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FTR #730 Interview with Russ Baker (Author of “Family of Secrets”)

Lis­ten:
MP3 Side 1 [1] | Side 2 [2]

NB: Lis­ten­ers should be sure to ref­er­ence FTRs 711 [3] through 716 [4] (inclu­sive), ana­lyz­ing Fam­i­ly of Secrets [5] in depth.

Intro­duc­tion: Sup­ple­ment­ing ear­li­er inter­views with Russ Bak­er [6], the author of the con­sum­mate­ly impor­tant Fam­i­ly of Secrets, this pro­gram ana­lyzes, among oth­er things, the phe­nom­e­non of the book itself.

Gar­ner­ing strong endorse­ments from pro­gres­sive lumi­nar­ies such as Bill Moy­ers, Gore Vidal and Dan Rather, the book could be con­sid­ered fun­da­men­tal­ly trans­gres­sive. Not only does Fam­i­ly of Secrets treat the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy in the fac­tu­al his­tor­i­cal con­text in which it actu­al­ly occurred, Bak­er’s inves­ti­ga­tion impli­cates George H.W. Bush in the event, pos­si­bly as a prin­ci­pal.

It is high­ly unusu­al for a book that vio­lates taboos to gain the rel­a­tive accep­tance that this book has received.

Bak­er’s analy­sis of the Bush/JFK assas­si­na­tion link is, in turn, deriv­a­tive of one of the book’s strongest features–analysis of the Bush fam­i­ly’s inex­tri­ca­ble con­nec­tion to the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty. That link in an expres­sion of the intel­li­gence agen­cies’ role as vehi­cles for fur­ther­ing the polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic goals of the cor­po­rate elite.

Through­out the course of their polit­i­cal his­to­ry, the Bush fam­i­ly has advanced its inter­ests through the appli­ca­tion of the method­ol­o­gy of covert action to both busi­ness and elec­toral pol­i­tics.

When look­ing at a Bush busi­ness operation–Zapata Off­shore Petro­le­um and Harken Ener­gy are two examples–it is appar­ent that the enti­ties are actu­al­ly fronts for the illic­it mov­ing of mon­ey. Many of them, such as Zap­a­ta, were prob­a­bly intel­li­gence fronts in and of them­selves.

Begin­ning with the role of Prescott Bush and his asso­ciate (and pro­fes­sion­al bene­fac­tor of “Pop­py” Bush) Robert Lovett in cre­at­ing the CIA, the clan­des­tine pedi­gree of Amer­i­can transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions and their allied inter­ests is evi­dent through­out the Bush nar­ra­tive.

Lovett abet­ted Pop­py’s rise through the ranks of Dress­er Indus­tries and lat­er assist­ed in the launch­ing of Zap­a­ta. Robert Gow, a Zap­a­ta employ­ee, helped groom Dubya, even as his father was cement­ing his deci­sive role in GOP and U.S. pol­i­tics.

The impact of Bak­er’s book and a sig­nif­i­cant cog­ni­tive divide on the sub­ject of “con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry” turns on the inabil­i­ty of many polit­i­cal ana­lysts to make the con­nec­tion between the doc­u­ment­ed fact that Amer­i­can cor­po­rate inter­ests rou­tine­ly engage in clan­des­tine oper­a­tions to influ­ence their for­tunes in for­eign coun­tries, and the fact that there is more wealth at stake in this coun­try.

It stands to rea­son, there­fore, that the use of covert action and dead­ly force used abroad would be applied at home.

It has been, and is being, used and the rise of the Bush fam­i­ly attests to that fact.

Polit­i­cal and insti­tu­tion­al iner­tia, par­tic­u­lar­ly with regard to our media estab­lish­ment, have min­i­mized the main­stream medi­a’s cov­er­age of Fam­i­ly of Secrets, while Dubya’s Deci­sion Points–a tis­sue of self-serv­ing dis­tor­tions and out­right invention–receives char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly soft cov­er­age.

Indeed, this “fact-free” polit­i­cal envi­ron­ment (as for­mer Pres­i­dent Clin­ton char­ac­ter­ized the present polit­i­cal sci­en­tif­ic land­scape) has had much to do with the ascent of Dubya, as well as Sarah Palin and the Tea Partiers.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of the decades-long pro­fes­sion­al rela­tion­ship between the Bush fam­i­ly and the Gammells–a pow­er­ful Scot­tish bank­ing and fos­sil fuels clan; review of the Gam­mells’ rela­tion­ship to Tony Blair; review of the Gam­mells’ rela­tion­ship to BP; review of the evo­lu­tion of KBR from polit­i­cal financiers of LBJ, through its pur­chase of Dress­er Indus­tries and its sub­se­quent acqui­si­tion by the Dick Cheney-con­trolled Hal­libur­ton (like BP, impli­cat­ed in the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon deba­cle in the Gulf of Mex­i­co); review of jour­nal­ist Mick­ey Her­shkow­itz’s dis­clo­sure that Dubya was think­ing of invad­ing Iraq in the late 1990’s; review of the close rela­tion­ship between Pop­py Bush and LBJ; review of the close rela­tion­ship between Nixon and the Bush­es.