-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- >>>A little more information on the strange attraction by and to the Fabulous Bush Boies of unusual busy-ness in the business community. Oh, try to get the Wilmsen book any more! >From amazon.com: Silverado : Neil Bush and the Savings & Loan Scandal by Steven K. Wilmsen Availability: This title is out of print. Although it is no longer available from the publisher, we'll query our network of used bookstores for you and send an update within one to two weeks. Amazon.com Sales Rank: 622,821 Up to St Martins, would sound the same but for SoftSkull you can get (now): http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1887128506/o/qid=954465197/sr=2-1/104- 6214156-2439664 Fortunate Son: George W. Bush And The Making Of An American President by J. H. Hatfield, Toby Rogers (Introduction), Nick Mamatas (Introduction) Paperback - 340 pages 1 edition (January 1, 2000) Soft Skull Press, Inc.; ISBN: 1887128506 ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.87 x 8.99 x 6.01 Amazon.com Sales Rank: 9,796 A<>E<>R <<< From http://www.netmagic.net/~franklin/SS1.html Via http://www.netmagic.net/~franklin/SM1.html {{<Begin>}} Silverado Savings and Loan The Cover Up of a Cover Up The following is the full text of a letter I sent to the San Jose Mercury News on April 18, 1994. The only changes are to improve the readibility of the letter in an HTML format. TO: The San Jose Mercury News , 750 Ridder Park Drive, San Jose, CA, 95190 DATE: April 18, 1994 In my April 4th, 1994 letter to your newspaper on the Whitewater, Silverado, and Broward Affairs, I posed some questions for you and for the Congress to ask about the Silverado Banking and Savings and Loan Association of Colorado. Question 2 had to do with the beginning and end dates of the federal investigation into Silverado, the date of the first violation of law, and the date when the federal regulators first discovered this and other violations. Question 6 had to do with the names of the regulators, among others, involved in investigating Neil Bush and Silverado. Another Savings and Loan: Another 1988 Bush Campaign Coverup These past two days, I have been fortunate enough to read the book Silverado: Neil Bush and the Savings and Loan Scandal by a Denver Post financial reporter, Steven Wilmsen. Wilmsen broke several of the key financial stories on Silverado in that newspaper and in the Denver Business Journal. In Silverado, I discovered partial answers to both of the above questions; I also discovered another coverup involving the Bush Campaign of 1988 that directly involved the head of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Topeka, Kansas and a mysterious voice from Washington. Between them they delayed the Federal takeover of Silverado until the day after Bush was elected, at an estimated cost to the American people of between $400 million dollars and $600 million dollars (details below). The cast of characters: • Michael R. Wise, Chairman and CEO of Silverado. • Neil Bush, a member of the Silverado Board of Directors - 1985 to August 1988. • Bill L. Waters, the largest developer in Denver. • Kenneth M. Good, the second largest developer in Denver; contributer of $100,000 to the 1988 Bush campaign. • Larry Mizel, developer and owner of M.D.C. Holdings, Inc. nation's fifth largest home builder, raiser of millions of dollars for politicians ( usually Republicans - he raised a million dollars at a single luncheon for Ronald Reagean in 1986). • Kermit Mowbray, President of the Kansas Federal Home Loan Bank (one of the 12 regional banks directed by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board [FHLBB] in Washington) • Dorothy van Cleave, S&L Examiner, Kansas Federal Home Loan Bank • Terry Sandefur, S&L Analyst, Topeka, Kansas Federal Home Loan Bank Walters, Good, Neil Bush and Bush's Oil Exploration Firm - JNB, Inc. Until I read Silverado, I was under the impression that Walters and Good were simply investors in JNB, Inc. They were more than that; without them the oil exploration firm would have never existed. Not that it mattered, JNB, Inc. never drilled an oil well that made money in the five years it operated. In addition, Bush concealed his close relationships with Walters, Good and Mizel from the other members of the Silverado board, resulting in major conflicts of interest. Walters, Good, Mizel and Michael Wise. The collusion between these three men during the glory days of Silverado Banking has to be seen to be believed. Wilmsen describes some of their initial dealings on page 81 of Silverado: Good conjured up a significant portion of his money in elaborate deals that created wealth where none had been -- with a little help from obliging savings and loans like Silverado. For example, Good and several partners traded two parcels of vacant land three times in six months with the value increasing each time until they finally sold them to Silverado for a $3.2 million profit. Good and Walters had become two of Silverado's most reliable customers. Each had taken out millions in Silverado loans and they had helped Silverado recapitalize itself in 1984. Silverado was desparately short of capital, so it had come up with a scheme to raise it by issuing stock in exchange for real estate. In the deal, Silverado traded shares of its stock for raw land from both developers, issuing $15 million in stock to Walters and $14 million to Good. The thrift then included the land in its capital. This was just the beginning of a series of deals between Walters and Silverado, Good and Silverado, and Mizel and Silverado, many of which were designed to conceal the true state of affairs at the savings and loan from the regulators and other members of the thrift industry. When Did Silverado Cross the Line from Risk Taking to Violations of the Law?. Although federal regulators became concerned about Silverado in 1982 and 1983, the rot probably did not set in until 1984. "At the end of 1984" Wilmsen writes "the thrift flirted dangerously with insolvency, having a capital level of only 0.6 percent. And regulators would later find [in late 1986] an avalanche of bad loans that Silverado had hidden away or simply not bothered to report. Still regulators and most people in the thrift business thought Silverado was a model of properity and Wise basked in the golden light of success -- the illusion of success." (p. 55) Steven R. Wise - Golden Boy. In the early to mid-1980's, Steven Wise could do no wrong. Savings and loan executives from all over the country came to Denver to "hear him expound on the wisdom of his methods." (p. 52) His success at Silverado "catapulted him to the top of the powerful U.S. League of Savings Institutions." (p.53) This was the lobby that many on Capitol Hill viewed as being only second in power to the NRA. In 1986, he was placed on the league's board of directors and its executive committee. When Ed Gray of the FHLBB tried to re-regulate the Industry in 1984 he had powerful enemies: Don Regan in the Reagan White House, Charles Keating of Lincoln Savings and Loan and Steven Wise of Silverado. More important to future events affecting Silverado, Wise became a director of the Kansas Home Loan Bank in Topeka, Kansas. One of the peculiarities of the Home Loan Bank Board system was (and is) that most of the board members of the regional banks are the very S&L executives being regulated. In fact the regulated S&Ls in each district actually own a portion of each bank because of the bank stock they are required to purchase. In any case, Wise became a director of the Kansas bank in 1981 and began cultivating its President, Kermit Mowbray. (pp. 150-152) When Did the Regulators Discover the Truth About Silverado? In late 1986, Dorothy van Cleave, an examiner of the Kansas Home Loan Bank and Terry Sandefur, an analyst at the same bank, were assigned to look at Silverado's books. It was then that the carefully-contrived "model of prosperity" began to unravel. But there was something disturbing about their findings that had less to do with Silverado than with the Topeka bank itself. Silverado had been on the edge for years, and its nefarious dealings had been in plain sight, just as they were now. Why hadn't anyone caught them before? Maybe none of the regulators had been as good as van Cleave and Sandefur. Or perhaps their overworked predecessors had simply missed them. After all, examiners were carrying unbelievable workloads in the wake of Reagan budget cuts, which had lopped hundreds of federal thrift examiners off the payroll. Sandefur alone was dealing with thirty troubled thrifts at once. Mistakes could be explained. But mistakes didn't explain why the Topeka bank had actually approved most of Silverado's illegal and wildly imprudent transactions. The man in charge of those approvals was Kermit Mowbray, president of the Topeka bank. (p.150) The Abortive Cease and Desist Order - March 1987 Based upon the documents they had examined since September, van Cleave and Sandefur instituted a full-fledged examination of Silverado on December 1, 1986, mashaling twenty examiners for the task. They found the situation was so critical they could not wait for the examination to be concluded, opting instead for a cease and desist order on March 10th, 1987. The cease and desist order would have put Silverado under tight goverment control. After meeting with Silverado's management the morning of the 10th in Denver, the two regulators were told after a phone call to Topeka that Mowbray said to drop the cease and desist order. They were reduced to paper threats, and Silverado knew it. Ironically enough, Silverado made a very risky loan seventeen days later that ultimately resulted in the collapse of the S&L in August 1988. The Cover Up of the Cover Up. On August 15, 1988 the Colorado savings and loan commissioner issued a capital call, the first step in a government takeover of Silverado. Neil Bush resigned two days later, saying he did not want the regulators to be constrained by his presence on the board. "The truth of the matter" Wilmsen writes, "was that Neil already was under investigation by the regulators." (p.182) On January 27, 1987, van Cleave had requested that investigators in Washington look into insider trading at Silverado. This was when all of the sub rosa dealings between Bush and Walters, Good, and Mizel were exposed, showing that Bush was guilty of major conflicts of interest, and not meeting his legal responsibilities to Silverado. Were the results of this investigation known in the White House as it was going on? Wilmsen believes that the 1988 Bush campaign would have been seriously damaged if it had become known to the Dukakis campaign and the American people that Bush's son "was in the thick of the greatest financial scandal in the nation's history." He goes on to cite "some troubling coincidences in the events that unfolded in the months between Neil's resignation and Silverado's closing" on December 9. 1988. (p. 182) September 12, 1988 - Terry Sandefur sends a memo to the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC) in Washington. FSLIC was then part of Danny Wall's FHLBB. October 21, 1988 - the Colorado savings and loan commissioner calls Mowbray in Topeka and tells him he would close Silverado before the end of October. October ??, 1988 - "Mowbray, suddenly and unexpectedly, ordered the proceeedings to a halt. A call had come from Washington asking Mowbray to hold off closing Silverado for forty-five days. No one seemed to know why." Mowbray later explained to the House Banking Committee that it was all a matter of priorities at FSLIC and he could not remember who called him or the reasons the caller had given for requesting the forty-five day delay. (p. 183) November 8, 1988 - George Bush elected President of the United States. November 9, 1988 - Mowbray re-starts the process to close down Silverado. According to Wilmsen, the "cost of that delay is in the hundreds of millions of dollars. In late September, regulators estimated the cost of Silverado's closure to be between $400 million and $600 million. When the thrift was finally closed December 9, it cost $1 billion". (p. 184) The Bush Treasury Department supposedly mounted an investigation in the fall of 1990. Just before Silverado went to press in 1991, the Bush Treasury Department told Wilmsen "We don't discuss investigations, now or ever." (p. 184) A Familiar Pattern. In May 1987, the FHLBB of San Francisco wanted to seize Lincoln Savings and Loan. If they had done so, what would the Lincoln bailout costs have been? Instead, Danny Wall, his senior staff in Washington (and perhaps the White House) protected Keating for two years raising the bailout costs to $2 billion dollars while Keating bilked between $250 million and $300 million dollars from about 20 thousand people in Southern California and paid out some of it in a $100,000 contribution to the Bush campaign of 1988. Although the news of this contribution became public in early 1990, no investigation of the Keating 1988 contribution to the Bush campaign has occurred in the last four years. In March 1987, regulators tried to serve a cease and desist order on Silverado. They were cut off by their own boss (or did it come from a higher authority?) When they tried to close Silverado down in September/October 1988, they were cut off again by a mysterious phone call from Washington. Was it Wall, a member of his senior staff, the Treasury Department, or was it the White House? Since then, the Treasury Department has stonewalled. Bottom Lines: The Cover Up of the Cover Up of the Keating contribution has been successful to date. The Cover Up of the Silverado Cover Up also has been successful to date. Finally, during the FDIC suit against Silverado that went to trial in 1991, the Office of Thrift Supervison (OTS) refused to hand over thousands of pages of documents that the defense claimed would show that regulators not only approved of Silverado's deals, but had actually encouraged them. Without any other explanation, the thrift office simply claimed confidentiality, saying it would rather accept a contempt of court citation than produce the documents. (p. 203) Why did the OTS take such an extreme action to protect the documents? As Wilmsen asks, did Mowbray, who was fired in December 1988 from the Kansas Home Loan Bank, do more damage than anyone knew about? Or is the OTS concealing something more? During the 1989 and 1990 congressional hearings, many Silverado regulators or former regulators testified as witnesses. Where was Congressman Leach when Mowbray said he could not remember who called him and asked for a forty-five day delay in closing Silverado? Was this not improper influencing of an appointed government official.? Who made the phone call? Mowbray should be compelled to answer. And here again we see the curious incuriosity of the national media when it comes to certain events that occurred during the Reagan and Bush administrations. How can you have a series of congressional hearings and raise some of these questions and not arouse the curiosity of anyone in the national media? What a difference an election makes. In contrast to your lack of coverage of certain events that occurred during the Reagan-Bush years, and which are now "non-events" in the Orwellian sense, the Clintons appear to be under a journalistic microscope. In the Mercury News of Saturday, April 16th 1994, Frank Greve of the Knight-Ridder Washington Bureau has an article on the analysis of the Clintons' 1993 tax return. In the next to last paragraph he tells us: "Because of the daily barrage of questions about the Clinton's finances in recent weeks, the president's top lawyers and aides reviewed the tax return line by line with reporters." The "Whitewater Standard" of Investigative Reporting This is the "Whitewater Standard" of investigative reporting I mentioned to you in my last letter. However, in the last paragraph of his article, I can not tell if Greve is serious or putting one over on the editors and owners of the Knight-Ridder papers. He writes: A $66 deduction for the personal-property tax paid on the Clinton's 1986 Oldsmobile prompted penetrating questions from reporters, including where was the car kept (somewhere in Arkansas) and who was driving it. If he is serious then God help us. If, as I hope, his reference to "penetrating questions" is a commentary on the level of much of the Whitewater journalism to date, then God Bless him. There may still be some hope left. Franklin R. Mancuso If you wish to comment on the content of any of these pages, please log in to Table Talk forum of Salon Magazine at http://tabletalk.salonmagazine.com/webx/webx.dll?15@@ Go to the Politics forum and Then Zippergate, and then to the Thread: The Media's Handling of the Clinton Scandals. Any information you care to provide on the Crime of the Century should go to my E-mail address [EMAIL PROTECTED] LIST 1: LOOTED S&Ls; AMOUNTS LOOTED LIST 2: LOOTED S&Ls; NAMES OF DEFAULTERS LIST 3: LOOTED S&Ls; PROPERTIES TO SPECULATORS LIST 4: LOOTED S&Ls; "FORGIVENESS OF LOANS" LINCOLN TIMELINE LINCOLN SKIMMING AND SHREDDING FOUR TYPES OF POLITICAL CRIMINAL ACTS WHY WAS THERE A WHITEWATER INVESTIGATION? A LETTER NOT SENT SAVINGS AND LOAN LOOTING TECHNIQUES WHO WATCHES THE WATCHERS? Press here to go back to HOME page Press her to go to MEDIA pages introduction Press here to go to GATE pages introduction Press here to go to SAVINGS AND LOAN SCAM pages introduction {{<End>}} A<>E<>R ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your common sense." --Buddha + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." Universal Declaration of Human Rights + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut." Ernest Hemingway + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soap-boxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
