonstrators in the East Timorese capital of Dili. Goodman and Nairn survived to tell their story to the international press.

Those reports helped persuade Congress to cut off International Military Education and Training (IMET) funds and the sale of small arms and armored vehicles to Indonesia. This, in turn, sparked a counter-offensive by well-heeled pro-Indonesian interests, including lobbyists for the Clinton-friendly Lippo Group and Sen. Bennett Johnston, D-La., whose state is home to the Freeport-McMoran mining company that owns rights to Indonesian gold, silver and copper deposits valued at $50 billion.

Congress responded by restoring IMET funding, while Clinton approved the sale of F-16 fighters to Indonesia. (Incidentally, the Lippo Group's Borneo branch bank was set ablaze by election protesters on May 23.) On June 2, Indonesia rescinded its F-16 order, citing anticipated opposition to the sale in Congress based on Jakarta's human rights record.

To many Indonesians and East Timorese, Suharto and his military-dominated government remain the biggest barrier to democracy and freedom. But in Washington, the endless "year of living cynically" continues despite the end of the Cold War. Only now, the bipartisan political consensus is economic.

With few voices of dissent, Republicans and Democrats alike favor continued U.S. support for Suharto, who can justify his government's repression not in the language of anti-communism, but in the rhetoric of free trade and stability. ~

(c) Copyright 1997


Go to 6109
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/COL207B.html
The Family That Preys Together
by Jack Colhoun
Covert Action Quarterly, Issue No. 41, Summer, 1992 .
Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), globalresearch.ca , July 2002


Global Outlook , Issue No 2 9-11: Foreknowledge or Deception? Stop the Nuclear Threat. Subscribe Online (for details click here) .
Order by phone from publisher. Call (toll free) 1-888-713-8500.


GEORGE JR.'S BCCI CONNECTION
"This is an incredible deal, unbelievable for this small company," energy analyst Charles Strain told Forbes magazine, describing the oil production sharing agreement the Harken Energy Corporation signed in January 1990 with Bahrain.

Under the terms of the deal, Harken was given the exclusive right to explore for gas and oil off the shores of the Gulf island nation. If gas or oil were found in waters near two of the world's largest gas and oil fields, Harken would have exclusive marketing and transportation rights for the energy resources. Truly an "incredible deal" for a company that had never drilled an offshore well.

Strain failed to point out, however, the one fact that puts the Harken deal in focus: George Bush, Jr., the eldest son of George and Barbara Bush of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC, is a member of Harken's board of directors, a consultant, and a stockholder in the Texas-based company. In light of this connection, the deal makes more sense. The involvement of Junior-George Walker Bush's childhood nickname-with Harken is a walking conflict of interest. His relationship to President Bush, rather than any business acumen, made him a valuable asset for Harken, the Republican Party benefactors, Middle East oil sheikhs and covert operators who played a part in Harken's Bahrain deal.

In fact, Junior's track record as an oilman is pretty dismal. He began his career in Midland, Texas, in the mid-1970s when he founded Arbusto Energy, Inc. When oil prices dropped in the early 1980s, Arbusto fell upon hard times. Junior was only rescued from business failure when his company was purchased by Spectrum 7 Energy Corporation, a small oil firm owned by William DeWitt and Mercer Reynolds. As part of the September 1984 deal, Bush became Spectrum 7's president and was given a 13.6 percent share in the company's stock. Oil prices stayed low and within two years, Spectrum 7 was in trouble.

In the six months before Spectrum 7 was acquired by Harken in 1986, it had lost $400,000. In the buyout deal, George "Jr." and his partners were given more than $2 million worth of Harken stock for the 180-well operation. Made a director and hired as a "consultant" to Harken, Junior received another $600,000 of Harken stock, and has been paid between $42,000 and $120,000 a year since 1986.

Junior's value to Harken soon became apparent when the company needed an infusion of cash in the spring of 1987. Junior and other Harken officials met with Jackson Stephens, head of Stephens, Inc., a large investment bank in Little Rock, Arkansas (Stephens made a $100,000 contribution to the Reagan-Bush campaign in 1980 and gave another $100,000 to the Bush dinner committee in 1990.)

In 1987, Stephens made arrangements with Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) to provide $25 million to Harken in return for a stock interest in Harken. As part of the Stephens-brokered deal, Sheikh Abdullah Bakhsh, a Saudi real estate tycoon and financier, joined Harken's board as a major investor. *5 Stephens, UBS, and Bakhsh each have ties to the scandal-ridden Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).

It was Stephens who suggested in the late 1970s that BCCI purchase what became First American Bankshares in Washington, D.C. BCCI later acquired First American's predecessor, Financial General Bankshares. At the time of the Harken investment, UBS was a joint-venture partner with BCCI in a bank in Geneva, Switzerland. Bakhsh has been an investment partner in Saudi Arabia with Gaith Pharoan, identified by the U.S. Federal Reserve Board as a "front man" for BCCI's secret acquisitions of U.S. banks.

Stephens, Inc. played a role in the Harken deal with Bahrain as well. Former Stephens bankers David and Mike Edwards contacted Michael Ameen, the former chief of Mobil Oil's Middle East operations, when Bahrain broke off 1989 talks with Amoco for a gas and oil exploration contract. The Edwardses recommended Harken for the job and urged Ameen to get in touch with Bahrain, which he did.

"In the midst of Harken's talks with Bahrain, Ameen- simultaneously working as a State Department consultant-briefed the incoming U.S. ambassador in Bahrain, Charles Hostler," the Wall Street Journal noted, adding that Hostler, a San Diego real estate investor, was a $100,000 contributor to the Republican Party. Hostler claimed he never discussed Harken with the Bahrainis.

Harken lacked sufficient financing to explore off the coast of Bahrain so it brought in Bass Enterprises Production Company of Fort Worth, Texas, as a partner. The Bass family contributed more than $200,000 to the Republican Party in the late 1980s and early 1990s. *9 On June 22, 1990, George Jr. sold two-thirds of his Harken stock for $848,560-a cool 200 percent profit. The move was well timed. One week after Junior sold his stock, Harken announced a $23.2 million loss in quarterly earnings and Harken stock dropped sharply, losing 60 percent of its value over the next six months. On August 2, 1990, Iraqi troops moved into Kuwait and 541,000 U.S. forces were deployed to the Gulf.

"There is substantial evidence to suggest that Bush knew Harken was in dire straits in the weeks before he sold the $848,560 of Harken stock," asserted U.S. News & World Report. The magazine noted Harken appointed Junior to a "fairness committee" to study possible economic restructuring of the company. Junior worked closely with financial advisers from Smith Barney, Harris Upham & Company, who concluded "only drastic action could save Harken."

George "Jr." also violated Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulations which require "insider" stock deals to be reported promptly, in Bush's case by July 10, 1990. He didn't file the stock sale with the SEC until the first week of March 1991.

Meanwhile, a cloak-and-dagger aura surrounds Junior's business dealings. James Bath, a Texas entrepreneur who invested $50,000 in Arbusto Energy, may be a business cutout for the CIA. Bath also acted as an investment "adviser" to Saudi Arabian oil sheikhs, linked to the outlaw BCCI, which also has ties to the CIA.

Bill White, a former Bath partner, claims that Bath has "national security" connections. White, a United States Naval Academy graduate and former fighter pilot, charges that Bath developed a network of off-shore companies to camouflage the movement of money and aircraft between Texas and the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia.

Alan Quasha, a Harken director and former chair of the company, is the son of attorney William Quasha, who defended figures in the Nugan Hand Bank scandal in Australia. Closed in 1980, Nugan Hand was not only tied to drug-money laundering and U.S. intelligence and mi- litary circles, but also to the CIA's covert backing for a "constitutional coup" in Australia that caused the fall of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam.

The Harken deal with Bahrain raises another troubling question: Did the Bahrainis and the BCCI-linked Saudi oil sheikhs use the production sharing agreement with Harken to curry favor with the Bush administration and influence U.S. policy in the Middle East? Talat Othman's sudden rise to prominence in Bush administration foreign policy circles is a case in point. Othman, who sits on the Harken board as Sheikh Bakhsh's representative, didn't have access to President Bush before Harken's Bahrain agreement. "But since August 1990, the Palestinian-born Chicago investor has attended three White House meetings with President Bush to discuss Middle East policy," the Wall Street Journal pointed out. "His name was added by the White House to a select list of 15 Arab-Americans chosen to meet with President Bush, [then White House Chief of Staff John] Sununu and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft in the White House two days after Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait."

PRESCOTT'S BIG ASIAN ADVENTURE
Prescott Bush, Jr., the president's older brother, also has a knack for nailing down "incredible deal[s]." Prescott took advantage of his brother's first presidential visit abroad in February 1989 to schedule a business trip to the same countries-China, Japan and South Korea.

Prescott arrived in Tokyo February 14, 1989, ten days before President Bush's stop in Japan, to drum up business for Prescott Bush Resources Ltd., a real estate and development consulting company. Prescott said he was dealing with four Japanese companies wanting to do business in the U.S.

From Japan, Prescott went to China, where he had a joint partnership with Akoi Corporation to develop an $18 million golf course and resort near Shanghai. Prescott had introduced the Tokyo-based Akoi to Chinese officials in 1988. With a 30 percent stake in the project, Prescott used his China connections to pave the way for capital-rich Akoi. Akoi had run into business obstacles in China because of lingering Chinese resentment over Japan's brutal occupation of China in the 1930s and 1940s.

Some of Prescott's most controversial business deals have been with Asset Management International Financing & Settlement Ltd., a Wall Street investment firm which has been in bankruptcy proceedings since fall 1991. Prescott was hired by Asset Management, which paid him a $250,000 fee for consulting in its joint venture with China to set up its internal communications network. Asset Management enlisted Prescott's services soon after President Bush imposed economic sanctions in June 1989 in response to Beijing's brutal crackdown on anti-government demonstrators in Tienanmen Square.

Under the sanctions, United States export licenses were suspended for $300 million worth of Hughes Aircraft satellites, a key component of Asset Management's joint venture with the Chinese government. The satellites would beam television programming to broadcasters in China and provide telecommunications links for the country's far-flung provinces. In November 1989, Congress passed additional sanctions specifically barring the export of U.S. satellites to China unless the president found the sale "in the national interest."

On December 19, 1989, President Bush lifted the sanctions that blocked the satellite deal, citing "the national interest." Two months earlier, the Bush administration had granted Hughes Aircraft "preliminary licenses" to exchange data with Chinese officials to ensure that the satellites met the technical specifications of the Long March rockets which would launch them into space.

Meanwhile, Prescott was hard at work in the summer of 1989 as middleman in the takeover of Asset Management by West Tsusho, a Tokyo-based investment firm linked to one of Japan's biggest mob syndicates. Prescott, as head of Prescott Bush & Co., received a $250,000 "finder's fee" from West Tsusho when the deal was closed and was promised an annual retainer of $250,000 over the next three years as a "consultant." Asset Management, however, went bankrupt in March 1991. In May 1992, West Tsusho filed a $2.5 million lawsuit against Prescott claiming that he reneged on his promise to protect the mob-linked firm's $5 million investment in Asset Management.

According to Japanese police, West Tsusho is controlled by the Inagawakai branch of the Yakuza, the Japanese equivalent of the Mafia crime syndicate. By the mid-1980s, the Yakuza were buying up real estate and investments in Japan and overseas to launder their ill-gotten profits from drug sales, prostitution, gambling and extortion. Yakuza's annual income is estimated at $10 billion.

Like George Jr., Prescott combined business with secret operations. He offered his services to the covert operations of the Reagan-Bush campaign in 1980, and later to the Reagan administration. A September 3, 1980, letter from Prescott to James Baker indicates Prescott was part of the Reagan-Bush campaign's secret surveillance of the Carter administration's efforts to obtain release of U.S. hostages held in Iran. Prior to inauguration, the Reagan-Bush campaign recruited retired military and intelligence officers to monitor activities of the CIA, the Defense Department, the National Security Council, the State Department, and the White House. This operation later became known as the "October Surprise."

"Herb Cohen-the guy that offered help on the Iranian hostage situation-called me yesterday afternoon," Prescott wrote in a letter designated "PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL." "Herb has a couple of reliable sources on the National Security Council, about whom the [Carter] administration does not know, who can keep him posted on developments."

Prescott continued, "He cannot come out now and say that Carter is going to do something on Iran in October because he said everything is a contingency plan that is loose and fluid from day to day.... Herb says, however, that if he and others in the administration who really care about the country and cannot stand to see Carter playing politics with the hostages, see Carter making a move to politicize the release of the hostages, he and they will come out at that time and expose him."

Prescott's covert associations continued while his younger brother was vice president. He appears to have aided the Reagan administration's clandestine support of the Nicaraguan Contras. In the 1980s, he served on the advisory board of Americares, the U.S.-based relief organization with ties to prominent right-wing Republicans and the intelligence community. Bush's other son, Marvin, also helped the family's pet charity and accompanied a flight of medical supplies to Nicaragua three days after Chamorro's inauguration. An undisclosed amount of the $680,000 in Americares aid to Honduras was delivered to Nicaraguan Miskito Indian guerrillas. Based in Honduras, they were aligned with the CIA-funded Contras, according to Roberto Ale- jos, a Guatemalan sugar and coffee grower who coordinated the Americares project in Honduras. In 1960, Alejos had permitted the CIA to use his plantations to train right-wing Cubans in preparation for the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.

In 1985 and 1986, after Congress cut off U.S. aid to the Contras, Americares donated more than $100,000 worth of newsprint to the pro-Contra newspaper La Prensa in Managua. Americares supplied $291,383 in food and medicine and $5,750 in cash to Mario Calero, New Orleans-based quartermaster and arms purchaser for the Contras, and brother of Contra leader Adolfo Calero. In this same period, groups associated with Lt. Col. Oliver North's off-the-shelf Contra arms network provided covert support for La Prensa.

Jeb: Liaison to Anti-Castro Right George Herbert Walker Bush's second eldest son, John Ellis or Jeb, was also linked to clandestine schemes in support of the Contras. Soon after congressional prohibition in late 1984, Jeb helped put a right-wing Guatemalan politician, Dr. Mario Castejon, in touch with Oliver North. Jeb acted as the Reagan administration's unofficial link with the Contras and Nicaraguan exiles in Miami.

Jeb was contacted in February 1985 by a friend of Castejon, who gave him a letter from Castejon to be passed on to then Vice President Bush. In his letter Castejon, a pediatrician and later an unsuccessful National Conservative Party presidential candidate, requested a meeting with George Bush to discuss a proposed medical aid project for the Contras. Jeb forwarded the letter to his father. In a March 3, 1985, letter, Vice President Bush expressed interest in Castejon's proposal to create an international medical brigade.

"I might suggest, if you are willing, that you consider meeting with Lt. Colonel Oliver North of the President's National Security Council Staff at a time that would be convenient for you," Bush wrote. "My staff has been in contact with Lt. Col. North concerning your projects and I know that he would be most happy to see you. You may feel free to make arrangements to see Lt. Colonel North, if you wish, by corresponding directly with him at the White House or by contacting Philip Hughes of my staff."

Castejon later met with North in the White House, where he also saw President Ronald Reagan. When Castejon returned to Washington for a second visit, he was introduced to members of North's secret Contra support network, including retired Maj. Gen. John Sing- laub and Contra leader Adolfo Calero. Castejon also met with a group of doctors working with Rob Owen, North's liaison with the Contras.

"He [Castejon] was offering us a pipeline into Guatemala," said Henry Whaley, a former arms dealer who said he was asked by his intelligence community connections to help Castejon. Whaley was optimistic about opening a new shipping route to the Contras through Guatemala. "If you can move Band-Aids," he reportedly said, "you can move bullets."

With Castejon, Whaley prepared a proposal to the State Department for the purchase of medical supplies for the Contras from the Department's newly established Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office. The document included requests for mobile field hospitals and light aircraft to evacuate wounded Contra guerrillas. Congress approved $27 million in "humanitarian" aid to the Contras in 1985. The Castejon proposal was hand-delivered to TGS International Limited in the Virginia suburbs of Washington. Whaley said he sent the report to TGS so it would be "quietly" forwarded to the CIA. TGS International is owned by Ted Shackley, who was CIA Associate Deputy Director of Operations when Bush Sr. headed the Agency in 1976-77.

Jeb had another Contra connection in his involvement with Miguel Recarey, Jr., a right-wing Cuban who headed the International Medical Centers (IMC) in Miami. In 1985 and 1986, Recarey and his associates gave more than $25,000 in contributions to political action committees controlled by then Vice President Bush. In 1986, Recarey hired Jeb, a real estate developer, to find a new headquarters for IMC. Jeb was paid a $75,000 fee, even though he never located a new building.

In September 1984, two months after IMC's $2,000 contribution to the Dade County Republican Party, which was headed by Jeb, the vice president's son contacted several top HHS (Department of Health and Human Services) officials on behalf of IMC. "Contrary to rumors, [Recarey] was a good community citizen and a good supporter of the Republican Party," one official of the HHC remembered Jeb telling him in late 1984. Jeb successfully sought an HHS waiver of a rule so that IMC could receive more than 50 percent of its income from Medicare.30

Leon Weinstein, an HHS Medicare fraud inspector, worked on an audit of IMC in 1986; he has charged that IMC used Medicare funds to treat wounded Contras at its hospital. *31 The transaction was arranged by IMC official José Basulto, a right-wing Cuban trained by the CIA, who arranged for Contras to receive treatment in Miami. Basulto was praised for his commitment by Felix Rodriguez: "He has been active for a decade in supporting the Nicaraguan freedom fighters ever since the Sandinistas took power, and is constantly organizing Contra support among Miami's Cuban community. He has even been to Contra camps in Central America, helping to dispense humanitarian aid."

At the same time as Recarey was providing medical assistance to the Contras, he was embezzling Medicare funds. IMC, one of the largest health maintenance organizations in the United States, received $30 million a month for its Medicare patients, clearing $1 billion in federal monies from 1981 to 1987. While he headed IMC, Recarey's personal wealth jumped from $1 million to $100 million, U.S. investigators believe.

"IMC is the classic case of embezzlement of government funds," according to Robert Teich, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Office on Labor Racketeering in Miami. Reich described IMC's skimming Medicare funds as a "bust-out" where money was "drained out the back door." A Florida state investigator concluded in a 1982 report that some federal funds IMC received "are being put in banks outside the country."

Recarey's links to the Mafia also raised eyebrows in Washington. "As far back as the 1960s, he had ties with reputed racketeers who had operated out of pre-Castro Cuba and who later forged an anti-Castro alliance with the CIA," the Wall Street Journal reported. The Journal added that the late Santos Trafficante, Jr., the Mafia boss of Florida, "helped out when Recarey needed business financing." Trafficante, a major drug trafficker, joined a failed CIA effort to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro in the early 1960s.

Recarey's access to Republican circles was probably one reason he was able to rip-off U.S. tax dollars for so long. He hired former Reagan aide Lyn Nofziger, the public relations firm Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly, which was close to the Reagan White House, and attorney John Sears, a former Reagan campaign manager, to look out for his interests in Washington. Recarey fled the United States in 1987 to avoid a federal indictment for racketeering and defrauding the U.S. government. The Bush administration has made no effort to extradite him from Venezuela where he is currently living.

JEB LINKED TO SMUGGLERS AND THIEVES
Jeb Bush has also been linked to Leonel Martinez, a Miami-based right-wing Cuban-American drug trafficker. Martinez, who was linked to Contra dissident Eden Pastora, was involved in efforts to smuggle more than 3,000 pounds of cocaine into Miami in 1985-86. He was arrested in 1989 and later convicted for bringing 300 kilos of cocaine into the U.S. He also reportedly arranged for the delivery of two helicopters, arms, ammunition, and clothing to Pasto- ra's Costa Rica-based Contras.

Federal prosecutors in Miami have a photograph of Jeb and Martinez shaking hands but won't release the photo to the public. Whether Jeb was aware of Martinez's drug trafficking activities is not known, but it is known that Leonel and his wife Margarita made a $2,200 contribution to the Dade County Republican Party four months after Jeb became the chair of the local GOP.

It is also known that Martinez wrote $5,000 checks to then Vice President Bush's Fund for America's Future in both December 1985 and July 1986 and made a $2,000 contribution to the Bush for President campaign in October 1987.

Martinez's construction company gave $6,000 in October 1986 to Bob Martinez (no relation), the GOP candidate for governor in Florida; he was governor from 1987 to 1991. At that time, Vice President Bush was serving as head of the South Florida Drug Task Force and later as chair of the National Narcotics Interdiction System, both set up to stem the flow of drugs into the U.S. While Bush was drug czar, the volume of cocaine smuggled into the U.S. tripled.

President Bush later appointed Bob Martinez in 1991 head of the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy- the drug czar to succeed the controversial William Bennett.

JEB GETS IN ON THE BCCI ACTION In 1988, Jeb was mentioned in a deposition taken by a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee, chaired by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), which was investigating drug money laundering operations in the U.S.

"I saw Jeb Bush two or three times over there with [Abdur] Sakhia," stated Aziz Rehman, a junior BCCI-Miami official in the 1980s. "This was all part of the bank's trying to cultivate public officials and prominent individuals." *38 Rehman said BCCI's practice was to "bribe" government officials in the United States.

"Jeb Bush, V.P. George Bush's son," Sakhia noted in a 1986 BCCI document, was a "name…to be remembered."

Most of Rehman's testimony focused on his role in BCCI-Miami's money laundering operation. Rehman said it was his job, in the mid-1980s, to chauffeur and entertain BCCI-Miami's big clients when they came to the city from the Caribbean and Latin America. Rehman described how he deposited large amounts of cash for these clients, ranging from $100,000 to $2 million, in other Miami banks at which BCCI-Miami had accounts. To disguise the money trail, BCCI transferred the cash electronically from Miami to BCCI banks in Panama and the Grand Cayman Islands.

Jeb's name also shows up in a September 1987 BCCI document written by Amjad Awan, then a senior BCCI-Miami official. The memorandum planned a BCCI breakfast meeting with a senior level delegation from the People's Republic of China and high Florida state government officials, including Secretary of Commerce Jeb Bush. Among the Chinese delegation was Ge Zhong Xue, Deputy Division Chief of the Ministry of Public Security, a top police official.

Meanwhile, Jeb and his business partner Armando Codina profited handsomely when the Bush administration bailed out Broward Federal Savings and Loan in Sunrise, Florida, which went belly up in 1988. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) absorbed $285 million in bad loans, including a $4.6 million loan by the Bush-Codina partnership. According to the deal struck by federal regulators, the Bush-Codina partnership wrote a check for $505,000 to the FDIC, and the government paid off the remaining $4.1 million of the loan for an office building on which Jeb and Codina defaulted. As a result of the bailout, the Bush-Codina partnership retained possession of its office building at 1390 Brickell Avenue in Miami's posh financial district.

Currently, Jeb is involved in a number of joint ventures with Codina, a Miami real estate developer who is also a leader of the right-wing Cuban American National Foundation (CANF). The Brickell Avenue office building is owned by IntrAmerica Investments. Jeb was listed in business documents in 1985 and in 1986 as the president of IntrAmerica Investments, and the building is managed by one of Jeb's real estate companies. Codina owns 80 percent of the building, while Jeb owns the remaining 20 percent.

Jeb has acted as the Reagan and Bush administration's liaison with the politically influential Cuban exile community in South Florida. Jorge Mas Canosa, president of CANF, succinctly described Jeb's role as the ultra-right Cuban-American community's liaison with the White House: "He is one of us."

Jeb Asks Dad To Free Terrorist As a link to that powerful and wealthy South Florida community, Jeb has been a tireless supporter of some of the most reactionary Cuban-American political causes -from promoting CANF projects like Radio and TV Marti & acute;, to lobbying for the release of anti-Castro terrorist Orlando Bosch from a Miami jail. TV propaganda broadcasts into Cuba, considered by legal experts a violation of the International Telecommunications Convention, are fully subsidized by U.S. taxpayers.

Anti-Castro terrorist Orlando Bosch was paroled in 1990 after Jeb lobbied the Bush administration for his release from prison in Miami. Bosch had been jailed in 1988 for jumping bail on a 1968 conviction for shooting a bazooka at a Polish freighter in the Miami harbor. He is better known as the mastermind of the explosion of a Cuban commercial airliner over Barbados on October 5, 1976, in which 73 passengers were killed. A U.S. District Court judge revealed in 1988 that secret U.S. documents concluded Bosch was a leader of the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU), which was responsible for more than 50 anti-Castro bombings in Cuba and elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere.

The Cuban government filed an order for his extradiction in May 1992.

"Tell Him...The Vice President's Son" Called "There was no conflict of interest," third Bush son Neil told reporters after the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) in Washington issued a notice of intent in January 1990 to hold a hearing on the failure of Silverado Banking Savings and Loan. Neil had been a member of Silverado's board of directors from 1985 to 1988. *45 Federal regulators shut down Silverado shortly after George Bush was elected president in 1988. The federal bailout cost U.S. taxpayers $1 billion.

Neil was responding to charges made in an OTS report that he had "breached his fiduciary duty" to Silverado by engaging in unethical business deals while a board member of the Denver savings and loan. The report documented that Neil personally profited from questionable Silverado loans to his business partners, Ken Good and Bill Walters. Good and Walters later defaulted on $132 million in loans to Silverado, leaving the taxpayers to pick up the tab.

The OTS report alleged that Neil failed to disclose his business connections to Good and Walters when he voted to approve a $900,000 line of credit to Good International, Inc. Neil got Silverado to write a letter of recommendation to authorities in Argentina, where Good International, in partnership with Neil's JNB Exploration Company, was exploring for gas and oil. Good also gave the President's third son a $100,000 loan to invest in the commodities market, which Bush was never required to repay.

Neil failed to inform Silverado that Walters had contributed $150,000 to the initial capitalization of JNB Exploration, or that Walters' Cherry Creek National Bank in Denver extended a $1.5 million line of credit to JNB Exploration. Neil put up a paltry $100 in start-up funds in 1983 when he founded JNB Exploration, but over the next five years was paid $550,000 in salary drawn from the Cherry Creek National Bank line of credit.

Neil brought few business skills to his job at JNB Exploration but he was adept at cashing in on his family name. "Tell him Neil Bush called," Neil once told the secretary of a wealthy Denver oil entrepreneur. "You know, the vice president's son."

"Neil knew people because of his name," acknowledged Evans Nash, one of Neil's partners at JNB Exploration. "He's the one that got us going. He's the one that made it happen for us."

When Neil left JNB Exploration in 1989, the company had yet to discover a profitable gas or oil well.

Neil: The Sensitive One Neil's business partners also included shady characters with ties to the world of covert operations. In 1985, Good received an $86 million loan from the Dallas Western Savings Association, which was tied to Robert Corson, a Texas developer and reputed CIA operative, and Herman Beebe, Sr., a convicted Mafia associate of Louisiana mob boss Carlos Marcello.

Neil profited from the Western Savings loan to Good, because the loan helped Good buy Gulfstream Land and Development, a Florida real estate company. Good made Neil a board member of one of Gulfstream's subsidiaries in 1988. Bush was paid $100,000 a year to attend occasional Gulfstream board meetings before it went out of business in 1990.

Investigative reporter Pete Brewton identified Corson as a CIA operative in a long Houston Post series on CIA links to organized crime and failed savings and loans. "One former CIA operative told the Post that Corson frequently acted as `a mule' for the agency, meaning he would carry large sums of money from country to country," Brewton wrote.

Corson's Vision Banc Savings in Kingsville, Texas, loaned about $20 million to Mike Atkinson, a Corson associate, for a Florida land deal put together by Lawrence Freeman. Freeman, who laundered money for Santos Trafficante, Jr., was also tied to veteran CIA operative Paul Helliwell. In the Bahamas, Helliwell set up Castle Bank and Trust Ltd., which was the CIA's primary financial front in Latin America and the Caribbean during the 1960s and 1970s. Castle laundered funds for the Agency's covert operations against Cuba.

Walters had ties to Richard Rossmiller, a Beebe associate. In the mid-1970s, Walters was a part-owner with Rossmiller, of Peoples State Bank in Marshall, Texas, at the same time as Rossmiller was doing business with Beebe.

Wayne Reeder, another Beebe associate, a big borrower from Silverado, defaulted on a $14 million loan. Reeder was involved in an unsuccessful arms deal with the Contras. Reeder accompanied his partner, John Nichols, in 1981 to a weapons demonstration attended by Contra leaders Eden Pastora and Raul Arana, both of whom were interested in buying military equipment from Nichols.

"Among the equipment were night vision goggles ... and light machine guns," according to the book, Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans. "Nichols ... had a plan in the early 1980s to build a munitions plant on the Cabezon Indian Reservation near Palm Springs, California, in partnership with Wackenhut, the Florida security firm. [But] the plan fell through."

There was another Silverado-Contra connection, however, that didn't fall through. E. Trine Starnes, Jr., the third largest Silverado borrower, was a major donor to the National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty (NEPL), directed by Carl "Spitz" Channell, which was a part of Oliver North's Contra funding and arms support network. A NEPL document, "Top 25 Contributors as of October 3, 1986," showed Starnes contributed $30,000 to NEPL's Central America Freedom Program. Starnes closed a deal with Silverado on September 30, 1986, for three business loans totaling $77.5 million, on which Starnes later defaulted.

The Central America Freedom Program was a propaganda effort in conjunction with the Reagan administration's campaign in 1986 to win congressional support for resuming arms aid to the Contras. When the administration wooed potential NEPL donors, Starnes was invited to a January 30, 1986, White House briefing, which included Reagan, National Security Adviser John Poindexter, White House Chief of Staff Donald Regan and Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams. Congress resumed U.S. arms aid to the Contras in mid-1986.

In a final ironic Silverado-Contra connection, NEPL banked at the Palmer National Bank in Washington, a bank with ties to Vice President Bush and Herman Beebe. Palmer National was also linked to North's Contra arms network.

Palmer National was established in 1983 by Stefan Halper and Harvey McClean, Jr., two former aides in Bush's unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1980. Halper, who had links to the intelligence community, became deputy director of the State Department's Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs in the Reagan administration. McClean was a Beebe associate. Beebe supplied the majority of the capitalization for the start-up of Palmer National.

"Palmer National lent money to individuals and organizations that were involved in covert aid to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels," Brewton wrote in the Houston Post. "Money was channeled through Palmer National to a Swiss bank account used by . . . North to provide military assistance to the Contras."

Bushed Out George Herbert Walker Bush is the first former CIA director to serve as president. The implications for U.S. politics of Bush's move from CIA headquarters to the White House are profound and chilling, but seldom the subject of mainstream political discussion. The corruption of the Bush family, however, is a good introduction.

The Bushes' shadowy business partners come straight out of the world in which the CIA thrives-the netherworld of secret wars and covert operators, drug runners, mafiosi and crooked entrepreneurs out to make a fast buck. What Bush family members lack in business acumen, they make up for by cashing in on their blood ties to the former Director of Central Intelligence who became president. In return for throwing business their way, the Bushes give their partners political access, legitimacy, and perhaps protection. The big loser in the deal is the democratic process.


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