Lis­ten:
MP3 One Seg­ment

1. Sup­ple­ment­ing dis­cus­sion and analy­sis pre­sented in FTR-214, this broad­cast high­lights the role of George W. Bush in petro­leum indus­try pol­i­tics, as well as that of his father. (Both are career oil men.) In FTR-214, the delib­er­ate manip­u­la­tion of oil and gaso­line prices, the delib­er­ate fal­si­fi­ca­tion of Soviet and Mid­dle East­ern petro­leum pro­duc­tion esti­mates, the dis­cred­i­ta­tion of the Carter admin­is­tra­tion, the elec­tion of Ronald Rea­gan and the sub­se­quent mil­i­tary build-up and expo­nen­tial increase of the national debt were ana­lyzed as orig­i­nat­ing from a CIA report, gen­er­ated by the Agency when George Bush was direc­tor. (The Secret War Against the Jews by John Lof­tus and Mark Aarons, St. Martin’s Press, copy­right 1994.) FTR-214 set forth the pos­si­bil­ity that the rise in oil and gas prices in 2000 may also have been gen­er­ated delib­er­ately, in order to help engi­neer the demise of Al Gore.

2. FTR-236 begins where FTR-214 left off, with dis­cus­sion of Saudi Arabia’s fail­ure to raise pro­duc­tion, thus giv­ing rise to an increase in oil futures. (The Wall Street Jour­nal, 7/13/2000, p. C19.)

3. Next, the pro­gram dis­cusses George W’s lav­ish cam­paign sup­port from the oil com­pa­nies ($1.5 mil­lion, con­trasted with Al Gore’s $100,000.) The oil com­pa­nies are hope­ful that Bush, if elected, will help ease drilling restric­tions in an Alaska wildlife refuge, ease explo­ration and drilling restric­tions in other national parks, ease EPA attempts to elim­i­nate sul­fur in gaso­line and relax an attempt by the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion to reclaim mil­lions of dol­lars that the com­pa­nies have stolen from the tax­pay­ers. (The San Jose Mer­cury News, 7/3/2000, p. 4A.)

4. The oil com­pa­nies’ expec­ta­tions appear to be on solid ground, because Bush’s advi­sory board fea­tures peo­ple promi­nent in, and sym­pa­thetic to, the petro­leum indus­try. Both Don Evans and for­mer Sec­re­tary of Defense Dick Cheney are oil men and key Bush advi­sors. (Finan­cial Times, 6/23/2000, p. 4.)

5. George W has a his­tory of going to bat for the oil indus­try. In 1992, he attempted to inter­vene on behalf of the oil indus­try with his father’s admin­is­tra­tion, lob­by­ing for an increase in petro­leum prices. (San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle, 6/24/2000, p. A2.)

6. In his first polit­i­cal cam­paign (a 1978 run for the con­gres­sional seat vacated by the retir­ing Rep­re­sen­ta­tive George Mahon, Demo­c­rat of Texas) “Dubya” cam­paigned on a plat­form advo­cat­ing dereg­u­la­tion of oil and nat­ural gas prices, mir­ror­ing the actions of CIA, the oil com­pa­nies anb the Saudis at that time. Bush later said that he ran specif­i­cally because of his antipa­thy for the poli­cies of Jimmy Carter, who had fired his father from CIA. (W — The Revenge of the Bush Dynasty, by Eliz­a­beth Mitchell, copy­right 2000, Hype­r­ion, ISBN 0–7868-6630–6, p.158.)

7. Bill Clin­ton has attempted to enlist the Depart­ment of Energy in an effort to stem ris­ing gas prices. (Los Ange­les Times, 6/17/2000, p. A8.)

8. Next, the pro­gram high­lights three arti­cles from June 15 of the year 2000, and intro­duces spec­u­la­tion that the three may be related. The “miss­ing hard drive” scan­dal at the Los Alamos National Lab­o­ra­tory has weak­ened the Depart­ment of Energy and sub­verted Energy Sec­re­tary Bill Richardson’s Vice-Presidential pos­si­bil­i­ties, under­min­ing both the Clin­ton Administration’s attempts to bring the oil com­pa­nies to heel and Gore’s poten­tial appeal to Latino vot­ers. (Richard­son is a Mex­i­can Amer­i­can.) (Los Ange­les Times, 6/15/2000, p. A6.)

9. The same Los Alamos scan­dal also pro­pelled Gen­eral John Gor­don (deputy direc­tor of the CIA, the agency with which George W’s father is affil­i­ated) into the direc­tor­ship of the National Nuclear Secu­rity Agency, a divi­sion of the Depart­ment of Energy. This move had been opposed by Sec­re­tary Richard­son and the con­gres­sional Democ­rats. (San Jose Mer­cury News, 6/15/2000, p.11A.) Mr. Emory spec­u­lates about the pos­si­bil­ity that ele­ments of the CIA may have been involved in the cre­ation of the scan­dal (as they appar­ently were in the de-stabilization of the Carter administration.)

10. Inter­est­ingly (and per­haps sig­nif­i­cantly) at the time that the events engulf­ing the Depart­ment of Energy were unfold­ing, George W was con­sult­ing (as he often does) with his father. (The New York Times, 6/15/2000, p.1.)

11. The pro­gram con­cludes with a look at the Kennedy administration’s attempts at increas­ing taxes on oil indus­try prof­its, through reduc­ing the oil deple­tion allowance and the pas­sage of the Kennedy Act. (The lat­ter removed the dis­tinc­tion between repa­tri­ated prof­its and prof­its re-invested abroad. The mea­sure was aimed largely at the oil com­pa­nies.) (Farewell Amer­ica, James Hep­burn, copy­right 1968 by Fron­tiers Pub­lish­ing, ISBN 68–57391, p.234.)

12. George H. W. Bush’s name crops up in con­nec­tion with the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion in a num­ber of dif­fer­ent con­texts. The broad­cast con­cludes with a review of Bush’s pres­ence in the air over Dal­las’ Love Field on 11/22/63. (W — The Revenge of the Bush Dynasty, p.63.)