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