Know your BFEE: James R Bath - Bush - bin Laden Link

[Octafish]

Back when George W was defendin' Texas from the Air Force of North Vietnam, he met a man by the name of James R Bath. They both were drummed off the flight line for failing to take physical exams -- coincidently, I'm sure, right about the same time the government starting testing pilots for illegal drugs 'n' such. Here's the document:



Now this document shows that the House of bin Laden selected James R Bath to be their official U.S. business agent. Isn't it something? Why doesn't anyone in the press corpse ask Bush about this?



Bottom Line: The BFEE goes where the money is -- War. Drugs. Oil. Social Security.

[blm]

1. Bush, Bath and bin Laden....while the news media looks the other way.

YOU are a hero.

You have my undying love and gratitude, patriot.

[Octafish]

2. Thanks, blm! They're not called Presstitutes for nothing.

In the entire U.S. Constitution, only one business is named: The Press. The reason is that only with a truly free press can the People be informed in order to make sound judgements with their ballots. Ben Franklin and the other Founders would be aghast at what passes for the Press today.

Here's a related story they've missed:

THE GW BUSH--OSAMA BIN LADIN CONNECTION

James R. Bath, friend and neighbor of George W. Bush, was used as a cash funnel from Osama bin Laden's rich father, Sheikh bin Laden, to set George W. Bush up in business, according to reputable sources from the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. The connection between GW Bush, the bin Laden family, and the Bank Commerce Credit International (BCCI) is well documented. The excerpts from the books and news articles are supplemented by the links at the bottom of the page to the cash flow charts of the bin Laden-backed BCCI money which was funneled into the Bush family in return for favors. Just click on the links at the bottom of the page to see the flow charts and use the back and forward keys on the screen to return to this page where you can then access the next flow chart link.

"Bath--who made his fortune by investing money for Mahfouz and another BCCI-connected Saudi, Sheikh bin-Laden--...was an original investor in George Bush Jr.'s oil exploration company..." from The Outlaw Bank, page 229.

"Bath provided financing to George W. Bush, the future president's eldest son, when he went into the oil business..." from False Profits, page 365.

Bath told me he was in the CIA...he had been recruited by George Bush himself 1n 1976 when Bush was director of the agency...Bath and George, Jr. were pals and flew together in the same Air National Guard unit, and Bath lived down the street from the Bush family when George, Sr. was living in Houston...he became representative for Sheikh Khalid bin-Mafouz...one of the richest men in the world, and he was a controlling shareholder in...BCCI..." from The Outlaw Bank, page 228.

"BCCI was charged with laundering drug money..." from False Profits, page 433.

SOURCE:

http://www.g-vision.com/newsletter/connection.shtml

CONTINUED...


PS: You're making me blush, blm! And I feel the same way about you and the Real Deal Team who still give a damn.

[zbdent]

5. I shopped at Bush, Bath, and bin Laden

Oh, wait, that was Bed Bath and Beyond . . .

Never mind . . .

[Octafish]

7. Ha ha! Guess which Smear Boat Liar "helped" defend a Bath plaintiff?

Why, it's John O'Neil, the same fellow paid to blacken Democratic nominee John Kerry. Small world, that BFEE.

No wonder William White -- a Naval Academy grad, fighter pilot and former Bath business partner -- lost everything. He never knew that playing with Bush-connected folk means the game is fixed. Then again, that's how it always is for the BFEE. From White's CBC interview:

William White CBC Interview

EXCERPT...

CBC: HE QUOTES THE NAME OF GEORGE BUSH?

Bill White: Oh absolutely.

CBC: SENIOR OR JUNIOR?

Bill White: Senior. He said that he would call the politically appointed Judges and I would never get due process. And that really is what motivated me to fight the fight in the courts. I couldn’t believe in the aftermath of all of us risking our lives fighting for the system that we could be denied our rights of due process under law. I just couldn’t believe that. Unfortunately I hought it was a bluff, but it turned out to be true because what he predicted is precisely what happened. I thought it was Bath who was blowing smoke so I resisted and I said: “Jim, I’m not going to sue you, I’m not going to go report these Saudi dealings to the DA’s Office. I just don’t want to be in Business with you anymore.” Then I called my Attorney and I didn’t instruct him to file a lawsuit. I said please look at our partnership agreement and find out how I can become a Businessman independent of Jim Bath. I just don’t want to be involved in all this. Well, I never
had that luxury because Bath and the Bank that was laundering the Saudi money inundated me in lawsuits. I had four criminal chargesand I think twenty-eight civil lawsuits that were filed against me concurrently. And it just dominated my life.

Fortunately I was able to get legal representation. The best lawyers in Houston took up my case on a contingency fee basis. They filed counter claims against Bath alleging Saudi influence peddling with the Bush family, although in retrospect when I read my own legal pleadings, the lawyers were very careful to remove a lot of the references to the threats and avoided using the Bin Laden, the Bin Mahfouz the Bush name. And I would ask my own lawyers, why aren’t you stating succinctly the nature of the Bath’s threat?. And they’d say: “Well Bill, you know we don’t want to make the Judges angry. We have to be very careful.”

CBC: AND IT WASN’T THAT THEY DIDN’T BELIEVE THOSE LINKS WERE TRUE, IT WAS JUST THE OPPOSITE. THEY BELIEVED THEM ?

Bill White: They believed the links to be true. They’re afraid of backlash from the Judges. One of my many Lawyers, John O’Neill of Porter and Clements, was actually the campaign manager of one of the Republican judges who poured me out every case - Judge Lewis Moore. And when John found out that my case was assigned to Judge Moore he said: "Bill, we’ve got this case made-in-the-shade.” He said: “This guy - I’m his campaign manager. I raise funds for his reelection. No problem.” And then we’d get into the courtroom and be poured out without a trial. And John would shake his head and comment: “The Judge must have gone crazy. I can’t believe it, he’s never treated me this way.”

CONTINUED (on PDF)...

http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/conspiracytheories/white.pdf

[blm]

19. I shopped at Bush, Bath and Bin Laden and all I got was Permanent War.

.

[seemslikeadream]

3. two clans were linked by a Houston businessman named James R. Bath

After the death of Mohammed bin Laden, control of the company passed to Salem bin Laden, Osama’s half brother. The roots of the first known Bush-bin Laden convergence date back to the mid-1970s, when the two clans were linked by a Houston businessman named James R. Bath. Bath had befriended George W. Bush in the late 1960s, when they both served in the Texas Air National Guard. By 1976, when Gerald Ford appointed the elder George Bush as CIA director, Bath was acting as a business agent for Salem bin Laden’s interests in Texas. (Texas and Saudi Arabia were well-connected by this point through U.S. oil companies and related industries with operations in both locations.) In 1991 Time magazine and later other publications reported on allegations by Bath’s former business partner that the Bush CIA hired Bath in 1976 to create offshore companies to move CIA funds and aircraft between Texas and Saudi Arabia.

http://www.texasobserver.org/showArticle.asp?ArticleID=480

AMY GOODMAN: And what is Bath’s connection to the Bushes?

J. H. HATFIELD: Well he was also in the National Guard with George W. back in the 70’s which is interesting too because in 1972 in August, my publisher was able not too long ago to get hold of Bush’s national guard records. And in 1972, at the same time we alleged he was doing community service for cocaine arrest James Bath who was in the unit with him. Both of them were grounded for failing to show up for medical exam. 14:19


http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/08/11/1447218#transcript

[Octafish]

4. Like Poppy, like Smirko.

Gee. Evidence shows a crooked apple doesn't fall far from the crooked tree.

Follow the Money: The Bush-bin Laden Connection

President Bush's September 2001 address to the American people will live on in infamy. In it, Bush roused the American people to a "war on terrorism," which was to consist of rooting out the financial sources of support for terrorist activities. A global effort ensued in the following weeks. Bush then signed an executive order freezing the financial assets of several alleged charities reputed to be "fronts" for the al-Qaida network. According to a report by Christopher Byron dated 9/24/01 entitled "Terrorists, dollars and a tangled web", however, one glitch got ahead of Bush's fanaticism: following this money trail would require investigators to "probe deep into the offshore activities of America's mightiest banks and the financial affairs of many of America's leading public figures," including George W. and George H.W. Bush. It all starts with the Bank for Credit & Commerce International, now infamous as the "BCCI Scandal." The BCCI, with its main offices in London and New York, was bankrolled by Saudi Arabian money handlers. The BCCI was engaged in widespread bribery of officials in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas; its criminal activities touched nearly every country on Earth. According to Byron, the BCCI "laundered money on a global scale, intimidated witnesses and law enforcement authorities, engaged in extortion and blackmail; supplied the financing for illegal arms trafficking and global terrorism; financed and facilitated income tax evasion, smuggling and prostitution." As Byron also explains, BCCI operated via secrecy through various front organizations, and "penetrated the top-most echelons of American business, co-opting and exploiting many of the most visible and influential public figures in America."

The tentacles of BCCI began to touch George W. Bush when he sold his young, struggling oil company to Harken Energy. This, according to Byron, "set in motion a chain of events that wound up entangling Bush, briefly but awkwardly, in the affairs of not just BCCI but of the bin Laden family itself." Specifically, what is the bin Laden connection?

James Bath, one of Bush's original partners in his oil company, had contacts in the Middle East. According to Byron, Bath was named in a 1976 trust document as the business representative for Salem bin Laden, Osama bin Laden's half-brother, who was killed in a private plane crash in Texas in 1988. William White has claimed that Bath was involved in a secret conspiracy to funnel Saudi money into the U.S., and that since 1976-the year Bush Sr. became head of the CIA-Bath had worked as a CIA liaison to Saudi Arabia. White has made the claim, which Bath denies, that "Bath ran an aviation business and obtained several aircraft from the CIA."

As Byron reports, Bath did run Skyway Aircraft Leasing Ltd., an aviation business based in the Cayman Islands, which was owned by Saudi banker Khalid bin Mahfouz. In 1977, bin Mahfouz joined up with Saudi front man for BCCI, Ghaith Pharaon, and became an investor in the Main Bank of Houston, in which Bath also held a stake.

CONTINUED...

http://www.paranoiamagazine.com/followmoney.html

[G_j]

6. kick!

[Octafish]

8. ¡Muchisimas gracias, G_j! Remember Bill White?

White is Bath's former business partner. According to a lawsuit, Bath used up his business's money after he lost a Sheikh's bankroll. So, he did what everyone in the BFEE does: He demanded someone else pay for his thievery. In this case, William White.

The Ancestor of the Iran/Contra Scandal

http://xymphora.blogspot.com / February 17, 2004

From a CBC interview(1) with Bill White by Bob McKeown on the subject of James Bath:

"Well if you recall back in the mid-1970's the CIA came under fire for trying to assassinate Fidel Castro, for engineering elections in Latin America and putting friendly Dictators in power. The Church and Pike committees were empanelled in Congress to bring the Agency under control. After these Intelligence committees investigated illegal CIA activities they issued a stinging report concluding that it is incompatible for the Government of a Democratic Society to engage in KGB-type activities. What Bush did as CIA Director, rather than just terminate these activities, was to privatize them.

"He began to look for people qualified and willing to form quasi private corporations to take control of these assets and continue to do the CIA’s bidding. Because he needed a pilot to form an Aviation cutout, he turned to the obvious referral source - his Son George Jr. who was in an Air National Guard Aviation Squadron. All military pilots like myself and Bath have to hold top-secret security clearances, are clearly patriots, and have been vetted by the FBI. Knowing this (as a former Naval Aviator himself), George Bush Sr. asked Dubya: 'Do you know a guy in your Air National Guard Unit who we could bring in to operate an Air proprietary and deal with the Saudis?' George Jr. responded by recommending his drinking buddy, Jim Bath."

And:

". . . Bath explained to me that he had been tapped by George Senior to set up a quasi-private aircraft firm that would basically engage in CIA-sponsored activities funded by the Saudi Royal Family. He explained that the Saudis had basically entered into a quid pro quo relationship with Bush and that Bush when he was CIA Director worked with the head of Saudi Intelligence and the CIA trained the Palace Guard to protect the Saudi Royal Family who was concerned about a fundamentalist revolution. And it was at that point I think that this thing got kicked into high gear and the Saudis agreed to provide surreptitious funding to the United States to fight it's secret wars in Afghanistan and Nicaragua."

The Saudis in Texas were Salem Bin Laden, Osama's brother, and Khalid bin Mahfouz, who were both probably acting as agents for the Saudi Royal Family (I've already (2) gone over the BUSH/HARKEN/BCCI/CIA/BIN LADEN/ENRON connections in some detail). White told the CBC:

". . . Bath had told me that he had used Saudi money to fund George Bush Junior’s start up in the Energy business."

CONTINUED...

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/print.asp?ID=1537

[G_j]

23. now I do :-)

gracias (hat tips)

[seemslikeadream]

9. Bath's ties to Houston real estate/S&L scandals/Iran-Contra

From starroute

Bath's ties to Houston real estate/S&L scandals/Iran-Contra

After leaving the National Guard, Bath was introduced into Houston business circles by Jack Trotter (a business partner of Houston real estate developer and Bush crony Walt Mischer.) Bath then became a partner in various real estate deals with Lan Bentsen (son of Senator Lloyd Bentsen, who was also a close friend of Mischer's.)

These three names -- Trotter, Mischer, and Bentsen -- show up over and over in accounts of Houston business dealings. Googling them in various combinations leads in a number of interesting directions. (For example, in the late 90's, Trotter and Mischer were working together to destroy the progressive income tax.)

A resume of Bath's from this period includes as references both Trotter and Sidney A. Adger. Adger, a Houston businessman and friend of Bush Sr.'s, was the man who pulled the strings that got Bush Jr. into the Air National Guard.

Another figure of interest is Robert Corson, who was the business partner of one of Adger's sons and was also Walt Mischer's son-in-law. Corson was eventually indicted in the savings-and-loan scandals and died of a supposed drug overdose in 1992 while on his way to Houston to testify. It has been claimed that he was involved in CIA drug smuggling and money laundering and had inside knowledge of Iran-Contra which he was about to reveal.

It seems as though Bath's CIA and Saudi connections were part of a larger picture involving all these other factors as well. Although Bath himself is a mysterious and shadowy figure, people like Trotter and Mischer are far better documented, and their doings may shed light on just what is so problematic about Bath.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1480644#1481464

[Octafish]

11. Tip o' the cephalopod to starroute and seemslikeadream!

The Savings and Loan thievery is classic Bush Family Evil Empire stuff. The CIA, the Mafia and every Bush-connected turd from Midland to Mecca made off like bandits.

Here's a few names to ponder:

The Beebe Network - The Cast Of Characters and The History

Ben Barnes (the fellah who "helped" get Smirko into the TANG -- Octafish), former Texas Lt. Governor; business associate of Herman K Beebe, Walter Mischer and John Connally (rode in the Lincoln with Kennedy and said "My God! They'll kill us all!" -- O.). Herman K. Beebe Sr., Louisiana financier with offices in Dallas, convicted felon and Mafia associate; many connections to the intelligence community; godfather of the dirty Texas S&L's; did nine months in Club Fed; Charles Hurwitz introduced Beebe to B G Wylie, half-brother of Carroll Kelly; funded start-up of Contra related Palmer NB

 Tom Benson,a partner of Stanley Rosenberg in Groos Bank(influenced by H K Beebe) and Bank of Leon Springs; a Beebe associate; partner with Peyton McKnight and Charles Hurwitz(?) in Culebra/1676, a Rosenberg boondoggle

 John Connally, former Texas governor;Connally's law firm, Vinson-Elkins had Walter Mischer as a client; Charles Keating worked on his 1980 Republican presidential race; he and his partner Ben Barnes, borrowed tens of millions of dollars from dirty S&L's; served on Hurwitz's Maxxam Inc's board of directors from 1988 until his death in 1993. Participated in several CIA related covert actions.

 Thomas Gaubert, big Democratic fundraiser from Dallas; former head of Independent American Savings, which purchased 20 branch offices from Hurwitz' USAT; owned a piece of Sandia Federal Savings in Albuquerque; head of Telecom; A right-wing flag waver.

 Joseph Grosz, Chicago mob associate; worked for Gouletas family; ran Southmark's San Jacinto Savings; director of Gaubert's Telecom.

Stefan Halper, co-founder with fellow George Bush supporter Harvey McLean of Palmer National Bank, which was financed by H K Beebe and funneled private donations to the Contras; former son-in-law of past CIA deputy director Ray Cline; helped set up legal defense fund for Oliver North.Peter Munk also an investor in Palmer NB

CONTINUED...

http://www.jailhurwitz.com/beebe.html

ONE EXAMPLE OF WHY THIS MATTERS:

Jail Hurwitz!

* Texas corporate raider Charles Hurwitz, with the help of junk-bond broker and convicted felon Michael Milken, looted and crashed a Savings and Loan, United Savings Association of Texas (USAT), costing U.S. taxpayers a staggering $1.6 billion!

* With looted money funneled from the S & L, Hurwitz engaged in a hostile takeover of the Pacific Lumber Company, commenced rabid clearcutting, and tripled the rate of logging of the world's largest stands of privately held ancient redwood forests, including Headwaters Forest, a precious, sacred and irreplaceable international treasure of the ages.

* Hurwitz simultaneously raided Pacific Lumber's worker pension fund, removing $55 million from the retired loggers and millworkers' nest egg, and began raping the company, selling off much of it's other liquitable assets for the quick cash he needed to make his pressing junk bond payments.

* Hurwitz had previously looted the Simplicity Pattern worker pension fund in 1982, reducing worker benefits by nearly $4000 per year.

* Hurwitz has entered into out-of-court settlements for insurance fraud, securities violations and a land swindleof his own company's shareholders! Hurwitz has lost seven environmental lawsuits over his incessant, illegal logging in these ancient redwood forests of Northern California.

CONTINUED...

http://www.jailhurwitz.com/

[me b zola]

10. Perhaps this is the orgin of the Bath Party

...okay, not funny. But Octafish, your work is invaluable. Thank you.

[Octafish]

12. Always with the humor, me b zola! Always with the humor!

You gave me an important idea, DU Friend! And at the risk of repeating myself or history:

Here's something from 1902 Mark Twain believed "would destroy the Republican Party." It involves the slaughter of Muslim people opposing the US colonization of the Phillipines.

The Moro Massacre

Comments on the Moro Massacre by Mark Twain

This material taken from the Humanities Digital Information Service of Stanford University <1> (http://dlib.stanford.edu:6520/cgi-bin/hugo).

Source: Mark Twain’s Weapons of Satire pp. 168-178, Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, NY 1992


Introduction

The Filipinos were not yet defeated On July 4, 1902, when President Roosevelt declared that the war was over. The Muslim Filipinos, or Moros, in the Southern Philippines were the most tenacious opponents of U.S. colonization, as they were in resisting Spanish rule during the preceding three centuries. But those whose slaughter is described below were not a military group.

Mark Twain must have felt strongly compelled to comment on the massacre. It provided another opportunity to condemn the brutality of the U.S troops, and Leonard Wood, already the subject of his scorn, was the commanding officer involved. In all of his writings about Wood, Mark Twain emphasized the irony that he was a medical doctor whose profession, as a soldier, was to kill people. This theme was developed here with references to the "doctor" who led the massacre, the "heroes" who performed it, and the "savages" who suffered it. The savagery was performed by the "heroes," not the sympathetically presented Moros, whose slaughtered children represented "our perfectest symbol of innocence and helplessness."

The Anti-Imperialist League quickly published two leaflets about the massacre. A photograph of the carnage that it distributed to the press in 1907 was later described as "the most hideous Philippine Picture . . . published in the United States during the subjugation of the islands." *

SNIP...

At a luncheon party of men convened yesterday to God-speed George Harvey, who is leaving to-day for a vacation in Europe, all the talk was about the brilliant feat of arms; and no one had anything to say about it that either the President or Major General Dr. Wood, or the damaged Johnson, would regard as complimentary, or as proper comment to put into our histories. Harvey said he believed that the shock and shame of this episode would eat down deeper and deeper into the hearts of the nation and fester there and produce results. He believed it would destroy the Republican party and President Roosevelt. I cannot believe that the prediction will come true, for the reason that prophecies which promise valuable things, desirable things, good things, worthy things, never come true. Prophecies of this kind are like wars fought in a good cause -- they are so rare that they don't count.

Day before yesterday the cable-note from the happy General Dr. Wood was still all glorious. There was still proud mention and elaboration of what was called the "desperate hand-to-hand fight." -- Doctor Wood not seeming to suspect that he was giving himself away, as the phrase goes -- since if there was any very desperate hand-to-hand fighting it would necessarily happen that nine hundred hand-to-hand fighters, if really desperate, would surely be able to kill more than fifteen of our men before their last man and woman and child perished.

CONTINUED...

http://search.localcolorart.com/search/encyclopedia/Moro_Crater_Massacre/

Wow! me b zola!



Now it's 103 years later and Mark Twain has given us the answer.
The American people need to see what this war has done to innocent people.
The need to know who is responsible.
And to what party they belong.
Let the American people know this before the next election,
and these turds of the BFEE are toast.

[bumblebee1]

13. Well, well, well

The Bush, Bath, bin Laden connection was shown in F911. John O'Neill of the SVBT involved, too? Man, too bad Michael Moore isn't making a sequel to F911. Then again, maybe he will. Wonders never cease, do they?

[Octafish]

21. Wonders. Coincidence. Old Boys Nutwerks. Conspiracy.

Michael Moore didn't do much more than survey the tip o' the iceberg when it comes to the Bush Family Evil Empire. The Bush name sits at the nexus of war profiteering, the military industrial complex, arming the NAZIs before World War II and protecting them after, Big Oil, Big Finance, narcotrafficking, money laundering and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Can't get much more evil than that.

[bobthedrummer]

14. These traitors have names and social networks comprising the "high and

the mighty", they're nothing but a RW criminal enterprise full of isms like fascism, militarism, religious extremism, etc.

Thanks for helping name these traitors and other criminals, Octafish.

I'll bet the Bath family has a nice health plan.

[Octafish]

22. They cover their charges like the Stalin Trust Corp: 'No Man. No Problem.'

Politicians who oppose the BFEE end up out of office or dead. Consider Paul Wellstone was Smirko's biggest thorn in the Senate. JFK Jr. was an up-and-coming political star on the horizon. It's not a new thing. In 980, after Sen. Frank Church looked into the CIA, funy money poured into his opponent's campaign. In 1984, there's Gary Hart, who had a nice girl do the lap dance for the camera and look what happened.

The case of Frank Olson became personal for me. His son is a DUer.

The Secret Sharers
The CIA, the Bush Gang and
the Killing of Frank Olson

by Chris Floyd

There is a thread running through modern American history, a thin red cord that weaves in and out of the shifting facades of reason and respectability that mask the brutal machinery of power. At certain rare moments the thread flashes into sight, emerging from the chaotic jumble of unbearable truth and life-giving illusion that makes up human reality. It appears, bears witness, then vanishes again, forgotten behind the next facade.

It's a thread that runs from horrified young intelligence operatives stumbling into the death camps of Nazi Germany to hardened agents running assassination programs in the jungles of Vietnam to august men of state building a shadow government with secret decrees authorizing tyranny, murder, torture and deceit. It's a thread of moral corruption, corruption by an idea, a temptation, a perversion of reason, the whisper of evil that says: "The end justifies the means."

That thread fetched up briefly again earlier this month, then was buried, literally, in a Maryland grave. The family of Frank Olson laid his exhumed remains to rest, closing the book on their half-century of struggle to find out why he died so violently in the hands of the government he had served--and whose deepest secrets he had guarded.

Frank's son, Eric, believes he knows the answer now: his father was murdered to keep the thread from sight, to "protect" the American people from the knowledge that their own government had taken up and extended Nazi experiments on mind control, psychological torture and chemical warfare--and that it was conducting these experiments as the Nazis did, on unwilling subjects, on captives and "expendables," even to the point of "termination."

Frank Olson was a CIA scientist at Fort Detrick, Maryland, the Army's biological weapons research center. Ostensibly he was a civilian employee of the Army; his family didn't know his true employer. Olson worked on methods of spreading anthrax and other toxins; some of his colleagues were involved in mind control drugs and torture techniques. But his life within the charmed circle of the American intelligence elite would unravel with dizzying speed in just a few months in 1953.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd0828.html

MORE INFO AT:

http://www.serendipity.li/cia/olson2.htm

There are many journalists, researchers and even artists who've lost their lives in covering the Bushes. One man was Mark Lombadi who's social network diagrams help us visualize the myriad connections of the BFEE:



Mark Lombardi: Global (Conspiracy) Networks

      Mapping criminal corporate-government connections is a dangerous occupation. Exposing the players and their front companies is even more hazardous. These are the subjects of Mark Lombardi's art -- the hidden global realities of money and power. His artwork, literally as well as figuratively, connects the dots of international high-level white-collar crime networks.

      Lombardi's drawings are mandalas of conspiracy, flow charts of shady deals and shaky agents, and org charts of world-class con men, revealing the genealogy of wickedness in the highest places of corporate and government power.

      "Mark Lombardi: Global Networks" is a traveling exhibition of 25 drawings, some as large as 4' x 12,’ organized by New York-based Independent Curators International (ICI) and curated by Robert Hobbs of Virginia Commonwealth University. In graphic terms, the drawings document the major financial and political frauds of the late 20th century. They are flow charts of illicit money and power, solid and dotted lines and curves as well as broken arrows denoting the flows of illicit financial operations and covert revenues.

DECONSTRUCTING CRIMINAL CONNECTIONS

      One of the drawings called "George W. Bush, Harken Energy and Jackson Stephens, ca 1979-90" (1999) shows the connections of James Bath, a former CIA spook and business broker, front man for Saudi money who connected the Bush Family and Bin Laden Family (of the Osama bin Laden/ 9-11 legend) in shady deals in Texas and around the world.



CONTINUED...

http://www.steamshovelpress.com/altmedia18.html

Most important: Thanks for the kind words, Bob. Your presence on DU, and your work off, make the struggle for restoring America as a nation of laws and the Constitution of the United States as the chief law of the land a lot closer to reality.

[JohnOneillsMemory]

15. Kick. ..n/t

[Octafish]

24. Craig Unger tracked down Bath.

Unger's the fellow who wrote "House of Bush. House of Saud."

Mystery man

Why the White House deleted the name of Bush pal and Saudi go-between James Bath from the president's military records is a tantalizing but unanswered question.

By Craig Unger

April 27, 2004 | Last month, before the 9/11 commission began its public hearings and Iraq exploded in renewed warfare, the White House tried to quell a gathering storm regarding President Bush's military service, releasing hundreds of documents about Bush's tenure in the Texas Air National Guard some 30 years ago. A close examination of the documents reveals that they not only fail to answer lingering questions about Bush's service but prompt a crucial new area of inquiry that could play a role in the presidential campaign -- a long and lucrative, but low-profile, relationship between Saudis and the Bush family that goes back 30 years.

The document that raises that question is dated Sept. 29, 1972, and notes that 1st Lt. George W. Bush was suspended from flying because of his "failure to accomplish annual medical examination." Since he had just received hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of training as a jet fighter pilot, the fact that Bush let his medical certification lapse raises a troubling matter. Why did he allow himself to become ineligible to fly when he still had two years of service left? Given that random drug testing by the military had just started, some have suggested that Bush had not yet given up his partying ways and may have begged off because he had a substance abuse problem.

SNIP...

Reached at his home near Houston, Bath, who has been a business associate and friend of George W. Bush's for about 30 years, acknowledged to Salon that he was the man in question, but he dismissed the suspensions as trivial. "It happens all the time, especially in the Guard," he said. "In a regular squadron it is real easy to get your physical, but in a Guard unit, it is a different kettle of fish because the flight surgeon is also a civilian."

Bath, who referred to Bush as "Geo" because his first name appeared in that abbreviated form on his National Guard uniform, said that "the base is a ghost town except when the whole unit is there. When you fall out of requirements, it is no big deal; you are simply not able to be on the flying schedule. That is it, full stop."

Bath asserted that allegations that Bush had been using drugs are a "bogus issue," but declined to answer precisely why he and Bush failed to undergo their physicals. "I'm telling you that it did not happen. It is beyond laughable. I wasn't with him 24/7, but Geo did not use drugs. Geo did not use drugs, and I really know the facts."

CONTINUED (Subscription of Day Pass)...

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/04/27/james_bath/

Thanks, JohnOneillsMemory! Appreciate the kick and you giving a damn.

[seemslikeadream]

16. On pain of being "Baxtered," I'll tell a Jim Bath story ...

From DemoTex

Actually, I told it right after Cliff Baxter was "Baxtered" without any ill effect. However, if I should die before I wake, I pray to thee my story to splash all over the front page. This is a very short story of very long connections. This is an abstract of a chapter in my work-in-progress.

Characters, Scene I:

Prince Kamyar Pahlavi (nephew of the Shah of Iran)
Doug and Morris Jaffee (names usually associated with the Texas Mafia)
A co-hort of Bath's
DemoTex

Characters,Scene II:
DemoTex and Jim Bath


Scene I:

DemoTex shows up at mansion on the south-side of downtown Houston to do article for an aviation trade magazine on Boeing 707 "hush-kits". DemoTex ushered into the plush office of Kamyar Pahlavi (DemoTex doesn't yet "get it"). Pahlavi has pictures of himself in AF garb in cockpit of Iranian F-4C Phantom jet. Also pics with a familiar looking guy. DemoTex wakes up and realizes he has been had. Shah of Iran! Mother-of-my-dog! Shah's nephew trys to snow DemoTex. No go.

Next stop, same day: San Antonio. They offered to fly me there on their Gulfstream. I took Southwest. Lunch meeting (at Luby's) with principals of company, including Doug and Morris Jaffe (Google "Texas Mafia Jaffe). Kamyar Pahlavi showed up with Jim Bath's cohort. The talk finally got social. Spook Stream. J. Henry Stream, married to country singer Lynn Anderson. Scion of Esso NJ. They knew him. I knew him (old friend's roomy at the KA house at UVA). I knew Lynn Anderson, too. The mayor pops in (Henry Cisneros) and says hi-what-can-I-possibly-do-for-you-great-gents?! Sycophant. Toady. Licked the re-puke mafioso's butt, I witnessed it.

(short dialog follows)

Morris Jaffee: Do you realize why you have to give a good review, in your magazine, of our Boeing 707 hush-kit?

DemoTex: I might. After the noise tests and my questions, we will develop an objective and qualitative assessment of your product for my article.

Morris Jaffe: Do you know the meaning of a walk in the Brazos River in concrete cowboy boots?

(Verbatim words of Morris Jaffe)

Scene II:

(A party at Houston Intercontinental Airport few weeks later)

DemoTex: Bartender, let me have another one of those Heineken's. Hello? Hi!

Jim Bath: Hi Mac! I read your by-line all the time! You are great. I've got a great deal for you... I'm Jim Bath. Have you submitted that article on the 707 hush-kit? (I didn't know him from Adam's house cat, except for his ubiquitous pictures in Trade-A-Plane! But he knew my name! Still scares me).

That's all I'll tell, but it's almost like a transcript of all of the events. I knew other names, and Bu$h was one. They were the top doggies.

Remember - and for the newbies - I was flying a JetStar II and Learjet 55s for Ken Lay during the early 80s. I met and know almost all of the current right wing players. Including "W". And remember, it ain't a story; it is a true story!


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1106153

[G_j]

17. well I'll be...

quite a little story
thanks DM & SLAD

[Karenina]

20. Kick!

:kick:

[Octafish]

27. Vielen dank, Karenina! Remember how Bath ties to BCCI?

This may seem like ancient history, but the story's still going on. Furthermore the perps run free in the Monkey Palace and what used to the Congress. It's a fact: The BFEE goes where the money goes. Then they take all they can steal, divert, siphone, hide, transform, launder and loot. BCCI was very good for that sort of thing...

Deals for Dubya

Bush’s family ties to shady bank BCCI help explain his “success” in the oil biz

by Bob Fitrakis

Trying to make sense of George W. Bush’s days in the oil business and his bizarre Harken Energy stock transactions? Well, if you dig deep enough, you’ll find a core group of people surrounding the notorious Bank of Credit and Commerce International (aka Bank of Crooks and Criminals International).

BCCI was, among other nefarious things, the bank of choice for al Qaeda, the CIA, Saddam Hussein and Manuel Noriega. This spooky collection of opium warlords, Arab sheiks, Pakistani financiers and organized crime perpetrated perhaps the greatest banking fraud in world history. BCCI’s global criminal conspiracy was aided by connections to Washington insiders like the Bush family, former secretary of defense and CIA co-founder Clark Clifford, Senator Orrin Hatch and President Jimmy Carter.

Award-winning journalists Peter Truell and Larry Gurwin document Dubya’s ties to al Qaeda’s favorite bank in their authoritative tome, False Profits: The Inside Story of BCCI, the World’s Most Corrupt Financial Empire.

Truell, a Wall Street Journal reporter, and Gurwin, who broke the infamous Banco Ambrosiano scandal in the early 1980s, point out that both Bush political brothers Jeb and Dubya had close links to BCCI. Jeb socialized with Abdur Sakhia, BCCI’s Miami branch manager and later the bank’s top U.S. official. Jeb’s real estate company, Bush Klein Realty, managed the Grove Island complex of luxury condominiums where Sakhia lived. BCCI financed various real estate deals at the complex.

But, as Truell and Gurwin note, “George W. Bush had even closer ties to the BCCI network.” In order to understand Bush’s bogus Horatio Alger claims of being a struggling West Texas oilman who struck it rich and the later Harken stock shenanigans now in question, people need to look beneath the mythology and political spin.

CONTINUED...

http://www.columbusalive.com/2002/20020829/082902/08290208.html

Excellent resource on Bath:

http://www.modernhistoryproject.org/mhp/EntityDisplay.php?Entity=BathJR

[Karenina]

28. Some folks seeing this info for the FIRST TIME

be sayin' Heh? :wtf: Please read on...

[Octafish]

33. In These Times ran Masden's excellent summary...

Of course we know more now than when the article was first run... I'm so glad.

QUESTIONABLE TIES

Tracking bin Laden's money flow leads back to Midland, Texas

by Wayne Madsen

EXCERPT...

In conflicting statements, Bush at first denied ever knowing Bath, then acknowledged his stake in Arbusto and that he was aware Bath represented Saudi interests. In fact, Bath has extensive ties, both to the bin Laden family and major players in the scandal-ridden Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI) who have gone on to fund Osama bin Laden. BCCI defrauded depositors of $10 billion in the ’80s in what has been called the “largest bank fraud in world financial history” by former Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. During the ’80s, BCCI also acted as a main conduit for laundering money intended for clandestine CIA activities, ranging from financial support to the Afghan mujahedin to paying intermediaries in the Iran-Contra affair.

When Salem bin Laden died in 1988, powerful Saudi Arabian banker and BCCI principal Khalid bin Mahfouz inherited his interests in Houston. Bath ran a business for bin Mahfouz in Houston and joined a partnership with bin Mahfouz and Gaith Pharaon, BCCI’s frontman in Houston’s Main Bank.

The Arbusto deal wasn’t the last time Bush looked to highly questionable sources to invest in his oil dealings. After several incarnations, Arbusto emerged in 1986 as Harken Energy Corporation. When Harken ran into trouble a year later, Saudi Sheik Abdullah Taha Bakhsh purchased a 17.6 percent stake in the company. Bakhsh was a business partner with Pharaon in Saudi Arabia; his banker there just happened to be bin Mahfouz.

Though Bush told the Wall Street Journal he had “no idea” BCCI was involved in Harken’s financial dealings, the network of connections between Bush and BCCI is so extensive that the Journal concluded their investigation of the matter in 1991 by stating: “The number of BCCI-connected people who had dealings with Harken—all since George W. Bush came on board—raises the question of whether they mask an effort to cozy up to a presidential son.” Or even the president: Bath finally came under investigation by the FBI in 1992 for his Saudi business relationships, accused of funneling Saudi money through Houston in order to influence the foreign policies of the Reagan and first Bush administrations.

CONTINUED...

http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/25/25/feature3.shtml

Like the curse says, we live in interesting times.

[Octafish]

25. Bath sounds scary. Image that comes to mind is that of gangster.

THE OCTOPUS 

The Criminal Cabal of Guns & Drugs

By David Guyatt

 It is one of those stories that even the wildest novelists can’t properly imagine.  A group of  well placed government bureaucrats and politicians, plus numerous CIA spooks and military covert ops types shake hands with the Mafia and agree to do business on the QT.  This involves shaking-down very wealthy figures, dealing guns on the black market, money laundering and trafficking drugs on a world-wide scale.  Along the way they bleed the assets of numerous banks, bankrupting many of them in the process.  They also involve themselves in Masonic secret societies and pull unseen strings deep inside the Vatican.  And, of course, they organise a few political assassinations, invoke some random murders and set alight the fuse on dozens of major bombing events - just to add zest and confusion. 

 Everything is done in the name of “anti-communism,” and is conducted under the umbrella of “national security” – a designation that is sure to stifle any irksome police investigation that could otherwise lead to arrest and imprisonment.  It also ensures their now decades old “business enterprise” will continue to prosper without any kind of oversight.  Welcome then, to the national security “untouchables” - a group of shadowy puppet-masters who practice organised crime on a global scale in the name of freedom and democracy – and who often possess marked Nazi sympathies.

SNIP...

The Head of the Octopus?

 In her book The Last Circle, author Carol Marshall outlines an international company, First Intercontinental Development Corporation (FIDCO) that she said led her “straight to the head of the octopus.”  She then lists the Board of Directors of FIDCO who included Robert Maheu Snr, right hand man of Mob and CIA connected Howard Hughes and Robert Booth Nichols, self-confessed CIA agent with powerful Mafia affiliations.  Among others on the board were Michael McManus, former assistant to President Reagan and Clint Murchison Jnr., owner of the Dallas Cowboys NFL football team.  The latter is the son of Clint Murchison Snr., who was one of the motivating factors behind General Douglas MacArthur’s failed Presidential attempt in 1952.   Muchison senior was also closely associated at this time with Richard Nixon, who later became US President and had financial dealings with him that involved Jimmy Hoffa, a Mafia figure connected to the Teamsters Union.  Others who were close friends of Murchison senior included FBI chief, J. Edgar Hoover.  That Clint Muchison senior had dealings with the Mafia is undisputed.  For example, 20% of the Murchison Oil Lease Company was owned by Gerardo Catena, a leading lieutenant of the Genovese crime family.  Of interest, too, are Murchison’s Texas connections.  Investigative journalist, Pete Brewton, in his book The Mafia, CIA & George Bush, ties former President George Bush to leading Mafia figures in Texas. 

SOURCE: http://www.deepblacklies.co.uk/the_octopus.htm

[chlamor]

36. thanx

for the article

[lonestarnot]

38. Very interesting.

[unhappycamper]

18. Gosh, I love sunshine.

Maybe a real news organization overseas can pick up on this and run with it? Someone? Anyone? Anyone?

[Octafish]

26. Got a light? Petrodollars fueledBush's Arbusto, Bush Exploration...

...Spectrum 7 and despite the millions in cash transfusions, the drunken coke whore managed to run all his companies into the ground. Then he got lucky and one of Poppy's buddies cut him a deal to sell out to HARKEN Energy. Gee. Why would someone do a multimillion favor like that?

Bush family’s dirty little secret: President’s oil companies funded by Bin Laden family and wealthy Saudis who also financed Osama bin Laden

By Rick Wiles
Copyright: American Freedom News
September 2001

EXCERPT...

"If you do business with terrorists, if you support or succor them, you will not do business with the United States," said President Bush.

He didn’t say anything about doing business with a terrorist’s brother – or his wealthy financier.

When President George W. Bush froze assets connected to Osama bin Laden, he didn’t tell the American people that the terrorist mastermind’s late brother was an investor in the president’s former oil business in Texas. He also hasn’t leveled with the American public about his financial connections to a host of shady Saudi characters involved in drug cartels, gun smuggling, and terrorist networks.

SNIP...

The Bush-controlled oil business eventually ended up being folded into Harken Energy Corp., a Dallas-based corporation. Mr. Bush joined Harken as a director in 1986 and was given 212,000 shares of Harken stock. Bush used his White House connections to land a lucrative contract for the obscure Harken Energy Corp. with the Middle Eastern government of Bahrain. On June 20, 1990, George W. Bush sold his Harken stock for $848,000 and paid off the loan he took out to buy his small share in the Texas Rangers. The Bahrain deal was brokered by David Edwards, a close pal to Bill Clinton and a former employee of Stephens Inc. Shortly after Bush sold his stock, Harken’s fortunes nose-dived when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Some critics claim young George was tipped off in advance by his father about the soon-coming Gulf War.

George W. Bush, however, worked wonders for Harken Energy Corp. before the stock collapsed. Using the Bush family name, he managed to bring much-needed capital investment to the struggling firm. George W. Bush traveled to Little Rock, AR, to attend a meeting with Jackson Stephens – a powerful Arkansas tycoon who helped bankroll the state campaigns of young Bill Clinton. He first gained political prominence as a fund-raiser for President Jimmy Carter. Stephens was also deeply involved in the BCCI scandal by helping the corrupt bank take control of First American Bank in Washington, DC.

CONTINUED...

http://www.freemasonrywatch.org/bush_binladen.html

PS: Really like the picture of the Little Turd from Crawford. It perfectly shows the guy in his element.

[Jara sang]

29. Octafish, what do you know about George Brown?

Of Brown and Root. Now, Kellogg, Brown and Root. Now Halliburton.

[Octafish]

30. The guy wired up LBJ pretty well.

In Texas, the DEMs and the pukes and the conservatives all seem to share the same watering hole. In the government business that means getting rich off guvmint service -- by hook, crook, contract and Old Boy network. Here's a bit of what Spartacus.Schoolnet.co.uk and a report from LBJ's decision to run for Congress as a New Dealer in 1937 have to say:

George Rufus Brown was born on 12th May, 1898. After studying at Rice University and the Colorado School of Mines, Brown served in the US Marines during the final stages of the Second World War.

Brown worked as a mining engineer in Butte, Montana, until he suffered a serious injury during a mining accident. He returned to Texas where he joined the construction firm founded by his brother, Herman Brown. Dan Root, Herman's brother-in-law, a prosperous cotton farmer, invested in the company. Eventually the company became known as Brown and Root.

Brown was a strong opponent of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. Edward A. Clark arranged for a meeting to take place between the Brown and Lyndon B. Johnson. During the meeting Brown complained about the cost of New Deal projects. According to Robert Caro, Johnson said to Herman Brown: “What are you worried about? It’s not coming out of your pocket. Any money that’s spent down here on New Deal projects, the East is paying for.”

Brown and Root now grew rapidly as a result of obtaining a large number of municipal and federal government projects. This included the Marshall Ford Dam on the Colorado River. This was worth $27,000,000. In a letter written to Lyndon B. Johnson, George Brown, admitted the company was set to make a $2,000,000 profit out of the deal. In 1940 the company won a $90 million contract to build the Naval Air Station at Corpus Christi.

In 1942 the Brown brothers established the Brown Shipbuilding Company on the Houston Ship Channel. Over the next three years the company built 359 ships and employed 25,000 people. This was worth $27,000,000. This contract was eventually worth $357,000,000. Yet until they got the contract, Brown & Root had never built a single ship of any type.

CONTINUED...

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKbrownG.htm

HOW BROWN FIXED LBJ'S STAR. INTERESTING PARALLEL TO PRESCOTT BUSH AND NIXON...

The Election of a Texas New Dealer: Lyndon Johnson's 1937 Race for Congress

EXCERPT...

Needless to say, Johnson's prospects weren't good and he would be a "longshot" if he chose to make the race. Nonetheless, Johnson, after extended discussions with Wirtz, his wife LadyBird, NYA staffers, etc., made the decision to respond to the knock at the door, take the risk, resign his position as NYA Director, and go for broke.

SNIP...

Thirdly, Johnson had a committed cadre of staffers at the NYA who could serve as the "storm troopers" of a Johnson campaign if allowed to by their new boss if Johnson resigned to make the campaign. Furthermore, while his NYA position hadn't given him name identification with Central Texas voters, Johnson had nonetheless developed contacts with some Central Texas leaders and could represent himself as having successfully served FDR and the New Deal, having already helped a number of Central Texans cope with the Great Depression.

Fourth, everyone who participated in the decision on whether to run or not understood that Johnson himself was a great asset. He would give every effort, twenty-four hours a day, day after day, to work harder than any other candidate. According to associate Gene Latimer years later: "No matter what anybody said, we felt he had a chance, because we knew he would work harder than anybody else".

Finally, the decision was made to run because of Alvin Wirtz's advice. Wirtz had a problem. Federal funding for Marshall Ford Dam was threatened by Buchannan's death. The dam was being built on land the federal government didn't own. Funding was contingent upon Congressman Buchannan's power and influence - and now he was gone. If the federal government cut off funding, Wirtz's client, George Brown's construction company, would be bankrupted. Feeling he needed a new congressman with powerful connections to legislative powers such as Sam Rayburn and Joseph Mansfield, someone who knew the "ropes" already, someone who could force a funding bill through Congress in the scant weeks left in the current session after the election - he turned to LBJ despite his disadvantages/weaknesses because he seemed to be the only potential candidate who could deliver immediately.

Obtaining Wirtz's support gave Johnson instant access to money in the form of campaign contributions, political expertise, and "connections" to powerful and influential people. Most importantly, Wirtz provided the strategy that would prove crucial in the election.

CONTINUED...

http://www.austin.cc.tx.us/lpatrick/his2341/election.html

Hope that helps, Jara sang. What've you got on Brown? Before they got bought up by Halliburton, I know they made a mint of Vietnam, let alone the Cold War.

[Jara sang]

31. They built the U.S. Naval Station at Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam

From what I've heard Brown "owned" Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. Brown owned an estate out in Loudoun County, Va. forty miles from the Whitehouse. Johnson held cabinet meetings in this house, in fact he had a heart attack there. Kennedy rented the house out when he was a freshman senator. Jackie loved to ride and Middleburg was the place for that. Sam Rayburn was a frequent guest of this estate. If there was one single person that, in my opinion, you could pin the Kennedy assassination on, it would be George Brown.:tinfoilhat: I don't know if his name comes up in conspiracy circles, but it should.

[seemslikeadream]

32. Hey Octafish have you seen this about Khashoggi?

:shrug:
As if an assassination plot wasn't enough, the Arab businessmen went on to discuss options for dealing with widow Imelda Marcos, then exiled in Hawaii. From the balmy islands, Imelda was heaving billions of dollars in gold on the black market, frantically, before the remains of her husband's tin dictatorship were seized by the courts. The sudden infusion of Philippine gold on the black market threatened to depress the already-sagging price of the metal. The Saudi cabal settled on a drastic solution a strategic terrorist act staged to drive up the price of gold.
(...)
Khashoggi was given a taste of Marcos gold back in 1963 when he ran with Edwin Pauley and George DeMorenschieldt (identified by the FBI during WW II as a Nazi spy and Lee Harvey's Oswald's friend and benefactor) converted into a certificate issued by the Bank of Switzerland to one "Adnan Kasogi."

Adnan was a familar face around the Marcos palace. So was Kodama Yoshio, a Khashoggi business partner - also a Japanese Naval rear admiral during WW II, a CIA asset, a ne'er-do-well in the Yakuza crime syndicate and future shaker in the Unification Church.
Yoshio had shipped the so-called "Golden Lilly" Japanese gold war reserve to the Philippines after the war.
Sterling and Peggy Seagrave, in Gold Warriors (2002), detail a "great fortune discovered by U.S. intelligence services in 1946 ... $13-billion in war loot amassed by underworld godfather Kodama Yoshio who, as a rear admiral in the Imperial Navy working with Golden Lily in China and Southeast Asia, was in charge of plundering the Asian underworld and racketeers. He was also in charge of Japan's wartime drug trade throughout Asia. After the war, to get out of Sugamo Prison and avoid prosecution for war crimes, Kodama gave $100-million to the CIA."
(...)
Khashoggi's gold certificate was his own pay-off for services rendered. Gary Weadon, in The Nazi Hydra in America, recalls that Khashoggi was an agent of Lockheed with a Yakuza business partner who transferred a fortune in gold to the Philippines: "This gold certificate was issued just before Lockheed paid the first known bribe to Prince Bernhard. Lockheed was being used by the CIA to funnel money worldwide. Moreover, Lockheed's European Sales Director, Dutchman Fred Meuser, had been a member of Prince Bernhard's wartime air force squadron. An additional member of the Lockheed bribe team was CIA officer Nicholas Deak."
Deak had set up a brokering front to launder CIA funds and slip them discreetly to Kodama. Deak merged with Lionel C. Perera, founder of Perera, Manfra & Brookes. "Perera was attached to the Chief of Military Government Finance Office at the Third Army's headquarters in Germany at war's end, where he interviewed Colonel Rauch. Rauch was the SS colonel responsible for hiding the Reich Bank gold reserves."
http://p097.ezboard.com/frigorousintuitionfrm7.showMessage?topicID=134.topic

[Octafish]

34. Wow, seemslikeadream! That Khashoggi keeps going and going...

...and going. The turd's floated in so much BFEE dirty water, I'd missed he waslikethis with Ms. Shoefeteesh. Thanks for the heads-up.

From a week before Smirko's Pearl Harbor, here's what I got on the Japanese post-WWII gold horde, used as a sort of proto-P2 Gladio idea called the BLACK EAGLE TRUST:

Yamashita's Gold - Eyewitness
Reveals Truth Of Fabulous
WWII Hidden Treasure

By Sterling and Peggy Seagrave
South China Morning Post
9-3-1

In the closing months of World War II, in the Philippines, several of Japan's highest ranking imperial princes hid tons of looted gold bullion and other stolen treasure in caves and tunnels, to recover later. This was the wealth of 12 Asian countries, accumulated over thousands of years.
 
Expert teams accompanying Japan's armed forces had systematically emptied treasuries, banks, factories, private homes, pawn shops, art galleries, and stripped ordinary people, while Japan's top gangsters looted Asia's underworld and its black economy.
 
There were 175 ''imperial'' treasure sites hidden throughout the Philippines. When American tanks were close, the chief engineers of those vaults were given a farewell party 67 metres underground in Tunnel 8 in the mountains of Luzon, stacked with row after row of gold bars. As the evening progressed, they drank great quantities of sake, sang patriotic songs and shouted banzai (long life).
 
At midnight, General Yamashita Tomoyuki and the princes slipped out, and dynamite charges were set off in the access tunnels, entombing the engineers. Their vaults would remain secret. The princes escaped to Tokyo by submarine, and three months later General Yamashita surrendered to American troops. Japan had lost the war militarily, but the princes made certain Japan did not lose financially.
 
This grisly event has remained unknown until now, and the hidden treasure was brushed off as a fanciful legend of ''Yamashita's Gold''. But an eyewitness to the entombment has taken us there and given us his personal account. During the war, Ben Valmores was the young Filipino valet of a senior prince, who was in charge of closing all imperial treasure sites in the Philippines. A sometimes sentimental man, the prince spared Ben's life and led him out of Tunnel 8 just before the dynamite was detonated.

CONTINUED...

http://www.rense.com/general13/treasure.htm

[Jara sang]

35. Link to Brown's Loudoun county estate.

http://www.nps.gov/lyjo/Ourheartshome/lbj2.htm

All powerful people, it seemed to the still sometimes naive Johnson, had such retreats, places where their dominance was secure. His benefactors, Herman and George Brown, owned Huntland, where Johnson would be overcome by his heart attack in 1955. In the Senate, many important people had their own estates. Russell had a country estate in rural Georgia; Kerr, Anderson, Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois, and Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon all owned large farms or ranches. In the halls of the Senate, they could put aside political differences and discuss their common avocation of owning property. Nor was the postwar generation bound to the hills of Maryland, Virginia, and the other central states of the East Coast that surrounded Washington, D.C., in the way their predecessors had been when they sought locations for their properties. With the advent of air travel, places far away could serve as more than out-of-session homes. Such retreats could become important parts of political images and, even more significantly, of the kind of posturing that was an integral part of the process of becoming powerful in the Senate. Such political maneuvering was clearly within Johnson's capability. Full membership in the social side of this elite club, Johnson believed, required a piece of land he could call his own

[Octafish]

39. Nancy Brown Negley is a Texas Blue Blood Friend of Boosh.

She's the daughter of George Rufus Brown.

Hunting lodge, eh, Jara sang? History repeats...

To the Manor Born Was He

Friday, January 02, 2004
8:44 PM

Apparently, Dubya can't shoot as well as Cheney the Great, but then he and Bush Sr. weren't shooting pre-caged pheasant. He was in good spirits, though, and good company as you will see in the Los Angeles Times.

FALFURRIAS, Texas President Bush began the new year with a bang on Thursday, shooting five quail on a bird hunting trip with his father in southern Texas, an excursion he used to set the stage for the 2004 reelection year.

"2004 is going to be a great year for this country," Bush told reporters at the Brooks County Airport before he climbed aboard Air Force One to return to his ranch outside Crawford, Texas, where he is spending the New Year's holiday. "It's going to be a year in which the world will become more peaceful and more people will be able to find work." ...

Bush said he traveled to this ranch town in the southern tip of Texas to spend a day with his father and get some fresh air and exercise. He said he shot five quail far short of the 15 birds permitted under Texas law...

Ah, so earthy, rustic and familial, father and son spending quality time together during the holiday season. Nothing terribly interesting about this little piece of genuine Americana, right? Yeah, but here comes the kicker...

The president's hunting excursion to El Tule Ranch was at the invitation of Nancy Brown Negley, heiress to the Brown & Root Construction Co., the engineering and construction firm that is now a subsidiary of Halliburton.

Negley is the daughter of George R. Brown, former president of Brown & Root and a friend of former President George Bush from his days in the Texas oil business.

Texas blue-blood "birds of a feather flocking together." Just a few familiar names if you are from that neck of the woods, east Texas oil country, not very far from Louisiana oil country. During the summers of my college years I worked off-shore in the oil-drilling industry for Brown & Root, and with Halliburton. Just good ol' boy names, yepper. Until you add a couple of non- Texas names and terms: Cheney, Iraq, Reconstruction and 20 Billion dollars. Interesting...? Read the full story in the Los Angeles Times   (LINK EXPIRED)

GOOGLE Cache to a some good analysis:

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:HjtoQUNWSF0J:www.josephbosco.com/2004/01/to-manor-born-was-he.html+negley+brown+bush&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Small world.

[Jara sang]

40. Fox hunting in this case

Loudoun County, Virginia is fox hunting country. It looks more like England around there than it does Virginia.

[Karenina]

41. The perfect environment

to fuel their fantasies of being "royalty." :eyes:

[lonestarnot]

37. MIHOP No doubt about it!

[Octafish]

42. George W Bush Knew 9-11 Was Coming and Did NOTHING!

The unelected moron George W Bush was advised by the CIA that Osama bin Laden was "determined to strike in the United States."

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0409041pdb1.html

Bush had been warned by the Russians that Osama would try to assassinate Bush at Genoa "using hijacked airliners."

Plot to Assassinate Bush – Reports

http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/06/20/russia.binladen/index.html

Seems the Italians, too, thought enough of Bush to warn him…

Italy Tells of Threat at Genoa Summit

Plot: Officials there took seriously a report that terrorists would try to crash a plane to kill Bush and other leaders.

From a Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — U.S. and Italian officials were warned in July that Islamic terrorists might attempt to kill President Bush and other leaders by crashing an airliner into the Genoa summit of industrialized nations, officials said Wednesday.

Italian officials took the reports seriously enough to prompt extraordinary precautions during the July summit of the Group of 8 nations, including closing the airspace over Genoa and stationing antiaircraft guns at the city's airport.

But a U.S. official said that American counter-terrorism experts considered the warning "unsubstantiated."

In either case, the reports suggest that Western governments were aware that terrorists might one day use a hijacked airplane as a suicide weapon--as they did Sept. 11 in attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The Genoa warning was disclosed last week by Italian Deputy Prime Minister Gianfranco Fini. In remarks on a television talk show reported by the Italian news agency ANSA, Fini said: "Many people were ironic about the Italian secret services. But in fact they got the information that there was the possibility of an attack against the U.S. president using an airliner. That's why we closed the airspace and installed the missiles. Those who made cracks should now think a little."

To reduce the terror threat from hijacked aircraft, the Italians and NATO installed anti-aircraft missiles around the conference site.

CONTINUED (REGISTRATION NEEDED, WELL-WORTH IT)…

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-092701genoa.story


Bush the Coward from Crawford chose to sleep in the Captain's quarters aboard a missile destroyer, safely offshore.

Missiles to protect summit leaders

http://www.guardian.co.uk/globalisation/story/0,7369,519925,00.html

The story was reported in-depth by a Bush biographer who “committed suicide” just before 9-11.

Why Would Osama bin Laden Want to Kill Dubya, His Former Business Partner?

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/Hatfield-R-091901/hatfield-r-091901.html

So what did Bush do to protect the American people on 9-11? He flew AWAY from Washington DC. The least he could have done was WARN US!

Hey, Media Horsies! Any of you chicken-livered presstitutes slaving for Corporate McPravda want to use this stuff and earn a Pulitzer Prize, feel free. And while you’re at it: BLOG This! The future of this country is worth more to me than a royalty check.

[lonestarnot]

43. Bushitler in on the whole enchilada...the freak

[Octafish]

44. Bush knew. Not only that, his PNAC cabal had been planning it for years.

9/11: The BCCI Connection

by Chaim Kupferberg

EXCERPT...

In his landmark article, Chaim Kupferberg uses mostly mainstream sources to reconstruct the making of the Official 9/11 Legend. Here, Kupferberg hypothesizes a covert global infrastructure behind the events of 9/11 - and lifts the veil to catch the lingering scent of BCCI.

With the above-stated hypothesis in mind, one should perhaps cast a discerning eye toward those manning the counter-terror posts in Los Angeles today - for an important element in John O'Neill's New York circle has recently relocated to the West Coast. In particular, O'Neill's friend, John Miller, has left a lucrative job at ABC News in order to work under William Bratton in the Los Angeles counter-terror office. Miller, some might recall, was one of the very few Americans to conduct a face-to-face interview with bin Laden before September 11. Before he had come aboard as a correspondent for ABC News, Miller had worked under Bratton in the NYPD. Bratton, through his acquaintance with O'Neill's friend Jerry Hauer, has also had intimate business dealings with Kroll Associates, the World Trade Center security firm which hired O'Neill.

It is, in fact, security firms like Kroll Associates, Burns Security, Teg, Wackenhut, and their ilk that should garner our interest at least as much as the web of conservative think tanks that have welded in place the parameters of "mainstream" debate - for it is through these very firms that the former stars of law enforcement have gone through the revolving door into the lucrative private sector. It is a world where former military types mix with various operatives of the CIA, FBI, DEA and any number of alphabet soup agencies charged with the security of our nation.

Moreover, the top people in the private security sector have the authority, prestige, and, most importantly, the skill to carry out - successfully and below the radar - the kinds of domestic operations that have been pegged as the province of shaggy al-Qaida operatives. Who, after all, could best ensure that 19 terrorists would be able to make it aboard four separate flights without any real danger of detection? And who, after all, would be best placed to ensure a complete and successful implosion of not just the two Twin Towers, but the neighboring building - 7 World Trade Center - which housed a bio-warfare "command and control bunker" under the direction of Jerry Hauer?

CONTINUED...

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KUP311A.html