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Those who claim the Bush administration is a Nazi regime are not far from the truth
by Wayne Madsen    The Wayne Madsen Report
Entered into the database on Saturday, July 08th, 2006 @ 15:21:04 MST


 

Untitled Document

This story is a special investigation of Bush family slush funds, smuggling, and secret money conduits from and to various right-wing causes, including some that are extremely violent. The New York Times is running a story today about the U.S. military recruiting Aryan Nation, neo-Nazi, and other white supremacists into its ranks. The Times' report states that Neo-Nazi graffiti has sprung up in Baghdad, in quoting from a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The involvement of white supremacy and neo-Nazi groups with the Pentagon began in earnest during the administrations of Reagan and Bush I. According to informed sources who have tracked the neo-Nazis since the Reagan era, the surge in extreme right-wing elements in the Federal government was spurred on by the network of Nicaraguan Contra support activities created to facilitate going around the prohibitions enacted by the Congress. A key member of that strategy was Cheney's Chief of Staff David Addington, who was with the CIA, the Iran-Contra Committee in Congress, and then signed on as senior Vice President for the American Trucking Associations (ATA). WMR reported yesterday on the involvement of a foundation set up by McLean Trucking Co., a member of the ATA, with covert Contra support.

The ATA is a hotbed of GOP activity as well past connections with support for covert CIA activities. Its chief lobbyist is Jim ("Whit") Whittinghill, a former aide to Sen. Bob Dole. Whittinghill's wife, Nancy Dorn, served as an assistant to Texas Representative Tom Loeffler and later served as Special Assistant for Legislative Affairs to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. Dorn also served as 1989-93), Nancy Dorn worked for Defense Secretary Dick Cheney as Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Inter-American Affairs. While working for Cheney, Dorn became a close associate of Addington. Dorn was also Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs. In 2001, Dorn returned to government after acting as a lobbyist for Pakistan, Azerbaijan, and China. She became special assistant for legislative affairs to Vice President Cheney. In 2002, Dorn became the Deputy Director for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), where she served until 2003 before becoming Vice President for Government Relations of General Electric, the parent company of NBC and NBC News. (This puts into context the partisan pro-Bush editorial slants of the network's news division, particularly Nora O'Donnell, Campbell Brown, Brian Williams, Tim Russert, and Chris Matthews).

In the late 1980s and early 90s, Dorn was associated with the network of right-wing neo-confederates who were gaining tremendous influence in the Republican Party. While the Army's chief of civil works, Dorn had control over Arlington National Cemetery and issued guidance on how the Confederate Memorial Committee of the District of Columbia could hold its annual ceremony at the cemetery's Confederate War Memorial and pay for it with funds provided by the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC). According to John Edward Hurley, a one-time associate of White House correspondent Sarah McClendon and the head of the non-partisan Confederate Memorial Association (CMA), South Carolina GOP operative and Confederate Memorial Committee chairman Richard T. Hines, now a major lobbyist (RTH Consulting) in Washington, DC (whose clients include Gambia, Saudi Arabia, Cambodia, and Nigeria), arranged with the UDC to have funds transferred for the Confederate monument and ceremony from sources in the South associated with far right-wing elements. Hines, who was close to South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, saw to it money was transferred from Metrolina Bank in Charlotte, North Carolina (connected to North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms), to First American Bank in Virginia (then owned by the CIA-connected Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI)), to the Mid-Atlantic Credit Union in Gaithersburg, Maryland. One of the officials involved in this money movement was the chief accountant for Edison Electric Institute, which was working closely with Enron and, along with Enron, was one of the largest contributors to the Bush and GOP campaign coffers.

The impetus for the Confederate revival at Arlington Cemetery was promoted by the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) Jefferson Davis Camp Number 305. Its members included a number of individuals associated with white supremacist and neo-Nazi organizations. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which was the source of the New York Times article on Aryan Nation and neo-Nazi penetration of the U.S. military, the SCV has come under the control of racists and Ku Klux Klansmen. Denne Sweeney, on the urging of SCV Camp 305 member Kirk Lyons, an attorney for the Klan, took over as SCV commander in 2004. According to the CMA's Hurley, Lyons, who ran the Houston-based Southern Legal Resource Center (SLRC) (a right-wing rival of the SPLC), was significantly funded by Hines. Lyons later moved the SLRC to Black Mountain in western North Carolina. According to Hurley and the SPLC, the SCV and SLRC are part of a vast network of far right organizations, including the Council of Conservative Citizens (a successor to the Klan-linked White Citizens Councils), the secessionist Southern Partisan magazine (for which Hines arranged an interview with then Missouri Senator John Ashcroft), the secessionist League of the South, the Aryan Nations, the National Association for the Advancement of White People, and the National Socialist White Americans' Party).

With the recent news about neo-Nazi and Klan penetration of the U.S. military, it is noteworthy that Hines' wife, Patricia Mayes Hines, was the U.S. Army's Deputy Assistant Secretary for Manpower and Reserve Affairs during the George H. W. Bush administration. Mrs. Hines served under Cheney along with Dorn, who was permitting neo-Confederate penetration of Arlington Cemetery, and David Addington, who was continuing to help cover up the elder Bush's role in Iran-Contra as Cheney's General Counsel, and Lewis I. "Scooter" Libby, who was Principal Deputy Under Secretary for Strategy and Resources and Deputy Undersecretary for Policy, and was also involved in senior Bush's covert operations abroad. Hines, who was an associate of the late Lee Atwater, Karl Rove's dirty tricks doppelganger, practiced his dirty tricks trade for George W. Bush in his home state against John McCain in the vicious 2000 GOP primary.

It is noteworthy that on the day he was arrested, Murrah Federal building bomber Timothy McVeigh was wearing a Southern Partisan magazine T-shirt bearing the Latin phrase, Sic Semper Tyrannis, along with a portrait of Abraham Lincoln. The phrase was shouted by John Wilkes Booth after he shot to death President Lincoln at Ford's Theater. Another violent connection to the neo-confederates is the FBI's VANPAC (Vance Political Assassination Conspiracy) case that involved white supremacist mail bombings directed against Federal judges. According to the Department of Justice, "four mail bombs [were] sent in December 1989 to different locations in the southeastern United States. One killed federal judge Robert Vance [11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals] in Alabama, a second killed a civil rights attorney [Robert Robinson] in Georgia, and two others [one at the U.S. Courthouse in Atlanta and the other at the NAACP headquarters in Jacksonville, Florida] were discovered before they exploded. A massive investigation ensued involving the FBI and several other law enforcement agencies. The FBI referred to the case as VANPAC because it involved the assassination of Judge Vance [at his home] with a bomb sent in a mail package. In June 1991, a federal jury convicted Walter LeRoy Moody, Jr. [a former Klansman] on charges related to the bombings." Louis Freeh, Jr. was appointed the Special Prosecutor in the VANPAC case. After moving the case from Birmingham, Alabama to St. Paul, Minnesota, and after introducing tainted evidence, Freeh won a successful conviction of Moody, who was sentenced to seven life sentences. An Alabama court sentenced Moody to death. In appreciation for his work, Freeh was nominated as U.S. District Court judge for the southern district of New York. In 1993, President Clinton named Freeh to be FBI Director, where he served during the McVeigh case and the Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky investigations of Clinton. Vance was a progressive Democrat in Alabama, having served as Democratic Party chairman for the state for 11 years. At the time of his death, several Alabama political figures cited "drugs" and "Colombian cartels" as the reason for the mail bombings directed at Federal judges. Vance, a Jimmy Carter appointee, had incurred the wrath of the neo-confederates who viewed him as too liberal and called him the "Daniel Ortega of Alabama." Because of the mail bombings directed against the Federal judiciary (Moody threatened to kill 17 judges), there were a number of judicial resignations around the United States, which allowed George H. W. Bush to replace them with his own people.


"Southern Partisan" T-shirt worn by right-wing terrorist bomber Timothy McVeigh. George W. Bush has appointed many neo-confederates to top jobs in his administration.

The threat against judges resumed under Bush's son, George W. Bush. In 2005, after being threatened with death by white supremacist and World Church of the Creator (now "Creativity Movement") head Matthew Hale, U.S. District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow, discovered the bodies of her 64-year old husband and 89-year old mother at her home. They had been brutally murdered. In a bizarre development, a Chicago man named Bart Ross shot himself in a Milwaukee suburb after being pulled over by police for a traffic violation. Police said they found a suicide note in which Ross claimed responsibility for the murders of Judge Lefkow's husband and mother. However, Ross had no known connections to any white supremacist organizations. Hale had been convicted for threatening Judge Lefkow's life and obstruction of justice. Threatening judges was not confined to people like Hale. Then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay threatened judges when he stated, "the time will come for the men responsible for the death of Terri Schiavo to answer for their behavior." Senator Frank Lautenberg wrote to DeLay, stating he was "stunned to read the threatening comments . . . directed at federal judges and our nation's courts of law in general."


Matthew Hale: Foot soldier for the GOP in threatening the lives of Federal judges.

The involvement of neo-Nazis and white supremacists with U.S. Special Forces, reported by the SPLC and New York Times, also bears on the neo-confederate penetration of the Bush administration. Ashbury International Group, of Sterling, Virginia, a private military contractor (PMC) offering the services of its ex-Special Forces personnel to the government, lost a lawsuit brought against its plans to build a shooting range in Nelson County, Virginia on the plantation of Confederate Congressman William Portcher Mills, the man who designed the Confederate flag. Appearing as a witness for Ashbury was Michael Garcia, a former Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and now the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, along with attorneys for the National Rifle Association. Another Special Forces link to the neo-confederates is retired Army Lt. Col. Jeffrey Addicott, a former counsel for the US Special Forces assigned to the Pentagon and, who, according to the CMA's Hurley, was a close associate of top officials in the neo-confederate movement. Addicott is currently the Director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary's College of Law in San Antonio, Texas and he chaired a panel at the National Defense Industrial Association's 2006 Special Operations/Low Intensity Conflict (SO/LIC) conference, an event attended by every major PMC, including those making huge profits in Iraq. Hurley released the following statement on August 31, 2005, that implicates a number of Bush I and II officials in the neo-confederate movement and the Iran-Contra affair, including Chief Justice John Roberts:

A Washington association executive has called for an investigation into the role of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts when he represented the National Credit Union Administration, a regulatory agency of the federal government. He charged that there was a bizarre intervention by the NCUA to quash a subpoena for a personal account while Roberts was representing the group.

Hurley, president of the Confederate Memorial Association which owned and operated the only Confederate museum in the nation's capital, said that ongoing litigation against his association had been traced to Contra supporters and present and former employees in the general counsels office of the National Credit Union Administration. Moreover, Hurley said that evidence indicated that a $500,000 political slush fund was being covered up.

Hurley said a court order approving a $15,000 fraudulent legal bill, after being issued nearly two years ago, was mysteriously submitted to the bank last week. A two-year lapse in collecting court ordered fees is unheard of, and Hurley contends that this shows that the White House is concerned about illegal NCUA activities being exposed while Roberts represented the group.

A "Freedom Fighter" fundraiser was scheduled after Roberts had made several recommendations on the subject while he was in the White House Counsels' office. Moreover, Carl "Spitz" Channell and Richard Miller, who were raising private funds for the Contras, had met in the White House to ask support for the Contras (as the Walsh Iran/Contra Report noted). After the Roberts memos counseled that Contra fundraising should be held outside the White House, a "Freedom Fighter Night" was scheduled on July 12, 1986 to be held in October of 1986 at Confederate Memorial Hall. Hurley said that he cancelled the October event. However, prior to this, a previous reception at the Hall had been attended by White House personnel. Hurley added that the invitation to the October event was sent from the Capital Yacht Club.

Roberts represented the National Credit Union Administration when he was with Hogan and Hartson. In 1997, Roberts argued the NCUA case before the Supreme Court, which dealt with expanding the banking market for credit unions. In that case, Robert M. Fenner was listed as counsel for the NCUA with Roberts.

Hurley said that Fenner had employed David Eno as the head of his fraud hotline operation at NCUA. According to Hurley, Eno was a commander of the Jefferson Davis Camp No. 305 of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, an organization that sued the Confederate Memorial Association. Kirk Lyons, an attorney who has represented the KKK and the Aryan Nation, is an officer in the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Eno and Richard Hines, another commander of the Jefferson Davis Camp and the husband of White House Domestic Policy advisor Patricia Hines, were behind the litigation against the Confederate Memorial Association.

Hurley said that the mysterious political funding that was used in the litigation against his organization was also used for the annual Confederate ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery. He charged that the funds were part of a secret political slush fund that was wired overnight through a bank in Charlotte by Department of Energy attorney Stephen Page Smith. The funds were traced to the Mid-Atlantic Federal Credit Union in Gaithersburg, Maryland which was regulated by Roberts' client, the NCUA. .

A subpoena for this account was quashed by D.C. Superior Court Judge John H. Bayly. The motion to quash was submitted to Judge Bayly by attorney Stephen Bisker, a former employee of NCUA's Robert Fenner and current contractor for the NCUA who works for a major credit union auditing firm. .

Hurley also believes that another $500,000 of illegal political donations from the American Defense Institute may now be in the account, noting that attorney Thomas L. O'Neill was on the ADI board and was another attorney litigating against Mr. Hurley's association.

Alan Rothenberg, yet another attorney litigating against the Confederate Memorial Association, is the treasurer of the U.S. Premier Federal Credit Union. The president of the USPFCU was Randolph Earnest, assistant to Ambassador David A. Gross, U.S. Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy at the State Department and the former executive director of Lawyers for Bush-Cheney, a group that worked with Roberts during the 2000 election.

Roberts also represented the National Mining Association. Hurley say that Herbert Harmon, the chief lawyer in the massive litigation against the Confederate Memorial Association, uses his home as a contact address for the Rio Tinto mining operation, the largest in the world.

The high-profile Confederate ceremonies in Arlington National Cemetery are held in June and are attended by such notables as Richard B. Abell, a former Department of Justice Assistant Secretary in charge of the Office of Justice Programs and current magistrate for the U.S. Court of Claims; Nicholas D. Ward, who serves on the Probate and Fiduciary Rules Advisory Committee of the D.C. Superior Court; and Robert Wilkie, who currently serves on the National Security Council staff at the White House.

Another prominent lawyer supporting the legal action against Hurley is Col. Jeffrey Addicott, former senior legal counsel for the Special Forces and current director of the Center for Terrorism Law.

When Judge Bayly jailed Hurley in 1997 for objecting to the quashing of the subpoena for the Mid-Atlantic account which Hurley believes to be at the behest of the NCUA, Hurley sold the century-old D.C. museum. The strange motion to quash "by someone other than the holder of the account shows a massive fraud and an obstruction of justice in his case," Hurley said.

Hurley cited a Maryland trial that continues this week as an example of the perilous consequences of dealing with white supremacists. The trial involves the largest arson in the history of the state. All of the burned homes in Charles County belonged to blacks. The chief witness against the Confederate Memorial Association was Lewis Doherty, who is now listed as an organizer of the neo-Nazi National Alliance that was distributing white supremacist literature in Charles County prior to the arsons.

Hurley is calling for a complete investigation of John Roberts connection with the planned "Freedom Fighter" reception, the National Credit Union Administration, the National Mining Association and the Rio Tinto mining operation. He said that all the facts about Roberts in these matters should be known before there is "a secular canonization of this man for the highest court."

 

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WMR has learned that under Bush I, the CIA's use of the trucking industry and cocaine shipments, blossomed. This was no where more apparent than in the state of South Carolina. In 1989, state Representative Ron Cobb was snared by the FBI in a cocaine bust. Cobb, a Democrat, was charged with trying to buy a kilo of cocaine for $20,000 from an undercover FBI agent. Cobb said he was entrapped to allow the FBI to obtain a covert operative inside the South Carolina legislature. Cobb was set up as the head of a phony Atlanta-based lobbying company -- Alpha Group -- and directed by his FBI handlers to bribe South Carolina legislators into pushing a bill to legalize horse and dog track betting in South Carolina. Rep. Robert Kohn of Charleston was brought in by Cobb to entrap white legislators while Rep. Luther Taylor was drafted to bring African American legislators. In all, 17 legislators pleaded guilty or were convicted of drug and racketeering charges. Kohn received a lighter sentence for testifying against his colleagues.

According to Hurley, Kohn's activities in trying to bribe a judge in South Carolina in order to get a Florence, South Carolina truck stop owner and major Republican contributor off the hook for a cocaine bust, were never adequately pursued by the FBI, mainly because of links between the South Carolina cocaine smuggling operations, trucking companies, and Ku Klux Klan and southern white supremacist organizations that were assisting in the distribution of cocaine in support of George H. W. Bush's Iran-Contra money-making scheme. According to the CMA's Hurley, Kohn's association with Hines, himself a former member of the South Carolina House of Representatives, was known to the FBI. But Hines, as a top GOP figure, was "off limits" as far as the FBI was concerned. The FBI told Hurley that "political influence" in the judge bribery case made it impossible for them to continue with an investigation, which was said to have involved cocaine.

Hines was certainly no stranger to the trucking business, having held a position under the Reagan administration with the now-defunct Interstate Commerce Commission, which regulated the trucking industry, and the Department of Transportation. Trucking firms associated with the American Trucking Association were part and parcel with the national cocaine distribution network in the United States, according to sources familiar with the covert operation. The Iran-Contra smuggling operation also saw money from illegal drug sales and off-shore bank account caches making their way into the campaign coffers of a number of U.S. political candidates, mostly Republicans but also including a few Democrats.

Illicit campaign contributions were particularly targeted at Florida officials in the state's important Panhandle, a haven and nexus for drug and weapons smuggling involving the CIA and Latin America during Iran-Contra. According to Florida sources, Jim Appleman, the Florida State Attorney for the 14th Judicial District of Florida who was based in Panama City, Florida, gave protection to Bush Senior's Iran-Contra smuggling operations in northern Florida. Appleman's 2000 campaign treasurer, Gerald R. Stanton, was President of Mutual Development Corporation, a Federal Savings & Loan Insurance Corporation entity that only existed on paper and eventually siphoned off the S&L proceeds confiscated by the U.S. government. Much of that money ended up in Bush family coffers. Two of the Bush sons, Neil (Silverado S&L) and Jeb (Broward Federal S&L) were intimately tied into the S&L collapse. George W. Bush, through his financial stake in Harken Energy, benefited from money provided by the defunct Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), a major avenue for Iran-Contra weapons and drug money laundering activities. Marvin Bush served as Finance Chairman of the Virginia Republican Party until 1991, after the collapse of the S&Ls.

While Marvin's role in the S&L collapse and the Iran-Contra drug and weapons smuggling scheme at first appears sketchy, a detailed analysis of contributions to the GOP while Marvin served as the Virginia Republican Party's finance chair shows definite links between the youngest Bush brother and the CIA-led network. Farhad Azima, an Iranian expatriate who was close to the Shah's family, owned Global International, which was involved in transporting arms for the CIA along with an associated air company, Race Aviation. Azima was a major contributor to the GOP, including Virginia Senate and House candidates, when Marvin was in charge of finances for the Virginia Republicans. The contributions came from Aviation Leasing and LCA Partners, two of Azima's companies. Global's planes were maintained by Southern Air Transport, a CIA proprietary that flew weapons to the Contras and drugs back from Latin America. Azima was also involved with Mario Renda in Indian Springs Bank of Kansas City. Renda, who was convicted of bilking $16 million from the S&Ls and tax fraud, was a Long Island mob figure who brokered drug money laundering for the CIA and the National Security Council. Renda was associated with four collapsed Virginia Savings & Loans: Heritage S&L, Investors S&L, Virginia Beach Federal S&L, and First S&L. Indian Springs collapsed in 1984, a year after its president died in a suspicious car fire.


The never-ending parade of Bush family slush funds.

While the air transport segment of the Bush crime family's weapons and drug smuggling operation involved CIA proprietary firms and mob elements, the ground segment involved trucking firms, some of which were tied to white supremacist and neo-Nazi organizations. These are the organizations that are now infiltrating the U.S. military with a wink and a nod from the Bush administration. The money amassed by the Bushes from these operations also found their way into secret bank accounts abroad and blind trusts in the United States.

According to Insider-Magazine.com's John Caylor, the CIA used its proprietary airline companies in Florida to ship in drugs and distribute them nationally. According to Caylor, "former Lt. Col. Thomas Bledsoe, a former owner of Kenworth of Dothan, Alabama and past President of Alabama Truckers Association [and director of CIA proprietary Tepper Aviation, which was associated with Crestview Aerospace Corporation], supplied transportation and possible storage of the goods [cocaine and weapons]. Bledsoe also flew truck parts nationwide to truckers with his fleet of pilots and fixed wing aircraft.

U.S. Customs Intelligence reports I’ve laid my eyes on say the Tepper planes would land late at night with several armed masked men in black guarding the aircraft with sub-machine guns while supervising the on-loading of tractor trailer rigs and local law enforcement were told to stay the hell away. Bledsoe became irritated after Customs opened the cover-up investigation and moved his yacht from BayPoint, Florida to Fort Lauderdale. Chief Lee Sullivan was reportedly on his payroll. According to those same reports Tepper employed 17 pilots in 1992, was caught with stolen military tanks on board an aircraft and a gun-battle almost ensued between U.S. Customs and Tepper black ops people. Tepper was part of the Iran-Contra network and in its first air crash in Angola, Bub Petty, a Tepper owner from Dothan, was killed." Caylor, who has extensive sources inside the FBI, Customs, and DEA, reported that Tepper/Crestview maintained drug and weapons smuggling operations right alongside the DEA at the San Antonio, Texas airport. The Alabama Trucking Association is a member of the American Trucking Associations, where Cheney's Chief of Staff Addington used to hang his hat. The American Trucking Associations suffered the loss of its Vice President for Public Affairs, Michael Russell on June 15, 2006. The former Department of Transportation official, veteran newsman, press secretary for Michigan Democratic Senator Donald Riegle (whose Senate Banking Committee investigated George H. W. Bush's and Ronald Reagan's supply of weapons of mass destruction to Saddam Hussein), Michigan Democratic Rep. William Ford, and Vice President Al Gore's National Performance Review, and resident of Sterling, Virginia, died in a rafting accident in Colorado. Russell reportedly fell out of his raft and drowned.

Drugs moved into the United States and throughout distribution channels controlled by the Mafia, the Latin American cartels, and the Chinese. While most people know about Iran-Contra, few have heard about "China-Contra." The Reagan and Bush I administrations received a significant amount of arms for the Contras from the Chinese, who were paid back in cocaine. During the height of the Iran-Contra operation, the FBI conducted a huge cocaine bust in Belize. The arrests led to a route in which the Chinese were distributing their cocaine through drug routes that went by air from Belize to Mena, Arkansas and then to Chinese crime syndicates throughout the United States and Canada.

The drug smuggling business was a financial windfall for the Bush family. With slush funds in BCCI and the S&Ls, the Bush family could move large amounts of money to their friends in the Republican Party and fatten the campaign coffers for candidates and office holders who would be permanently beholden to the Bushes. But the mother lode for Bush money remained in off-shore secret bank accounts. Adler B. "Barry" Seal was a former TWA pilot who had flown marijuana and cocaine into the United States since the 1970s. When he was arrested in 1983, Seal had already flown 100 flights into the United States each carrying between 600 and 1200 pounds of cocaine, equating to a street value of between $3 and $5 billion. However, Seal became a witness and informant for the government and proved invaluable for grand juries investigating how drug smuggling worked in the United States. But that testimony came too close to certain top leaders who had been involved in the Iran-Contra and China-Contra scandals. On February 19, 1986, at the height of the Iran-Contra scandal, Seal was murdered gangland style in Baton Rouge, Louisiana at a halfway house where he was assigned. Those who relied on Seal's testimony and cooperation in the drug war, including Louisiana Attorney General William Guste, Jr., were aghast that such an important witness and informant had no protection from the government. The government, of which the number two man was George H. W. Bush, top kingpin in the smuggling. According to those close to the Seal family, after Seal was gunned down, several Swiss bank account numbers were discovered on papers found in the trunk of Seal's car. They were all in the name of George H. W. Bush. The numbers were confiscated by Federal agents.

After the collapse of BCCI and the S&Ls, the Bush family required a new slush fund. It would not be a bank but something with which the Bushes were very familiar -- an energy company specializing in oil and natural gas. Enron, headed up by Bush friend and contributor Ken "Kenny Boy" Lay would fill the vacuum left by BCCI and the S&Ls. Enron, operating with dubious funds from Saudi Arabia, Russia, and other sources, would become the launching pad for George W. Bush's run for the governorship of Texas and the presidency of the United States. Enron's corporate jet was used by Bush in the 2000 campaign. Kenny Boy and George H. W. and W. Bush were close friends. But after Enron served its purpose, it, too, was allowed to collapse. Just as with BCCI and the S&Ls, Enron's employees and shareholders took a bath, while its corporate dons cashed out before the financial doomsday arrived.

However, another Bush "phoenix" would arise from the ashes of Enron. Northern Trust, a Chicago-based multinational financial firm, would assume control of Enron's pension plans, employee savings accounts, 401Ks, and Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) funds. After Enron's bankruptcy in 2002, Northern Trust and Enron's principals (including Ken Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, Andy Fastow, Lou Pai, and Cliff Baxter (who supposedly committed suicide before his appearance before a grand jury as a star witness for the government) were sued in the Houston U.S. District Court by ex-Enron employees.

Just before Lay and Skilling were convicted in the Enron case for fraud, Northern Trust submitted Form 10Q to the Securities and Exchange Commission stating the outcome of the suit against Northern Trust:

"One subsidiary of the Corporation [Northern Trust] was named as a defendant in several Enron-related class action suits that were consolidated under a single complaint in the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Texas (Houston). Individual participants in the employee pension benefit plans sponsored by Enron Corp. sued various corporate entities and individuals, including the Bank in its capacity as the former directed trustee of the Enron Corp. Savings Plan and former service-provider for the Enron Corp. Employee Stock Ownership Plan. The lawsuit made claims, inter alia, for breach of fiduciary duty to the plan participants, and sought equitable relief and monetary damages in an unspecified amount against the defendants. On September 30, 2003, the court denied the Bank’s motion to dismiss the complaint as a matter of law. In an Amended Consolidated Complaint filed on January 2, 2004, plaintiffs continued to assert claims against the Bank and other defendants under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, seeking a finding that defendants are liable to restore to the benefit plans and the plaintiffs hundreds of millions of dollars of losses allegedly caused by defendants’ alleged
breaches of fiduciary duty. In June 2003, after conducting an extensive investigation, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) filed a civil action against numerous parties charging that they violated their obligations to the Enron plan participants. The DOL did not name any Northern Trust entity or employee as a defendant in its suit. On March 31, 2006, the Corporation announced that the Bank had reached an agreement with counsel for the plaintiffs in the Enron lawsuit to seek approval of a settlement of that class action at $37.5 million, all of which will be paid by the Corporation's insurance carriers. Before the
settlement can be finalized, it will have to be approved by the court. On April 20, 2006, the court gave preliminary approval to the settlement. A hearing at which the court may give final approval of the settlement is scheduled for July 24, 2006. As part of the proposed settlement, the Corporation has agreed to give up any claim it might have against Enron, presently in bankruptcy, arising out of or relating to the Enron employee benefit plans."

Now, here is where we go full circle back to Bush and Florida. According to IRS Form 8872, filed by the Americans for Free Speech, a GOP Political Action Committee (PAC) located at 2020 Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington, DC, between Aug. 8, 2004 and September 30, 2004 -- right in the middle of the presidential election campaign between George W. Bush and John Kerry, affiliated PACs, including Americans for Jobs, Families for Conservative Values [also located at 2020 Pennsylvania Ave.], and Taxpayers for Conservative Government and Floridians for Conservative Values [both located in Tallahassee, Florida] contributed a little less than $1 million to Americans for Free Speech. The Americans for Free Speech laundered the money to other right-wing political committees [South Florida Community Council in Coral Gables; People for Fairness and Equality and Citizens for Safer Streets in Tallahassee; and Alliance for Protecting Seniors in Washington, DC] which, in turn, made contributions to various candidates, mostly Republicans but also a few Democrats. One of these recipients was Stephen Meadows, a Democrat, but the Bush family's hand picked successor to Florida State Attorney Jim Appleman in the 14th Judicial District of Florida. Meadows would continue to look out for the interests of the Bushes in the Florida Panhandle as Appleman had for the Iran-Contra and S&L frauds. The Americans for Free Speech also listed an interesting recipient of its expenditures: a Northern Trust office in North Palm Beach, Florida received payment for handling the money wires from and to the GOP PACs.

On April 18, 2005, The Chicago Tribune ran a story on George W. Bush's 2004 Federal Income Tax Return. Bush listed his address as: Post Office Box 803968, Chicago, Illinois, 60680. The post office box is the downtown post office box of -- Northern Trust -- the financial group that held Enron's pension and other financial assets. It is also the holding company that maintains George W. Bush's blind trust. Bush money, Enron money, GOP right-wing PAC money, and God only knows what covert action funds, all handled by the same company. It does sound all so familiar. Enron is dead and so is Ken Lay. Long live the new Bush slush fund -- Northern Trust. The question remains. What did Ken Lay know about Northern Trust? One can assume plenty. For the Bushes, its better that one dead man is now in a position to keep their secrets.

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The Wayne Madsen Report

Wayne Madsen
July 6. 2006

While many people believe Karl Rove is the most powerful and heartless White House advisers in the Bush-Cheney administration, Dick Cheney's friend, counsel, and Chief of Staff David Addington is not less influential and ruthless. Addington, an Army brat who lived in Saudi Arabia where his father was stationed, never made it through the Naval Academy having dropped out during his freshman year as a Midshipman. Addington, described as a conservative Catholic, received his undergraduate degree from Georgetown and law degree from Duke. After Ronald Reagan's inauguration, Addington worked in the General Counsel's office at the CIA where he helped cover up Director Bill Casey's secret and illegal role in involving the agency in the Iran-Contra scandal. Addington honed his cover-up skills at the CIA. Working with the Republican minority staff on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and becoming Republican counsel on the Iran-Contra committee, Addington ensured that details of Oliver North's and Elliott Abrams' global panhandling for the Contras remained as secretive as possible. After all, many of the countries involved in secretly funding the Contras were dictatorships close to Vice President George H. W. Bush, including Saudi Arabia.

Addington never liked congressional interference with illegal activities carried out by Republican administrations. He felt that Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan were hamstrung by meddlesome members of Congress, independent prosecutors, and federal judges. In this, Addington had an ideological soul mate in Dick Cheney, Ford's Chief of Staff. When George H. W. Bush became President and appointed Cheney as Secretary of Defense, Cheney hired Addington as his personal special assistant and later as General Counsel for the Defense Department. If Addington and Cheney were closer than friends and ideological doppelgangers, they would have had to go to Ikea to pick out furniture.

After Clinton became President in 1993, Addington would find that his old connections to Iran-Contra figures would pay off handsomely. Addington became senior vice president and general counsel for the American Trucking Association, a lobby long associated with right-wing causes. According to CIA sources who were involved with the Iran-Contra operations, one of the American Trucking Association's most influential member companies was McLean Trucking Company, one of America's largest trucking firms. The firm was reportedly connected to an entity called the McLean Foundation, which helped funnel money to the Contras. Whatever deals Addington knew about the relationship between McLean, the American Trucking Association, and the CIA, it was clear they were significant enough for the trucking industry to give him a high paying job after the Democrats took over the White House. During his stint for the truckers, Addington formed a political action committee called the Alliance for American Leadership, an exploratory committee for a presidential run by Cheney in 1996. Addington also worked for the Holland & Knight law firm, which is very close to Florida Governor Jeb Bush.


Fitzgerald's match: David Addington

Addington served on Cheney's transition team and then became his General Counsel. It was Addington who was largely behind the U.S. abrogation of the Geneva Conventions in dealing with war prisoners and who oversaw the whittling away of legal impediments to the torturing of prisoners. Addington also championed the creation of a "unitary executive," an all-powerful White House, with Congress and the Courts taking a back seat. Addington is identified in the events leading up to the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson, Ambassador Joseph Wilson's covert CIA wife. After Scooter Libby was indicted last October, Addington took his place and another Cheney aide who was named in the outing of Plame, John Hannah, became Cheney's National Security Adviser.

In Addington, CIA Leakgate Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has likely met his match. Addington never liked independent counsels let alone special prosecutors. The mere fact that Fitzgerald was threatening the unitary executive would have prompted Addington to pull out all the stops. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that Addington likely interfered in the Fitzgerald Grand Jury process. The word in Washington is that Fitzgerald was told an indictment of Rove would go no where since Bush plans to place Libby's name on the next Christmas pardon list. Libby was indicted for lying to a Grand Jury. With a pardon of Libby, Fitzgerald would have been hard pressed to bring a case against Rove or Addington's alter ego, Cheney. Chicago's crime fighting Eliot Ness met his match in native Washingtonian J. Edgar Hoover. In Washington's Addington, Chicago's Fitzgerald has witnessed history repeating itself.

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