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America's Fishiest First Family

by Maureen Farrell

"These people are overly reaching, overly aggressive, overly secretive, and just plain corrupt. I don't trust these people." - Ronald Reagan Jr., on the current Bush administration
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/04/14/
ron_reagan/index_np.html

Sometimes, one simple assertion triggers an avalanche. The above statement, for example, after prompting an obligatory, "Wasn't Iran-Contra aggressive, secretive and corrupt?" conjures a cascade of murkier questions.

Ever since Prescott Bush was penalized for trading with the Nazis and the words "George Bush of the CIA" surfaced on a 1963 FBI report on the JFK assassination, the Bush family has been tied to speculation. But given that the GOP wasted more than $50 million of our tax dollars investigating a failed land deal and a president's sex life, who's in the mood to dwell on boogiemen in the closet? Isn't this administration frightening enough without fueling fears with yesterday's news?

Yes and no. Because, though we can always join fellow citizens in Weekly Standard-fed, denial-drenched chirpiness (for reference, see Annette Benning's American Beauty character), some sinister undercurrents run deeper than Dick Cheney's new bunker. Reagan's 'I don't trust these people" is a sentiment that goes beyond the here and now and recalls weird and notorious moments in our first family's history -- moments far more consequential to America's future than Whitewater or Monica.

Here then, is a brief overview of some of the stranger stories hiding behind the Bushes:

Conventional Conniving

It seems Ronald Reagan Sr. didn't initially trust George Herbert Walker Bush, either. Oddly enough, with organizations like the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Trilateral Commission becoming "hot topics" during the 1980 presidential primaries, candidates for the Republican nomination (save George Bush and John Anderson), clamored to prove they weren't associated with either entity. According to the History Channel, not only did Reagan repeatedly express a distrust of these organizations, but promised that CFR and Trilateral Commission member George Bush would not be offered a position in his administration. (This concern didn't extend to others, it seems, because on the day he won the New Hampshire primary, Reagan replaced his campaign manager with CFR member and future CIA Director William J. Casey).

During the Republican Convention, Reagan broke his promise -- and tradition. Making a late night dash from his hotel room to the convention floor, following televised speculation on a Ronald Reagan/Gerald Ford "co-presidency," he said: "I know that I am breaking with precedent to come here tonight and I assure you at this late hour I'm not going to give you my acceptance address. But in watching the television at the hotel and seeing the rumors that were going around and the gossip that was talking place here. It is true that a number of Republican leaders . . . . felt that a proper ticket would have included the former president of the United States, Gerald Ford, as second place on the ticket. . . . I then believed that because of all the talk and how something might be growing throughout the night that it was time for me to advance the schedule a little bit. . . . I have asked and I am recommending to this convention that tomorrow when the session reconvenes that George Bush be nominated for vice president."

Though Bush denies meeting Iranian officials in Paris to delay the release of America's 52 hostages, the Iran hostage situation was miraculously resolved the day Reagan was sworn in. http://www.webcom.com/~lpease/collections/denied/octsurprise.htm

Two years later, following the Reagan assassination attempt, NBC's John Chancellor and the Houston Post's Arthur Wiese and Margaret Downing reportedly stunned their respective audiences with news that Scott Hinckley, brother of Reagan's would-be assassin, was scheduled to dine with Vice President Bush's son Neil the night of the shooting. And though the March 31, 1981 Houston Post ran the headline, "Bush's Son Was To Dine With Suspect's Brother," the April 13 Newsweek sandwiched the story among oddball theories under a banner that read, "for conspiracy buffs only."

'Contempt for Honesty'

In 2000, George H.W. Bush promised the New York Times that his son would "restore honor and integrity" to the White House. "On the subject of 'honor and integrity,' David Corn responded, "let's recall the Iran-contra affair."

Although Congress, responding to public will, made it illegal for the US to support "indirectly or indirectly military or paramilitary operations in Nicaragua," the Reagan/Bush administration bypassed democracy and funded the contras anyway. Selling weapons to the regime that once held Americans hostage to finance this subversion, they also engaged in "foreign policy bribery," lied shamelessly, and pardoned those involved.

Saying that Bush's last minute pardons proved that "powerful people with powerful allies can commit serious crimes in high office - deliberately abusing the public trust - without consequence," Iran-contra independent counsel Lawrence Walsh added that it was "hard to find an adjective strong enough to characterize a president who has such contempt for honesty." http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=9448

When George W. Bush littered his cabinet with recycled Iran/contra criminals, and proved to be a liar on several fronts, honor and integrity went AWOL, just like the president himself. http://www.awolbush.com/.

Numbskulls

By now, many people know that during WWII, President Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush, and his maternal great-grandfather, Bert Walker, had assets seized under the Trading With the Enemy Act. "Huge sections of Prescott Bush's empire had been operated on behalf of Nazi Germany and had greatly assisted the German war effort" officials claimed (http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0228/ridgeway.php, scroll down).

But there are other skeletons in the closet. Literally. In an article entitled, "I Stole the Head of Prescott Bush! More Scary Skull and Bones Tales," New York Observer columnist Ron Rosenbaum addressed allegations that Prescott Bush stole Geronimo's skull for Yale's Skull and Bones secret society (to which both Presidents Bush also belonged). He wrote: "Here's where the Bush family involvement in the grave-robbing allegation begins. . . .The document is an account of a "mad expedition" by George W.'s grandfather Prescott Bush and two other Skull and Bones men to the grave of Geronimo 'to bring to the Tomb its most spectacular 'crook,' the skull of Geronimo, the Indian chief who had taken 49 white scalps. … [Prescott] Bush entered and started to dig. The skull was fairly clean, having only some flesh inside and a little hair."

Rosenbaum explored Senator John McCain's role in handling these accusations, and peppered his Skull and Bones tomb tour with asides on Nazi memorabilia. "The most shocking thing," one source reported, "and I say this because I do think it's sort of important-I mean President Bush does belong to Skull and Bones … there is like a little Nazi shrine inside. One room on the second floor has a bunch of swastikas, kind of an SS macho Nazi iconography. Somebody should ask President Bush about the swastikas in there." http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/story.asp?ID=2947

The Bushy Knoll: The Kennedy Years

In the same article, Rosenbaum also chronicled the link between Skull and Bones alumni and the Bay of Pigs fiasco. "One of the C.I.A.'s masterminds for the Bay of Pigs was a man named Richard Drain, Skull and Bones '43," he wrote, before listing other Skull and Bonesmen who also took part. Though George H. W. Bush's name wasn't on that list and Bush denies involvement with the CIA until being appointed head honcho in 1975, evidence suggests otherwise.

In a 1988 Nation article entitled, "The Man Who Wasn't There, 'George Bush,' C.I.A. Operative," Joseph McBride interviewed a former CIA agent who said that Bush's Zapata Offshore Oil Company was a front for CIA clandestine operations. "I know [Bush] was involved in the Caribbean," the operative said. (Interestingly enough, the Bay of Pigs disaster was called "Operation Zapata" and two of the boats used were named Houston and Barbara).

McBride also reported on an F.B.I. memorandum, dated November 29, 1963, with the subject head "Assassination of President John F. Kennedy November 22, 1963" in which Hoover reported that the FBI had briefed "Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency" on the post-assassination reaction of Cuban exiles in Miami. (To view the document, http://www.internetpirate.com/bush.htm). The CIA uncharacteristically denied Bush's involvement, saying that the memo alluded to another employee, George William Bush. But according to McBride, George William only worked for the CIA for six months in 1963-64 and explained he was just a "lowly researcher and analyst" who had never been briefed by any government agency.

In another twist, Lee Harvey Oswald's unlikely friend, George DeMohrenschildt (who "committed suicide" before police could question him regarding Oswald), had "George H.W. (Poppy) 1412 Ohio also Zapata Petroleum Midland" listed in his address book.

Boys Will Be Boys

In a 1992 Mother Jones article entitled Bush Family Value$, Stephen Pizzo investigated George W. Bush's shady Harken deals, Jeb Bush's "help in facilitating the largest HMO Medicare fraud in U.S. history" and Neil Bush's "wheeling and dealing" that inevitably cost US taxpayers.

Bashing the Bush world of "well-to-do white boys who trade on family connections, welsh on loans, run with con men, and leave financial ruin in their wake as they line their own pockets," Pizzo asked, "What about grown men, with access to the most powerful public office in the land, who participate in scandal but show no remorse for any of it -- and who take no responsibility for the consequences of their own actions?" He then pointed out that, "The pattern of behavior by the president's three sons raises questions -- about them and their father." http://www.motherjones.com/news_wire/bushboys.html

Media Manipulation

Operation Mockingbird, the CIA's plan to infiltrate America's newsrooms, was such a success that former CIA director William Colby boasted, "The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any major significance in the major media." Carl Bernstein substantiated this, telling Rolling Stone that hundreds of journalists and news organizations were involved in this subversion. And though officials have been caught planting fabrications in the past (a PR firm concocted the "babies in incubators" story that swayed the Senate into supporting Bush #41's Gulf War), the current White House has perfected the art of propaganda.

"What's changed is that there's no shame anymore in doing it directly," media author and Harper's magazine publisher John MacArthur recently reported, alluding to the lies the Bush administration told regarding Iraq's weapons capabilities. "The concept of a self-governing American republic has been crippled by this propaganda," he mused. The whole idea that we can govern ourselves and have an intelligent debate, free of cant, free of disinformation, I think it's dead." http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=ourWorldNews&storyID=2667151

America Since 9/11

Yet for those willing to dig, there's a wealth of information about Sept. 11 oddities. http://www.failureisimpossible.com/needtoknow/aftermath.htm#warning
But would digging be necessary had Sept. 11 occurred under Clinton's watch? What do you suppose would happen, if he, like Bush, had ties to the bin Ladens? What might Rush Limbaugh say if James Baker were a Clinton family friend, instead? Would Rush be ok with Baker's law firm representing the Saudis against Sept. 11 victims' families? http://alwatan4all.netfirms.com/article-e0031.htm

And what would happen if Clinton appointed someone with iffy ties to head the Sept. 11 commission? In "Five Degrees of Osama," Fortune Magazine explored Governor Kean's "bizarre link" to al Qaeda, exposing "dots" that connect the governor to Osama bin Ladens' brother-in-law, Khalid bin Mahfouz as well as to the Carlyle Group and BCCI. http://www.fortune.com/fortune/articles/0,15114,410237,00.html

George W. Bush has similar peculiar ties, too, of course. A recent article in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette discussed how Bin Mahfouz was scrutinized "for an alleged investment made in a Texas oil company owned by a young George W. Bush," and how BCCI was accused, in 1999, of "funneling millions to front organizations for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden." http://www.post-gazette.com/businessnews/20030318meast0318p2.asp In 1991, the Wall Street Journal observed that "The number of BCCI-connected people who had dealings with Harken -- all since George W. Bush came on board -- raises the question of whether they mask an effort to cozy up to a presidential son."

Moreover, if Bush were Clinton, how might talking heads react to him undercutting the 9/11 investigation? http://www.msnbc.com/news/907379.asp?0cv=KA01&cp1=1 http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,437267,00.html

It would be "Scandal TV" -- every day, all day. And yet, for some reason, as the media rolls over and citizens snooze, few seem to notice reams of sleaze. Meanwhile, Bush family history and America's future become more deeply and irretrievably intertwined.