Recorded Feb­ru­ary 8, 2004
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Pre­sent­ing the work of Kevin Phillips (a main­stream con­ser­v­a­tive and for­mer con­sul­tant to Pres­i­dent Nixon), this broad­cast draws on his very impor­tant recent book Amer­i­can Dynasty. Mr. Emory emphat­i­cally rec­om­mends this book! The pro­gram fea­tures Phillips’ dis­cus­sion of the Bush family’s pro­found con­nec­tions to the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity over a period of more than 50 years. With the Bush family’s Wall Street con­nec­tions to both U.S. and Third Reich finance and indus­try as its foun­da­tion, the Bush family’s rela­tion­ship with the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity stretches from Prescott Bush, Sr. on down to the peo­ple sur­round­ing the cur­rent pres­i­dent. In his analy­sis of the Bush family’s intel­li­gence con­nec­tions, Phillips empha­sizes the rela­tion­ship between Prescott Bush and Allen Dulles of the CIA, as well as the Caribbean influ­ence of the Walker family’s exten­sive hold­ings in Cuba and the Domini­can Repub­lic. The elder George Bush appears to have inher­ited his father’s Wall Street con­nec­tions to the Dulles milieu, which, in com­bi­na­tion with the Walker Caribbean influ­ence, paved the way for his involve­ment with the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity, which appears to have begun in the early ’50’s. All around the elder George Bush, one finds the inter­sec­tion between the petro­leum indus­try and the intel­li­gence community—a rela­tion­ship that shaped the char­ac­ter of the polit­i­cal lives of both the elder and younger George Bush.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The role of Lau­rence Sil­ber­man (appointed by Bush to head the com­mis­sion just formed to inves­ti­gate intel­li­gence fail­ures in the Mid­dle East) in the Iran-Contra and Octo­ber Sur­prise affairs; the elder George Bush’s liai­son with Dresser Indus­tries’ chief Henry Neil Mal­lon, CIA direc­tor Allen Dulles and for­mer Nazi spy Hans Gise­vius; George Bush (Sr.)‘s work for Dresser Indus­tries (today part of Hal­libur­ton Oil); Dresser Indus­tries’ con­nec­tions to the CIA; the prob­a­ble con­nec­tion of the elder Bush’s Zap­ata Petro­leum to the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity; Zapata’s links with the CIA-connected Mex­i­can petro­leum milieu and oil king­pin Ed Pauley; the CIA/Pemex/Texas oil link to the Water­gate scan­dal; con­nec­tions of the Skull and Bones soci­ety to the CIA and the Bay of Pigs oper­a­tion; the sig­nif­i­cance of the elder George Bush’s intel­li­gence con­nec­tions to the wars in the Per­sian Gulf and Afghanistan; the entan­gle­ments of “the Wars of the Texas Suc­ces­sion” (as Phillips calls them) to which the younger Bush is heir; the influ­ence of the phi­los­o­phy of Mac­chi­avelli on the admin­is­tra­tions of both Georges Bush.

1. The pro­gram begins by high­light­ing the appoint­ment of retired judge Lau­rence Sil­ber­man to a panel empow­ered with inves­ti­gat­ing the intel­li­gence short­com­ings that led to the false esti­mates of Iraqi WMD’s. “George Bush, the US pres­i­dent, today announced the for­ma­tion of a com­mis­sion to inves­ti­gate fail­ures in intel­li­gence used to jus­tify the war in Iraq. Mr. Bush said: ‘We are deter­mined to find out what hap­pened.’ In a tele­vised brief­ing at 6:30pm (GMT), Mr. Bush said the nine-member panel, to be chaired by a for­mer gov­er­nor of Vir­ginia, Charles Robb, and a retired judge, Lau­rence Sil­ber­man, would be instructed to report on its find­ings in March 2005. . . .” (“Bush Announces WMD Com­mis­sion” by George Wright; The Guardian Unlim­ited; 2/6/2004; accessed at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1142859,00.html.)

2. Next, the broad­cast sets forth infor­ma­tion about Silberman’s back­ground. Among other things, Sil­ber­man was at the core of many of the intelligence-related scan­dals of the 1980’s and 1990’s. In his remark­able, impor­tant book, Kevin Phillips labels the two Per­sian Gulf wars, the Iran-Contra scan­dal, the Iraq­gate scan­dal and the two Afghan wars as “The Wars of the Texas Suc­ces­sion.” (Phillips enti­tles an entire chap­ter of his book as such.) Walsh was one of the judges who over­turned the con­vic­tion of Oliver North, stem­ming from his Iran-Contra activ­i­ties. ” . . . For the next six years, Walsh over­saw a serious-though-plodding probe of that scan­dal, infu­ri­at­ing Repub­li­can lead­ers, such as Sen. Bob Dole, who favored a tidy cover-up. Walsh’s dili­gence also led to a behind-the-scenes power play by con­ser­v­a­tive fed­eral judges to under­cut Walsh’s probe and turn the spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor appa­ra­tus into another tool of con­ser­v­a­tive power.” (“Last Word: Judge Walsh’s Warn­ing”; The Con­sor­tium; 1996; accessed at: http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/story10.html.)

3. Details about how Sil­ber­man helped to cover-up the Iran-Contra affair by help­ing to over­turn the con­vic­tion of Oliver North: “This legal coup began when hard-line Rea­gan judges David Sen­telle and Lau­rence Sil­ber­man over­turned Walsh’s felony con­vic­tion of Oliver North, by a two-to-one vote, in 1990. Sen­telle, a pro­tégé of North Carolina’s con­ser­v­a­tive Sen. Jesse Helms, was also part of the panel that reversed the guilty ver­dicts against North’s White House boss, Adm. John Poindex­ter.” (Idem.)

4. In his remark­able deci­sion to over­turn the North con­vic­tion, Sil­ber­man was aided by Bush’s solic­i­tor gen­eral, Ken­neth Starr—who even­tu­ally became White­wa­ter Spe­cial Pros­e­cu­tor. “When Walsh moved to appeal the North rul­ing (which was based on an unprece­dented appli­ca­tion of immu­nity rules), Walsh was sup­ported by the Jus­tice Department’s career appel­late divi­sion. But Walsh was opposed by Bush’s solic­i­tor gen­eral, none other than Ken­neth Starr.” (Idem.)

5. “While the bat­tle over the North case played out, con­ser­v­a­tive Chief Jus­tice William Rehn­quist was fix­ing the game at another level. He replaced the senior panel that tra­di­tion­ally picked spe­cial pros­e­cu­tors with a new panel run by Sen­telle. The revamped panel was in place when Repub­li­can Robert Fiske was ousted as White­wa­ter spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor and was replaced by legal con­ser­v­a­tive activist Starr.” (Idem.)

6. Starr and Sil­ber­man are part of a far-right judi­cial milieu cen­tered on the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety. (For more about the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, see FTR#289.) “Indeed, all the con­ser­v­a­tive judges involved in this seizure of the spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor appa­ra­tus work closely with the far-right Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, which has as a prin­ci­pal goal the purg­ing of lib­er­al­ism from the fed­eral bench. The Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety is so far right that it has even attacked the Amer­i­can Bar Asso­ci­a­tion as ‘col­lec­tivist, rad­i­cal.’ In an inter­view, Walsh said he found the ‘dog­ma­tism that seems to come out of the Fed­er­al­ist group’ trou­bling. . . .” (Idem.)

7. Silberman’s name also crops up in con­nec­tion with the “Octo­ber Surprise”—the appar­ent col­lu­sion between the Reagan-Bush cam­paign in 1980 and the Khome­ini forces in Iran to with­hold the U.S. hostages taken from the U.S. embassy until after Jimmy Carter’s humil­i­a­tion and con­se­quent elec­tion defeat were assured. (For more about the Octo­ber Sur­prise, see—among other programs—RFAs 31, 38. For more about the Iran-Contra scan­dal, see—among other programs—RFAs 29–35, 38—available from Spitfire—as well as FTRs 01, 2, 29, 174, 248, 310.) “In Sep­tem­ber 1980, [Richard] Allen got a call from Robert McFar­lane, then an author­ity on Iran for the Sen­ate Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee. McFar­lane told Allen that he knew a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment who might be use­ful. McFar­lane wanted us to meet him; he was emphatic,’ recalls Allen. And against my bet­ter judge­ment, I agreed.’ Allen asked another cam­paign advi­sor, Lau­rence Sil­ber­man, to accom­pany him. The four met in the lobby of L’Enfant Plaza Hotel in Wash­ing­ton. The Iran­ian envoy informed them that he was on good terms with Khomeini’s inner cir­cle. Then he spun a web about how he could get the hostages released directly to our cam­paign before the elec­tion,’ recalls Sil­ber­man. And that point, we cut him off.’ . . . Maybe. . . . Among other things, the paucity of details makes the account dis­turb­ing. The time and date of the con­fer­ence, even the envoy’s iden­tity, are all unknown. . . . But con­sid­er­ing the enor­mity of the envoy’s pro­posal, and Allen’s own well-documented obses­sion with Iran­ian affairs, that par­tic­u­lar black­out seems too con­ve­nient. Three highly respected pro­fes­sion­als, whose liveli­hoods depend on recall­ing names, faces and events, unac­count­ably develop amne­sia. It’s unlikely that they would meet an envoy with­out know­ing before­hand his sta­tus, reli­a­bil­ity and objec­tive.” (“Octo­ber Sur­prise News Cov­er­age [House of Representatives—February, 1992]”; p. 29 [of 64]; accessed at http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_cr/h920205-october-clips.htm.)

8. Turn­ing to the Kevin Phillips book, the broad­cast relates some of the pro­found con­nec­tions between U.S. indus­try and finance and the eco­nomic engines that financed Hitler and pow­ered his war machine. (For more about this sub­ject, see—among other programs—RFAs 1, 2, 10, 37, Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Shows M11, M26, M42—available from Spit­fire. In addi­tion, see—among other programs—FTRs 29, 36–38, 113, 121, 186, 248, 361, 370, 435. The U.S. invest­ment in Ger­many is set within a macro-economic frame­work in FTR#441.) “In the 1920’s, Ger­many had been by far the most impor­tant inter­na­tional mar­ket for recy­cling the new pri­vate U.S. cap­i­tal cre­ated by the war. Most of this U.S. invest­ment, which approached $2 bil­lion, took the form of loans to Ger­man indus­try, direct invest­ment in Ger­man com­pa­nies, loans to Ger­man munic­i­pal­i­ties, and end­less dol­lars of Dawes Plan cred­its. Christo­pher Simp­son, in The Splen­did Blond Beast, listed the prin­ci­pal U.S. Firms that bought or began estab­lish­ing major Ger­man sub­sidiaries or joint ven­tures dur­ing the 1920’s: ITT, Gen­eral Motors, Ford, Stan­dard Oil of New Jer­sey, and Gen­eral Elec­tric. All were among America’s dozen largest com­pa­nies.” (Amer­i­can Dynasty: Aris­toc­racy, For­tune, and the Pol­i­tics of Deceit in the House of Bush; by Kevin Philips; Viking [HC]; Copy­right 2004 by Kevin Phillips; ISBN 0–670-03264–6; p. 186.)

9. “U.S. over­seas invest­ment didn’t end with Hitler’s acces­sion to power. Cap­i­tal con­tin­ued to move to Ger­many dur­ing the 1930’s under the Third Reich. Reports by the U.S. Com­merce Depart­ment showed the U.S. invest­ment in Ger­many increased by 48.5 per­cent between 1929 and 1940, while declin­ing almost every­where else in con­ti­nen­tal Europe.” (Ibid.; p. 187.)

10. Phillips notes that the com­pa­nies invested in Nazi Ger­many turned to Allen and John Fos­ter Dulles (of Sul­li­van and Cromwell). Allen Dulles played a cen­tral role in the mask­ing of the Bush family’s assets in the econ­omy of the Third Reich. (For dis­cus­sion of the Bush family’s involve­ment with Third Reich indus­try and finance, see—among other programs—FTRs 186, 248, 273, 332, 361, 370, 435.) “By 1939, many of these var­i­ous units—manufacturing engines, armored chas­sis, and arti­fi­cial rubber—wee main­stays of the Ger­man war machine. As pricey, immo­bile assets that could not be repa­tri­ated, the large Ger­man sub­sidiaries were also impor­tant props of the val­u­a­tions of many of the biggest U.S. com­pa­nies. Instead of the obvi­ous pro-Allied eco­nomic self-interest of 1917, many major cor­po­ra­tions faced a very dif­fer­ent conun­drum in 1939–41. Top exec­u­tives and invest­ment bankers uncer­tain about what they ought to do—or how they ought to take cover—hired lawyers like John Fos­ter and Allen Dulles.” (Idem.)

11. Set­ting the stage for dis­cus­sion of Prescott Bush, Sr. (the cur­rent president’s grand­fa­ther) and his rela­tion­ship with the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity, the pro­gram syn­op­sizes the incor­po­ra­tion of the Rein­hard Gehlen spy out­fit into the U.S. national secu­rity estab­lish­ment. (For more about the Gehlen orga­ni­za­tion, see—among other programs—RFAs 1–3, 11, 14, 15, 21, 22, 36, 37, avail­able from Spit­fire. In addi­tion, see FTRs 44, 120, 180, 332.) Note, in par­tic­u­lar, the role of for­mer Gestapo offi­cer Hans Gise­vius and his work on behalf of Admi­ral Wil­helm Canaris. Gise­vius was to become an asso­ciate of Prescott Bush in the con­text of his work with Dresser indus­tries. (Mal­lon and Dresser were the first employ­ees of the elder George Bush after his grad­u­a­tion from Yale. See RFA#37—available from Spitfire—and FTR#367.) Dresser Indus­tries is now part of Hal­libur­ton, whose for­mer CEO is Dick Cheney. “The speed with which post­war U.S. mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence offi­cers wel­comed anti-Soviet Ger­mans who had worn Hitler’s insignia through­out the war reflected the his­tor­i­cal pref­er­ence for prac­ti­cal­ity over moral­ity. Con­sid­er­able por­tions of the Ger­man Abwehr and wartime Rein­hard Gehlen organization—Fremde Heere Ost, the army intel­li­gence group mon­i­tor­ing East­ern Europe and Russia—had shifted to the employ of the United States by 1950, imple­ment­ing the anti-Soviet alliance scores of Ger­mans had dis­cussed with Stew­art Men­zies and Allen Dulles in other days and other uni­forms. Hans Gise­vius, the agent sent by Admi­ral Wil­helm Canaris and Ger­man intel­li­gence to meet with Allen Dulles in wartime Switzer­land, was about to begin a new cold war role: car­ry­ing mes­sages and ideas from Neil Mal­lon at Dresser Indus­tries to the same Allen Dulles, soon to head the CIA.” (Ibid.; pp. 194–195.)

12. Phillips notes the role of many of the Wall Street power elite as 1950 pro­gressed. Union Bank­ing Cor­po­ra­tion and Fritz Thyssen are part of the Bush busi­ness milieu. (See FTRs 186, 248, 332, 346, 361, 370, 435.) “In 1950, Robert A. Lovett him­self was deputy sec­re­tary of defense and about to become sec­re­tary; Averell Har­ri­man was the president’s national secu­rity adviser; Prescott Bush was about to run for the U.S. Sen­ate from Con­necti­cut; Allen Dulles was deputy direc­tor of the CIA; and John Fos­ter Dulles was wait­ing for the next Repub­li­can pres­i­dent to appoint him to the post of sec­re­tary of state ear­lier held by his grand­fa­ther and his uncle. What­ever these men and their invest­ment banks and law firms had or hadn’t done for I.G. Far­ben, Fritz Thyssen, and the Union Bank­ing Cor­po­ra­tion, in terms of broad pol­i­tics, at least, they had picked the right side—the camp that became the U.S. national secu­rity estab­lish­ment.” (Ibid.; p. 195.)

13. High­light­ing the pro­found role Prescott Bush appears to have played in the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity, Phillips notes Bush’s close rela­tion­ship with Allen Dulles. “Bush also kept up with the Dulles broth­ers. In 1946, almost as soon as Allen Dulles was back in New York, Bush had him to lunch. In 1961, when Dulles was pushed from his CIA director’s aerie because of the Bay of Pigs foul-up, he made it a point, on the day before his suc­ces­sor, John McCone, was named, to bring McCone along to a din­ner with Prescott Bush.” (Ibid.; pp. 196–197.)

14. “In 1962, as Bush was about to leave the Sen­ate, he helped to launch the new National Strat­egy Infor­ma­tion Cen­ter, to be run by Frank Bar­nett, a right-tilting expert on polit­i­cal war­fare and covert oper­a­tions who had pre­vi­ously directed research at North Carolina’s CIA-linked Smith Richard­son Foun­da­tion. Bush knew well those involved, because dur­ing the early 1950’s, at the request of H. Smith Richard­son and his son-in-law Eugene Stet­son, a Bones­man and for­mer Brown Broth­ers Har­ri­man col­league of Bush’s, he had given the Richard­sons advice and sup­port­ive coun­sel on set­ting up their foun­da­tion.” (Ibid.; p. 197.)

15. “Which brings us to what, in the tele­vi­sion quiz show par­lance of that very era, was called ‘the $64,000 Ques­tion”: Who—and what—was Prescott Bush in the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­nity? And did he leave a legacy to his son?” (Idem.)

16. “The senior Bush was not of the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity, in the sense of hav­ing been the direc­tor or an offi­cial of the OSS or CIA; but he was indis­putably close to it, prob­a­bly as a con­fi­dant, ‘asset,’ or high-level coun­selor, much as Juan Trippe of Pan Amer­i­can Air­ways and William S. Paley of CBS were widely thought to have

been. Indeed, Prescott Bush was a long-serving mem­ber of both Trippe’s and Paley’s cor­po­rate boards. He was also a war-time board mem­ber of two companies—the Vana­dium Cor­po­ra­tion of Amer­ica and Dresser Industries—that pro­vided ura­nium ore and ura­nium gaseous dif­fu­sion pumps, respec­tively, for the Man­hat­tan Project and sub­se­quent atomic-bomb devel­op­ment.” (Idem.)

17. Bush met fre­quently with Dulles, Mal­lon and the afore­men­tioned Hans Gise­vius. Phillips even spec­u­lates that Prescott Bush may have served as a “shadow CIA direc­tor.” “Dresser’s CIA con­nec­tions prob­a­bly matched those of CBS and Pan Amer­i­can. Researcher Bruce Adam­son has obtained copies of 1953–54 cor­re­spon­dence between Dresser chief Neil Mal­lon and CIA direc­tor Allen Dulles. The meet­ings arranged between the two men some­times also included Sen­a­tor Prescott Bush, ex-German agent Hans Gise­vius, or Defense Sec­re­tary Charles Wil­son. Sev­eral of the let­ters cited plans, notably a pilot project in the Caribbean, that had been thought up by Gisevius—hardly your every­day Dal­las executive—now work­ing for Dresser and Mal­lon. The intrigued researcher, con­nect­ing these dots and many oth­ers, starts to assume that Prescott Bush of Yale, Skull and Bones, and Brown Broth­ers Har­ri­man was an off-the-books emi­nence grise, a Man Who Could Be Trusted, per­haps even a shadow CIA direc­tor. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s]. How he might have got­ten there is even more murky. . . .” (Ibid.; pp. 197–198.)

18. ” . . . One con­clu­sion can rea­son­ably be drawn: that the men who man­aged most of the high-level finan­cial and cor­po­rate rela­tions between the United States and Ger­many in the period from 1933 to 1941 devel­oped an unusual kind of infor­ma­tion and exper­tise that made them impor­tant to the war effort in gen­eral and the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­nity in par­tic­u­lar. As a result, after World War II was over, with the Soviet Union soon becom­ing an enemy and Ger­many being trans­formed into a U.S. ally, the new Amer­i­can national secu­rity state formed around a new estab­lish­ment in which Prescott Bush and many of his friends were promi­nent and hon­ored mem­bers.” (Ibid.; p. 199.)

19. Turn­ing to the sub­ject of the younger George Bush’s involve­ment with the CIA and the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity, Phillips notes the prob­a­ble influ­ence of Prescott Bush, and George H. Walker (Jr. and Sr.) The Walk­ers were heav­ily invested in Cuba and the rest of the Caribbean, a hotbed of intel­li­gence activ­ity from the 1950’s on. “The influ­ences of Prescott Bush’s milieu must have been sig­nif­i­cant. But we should not for­get George H. Walker’s role. We’ve explored Prescott Bush’s own cir­cle and its wide con­nec­tions. As for Walker, no one can know what, in those sum­mer walks and hours out on the old man’s boat in the 1930’s and 1940’s, he told the grand­son who car­ried his name. How­ever, Walker had derring-do to spare, plus strong inter­ests in the Caribbean, where the polit­i­cal and covert action was soon to heat up. In addi­tion to his Euro­pean ven­tures, he had long­stand­ing ties to Cuba and served as a direc­tor of seven related com­pa­nies dur­ing the mid-and late 1920’s and early 1930’s: the Cuba Com­pany, the Cuban Rail­road, Cuban-Dominican Sugar, Bara­hona Sugar, Cuba Dis­till­ing, Sugar Estates of Ori­ente, and Atlantic Fruit and Sugar. Promi­nent New York invest­ment bankers did not under­take such com­mit­ments lightly; Walker was cen­trally involved with the island through three major indus­tries: sugar, (rum) dis­till­ing, and a major rail­road that served these enter­prises (and became a sym­bol of yan­qui power.)” (Ibid.; p. 202.)

20. “In the 1930’s and early 1940′, young Bush’s favorite uncle, Herbie—George Her­bert Walker, Jr.—took over direc­tor­ships of sev­eral of these Cuban-Dominican sugar com­pa­nies, which ulti­mately merged into West Indies Sugar in 1942. It is not hard to imag­ine the young George H.W. Bush pick­ing up from grand­fa­ther and uncle alike a roman­tic sugar-plantation, rum, and palm-trees image of the heav­ily policed, old-regime Cuba of Ful­gen­cio Batista. The island was much liked by a vis­it­ing gen­er­a­tion of middle-and upper-class Amer­i­cans.” (Ibid.; pp. 202–203.)

21. “Uncle Her­bie” Walker was deeply involved with the reor­ga­ni­za­tion of George H.W. Bush’s Zap­ata Oil—itself heav­ily involved in the Caribbean. “His uncle would have been angry in 1959, when the new left­ist Cas­tro regime announced that it would nation­al­ize the hold­ings of the U.S. sugar com­pa­nies. Cas­tro had launched his rev­o­lu­tion sev­eral years ear­lier in east­ern Cuba’s sugar-and-rum-centered Ori­ente Province, and some of the Amer­i­can own­ers of sugar mills and estates had con­tributed funds in the hope of mod­er­at­ing his move­ment. Oriente-based West Indies Sugar had been a par­tic­u­lar tar­get of rebel levies and depre­da­tions. Coin­ci­den­tally, 1959 was the year when Uncle Her­bie helped to finance the reor­ga­ni­za­tion of Zap­ata by which the off­shore drilling rigs—at least one oper­at­ing near Cuba—became inde­pen­dent under Walker-Bush con­trol. George H. Walker Jr. must have been even angrier in 1960 when Cas­tro nation­al­ized the West Indies Sugar Com­pany, of which he had been a direc­tor until 1959. Infu­ri­ated by Cas­tro’ sugar estate seizures, the U.S. gov­ern­ment with­drew its recog­ni­tion of Cuba and launched an eco­nomic embargo in Jan­u­ary 1961. Three months later came the Bay of Pigs inva­sion.” (Ibid.; p. 203.)

22. The Bush/Cuban con­nec­tion con­tin­ued through the gen­er­a­tions. As dis­cussed in FTRs 249, 268, Jeb Bush was very close to the Anti-Castro Cubans. Jeb Bush even appointed the grand­son of Ful­gen­cio Batista to a posi­tion as a state supreme judge. “Grand­fa­ther Walker had died in 1953, but Prescott Bush, too, had a con­sid­er­able psy­cho­log­i­cal involve­ment with Cuba, its pol­i­tics, and its impor­tance to the United States. The events of the later 1950’s and early 1960’s would make the com­mit­ments of both Prescott and George H. W. Bush stand out in bold relief. Cuba’s fate would be a per­sonal as well as pro­fes­sional pre­oc­cu­pa­tion. Old Batista-era loy­al­ties would linger (even into the twenty-first cen­tury, when Florida gov­er­nor Jeb Bush would nom­i­nate Batista’s grand­son, Raul Can­tero, to the state supreme court).” (Idem.)

23. As Phillips notes, George H.W. Bush’s employ­ment for Dresser Indus­tries may well have involved work on behalf of the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity. “George H.W. Bush’s intel­li­gence con­nec­tions may have affected when and why he went to Texas. Work­ing for Ray Kravis in Tulsa might not have been rel­e­vant; work­ing for Neil Mal­lon, as Dresser shifted its focus and head­quar­ters from Ohio to Texas and turned global, would have been more so. Dresser had top secret clear­ances dur­ing the 1941–45 war years for var­i­ous projects, and after Mal­lon relo­cated to Dal­las in 1950, the company’s great­est growth came from over­seas activ­ity, con­ceiv­ably includ­ing some covert projects.” (Idem.)

24. George Bush (Sr.)‘s petroleum/intelligence activ­i­ties may well have grad­u­ated from his asso­ci­a­tion to Dresser to his involve­ment with Zap­ata Off­shore. “The inter­na­tional side of the oil busi­ness, whether in the Mid­dle East or the Caribbean, lent itself to close involve­ment with the CIA and U.S. intel­li­gence, as numer­ous chron­i­clers have elab­o­rated. Although George Bush left Dresser in 1951, he main­tained close rela­tions with Mal­lon and other friends there. They referred clients to him after he joined up with the Liedtke broth­ers in 1953 to form Zap­ata Petro­leum, which decided to branch out into deep-sea drilling with Zap­ata Off­shore in 1954. This hap­pened to be the year that the CIA under Allen Dulles stepped up its own Caribbean activ­ity with the over­throw of the Left-leaning gov­ern­ment of Jacobo Arbenz Guz­man in Guatemala. Bruce Adam­son, who assem­bled the Dresser-Dulles cor­re­spon­dence, won­dered about a pos­si­ble con­nec­tion between the Bush-Liedtke Zap­ata off­shore enter­prise and the Caribbean project that Dresser chief Mal­lon and for­mer Ger­man intel­li­gence offi­cer Hans Gise­vius had dis­cussed a lit­tle ear­lier with Du

lles.” (Ibid.; pp. 203–204.)

25. Yet another of the areas of inter­sec­tion between George Bush (Sr.)‘s oil busi­ness career and his prob­a­ble early involve­ment with the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity (CIA) con­cerns Zap­ata Petroleum’s con­nec­tions to Mex­i­can oil and Ed Pauley. “Here analy­sis has to rely on impli­ca­tion and com­mon sense. Adam­son, Lof­tus, The Nation mag­a­zine, and the U.S. jour­nal­ism effort named Project Cen­sored all posited some direct George H.W. Bush—CIA con­nec­tion emerg­ing between 1954 and 1963. Related hints of a Mexican-connected Bush ini­ti­a­tion also came from reporter Jonathan Kwitny in his 1988 Barron’s arti­cle ‘The Mex­i­can Con­nec­tion.’ The impli­ca­tions are con­sid­er­able; con­crete proof is min­i­mal.” (Ibid.; p. 204.)

26. “In 1988, dur­ing Bush’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, Kwitny revealed that back in 1960, Bush and Zap­ata Off­shore, together with Jorge Diaz Ser­rano, a Mex­i­can oil­man rec­om­mended by Dresser, had set up a new Mex­i­can com­pany called Per­margo. The lat­ter, under the author­ity of Pemex, the Mex­i­can oil monop­oly, was to do deep-sea drilling off the Mex­i­can coast for Pan Amer­i­can Petro­leum, a firm run by U.S. oil­man Ed Pauley. Pemex and Pauley were both known for CIA con­nec­tions.” (Idem.)

27. “Bush, how­ever, was already drilling for Pauley under a Zap­ata Off­shore con­tract. Details about Zapata’s Per­margo involve­ment didn’t check out, and Kwitny smelled a rat or two, espe­cially when it emerged that in 1981, shortly after Bush had been elected vice pres­i­dent, the SEC ‘inad­ver­tently destroyed’ the Zap­ata Off­shore SEC fil­ings for 1960 to 1966. Some years later Lof­tus wrote, ‘The ‘old spies’ say Bush lost his vir­gin­ity in the oil busi­ness to Ed Pauley.’ He added that ‘the Zapata-Permargo deal also caught the atten­tion of Allen Dulles, who, the ‘old spies’ report, was the man who recruited Bush’s com­pany as a part-time pur­chas­ing front for the CIA. Zap­ata pro­vided com­mer­cial sup­plies for one of Dulles’ most noto­ri­ous oper­a­tions: the Bay of Pigs inva­sion.” (Idem.)

28. “Biog­ra­phers have found more Zap­ata details in the papers of for­mer U.S. sen­a­tor Ralph Yarbrough, whom Bush unsuc­cess­fully opposed in the 1964 elec­tion. That year, Yarbor­ough, who liked to call Bush ‘a Con­necti­cut car­pet­bag­ger,’ had arranged for a sup­porter named Allan Man­del to do some cam­paign research on Bush’s com­pany. What Man­del turned up—his report still exists among the senator’s papers in Austin—ws a descrip­tion of Zap­ata Offshore’s unusual and com­plex busi­ness struc­ture: a half-dozen sub­sidiaries rang­ing from Zap­ata Inter­na­tional, Sea­cat Zap­ata, and Zap­ata de Mex­ico to the Zap­ata Over­seas Cor­po­ra­tion. Tax advan­tages were one expla­na­tion; han­dling covert funds could have been another.” (Ibid.; pp. 204–205.)

29. As dis­cussed in RFA#37—available from Spitfire—and FTR#367, Bush’s name was in the address book of George De Mohren­schildt, a for­mer Nazi spy and one of Lee Har­vey Oswald’s intel­li­gence babysit­ters. “As for CIA ties, Per­margo obvi­ously had some; in addi­tion note has been made of the pub­lished cor­re­spon­dence that con­nected Dresser with the CIA and Allen Dulles. We will also see shortly that the Liedtkes and Zapata-turned-Pennzoil were tied with Pemex to a 1972 CIA money-laundering chain related to the Water­gate break-in. Bruce Adam­son added that ‘George Bush and Edwin Pauley (both CIA) were both listed in 1954–55 in (CIA asset) George de Mohrenschildt’s per­sonal address book, which I obtained a copy [of] from the West Palm Beach Sheriff’s office in 1992.’” (Ibid.; p. 205.)

30. Under­scor­ing the pro­found Skull and Bones con­nec­tion to the CIA, Phillips relates the links between the plan­ners for the Bay of Pigs and Skull and Bones. The shell cor­po­ra­tion that funded the soci­ety may well have been used as a fund­ing con­duit for the ill-fated inva­sion. “Yale­man Ron Rosen­baum, who wrote about Skull and Bones in the New York Observer and else­where, came up with a chill­ing angle in his attempts to trace the shell corporation—the Rus­sell Trust Association—that had funded the society’s year-to-year exis­tence. A check with the Con­necti­cut sec­re­tary of state’s office in 2000 found no such cor­po­ra­tion, which seemed to leave a dead end. But then a researcher’s care­ful follow-up found out that years ear­lier the asso­ci­a­tion had been abol­ished, then reestab­lished under the name RTA Incor­po­rated.” (Ibid.; p. 206.)

31. “Let Rosen­baum tell his own tale of dis­cov­ery: ‘The new papers of rein­cor­po­ra­tion that erased the century-old Rus­sell Trust Asso­ci­a­tion were filed at 10:15 A.M. on April 14, 1961. Two hours later, at noon on that day, the orders went out to begin the Bay of Pigs operations—the covert CIA-financed inva­sion of Castro’s Cuba, a bloody fiasco that still haunts us four decades later. Con­ci­dence? Prob­a­bly. But then it’s also true that one of the CIA’s mas­ter­minds for the Bay of Pigs oper­a­tion was a man named Richard Drain, Skull and Bones ’43. And the White House plan­ner of the Bay of Pigs oper­a­tion was McGe­orge Bundy, Skull and Bones ’40. And the State Depart­ment liai­son for the Bay of Pigs Oper­a­tion was his brother William P. Bundy, Skull and Bones ’39. And the man who filed the rein­cor­po­ra­tion papers that erased the Rus­sell Trust Asso­ci­a­tion from exis­tence on the day of the Bay of Pigs was Howard Weaver, Skull and Bones ’45 (George Bush’s class), who retired from the CIA in 1959. All of which might lead one to sus­pect that the Skull and Bones cor­po­rate shell had been used as a clan­des­tine con­duit for the Bay of Pigs, and then erased from exis­tence to cover up the con­nec­tion as the inva­sion got under way.’ Yes, it must be a coin­ci­dence; it has to be a coin­ci­dence.” (Idem.)

32. Yet another of the CIA/petroleum links to the career of George Bush involves a slush fund that chan­neled monies to the Water­gate Bur­glars. (As Phillips notes, many of the Water­gate bur­glars had back­grounds in the Bay of Pigs oper­a­tion, and the monies came from Texas allies of George H.W. Bush. Bush was chair­man of the Repub­li­can National Com­mit­tee at the time.) “It is fair to say that by Decem­ber 1975, when White House chief of staff Don­ald Rums­feld was work­ing to derail George H.W. Bush’s pres­i­den­tial ambi­tions by slot­ting him as CIA direc­tor, three gen­er­a­tions of the Bush and Walker fam­i­lies already had some six decades of intelligence-related activ­ity and expe­ri­ence under their belts. How­ever, there is still one more con­nec­tion to men­tion: the Pemex-Pennzoil-CIA money line coin­ci­den­tally or oth­er­wise exposed in 1972 after funds it pro­vided through Mex­i­can banks were found in the hands of the Water­gate bur­glars. Of those men, a solid majority—Howard Hunt, Frank Stur­gis, Euge­nio Mar­tinez, Vir­gilio Gon­za­lez, and Bernard Barker—had been involved in the abortive Bay of Pigs episode.” (Ibid.; pp. 206–207.)

33. “Nixon and his senior advis­ers knew that the money had come through Mex­i­can banks from ‘the Tex­ans’: regional Nixon finance chief William Liedtke, Robert Mos­bacher, and other Bush friends. Appar­ently they were not sure what that meant—what kind of a CIA pipeline was involved or what kind of usage was under way. Author Lof­tus says that George H.W. Bush’s sub­se­quent high stand­ing with the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity came not from his Bay of Pigs involve­ment but from ‘when he told Nixon that he could not shift the blame for the Mex­i­can slush fund to the CIA with­out wreck­ing the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity.’” (Ibid.; p. 207.)

34. “There is no proof that Bush con­veyed any such warn­ing. More­over, Nixon’s White House chief of staff, H.R. Halde­man, gave a dif­fer­ent view in his 1978 book The Ends of Power: ‘If the Mex­i­can bank con­nec­tion was actu­ally a CIA oper­a­tion all along, unknown to Nixon, and Nixon was destroyed for ask­ing the FBI to stop inves­ti­gat­ing the bank because it might uncover a CIA oper­a­tion (which the Helms memo seems to indi­cate it actu­ally was all along), the mul­ti­ple lay­ers of decep­tion by the CIA are astound­ing.’” (I

dem.)

35. Phillips notes that the intelligence-rated scan­dals of the 1970’s barely dented the intel­li­gence estab­lish­ment, which roared back in the 1980’s and 1990’s, with the elder George Bush being first Vice-President and then Pres­i­dent. “At any rate, the national secu­rity state was only slightly wounded in the six­ties and sev­en­ties, rebound­ing to thrive in the eight­ies and nineties despite a few bumps after the breakup of the Soviet Union, when the CIA briefly feared for its future. More to the point, two men named George Bush would be CIA direc­tor, vice pres­i­dent, or pres­i­dent of the United States for sev­en­teen of the twenty-eight years between 1976 and 2004. In a very real but lit­tle under­stood sense, the Bush dynasty was already get­ting way in 1980–81 when George Bush went from the CIA director’s job to the vice pres­i­dency, a jump no one had ever man­aged before and one that brought a new and unfa­mil­iar mind-set to the elected exec­u­tive office.” (Idem.)

36. As dis­cussed in FTRs 29, 174, 248, 384, Rea­gan issued a National Secu­rity Direc­tive that put George Bush in charge of an inter-agency gov­ern­men­tal net­work that served as his own pri­vate intel­li­gence ser­vice. This net­work was the chief vehi­cle for effect­ing both the Iran-Contra and Iraq­gate machi­na­tions. It is Mr. Phillips’ opin­ion, (shared by Mr. Emory) that this set the stage for “The Wars of the Texas Suc­ces­sion.” “In 1981, because of Bush’s CIA experience—and per­haps also because of the influ­ence of the White House chief of staff, James A. Baker III, who had man­aged the Texan’s 1980 nom­i­na­tion campaign—President Rea­gan issued National Secu­rity Direc­tive 3, nam­ing the vice pres­i­dent to head a Spe­cial Sit­u­a­tion Group to iden­tify national secu­rity crises and plan for them. A new era of clan­des­tine arms sales, mas­sive arma­ments buildups, secret diplo­macy, and covert actions, per­haps as much Bush’s doing as Reagan’s, was about to unfold in the Mid­dle East gen­er­ally and in Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan specif­i­cally. With it, the seeds of two Per­sian Gulf wars and hun­dreds of ter­ror­ist strikes would be fer­til­ized and watered.” (Ibid.; pp. 207–208.)

37. Con­clud­ing with Phillips’ thoughts on the influ­ence of Machiavelli’s The Prince on Bush adviser Karl Rove, the broad­cast notes the sim­i­lar­ity between the sig­na­ture dis­hon­esty and cyn­i­cism char­ac­ter­iz­ing the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and the power-political advice of the Flo­ren­tine. “The polit­i­cal thinker Nic­colo Machi­avelli (1469–1527), long a believer in the famous Flo­ren­tine Repub­lic of the Renais­sance, began to lose faith in his later years as the tides of impe­r­ial power and ambition—French, Ger­man, and Spanish—swept across the Ital­ian penin­sula, wash­ing away the old repub­li­can pol­i­tics of city-states like Flo­rence and Siena, too small to sur­vive on their own. Unlike Machiavelli’s less-well-known books, which embraced repub­li­can pol­i­tics and insti­tu­tions, his most famous vol­ume, The Prince, was ded­i­cated to Lorenzo de’ Medici, the duke of Urbino. It encap­su­lated the tech­niques, from amoral­ity and fraud to reli­gion, by which the ascen­dant princely rulers might gov­ern most suc­cess­fully.” (Ibid.; p. 320.)

38. Sun-Tzu is also an influ­ence on the Bush admin­is­tra­tion. (See Mr. Emory’s thoughts on this in FTRs 366, 418, 442.) “As the 2004 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion took shape, another such Machi­avel­lian moment was at hand. U.S. pres­i­dent George W. Bush, while hardly a Medici, was a dynast whose fam­ily her­itage included secrecy and cal­cu­lated decep­tion. Harken­ing to the increas­ingly impe­r­ial self-perception of the United States, the president’s the­o­rists and tac­ti­cians boasted of tak­ing the advice of Machi­avelli and the Chi­nese strate­gist Sun Tzu. The late Lee Atwa­ter, chief polit­i­cal adviser to the elder Bush, and Karl Rove, strate­gist for the younger Bush, friends and col­lab­o­ra­tors, wee both devo­tees of Machi­avelli and The Prince, hardly a coin­ci­dence.” (Ibid.; pp. 320–321.)

39. “The pos­si­bil­ity that the United States could edge toward its own Machi­avel­lian moment in an early-twenty-first cen­tury milieu of ter­ror­ism, neo-imperialism, and dynas­ti­za­tion is not far-fetched. As we have seen, Rove, the Bush dynasty’s own polit­i­cal plot­ter, has been an avid reader of Machi­avelli. While the analy­sis in The Dis­courses upholds repub­li­can­ism, the advice Machi­avelli gives in The Prince was ded­i­cated to the Medicis and designed to work in the new princely, aris­to­cratic, and neo-imperial milieu of sixteenth-century Italy.” (Ibid.; p. 330.)

40. “Chap­ter 4, in its dis­cus­sion of Bush domes­tic pol­icy and ‘com­pas­sion­ate con­ser­v­a­tive’ rhetoric, has already referred to Machiavelli’s advice that the Prince should lie but must ‘be able to dis­guise this char­ac­ter well, and to be a great feigner and dis­sem­bler.’ More­over, ‘to see and hear him, he [the Prince] should seem to be all mercy, faith, integrity, human­ity and reli­gion. And noth­ing is more nec­es­sary than to seem to have this last qual­ity . . . Every­body sees what you appear to be, few feel what you are.’” (Idem.)

41. “Other advice dwells on the mer­its of fraud, hypocrisy, faith­less­ness, and related prac­tices, and twentieth-century aca­d­e­mi­cians have noted Machiavelli’s appeal to lead­ers like Hitler, Stalin, and Mus­solini. Doubt­less there are also hun­dreds of copies of The Prince at the CIA. Which makes it reveal­ing, and arguably ill advised, that the two polit­i­cal advis­ers to the two Bush pres­i­dents should claim it as a bible of sorts.” (Idem.)

42. “Even in reli­gion, Machiavelli’s advice to empha­size it is rel­e­vant to the early-twenty-first cen­tury United States. His career in Flo­rence over­lapped that of Friar Giro­lamo Savonarola, the reli­gious despot who ruled the gasp­ing repub­lic from 1494 to 1498 with a pol­i­tics of fight­ing sin and immoral­ity. Doubt­less the youth­ful Machi­avelli absorbed how close Savonarola came to achiev­ing a theoc­racy even in repub­li­can Flo­rence. Not a few Amer­i­cans see a lit­tle bit of Savonarola in George W. Bush.” (Idem.)

43. “The advent of a Machiavelli-inclined dynasty in what may be a Machi­avel­lian moment for the Amer­i­can Repub­lic is not a happy coin­ci­dence, but one that demands atten­tion. Luck­ily, the arrival of a U.S. pres­i­den­tial elec­tion every fourth year typ­i­cally brings with it an uncom­mon inten­sity of national debate, so per­haps atten­tion will be paid.” (Ibid.; pp. 330–331.)

44. “Since the events and upheavals of 2000–2001, the United States has had an abun­dance of unfold­ing trans­for­ma­tions to discuss—in eco­nom­ics, national secu­rity, and even reli­gion. Of these, many can be con­sid­ered and man­aged sep­a­rately. But one is per­va­sive enough to make its impact felt almost every­where: the extent to which national gov­er­nance has, at least tem­porar­ily, moved away from the proven tra­di­tion of a leader cho­sen demo­c­ra­t­i­cally, by a major­ity of plu­ral­ity of the elec­torate, to the suc­ces­sion of a dynas­tic heir whose unfor­tu­nate inher­i­tance is priv­i­leged, covert and glob­ally embroil­ing.” (Ibid.; p. 331.)