President
Bush recently signed an executive order to freeze
the US financial assets of corporations doing
business with Osama bin Laden. He described the
order as a "strike on the financial foundation
of the global terror network."
"If
you do business with terrorists, if you support
or succor them, you will not do business with
the United States," said President Bush.
He
didn't say anything about doing business with
a terrorist's brother - or his wealthy financier.
When
President George W. Bush froze assets connected
to Osama bin Laden, he didn't tell the American
people that the terrorist mastermind's late brother
was an investor in the president's former oil
business in Texas. He also hasn't leveled
with the American public about his financial connections
to a host of shady Saudi characters involved in
drug cartels, gun smuggling, andterrorist networks.
Doing
business with the enemy is nothing new to the
Bush family. Much of the Bush family wealth
came from supplying needed raw materials and credit
to Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. Several business
operations managed by Prescott Bush - the president's
grandfather - were seized by the US government
during World War II under the Trading with the
Enemy Act.
On
October 20, 1942, the federal government seized
the Union Banking Corporation in New York City
as a front operation for the Nazis. Prescott
Bush was a director.Bush, E. Roland Harriman,
two Bush associates, and three Nazi executives
owned the bank's shares.Eight days later, the
Roosevelt administration seized two other corporations
managed by Prescott Bush.The Holland-American
Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment
Corporation, both managed by the Bush-Harriman
bank, were accused by the US federal government
of being front organizations for Hitler's Third
Reich. Again, on November 8, 1942, the federal
government seized Nazi-controlled assets of Silesian-American
Corporation, another Bush-Harriman company doing
business with Hitler.
Doing
business with the bin Laden empire, therefore,
is only the latest extension of the Bush family's
financial ties to unsavory individuals and organizations.
Now that thousands of American citizens have died
in terrorist attacks and the nation is going to
war, the American people should know about George
W. Bush's relationship with the family of Osama
bin Laden.
Salem
bin Laden, Osama's older brother, was an investor
in Arbusto Energy. - the Texas oil company started
by George W. Bush. Arbusto means ³Bush"
in Spanish. Salem bin Laden died in an airplane
crash in Texas in 1988.
Sheik
Mohammed bin Laden, the family patriarch and founder
of its construction empire, also died in a plane
crash.Upon his death in 1968, he left behind 57
sons and daughters - the offspring he sired with
12 wives in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, and
Jordan. About a dozen brothers manage Bin
Laden Brothers Construction - one of the largest
construction firms in the Middle East.
Fresh
out of Harvard Business School, young George W.
Bush returned to Midland, TX, in the late 1970s
to follow his father's footsteps in the oil business.
Beginning in 1978, he set up a series of limited
partnerships - Arbusto '78, Arbusto '79, and so
on - to drill for oil.
One
of President Bush's earliest financial backers
was James Bath, a Houston aircraft broker.Bath
served with President Bush in the Texas Air National
Guard. Bath has a mysterious connection
to the Central Intelligence Agency.
According
to a 1976 trust agreement, Salem bin Laden appointed
James Bath as his business representative in Houston. Revelation
about Bath's relationship with the bin Laden financial
empire and the CIA was made public in 1992 by
Bill White, a former real estate business partner
with Bath. White informed federal investigators
in 1992 that Bath told him that he had assisted
the CIA in a liaison role since 1976 - the same
year former President George Herbert Walker Bush
served as director of the CIA.
During
a bitter legal fight between White and Bath, the
real estate partner disclosed that Bath managed
a portfolio worth millions of dollars for Sheik
Khalid bin Mahfouz and other wealthy Saudis.Among
the investments made by Bath with Mahfouz's money
was the Houston Gulf Airport.
A
powerful banker in Saudi Arabia, Mahfouz was one
of the largest stockholders in the Bank of Credit
and Commerce International. BCCI was a corrupt
global banking empire operating in 73 nations
and was a major financial and political force
in Washington, Paris, Geneva, London, and Hong
Kong.Despite the appearance of a normal banking
operation, BCCI was actually an international
crime syndicate providing "banking services"
to the Medellin drug cartel, Pamama dictator Manuel
Noriega, Saddam Hussein, terrorist mastermind
Abu Nidal, and Khun Sa, the heroin kingpin in
Asia's Golden Triangle.
The
BCCI scandal implicated some of the biggest political
names in Washington - both Democrats and Republicans
- during the first Bush White House. The
bank was accused of laundering money for drug
cartels, smuggling weapons to terrorists, and
using Middle Eastern oil money to influence American
politicians.
The
chief of the Justice Department's criminal division
under former President Bush was Robert Mueller.Because
the major players came out of the scandal with
slaps on the wrists, many critics accused Mueller
of botching the investigation. Mr. Mueller
was recently appointed by President George W.
Bush as the new Director of the FBI, replacing
Louis Freeh who did nothing while William Jefferson
Clinton allowed the Red Chinese to loot our national
security secrets.
The
Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN),
a division of the Justice Department, reviewed
allegations by Bill White in 1992 that James Bath
funneled money from wealthy Middle Eastern businessmen
to American companies to influence the policies
of the Reagan and Bush administrations.
Robert Mueller, the new FBI chief, was in a senior
position at the Justice Department at the time
of the review.
White
told a Texas court in 1992 that Bath and the Justice
Department had "blackballed" him professionally
and financially because he refused to keep quiet
about his knowledge of an Arabic conspiracy to
launder Middle Eastern money into the bank accounts
of American businesses and politicians.
In
sworn depositions, Bath admitted he represented
four wealthy Saudi Arabian businessmen as a trustee. He
also admitted he used his name on their investments
and received, in return, a five- percent stake
in their business deals.
Indeed, Texas
tax documents revealed that Bath owned five percent
of Arbusto '79 Ltd., and Arbusto '80 Ltd.Bush
Exploration Company controlled the limited partnerships,
the general partnership firm owned by young George
W. Bush.
Although George
W. Bush's Texas oil ventures were financial failures,
his financial backers recovered their investments
through a series of mergers and stock swaps. He
changed Arbusto's name to Bush Exploration, then
merged the new firm into Spectrum 7 Energy Corporation
in 1984.
The Bush-controlled
oil business eventually ended up being folded
into Harken Energy Corp., a Dallas-based corporation.Mr.
Bush joined Harken as a director in 1986 and was
given 212,000 shares of Harken stock.Bush used
his White House connections to land a lucrative
contract for the obscure Harken Energy Corp. with
the Middle Eastern government of Bahrain.
On June 20, 1990, George W. Bush sold his Harken
stock for $848,000 and paid off the loan he took
out to buy his small share in the Texas Rangers.
The Bahrain deal was brokered by David Edwards,
a close pal to Bill Clinton and a former employee
of Stephens Inc. Shortly after Bush sold his stock,
Harken's fortunes nose-dived when Saddam Hussein
invaded Kuwait. Some critics claim young
George was tipped off in advance by his father
about the soon-coming Gulf War.
George W. Bush,
however, worked wonders for Harken Energy Corp.
before the stock collapsed. Using
the Bush family name, he managed to bring much-needed
capital investment to the struggling firm.George
W. Bush traveled to Little Rock, AR, to attend
a meeting with Jackson Stephens - a powerful Arkansas
tycoon who helped bankroll the state campaigns
of young Bill Clinton. He first gained political
prominence as a fund-raiser for President Jimmy
Carter. Stephens was also deeply involved in the
BCCI scandal by helping the corrupt bank take
control of First American Bank in Washington,
DC.
Jack Stephens
didn't need an introduction to young George W.
Bush. Mary Anne Stephens, his wife,
managed Vice President George Bush's 1988 presidential
campaign in Arkansas.Stephens Inc., the well connected
brokerage firm owned by Jack Stephens, donated
$100,000 to a Bush campaign fundraising dinner
in 1991. When George W. Bush won the contested
Florida election in 2000, Jack Stephens made a
substantial contribution to the Bush inauguration.
Recently, former President Bush played golf on
April 11, 2001, with Jack Stephens at the Jack
Stephens Youth Golf Academy in Little Rock.
The former president told Stephens, ³Jack, we
love you and we are very, very grateful for what
you have done."
Perhaps the
former president was thanking him for the money
Stephens provided young George W. Bush.Stephens
arranged for a $25 million investment from the
Union des Banques Suisses. The Swiss Bank
held the minority interest in the Banque de Commerce
et de Placements, a Geneva-based subsidiary of
BCCI.
Both Stephens
and Abdullah Taha Bakhsh, a wealthy and well-connected
Saudi real estate investor, signed the financial
transaction. The Geneva transaction was paid through
a joint venture between the Union Bank of Switzerland
and its Geneva branch of BCCI.
The BCCI connection,
therefore, linked George W. Bush with Saudi banker
Khaled bin Mahfouz. Known in Arab circles as the
³king's treasurer," Mahfouz held a 20 percent
take in BCCI between 1986 and 1990.Mahfouz is
no stranger to the Bush family. He was a
big investor in the Carlyle Group, a defense-industry
investment group with deep connections to the
Republican Party establishment. Former President
Bush is a former member of the company's board
of directors. George W. Bush also held shares
in Caterair, a Carlyle subsidiary. Sami
Baarma, a powerful player in the Mahfouz-owned
Prime Commercial Bank of Pakistan, is a member
of the Carlyle Group's international advisory
board.
President Bush
certainly is aware of that his former Saudi sugar
daddy is still financing Osama bin Laden's terrorist
network.USA Today newspaper reported in 1999 that
a year after bin Laden's attacks on US embassies
in Africa, Khaled bin Mahfouz and other wealthy
Saudis were funneling tens of millions of dollars
each year into bin Laden's bank accounts.
Five top Saudi businessmen ordered the National
Commercial Bank to transfer personal funds and
$3 million pilfered from a Saudi pension fund
to the Capitol Trust Bank in New York City.The
money was deposited into the Islamic Relief and
Blessed Relief - Islamic charities operating in
the US and Great Britain as fronts for Osama bin
Laden.
The Capitol
Trust Bank is run by Mohammad Hussein al-Amoudi.
His lawyer is Democratic Party bigwig Vernon Jordan,
close friend of former President Bill Clinton
and Monica Lewinsky.
Abdullah Taha
Bakhsh, the Arab who cosigned the $25 million
cash infusion into George W. Bush's Harken Energy
Corporation, appointed Talat Othman to manage
his 17.6 percent share in Harken Energy Corp.Othman,
a native Palestinian, is president and CEO of
Dearborn Financial Inc. - an investment firm in
Arlington Heights, IL.
Bakhsh also
bought a 9.6 percent stake in Worthen Banking
Corporation, the Arkansas bank controlled by Jack
Stephens.Abdullah Bakhsh's share was the identical
percentage as the amount of shares sold by Mochtar
Riady, the godfather of the wealthy Indonesian
family with close ties to the Chinese communists,
Bill Clinton and evangelist Pat Robertson.
Bakhsh is represented by Rogers & Wells, a
well-connected Republican law firm in New York
whose partners include former Secretary of State
William P. Rogers.
Independent
investigator reporter David Twersky reported in
the early 1990s that Othman had a seat on Harken's
board of directors and met three times in the
White House with President George Herbert Walker
Bush. Organized by Chief of Staff John Sununu,
Othman's first meeting with President Bush at
the White House was in August 1990, just days
after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.
There exist
to this day an Arab-Texas connection. Khalid
bin Mahfouz, financier of both George W. Bush
and Osama bin Laden, still maintains a palatial
estate in Houston, TX. Former President
George Bush also lives in Houston. James
Bath, Texas political confidant of George W. Bush,
managed to obtain a $1.4 million loan from Mahfouz
in 1990. Bath and Mahfouz, along with former
Secretary of Treasury John Connally, were also
co-investors in Houston's Main Bank. Bath
was also president of Skyway Aircraft Leasing
Ltd, a Texas air charter company registered in
the Cayman Islands. According to published
reports in the early 1990s, the real owner was
bin Mahfouz.When Salem bin Laden, Osama' brother,
died in 1988, his interest in the Houston Gulf
Airport was transferred to bin Mahfouz.
Since Osama
bin Laden's bloody attack on America on September
11, the federal government has moved quickly to
freeze bank accounts connected to Osama bin Laden,
Khalid bin Mahfouz, and a host of Islamic charities.
Perhaps federal agents should freeze the financial assets of the Bush family
too. It would not be the first time Bush-family
assets were seized by the US government for trading
with the enemy.

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