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Origins of the G.W. Bush-Carlyle-Nazi Axis
By Alex Constantine
Even the most loyal conservative must admit that George Bush, Jr. is a
strange bird. Texans have never truly accepted him as one of their own.
"Like his father," the UK's Observer jeered in 1994, "his home-grown
credentials are questioned." In general, the natives were somewhat uneasy
about the occasional bizarre antic - like the fist day of a local dove
shoot, highlighted by Bush bagging a protected songbird, not the designated
target (Ed Vulliamy, "White Hot Mama Fights a Texan Bush War," Observer,
October 2, 1994). "No real Texan would have done that!" barked then Governor
Ann Richards.
But then, in the mid-90s, the Texas political landscape shifted
radically, the old order crumbling and a home-grown right-wing mutation
plowing through the crust. Democrats had dominated the state since the Civil
War, but with Napoleanic zeal the Christian-Right rallied and seized control
of the Republican Party, led by the state's Christian Coalition and Eagle
Forum, and went on to demonstrate that any political machine is mutable,
even in the deep South.
But Bush still didn't quite fit the ticket, some Texans felt. True, his
business was petroleum. But shortly after George, Jr. joined the board of
Harken Oil, BCCI, the international bank that parlayed middle eastern oil
profits into political influence, not to mention engaging in child
prostitution and arming Iraq, dropped a number of lucrative drilling
contracts in his lap (Petzinger, Truell & Abramson, 'Family Ties,' Wall
Street Journal, December 5, 1991, p. 1). Texans were left to ponder the
unspeakable question: Why in tarnation was W. in business with Shiek
Khalifah bin-Salmon al-Khalifah, the scandal-ridden ruling emir of Bahrain?
In 1990, the Shiek's name surfaced on a list of primary shareholders in
BCCI's parent company, BCCI Holdings in Luxembourg. Bush had pulled strings
to throw the contracts to Harken. In return, Harken Oil helped BCCI
investment bankers gain a foothold in the U.S.
When the Iraqgate scandal broke, W. attempted to separate himself
from the deal, blaming a former aide who had gone to work for BCCI and
resigned when the press caught whiff of corruption.
At the same time, it was clear that the young entrepeneur had his gaze
fixed on his father's eyrie in Washington. George W. Bush had been one of
his father's leading advisors, a "lead player," in "the campaign to oust
White House Chief of Staff John Sununu' (Pertzinger, Truell & Abramson). The
Wall Street Journal looked into Bush's business dealings and found a
"complex pattern" of provocative personal and financial ties, but Bush
refused to respond to questions: "George W. Bush, a managing partner of the
Texas Rangers baseball team, declined to be interviewed," but "he did
provide brief responses to written questions through an intermediary." Where
was the bold Texas moralist with an aversion to "even" the vaguest
appearance of wrong-doing? In hiding.
But still exploiting those personal and financial relationships, of
course. On March, 1995, the regents of the University of Texas, at the
behest of Governor Bush, invested $10 million with the Carlyle Group, a
merchant bank in the District of Columbia. Carlyle was chaired by Frank
Carlucci, Ronald Reagan's secretary of defense and, since 1989, "a darling
of the corporate sector," per the L.A. Times. Carlucci sits on the board of
numerous mega-corporations, including Bell Atlantic, Ashland Oil and the
Kaman Corporation. Carlyle's sole outside parner is the Mellon Family.
Richard Darmon, economic advisor to Bush, Sr. was on the board. So did James
Baker III, former secretary of state. These investments raised a ruckus in
the business press. G.W. himself had long-standing business ties to Carlyle
Group. In 1990, he was given a seat on the board by former Nixon aide Fred
Malek, a Carlyle advisor (Joe Conason, "Notes on a Native Son," Harper's,
February 2000, p. 49).
Fred Malek, mind you, was the CREEP deputy director who, prompted by
Nixon's trembling belief that "a Jewish cabal" in the Bureau of Labor
Statistics was bent on is destruction, made up a list of Jews in the bureau.
Malek was made deputy director of the Republican National Committee by
George Bush, Sr., an old friend. It was Malek who organized an "ethnic
coalition" of Nazis in August 1988, the Heritage Groups Council, that
included the lies of Laszlo Pastor (a Hungarian-American, former fascist
Arrowcross officer and junior diplomatic envoy to Berlin under Hitler), and
Father Florian Galdau (a priest, Vatican P-2 member and New York leader of
the Iron Guard, a latter day version of the old SS-run Romanian terror
organization).
Once again, the Bush family distanced itself from scandal. The clan pled
ignorance, even though Bush, Sr. had cherry-picked Malek for the job.
Supposedly, they had fooled everyone, even the conservative National Jewish
Coalition, which boasted In 1992 that "Vice President Dan Quayle, HUD
Secretary Jack Kemp, GOP Campaign Manager Fred Malek and a large number of
key Senators, Congressmen and candidates for office addressed Jewish
delegates and community leaders at a series of events hosted by the NJC
during the Republican convention in Houston last month." (NJC Bulletin,
September 1992).
On February 2 1990, USA Today's Tom Squitieri wrote that "four key
Republican activists, ousted from George Bush's 1988 campaign amid charges
of anti-Semitic or pro-fascist links, are back working for the party." These
included Fred Malek and Phil Guarino, another pro-Nazi P-2 member. George W.
Bush ran spin control for his father's 1988 presidential campaign, and when
the Nazi scandal burst ever-so-briefly in the media, GW protected his father
by urging the European fascists to resign from the Heritage Council
(Citizen's Law Web Site, http://www.citizenslaw.net/
bushdynasty_corrupt.htm).
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