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The Best Enemies Money Can
Buy
From
Hitler To Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden – Insider Connections and the
Bush Family’s Partnership with Killers of
Americans
Brown
Brothers, Harriman - BNL- and the Carlyle
Group
By
Michael C.
Ruppert
[©
Copyright 2001. All Rights Reserved, Michael C. Ruppert and From The
Wilderness Publications,  http://www.copvcia.com/. May be
reprinted or distributed for non-profit purposes
only.]

FTW, Oct. 9, 2001 - Since
the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, major
media powerhouses and the increasingly influential alternative media alike
have begun to focus attention on Bush family connections and a long
history of arming and financing America’s attackers in the months and
years prior to the outbreak of war. Recent stories in the Wall Street
Journal (Sept. 27 & 28, 2001), ABC News (Oct. 1, 2001), as well as a
host of reports from so-called alternative news sources have begun to
focus attention on the Bush family’s profit-making role in creating and
arming our enemies.
The
following is a more comprehensive look at the documented history of these
relationships that will also open some new avenues of inquiry for the
press, Congress and the American people.
In
a world now filled with biowarfare agents, backpack nuclear devices, and
chemical weapons like Sarin gas -- where there are people in many
countries with reasons to oppose the United States -- the Bush
Administration is following predictable strategies in a way that redefines
the concept of brinksmanship. Human survival may depend upon the will and
the ability of both the Congress and the press to focus on these
relationships and to take appropriate action. Moreover – and I am not the
first to say this – if a national security priority is to seize the
financial assets of those who support terrorists, then perhaps we should
start right here at home.
---
Adolph Hitler
Meticulous research,
including U.S. government records from the era, along with contemporaneous
news stories from the New York Times and other papers is presented in the
1992 book entitled, “George Bush, The Unauthorized Biography” by Webster
G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin, Published by The Executive Intelligence
Review and located at  http://www.tarpley.net/bushb.htm.
The following is sourced entirely from Chapter II of this essential work.
[Note: Although FTW does not always agree with conclusions
reached by the Executive Intelligence Review, or its founder Lyndon La
Rouche, we have never found a single flaw in any of their factual
research. History is history, no matter who presents it. And this history
is essential to understanding our era.]
George W. Bush’s
grandfather, Prescott Bush, was the Managing Director of the investment
bank Brown Brothers, Harriman from the 1920s through the 1940s. It was
Brown Brothers, in conjunction with Averell Harriman, the Rockefeller
family, Standard Oil, the DuPonts, the Morgans and the Fords who served as
the principal funding arm in helping to finance Adolph Hitler’s rise to
power starting in 1923. This included direct funding for the SS and SA
channeled through a variety of German firms. Prescott Bush, through
associations with the Hamburg-Amerika Steamship line, Nazi banker Fritz
Thyssen (pronounced Tee-sen), Standard Oil of Germany, The German Steel
Trust (founded by Dillon Read founder, Clarence Dillon), and I.G. Farben,
used the Union Bank Corporation to funnel vast quantities of money to the
Nazis and to manage their American interests. The profits from those
investments came back to Bush allies on Wall Street. Thyssen is
universally regarded as having been Hitler’s private banker and ultimate
owner of the Union Bank Corporation.
Early support for
Hitler came from Prescott Bush through the Hamburg-Amerika Steamship line
-- also funded by Brown Bothers -- that funneled large sums of money and
weapons to Hitler’s storm troopers in the
1920s.
According to Tarpley
and Chaitkin, “In May 1933, just after the Hitler regime was
consolidated, an agreement was reached in Berlin for the coordination of
all Nazi commerce with the U.S.A. The Harriman International Company… was
to head a syndicate of 150 firms and individuals, to conduct all exports
from Hitler Germany to the United
States.”
Furthermore,
a 1942 U.S. government investigative report that surfaced during 1945
Senate hearings found that the Union Bank, with Prescott Bush on the
board, was an “interlocking concern” with the German Steel Trust that had
produced:
-       
50.8%
of Nazi Germany’s pig iron
-       
41.4%
of Nazi Germany’s universal plate
-       
36%
of Nazi Germany’s heavy plate
-       
38.5%
of Nazi Germany’s galvanized sheet
-       
45.5%
of Nazi Germany’s pipes and tubes
-       
22.1%
of Nazi Germany’s wire
-       
35%
of Nazi Germany’s explosives
The business
relationships established by Bush in 1923 continued even after the war
started until they became so offensive and overt as to warrant seizure by
the U.S. government under the Trading with the Enemy Act in 1942.

In 1942, “Under the
Trading with the Enemy Act, the government took over Union Banking
Corporation, in which Bush was a director. The U.S. Alien Property
Custodian seized Union Banking Corp.’s stock
shares…
“… all of which shares
are held for the benefit of… members of the Thyssen family, [and] is
property of nationals… of a designated enemy
country.”
“On October 28, the
government issued orders seizing two Nazi front organizations run by the
Bush-Harriman bank: the Holland-American Trading Corporation and the
Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation.”
“Nazi interests in the
Silesian-American Corporation, long managed by Prescott Bush and his
father in law George Herbert Walker, were seized under the Trading with
the Enemy Act on Nov. 17, 1942…” These seizures of
Bush businesses were reported in a number of American papers including The
New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Prescott Bush went on
to become an influential Republican Senator from Connecticut who went on
to be a regular golfing partner of President Dwight Eisenhower. His
attorneys were the lawyers John Foster and Allen Dulles, the later became
the CIA Director under Eisenhower.
Saddam
Hussein
After becoming
President in January 1989, Prescott Bush’s son, George Herbert Walker Bush
– father of our current President – authorized a series of programs that
not only armed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein but also provided him with
technology that assisted in his development of chemical weapons like Sarin
gas, and biological weapons, which he still possesses. Apologists for Bush
(the elder) say that, after the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s left the region
unstable, he was just trying to establish a new balance of power. Not so.
Bush directives and policies, including relationships with the Bank of
Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), and the Banca Nacional del
Lavoro (BNL) were directly and deliberately responsible for creating the
army the U.S. fought in 1991.
A story by Russ W.
Baker, in the March/April issue the Colombia Journalism Review (CJR),
provided the most compelling overview of Iraqgate that I have seen.

“ABC News Nightline
opened last June 9 with words to make the heart stop ‘It is becoming
increasingly clear,’ said a grave Ted Koppel, ‘that George Bush, operating
largely behind the scenes throughout the 1980s, initiated and supported
much of the financing, intelligence, and military help that built Saddam’s
Iraq into the aggressive power that the United States ultimately had to
destroy…
“Why, then, have some
of our top papers provided so little coverage?” Baker poignantly
asks.
“ The result: readers
who neither grasp nor care about the facts behind facile imagery like The
Butcher of Baghdad and Operation Desert Storm. In particular, readers who
do not follow the story of the Banca Nacional del Lavoro, which apparently
served as a paymaster for Saddam’s arms buildup, and thus became a player
in the largest bank-fraud case in U.S.
history.
“Complex, challenging,
mind-boggling stories (from Iran-Contra to the S&L crisis to BCCI)
increasingly define our times: yet we don’t appear to be getting any
better at telling them…
“Much of what Saddam
received from the West was not arms per se, but so-called dual-use
technology -- ultra sophisticated computers, armored ambulances,
helicopters, chemicals, and the like, with potential civilian uses as well
as military applications. We’ve learned that a vast network of companies,
based in the U.S. and abroad, eagerly fed the Iraqi war machine right up
until August 1990, when Saddam invaded
Kuwait.
“And we’ve learned
that the obscure Atlanta Branch of Italy’s largest bank, Banca Nacional
del Lavoro, relying partly on U.S. taxpayer-guaranteed loans, funneled $5
billion to Iraq from 1985 to 1989. Some government-backed loans were
supposed to be for agricultural purposes, but were used to facilitate the
purchase of stronger stuff than wheat. Federal Reserve and Agriculture
department memos warned of suspected abuses by Iraq, which apparently took
advantage of the loans to free up funds for munitions. U.S. taxpayers have
been left holding the bag for what looks like $2 billion in defaulted
loans to Iraq.
“… In fact, we now
know that in February 1990, then Attorney General Dick Thornburgh
[appointed by George H.W. Bush] blocked U.S. investigators from traveling
to Rome and Istanbul to pursue the case…
“… As New York Times
columnist William Safire argued last December 7, ‘Iraqgate is uniquely
horrendous: a scandal about the Systematic abuse of power by misguided
leaders of three democratic nations [The U.S., Britain, and Italy] to
secretly finance the arms buildup of a
dictator.”
While Democrat Henry
Gonzales, Chairman of the House Banking Committee during the period, stood
as the lone voice from the wilderness in raising alarms about Bush’s
obvious corruption, the rest of the Congress sheepishly ignored all the
signs demanding immediate action. Gonzales’ voice reportedly fell silent
after his empty car was machine-gunned in a Washington suburb in what
passed for a drive-by shooting.
The CJR continues:
“Meanwhile, The Village Voice published a major investigation by
free-lancer Murray Waas in its December 18, 1990 issue… “That American
troops could be killed or maimed because of a covert decision to arm
Iraq,’ Waas wrote, “is the most serious consequence of a U.S. foreign
policy formulated and executed in secret, without the advice and consent
of the American public…”
The L.A. Times, on Feb
23, 1992, dug deep enough to find secret National Security Decision
Directives by the Bush Administration in 1989 ordering closer ties with
Baghdad and paving the way for $1 billion in new aid. The Times’ series,
co-authored with Waas, emphasized that, “buried deep in a 1991
Washington Press piece – that Secretary of State James Baker, after
meeting with Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz in October 1989, intervened
personally to support U.S. government loans guarantees to
Iraq.”
Baker’s CJR report
also noted, “On October 3, the [Wall Street] Journal reported [BNL
official Christopher] Drogoul’s assertion that the director general of
Iraq’s Ministry of Industry and Military Production had told him, ‘We are
all in this together. The intelligence service of the U.S. government
works very closely with the intelligence service of the Iraqi government.’
Three weeks later, the Journal reported that [Henry] Gonzales ‘produced a
phone-book-sized packet of documents’ showing the involvement of U.S.
exporting firms… The documents mentioned one… which designed parts for
Iraq’s howitzers and was financed through
BNL…”
In
the wake of highly suspicious anthrax outbreaks in Florida, just miles
from where several of the WTC suicides pilots trained, we add one final
note. In his 1998 book "Bringing the War Home" author William Thomas
writes, “ Under that same [weapons transfer] program, 19
containers of Anthrax bacteria were supplied to Iraq in 1988 by the
American Type Culture Collection company, located near Fort Detrick, MD,
the site of the US Army's high security germ warfare
labs.”
The
Carlyle Group, the Bushes and bin Laden
The warnings about the
Carlyle Group, the nation’s 11th largest defense contractor,
and the Bushes came long before the World Trade Center attacks. The
Carlyle Group is a closely held corporation, exempt, for that reason, from
reporting its affairs to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Little is
known of what it actually does except that it buys and sells defense
contractors. As of October 4, 2001, it has removed its corporate web site
from the World Wide Web making further investigation through that channel
impossible. Its Directors include Frank Carlucci, former Reagan Secretary
of Defense; James Baker, former Bush Secretary of State; and Richard
Darman, a former White House aide to Ronald Reagan and Republican Party
operative.
On March 3, 2001, just
weeks after George W Bush’s inauguration, the conservative Washington
lobbying group Judicial Watch issued a press release. It
said:
“(Washington,
D.C.) Judicial Watch, the public interest law firm that investigates and
prosecutes government abuse and corruption, called on former President
George Herbert Walker Bush to resign immediately from the Carlyle Group, a
private investment firm, while his son President George W. Bush is in
office. Today's New York Times reported that the elder Bush is an
"ambassador" for the $12 billion private investment firm and last year
traveled to the Middle East on its behalf. The former president also
helped the firm in South Korea.
“The
New York Times reported that as compensation, the elder Bush is allowed to
buy a stake in the Carlyle Group's investments, which include ownership in
at least 164 companies throughout the world (thereby by giving the current
president an indirect benefit). James Baker, the former Secretary of State
who served as President George W. Bush's point man in Florida's election
dispute, is a partner in the firm. The firm also gave George W. Bush help
in the early 1990's when it placed him on one of its subsidiary's board of
directors.
"This
is simply inappropriate. Former President Bush should immediately resign
from the Carlyle Group because it is an obvious conflict of interest. Any
foreign government or foreign investor trying to curry favor with the
current Bush Administration is sure to throw business to the Carlyle
Group. And with the former President Bush promoting the firm's investments
abroad, foreign nationals could understandably confuse the Carlyle Group's
interests with the interests of the United States government," stated
Larry Klayman, Judicial Watch Chairman and General Counsel.

"Questions
are now bound to be raised if the recent Bush Administration change in
policy towards Iraq has the fingerprints of the Carlyle Group, which is
trying to gain investments from other Arab countries who [sic]
would presumably benefit from the new policy," stated Judicial Watch
President Tom Fitton.”
Judicial
Watch noted that “even the Clinton Administration called on the Rodham
brothers to stop their business dealings in [The former Soviet
Republic of] Georgia because those dealings started to destabilize that
country.”
Since
the WTC attacks the Wall Street Journal has reported (Sept. 28, 2001)
that, “George H.W. Bush, the father of President Bush, works for the
bin Laden family business in Saudi Arabia through the Carlyle Group, an
international consulting firm.” The senior Bush had met with the bin
Laden family at least twice in the last three years – 1998 and 2000 -- as
a representative of Carlyle, seeking to expand business dealings with one
of the wealthiest Saudi families, which some experts argue, has never
fully severed its ties with black sheep Osama in spite of current reports
in a mainstream press that is afraid of offending the current
administration.
The
Nation, on March 27, 2000 – in a story co-authored by David Corn and Paul
Lashmar – wrote, “In January former President George Bush and former
British Prime Minister John Major paid a social call on Saudi Arabian
Crown Prince Abdullah…” This story confirms at least one meeting
between the elder Bush and Saudi leaders, including the bin Ladens. That
the bin Ladens attended this meeting was confirmed in a subsequent
September 27, 2001 Wall Street Journal (WSJ) story. The January 2000
meeting with the bin Ladens was also later confirmed by Bush (the elder’s)
Chief of Staff Jean Becker, only after the WSJ presented her with a thank
you note sent by Bush to the bin Ladens after that
meeting.
James
Baker visited the bin Ladens in 1998 and 1999 with Carlyle CEO Frank
Carlucci.
The
WSJ story went on to note, “A Carlyle executive said that the bin Laden
family committed $2 million through a London investment arm in 1995 in
Carlyle Partners II Fund, which raised $1.3 billion overall. The fund has
purchased several aerospace companies among 29 deals. So far, the family
has received $1.3 million back in completed investments and should
ultimately realize a 40% annualized rate of return, the Carlyle executive
said.
“But
a foreign financier with ties to the bin Laden family says the family’s
overall investment with Carlyle is considerably
larger…”
In other
words, Osama bin Laden’s attacks on the WTC and Pentagon, with the
resulting massive increase in the U.S. defense budget have just made his
family a great big pile of money.
More
Bush connections appear in relation to the bin Ladens. The WSJ story also
notes that, “During the past several years, the [bin Laden] family’s
close ties to the Saudi royal family prompted executives and staff from
closely held New York publisher Forbes, Inc. to make two trips to the
family headquarters, according to Forbes Chairman Caspar Weinberger, a
former U.S. Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration. ‘We would
call on them to get their view of the country and what would be of
interest to investors.’”
President
G.H.W. Bush pardoned Weinberger for his criminal conduct in the
Iran-Contra scandal in 1989.
Our
current President, George W. Bush has also had -- at minimum -- indirect
dealings with Carlyle and the bin Ladens. In 1976 his firm Arbusto Energy
was funded with $50,000 from Texas investment banker James R. Bath who was
also the U.S. investment counselor for the bin Laden family. In his
watershed 1992 book, “The Mafia, The CIA and George Bush,” award winning
Texas investigative journalist Pete Brewton dug deeply into Bath’s
background, revealing connections with the CIA and major fraudulent
activities connected with the Savings & Loan scandal that took $500
billion out of the pockets of American taxpayers. A long-time friend of
George W. Bush, Bath was connected to a number of covert financing
operations in the Iran-Contra scandal, which also linked to bin Laden
friend Adnan Khashoggi. One of the richest men in the world, Khashoggi was
the arms merchant at the center of the whole Iran-Contra scandal.
Khashoggi, whose connections to the bin Ladens is more than superficial,
got his first business break by acting as middle-man for a large truck
purchase by Osama bin Laden’s older brother,
Salem.
Another
key player in the Bush Administration, Deputy Secretary of Defense Richard
Armitage, left his post as an Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan
Administration after a series of scandals connected to CIA operatives Ed
Wilson, Ted Shackley, Richard Secord and Tom Clines placed him at the
brink of criminal indictment and jail. Shackley and Secord are veterans of
Vietnam operations and have long been linked to opium/heroin smuggling.
The Armitage scandals all focused on the illegal provision of weapons and
war materiel to potential or actual enemies of the U.S. and to the Contras
in Central America.
Armitage,
a former Navy SEAL, who reportedly enjoyed combat missions and killing
during covert operations in Laos during the Vietnam War, has never been
far from the Bush family’s side. Throughout his career, both in and out of
government, he has been perpetually connected to CIA drug smuggling
operations. Secretary of State Colin Powell, in a 1995 Washington Post
story, called Armitage, “my white son.” In 1990, then President Bush
dispatched Armitage to Russia to aid in its “transition” to capitalism.
Armitage’s Russian work for Bush has been frequently connected to the
explosion of drug trafficking under the Russian Mafias, which became
virtual rulers of the nation afterwards. In the early 1990s Armitage had
extensive involvement in Albania at the same time that the Albanian ally,
Kosovo Liberation Army was coming to power and consolidating its grip,
according to The Christian Science Monitor, on 70% of the heroin entering
western Europe. [See FTW Vol. II, No 2 – April 24,
1999]
Armitage
and Carlucci are both Board Members of the influential Washington think
tank, the Middle East Policy Council.
The
connections continue with Vice President Dick Cheney. Amongst the
multitude of oil pipeline construction running through the new war zone is
one project – according to a Sept. 19, 2001 Wall Street Journal story – a
joint venture in which the bin Laden family joined with the construction
firm H.C. Price. A researcher named “Phoenix,” writing for the Internet
news site Rumor Mills News Agency located at  http://www.rumormillnews.com/,
reported that Price subsequently changed its name to Bredero Shaw, Inc.
and is now owned by a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation, Dresser
Industries. It was Dresser industries that gave George H.W. Bush his first
post war job in 1948. A check of the relevant corporate web sites has
confirmed this.
Vice
President Dick Cheney, who served as Secretary of Defense during Desert
Storm, directing the campaign against Saddam Hussein, was Halliburton’s
CEO until last year’s election.
And,
according to a 2000 story from Harper’s Magazine, in 1990 our current
President, through a position as a corporate director of Caterair, owned
by the Carlyle Group – at a time when the bin Laden’s were invested in
Carlyle – had additional connections to the bin Laden family. In addition,
on March 1, 1995, when George W. Bush was Texas governor and a senior
Trustee of the university, the University of Texas Endowment voted to
place $10 million in investments with the Carlyle Group. As to how much of
that money went to the bin Ladens we can only guess. But we do know that
there is a long tradition in the Bush family of giving money to those who
kill Americans.
Now,
as the people of America are beginning to awaken to what is really being
unleashed upon them, as a few brave souls are asking who’s going to get
all the money the Bush Administration is “borrowing” from government
coffers and who’s going to pay for it - the above history is more than
ominous.
Considering
that during the 1980s, under the pretext of fighting a Sandinista regime
in Nicaragua that never once launched an attack on the U.S., these same
people oversaw an explosion in U.S. cocaine consumption that went from 80
metric tons in 1979 to 600 metric tons in 1989 - considering that the CIA
trained and equipped death squads that tortured and murdered hundreds of
thousands of people from Guatemala to Panama – considering that these same
people have brutalized Iraq, leaving portions of it radioactively
contaminated by depleted uranium for the next 4 billion years and causing
a fivefold increase in the number of childhood leukemia cases amidst a
starving population, one can only wonder what they will produce for the
world now given the context of the World Trade Center
attacks.


Michael C. RuppertP.O. Box 6061-350,
Sherman Oaks, CA 91413(818)788-8791 *
fax(818) 981-2847mruppert@copvcia.com© COPYRIGHT 1998,
1999, 2000, 2001 MICHAEL C. RUPPERT. ALL RIGHTS
RESERVED.