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NB: This stream con­tains both FTRs 431 and 432 in sequence. Each is a 30 minute broadcast.

This pro­gram is a follow-up to FTR#392, which deals with some of the Mid­dle East­ern busi­ness con­nec­tions of Mar­vin Bush—the President’s younger brother. Intro­duc­ing the major focal point of the pro­gram, the broad­cast high­lights Mar­vin Bush’s posi­tion on the boards of Stratesec and HCC. The for­mer held elec­tronic secu­rity con­tracts for the World Trade Cen­ter, Dulles Inter­na­tional Air­port and United Air­lines. The lat­ter was a major insur­ance under­writer for the World Trade Cen­ter. (Dulles Inter­na­tional Air­port was the depar­ture point for the plane that attacked the Pen­ta­gon and one of the air­craft that crashed into the World Trade Cen­ter was a United Air­lines flight.) The par­ent cor­po­ra­tion of Stratesec was the Kuwaiti-American Cor­po­ra­tion, a firm that linked the Bush fam­ily with mem­bers of the Kuwaiti fam­ily. One of the cen­tral ques­tions aris­ing in con­nec­tion with the Bush fam­ily rela­tion­ship with this nexus con­cerns the pos­si­ble use of these con­nec­tions for intel­li­gence gath­er­ing or oper­a­tional manip­u­la­tion in con­nec­tion with the attacks. Could this rela­tion­ship have had any bear­ing on the hir­ing of for­mer FBI agent John O’Neill—who was killed at Ground Zero on his first day as direc­tor of the WTC? O’Neill’s inves­ti­ga­tion had been actively frus­trated by cor­po­rate inter­ests linked to Saudi Ara­bia; his team barred from con­tin­u­ing their work in Yemen by Bush’s State Depart­ment. He (O’Neill) allegedly had a brief­case stolen from his pos­ses­sion in the sum­mer of 2001 con­tain­ing fund­ing and per­son­nel assign­ments for all coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence and counter-terror oper­a­tions in the New York area. As will be seen below, Wirt D. Walker III was the man­ag­ing direc­tor of the Kuwaiti-American Cor­po­ra­tion and deeply involved with Stratesec. Walker is also a mem­ber of the Bush fam­ily. Inter­est­ingly (and per­haps sig­nif­i­cantly), Walker is also chair­man and CEO of Avi­a­tion Gen­eral, a Tulsa, Okla­homa, avi­a­tion firm. Among Avi­a­tion General’s links are busi­ness con­nec­tions in the Mid­dle East (Egypt in par­tic­u­lar) and flight schools in Florida. Again, the ques­tion arises as to pos­si­ble con­nec­tions with the events of 9/11.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Mar­vin Bush’s fail­ure to prop­erly list his direc­tor­ships of HCC and Stratesec on SEC proxy fil­ings; pres­i­den­tial uncle Jonathan Bush’s links to Saudi bank accounts tan­gen­tial to the milieu of 9/11; Jonathan Bush crony William Donaldson’s acces­sion to being head of the SEC.

1. Intro­duc­ing the major focal point of the pro­gram, the broad­cast high­lights Mar­vin Bush’s posi­tion on the boards of Stratesec and HCC. The for­mer held elec­tronic secu­rity con­tracts for the World Trade Cen­ter, Dulles Inter­na­tional Air­port and United Air­lines. The lat­ter was a major insur­ance under­writer for the World Trade Cen­ter. (Dulles Inter­na­tional Air­port was the depar­ture point for the plane that attacked the Pen­ta­gon and one of the air­craft that crashed into the World Trade Cen­ter was a United Air­lines flight.) The par­ent cor­po­ra­tion of Stratesec was the Kuwaiti-American Cor­po­ra­tion, a firm that linked the Bush fam­ily with mem­bers of the Kuwaiti fam­ily. One of the cen­tral ques­tions arisng in con­nec­tion with the Bush fam­ily rela­tion­ship with this nexus con­cerns the pos­si­ble use of these con­nec­tions for intel­li­gence gath­er­ing or oper­a­tional manip­u­la­tion in con­nec­tion with the attacks. Could this rela­tion­ship have had any bear­ing on the hir­ing of for­mer FBI agent John O’Neill—who was killed at Ground Zero on his first day as direc­tor of the WTC? O’Neill’s inves­ti­ga­tion had been actively frus­trated by cor­po­rate inter­ests linked to Saudi Ara­bia; his team barred from con­tin­u­ing their work in Yemen by Bush’s State Depart­ment. He (O’Neill) allegedly had a brief­case stolen from his pos­ses­sion in the sum­mer of 2001 con­tain­ing fund­ing and per­son­nel assign­ments for all coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence and counter-terror oper­a­tions in the New York area.

Might the Mar­vin Bush con­nec­tion to Stratesec and HCC have had any bear­ing on the appar­ent short-selling of air­line and insur­ance stocks in the run-up to the inves­ti­ga­tion? Obvi­ously, this is what Mr. Emory calls “Food For Thought and Grounds for Fur­ther Research”—it is inde­ter­mi­nate, at this point in time. In light of the fact that both Jeb Bush and his brother Neil helped their father’s efforts in con­nec­tion with covert sup­port for the Con­tras this would not are alto­gether surprising.

“George W. Bush’s brother was on the board of direc­tors of a com­pany pro­vid­ing elec­tronic secu­rity for the World Trade Cen­ter, Dulles Inter­na­tional Air­port and United Air­lines, accord­ing to pub­lic records. The com­pany was backed by an invest­ment firm, the Kuwait-American Corp., also linked for years to the Bush fam­ily. The secu­rity firm, for­merly named Secu­ra­com and now named Stratesec, is in Ster­ling, VA. Its CEO, Barry McDaniel, said the com­pany had a ‘com­ple­tion con­tract’ to han­dle some of the secu­rity at the World Trade Cen­ter ‘up to the day the build­ings fell down.’ It also had a three-year con­tract to main­tain elec­tronic secu­rity sys­tems at Dulles Air­port, accord­ing to a Dulles con­tract­ing offi­cial. Securacom/Stratesec also han­dled some secu­rity for United Air­lines in the 1990’s, accord­ing to McDaniel, but it had been com­pleted before his arriv­ing on the board in 1998.”

(“Bush-linked Com­pany Han­dled Secu­rity for the WTC, Dulles and United” by Margie Burns; Prince George’s Jour­nal [Mary­land]; 2/4/2003; p. 1.)

2. Not­ing Stratesec’s con­tracts for secu­rity at the Los Alamos lab­o­ra­tory, it is also inter­est­ing to spec­u­late on the Wen Ho Lee case and a major secu­rity scan­dal at the lab that helped to desta­bi­lize the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion and dis­credit the Energy Depart­ment under Bill Richard­son. (For more about this sub­ject, see FTR#236.)

“McDaniel con­firmed that the com­pany has secu­rity con­tracts with the Depart­ment of Defense, includ­ing the U.S. Army, but did not detail the nature of the work, cit­ing secu­rity con­cerns. It has an ongo­ing line with the Gen­eral Ser­vices Administration—meaning that its bids for con­tracts are noncompetitive—and also did secu­rity work for the Los Alamos lab­o­ra­tory before 1998.”

(Idem.)

3.

“Mar­vin P. Bush, the president’s youngest brother, was a direc­tor at Stratesec from 1993 to fis­cal year 2000. But the White House has not pub­licly dis­closed Bush con­nec­tions in any of its responses to 9/11, nor has it men­tioned that another Bush-linked busi­ness had done secu­rity work for the facil­i­ties attacked. Mar­vin Bush has not responded to tele­phone calls and e-mails for com­ment. KuwAm has been linked to the Bush fam­ily finan­cially since the Gulf War. One of its prin­ci­pals and a mem­ber of the Kuwaiti royal fam­ily, Mishal Yousef Saud al Sabah, served on the board of Stratesec.”

(Idem.)

4. As will be seen below, Wirt D. Walker III was the man­ag­ing direc­tor of the Kuwaiti-American Cor­po­ra­tion and deeply involved with Stratesec. Walker is also a mem­ber of the Bush family.

“The man­ag­ing direc­tor at KuwAm, Wirt D. Walker III, was also a prin­ci­pal at Stratesec and Walker, Mar­vin Bush and al Sabah are listed in SEC fil­ings as sig­nif­i­cant share­hold­ers in both com­pa­nies dur­ing that period. Mar­vin Bush’s last year on the board at Stratesec coin­cided with his first year on the board of HCC Insur­ance, for­merly Hous­ton Casu­alty Co., one of the insur­ance car­ri­ers for the WTC. He left the HCC board in Novem­ber 2002.”

(Ibid.; pp. 1–2.)

5. Inter­est­ingly (and per­haps sig­nif­i­cantly), Walker is also chair­man and CEO of Avi­a­tion Gen­eral, a Tulsa (Okla­homa) avi­a­tion firm. Among Avi­a­tion General’s links are busi­ness con­nec­tions in the Mid­dle East (Egypt in par­tic­u­lar) and flight schools in Florida. Again, the ques­tion arises as to pos­si­ble con­nec­tions with the events of 9/11.

“But none of these con­nec­tions has been looked at dur­ing the exten­sive inves­ti­ga­tions since 9/11. McDaniel says prin­ci­pals and other per­son­nel at Stratesec have not been ques­tioned or debriefed by the FBI or other inves­ti­ga­tors. Walker declined to answer the same ques­tion regard­ing KuwAm, refer­ring to the pub­lic record. Walker [a Bush fam­ily rel­a­tive] is also chair­man and CEO of Avi­a­tion Gen­eral, a Tulsa, Okla.-based avi­a­tion com­pany with two sub­sidiaries. SEC fil­ings also show al Sabah as a prin­ci­pal and share­holder in Avi­a­tion Gen­eral, which was recently delisted by the Nas­daq. Stratesec was delisted by the Amer­i­can Stock Exchange in Octo­ber 2002.”

(Ibid.; p. 2.)

6. Other inter­est­ing evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries con­nect­ing the Bush fam­ily to the HCC, KuwAm milieu involve the leas­ing of the suite used for board elec­tions to the Saudi Gov­ern­ment and the Riggs Bank. The lat­ter has the President’s Uncle Jonathan Bush as an exec­u­tive. Riggs han­dles the vast bulk of accounts for D.C. Embassies and was the repos­i­tory for Saudi Princess al-Faisal’s account used on behalf of some of the hijackers.

“The suite in which Mar­vin Bush was annu­ally re-elected, accord­ing to pub­lic records, is located in the Water­gate in space leased to the Saudi Gov­ern­ment. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s.] The com­pany now holds share­holder meet­ings in space leased by the Kuwaiti gov­ern­ment there. The White House has not responded to var­i­ous requests for com­ment. Speak­ing of the Water­gate, Riggs National Bank, where Saudi Princess al-Faisal had her ‘Saudi money trail’ bank account, has as one of its exec­u­tives Jonathan Bush, an uncle of the pres­i­dent. The pub­lic has not learned whether Riggs—which, ser­vices 95 per­cent of Washington’s for­eign embassies—will be turn­ing over records relat­ing to Saudi finance.”

(Idem.)

7. One of Jonathan Bush’s Yale classmates—William Donaldson—was appointed head of the SEC. Don’t expect any inquiries into the secu­ri­ties manip­u­la­tions prior to and after 9/11.

“Mean­while, Bush has nom­i­nated William H. Don­ald­son to head the Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion. Don­ald­son, a long­time Bush fam­ily friend, was a Yale class­mate of Jonathan Bush. On the very day of the tragic space shut­tle crash, the gov­ern­ment appointed an inde­pen­dent inves­tiga­tive panel, and rightly so. Why didn’t it do the same on Sept. 12, 2001?”

(Idem.)

8. Bush, how­ever, did not list his direc­tor­ship at Stratesec on the proxy state­ment for HCC, and did not list his con­nec­tions with HCC on the proxy state­ment for Stratesec. Why not? It is ille­gal to fail to report such rela­tion­ships under the circumstances.

“In the spring of 1999, Mar­vin Pierce Bush, youngest brother of George W. Bush, was a nom­i­nee for the boards of direc­tors of two com­pa­nies, both with a sig­nif­i­cant inter­est in secu­rity at the World Trade Cen­ter. One was HCC Insur­ance, for­merly Hous­ton Casu­alty Com­pany, a giant hold­ing com­pany and major insur­ance car­rier for the cen­ter. The other was a secu­rity com­pany named Stratesec, one of the center’s numer­ous secu­rity con­trac­tors. Bush, how­ever, did not list his direc­tor­ship at Stratesec on the proxy state­ment for HCC, and did not list his con­nec­tions with HCC on the proxy state­ment for Stratesec. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s]. Accord­ing to offi­cials at the Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion and other experts, list­ing other direc­tor­ships is required, in proxy state­ments, for direc­tors and offi­cers of pub­lic companies.”

(“The Best Unreg­u­lated Fam­i­lies” by Margie Burns; Online Jour­nal 3/24/2003.)

9.

“Stratesec was even­tu­ally excused from the World Trade Cen­ter project. HCC sus­tained sig­nif­i­cant losses when with­draw­ing from work­ers com­pen­sa­tion as a result. Stratesec, for­merly called Secu­ra­com but forced to change its name after some bad-blood lit­i­ga­tion with another secu­rity com­pany, filed its SEC proxy state­ment on April 23, 1999. The share­hold­ers met on May 25, 1999, in a Water­gate office suite, leased by the Saudi Ara­bian gov­ern­ment, to elect seven mem­bers includ­ing Bush, who had been on the board since 1993. Bush was also on the company’s audit and com­pen­sa­tion com­mit­tees. A prin­ci­pal in the com­pany, Wirt D. Walker III, is also a Bush relative.”

(Ibid.; pp. 1–2.)

10.

“HCC Insur­ance filed its proxy state­ment on April 28, 1999, for the share­hold­ers meet­ing in Hous­ton on May 20, 1999. It was Bush’s entrance on HCC’s 13-member board. He had been on the board of direc­tors at Fresh Del Monte Pro­duce Inc. since 1998, appointed by HCC’s CEO and chair­man of the board, Stephen Way, a long­time friend. The Stratesec proxy also omit­ted the Fresh Del Monte Pro­duce (FDP) con­nec­tions. By law, proxy state­ments filed with the SEC for pub­licly traded com­pa­nies list, along with other required infor­ma­tion, the age, cre­den­tials and busi­ness con­nec­tions of direc­tors and nominees.”

(Ibid.; p. 2.)

11.

“Bush’s infor­ma­tion dis­closed to Stratesec’s share­hold­ers listed his ongo­ing direc­tor­ship at Stratesec, his pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence at invest­ment firms, his part­ner­ship at his own company—Winston Part­ners, a pri­vate invest­ment firm in North­ern Virginia—and his direc­tor­ship at Ker­rco, an oil and gas com­pany. Only his direc­tor­ships at HCC and Fresh Del Monte, where he was also on the Audit and Com­pen­sa­tion com­mit­tees, were omit­ted. (See http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1037453/0000928385–99-001383.txt .)

(Idem.)

12.

“The infor­ma­tion dis­closed to HCC’s share­hold­ers listed Bush’s posi­tions at Win­ston Part­ners and Fresh Del Monte, his mem­ber­ship on the Board of Trustees of the George Bush Pres­i­den­tial Library and on the Board of Man­agers at the Uni­ver­sity of Vir­ginia. Only Stratesec and Ker­rco were omit­ted. (http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/888919/0001047469–99-016818.txt.) Bush left Stratesec’s board within the year. He was reelected to the HCC board for the next two years, again omit­ting the Stratesec connection.”

(Idem.)

13.

“Accord­ing to expert opin­ion, these omis­sions vio­late SEC reg­u­la­tions. Attor­ney Robert Plesnarski, spe­cial coun­sel in the Office of Chief Coun­sel at the Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion, said by tele­phone that a per­son run­ning for the board of direc­tors of a pub­lic com­pany is required to list all other direc­tor­ships. When asked about the proxy state­ments involv­ing Mar­vin Bush, Plesnarski answers that [if] the com­pa­nies [had] been pri­vate, prob­a­bly the infor­ma­tion would not have been included. How­ever, cit­ing ‘Item 401 of Reg­u­la­tion SK,’ Plesnarski states that since Stratesec and HCC were pub­lic traded, ‘the infor­ma­tion would have been required.’ This con­clu­sion is also sup­ported by the SEC’s pub­lic ref­er­ence branch. . . .”

(Idem.)

14. Con­clud­ing with more thought-provoking infor­ma­tion about KuwAm sub­sidiary Avi­a­tion Gen­eral, headed by Bush rel­a­tive Wirt D. Walker III. In addi­tion to inter­fac­ing with the Egypt­ian orga­ni­za­tion that trains civil­ian pilots (NATCO) which, in turn, has a work­ing rela­tion­ship with flight schools at Embry-Riddle Uni­ver­sity in Florida. (Recall that Mohammed Atta was Egypt­ian, that most of the hijack­ers were based in Florida—Jeb Bush’s state. It is also interesting—and pos­si­bly significant—that an Egypt­ian Air­liner went down sev­eral years ago, with the pilot heard invok­ing the Prophet Mohammed. There has been spec­u­la­tion in the media about whether it was an act of ter­ror­ism or suicide.)

” . . . An even big­ger ques­tion than finance is pub­lic safety. Avi­a­tion Gen­eral, for­merly Com­man­der Air­craft, has an inter­na­tional clien­tele. A 1996 press release announced its sale of air­planes to the National Civil Avi­a­tion Train­ing Orga­ni­za­tion (NCATO) of Giza, Egypt, ‘the sole civil­ian pilot train­ing orga­ni­za­tion in Egypt.’ ‘This deliv­ery was announced by Sheik Mishal Youssef Saud Al Sabah, Chair­man of KuwAm Cor­po­ra­tion and board mem­ber of Com­man­der Air­craft Com­pany.’ NCATO’s con­trac­tual part­ner­ships with flight schools included Embry-Riddle Uni­ver­sity, in Florida. Embry-Riddle has not responded to ques­tions about the part­ner­ship. There is no indi­ca­tion that inves­ti­ga­tors have looked into any of these connections. . . .”

(Ibid.; p. 5.)