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Intro­duc­tion: Jour­nal­ist Russ Baker has authored Fam­ily of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America’s Invis­i­ble Gov­ern­ment and the Hid­den His­tory of the Last 50 Years–a poten­tially deci­sive, multi-generational polit­i­cal his­tory and analy­sis of the Bush fam­ily. This fifth of six inter­views with Mr. Baker focuses largely on events occur­ring in the after­math of the Water­gate scan­dal, set­ting the stage and the drama­tis per­sonae for much of what hap­pened in suc­ceed­ing decades.

Even before Nixon’s res­ig­na­tion, Poppy Bush ele­vated a young GOP oper­a­tive named Karl Rove to a posi­tion of influ­ence that “Bush’s Brain” par­layed into Machi­avel­lian largess dur­ing the admin­is­tra­tions of the younger George Bush. Sig­nif­i­cantly, Rove came to Poppy’s atten­tion because of appar­ent dirty tricks that he had engaged in–those dirty tricks are why the elder Bush found him intrigu­ing and poten­tially use­ful. Rove was not the only GOP heavy hit­ter minted in the 1970’s.

After suc­ceed­ing Richard Nixon as Pres­i­dent, for­mer War­ren Com­mis­sion mem­ber Ger­ald Ford exe­cuted what became known as the “Hal­loween Mas­sacre,” so-named because it took place on Novem­ber 1, 1975. Ford appointed Poppy Bush to be head of the CIA–this at a time when sev­eral inves­ti­ga­tions into intel­li­gence com­mu­nity abuses were under­way simul­ta­ne­ously. The most impor­tant inves­ti­ga­tion under­way in this time period was the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions, inves­ti­gat­ing the assas­si­na­tions of Pres­i­dent Kennedy and Mar­tin Luther King. As dis­cussed in the first three of the inter­views, evi­dence sug­gests very strongly that Poppy Bush was deeply involved with the JFK killing. It was thus essen­tial to have an inside player in charge at CIA with those inves­ti­ga­tions underway.

On that same day, Ford appointed sev­eral other key play­ers to posi­tions of power. Replac­ing Henry Kissinger with Brent Scow­croft, Ford found a hard-liner to replace Kissinger, who favored detente with the Soviet Union. Scow­croft went on to fill the same role in the admin­is­tra­tion of the elder George Bush when he became President.

In addi­tion, the Hal­loween Mas­sacre also brought to power two indi­vid­u­als who were to play major roles in suc­ceed­ing years–Dick Cheney and Don­ald Rums­feld. Cheney became Ford’s White House Chief of Staff, replac­ing Rums­feld, who became Sec­re­tary of Defense. In later years, of course, Cheney was to become Sec­re­tary of Defense under Poppy Bush, and then the “Impe­r­ial Vice-President” under Dubya. Rums­feld would go on to posi­tions with the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion and, ulti­mately, Sec­re­tary of Defense under George W. Bush.

Most sig­nif­i­cantly, Poppy’s brief tenure as head of the CIA saw the anoint­ing of “Team B.” Reject­ing pre­vi­ous, mod­er­ate Agency esti­mates of the Soviet Union (upon which the pol­icy of detente was pred­i­cated), Bush hear­kened to the war cries of the far right and brought in a team of out­side ana­lysts who pre­sented an alarm­ing, greatly exag­ger­ated view of the USSR. It was this new, alarmist analy­sis of the Soviet Union that served as the ide­o­log­i­cal pre­text for the enor­mous mil­i­tary buildup of the Rea­gan years. (That buildup, in com­bi­na­tion with the Rea­gan tax cuts, more than tripled the national debt in eight years.) Poppy’s “Team B” also ele­vated yet another major player in sub­se­quent years–Paul Wol­fowitz.

One of the best known “neo-Cons,” Wol­fowitz flour­ished first under Poppy’s Team B, then the Rea­gan years and, finally, became Deputy Defense Sec­re­tary under George W. Bush.

The younger George Bush’s pro­fes­sional inter­ests were gain­ing steam dur­ing this same period, fea­tur­ing employ­ment stints with com­pa­nies con­nected to the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity, CIA in par­tic­u­lar. An employee of Poppy’s Zap­ata Off­shore Petroleum–an appar­ent intel­li­gence front–Robert Gow went on to found Strat­ford of Texas, his own com­pany. It, too, did intel­li­gence work for CIA and it was an early employer of Dubya.

Another of George W. Bush’s early employ­ers was Alaska Inter­na­tional Indus­tries’ air sub­sidiary. Com­pany head Neil Bergt has been quite open about the firm’s dou­bling as a intel­li­gence front, pri­mar­ily CIA. Bergt has also been quite open about his company’s efforts on behalf of the Con­tra sup­port effort.

Baker devotes a sec­tion of his book to Poppy Bush’s activ­i­ties while head­ing CIA, which he titled “Poppy’s Web.” Among the crea­tures thriv­ing in that web were James R. Bath. An expert pilot, Bath appears to have been req­ui­si­tioned by the elder Bush to keep an eye on W while he was in the Texas Air National Guard. Bath’s pres­ence afforded Dubya cred­i­bil­ity sup­port against the com­pelling charges that the future com­man­der in chief went AWOL from his guard duties.

Later, Bath–apparently still work­ing for Poppy and CIA–became involved with Saudi Ara­bian lumi­nar­ies, includ­ing Salem bin Laden (Osama’s brother) and Khalid bin Mah­fouz, key king­dom banker and an early sup­porter of Osama bin Laden. Enter­ing into the air­craft busi­ness as head of a com­pany called Sky­way, Bath appears to have been cap­i­tal­ized by his Saudi asso­ciates. Sky­way, in turn, appears to have been yet another intel­li­gence front, doing work for the play­ers in the Iran/Contra scandal.

As dis­cussed in numer­ous pro­grams, Bath was also an early investor in George W. Bush’s Arbusto Energy. Since Bath appar­ently had lit­tle money of his own at the time, this indi­cates that the Bin Laden fam­ily were among the early investors–albeit by proxy–in Dubya’s busi­ness career.

Among George W. Bush’s busi­ness ven­tures, Harken Energy stands out as among the most mys­te­ri­ous and cor­rupt. Grow­ing out of Spec­trum 7 Energy, Harken owes much of its suc­cess to an attor­ney named Allen Quasha. Son of William Quasha, a [Phillip­pine dic­ta­tor Fer­di­nand] Mar­cos attor­ney who worked for the Manilla branch of the Nugan Hand Bank, Alan Quasha was deeply involved with gold traf­fick­ing. (The Nugan Hand Bank–a U.S. intelligence-connected drug bank– is dis­cussed at length in AFA #25. Baker spec­u­lates that Harken Energy may well have been used to laun­der some of the Golden Lily loot recov­ered in the Phillip­pines.)

The avail­able evi­dence sug­gests that Harken was essen­tially a money-laundering front. Even­tu­ally, the firm got the rights to drill for oil off Bahrain. The process by which Harken got the contract–which inflated its stock–is curi­ous. Harken was selected because of its lack of expe­ri­ence with this type of operation–something that was viewed as an advan­tage!

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Poppy Bush’s work for Texas bank First Inter­na­tional Banc­shares after offi­cially “leav­ing” the CIA; W’s work for the same insti­tu­tion in 1967; over­lap between First Inter­na­tional and Repub­lic National Bank, another finan­cial insti­tu­tion that financed the Texas power elite; First International’s close con­nec­tions to mem­bers of the Saudi elite; indi­ca­tions that First Inter­na­tional was involved in money laun­der­ing for the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity; the fail­ure and pub­lic bailout of First Inter­na­tional after in merged with Repub­lic; Poppy’s eulogy for Ger­ald Ford, in which he lauds him for help­ing to iden­tify Oswald as the lone assas­sin of Pres­i­dent Kennedy; Poppy’s rebuff of a plea for help by his for­mer asso­ciate and Oswald “han­dler” George De Mohren­schildt, shortly before his timely “sui­cide;” Harken’s appar­ent role as a money-laundering vehi­cle for ele­ments of the South African apartheid elite; the sig­nif­i­cant cap­i­tal invest­ment of Har­vard Uni­ver­sity in Harken; the intel­li­gence and power elite con­nec­tions of Robert Stone, who over­saw Harvard’s invest­ments dur­ing this period; the links between the Bush fam­ily milieu and that of Gen­eral Dou­glas MacArthur; George Soros’s invest­ments in Harken Energy.