John Ellis Bush 2016.
'Any questions?'
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by norton ash » Tue Jun 16, 2015 2:25 pm
by 82_28 » Tue Jun 16, 2015 2:53 pm
by zangtang » Tue Jun 16, 2015 3:19 pm
by Luther Blissett » Tue Jun 16, 2015 3:43 pm
by Searcher08 » Tue Jun 16, 2015 5:27 pm
82_28 » Tue Jun 16, 2015 6:53 pm wrote:
I don't know if it would do any good, but to culture jam the whole thing with like his actual name would be great. At least I would find it funny to see bumper stickers and shit with his real name in some noble font as opposed to this chicken mcnuggets on sale for a limited time shit.
by Iamwhomiam » Tue Jun 16, 2015 5:47 pm
stillrobertpaulsen » Wed Dec 17, 2014 6:06 pm wrote:Here's an entry that has some of the Hopsicker research on the "smart" Bush:Wed Apr 03, 2013 at 02:40 PM PDT
Jeb Bush, Oliver North and the Murder of CIA Drug Smuggler Barry Seal in 1986
by RobertMorrowTexas
A few weeks ago, Jeb Bush commented that he didn't think the "Bush" name carried with it any baggage. Really?? There is a name for this type of behavior; it is called "whistling past the graveyard."
Jeb Bush in 1986 was the 33-year-old chairman of the Dade County Republican party and he was up to his eyeballs in the Iran-Contra scandal. To get a taste of that read Al Martin’s book The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran-Contra Insider (2001) and read about Jeb Bush’s dealings with operatives such as Al Martin, Oliver North, Richard Secord, Dewey Clarridge, Sam Watson, Fred Ikley and, of course, his father George Herbert Walker Bush. Basically Jeb Bush was in the center of a wasp’s nest of dirty dealing CIA/military operatives engaged in rampant criminality – all in the name of “national security.”
On Feb. 19, 1986, Barry Seal, a very prominent CIA drug smuggler and ace pilot, was murdered outside his halfway house in Baton Rouge, LA. Barry Seal, at the time he died, may have been the largest drug smuggler in American history. Over the past 5, 10 & 20 years a lot of information about this murder has come out. Based on all this information, from a variety of sources, it is about time for someone to ask Jeb Bush, George Herbert Walker Bush and Oliver North a simple question. And that question is "Did you murder Barry Seal."
George Herbert Walker Bush: “Sarah, if the American people ever find out what we have done, they would chase us down the street and lynch us.”
That is a famous 1992 quote by George Herbert Walker Bush to Sarah McLendon, a Texas journalist who Bush had known for years and who was the grand dame of the White House press corps at the time. McLendon had asked Bush: “What will the people do if they ever find out the truth about Iraq-gate and Iran contra?”
Jeb Bush to intelligence operative Al Martin, who had worked closely with Jeb Bush during the Iran-Contra scandal and was threatening to go public: “There is no constituency for the truth.”
Ross Perot: “When you look into the [American POW] prisoner cover-up, you find government officials in the drug trade who can’t break themselves of the habit.”
Ross Perot: “What I have found is a snake pit without a bottom. They will do anything to keep this covered up.”
Barry Seal was a legendary CIA drug smuggler and ace pilot who had literally worked for the Agency since he was a teenage pilot prodigy in the late 1950’s. By 1986 Barry Seal was having legal problems (criminal and a huge IRS tax liability) that not even his CIA connections could protect him from and according to Seal’s lawyer Lewis Unglesby, Barry Seal was a threat to testify against Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush. In fact, in early 1986 Barry Seal was threatening GHW Bush to get the IRS off his back or he (Seal) was going to blow the whistle on the Contra scheme and CIA drug smuggling.
Two weeks after his argument with Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush, Barry Seal was pumped full of bullets and murdered outside his Baton Rouge halfway house on Feb. 19, 1986. The three Columbians who were convicted of the crime thought they were working for Lt. Col. Oliver North of the National Security Council. North’s alias in the 1980’s was “John Cathey.” The personal phone number of George Herbert Walker Bush was found in Seal’s possessions, even after the “men in black” had swept in to pick car of the slaughtered CIA drug smuggler clean of evidence. Years later, Texas Gov. George W. Bush was literally being flown around in what had been the favorite plane of Barry Seal.
Many folks don’t know that on the exact same day (2/19/86) Barry Seal was murdered in Baton Rouge, his mistress “Barbara” was also murdered in Miami; two other men also affiliated with the Medellin drug cartel, Pablo Carrera (Medellin’s #2 man) and Pablo Ochill, were also assassinated in Colombia.
Some people think the CIA American drug cartel were switching horses from the Medellin drug cartel to a partnership with the Cali, Colombian drug cartel. The three men convicted of murdering Barry Seal were from Cali, Colombia. The CIA American drug cartel was using the Cali cartel in a killing spree to wipe out the competition and murder anyone who might pose a threat to spill the beans on CIA drug smuggling and the participation of very high U.S. officials.
Jeb Bush in 1986 was the 33-year-old chairman of the Dade County Republican party and he was up to his eyeballs in the Iran-Contra scandal. To get a taste of that read Al Martin’s book The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran-Contra Insider (2001) and read about Jeb Bush’s dealings with operatives such as Al Martin, Oliver North, Richard Secord, Dewey Clarridge, Sam Watson, Fred Ikley and, of course, his father George Herbert Walker Bush. Basically Jeb Bush was in the center of a wasp’s nest of dirty dealing CIA/military operatives engaged in rampant criminality – all in the name of “national security.”
Regarding Jeb Bush: just read the material below. And particularly see what Jeb Bush had to say to Al Martin about the murders of George Morales and Johnny Molina. This material has been on the public record for 5-10-20 years. It really is stunning that Jeb Bush with such epic Iran-Contra liability could even be considered for president. It just shows the arrogance of these people who think that rules are for everyone else, but not for them. As someone said “Tyranny is defined as that which is legal for the government but illegal for the citizenry.”
Some examples might be gargantuan drug running, money laundering and murdering people to keep it all covered up. Below there is a lot of material relating to the 1986 murder of CIA drug smuggler Barry Seal as well as CIA/governmental drug smuggling in general. Be sure and check at the end of this article the bibliographies on CIA drug smuggling and one on the dark side of the Bushes.
The Personal Phone Number of VP George Herbert Walker Bush was Found in CIA Drug Smuggler Barry Seal’s Trunk:
The well respected reporter Daniel Hopsicker, who focuses on the government drug trade, is a must read on the murder of Barry Seal. Read “CIA Linked to Seal’s Assassination: George Bush’s Personal Phone Number Found in Seals’ Trunk” (Daniel Hopsicker, 8/18/97):
Another must-read is the “Real American Desperados” by Daniel Hopsicker (6/4/12).
Hopsicker’s book “Barry and ‘the Boys:’ The CIA, the Mob and America’s Secret History (2006) is one of the classics of modern politics. Hopsicker’s book has critical information on the murder of Barry Seal and the possible Bush family/Oliver North involvement. The author Daniel Hopsicker concludes that Oliver North murdered Barry Seal and he used Colombians to do it.
Texas Governor George W. Bush later flown around in the favorite airplane of the murdered Barry Seal
A fine article is “Why Does George W. Bush Fly in Drug Smuggler Barry Seal’s Airplane?” (Oct., 1999) by Daniel Hopsicker and Michael Ruppert. That article is about how after the murder of CIA drug smuggler Barry Seal, his favorite airplane somehow ended up being the exact same plane use to transport Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the brother of Jeb Bush and son of George Herbert Walker Bush.
Read Hopsicker’s Barry and the Boys (2006) and also Al Martin's The Conspiractors: Confessions of an Iran-Contra Insider (1999) and you will never look at modern American politics in the same way again.
BARRY SEAL AND HIS ARGUMENT WITH VP GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH IN EARLY 1986
[Daniel Hopsicker, "Barry & the Boys: The CIA, The Mob and America's Secret History," pp. 375-376]
"Lewis Unglesby is today a prominent and very well connected Louisiana lawyer. At the time his name was daily on the front page of the state's newspapers., defending his long-time client and associate, Governor Edwin Edwards.
Unglesby had told us about a confrontation he had with Barry over the fact that Seal was keeping him in the dark about matters Unglesbly considered crucial to defending him...
"Barry pushed the phone across the desk to me and said, 'You wanna know what's going on? Here. Dial this number. Tell 'em you're me,' Unglesby related.
"When I did what he requested," he continued, "A female voice answered the phone, sayin' 'Vice President Bush's office, may I help you?'"
"I said, 'This is Barry Seal.' She asked me to wait while she transferred the call, which was immediately picked up by a man who identified himself as Admiral somebody or other, who said to me 'Barry, Where you been?'"
"That's when I told him that I wasn't Barry Seal, I was his lawyer," said Unglesby. "Immediately he slammed down the phone."
So why was Barry Seal murdered?" we asked Sharpstein.
"Unglesby said he had been with Seal when the IRS came and seized all his property," Sharpstein related. "The IRS man said, 'You owe us $30 million for the money you made in drug dealing.'
"Hey, I work for you," was Seal's reply. "We work for the same people."
"You don't work for us," the IRS agent stated. "We're the IRS."
"Unglesby was with Seal when he retired to a back room." Sharpstein stated. "He watched as Seal placed a call to George Bush. He heard Barry Seal tell Bush, 'If you don't get these IRS assholes off my back I'm going to blow the whistle on the Contra scheme."
Sharpstein spoke solemnly, aware of the gravity of his words..., "'That's why he's dead,' is what Unglesby said."
One week after the phone conversation between Barry Seal and George Bush, Seal was sentenced to a halfway house. Two weeks later he was dead.
"Barry Seal, you mean that agent that went bad?" Gordon Novel had casually inquired, when we'd posed the question of his associations with Seal.
An agent that 'goes bad,' as we understand intelligence industry trade jargon, is one who contemplates talking.
"Seal was gunned down, supposedly by those Colombians," says Sharpstein. "But they were fed information by the assholes in our government who wanted him dead."
The assassination of Barry Seal was very likely even not the first attempt on Seal's life by North, we were told by CIA electronics expert Red Hall, on the ground in Nicaragua with Seal on the Sandinista drug sting....
"The only thing I knew was the CIA had a lot to do with it (Barry's murder.) The killers were being directed by Oliver North at the time. It was the same thing Oliver North pulled on us down in Nicaragua."
"Then, I didn't know yet that Oliver North had it for Barry Seal, because he was working with Oliver at that particular point. We was undercover, and we were still down there (Nicaragua), when Oliver blew the whistle on us."
Chip Tatum, another covert operative who had known Seal and shared confidences with him, listened with amusement the first time we breathlessly relayed what we'd discovered: that Oliver North is guilty in the assassination of Barry Seal...
"No shit, Sherlock," he replied, laughing. "It ain't exactly the secret of the century, I can tell you."
[Daniel Hopsicker, Barry & the Boys: The CIA, The Mob and America's Secret History, pp. 375-376]
AL MARTINS' CONVERSATION WITH JEB BUSH JUST DAYS after the Feb, 1986 Murder of Barry Seal in Baton Rouge. Jeb Bush had been at a meeting in Sept, 1985, where the assassination of Barry Seal had been discussed:
[ Al Martin, "The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran-Contra Insider," p. 194-195]
Al Martin: "In this discussion, I had mentioned the recent assassination, only a few days before, of Barry Seal [Feb, 1986, outside his halfway house in New Orleans].
I said to Jeb, "Isn't it convenient that Barry Seal was assassinated when he was? And now suddenly all the information and documents he had are gone missing?"
Jeb had a rather broad smile on his face, and he concurred that it was convenient. He added a little snicker - as he often had a tendency of doing. Also little beads of sweat formed on his forehead, as when he gets nervous. It's something you can notice when he's on television. He still has a tendency to have little beads of sweat around his forehead, when he is either lying about something, or he's nervous about what someone is saying."
My conversations with Jeb at this meeting were overheard by the two Secret Service agents who were always assigned to Jeb when he was in his office at 1390 Brickell Avenue in Miami.
I had intimated that if certain parties in Washington were not prepared to come to my aid pursuant to my grand jury testimony, that it would be entirely possible that certain details of a certain meeting occurring in September of the year [Sept., 1985] before might be leaked out to the press.
Jeb asked me what I was talking about.
I specifically mentioned a September meeting of the Dade County Latin America Chamber of Commerce, which Jeb chaired, and which, of course, was not used as a Chamber of Commerce meeting at all. It was essentially used as a political meeting for covert operational planning pursuant to Iran-Contra.
As I've said before, Oliver North, Richard Secord or Dewey Clarridge or, in a few cases, even Sam Watson and Fred Ikley himself, would show up at these meetings.
Anyway, I had recounted to Jeb, as if he didn't know what the text of that meeting was that he chaired - the conversations he had with Oliver North and Richard Secord and Dewey Clarridge, all of whom attended that meeting.
Dewey seldom attended the meetings, but this time the four of them were discussing the assassination of Barry Seal and how it was to be carried out, since Barry was becoming an increasing liability.
I had told Jeb that I had substantial corroboration of that meeting. And I think Jeb understood what I meant.
It would certainly place him into a conspiracy to assassinate a CIA drug runner for the sake of political expediency.
When I was through speaking, Jeb became quiet and his demeanor became serious and changed. He became flushed, as he often does when he's frightened.
Jeb responded by telling me that it would be most unfortunate if I were to do that, since I might wind up like George Morales or Johnny Molina.
[ Al Martin, "The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran-Contra Insider," p. 194-195]
JEB BUSH AND THE MURDERS OF GEORGE MORALES AND JOHNNY MOLINA
[ Al Martin, "The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran-Contra Insider," p. 195-198 ]
What he was referring to, of course, was that, a number of months earlier, George Morales had been set up on a cocaine charge – to distance what Morales was doing from the CIA.
As any serious student of Iran-Contra would know, Morales absolutely screamed “CIA, CIA.”
But ultimately he was convicted.
He was bound and gagged in the courtroom before the Republican Judge Hoover, who allowed him to present no CIA defense. He couldn’t mention any Bush names, or North, or Secord, or anything.
He got the standard fifteen-year sentence for cocaine trafficking. At the time, in the State of Florida, you had to serve six years nine months mandatory.
Jeb then went on to mention to me about Morales. He said “Of course, Morales will never leave prison alive.”
Fast forward to the time when Morales was due to be released from prison in early 1992.
The day before Morales was to be released, he did, in fact, slip on a bar of soap in the prisoner’s shower and supposedly died as a result of the fall.
The following day, Morales was due to be picked up at the Miami International Airport by a Congressional charter flight arranged for him by Congressmen Alexander, Rose, Brooks and Gonzalez. He was to be taken to Washington to have a detailed discussion with them and their investigators about his knowledge of Iran-Contra.
At that moment, the threat Jeb was making to me – the sublime threat about not wanting to wind up like Johnny Molina – really didn’t mean anything to me because I knew as of the day before that Molina was still alive and well.
I didn’t think anything of it until the next day when I got into my office and opened the Miami Herald.
I read that Mr. Molina had in fact “committed suicide” that evening in the parking lot of a restaurant in Pensacola, Florida.
He had “committed suicide” by discharging an entire twenty-round clip of a MAC-10 into his own body.
Of course, by the following day, the body had quickly been cremated – before his family was notified and before an autopsy could be done.
It’s the same old story.
It was interesting to note that Jeb had issued that threat at that meeting which was held at about 10:30 a.m.
Molina “committed suicide” at about 9:30 p.m. that evening.
I found the connection rather humorous, but also salient in that Bush knew what was going to happen a number of hours before it actually did.
A second interesting and humorous story I can relate from that September meeting was not only the discussion of Barry Seal, but the general discussion of narcotics, wherein Jeb was talking to Oliver North.
Dewey Clarridge and Joe Fernandez were there and Jeb was whining about how they were importing so much cocaine for the purposes of maintaining illicit covert revenue streams that, in fact, they were depressing the street value of the price of cocaine.
Revenues were in fact diminishing.
And North chuckled, and said that he had already made arrangements, that he, Dewey, Fred Ikley and Clair George had made arrangements.
What they were referring to by “arrangements” was the opening of the so-called sea routes to substantially increase the amount of cocaine that was being imported.
Jeb Bush said to Oliver North, “All you would manage to do is to further the price of cocaine.”
North’s attitude was, “Well, we’ll simply bring in more and more of the stuff to maintain revenues.”
As it has been pointed out in the past, CIA-assisted enterprise narcotics trafficking managed to depress the street price of a value of cocaine from $30,000 in early 1985 to $12,000 by mid-1986.
Later in the conversation, Jeb, wanting to be helpful, threw out a suggestion regarding the separate Guns-For-Drugs Operation being run out of Mena Airport in Arkansas.
He suggested that North start changing the fraction vis-à-vis the Contras.
Instead of one M-16 rifle, 1,000 rounds of ammunition, and the full field kit in exchange for one kilogram of cocaine, Bush suggested that North inform Enrico Bermudez and Eden Pastora that henceforth it was going to be two kilograms of cocaine for the same weapons delivery as it had been in the past.
North rebuffed this suggestion, reminding Bush that the one M-16 rifle, ammunition and field kit cost them a total of a $1,000 net delivered and the value of the kilogram of cocaine was still $17,000 or $18,000.
The third and final salient highlight I’d like to point out about that meeting (which was an important and pivotal meeting) is that General Secord had mentioned to Jeb Bush – and I was standing not two feet from him – that some of Jeb’s hangers-on (some of the old Cuban Bay of Pigs crowd that were Jeb Bush hangers-on vis-à-vis Jeb wearing his hat as a scamscateer and a money launderer) were beginning to have big mouths.
And Jeb asked, “Who?”
Secord specifically said it was the infamous Manny Perez, who was a very close ally of Jeb’s and had been for a long time. Perez used to act as a straw at various fraudulent deals for Jeb. He transported cash. He wired money into accounts he controlled through a variety of other straws. He was also very close with Jeb at Eagle National Bank in Miami.
Jeb asked General Secord what he, Jeb Bush, was supposed to do about it.
And Dick Secord said, “Well, your father controls your show and he’s got to clean up his own mess.”
History records it wasn’t long after an article appeared in a certain major newspaper about Manny Perez.
Evidently Manny’s body was found floating in a canal in West Hialeah, and his death was duly declared a “swimming accident.”
Perhaps the reader can better understand the phone call I received the day after the November 1998 elections when Jeb Bush won the governorship of the State of Florida.
On that very same evening, I got a phone call from Neil Lewis in Miami, an attorney who had previously represented both Jeb and me, and who had acted as a conduit for people like me to Jeb and Dick Secord and a variety of others.
Neil told me that he had a direct message from Jeb stating that if I wished to continue to be a resident of this state and to remain at large and with life that I best not reveal stories such as I have revealed here.
When Neil relayed the threat to me that evening, I told Neil that when he talked to Jeb the following day (which I knew he would because he wanted to know what my response would be) to tell Jeb that I was aware that my former close colleague, Larry Hamil, prior to the November 1998 elections, had been involved in a political campaign money laundering scheme, wherein Mr. Hamil laundered certain monies of Chinese origin to certain Republicans (not Democrats, but Republican candidates) including the gubernatorial campaign of Jeb Bush.
Neil laughed and said, “Are you certain you want me to relay that?”
I said, “Yes,” and I didn’t talk to Neil after that.
I can only presume Neil did, in fact, relay that message because the next morning when I got out of bed, I was greeted by a view (outside of my bay windows) of two unmarked cars parked directly in front of my townhouse. They were of the sinister variety I’m used to – dark Chevy Caprices, darkened windows, black-wall tires, four or five aerials coming out of the back of them, Washington D.C. plates.
There was enough sunlight that I could see two men sitting in each vehicle.
And that’s all they did.
They simply sat there and looked directly at my unit. They stayed for a few hours in that position and then drove off.
I had one of my neighbors record the D.C. plates on the car and upon checking them out later in the day, I was informed that no such plates existed.
But nonetheless, the message was sent.
[ Al Martin, "The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran-Contra Insider," p. 195-198 ]
**Oliver North speaking to Jeb Bush and Dewey Clarridge in the 1980's: "Well, we haven't decided how we will rule his demise yet - whether it will be accident, natural causes, or suicide:"**
[Al Martin, The Conspirators: Confessions of an Iran-Contra Insider, p.201]
"As I am a middle-aged man, I have worked or been involved in illegal covert operation of government all my adult life.
How many others in my age group can say they have personally known in their adult lifetimes almost 400 people who have died under clouded circumstances?
The common thread among the deaths of these 400 people was not anything they did - but what they knew.
I wonder how many others can make the same comment about their lives.
It's an indication of the type of life I've led.
Even what I have revealed thus far - it isn't a tenth of what I know. And it is such a task. That's the type of life I've led and what I know. I hope that the flavor of this comes out of what has happened to my friends, those I've known, who became inconvenient to their superiors and who died to maintain the deniability of others.
The egregious nature of the conspiracy surrounding their death goes to a level that is virtually humorous.
When Jeb Bush, Oliver North and Dewey Clarridge once spoke about an individual, North laughed and said, "Well, we haven't decided how we will rule his demise yet - whether it will be accident, natural causes, or suicide.""
[ Al Martin, "The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran-Contra Insider," p. 201]
CIA OPERATIVE CHIP TATUM, WHO WORKED CLOSELY WITH OLIVER NORTH IN THE 1980'S, SAYS OLIVER NORTH SAID GHW BUSH & JEB BUSH WERE GOING TO "ARRANGE SOMETHING OUT OF COLUMBIA" TO TAKE CARE OF BARRY SEAL
Google "Chip Tatum Pegasus" and you will learn a lot about CIA drug smuggling and assassinations.
Mr. North stated the following to the other passengers, "One more year of this and we'll all retire." He then made a remark concerning Barry Seal and Governor Clinton. "If we can keep those Arkansas hicks in line, that is," referring to the loss of monies as determined the week prior during their meeting in Costa Rica. I stood silently by the vat of leaves, listening to the conversation. General Alverez had gone with the Contra leader to discuss logistics. The other three - North, Rodriguez, and Ami Nir - continued through the wooden building, inspecting the cocaine. North continued, "...but he (Vice President Bush) is very concerned about those missing monies. I think he's going to have Jeb (Bush) arrange something out of Columbia," he told his comrades, not thinking twice of my presence. What Mr. North was referring to ended up being the assassination of Barry Seal by members of the Medellin Cartel in early 1986.
FORMER DEA AGENT CELE CASTILLO ON GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH AND HIS PARTICIPATION IN CONTRAS DRUG SMUGGLING:
"Powerburns: Cocaine, Contras & the Drug War" by Celerino Castillo (1998)
"The end of my career with the DEA took place in El Salvador. One day, I received a cable from a fellow agent, saying to investigate possible drug smuggling by Nicaraguan Contras operating from the Ilopango Air Force Base.
"I quickly discovered that the Contra pilots were, indeed, smuggling narcotics back into the United States - using the same pilots, planes and hangers that the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council, under the direction of Lt. Col. Oliver North, used to maintain their covert supply operation to the Contras."
Instead of playing along with the criminals inside government profiting from cocaine trafficking, Castillo attempted to seek justice, naming many high-level officials along the way, including North and former President George H.W Bush.
In fact, after Castillo blew the whistle, Bush made a point to seek out Castillo during one of his South of the border visits, in essence trying to "feel out" Castillo, but at the same time careful not to make any incriminating statement.
"When Bush confronted me and then just walked away after I told him some of the evidence I had, it was obvious he knew what was going on and was involved in the illegal drug trade," said Castillo.
And when Castillo's allegations first went public, he was the first government DEA agent with first-hand knowledge of North's drug dealing sanctioned by Bush and other higher-ups.
CELE CASTILLO FROM HIS BOOK "POWERBURNS" ON GHW BUSH:
On January 14 [1986], Vice President George Bush visited Guatemala City to put the U.S. stamp of approval on Cerezo’s inauguration. I met Bush at the obligatory cocktail party at the ambassador’s residence. Embassy personnel and Guatemalan dignitaries elbowed through the crowd, jockeying for floor space near the Vice President. I was standing alone, watching the steel-faced secret service agents watching everyone else, when Bush approached. He read the tag on my lapel identifying me as a member of the U.S. embassy, and asked what I did. As he shook my hand, someone snapped a photo. I told him I was a DEA agent assigned to Guatemala. He said, “Well, what do you do?” I knew it wasn’t wise to bring up the Contras – this man was part of the Administration, and Reagan had even declared himself to be a Contra.
I just blurted it out. “There’s some funny things going on with the Contras in El Salvador.”
Bush didn’t reply. He simply smiled and walked away, seeking another hand to shake. After that exchange, I knew that he knew.”
[Celerino Castillo & Dave Harmon, Powderburns: Cocaine, Contras & the Drug War, p. 132]
FBI UNDERCOVER AGENT DARLENE NOVINGER ON THE INVOLVEMENT OF JEB BUSH AND VICE PRESIDENT GHW BUSH IN THE DRUG TRADE IN FLORIDA (1982). COCAINE DELIVERIES TO VP OFFICE; DRUG LORDS PROVIDING PROSTITUTES FOR JEB BUSH AND VP GHW BUSH.
[Rodney Stich, Drugging America: a Trojan Horse – FBI, CIA and Other Insiders Reveal Greatest Threat to America’s Men and Women From Government’s Fraudulent War-On-Drugs, pp. 425-426 ]
After testifying in Harrisburg, Darlene returned to her Florida assignment with the South Florida Drug Task Force. Because of her earlier associations with the Smatt brothers, who by now were reportedly major drug smugglers, the FBI suggested that Darlene renew her contacts with them. In December 1982 she called Raymond Smatt in Jamaica, who invited Darlene to his mansion, where she stayed for several weeks. Raymond then suggested that Darlene stay with another brother William, who had a mansion in Miami, where she stayed for several days before going back to Jamaica.
Claiming Vice President Involved in Drugs
During one of many conversations with William Smatt at his Jamaica mansion, William started talking about the corrupt nature of the American judicial system and the White House. In one instance he said, “Let’s take, for instance, the vice president and his son, referring to George Bush and his son, Jeb Bush.”
Darlene asked, “What about them, you mean George Bush and his son; which son?” Smatt responds, “Jeb.”
Darlene responded, “You mean, Jeb with the Miami Republican party?” “Yes,” he replied. Darlene started explaining what occurred:
I was in one of the drug lords mansions which I was trained to encounter and infiltrate. I was sitting on a couch and a conversation turned up that would lead to something that would change the rest of my life. I was sitting and talking about justice in the judicial system. Well, these people were not American citizens, but they had strong opinions about the American judicial system, and how it worked, and they wanted to express it to me. I’ll never forget this day. What came out was the following.
They proceeded to tell me how money is the way to justice. Without it, there is no chance. You’re living in a Disney World to believe otherwise. This is what I was told by them. They proceeded to tell me how they had to pay the Republican Party in Miami. At that time, Jeb Bush was the chairman of the Republican Party in Florida [editor’s note: Jeb was Dade County GOP chairman in the early 1980’s]
They told me about the visits Vice President George Bush made to their mansion. The story that unfolded was incredible that I thought I had heard everything until this gentleman was done showing me correspondence. His office phone was ringing at this time. Lo and behold, it was the Miami Republican Party calling. He was screaming at them because he said, “I just gave you a couple hundred-thousand dollars and I want this done!”
Darlene explained how Smatt told her about providing pharmaceutical-grade drugs to aircraft arriving from Washington, DC, which were then flown back to Washington and delivered by courier to the Bush White House. [editor’s note: Office of the Vice Presidency] Smatt told Darlene of the money that he provided to the head of the Republican Party in Florida, and the relationship he had with Florida politicians. He was complaining that they kept asking him for more money. Darlene explained:
I asked him why he continued to do business with them if he didn’t like them. He said it was very simple. His contributions were going to the vice president and his sons’ interests because he was going to be appointed roving ambassador in the
Caribbean. Meaning something called the Caribbean Basin initiative, which was to their benefit to get passed because they would make a lot of money, on top of everything else.
He proceeded to tell me how he and his family, particularly he, furnished prostitutes to Jeb Bush and George Bush when they were in Miami, Florida, and of the use of cocaine by these individuals and George Bush’s staff in Washington, D.C. He proceeded to also tell me about flying pharmaceutical grade cocaine, and how the currier delivered it to the vice president’s office in Washington, D.C.
Darlene continued to explain what was said:
At that point I was sitting there with absolutely nothing to say other than, I could not believe it. I then sort of regrouped and said, “How do I know that what you’re saying is true? That just seems so incredible.”
Darlene explained William Smatt opening his desk drawer and “showing me personal correspondence from the vice-president , his son, photographs, and checks. I had no reason to believe that this man who I had known for years made this up.”
At another time, while staying at Raymond Smatt’s Miami mansion, Raymond said that Vice President George Bush and Jeb Bush had used cocaine at his Miami home.
[Rodney Stich, Drugging America: a Trojan Horse – FBI, CIA and Other Insiders Reveal Greatest Threat to America’s Men and Women From Government’s Fraudulent War-On-Drugs, pp. 425-426 ]
Darlene Novinger and her 1982 Report to the FBI Office in Harrisburg:
Darlene said that after she submitted her report in December 1982, an investigation was commenced. Darlene said that in January 1983, newspapers reported that Vice President George Bush’s entire staff on the South Florida Drug Task Force was replaced. She assumed this was due to her report. She also remembered a Washington Post article in January 1983 that stated many members of the South Florida Task Force were using drugs…
[Rodney Stich, Drugging America: a Trojan Horse – FBI, CIA and Other Insiders Reveal Greatest Threat to America’s Men and Women From Government’s Fraudulent War-On-Drugs, pp. 427]
Darlene Novinger was Set Up to be Murdered by Drug Traffickers by Justice Department personnel who intentionally blew her cover, revealing she was an informant. Someone in government wanted Darlene dead. She survived.
Darlene returned to her assignment in Florida and found herself being set up by someone in the Miami U.S. attorney’s office to be killed. She explained that while staying at the Raymond Smatt mansion in Jamaica, and while talking to Raymond, the phone rings. It was a call from his brother, William Smatt in Miami, who stated that his contact in the Miami U.S. attorney’s office found out that Darlene was an FBI informant. Darlene explained:
That particular office, the Miami U.S. attorney’s office, almost cost me my life. I was at the mansion of a major drug lord in Jamaica, and a phone call was made when I was in the living room of their house. I could hear part of the conversation and they were talking about me. I could hear Raymond acting, “The FBI in Miami said who was working for them?” They were talking about me!
I felt trapped. There I was in his home, on an island, trapped, and I’m hearing this man get this call, and I thought, “I’m going to die.” I really did. I thought, whew, it was a close one, I’ll tell you. And he kept looking at me and he was a little grumpy. I said, “The next thing you know, they’ll have me working for the CIA.”
Eventually he lightened up, and I talked my way out of that one. Later, I found out that that gentleman was very heavily involved and he was not playing on the up and up….
Apparently, whoever told William Smatt that Darlene was an FBI undercover agent knew that Darlene was staying in Jamaica at the Raymond Smatt residence, and wanted Darlene killed. That would solve the problem with the report on Vice President George Bush and his son, Jeb.
[Rodney Stich, Drugging America: a Trojan Horse – FBI, CIA and Other Insiders Reveal Greatest Threat to America’s Men and Women From Government’s Fraudulent War-On-Drugs, pp. 428-429]
BO GRITZ LETTER TO VP GHW BUSH IN 1988 AND REGARDING US GOVERNMENT HEROIN SMUGGLING:
Web link: http://www.serendipity.li/cia/gritz1.htm
Bo Gritz Letter to George Bush
1 February 1988, Sandy Valley, NV
Honorable George Bush, Vice President, United States of America, Washington, D.C.
Sir:
Why does it seem that you are saying "YES" to illegal narcotics in America?
I turned over video tapes to your NSC staff assistant, Tom Harvey, January 1987, wherein General KHUN SA, overlord of Asia's "Golden Triangle", offered to stop 900 tons of heroin/opium from entering the free world in 1987. Harvey told me, "...there is no interest here in doing that." General Khun Sa also offered to identify U.S. Government officials who, he says, have been trafficking in heroin for more than 20 years.
November 1986, Scott Weekly and I went into Burma in coordination and cooperation with The White House. Tom Harvey told me you received a letter from Arthur Suchesk, Orange County, CA, dated 29 August 1986. Dr. Suchesk said that Gen Khun Sa had access to U.S. POWs. Harvey said the letter had received "highest attention". He gave me a copy along with other case documents. I was asked if it was possible to verify the information. According to Harvey, the CIA said Khun Sa had been assassinated some months before. Harvey supplied Scott and myself with language under White House and NSC letterhead that would help us gain access to Khun Sa. It worked. Unfortunately, Khun Sa knew nothing about US POWs. He did, however, offer to trade his nation's poppy dependence for a legitimate economy.
Instead of receiving an "Atta Boy" for bringing back video tape showing Khun Sa`s offer to stop 900 tons of illegal narcotics and expose dirty USG officials, Scott was jailed and I was threatened. I was told that if I didn't "erase and forget" all that we had discovered, I would, "hurt the government". Further, I was promised a prison sentence of "15 years".
I returned to Burma with two other American witnesses, Lance Trimmer, a private detective from San Francisco, and Barry Flynn from Boston. Gen Khun Sa identified some of those in government service he says were dealing in heroin and arms sales. We video taped this second interview and I turned copies over in June 1987, to the Chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence; Chairman of the House on Foreign Affairs Task Force on Narcotics Control; Co-Chairman, Senate Narcotics Committee; Senator Harry Reid, NV; Representative James Bilbray, NV; and other Congressional members. Mister Richard Armitage, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, is one of those USG officials implicated by Khun Sa. Nothing was done with this evidence that indicated that anyone of authority, including yourself, had intended to do anything more than protect Mr. Armitage. I was charged with "Misuse of Passport". Seems that it is alright for Oliver North and Robert MacFarlane to go into Iran on Irish Passports to negotiate an illegal arms deal that neither you nor anyone else admits condoning, but I can't use a passport that brings back drug information against your friends.
Lance Trimmer and I submitted a "Citizen Complaint of Wrongdoing by Federal Officers" to Attorney General Edwin Meese, III on 17 September 1987. Continuous private and Legislative inquiries to date indicate that the Attorney General's Office has "lost" the document. Congressional requests to the Government Accounting Office have resulted in additional government snares and stalls.
January 20, 1988, I talked before your Breakfast Club in Houston, Texas. A distinguished group of approximately 125 associates of yours, including the Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court, expressed assurance that you are a righteous man. Almost all of them raised their hand when I asked how many of them know you personally. If you are a man with good intent, I pray you will do more than respond to this letter. I ask that you seriously look into the possibility that political appointees close to you are guilty of by passing our Constitutional process, and for purposes of promoting illegal covert operations, conspired in the trafficking of narcotics and arms.
Please answer why a respected American Citizen like Mister H. Ross Perot can bring you a pile of evidence of wrongdoing by Armitage and others, and you, according to TIME magazine (May 4, page 18), not only offer him no support, but have your Secretary of Defense, Frank Carlucci tell Mr. Perot to "stop pursuing Mr. Armitage". Why Sir, will you not look into affidavits gathered by The Christic Institute (Washington, D.C.), which testify that Armitage not only trafficked in heroin, but did so under the guise of an officer charged with bringing home our POWs. If the charges are true, Armitage, who is still responsible for POW recovery as your Assistant Secretary of Defense ISA, has every reason not to want these heros returned to us alive. Clearly, follow on investigations would illuminate the collective crimes of Armitage and others.
Several years ago a secretary working for Armitage asked me "Why would he have us expunge his official record of all reference to past POW/MIA assignments and activities?" Not knowing, I ventured a guess that maybe he was considering running for public office and didn't feel the POW -Vietnam association would be a plus in his resume. It was about the same time a CIA agent named by Khun Sa turned up dead in Bangkok under "mysterious circumstances". Also about this time, as an agent of NSC's Intelligence Support Activity, I was told by ISA Chief Jerry King, "...there are still too many bureaucrats in Washington who don't want to see POWs returned alive". I failed to realize the fullness of his meaning, or these other events, until in May 1987, Gen Khun Sa, in his jungle headquarters, named Richard Armitage as a key connection in a ring of heroin trafficking mobsters and USG officials. A U.S. agent I have known for many years stopped by my home last month enroute to his next overseas assignment. He remarked that he had worked for those CIA chiefs named by Khun Sa, and that by his own personal knowledge, he knew what Khun Sa said was true. He was surprised it had taken so long to surface.
I am a registered Republican. I voted for you twice. I will not do so again. If you have any love or loyalty in your heart for this nation; if you have not completely sold out, then do something positive to determine the truth of these most serious allegations. You were Director of the CIA in 1975, during a time Khun Sa says Armitage and CIA officials were trafficking in heroin. As Director of Intelligence you were responsible to the American people for the activities of your assistant - even as you should know what some of these same people are doing who are close to you now as our Vice President because I feel these "parallel government" types will only be promoted by you, giving them more reason to bury our POWs.
I am enclosing some documentation that supports the charges made. Chief is a letter from Khun Sa to the U.S. Justice Department dated 28 June 1987, wherein Richard Armitage is named along with Theodore Shackley (your former Deputy Director CIA from Covert Operations) and others. Please also note William Stevenson's article, "Bank of Intrigue-Circles of Power". You, Armitage, and General Richard Secord are prominently mentioned. Stevenson, you might remember, authored A MAN CALLED INTREPID. Also Tom Fitzpatrick's article, "From Burma to Bush, a Heroin Highway", should interest you. Both of these men are prize winning journalists. The book, CRIMES of PATRIOTS, "A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA", by Jonathan Kwitny, reporter for the Wall Street Journal, details for you the bank connections that Khun Sa mentions. Finally, the basic primer that spells out exactly how this dope for covert operations gambit began, is Alfred McCoy's THE POLITICS OF HEROIN IN SOUTHEAST ASIA. All of these should be required reading for the man appointed chief cop by our President to safeguard America from illegal narcotics. These are just a sampling of many works now available that chronical disgraceful conduct by those sworn to protect and defend our Constitution.
Parting shot Mr. Vice President: On 28 January 1988, General Khun Sa tendered an offer to turn over to me one metric ton (2,200 pounds) of heroin. He says this is a good faith gesture to the American people that he is serious about stopping all drugs coming from the infamous Golden Triangle. I, you and Nancy Reagan are really serious about saying "NO" to drugs, why not test Gen Khun Sa? I challenge you to allow me in the company of agents of your choice to arrange to receive this token offer worth over $4 billion on the streets of New York City. It will represent the largest "legal" seizure of heroin on record. You can personally torch it, dump it in the ocean, or turn it into legal medication; as I understand there is a great shortage of legal opiates available to our doctors. I think Gen Khun Sa's offer is most interesting. If you say "YES" then the ever increasing flow of heroin from Southeast Asia (600-- tons-- '86, 900 tons-- '87, 1200-- tons'88) may dry up--not good for business in the parallel government and super CIA circles Oliver North mentioned. If you say "NO" to Khun Sa, you are showing colors not fit for a man who would be President.
What is your decision? I challenge you to demonstrate exactly where you stand with respect to big-business-drugs, parallel government, misuse of U.S. tax-payer dollars in foreign drug supression programs that don't work, no interest in dialogue that will stem the flow of illegal narcotics, return of POWs while they are still alive? I for one am not for a "USA, Inc." with you or anyone else as Chairman of the Board.
Respecting Your Office,
James "Bo" Gritz, Concerned American, Box 472 HCR-31Sandy Valley, NV 89019,
Bibliography on governmental and CIA drug smuggling and related criminal activities:
1) Powerburns: Cocaine, Contras & the Drug War by former DEA agent Celerino Castillo, III (2010)
2) Dark Alliance by Gary Webb (1999)
3) Barry and the Boys: the CIA, the Mob and America's Secret History by Daniel Hopsicker (2006, written in 2001, lawsuits delayed it for 5 years. Extremely important book.)
4) Whiteout by Alexander Cockburn (1999)
5) Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies and the CIA in Central America by Peter Dale Scott and
Jonathon Marshall (1998)
6) Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth’ by Robert Parry (1999)
7) The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran-Contra Insider by Al Martin (2000)The Big White Lie: The Deep Cover Operation That Exposed the CIA Sabotage of the Drug War: An Undercover Odyssey by Michael Levine and Laura Kavanau-Levine (2012)
9) The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade by Alfred W. McCoy (1972 and republished 2003)
10) Out of Control: The Story of the Reagan Administration’s Secret War in Nicaragua, the Illegal Arms Pipeline, and the Contra Drug Connection by Leslie Cockburn (1987)
11) Blue Thunder: How the Mafia Owned and Finally Murdered Cigarette Boat King Donald Aronov by Thomas Burdick and Charlene Mitchell (1990)
12) The Mafia, CIA, & George Bush by Pete Brewton (1992)
13) Called to Serve by James “Bo” Gritz (1991)
14) Crossfire: Witness in the Clinton Investigation by L.D. Brown (1997)
15) The Secret Life of Bill Clinton: The Unreported Stories by Ambrose Evans Pritchard (1
16) American Desperado: My Life - From Mafia Soldier to Cocaine Cowboy to Secret Government Asset by Jon Roberts & Evan Wright (2012)
17) Cocaine, Death Squads, and the War on Terror: U.S. Imperialism and Class Struggle in Colombia by Oliver Villar and Drew Cottle (2011)
18) The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA by Jonathan Kwitney (1987)
19) The Politics of Cocaine: How U.S. Foreign Policy Has Created a Thriving Drug Industry in Central and South America by William L. Marcy (2010)
20) How to Get Away with Murder in America: Drug Lords, Dirty Pols, Obsessed Cops, and the Quiet Man Who Became the CIA’s Master Killer by Evan Wright (2012)
21) Defrauding America: Encyclopedia of Secret Operations by the CIA, DEA, and other Covert Agencies (third edition) by Rodney Stich (1998)
22) Drugging America: A Trojan Horse (second edition) by Rodney Stich (2005)
23) The New Clinton Chronicles (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtNoLxvkKGY
24) Conspiracy – The Secret History: The Secret Heartbeat of America, the CIA and Drugs by Daniel Hopsicker (2004)
25) Kill the Messenger: How the CIA’s Crack-Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb by Nick Schou (2006)
26) Dope, Inc: The Book That Drove Henry Kissinger Crazy by Executive Intelligence Review (1992)
27) Disavow: A CIA Saga of Betrayal by Rodney Stich
28) Welcome to Terrorland: Mohamed Atta & the 9-11 Cover-Up in Florida by Daniel Hopsicker (2005)
29) Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy: A Study of the Asian Opium Trade 1750-1950 by Carl Trocki (1999)
30) The Boys on the Tracks: Death, Denial, and a Mother’s Crusade to Bring Her Son’s Killers to Justice by Mara Leveritt (1999)
31) The Strength of the Wolf: The Secret History of America’s War on Drugs by Douglas Valentine (2004)
32) The Strength of the Pack: The Personalities, Politics and Espionage Intrigues That Shaped the DEA by Douglas Valentine (2009)
Bibliography of Books about the Darker Side of the Bushes:
1) Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America by Russ Baker (2008)
2) The Immaculate Deception: Bush Crime Family Exposed by Russell S. Bowen (1991)
3) George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography by Webster Griffin Tarpley (2004)
4) Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President by J.H. Hatfield (2002)
5) Bushwhacked: Inside Stories of True Conspiracy by Uri Dowbenko (2003)
6) The Two Faces of George Bush by Anthony C. Sutton (1988)
7) American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush by Kevin Phillips
9) The Bush Junta: A Field Guide to Corruption in Government by Mack White & Gary Groth (2005)
10) October Surprise by Barbara Honegger (1989)
11) October Surprise by Gary Sick (1992)
12) Trick or Treason: The October Surprise by Robert Parry (1993)
13) The Complete and ExtraOrdinary History of the October Surprise by Brian Joseph (2009)
14) The October Surprise X-Files: The Hidden Origins of the Reagan-Bush Era by Robert Parry
15) Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential by James Moore and Wayne Slater (2004)
16) Jeb: America’s Next Bush by S.V. Date
Books by some of the perps in Iran-Contra who were running gargantuan amounts of drugs into the USA, committing financial crime, & murdering people to cover it up, etc. Somehow they forgot to put that in their books.
1) Under Fire: An American Story – Oliver L. North with William Novak (1992)
2) Honored and Betrayed: Irangate, Covert Affairs, and the Secret War in Laos by Richard Secord (1992)
3) Shadow Warrior: The CIA Hero of Hundred Unknown Battles by Felix I. Rodriguez (1989)
4) Spymaster: My Life in the CIA by Ted Shackley (2006)
5) A Spy for All Seasons: My Life in the CIA by Duane R. Clarridge
6) Hazardous Duty: An American Soldier in the Twentieth Century by John Singlaub (1992)
Question: If you truly have character, do you really have to have books written by and about you pertaining to “character” and “integrity?”
1) George Bush: Man of Integrity by Doug Wead (1988)
2) Profiles in Character by Jeb Bush and Brian Yablonski (1996)
Final note: Here is my blog on Jeb Bush and the murder of CIA drug smuggler Barry Seal in 1986: http://barrysealmurder1986jebbusholiver ... bsp;
A Jeb Bush presidency will be a pure war presidency, one that promises terror, more unspeakable than we are experiencing now, lording it over a world engulfed in holocaust.
by stillrobertpaulsen » Tue Jun 16, 2015 6:00 pm
Milwaukee serial killer Walter Ellis dies in South Dakota
By Meg Jones of the Journal Sentinel
Dec. 1, 2013
Walter E. Ellis, the serial killer serving several life sentences for the slayings of seven Milwaukee women over two decades, died Sunday.
Ellis, 53, was incarcerated at a South Dakota prison under an interstate agreement. He died of apparent natural causes at a Sioux Falls, S.D., hospital, according to a South Dakota prison official.
An autopsy will be conducted.
Ellis was arrested in 2009 after Milwaukee police said his DNA matched semen samples found on six homicide victims and a blood sample on a can of pepper spray discovered at the scene of the seventh slaying. The homicides occurred between 1986 and 2007. All seven victims were strangled. One also was stabbed.
His case exposed serious flaws in Wisconsin's process for collecting DNA from convicted felons. Ellis' DNA was missing from a state database even though he should have submitted a sample while serving time for beating a girlfriend with a hammer. Authorities said Ellis persuaded a fellow inmate to submit a DNA sample in his place.
Police later said that if a sample had been taken from Ellis at that time, they may have been able to track him down before the last slaying, in 2007.
Two men were convicted and later exonerated in slayings later linked to Ellis.
William Avery was convicted wrongfully in the 1998 slaying of Maryetta Griffin. Avery maintained his innocence but was convicted in 2005 and served six years before he was released when DNA tests were done on evidence recovered from the crime scene, which matched Ellis, who was later convicted of killing Griffin.
Another man, Chaunte Ott was convicted in 1996 for the murder of Jessica Payne, a 16-year-old South Milwaukee runaway. He served 13 years of a life sentence before he was freed, after his lawyers showed that DNA found on Payne matched that on two other women later determined to be Ellis' victims. Ellis was not charged in Payne's homicide.
In a third case later linked to Ellis, Curtis McCoy was charged and tried but acquitted in the 1994 murder of Carron D. Kilpatrick.
Ellis never explained why he killed seven women over 21 years. At his sentencing in February 2011 he remained silent after unexpectedly pleading no contest to seven counts of first-degree intentional homicide. He was sentenced to seven consecutive life terms.
Investigators arrested Ellis in 2009 after advances in technology linked DNA from several unsolved prostitute murders. Ellis emerged among a small group of suspects. Police got a sample of his DNA from a toothbrush, which matched evidence at the murder scenes, and he was arrested at a Franklin motel just 16 weeks after a task force was formed.
The South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation is investigating Ellis' death, which is standard procedure in the death of an inmate.
by brekin » Tue Jun 16, 2015 7:31 pm
It really is stunning that Jeb Bush with such epic Iran-Contra liability could even be considered for president. It just shows the arrogance of these people who think that rules are for everyone else, but not for them. As someone said “Tyranny is defined as that which is legal for the government but illegal for the citizenry.”
Some examples might be gargantuan drug running, money laundering and murdering people to keep it all covered up. Below there is a lot of material relating to the 1986 murder of CIA drug smuggler Barry Seal as well as CIA/governmental drug smuggling in general. Be sure and check at the end of this article the bibliographies on CIA drug smuggling and one on the dark side of the Bushes.
by zangtang » Tue Jun 16, 2015 7:49 pm
by coffin_dodger » Tue Jun 16, 2015 7:50 pm
by stillrobertpaulsen » Tue Jun 16, 2015 8:08 pm
Jeb Bush seized flight school records at 2 AM on September 12.
Edited on Fri Apr-02-04 01:40 AM by Minstrel Boy
Why did Jeb Bush and federal agents seize records from Huffman Aviation - Florida flight school of Mohammed Atta, and other 9/11 hijackers - in the middle of the night following the attacks of September 11th and load them onto a C-130? And why did Jeb Bush know, hours after the attack, where to look?
"Whatever secrets Dekkers may possess about the terrorists, records from his flight school were deemed sensitive enough to have merited being escorted back to Washington by Florida Governor Jeb Bush aboard a C-130 cargo plane, which left Sarasota less than 24 hours after the September 11 attack."
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0212/S00058.htm
Valentine:
The federal authorities came in and grabbed up all of the records of the flight school.
Hopsicker:
That’s right. They flew them out on a plane that also had Jeb Bush aboard.
Valentine:
The federal authorities told the local law enforcement authorities to keep their noses out of the investigation, didn’t they?
Hopsicker:
That’s correct. I sat down with two Southern lawmen, a current sheriff and his immediate predecessor. These two guys looked me dead in the eye and said that, based on what they have seen with a lot of CIA-connected covert operations in the area, the CIA was somehow involved in, if not responsible for, the World Trade Center attacks. You might expect some wild-eyed leftist radical to say that. But these are two Southern sheriffs. They have spent years watching CIA activities that they could not interfere with.
http://www.libertyforum.org/showflat.ph ... oard=new...
And what are the linkages between the flight school and its Republican owner, Wally Hilliard, to US covert agencies and the covert drug trade?
"A Learjet belonging to the true owner of the Venice flight school that trained both terrorist pilots who flew into the World Trade Center was seized with more than 30 pounds of heroin onboard by Federal Agents in July of 2000 at the Orlando Executive Airport."
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/archive/sc ... ies/92/e...
What's the largely unexplored connection between Atta, the CIA, al Qaeda and drugs?
From Sander Hicks:
...what makes Ben-Veniste such an intriguing player on the 9/11 Commission (The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States) is his experience with rogue drug-running CIA operatives. Ben-Veniste defended Barry Seal, the notorious smuggler who flew C-123 military cargo planes filled with cocaine into Mena, Arkansas on behalf of the contras.
Al Qaeda's lead 9/11 hijacker, Mohamed Atta, was allegedly partying with CIA-connected pilots while he got his flight training in fall/winter 2000 at Huffman Aviation in Venice, Fla., where two of the other 9/11 hijacker pilots trained. Atta wasn't acting much like a holy martyr: He wore jeans and sneakers, played video games, bought himself a red Pontiac and was said to be a hedonist. The Press posed the question to Ben-Veniste: If Atta belonged to the fundamentalist Muslim group, why was he snorting cocaine and frequenting strip bars?
"You know," said Ben-Veniste, as he smiled a little. "That's a heck of a question."
http://www.911citizenswatch.org/print.php?sid=82
And Daniel Hopsicker:
FBI agents harassed and intimidated witnesses to the 9/11 terrorist conspiracy’s activities in Florida, issuing warnings to avoid talking with reporters, say current and former residents in Venice, Florida. At least one eyewitness, who knew Mohamed Atta because he lived next door for a time, received regular visits for over six months after the attack from FBI agents eager to ensure she continued to remain silent. Several said they felt unfairly singled out because what they saw and heard is at considerable variance with the official story of the terrorist cadre’s time in Florida.
An American girl named Amanda Keller, for example, briefly lived with Mohamed Atta in Venice, according to both local news reports and numerous eyewitnesses.
http://www.madcowprod.com/issue44.html
by seemslikeadream » Wed Jun 17, 2015 9:53 am
Jeb Bush: Fool Us Three Times, You Don't Get Fooled Again
In which Jeb (!) would like to run the family business.
BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
The heart is the Jeb (!) and Jeb (!) is the heart.
That was the theme of Monday's roll-out. Also, the corazon is the Jeb (!) and Jeb (!) is the corazon.
There was some serious bilingual humanizing going on in the extended run-up. We heard more about his efforts to curb domestic violence than we did about his work cutting taxes, and killing affirmative action, and the other more base-worthy moves from his days as governor. (Terri Schiavo's, another victim of Jeb (!)'s great heart, was not mentioned.) He left the Jesus stuff to his son, George P., who is upholding the family tradition of avoiding the private sector by glomming onto an elected position in Texas. I kept waiting for a short word from the grateful heirs of Orlando Bosch, the Cuban terrorist whom Poppy Bush sprang from the hoosegow at Jebbie's insistence.
According to the justice department in George Bush Sr's administration, Bosch had participated in more than 30 terrorist acts. He was convicted of firing a rocket into a Polish ship which was on passage to Cuba. He was also implicated in the 1976 blowing-up of a Cubana plane flying to Havana from Venezuela in which all 73 civilians on board were killed. CIA memorandums strongly suggest, according to Bardach's book, that Bosch was one of the conspirators, and quotes the then secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, as writing that the "US government had been planning to suggest Bosch's deportation before Cubana airlines crash took place for his suspected involvement in other terrorist acts and violation of his parole."
OK, past is past. Jeb (!) is not about the past. Not him. He's especially not about that thin slice of the past that occurred during the years 2001-2009, when somebody Jeb (!) once met briefly was president of the United States and everything went to shit. Because Jeb (!) grew up in a small shoebox in the middle of the road, and is not one of the "pampered elites."
(I have to admit that this was the point where I expected his pants to ignite.)
Honest to god, if you listened to the speech, which was written very well and delivered with the kind of smug WASP brio that so often eluded that chap who Jeb (!) bumped into back in the Aughts, you would believe that history began in January of 2009. He did make a little wink and a nod to the "first president I met on the day I was born, and the second one I met on the day I came home." But, beyond that, you'd have thought he was found in a basket in the bullrushes along the banks of the Kennebec River.
But his campaign is a fascinating walk across a couple of wires. The first one was strung across the Gorge Of Eternal Peril by his dim brother, whom he barely mentioned. On Monday, he began to show the beginnings of a strategy whereby he (and the $100 million shady dead presidents he's already enlisted in his campaign) will run as a self-identified underdog, just one of the folks running in the people's election.
And I know that there are good people running for president. Quite a few, in fact. And not a one of us deserves the job by right of resume, party, seniority, family, or family narrative. It's nobody's turn. It's everybody's test, and it's wide open – exactly as a contest for president should be.The outcome is entirely up to you – the voters. It is entirely up to me to earn the nomination of my party and then to take our case all across this great and diverse nation.
He might just be able to pull this off, given the wherewithal he has to peddle it, and especially if he runs hard over the next several months. It's already part of the campaign strategy to downplay any adverse result anywhere prior to March 6, 2016. Can he actually write off the first four major tests and still be considered a contender? Watch him.
The other wire he has to walk is thinner and more tremulous. As his announcement event demonstrated, Jeb (!) is still going to run as the guy who actually believes all that "compassionate conservatism" bunk with which Karl Rove programmed his brother who, as we know, was president back in an alternative universe that Jeb (!) never visited. He even briefly sided with some immigration-reform hecklers in the stands. The problem, of course, is that his party base is completely insane, particularly on that issue.
As a candidate, I intend to let everyone hear my message, including the many who can express their love of country in a different language: Ayúdenos en tener una campaña que les da la bienvenida. Trabajen con nosotros por los valores que compartimos y para un gran futuro que es nuestro para construir para nosotros y nuestros hijos. Júntense a nuestra causa de oportunidad para todos, a la causa de todos que aman la libertad y a la causa noble de los Estados Unidos de América.
And heads do detonate all over rural Iowa.
But, seriously, who among the leading Republican candidates is going to cut him up over this? Who's going to xeno-bait him in a debate? Certainly not Marco Rubio, and I doubt Scott Walker is dumb enough to try. Last time, it was Willard Romney who made poor Rick Perry pay for his tenderness toward the brown people, an act of sheer xenophobic bullying by a soulless hack. And that is the difference, and why Bush yet may make across both wires.
In 2012, Romney was the eye of Sauron, fixing itself on the destruction of individual opponents at its leisure, no matter how lavishly said opponents were financed by wizened old crackpots from the Nevada desert. This time, I fear, it's Jeb (!) who will be cast as the eye in the tower. There were enough nasty cracks in the speech -- Calling the president a "glorified tourist" for his Cuba initiative was a good one. Orlando Bosch smiled on his spit in hell -- to prove that Jeb (!) has the kind of mean streak beloved by the talk-radio crowd. Members of the Bush family learn to get what they want by savaging other people in the cradle. Jeb (!) has bred true on that score. Really, though. Somebody should fill him in on what happened in America in the first eight years of this century. A lot of stuff went on he probably should know about.
by Iamwhomiam » Wed Jun 17, 2015 2:13 pm
by seemslikeadream » Thu Jun 18, 2015 1:26 pm
Did Jeb Bush Help a Miami Hustler Defraud His Shareholders?
He was a marketing consultant for a Fla. company while it was the subject of a criminal investigation.
By Lou Dubose / The Washington Spectator June 16, 2015
The collapse of InnoVida Holdings LLC in 2011 didn’t get much traction in the media. Except in South Florida where a small group of investors lost more than $40 million on a scheme to market hurricane- and earthquake-resistant homes assembled from prefabricated plastic panels. The company CEO had promised a highly publicized roll-out in Haiti followed by expansion into more lucrative markets. Neither ever occurred.
Even in South Florida, the story had receded into endless litigation (with more than 1,000 pleadings filed in bankruptcy and civil proceedings). It resurfaced in The New York Times in April, because it involved former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who is emerging as the preferred 2016 presidential candidate among establishment Republicans who consider New Jersey Governor Chris Christie unelectable.
Bush was both a director on the corporate board and a marketing consultant for InnoVida Holdings LLC while it was the subject of a criminal investigation that sent its two top executives to jail.
The Times surveyed business dealings Bush pursued after leaving office in 2007. He had returned to the private sector with a modest net worth of $1.3 million, lagging behind his brothers. George W., for example, made $14 million on the sale of his partial ownership of the Texas Rangers while he was governor of Texas. Jeb, the Times reported, scrambled to make up for time lost while governor and had earned $3.2 million since leaving office.
There is much more to Jeb Bush’s role in the InnoVida scam, which wiped out every dime of shareholder wealth, than the Times reported. Bankruptcy documents, a lawsuit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, and filings in criminal and civil cases suggest an ethical blind spot that led Bush to ignore the fact that the book value and returns reported by InnoVida executives were impossible under any reasonable set of financial assumptions.
Corporate board directors have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders whose interest they represent. Bush endorsed a company that defrauded its shareholders and the government while failing to deliver its product to market.
“Corporate Ponzi scheme”
Before the indictment and bankruptcy, InnoVida was a quintessential South Florida story unfolding on the business and lifestyle pages of the Miami Herald. An extravagant and strikingly handsome South American CEO, arts patron, and political donor hosting A-List parties in a $12 million waterfront mansion on Star Island, a gated community on a man-made island in Biscayne Bay. The Venezuelan-born Gatsby had a $75,000 speedboat at the end of the dock. And a Maserati in the garage. He was also a major Democratic Party donor.
Claudio Osorio is now Inmate #01273-104 at the Miami Federal Detention Center. A bankruptcy trustee sold the property rights to his resilient plastic panels to a Brazilian company. Forensic accountants continue to search for funds in offshore banks. And investors are asking what became of $40-$50 million they staked on a company that promised turnkey prefabricated residential units assembled in one day.
Osorio, it turns out, was damaged goods long before Bush signed on. An unnamed Bush aide told the Times that he had done a background search on Osorio and found one bankruptcy but “nothing to suggest wrongdoing.”
Before the bankruptcy that the aide referred to, Osorio’s CHS Electronics was in federal court in Miami, defending itself against class-action suits by shareholders who claimed the company had engaged in securities fraud. Several of the shareholders’ suits were consolidated in 1999, and in 2001 a bankruptcy judge in Miami used proceeds from insurance policies that had been purchased by the company’s board of directors and officers to pay shareholders $11,750,000, according to court records.
Those records were available to anyone doing a background research and should have been a red flag regarding any Claudio Osorio business venture.
An attorney who would later sue Osorio told me that, “This is a small world down here,” and that it would almost require “willful ignorance” to miss the paper trail of litigation that led to Osorio’s corporate suite.
Offshore Alert’s financial database later published a report linking Osorio to potential criminal activities in Switzerland:
“Claudio Osorio Rodriguez et al. Application for the appointment to collect evidence for a criminal investigation in Switzerland into Claudio Eleazar Osorio Rodriguez, Marc Schurtz, John Metzger, William Ferrero and Andre Tinguely into alleged fraud and forgery regarding the bankruptcy of CHS Financial Suisse SA in May 2000.”
Seven years before he invited Bush to join InnoVida’s corporate board, Osorio was pursuing a $200-million loan in Switzerland with what was alleged to be a fraudulent application.
But the more critical story played out in federal courts in the Southern District of Florida, where plaintiffs claimed that Osorio submitted false financials based on forged documents and fake orders. And that CHS Electronics had reported near-impossible increases in profits—from $1.34 million to $4.7 billion in a four-year period. After attorneys for shareholders discovered widespread accounting irregularities, stock value evaporated and the company’s remaining assets were parceled out to creditors in bankruptcy court.
What happened at CHS foreshadowed what would happen at InnoVida. The same patterns and practices that resulted in the loss of all shareholder value at CHS would be repeated seven years later.
David Nunez, a Florida lawyer who represented several shareholders who together lost more than $5 million when InnoVida collapsed, said there was a lack of corporate due diligence.
“There’s nothing wrong with filing bankruptcy,” Nunez told me. “But if you had done your research, you would have learned that this guy [Osorio] took a multi-national company into bankruptcy after he took out a $200-million loan with forged papers. The Swiss government asked the U.S. Attorney’s office here in South Florida to assist in their probe, because they felt the loan was made under fraudulent terms. To me, that would be an indication that I should look deeper.”
Why didn’t Bush or someone on his staff look deeper? The former governor wasn’t a novice. He had been involved in commercial real estate in South Florida, was the director of a business-consulting firm and he was sitting on five other corporate boards. How did he end up on the board of directors of a corporate Ponzi scheme—or so InnoVida is described in the 21-count federal indictment of Osorio and his Chief Financial Officer Craig Toll.
According to the indictment, “newly collected investor money was being used to pay annual returns on interest payments promised to investors and to repay investors’ principal in order to create the false and fraudulent impression that InnoVida was successful and profitable.”
“An air of legitimacy”
Bush is not mentioned in the indictment that sent Osorio to prison for 12-and-a-half years. Nor is there any suggestion that he was culpable of criminal wrongdoing.
But a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit filed against InnoVida and Osorio in 2013 alleges that Bush was brought on “to add an air of legitimacy to InnoVida,” which “helped Osorio raise approximately $16.8 million from at least five investors.” More than half that money, according to the complaint, was used by Osorio to pay for private homes in Florida, Colorado and Switzerland.
The fraudulent financial statements detailed in the SEC complaint should have set off alarms for Jeb Bush and the other board members.
Osorio and his CFO created one financial statement showing that InnoVida had more than $35 million in cash and more than $100 million in equity, both of which were not true.
Osorio informed one prospective investor that InnoVida was valued at $50 million and another that it was valued at $250 million. Neither statement was true.
In March 2009, one financial statement listed “more than $35 million in cash and cash equivalents” while there was only $185,000 in company accounts.
InnoVida executives used fraudulent statements to lure investors who were solicited at board meetings. After one meeting, “an investor subsequently increased his investment and a potential investor made his initial investment based on the fraudulent financial statements.”
Cash value and equity, according to the SEC complaint, were adjusted as needed on paper to lure investors. During a September 2009 board meeting, for example, prospective investors were told the company was valued at $250 million, although InnoVida’s most recent evaluation in December 2008 was for $20 million.
“I saw their books,” Nunez said in a phone interview. “And I’ll put ‘books’ in quotes. Their books were forged. I took an accountant to look at them. When we saw their numbers, we knew that they were a crock of you-know-what.
“Now I can’t imagine someone who has been in government, in the public sector, then in the private sector, having performed any kind of due diligence and concluded that this company was legitimate.”
Nunez wouldn’t disclose the names of his clients. According to bankruptcy filings, two of his clients were NBA power forward Carlos Boozer and his former wife, Cindy, listed as unsecured creditors in bankruptcy proceedings while suing InnoVida for $6 million.
“My clients did not rely per se on board members having done their due diligence,” Nunez said. “Having said that, I can’t imagine anyone looking at the company and saying Governor Bush is on the board, General Wesley Clark is on the board and thinking this is anything but a seal of approval. This was an all-star cast of board members.”
Miami attorney Abbey Kaplan represented a client who invested $6.3 million in the company, then loaned Osorio $1.7 million, according to court records.
In 2011, Kaplan told the Miami Herald that Osorio used his board members to attract his client. “Osorio used his apparent wealth, connections and success story to lure him in. A who’s-who was listed as his board of directors: Wesley Clark, Jeb Bush [Miami condo developer] Jorge Perez.”
In a telephone interview, Kaplan told me his client’s claim was stayed when InnoVida went into bankruptcy. “Unsecured creditors are the last to get paid,” Kaplan said.
(Among the list of unsecured clients in the Chapter 11 filings was the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, a federally-backed agency that lost $3 million, the first installment of a $10-million loan to InnoVida.)
Bush repaid $270,000 of $468,901 he had earned as a consultant between 2007 and 2010. He stipulated in court documents that he was voluntarily surrendering the funds to the court and had not been compelled to repay them.
The discovery process in shareholders’ suits filed against Osorio and InnoVida ended when bankruptcy proceedings began, so Bush’s compensation as a board member was never revealed to shareholders or other creditors. Nor do documents explain why Bush repaid less than half the money he received from InnoVida.
As the company was never profitable and constantly solicited new investors, all of its money was investors’ money.
A front-row seat
A spokesperson for Bush did not respond by deadline to emails or phone calls regarding InnoVida. But as Bush begins to eclipse Chris Christie as the moderate Republican alternative in the 2016 race, questions will persist.
Was the former governor of Florida in the room when Claudio Osorio wildly overstated the value of the company to secure millions from an investor who lost everything? Did it occur to Bush to inquire about a multimillion-dollar investor from a Middle East sovereign-wealth fund who never existed? Did Bush ask how company value increased from $20 million to $250 million in nine months in 2009?
Perhaps his staff bungled what should have been a simple background check on Claudio Osorio, thus missing his first shakedown of investors. But according to documents on file in state and federal courtrooms in Florida, what happened the second time around, in InnoVida’s corporate board room, put two men in jail and destroyed tens of millions of dollars in shareholder wealth.
And Jeb Bush either had a front-row seat to a corporate scam or he ignored his duty to the shareholders he represented on a corporate board.
by seemslikeadream » Fri Jun 19, 2015 10:02 am
WEEKEND EDITION JUNE 19-21, 2015
How Uncle Bucky Made a Killing
It’s a (Bush) Family Affair
by JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
Back in 1991, shortly after the depleted uranium-flaked dust had settled some from the first Gulf War, there was a minor tempest in the press over influence peddling by members of the President George H. W. Bush’s family, including his son Neil and his brother Prescott, Jr. Both Neil and Prescott, neither of whom had proven to be exceptionally talented businessmen, had made millions by flagrantly trading on their relationship to the president.
Seeking to distinguish himself from his more predatory relatives, William Henry Trotter Bush, the younger brother of Bush Sr. and an investment banker in St. Louis, gave an interview to disclaim any profiteering on his own part. Indeed, he sounded downright grumpy, as if his older brother hadn’t done enough to steer juicy government deals his way. “Being the brother of George Bush isn’t a financial windfall by any stretch of the imagination,” huffed William H.T. Bush.
Well, perhaps being the brother of the president didn’t generate as much business as he hoped, but having the good fortune to be the uncle of the president certainly appears to have padded the pockets of the man endearingly known to George W. Bush as “Uncle Bucky.”
A few months before his selection as president, Bush’s Uncle Bucky quietly joined the board of a small and struggling St. Louis defense company called Engineered Support Systems, Incorporated (ESSI). Since Bush joined the team, ESSI’s fortunes have taken a dramatic turn for the better. This once obscure outfit soon became one of the top Pentagon contractors. By 2006 its revenues topped $1 billion, nearly all of it derived from defense contracts with the Pentagon or with foreign militaries financed by US aid and loan guarantees. Even sweeter, most of these contracts were awarded in no bid, sole source deals.
True to form, Uncle Bucky claimed that ESSI’s amazing transformation had nothing to do with him or his nephew, the president. “I don’t make any calls to the 202 (DC) Area Code,” Bush sneered to the Los Angeles Times.
Uncle Bucky’s characteristic modesty was swiftly undercut by statements made by top executives at grandtheftESSI, who seemed proud that their foresight in inviting Bush on board had paid off so handsomely for all concerned. “Having a Bush certainly doesn’t hurt,” chuckled Dan Kreher, ESSI’s vice president for industrial relations.
Uncle Bucky Bush is 16 years younger than his brother, the former president. According to Kitty Kelley’s gripping history of the Bush clan The Family, Bucky was raised “almost as an only child” by his aging parents Dorothy and Prescott Bush, the senator who traded with the Nazis. Bucky was a sensitive and precocious kid with a peculiar devotion to choral music. In fact, the highlight of his career at Yale University was his starring spot with Whiffenpoofs, an elite choir.
While his older brother headed to Texas to make his name in the oil patch, Bucky returned to St. Louis, the Gateway City where the original Bush fortune had been built. He settled into a modest career as an investment banker and corporate consultant. Then, with his nephew poised to seize the White House, Uncle Bucky was offered a seat on the board of ESSI, a military support and defense electronics firm. ESSI’s company prospectus described it as “a diversified supplier of high-tech, integrated military electronics, support equipment and logistics services for all branches of America’s armed forces and certain foreign militaries.”
Shortly after the attacks of 9/11, ESSI positioned itself to win a series of lucrative Pentagon contracts that would catapult the diminutive firm into the top ranks of defense contractors. Within a few brief months, the company’s shareholders were given the financial ride of their lives.
By the time of the Iraq war, ESSI was a brawny new player on the defense block. In the spring of 2003, ESSI acquired a military communications company called TAMSCO, whose prime activity was in developing military satellite terminals in the Gulf region and in US bases in Germany in anticipation of a US invasion of Iraq. After the ESSI buy-out, TAMSCO swiftly won contracts from both the Air Force and the Army for more than $90 million for the training of troops in the operation of the system and the installation of radar equipment in Kuwait.
Then Pentagon awarded ESSI a $49 million contract to remodel military trailers for use in Iraq.
In 2003, the Defense Department gave ESSI a huge deal to provide the Army with equipment to search for Iraq’s non-existent chemical and biological weapons. Part of this package included a $19 million contract to provide protective tents for US troops from chemical bombs. The tents didn’t arrive in Iraq until after it was evident to nearly everyone that the Iraqi military didn’t have access to such weapons. This didn’t stop the money from flowing into ESSI’s coffers and it didn’t stop ESSI’s executives from playing along in the grand charade. “The potential threat of our troops facing a chemical or biological attack during the current conflict in Iraq remains very real,” huffed Michael Shananan, the company’s former chairman.
As the invasion transformed into a military occupation of Iraq, ESSI continued to pluck off sweet deals. In late 2003, the Coalition Provisional Authority, whose contracts passed across the Pentagon desk of arch neocon Douglas Feith, awarded ESSI an $18 million deal to engineer a communications system for the CPA offices, barricaded inside Baghdad’s Green Zone.
Its executives openly clucked at the likelihood for protracted war. “The increasing likelihood for a prolonged military involvement in Southwest Asia by US forces well into 2006 has created a fertile environment for the type of support products and services we offer,” gloated Gerald L. Daniels, the company’s Chief Executive Officer. Rarely has corporate glee over the prospects of war profiteering been expressed so brazenly.
But Daniels had a point. Even as things began to go sour for the US in Iraq, ESSI stood to make lots of money. One of its biggest no-bid contracts came in 2004 in the wake of mounting causalities in light-armored vehicles hit by roadside bombs. ESSI won a deal to upgrade the armor of thousands of vehicles in or bound for Iraq. The company’s annual report for 2005 forecast that ESSI might make as much as $200 million from this bloody windfall alone.
As the flood of new contracts poured in, ESSI’s stock soared. In January of 2005, it reached its all-time high of $60.39 per share. A few days before the stock hit this lofty peak, Uncle Bucky quietly exercised his option to sell 8,438 shares of ESSI stock. He walked away from that transaction with at least $450,000. The stock sale occurred a few days after ESSI announced that the Pentagon had awarded it $77 million in new contracts for the Iraq war and a few days before word leaked to the press that the company was under investigation for its handling of older Pentagon contracts. The timing of the trade was perfect.
In a February 2005 filing with the Securities Exchange Commission, ESSI discreetly disclosed to its shareholders that the inspector general of Pentagon had launched an inquiry into a series of contracts awarded to the company in 2002 for work on the Air Force’s troubled automated cargo loading machine called the Tunner.
While the company’s chief financial officer dismissed the probe as “routine” and assured investors that it would have “no effect” on ESSI’s fortunes, the Pentagon held to a more restrained assessment of the potential liability. Michael Wynne, acting undersecretary of Defense, said he had referred ESSI contracts valued at $158 million to the Pentagon’s inspector general because the deals “appear to have anomalies in them.” Many of the contracts were awarded on a no-bid basis and much of the probe appears to focus on the role Pentagon insiders played in steering the contracts to ESSI.
Much of the thrust behind ESSI’s dramatic rise was been fueled by no-bid or source deals with the Pentagon. These no risk deals are part of a corporate strategy cooked up in part by none other than Uncle Bucky himself. In a profitable bit of self-dealing, ESSI hired its board member, Bucky Bush, as a consultant in 2002. Bush, who pulled in about $45,000 a year in director’s fees, was paid an additional $125,000 for his advice on ESSI’s buyout of other military contractors. The acquisition strategy outlined by Bush was to train the company’s appetite on the gobbling up of companies that held no-bid or sole source deals with the Pentagon.
In January of 2005, ESSI spent $37.6 million to buy a New York electronics testing firm called Prospective Computer Analysis, Inc. In defending the purchase to shareholders, executives at ESSI emphasized that the company held “a lot of source contracts.”
This was swiftly followed by ESSI’s acquisition of Spacelink, Inc, a Virginia-based defense company, for $150 million. Spacelink, which supplies parts for military satellites, was poised to cash in on the $80 billion missile defense bonanza.
ESSI isn’t the only defense-oriented company to acquire the services of Uncle Bucky. The banker from St. Louis was also retained as a trustee for the global investment firm Lord Abbott, one of the primary financial underwriters of Halliburton. Lord Abbott is both one of the top 10 shareholders in Dick Cheney’s former company, as well as one of its top mutual fund holders. It’s all in the family.
Uncle Bucky didn’t unload all of his ESSI stock. He held on 45,000 shares valued at more than $2.5 million, using the profits from the sale to purchase a vacation home in Florida near his other nephew nourishing presidential ambitions, Jeb Bush.
Who knows if the Bucky will finally stop there?
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