A Government of Thieves

Part One - the Scandal of the Bushes

The Bush family - a cascade of fortunes and political careers founded on arms profiteering, continued on Nazi-derived earnings, advanced by Saudi oil & Bin Laden connections, sustained by business fraud and now benefiting from a war they themselves started. Should a leader be blamed for the sins of his ancestors? No, if that is the simple question, but yes, if he shows no contrition, continues to profit from them and goes on to do more of the same.

Is George Walker Bush fit to be President, and are the group around him fit to govern?

You be the judge.

The Founders

1. Samuel Prescott Bush (1863 -1948)

Samuel Bush

Early Days

The founder of the modern Bush dynasty was Samuel Prescott Bush, an Ohio steel executive, whose Buckeye Steel Castings Co. business projects included making parts for the Harriman railway empire. Before becoming President of Buckeye (1905-1927), Samuel Bush held a railroad position in Pennsylvania. He was the son of the Rev. James Smith Bush and Harriet Fay. Samuel graduated from the Stevens Institute of Technology in 1884, and ten years later married Flora Sheldon, with whom he had four surviving children, Prescott, Mary, Margaret and James. Of these his son Prescott Sheldon Bush was to be his father's dynastic successor. Samuel's money was not to give him immunity from personal tragedy however, for his wife Flora was to be killed when struck by a car in 1920. Samuel later remarried Martha Bell Carter of Milwaukee.

For many years Samuel was a leading member of the National Association of Manufacturers, and for a time was President of the Ohio Manufacturer's Association. Later he was to be an advisor to the disastrous Depression-era President Herbert Hoover on business and unemployment issues. He began the Bush family's abiding interest in golf, baseball, tennis and football. His old company Buckeye Steel endured for many years, but under new ownership filed for bankruptcy reorganization in Dec. 2002.

After the US entered World War I in April 1917, Samuel Bush obtained a position as head of the War Industries Board's Ordnance, Small Arms and Ammunition Section. This is surprising, considering he had no background in armaments. There was a hidden logic. As an apparent 'cleanskin' suitable for a sensitive official position, Bush already had powerful patrons eager to put his name forward. We can note for example Frank and Percy Rockefeller, whose famous family had moved to gain control of the Remington Arms Company in 1914. (Frank Rockefeller, a brother of clan head John D. Rockefeller, was the previous President of Buckeye Steel).

Then there was a certain George Sheldon, a director of the huge Bethlehem Steel Corp., which like Remington benefited enormously from World War I. George Sheldon was also a vice-president of the Navy League, which was subsidised by steel & arms makers to agitate for a massive naval expansion advantageous to them.

Finally, the War Industries Board was itself headed by Bernard M. Baruch, a Wall St. speculator who had close personal and business ties to E.H. Harriman, father of the closest friend of Bush's son Prescott at Yale. Sometimes the associations of their children can bring advancement to parents just as readily as the reverse. In Samuel Bush's later years he was to remain closely associated with the high-flying Baruch. In the America of the day, big money stuck together closer than clotted cream.

So the link between the Bushes, war, patriotism and profits was now firmly established through an informal network of influence. It has continued ever since.

The Merchants of Death

The period following the Civil War in the US and the Franco-Prussian War in Europe opened both a great general industrial expansion and the largest explosion of arms manufacturing ever known until the modern era. It was a time of huge fortunes being built by ruthless industrialists and bankers. These gentlemen, later styled the "robber barons" by historians, look little better than gangsters in retrospect. However many of them founded family dynasties whose descendants were to become not only rich but also eminently respectable. In some cases, like that of the Carnegies and the Rockefellers, much of their fortunes were later to be used worldwide for considerable good. In other cases, like the Bush family, the further accumulation of money and power remained the primary goal.

The most evil aspect of the unregulated free-for-all that characterised the 1865 -1914 period of rapid industrial expansion was the development of an arms trade which did not just sell weapons but actively promoted war tensions and conflict to do so. The "trick of the trade" then for the arms manufacturers was to manufacture not just munitions but also regular "threats" and war scares. The idea was to keep populations supportive of greater expenditures on arms, and to prevent effective political challenge to those who advocated spending ever more taxes on weapons.

Fear was in fact the greatest weapon the arms dealers peddled. And they had no compunction about firing it from the shortest range possible. An example of their cynicism in action was shown as early as 1879, when the Remington Arms Co. was selling ammunition to both Russia and Turkey when they were at war with each other. Closer to home, they sold rifles to Cuban revolutionaries and at the same time ammunition to the Spanish Govt. fighting them.

Remington later topped this when Colombia and Venezuela were at war, but both states were also facing civil insurrections. There Remington achieved a quadruple sales bonanza by having all four parties firing at each other with Remington rifles loaded with Remington UMC bullets.

In Bullets we Trust

Beginning in 1894 an international arms cartel was formed, enabling leading arms manufacturers to jointly exploit markets worldwide without the annoyance of risking undercutting each other's profits. Disguised under the innocuous title of the Harvey United Steel Co., the "Harvey Syndicate" brought together many leading arms majors. The largest of these were UK firms Vickers Ltd. & Armstrong-Whitworth; from Germany Krupps and Dillingen, France's huge Schneider Co., Italy's Terni and from the USA Bethlehem Steel. Some of the companies had numerous national subsidiaries or associated businesses with interlocking directorships, and behind them stood big bankers such as John Pierpont Morgan. The companies sold in all markets to friend or potential foe, without reservation. Yet within their home countries each put their efforts forward as the essence of patriotism.

Arms panics in 1889 & 1892-3 created by agents of the weapons manufacturers resulted in huge surges of military spending in Britain and France, kicking off a corresponding rise in Germany. This tactic was regularly and successfully repeated, often by the deliberate spreading of false or misleading information about what potential or actual enemies were doing. Weapons agents sallied back and forth between national leaders and governments, intentionally provoking them in turn. The resulting arms race made Europe a "powderkeg" ready for the fatal conflagration that occurred in 1914, the most disastrous and bloody war in all human history.

The League of Rascals

This period saw the first real establishment of the "military-industrial complex" President Dwight D. Eisenhower was later to warn against. In his 1961 farewell address to the American people, perhaps after reflecting sombrely on what was casually revealed during his many golf matches with Samuel Bush's son Prescott, Eisenhower cautioned: " we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted."

What he meant was a network of arms makers, politicians, military officers, bankers, media owners and compliant journalists who together could distort the whole policy of a nation for their own selfish advantage. Of course the USA was not unique in such corruption - in "Mother England" things were equally as bad in the run-up to the Great War.

In Britain, after arms manufacturers successfully fooled the public with the "big Navy Scare " of 1909, rampant behind- the-scenes corruption burst into the public view for the first time when Vickers Ltd. was caught out bribing Rear Admiral Fujii of the Imperial Japanese Navy, to place an order with their company for the construction of warships. Visiting Canadian Government ministers Sir Frederick Borden and Louis Brodeur were also shocked by a Vickers official who told them "the Empire is going to the dogs for lack of a war and, worst of all, there is not even one small war in prospect". Vickers's roving salesman, the sinister Sir Basil Zaharoff, received extraordinary "expenses" and "special commissions", enabling him to bribe foreign officials with considerable success.

An analysis in 19l1 by a financial paper found 13 members of Parliament, 43 military/naval officers and 17 newspaper owners and journalists on the boards of directors of three leading arms makers. The highly respected retired Civil Service and Treasury head, Lord Welby of Allington, was so angered by all this that he declared "We are in the hands of an organisation of crooks. They are the politicians, generals, manufacturers of armaments and journalists. All of them are anxious for unlimited expenditure and go on inventing scares to terrify the public...".

The situation he spoke of bears an uncanny resemblance to the present Washington government of George W. Bush, where both politicians and military personnel move freely back and forth from public employ to highly paid positions with defence contractors, under the cover of enthusiastic media endorsements, all with the inevitable -and to them welcome -consequences** (see Part Two).

In 1913 the great arms cartel fell apart, and the arms makers began competing open slather with each other. Within a year Europe was at war.

The "Great War" - gas masks, trench slaughter , misery and - money for jam

World War I was enormously beneficial for the rich of America. Twenty-one thousand new millionaires were created. Du Pont stock became fifty times more valuable, and the banker J.P. Morgan became rich beyond his wildest imaginings. In 1917 Bethlehem Steel paid a dividend of an astounding 200% of its stock (share) value.

Selling munitions to Europe was a major part of this earnings boom. Under war conditions the opportunities to engage in profiteering were far greater than usual, and were eagerly seized upon. European munitions purchases from the USA rose from $40 million in 1914 to $2,340 million in 1918, for a war total of over four billion dollars (worth many times more in today's values). US entry into the war in April 1917 also created a home-grown bonanza for the arms makers.

In his new official position Samuel Bush helped organise munitions for the US Government's war effort, and channeled Government assistance to needy weapon makers (though why they needed it was a profound mystery to outsiders). Although only a relative 'small fry' in business himself, he was now perfectly placed to give the nod to particularly profitable contracts for others and receive "kickbacks" in return, from transactions that were handily shrouded in wartime secrecy. And sure enough, fat war contracts now flowed to Buckeye Steel. It was Samuel Prescott Bush, then, who began the long tradition of the" patriotic" Bushes, the proud American family who just happen to be always making money from war.

The aftermath

After World War I there were enquiries into the huge and senseless slaughter during that monstrous conflict, and into those who benefited by it. In one such, people such as Samuel Bush were labeled Merchants of Death when it became clear both that large armaments companies had deliberately fostered an arms race to stimulate their business and that some officials had conspired to assist their wholesale profiteering.

Strangely, most (but fortunately not all) of the detailed US records of the Samuel Bush wartime transactions later disappeared from the relevant Archives and have never been recovered. This pattern was not to be unique. The present President has busily censored damaging reports, tried to block enquiries, and sealed off many records from public scrutiny, some permanently. Wherever the Bushes have been, "cleaners" seem to follow them.

In 1944 Samuel Bush's Buckeye Steel was to be awarded a huge government arms contract, to make armor casings for shells. For a second time this Bush was to profit from" fighting the Germans", this time a Nazi state that his own son had been instrumental in founding and nourishing.

The revulsion that followed World War I led to attempts to regulate the arms trade, and prevent arms dealers from ever again entering into corrupt alliances with politicians and military personnel. Today, however, under the Presidency of George W. Bush the appalling situation that existed prior to W.W.I now prevails again in America. A Government of "war from business and business from war" now controls the world's only superpower. And once more the Bush family thrives as others suffer and die. Let's continue the full story with the next generation of the Bush family.

2. Prescott Sheldon Bush (1895 -1972)
US Senator
father of President George Herbert Walker Bush
grandfather of current President George Walker Bush.

Prescott Bush

Prescott Soldiers On

*By the time Prescott Bush was a teenager, the Bushes were sufficiently established to be regarded as part of the aspirational elite who were shaping the new, booming economy of the United States in the early twentieth century. Although regarded by some as still a "minor league" family in the New England aristocracy of wealth and power, their children were now able to attend the "right" schools and universities, and be in a position to advance further should the opportunities arise.

Prescott Bush attended Yale University. There the tall (6 ft 4 in), athletic and handsome young man formed an advantageous close friendship with E. Roland "Bunny" Harriman, younger son of the immensely wealthy Harriman family. "Bunny's" father, railroad baron & stock broker E.H.Harriman was denounced by President Theodore Roosevelt as an "undesirable citizen" guilty of "deep-seated corruption" for issuing tens of millions of dollars of fraudulent railroad stock; but Harriman had managed to keep the cash and become one of America's richest men.

As a close chum of "Bunny" Harriman, Prescott was "tapped" (recruited) with him for the infamous
Skull and Bones Society, whose many wealthy and well-placed "Patriarch" graduates were to assist him throughout his rise in life.

Skull and Bones The Tomb, New Haven At a number of private US colleges there are "secret societies" where the children of the rich form hidden and often snobbish cliques, to establish lifelong networks of advantage. Some of these groups practise bizarre initiations, regular group bonding ceremonies with weird mumbo-jumbo rituals, and the usual extreme horseplay of overprivileged adolescents with time on their hands. Of all these the most powerful and secretive is the Skull and Bones Society of Yale. Founded by the scion of an opium trader, Skull and Bones is notorious for its focus on death rituals and perverse sexual interrogation. The group houses a collection of stolen skulls and other macabre objects - reputedly including Hitler's silverware - in its windowless headquarters in New Haven, Connecticut, a building known to members as the Tomb. Outsiders are never permitted entry, and those attempting to investigate Skull and Bones may be discouraged by subtle or less than subtle means. The Skull and Bones society is immensely wealthy. For example it possess its own private island (Deer Island) with an exclusive "retreat", and owns much property at Yale. Members include many leading corporate and financial figures, senior lawyers and justices, some ranking FBI and CIA personnel (the CIA has been a haven of Bonesmen), and politicians. Both President's Bush are "Patriarchs" (graduate members) of Skull and Bones, many of whose alumni have assisted and protected their family's rise from the days of Prescott Bush at Yale. "Bonesmen", as with similar networks, are sworn to assist each other wherever possible in life. However in the real world they sometimes become enemies or even political rivals. The current President Bush has appointed at least eleven "Bonesmen" to important positions.

The Geronimo Incident

*Prescott Bush graduated BA from Yale in 1917. He had enlisted in the Connecticut National Guard in 1916 and then attended US Army Officer training. Now he joined the army as a captain of field artillery, and in 1918 was posted to Fort Sill, Oklahoma. There, with fellow Skull and Bones members Neil Mallon, Ellery James and four other novice captain accomplices, he led a grave-robbing incident involving the remains of the famous Chiricahua Apache chief Geronimo, who had been buried at Fort Sill in 1909.

Geronimo's skull, elbow bone and some belongings were taken to the Tomb (Skull & Bones HQ) in New Haven, and are evidently still there, on display in a glass cage. Despite Apache grievance, law enforcement officers have never entered the Tomb to reclaim them, so powerful is the Skull and Bones in the legal and judicial worlds (most members in any case regard it as their duty to deceive outsiders to protect their secrets).

Postscript: An attempt to negotiate a settlement to this shameful issue with Jonathan Bush, President George H. W. Bush's brother, in NYC in 1986 ended without agreement, and the Skull and Bones Society lawyer Endicott P. Davison then blandly denied all, despite the existence of substantial physical evidence supplied by a "Bonesman" with a conscience. In the Bush world, truth is what you can get away with.

With Prescott gone off to play soldier boy, his chum E. Roland "Bunny" Harriman hurriedly married a Miss Gladys Fries. It's interesting to note that although he and Prescott were frequently in each other's company throughout their lives thereafter, neither managed to attend the other's wedding. The newlyweds then departed for Washington, for Roland in a singular coincidence had secured a position in the War Department in connection with munitions ordnance, the same area of occupation as that of Prescott's father Samuel Bush.

Don't Mention the War

*Later in 1918 Captain Prescott Bush was sent to the European War, by now running towards its last bloody days. He was attached to the 158th Field Artillery Brigade in France, and later to the occupation forces in Germany. When evidently bored from a lack of wartime "action", Bush amused himself & he thought his readers by writing a humorous letter in which he claimed to have been awarded the Victoria Cross, the Legion of Honor, and the Distinguished Service Cross, under circumstances that were clearly preposterous.

However in the fevered war atmosphere of the time the letter was taken seriously, & published in a newspaper as factual. This led to a scandal as a result of which Bush was unable to remain in his hometown of Columbus Ohio when he returned there in mid 1919. The "phony war hero" label, though unjustified, was a permanent humiliation thereafter. However there is no evidence to support the view that bitterness over this incident pushed Bush towards Nazi sympathies.

Seeking Employment

*Now at a loose end, Bush attended the 1919 reunion of his Yale class, where fellow Skull & Bonesman Wallace Simmons offered him a job in his St. Louis, Missouri, railroad equipment company. Bush accepted, and moved to St. Louis, where his" fortunate connections" were soon to offer him further and better opportunities.

In 1919 wealthy Missouri corporate wheeler- dealer George Herbert Walker obliged the Harriman family patriarch by forming the W.A. Harriman & Co. private bank for the Harriman sons to have something to do. Walker, who took the posts of bank president and chief executive, was a "colourful" character, a former champion boxer whose hobbies were described as "golf, hunting, drinking scotch and beating his (four) sons to a pulp." However he was more polite towards the far richer Harrimans, whose elder son W. Averell Harriman was made chairman of the bank, and joint owner with his younger brother, Prescott's friend " Bunny".

At this time Prescott Bush met George Herbert Walker's daughter Dorothy, wooed her, & married her in 1921. They were to have four sons - George, Prescott Jr., Jonathan and William - and a daughter Nancy. With little success from his own business efforts, Bush was tapped by his old Yale chum "Bunny" to work firstly for the Harriman-controlled U.S. Rubber Co. in 1924, & then in 1926 directly for the W. A. Harriman bank itself.

In 1931 the Harriman bank was to merge with the British-American firm Brown Bros. and Co. to form Brown Brothers Harriman, with E.Roland Harriman as vice-president and Prescott Bush now a full partner. "Bert" Walker retired from the bank to his own G.H Walker & Co. Prescott Bush, who had gradually come to run the day-to-day operations of WA Harriman & Co., now became a managing partner of the merged entity. BBH was to be eventually the most important private banking house in America. Prescott Bush had reached the zone of serious money.

W (William) Averell Harriman, as a young man

W.Averell Harriman was the elder of the two heirs of railroad baron and stock market manipulator E H Harriman. The Harriman brothers were handsome, influential and immensely rich. Averell Harriman later formed an association with the Democratic Party, becoming at various times Governor of New York State, Ambassador to Moscow and Special Presidential Envoy. His brother remained a registered Republican. It is believed that embarrassment over Harriman's Democratic Party connections (resented by many in the party) is the reason the US Democratic Party has refused to raise the Bush-Harriman Nazi connections as an election issue, despite ample evidence.

Averell Harriman (centre), Special Presidential Envoy, with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, Moscow Conference, August 1942

The First Sniff of Oil

*As a result, Prescott also sat on several corporate boards alongside "Bunny" Harriman, including
(1929 -1952) Dresser Industries. Dresser was an oil equipment company, on whose board the pair installed Yale classmate Henry Neil Mallon as chairman. Mallon was a fellow Skull and Bonesman and one of the Geronimo grave-robbers. In 1948 Mallon was in turn to hire Prescott's son George Herbert Walker Bush, later the first President Bush, to work at Dresser. (George H.W. Bush later named one of his own sons, Neil Mallon Bush). In September 1998, Dresser merged with Halliburton, a company much in the news recently.

The Bushes, the Walkers, the Harrimans and their connections remained close socially as well as in business. If we dip into the New York Times social pages of December 12 1941 for example we see the annual "Gay Thirties Dinner Dance" for charity being held on the Starlight Roof of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. At this event we find that the rollcall includes E.Roland "Bunny" Harriman present as President of the Boys' Club of New York, and the Prescott Bushes as guests at his table.

Another glance at the NYT shows a wedding on November 11 1950 uniting a Miss Marie Abbie Walker, daughter of Mr. & Mrs. Charles Herbert Walker, with a John Malcolm Lilley, late of Yale. One of the bridesmaids is a Joan Harriman. The bridegroom, it transpires, is an employee of the Rockefeller-owned Standard Oil Co. and the grandson of a Samuel Bush.

The German Ships

*Meanwhile in 1920 the Harrimans had initiated their "German connection", relaunching Germany's Hamburg-Amerika Line, whose steamships the Harrimans had somehow acquired after the ships were confiscated by the US at the end of WWI. They now took a half share in the line, & until 1940 had complete control of the US end.

At the other end was to be Baron Rudolph von Schroeder, vice president and director of the Hamburg-Amerika Line, treasurer of the support organization for the Nazi Party's private armies and a gentleman who sent his grandson Baron Johann Rudolph for a tour of Prescott Bush's Brown Brothers Harriman offices in New York City in December 1932, shortly before Hitler took power in Germany.

When the elected German government tried (unsuccessfully) to make the Nazi Party private armies disband in 1932, the Hamburg-Amerika Line distributed propaganda attacks against it for doing so. After the Nazi takeover, Hamburg-Amerika was henceforth to provide free passage to individuals going abroad for Nazi propaganda and spying purposes, to subsidise pro-Nazi newspapers in the USA, and in general act as a conduit for the Nazi cause.

Bush, Soviet Russia, the Thyssens and the Nazi Connection

*But shipping was just the beginning. WA Harriman & Co. linked with the Hamburg-based Warburg bank to make widespread investments in the new German Republic in the 1920s. Germany was then democratic, but from Berlin they also made huge secretive oil & mining deals with Soviet Russia through commissar Leon Trotsky and KGB founder Felix Dzerzhinsky, helping advance the Soviet state so detested out loud at the time by the Republican Party.

The start of the Great Depression saw heavy financial losses by both Bush and the Harrimans. Indeed Prescott Bush was soon in deep water as a partner. The German Government's moratorium on debt repayments put his own business accounts heavily into the red. The Harrimans had deep pockets though, & magnanimously compensated their protégé Prescott for his shortfalls. In the nature of bankers this was not a straightforward gift however, and relied on new income for the company to resolve the money owed, although Bush was also paid a generous salary to live on in the meantime.

Losses were not the name of the game for long, however. Despite the ruinous Depression there was still money to be made out there, and in Germany soon a whole new political order to make it from. Germany had given the Harrimans and Bush a problem, and Germany could resolve it. The opportunity was made the most of.

While in Berlin in 1922 W. Averell Harriman had become acquainted with leading German industrialist and steel magnate Fritz Thyssen, and agreed to set up a bank for Thyssen in New York. As a result the Union Banking Corporation (UBC) was established in August 1924 in the Manhattan offices of WA Harriman & Co., with George Herbert Walker as president.

Thyssen with Hitler

The UBC was no ordinary bank. It was a front in the US for Thyssen, who bankrolled & boosted Adolf Hitler from his early days of the beer hall "putsch" of 1923 onwards, and without whose money and support Hitler could not have come to power. Moreover the Thyssen industrial group became leading builders of the German war machine. In the end (late 1938) Thyssen, a Catholic, rejected Hitler and resigned his State positions after Hitler's murderous intentions towards the Jewish race (and any opposition) became crystal clear. Thyssen fled Germany in 1939. He was eventually arrested in France by the Vichy regime, intending to flee to South America but having failed to leave soon enough during the rapid fall of France, and was sent back to imprisonment in Germany. However his confiscated companies remained in Nazi hands and their Harriman-Bush connection continued as before.

Prescott Bush, his pal "Bunny" Harriman and six others were directors of the UBC from 1934 to 1943, wholly within the Nazi era. Moreover it was Prescott who ran the business day-to-day. Prescott and W. Averell Harriman were also the sole directors of the Harriman Fifteen Corporation, which occupied the prestigious address of 1 Wall Street New York (Prescott's father-in-law George Herbert Walker was the company president). Much of Harriman Fifteen's investments were in the Silesian Holding Company, which owned mining operations in Poland. In the Nazi era, Silesian was to boost its profits using slave labor from the death camps.

On 4 January 1933, in the midst of a political crisis and struggle for the Chancellorship in Germany, Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler and his crony Rudolf Hess met the influential politician Franz von Papen, a former Chancellor, at the office of merchant banker Kurt von Schroeder, in Cologne. Schroeder, some of whose other family connections are mentioned above, was amongst other things a co-director of theThyssen-Huautte foundry. The other co-director was Johann Groeninger, who also happened to be on the board of the Union Banking Corporation with Prescott Bush.

At this time the Nazi's funding was exhausted from fighting two general elections in seven months. As well, in the second of those elections the Nazi share of representatives elected to the Reichstag had fallen significantly (from 230 to 196). Yet Hitler emerged from this meeting with two trump cards. First, an understanding with von Papen that was to lead to Hitler assuming the Chancellorship on January 30. As a result, a murderous demagogue was soon able to seize dictatorial power, with appalling future consequences for humanity. Secondly, the Nazis received substantial funding to revitalise their party, from a source unknown.

Indeed no one since has ever been able to identify the source of this particular critical payment. For like many other trails of our investigation, any relevant paperwork has conveniently vanished. Given the von Schroeder connection however, there is an obvious candidate.

Fritz Thyssen

In his book "I Paid Hitler", published in several Allied countries in 1941 after his imprisonment by the Nazis he had now broken with, Thyssen confessed "For ten years before he came to power I supported Hitler and his party. I myself was a National Socialist (Nazi)". Much of the book is in fact a rather transparent attempt by Thyssen to distance himself from "Der Fuhrer" in retrospect, and downplay his own role while "dishing dirt" on other prominent figures of the era. However Thyssen did support Hitler financially from 1923, and in the critical 1930-33 period donated possibly over three million German marks to the Nazis (the amount is disputed & he admits only to a million, but there are no doubts the figure was substantial). In return Thyssen gained control of the German steel industry and was given high-sounding positions in the Nazi regime. His American operations were managed during the Nazi era by Prescott Bush, until seized by the US government in late 1942. After WWII Thyssen regained control of his companies, less a 15% "fine", but died in 1951 while visiting his daughter in Argentina.

If the Harrimans & Prescott Bush were not directly involved in promoting Hitler to power they were certainly remarkably quick to take advantage of the new situation. For in May 1933 negotiations were concluded in Berlin between Hjalmar Schacht, Hitler's new economics minister, and a US international attorney (John Foster Dulles) to coordinate Nazi-American trade. Coincidentally or not, Kurt von Schroeder was one of the principal German advisers assisting this negotiation. A syndicate of 150 firms and individuals was formed as a result, and it was headed by none other than the Harriman International Company.

On the Side of the Enemy

*As war approached in Europe, Prescott Bush & the Harrimans continued to happily rake in the profits from various enterprises that were "in the possession of and have been operated by the (Nazi) German government and have undoubtedly been of considerable assistance to that country in its war effort" (as described in a US Govt. investigative report).

Bush held at least thirteen other directorships, including the board of the Simmons Company (later a major financial contributor to the campaigns of both Bush presidencies), the Continental Bank & Trust Company of New York, and United States Guaranty Trust. Why did Prescott Bush & the Harrimans not stick to those, and divest themselves of their Nazi connections, disassociate themselves once it was clear what was really happening in Germany? After all, even Thyssen himself had finally rejected Hitler.

But no, on the contrary the shameful truth is they went on during the 1930's as if nothing was changed, and continued to make money from banking for the Nazis, and from being closely involved with the companies that were building the German military might that was to overrun Europe and threaten to annihilate free Western civilisation.

After Germany invaded Poland, the US Govt. blocked Nazi payments to the Silesian-American Corporation's US bondholders. Undeterred, George Herbert Walker tried three times to arrange subterfuge schemes so the money could come in through Switzerland. The next year (1940), the UBC's US assets were frozen, so Prescott Bush & the Harrimans tended to the Thyssen US affairs allegedly for nothing, as a gesture to their client. It seems unlikely that they were not well compensated later, after Thyssen was freed.

Once US soldiers were dying in a war for which the Thyssen companies were providing much of the physical means, the US authorities could no longer stomach what was in effect treason. After October 20 1942, under the Trading With the Enemy Act, the U.S. Government ordered the seizure of Nazi German operations in the US. Companies seized that Prescott Bush was heavily involved with included the Union Banking Corporation (UBC), Holland-American Trading Corporation, the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation & the Silesian-American Corporation. All property of the Hamburg-Amerika Line had already been sequestered two months before.

W. Averell Harriman was also chairman of the Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation, an American group owning one-third of a complex of steel-making, coal-mining and zinc-mining activities in Germany and Poland, in which one Friedrich Flick owned two-thirds. Flick, later imprisoned after the Nuremberg war crimes trials, was with Fritz Thyssen the major co-owner of the German Steel Trust, and from 1932 contributed large sums to the Nazi Party. Like Thyssen, Flick's money helped finance the Nazis private armies, the black-shirted S.S. (Schutzstaffel) and the brown-shirted S.A. storm troopers (Sturmabteilung), who together destroyed German democracy on the streets, paving the way for Hitler's rise to absolute power.

Prescott Bush concentrated on the Harriman's German activities, and with his father-in-law George Herbert Walker directly supervised the Flick-Harriman operations. Some have claimed that Bush had consciously promoted a "Hitler Project" as being good for Germany and business, others that he was just blinded by greed.

There is no proof that Prescott was himself ever a Nazi or identified with their beliefs - just unassailable evidence of an amoral banker and businessman happy to make money out of the Nazis and to assist their foreign financial dealings in any way possible, as long as there was profit in it.

As to the charge that Bush and the Harrimans personally and intentionally worked to bring Hitler to power, because they thought it would be best for Germany, business and their own pockets, the minimum we can say is "not proven, but cannot be excluded, and circumstantial evidence must cast them under a cloud". Fortunately for Bush and the Harrimans, their ubiquitous circle of friends and Bonesmen kept their names out of the official announcements concerning the seized companies. No charges were ever laid against them, moreover.

Most Americans today have never heard of the Bush-Harriman involvement with the Nazis, and to this day the major media of the USA have generally not investigated these matters, for reasons their corporate directors seem reluctant to discuss.

In this context we note that:
*Prescott Bush was a director of CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System, the large media network). *E. Roland Harriman was a director of Newsweek magazine. He also purchased the New York Daily Herald in 1924 and later made further media investments. *Barbara Bush (wife of President Bush Snr.) is the daughter of Marvin Pierce, who was executive vice-president and later head of the McCall Corporation magazine publishing group. *Samuel Bush's son James Bush married Janet Newbold, daughter of the owner of the Evening Star newspaper of Washington. *The Fox TV network and News Corp. newspaper empire are controlled by Rupert Murdoch, an ardent Bush supporter. *Clear Channel Communications fields 1,200 pro-Bush radio stations across the USA. *There are many other US media connections influenced by Bonesmen, and by relatives and friends of the Bushes, Walkers & Harrimans. So the doubtful "independence" of the large US media on an issue like this could only be resolved by its investigatory actions proving otherwise. So far it has failed the test miserably. Unless this situation is reversed, the charge "corrupt and biased" in this area is difficult to refute.

Nor did it end there. After WWII, a further eighteen additional Brown Brothers Harriman and UBC-related client assets were seized under The Trading with the Enemy Act. Some showed a continued relationship with the Thyssen family after the first 1942 seizures. Worse, after the war Bush and the Harrimans did further business for related concerns moving assets into Switzerland, Panama, Argentina & Brazil. This flight of Nazi capital, especially to Latin America, was to lead to much corruption there and protect & assist Nazi holdouts for many years.

How time blurs memories. Today the name Thyssen is more often remembered in connection with the wonderful art collections of Fritz's younger brother Baron Thyssen Bornemisza de Kaszon, and his younger wife the ultra-glamorous Baroness von Thyssen. And the Bushes parade themselves as the defenders of civilisation against totalitarianism, when they made a fortune being exactly the opposite.

The Legacy

*Many people might believe that Prescott Bush should have been punished for his misdeeds. Most would say that if the profits and blood money he gained from dealing for the Nazis were not confiscated that would be an outrage.

But Prescott Bush got away with it all. He was by now extremely well-connected in general, plus his Skull and Bones membership gave him hidden high-placed allies throughout the decision-making levels of Government. So not only did he keep all the money he had made from his Nazi front company dealings, in 1951 Prescott Bush also received US$750,000 (worth about US$5.3 million in today's values) for his single share in the UBC bank.

Some of all this money was used to help fund both his son George Herbert Walker Bush's first business enterprise, and to support his (Prescott Bush's) own political campaigns. With his big money connections it was an easy step for Prescott to become (1947 -1950) Connecticut Republican finance chairman. He could also easily afford a first unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate in 1950, followed by a triumphant bid in the second of two contests in 1952. The Bushes were now launched onto the stage of public power.

The nauseating truth then is that the present US President's family fortune was largely built on corrupt arms trading and Nazi profits, which have helped propel two Bushes to the White House. Worse, the present President's grandfather's efforts had the effect of helping put Hitler in power. The family for whom it seems that "it's all just business" apparently has no qualms even today about its past*. Which is perhaps not so surprising when we look at the later dealings of the Bush dynasty, their Saudi-Bin Laden connections, their scandalous business activities and their willingness to start a war which benefited them personally but which has plunged America into a Vietnam-style maelstrom.

In summary, there is considerably more circumstantial evidence today to suggest that President Bush's grandfather helped put Hitler in power than there was ever genuine evidence in the hands of George W. Bush when he took America to war in Iraq, claiming a threat of current and developing weapons of mass destruction. If this comparison is not instructive to the voters of America, then we must despair for the future of Western democracy.

And if these same facts do not persuade the US media to examine the Bush background more closely, then those same media that followed the war-at-all-costs bandwagon in 2003 without critically examining its credentials have already weighed themselves in the balance and been found wanting.

*Although President Bush Sr. may have kept a few secretly. An interesting sidelight in a family in which dynastic names are carried forward proudly is that George Herbert Walker Bush and his wife Barbara Bush named their daughter Dorothy after George's mother, another daughter (Pauline Robinson) after Barbara's mother, one son after Barbara's father (Marvin), another son after George's mother's father & himself (George), a third son (Jeb, actually John) probably after his brother Jonathan, but omitted his own father's name entirely.

Instead he called his other son Neil Mallon, after the man who gave him his first big job. However the name Prescott has been used again elsewhere in the Bush line, and true to form it crops up most dishonourably on Presidential election night 2000 in the amazing Fox News scam of that evening. (see Part Three).

** On 1 October 2004 the US Air Forces's No.2 weapons buyer, Darleen Druyun, was sentenced to nine months imprisonment after admitting to inflating prices on a Boeing contract and giving Boeing confidential pricing data from a European rival, in connection with future employment at the giant aerospace company. The corruption investigation was pushed by" honest John" Pentagon watchdog Senator John McCain. However the Bush administration is refusing to allow Senate Armed Services Committee investigators access to over 100 emails connected to Marvin Sambur, the No.1. Air Force weapons buyer. Meanwhile Air Force Secretary James Roche, a former vice-president of the huge Northrop Grumman aircraft and weapons systems conglomerate, and White House official Robin Cleveland are also under investigation for a "conflict of interest"...

The thieves in action
And here's the proof

"Washington: The US President, George Bush, is proposing to slash medical care for the poor and elderly to meet the soaring cost of the Iraq war... including $US66 billion in cuts over five years to Medicare, the health-care scheme for the elderly, and $12 billion from the Medicaid health-care scheme for the poor." Guardian News & Media, Reuters, The New York Times,7 February 2007.

Stolen - money, social services, jobs - and lives

US citizen's taxes fuel the war profits of a secretive group of people growing ever richer at their expense. This "government of thieves" practises a revolving door of war for business and business for war. The Bush administration has promoted a huge increase in military spending for purposes such as invading Iraq, providing an enormous source of extra profit for big defence contractors and military-corporate shareholders, who at the same time have also been given large tax cuts by Bush & his cronies.

All this money is in effect stolen from the remaining 90% of the population. As a consequence, education, health, social welfare and many other useful or vital areas of government must be cut back. As well, numerous jobs are lost in these fields. Many ordinary people were suckered into voting for Bush by appeals to patriotism and religion - this from the family that has failed to find Osama bin Laden, but which protects the Saudi elite whose oil dollars work to promote Islamic fundamentalism against more moderate forms of Islam and all other religions and creeds.

How this theft affects Americans was brought home vividly in the Hurricane Katrina disaster. The best resources of the local National Guard, intended to protect their communities, had instead been diverted to the imperial war in Iraq, along with much money meant to secure the levees of New Orleans against floods. As well, an incompetent director who later had to be sacked had been appointed to the FEMA body meant to respond to civil emergencies, because he had contributed a large amount to the Bush campaign coffers. New Orleans inhabitants paid a terrible price because of these scandals.

Again, the Bushes are so tied in with wealthy Arab oil money that they could not understand why Americans might be alarmed early in 2006 that control of their major ports was to be given to an Arab-owned company. President Bush even threatened to veto any attempt to scuttle the deal, before being forced into a humiliating back down by members of his own party. Living in his own fantasy universe, George Bush could not see that having started a war based on lies and stoking anti-Arab "terrorist" hysteria through fear-mongering, "Patriot Act" laws and so on, Americans would not exempt "big-money" Arabs from the anxiety he himself had sought to fan.

Stolen - the lives and limbs of America's young as cannon fodder

Over four thousand dead and over thirty thousand wounded US soldiers already in Iraq (by April 2008), with no end in sight. More than half of US wounded are under the age of 24, many suffering permanent and crippling disabilities. How many more will be sacrificed for corporate interests? Is it reasonable to defame lives lost already by using them as an excuse to squander thousands more? There is no light at the end of this tunnel - instead the oil flares of Iraq illuminate a US occupation that more & more resembles a Vietnam-style guerilla war that is going down the tube.

It's the poor who serve, while the rich just get richer on the "patriotism of scoundrels" The Bush administration represents a corrupt group of people who together with a few toadies abroad have stolen control of Western civilisation by deception.

In President Bush's own words, his personal "base" is "the haves and the have mores". He finds that amusing, while the young men and women of America suffer and die for him and his ruthless, moneyed corporate elite. The children of this elite do not suffer and die in Iraq, that fate is reserved for the financially downtrodden. That's why rising unemployment does not bother the elite, for a lack of jobs elsewhere makes it easier to recruit poorer young people into the armed forces, and to keep "lesser folk" fearful for their future and so more compliant to authority.

And here's the proof…

The new elite of America with their hands in the till

The Carlyle Group

This huge investment company (it manages over US$13 billion in assets) is headed by Frank Carlucci, a former Defence Secretary and National Security Council head under President Reagan. Carlucci was also Donald Rumsfeld's college roommate at Princeton. Richard Darman, formerly President Bush Sr's director of the Office of Management and Budget, is the managing director. Highly paid "consultants" to the company include several retired world leaders. If you ever wonder why some world leaders support the Iraq war so strongly against the wishes of their populations, the retirement rewards can be considerable.

Not the least of the retired leaders is President George Bush Sr., who is a large Carlyle stockholder, sometime Carlyle board member and has earned substantial fees working for Carlyle since he left office. Indeed he has received at least US$80,000 per "speaking engagement", although it seems to be his personal contacts and presumed ability to influence the powerful that prompted such generous compensation.

Bush senior's connection with the company presumably began when his son, George W. Bush, was offered a director's position on the board of a Carlyle subsidiary, Caterair, in 1990 when his father was President. Bush Sr. is also senior advisor of Carlyle's Asia Advisory Board. As well, the first President Bush twice visited the bin Laden family in Saudi Arabia (November 1998 & January 2000) on Carlyle business besides other meetings with family members elsewhere.

Another key Carlyle figure as a "senior counsellor" is James Baker (James A. Baker III), a former Republican Secretary of State and close Bush family friend. Baker was leader of the final "Team Bush" grab for office during the disputed election process in Florida in 2000 (he was notorious for dropping the mask briefly on TV & snarling outright the Bush determination to seize power).

A huge Carlyle investment has been in the United Defence company, suppliers of many of the armoured vehicles for the Iraq war. Carlyle is now finally selling out of that company, but not before making enormous profits (the bin Laden family were earlier offered a 40% return on their investment in Carlyle).

Other lucrative benefits for Carlyle's investments deriving from the Bush wars have come from USIS, a privatised former federal agency that does security vetting for a huge range of sensitive positions, and EG&G, a weapons testing & related services company recently sold by Carlyle for a handy US$675 million.

Aircraft components subsidiaries of Carlyle such as Vought Aircraft and Composite Structures also promise well for the group's bottom line, in the light of the critical use of aircraft in the Bush administration's wonderfully profitable business of the "war against terror". Among other current Carlyle investments are Lier Siegler Services, providing logistics and maintenance, and Federal Data Systems, selling information technology to the US Air Force and other government agencies.

The Carlyle Group gave some US$358,000 to Republican candidates in 2000. They have since profited handsomely from their investment.

Carlyle, the Bush family and the Saudis

Perhaps the most embarrassing single detail about Carlyle is that on the morning of September 11 2001, it was holding its annual investor's conference at the Washington Ritz-Carlton Hotel, a gathering that included Shafiq bin Laden, half-brother of Osama. Following on from that is the scandal of how numerous members of the Bin Laden family were able to leave America after 9/11 on a special flight approved by the White House, without any adequate cross examination. But we should not really be surprised at that, considering the considerable ties between the Bush family and the bin Ladens. (Later the bin Ladens withdrew their Carlyle investments, or so we are told. With the secretive Carlyle Group you have to rely on their word).

However numerous other Saudi investors, including the Saudi royal family, continue to have large amounts of capital invested in Carlyle. Given that nearly all of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals and none were Iraqis, it would have been more" logical" - given the new Bush doctrine of pre-emptive strikes - for the US to invade Saudi Arabia rather than Iraq in order to quell Al Qaeda and cut off its funding sources and recruiting ability.

Instead, ties of profit by Bush family & administration members ensured that the Saudi regime would be protected at all costs, even though it funds the Wahabist Islamic evangelical push around the world, from which nearly all Al Qaeda members derive. When it comes to religion versus family profit, born-again George has no hesitation in short-changing his own Christian evangelical constituency in favour of underwriting rich Saudi Islamic fundamentalists instead.

The current President Bush also has an uncle, a brother of his father, named William Bush. William Bush, nicknamed "Bucky", holds a director's seat on the board of a St Louis, Missouri-based company called Engineered Support Systems Incorporated (ESSI). ESSI has recently done "very well thank you" as a military contractor to the Pentagon.

Uncle Bucky personally has done even better. In fact in January 2005 he sold 8,438 share options in the company for around $450,000 as just one benefit. No-bid contracts relating to the Iraq war have helped the company to record profitability. An interesting point is that in 2003, ESSI was granted contracts for equipment to help search for, and protect US soldiers from Iraq's chemical and biological weapons, the ones that didn't exist. Of course no one involved in trumping up a fictitious case for the Iraq invasion knew that - or did they? If they did, it's interesting how cleverly you can perpetuate a scam within a scam if you have the right connections.

And in a final Team Bush irony, key Carlyle figure James Baker, who is one of the closest friends and political operatives of the Bush family, has donned his lawyer's hat to represent members of the Saudi royal family against family members of 9/11 victims who are suing them. When it comes to family values the Bushes leave no victims unburned. The President has also selected a former partner of Baker's law firm, Bob Jordan, as his ambassador to Saudi Arabia (confirmed in this position on 5 October 2001).

*Let's not forget the independent operatives. A single example is Joe Allbaugh, George W. Bush's campaign manager for 2000, whose New Bridge Strategies "consulting" company is based on extracting fees advising on how to cash in on Iraqi "reconstruction" investments.

Vice President Dick Cheney and Halliburton

Dick Cheney, US Defence Secretary under President Bush Sr, moved from Government into an industry he used to regulate and then back to Government again, becoming as a result the richest member of "Team Bush". As Defence Secretary under Bush senior Cheney had pushed a decision to privatise not only support services for US forces overseas but even much of the logistics planning for deployments. Indeed in 1992, shortly before Cheney left government, the Halliburton company received the first private contract ever of the latter type.

As Chief Operating Officer of Halliburton from 1995 Cheney was then able to reap the rewards of his groundwork, as the company's military contracts grew like Topsy. In his last year at Halliburton (2000), before becoming US Vice-President, Cheney received a staggering US$26.4 million from the grateful company in salary, bonuses, stock options and sale of stock received as compensation for giving up his position (he held Halliburton stock worth US$46 million in 2001).

Annual "deferred compensation" payments of roughly US$150,000 per year he has received since taking on his "public responsibilities" are of course tiny by comparison, but probably pay a few minor pressing bills. Not since Sir Basil Zaharoff has anyone done so well from promoting war. The wages of militarism are indeed magnificent for war profiteers of his ilk.

Although under the Clinton presidency Haliburton later lost some of its rich contracts, once Cheney was back in a senior Govt position the gravy train hurtled off again as never before. In 2001 Halliburton won back the big LOGCAP contract, and became pre-eminent supplier of provisions and facilities for the overseas "war on terror", even making the cages for captives at Guantanamo Bay.

Then there was the no-bid "just-about-everything to do with oil" contract for Iraq, given to Halliburton after the company was asked to help write the specifications for a contract it was then awarded without competition (!). Truly, the new golden age of the war profiteers was here with a vengeance. So it's no surprise to learn that the board of Halliburton had found it in their hearts to donate around US$672,000 to Republican candidates from 1999 to 2002, small change compared with their sales growth.

The Vice President's family doesn't exactly suffer from his holding such a powerful position either. Cheney's daughter Elizabeth was handily appointed as principal deputy assistant Secretary of State and the second-ranking US diplomat for the Middle East in March 2005. Her husband, Philip Perry, has also since been nominated by President Bush, on the timely date of April 1st 2005, to the plum job of general counsel of the Homeland Security Department, overseeing 1500 lawyers.

Mr Perry was formerly a partner in the law firm Latham & Watkins where he was a lobbyist for the weapons firm Lockheed Martin. Ah, what are family and friends for, in the GoT, if not to share the largesse of government? And you can always browse Lockheed Martin & the Bush arms gravy train below for another interesting Cheney family connection.

Richard Armitage, the prominent assistant secretary of state, worked as a consultant to Halliburton before taking up his present job.

Admiral Joe Lopez, Pentagon military aide to Cheney when he was US Defence Secretary and a four-star former commander in chief of U.S. forces in southern Europe, was recruited to Halliburton by Cheney, and given the highly-paid job of senior vice president in charge of dealings between Halliburton's major subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root and the Pentagon.

Former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld

The recent US Defence Secretary also once served as Defence Secretary to President Ford. Failing in a bid to become Republican candidate for President, he then entered business to became a senior executive with several major companies. In 1983 President Reagan appointed him as Special Presidential Envoy to the Middle East, where he supervised the warming relationship with Saddam Hussein into an alliance in which the US was to supply intelligence, military technology and the necessary ingredients to make weapons of mass destruction.

What Rumsfeld should have said if he was honest in 2003 was "Well I know that Saddam used to have WMD anyway, because I arranged for him to get them!"

Being even then interested in Iraq's oil, Rumsfeld also discussed with Iraqi Premier Tariq Aziz the possibility of an oil pipeline through Jordan to the Red Sea. Less than coincidentally, the pipeline had in fact been proposed by the Bechtel Corp. for which then Republican Secretary of State George Schultz had worked. Bechtel Corp., another of the Bush administration's "crony companies", today has a contract for a minimum of US$680 million for rebuilding some of the damage done in Iraq. Indeed a contract awarded to Bechtel through secret procedures (by the US AID agency) was later expanded by a further US$350 million.

Out of government again, Rumsfeld secured a number of senior business appointments in the 1990s, including CEO of General Instruments and a board position with Gulfstream Aerospace (where Secretary of State Colin Powell was another board member). The latter company was acquired by weapons makers General Dynamics in 1999, and Rumsfeld sold his stock for a tidy US$11 million.

Rumsfeld was also on the board of Swiss-based engineering company ABB. The problem with this was that they sold two nuclear reactors to North Korea in a US$200 million deal. Rumsfeld's selective amnesia, already apparent concerning his earlier dealings with Saddam Hussein, has kicked into overdrive on this issue. Apparently it bypassed his attention span altogether, even though it can be proved he attended board meetings where the matter was discussed.

former Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz

(since resigned under a cloud from presidency of the World Bank)

Former Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz is regarded by many as the leading architect of the 2003 Iraq invasion plan. A PNAC member, he worked as a consultant for the giant Northrop Grumman aircraft and weapons systems company before becoming Donald Rumsfeld's deputy. Northrop Grumman also owns the Vinnell Corporation, which was awarded the contract to train a new Iraqi army.

NB: Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman are the "big three" who between them receive over a quarter of the Pentagon's contracts budget - a share worth over US$ 41 billion in 2002, plus billions more from other Govt. departments such as Homeland Security. And that share of an expanding budget (which has risen $100 billion in two years) seems liable to grow further through their "fortunate connections" in the Bush Administration.

Defence Policy Board Member Richard Perle

A prominent neo-conservative, PNAC and American Enterprise Institute member & leading Iraq war advocate, Perle's patrician manner belies his relentless money-grubbing. He has three times been caught for misusing his Defence Policy Board position for personal financial gain. The Defence Policy Board, a semi-official advisory body, has access to both classified information and upper-level defence officials, and offers advice to the Government on strategic policy, weapons procurement and other defence-related matters.

On one of these three occasions, early in 2003, Perle had to resign as chairman of the DPB. This first issue was Perle using the notorious Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi (a middleman in the Iran Contra scandal) to arrange a meeting under false pretences with a hugely wealthy Saudi industrialist, Harb Saleh al-Zuhair. The real purpose was to solicit US$100 million for Perle's personal investment company, Trireme Partners L.P.

Tireme was registered in November 2001, soon after 9/11 (like "Dubya's" grandfather Prescott Bush and the Harrimans dealing with the new Nazi regime in 1930's Germany, Perle wasted no time in moving to take advantage of the "different world" of business opportunities after 9/11). Adnan Khashoggi was later to declare that:"Trireme's business potential depended on a war in Iraq taking place". Tireme itself more modestly declares that it invests in companies "of value to homeland security and defense".

On a second occasion Perle offered to help telecommunications company Global Crossing get Government approval to sell a high-tech subdivision to China in return for a US$725,000 fee if he was successful.

A third corrupt instance was, when working as a consultant for the Loral Corporation, Perle attempted to curry influence for that corporation so they would be allowed technology transfer to China, when Loral had already been charged with improperly selling China information that might assist the performance of China's nuclear ballistic missiles & their ability to target America.

Many believe it was also Richard Perle who improperly passed secret information to onetime Iraqi protégé Ahmad Chalabi concerning the cracking of the Iranian intelligence code, which Chalabi then passed on to the Iranians, compromising US intelligence operations. However others believe it was Paul Wolfowitz or even Donald Rumsfeld himself who did so (so far none of the three has been willing to clear his own name by fingering the guilty party).

Perle's selective patriotism appears to be a security threat to the USA, but because he is among like-minded friends in the Bush Administration & has close ties to Defence Secretary Rumsfeld he remains on the DPB, busy advocating wars, strategies and spending that will help line his pockets. Indeed two other Tireme executives are also DPB members. In addition Boeing, for reasons best known to itself, has invested $20 million with Perle's company Tireme.

Worse, a 2003 study by the US Centre for Public Integrity showed that nine out of thirty Defence Policy Board members had significant ties to arms industry companies (e.g. retired Admiral David Jeremiah and retired Air Force General Ronald Fogelman were receiving payments as consultants from Boeing). Unsurprisingly, the companies with whom the nine were linked had been successful with over US$76 billion of contracts in one year alone.

Perle is also on the boards of Turkish company FNSS, which makes US armoured vehicles under licence for United Defence, and British company the Autonomy Corporation, which holds a major US contract for "homeland defence" activities.

Former US Attorney General John Ashcroft

As George W. Bush's Attorney General, Ashcroft pushed an agenda of extending US Government surveillance of its own citizens (including warrantless activities illegal under the Constitution), intimidating dissent and extending the obsessive secrecy of the Bush Administration (in short, they want to know all about you but want you to know less and less about them). All in the name of "protecting" citizens as part of the "War on Terror". What they would probably much rather you did not ever find out is how well they are doing personally out of this "forever war" of theirs.

At last count (September 2006) there were 33,890 mostly American companies with federal homeland security contracts, compared with only nine seven years before. Some US$130 billion has been allocated since the year 2000 for contracts in this areas now defined by this portfolio. Just as for the arms merchants described on this page, the "war on terror" and the war in Iraq have proved the greatest business bonanza of modern times.

Today in Washington DC, six blocks from his former office in the US Department of Justice, John Ashcroft now heads the Ashcroft Group which "advises" (consults and lobbies for) surveillance companies (e.g. ChoicePoint, Dulles Research, Innova, LTU Technologies) seeking huge profits from the spending spree of public money. Ashcroft is yet another outstanding example of the "revolving door" corruption of the Bush Administration. These friends of the President somehow get into government, push an agenda and then exit into private business to reap the rewards of that agenda from their networks of contacts.

Ashcroft is scarcely alone in this. From the official surveillance bureaucracy of the Department of Homeland Security for example, an organisation only three years old, some 90 former officials have already left to reap larger secondary rewards from the public purse in lobbying and consulting for private businesses. So George Bush's "have and have more" supporters are enriching themselves to staggering levels from the taxes of those who struggle to make ends meet. These people want you to remain scared at all costs - that's what they make their killing from.

Lockheed Martin & the Bush arms gravy train

Lockheed Martin is now reputedly the world's largest weapons manufacturer. George W. Bush's direct connection with this huge "defence & aerospace" corporation began when he was Governor of Texas. There Lockheed attempted to gain a contact to become official benefits screeners for welfare and Medicaid in that state, a privatisation policy "Dubya" supported but could not get passed. Not surprisingly, for if the arms makers are to both dominate foreign policy and control social welfare as well, there seems little point in having a US government at all.

Later, Lockheed Martin Vice-President for corporate strategy & development Bruce Jackson served as Finance Chairman for the 2000 Bush campaign - and also as Chair of the Republican Party foreign policy platform committee, about as blatant a conflict of interest as an arms company executive could attempt. "I wrote the Republican Party's foreign policy platform," Jackson is reported as boasting. Unsurprisingly he is also a board member of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

Bruce Jackson

Presumably it was on the basis of enormous additional profits expected during a Bush administration rather than mere executive greed that the CEO's pay at Lockheed Martin rose more than fourfold from US$5.8 million in 2000 to US$25.3 million in 2002.

Some "Lockheed people" on board with Bush

*Peter B. Teets, former Lockheed Martin Chief Operating Officer, has been appointed Undersecretary of the Air Force and Director of the National Reconnaissance Office.

*Former Lockheed executive Everet Beckner has been appointed administrator for defence programmes at the National Nuclear Security Administration. (Lockheed Martin jointly with the Bechtel Corporation and a third company has a contract to run the NNSA Nevada Test Site where it is planned to test nuclear weapons again. Lockheed will also earn almost two billion per year running the Sandia Laboratories nuclear weapons design facility in New Mexico). ***

*Stephen Hadley, formerly a lawyer with Shea & Gardner representing Lockheed Martin, was appointed Deputy National Security Advisor.

*Otto Reich, formerly a lobbyist for Lockheed Martin when they were seeking to reverse the ban on US hi-tech weapons sales to Latin America, was nominated for Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs.

*Norman Mineta, Secretary for Transportation, and Michael Jackson, Deputy Secretary for Transportation, were both Lockheed Martin vice-presidents before their appointments by President Bush.

*Lynne V. Cheney, wife of US Vice-President Dick Cheney, was a board member of Lockheed Martin for the period 1994-2001, picking up a handy US$120,000 per year for the privilege. (Mrs Cheney other lucrative directorship's include AXP Mutual {an American Express subsidiary}, the Union Pacific Resources Group, & the Reader's Digest Association. As a director of Union Pacific when it merged with Anadarko Petroleum, Lynne Cheney received Anadarko stock worth $250,000 to $500,000. Her husband's major source of vast wealth, Halliburton, had done business with Anadarko Petroleum since 1959.

***The grand architect of this new nuclear strategy, the Dr Strangelovian figure Keith Payne, believes that a full-scale nuclear war could reasonably be fought and won, since America might suffer "only" twenty million casualties. Payne's National Institute for Public Policy (NIPP) receives substantial funding from arms makers and has a Lockheed Martin executive on its board.

So under Bush's renewed nuclear bombs push, the lunatics are truly running the asylum - and equally, the arms makers are on a wondrous merry-go-round of milking the Government, then running it, and back for more again, all under the benign gaze of George Walker Bush. The US President is truly a worthy descendant of his great-grandfather the first George Walker, the amoral financial hustler extraordinaire after whom he was named.

Team Bush, Team War Profiteers

Earlier this month, the President also asked for an additional $20 billion for Iraqi reconstruction as part of his larger supplemental appropriations request. Unfortunately, the President provided no assurances that the billions of dollars in new contracts will not be awarded through similarly secretive processes.
United States Senators Joseph I. Lieberman & Frank R. Lautenberg, Sept. 23, 2003.

Many other lesser members of Team Bush or the official Bush administration too numerous to list here have for the past five years (nearly) been working the revolving door of war business and government, to great personal financial advantage. In Part Three we will also detail how various Bush relatives are personally benefitting from the war in Iraq and the "War on Terror".

The grim truth is that the threat President Eisenhower warned about in 1961 is today the primary reality of the Bush governance, and the carpetbaggers of Washington are setting the tone for an era of war profiteering without equal in all human history. Only an aware and committed citizenry can hope to stop them.

Latest News...

In a radio address on 27 August 2005, President Bush called for Americans to be prepared for "more sacrifice" in Iraq. But who is to do the sacrificing? Not the President or any of his relatives and associates, that's for sure. They don't send their sons and daughters to fight in Iraq, they have "better things" to do. Mr Bush's "haves and have mores" prefer to rake in enormous windfall war profits generated by companies they have investments in, and which offer many of them high-paid jobs and extraordinary perks in the scandalous "revolving door" between the current US government and the big business corporations now profiting so hugely from this war.

We've all heard of Halliburton, so closely associated with Vice President Cheney. But here are a group of giant American corporations now doing "very nicely indeed thanks" out of the Iraq war as at the second half of 2005: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Honeywell and United Technologies. Behind them come dozens of medium-sized companies and hundreds of smaller ones for whom, far from sacrifice, war is a bonanza.

Lockheed Martin's net profit, for example, jumped 41 percent in the first six months of 2005. With orders worth US$73 billion to hand, their gravy train looks like rolling on for quite some time. Boeing's military division reported sales of US$15.3 billion in January-June 2005, with operating profits rising 16 percent to US$1.7 billion. Northrop Grumman's half-year earnings rose no less than 45.3%...

The latest Bush appointments on the blood money gravy train:
The new Deputy Secretary of Defence Gordon England, (replacing prominent Iraq war advocate Paul Wolfowitz, who became president of the World Bank), has previously held executive positions with both Lockheed Martin Corp and General Dynamics Corp. Below him, being nominated by President Bush as Secretary of the Air Force is Michael Wynne - even though the US Senate has previously refused to confirm Mr Wynne as the Pentagon's acquisition chief, because of concerns about a whole range of Air Force weapons-buying scandals. And who has the White House put forward for a replacement Secretary of the Navy? None other than Donald C. Winter, a current executive of Northrop Grumman Corp. Remember them from the windfall profits list?

And what happens to the honest ones? A senior contracting official, Ms Bunnatine Greenhouse, who criticised the Pentagon's decision to give Halliburton a multibillion-dollar, no-bid contract for work in Iraq, was sacked at the end of August 2005 for "poor performance". Yes indeed, the people in power find any criticism of all this revolving door corruption to be a very "poor" show, from their point of view. The dismissal, described by her attorney as bearing "the hallmark of illegal retaliation," handily scotches the investigation into her embarrassing finger-pointing at the thieves in action. Said Ms Greenhouse, "I can unequivocally state that the abuse related to contracts awarded to KBR (a division of Halliburton) represents the most blatant and improper abuse I have witnessed" in 20 years working on government contracts.

A final word

Many of the big corporations that own much of the US media are doing their best to avoid letting you read, see, or hear information they don't want you to know about, or try to ensure that such information is at any rate relegated to obscurity. The Web, and the publishing of books (both physical and e-books), remain the last free bastion of "the inconvenient truth". If sites like this one are forced off the Web, you'll know why. We hope that a kinder, more globally responsible America will eventually triumph over the military-corporate elite who have at present usurped government and fooled many of the American people into supporting them.

To be continued...

Forthcoming (eventually) …

Part three: The later Bushes

Previews:

1. It has been suggested of George Herbert Walker Bush (the first President Bush) that he bravely volunteered for the Navy in WWII at age eighteen to redeem his family's shame concerning their Nazi profits, but that later in life he reverted to type and the "it's all just business" credo. Moreover he produced four sons who were well and truly as shameless in business as their grandfather and his father...

2. Jeb Bush, Neil Bush, Marvin Bush, George W. Bush. The four sons of G.H.W. Bush have all followed a curious pattern in business that is suggestive of failure followed by massive fraud, with a happy ending reserved for them alone. Then there are their numerous relatives the Walkers, the Ellis family, the Pierces and so on, all doing very well thank you out of "fortunate connections"...

3. The grasping of Bush family members for high public office is a far bigger enterprise than most people realise. They make more sense when regarded less as disparate individuals and more as a dynastic clan striving as eagerly as any Mafia family for group wealth and power, and often achieving it. Bush fans worried about the lack of a serious candidate for future high office from the President's two frivolous daughters need not fret. There are in fact an embarrassment of other young Bushes fast growing towards eager availability...

George Herbert Walker III

Appointed US Ambassador to Hungary, 30 September 2003
on the nomination of his relative President George Walker Bush.