“If the people were to ever find out what we have done, we would be chased down the streets and lynched.”-– George H. W. Bush, cited in the June 1992 Sarah McClendon Newsletter.
A BLAST FROM THE PAST: Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote this letter to his brother Nov. 8, 1954:
"Now it is true that I believe this country is following a dangerous trend when it permits too great a degree of centralization of governmental functions. I oppose this -- in some instances the fight is a rather desperate one. But to attain any success it is quite clear that the Federal government cannot avoid or escape responsibilities which the mass of the people firmly believe should be undertaken by it. The political processes of our country are such that if a rule of reason is not applied in this effort, we will lose everything–even to a possible and drastic change in the Constitution. This is what I mean by my constant insistence upon “moderation” in government.One of those Texas Oil Millionaires, and part of the "tiny splinter group" is none other than George H. W. Bush.
Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man rom other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”
41’s bio:
…A few months before the end of the war, while on rotation home, he married Barbara Pierce, whose father published the magazines Redbook and McCall’s. After the war,DRESSER INDUSTRIES:
...
Although he was offered a job at his father’s firm, Brown Brothers, Harriman and Company, Bush moved, with his wife and infant son, to west Texas, where he worked for Dresser Industries, an oilfield supply company. He started at the bottom, sweeping warehouses and painting machinery, but soon became a salesman of drilling bits.
By 1950, he had gone into business for himself, forming the Bush-Overby Company with partner John Overby in Midland, Texas. This company, which dealt in oil and gas properties, grew and took on more partners. In 1954, George Bush co-founded and became the president of Zapata Offshore Company.
…Prescott Bush was a director of Dresser Industries, which is now part of Halliburton. Former United States president George H. W. Bush worked for Dresser Industries in several positions from 1948-1951, before he founded Zapata Corporation.Halliburton’s Iraq Deals Greater Than Cheney Has Said
…But in 1998, Cheney oversaw Halliburton’s acquisition of Dresser Industries Inc., which exported equipment to Iraq through two subsidiaries of a joint venture with another large U.S. equipment maker, Ingersoll-Rand Co.ZAPATA OIL: THE BAY OF PIGS AND THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION
Starting about the time of the Bay of Pigs invasion in the spring of 1961, we have the first hints that Bush, in addition to working for Zapata Offshore, may also have been a participant in certain covert operations of the US intelligence community.Dick Russel dot org
Such participation would certainly be coherent with George’s role in the Prescott Bush, Skull and Bones, and Brown Brothers, Harriman networks. During the twentieth century, the Skull and Bones/Harriman circles have always maintained a sizable and often decisive presence inside the intelligence organizations of the State Department, the Treasury Department, the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Office of Strategic Services, and the Central Intelligence Agency. [MORE]
Leave it to the old Kennedy assassination researcher to come up with a good one. As we read about the decimation of the striper’s principal food supply – a small, boney fish called the menhaden – by commercial fishing operations intent on exploiting it for use in Omega-3 fish oil, we find ourselves back at “the Bay of Pigs thing”, as Nixon put it. For who is America’s largest purveyor of Omega-3 fish oil and the major destroyer of the menhaden supply but … Zapata Oil!Famous Texans.com - Howard Hughes
Oh, yes, dear reader. The same Zapata Oil that was run by George H.W. Bush until he sold it in the mid-1960s, believed to have been a CIA front for the Bay of Pigs invasion. We will never know all the details because, as Russell reminds us, potentially revealing financial documents were “accidentally” destroyed at the SEC when Bush became vice-president under Reagan. The company is now known as Omega Protein, and it is owned by the same man who bought the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Manchester United: Malcolm Glazer.
…Throughout the 1950s, as the power of three entities grew – the Hughes empire, organized crime, and the new Central Intelligence Agency – it became all but impossible to distinguish between them. By the end of the decade, Hughes’ chief of staff, Robert Maheu, had orchestrated the CIA’s dirtiest secret – plots to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro with the help of two heads of organized crime. Vice President Richard Nixon was the White House action officer in the clandestine attempts to oust Castro.Allen Dulles, the later CIA director, who was the architect [together with Vice President Richard Nixon and George Bush] of the Bay of Pigs invasion to overthrow Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Allen Dulles was fired by President Kennedy because of the fiasco of the Bay of Pigs. Yet Allen Dulles was appointed by Lyndon Johnson to serve on the Warren Commission to “investigate” JFK’s death.
Zapata Off-Shore, the oil company owned by future CIA director and U.S. president George Bush after he split it off from Zapata Oil partner Hugh Liedtke in 1954, had a drilling rig on the Cay Sal Bank in 1958. These islands had been leased to Nixon supporter and CIA contractor Howard Hughes the previous year and were later used as a base for CIA raids on Cuba.
Nixon lost the 1960 presidential election to John F. Kennedy largely because of a scandal over a never repaid $205,000 “loan” Nixon’s brother received from Hughes. As attorney general, Robert Kennedy secretly investigated the Hughes-Nixon dealings.
Allen Dulles & the CIA
Dulles was fired from the CIA by Kennedy in 1961 over Operation Northwoods. Another cover CIA operation aimed at gaining popular support for a war against Cuba by framing Cuba for stage real or simulated attacks on American citizens. Dulles was replaced by John McCone.White House For Sale: The Hunts of Texas
Allen Dulles and the Bush family
John Foster Dulles, Allen’s brother was hired by George Herbert Walker and Prescott Bush to cover up improprieties in their business dealings in Poland and nazi Germany.
Ray Hunt ranked No. 78 on the 2003 “Forbes 400 Richest Americans” list. Hunt’s fortune originated in rights his father bought in 1930 to a sea of 5 billion barrels of east Texas crude.Top Secret Cronies
Polygamist H.L. Hunt pumped $100 million into trusts that he left to two of his three families. Placid Oil fed his first family’s trusts, while Hunt Oil benefited the family that H.L. started with a Hunt Oil secretary.
Ray Hunt later formed Hunt Consolidated as an umbrella for Hunt Oil, his Dallas real estate empire and other other ventures. Hunt Oil and Halliburton Co. (where Hunt sits on the board) are developing the $1.6 billion Camisea gas project in a Peruvian rain forest reserve established to protect indigenous people.
Gas will be shipped to a processing plant in the buffer zone of Peru’s only marine sanctuary in pipelines cut through the rain forest. On environmental grounds in mid 2003 the U.S. Export Import Bank rejected a request for $214 million in public funding for Camisea, which Amazon Watch calls “the most damaging project in the Amazon Basin.” Two weeks later, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) stepped in with $135 million in loans.
While the United States controls 30 percent of the IDB’s multilateral vote, Camisea promoters lined up the votes to approve this funding with U.S. IDB Director Jose Fourquet abstaining. Until recently, the company website said that Hunt Oil Vice President Hunter Hunt (Ray Hunt’s son) served as George W. Bush’s “primary Policy Advisor responsible for energy issues.”
Ray Hunt is a veteran powerbroker. After raising $4 million for then-Senator Phil Gramm in a single 1995 fundraiser, Hunt boasted that this one-day take was “the largest in the history of American politics.” A monument to Hunt’s local political influence is Dallas’ $210 million, 53-acre Reunion complex, which Hunt spent a year secretly planning with then-City Manager George Schrader without informing the city council.
The city received just one bid for the huge project in 1973 and approved a remarkable contract with Hunt. One provision stipulated that the city would refurbish the old Union Terminal train station and then rent two floors of it to Hunt for $100 a year over 100 years. Accusing the city of breaching this contract, Hunt later pressed a $1.4 million claim.
The City Council voted in 1993 to pay Hunt a $440,000 settlement. “This is giving welfare to the rich,” complained dissenting council member Domingo Garcia. “Somebody owed us money, and they threatened to take us to court. Now, we’re paying people to be quiet.”
After Dallas’ First Republic Bank failed in 1989 at a record taxpayer cost of $3.6 billion, Hunt and other ex-directors and officers of the bank (see Robert Dedman) agreed to pay $17.5 million in 1993 to settle related charges. “Those were very rich, very important, and some very self-important people,” a federal prosecutor said. “They don’t understand that when you have enormous problems you have to do something about it or quit the bank. It is endemic among directors across the country. But there is a peculiar brand of it in Texas.”
Then-Governor Bush fast-tracked an oil tax break in 1999 by declaring it a legislative emergency. Billed as relief for small producers, the tax cut benefited energy giants as well as the oil companies of nine future Pioneers, including a $85,176 tax break for Hunt energy interests. Bush appointed Hunt to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in 2001.
Bush has stacked his foreign advisory board with his Texas business pals, who stand to profit from access to CIA and military intelligence.[many thanks to Kira for this material]
By Robert Bryce | 11/17/2005
...With Scowcroft out, Bush's cronies are in. Last month, the White House announced that Dallas oil billionaire Ray Hunt, one of Bush's biggest financial backers, was reappointed to the PFIAB. So was Cincinnati financier William DeWitt Jr., who has backed Bush in all of his business deals going back to 1984, when DeWitt's company, Spectrum 7, bailed out the faltering entity known as Bush Oil Co. The new appointee of note to the PFIAB is former Commerce Secretary Donald Evans, a Bush confidant since his days in Midland, Texas....