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.