-------------------------------------------------------- http://www.e-book.com.au/electionspecial04.htm A Government of Thieves Part One - the Scandal of the Bushes The Bush family - a cascade of fortunes and political careers founded on arms profiteering, continued on Nazi-derived earnings, advanced by Saudi oil & Bin Laden connections, sustained by business fraud and now benefiting from a war they themselves started. Should a leader be blamed for the sins of his ancestors? No, if that is the simple question, but yes, if he shows no contrition, continues to profit from them and goes on to do more of the same. Is George Walker Bush fit to be President, and are the group around him fit to govern? You be the judge. The Founders 1. Samuel Prescott Bush (1863 -1948) Samuel Bush Early Days The founder of the modern Bush dynasty was Samuel Prescott Bush ,an Ohio steel executive, whose Buckeye Steel Castings Co. business projects included making parts for the Harriman railway empire. Before becoming President of Buckeye (1905-1927), Samuel Bush held a railroad position in Pennsylvania. He was the son of the Rev. James Smith Bush and Harriet Fay. Samuel graduated from the Stevens Institute of Technology in 1884, and ten years later married Flora Sheldon , with whom he had four surviving children, Prescott, Mary, Margaret and James. Of these his son Prescott Sheldon Bush was to be his father's dynastic successor. Samuel's money was not to give him immunity from personal tragedy however, for his wife Flora was to be killed when struck by a car in 1920. Samuel later remarried Martha Bell Carter of Milwaukee. For many years Samuel was a leading member of the National Association of Manufacturers, and for a time was President of the Ohio Manufacturer's Association. Later he was to be an advisor to the disastrous Depression-era President Herbert Hoover on business and unemployment issues. He began the Bush family's abiding interest in golf, baseball, tennis and football. His old company Buckeye Steel endured for many years, but under new ownership filed for bankruptcy reorganization in Dec. 2002. After the US entered World War I in April 1917, Samuel Bush obtained a position as head of the War Industries Board's Ordnance, Small Arms and Ammunition Section . This is surprising, considering he had no background in armaments. There was a hidden logic. As an apparent 'cleanskin' suitable for a sensitive official position, Bush already had powerful patrons eager to put his name forward. We can note for example Frank and Percy Rockefeller , whose famous family had moved to gain control of the Remington Arms Company in 1914. (Frank Rockefeller, a brother of clan head John D. Rockefeller, was the previous President of Buckeye Steel). Then there was a certain George Sheldon, a director of the huge Bethlehem Steel Corp., which like Remington benefited enormously from World War I. George Sheldon was also a vice-president of the Navy League, which was subsidised by steel & arms makers to agitate for a massive naval expansion advantageous to them. Finally, the War Industries Board was itself headed by Bernard M. Baruch , a Wall St. speculator who had close personal and business ties to E.H. Harriman, father of the closest friend of Bush's son Prescott at Yale. Sometimes the associations of their children can bring advancement to parents just as readily as the reverse. In Samuel Bush's later years he was to remain closely associated with the high-flying Baruch. In the America of the day, big money stuck together closer than clotted cream. So the link between the Bushes, war, patriotism and profits was now firmly established through an informal network of influence. It has continued ever since. The Merchants of Death The period following the Civil War in the US and the Franco-Prussian War in Europe opened both a great general industrial expansion and the largest explosion of arms manufacturing ever known until the modern era. It was a time of huge fortunes being built by ruthless industrialists and bankers. These gentlemen, later styled the "robber barons" by historians, look little better than gangsters in retrospect. However many of them founded family dynasties whose descendants were to become not only rich but also eminently respectable. In some cases, like that of the Carnegies and the Rockefellers, much of their fortunes were later to be used worldwide for considerable good. In other cases, like the Bush family, the further accumulation of money and power remained the primary goal. The most evil aspect of the unregulated free-for-all that characterised the 1865 -1914 period of rapid industrial expansion was the development of an arms trade which did not just sell weapons but actively promoted war tensions and conflict to do so. The "trick of the trade" then for the arms manufacturers was to manufacture not just munitions but also regular "threats" and war scares. The idea was to keep populations supportive of greater expenditures on arms, and to prevent effective political challenge to those who advocated spending ever more taxes on weapons. Fear was in fact the greatest weapon the arms dealers peddled. And they had no compunction about firing it from the shortest range possible. An example of their cynicism in action was shown as early as 1879, when the Remington Arms Co. was selling ammunition to both Russia and Turkey when they were at war with each other. Closer to home, they sold rifles to Cuban revolutionaries and at the same time ammunition to the Spanish Govt. fighting them. Remington later topped this when Colombia and Venezuela were at war, but both states were also facing civil insurrections. There Remington achieved a quadruple sales bonanza by having all four parties firing at each other with Remington rifles loaded with Remington UMC bullets. In Bullets we Trust Beginning in 1894 an international arms cartel was formed, enabling leading arms manufacturers to jointly exploit markets worldwide without the annoyance of risking undercutting each other's profits. Disguised under the innocuous title of the Harvey United Steel Co., the "Harvey Syndicate" brought together many leading arms majors. The largest of these were UK firms Vickers Ltd. & Armstrong-Whitworth; from Germany Krupps and Dillingen, France's huge Schneider Co., Italy's Terni and from the USA Bethlehem Steel. Some of the companies had numerous national subsidiaries or associated businesses with interlocking directorships, and behind them stood big bankers such as John Pierpont Morgan. The companies sold in all markets to friend or potential foe, without reservation. Yet within their home countries each put their efforts forward as the essence of patriotism. Arms panics in 1889 & 1892-3 created by agents of the weapons manufacturers resulted in huge surges of military spending in Britain and France, kicking off a corresponding rise in Germany. This tactic was regularly and successfully repeated, often by the deliberate spreading of false or misleading information about what potential or actual enemies were doing. Weapons agents sallied back and forth between national leaders and governments, intentionally provoking them in turn. The resulting arms race made Europe a "powderkeg" ready for the fatal conflagration that occurred in 1914, the most disastrous and bloody war in all human history. The League of Rascals This period saw the first real establishment of the "military-industrial complex" President Dwight D. Eisenhower was later to warn against. In his 1961 farewell address to the American people, perhaps after reflecting sombrely on what was casually revealed during his many golf matches with Samuel Bush's son Prescott, Eisenhower cautioned: " we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted." What he meant was a network of arms makers, politicians, military officers, bankers, media owners and compliant journalists who together could distort the whole policy of a nation for their own selfish advantage. Of course the USA was not unique in such corruption - in "Mother England" things were equally as bad in the run-up to the Great War. In Britain, after arms manufacturers successfully fooled the public with the "big Navy Scare " of 1909, rampant behind- the-scenes corruption burst into the public view for the first time when Vickers Ltd. was caught out bribing Rear Admiral Fujii of the Imperial Japanese Navy, to place an order with their company for the construction of warships. Visiting Canadian Government ministers Sir Frederick Borden and Louis Brodeur were also shocked by a Vickers official who told them "the Empire is going to the dogs for lack of a war and, worst of all, there is not even one small war in prospect". Vickers's roving salesman, the sinister Sir Basil Zaharoff, received extraordinary "expenses" and "special commissions", enabling him to bribe foreign officials with considerable success. An analysis in 19l1 by a financial paper found 13 members of Parliament, 43 military/naval officers and 17 newspaper owners and journalists on the boards of directors of three leading arms makers. The highly respected retired Civil Service and Treasury head, Lord Welby of Allington, was so angered by all this that he declared "We are in the hands of an organisation of crooks. They are the politicians, generals, manufacturers of armaments and journalists. All of them are anxious for unlimited expenditure and go on inventing scares to terrify the public...". The situation he spoke of bears an uncanny resemblance to the present Washington government of George W. Bush, where both politicians and military personnel move freely back and forth from public employ to highly paid positions with defence contractors, under the cover of enthusiastic media endorsements, all with the inevitable -and to them welcome -consequences** ( see Part Two ). In 1913 the great arms cartel fell apart, and the arms makers began competing open slather with each other. Within a year Europe was at war. The "Great War" - gas masks, trench slaughter , misery and - money for jam World War I was enormously beneficial for the rich of America. Twenty-one thousand new millionaires were created. Du Pont stock became fifty times more valuable, and the banker J.P. Morgan became rich beyond his wildest imaginings. In 1917 Bethlehem Steel paid a dividend of an astounding 200% of its stock (share) value. Selling munitions to Europe was a major part of this earnings boom. Under war conditions the opportunities to engage in profiteering were far greater than usual, and were eagerly seized upon. European munitions purchases from the USA rose from $40 million in 1914 to $2,340 million in 1918, for a war total of over four billion dollars (worth many times more in today's values). US entry into the war in April 1917 also created a home-grown bonanza for the arms makers. In his new official position Samuel Bush helped organise munitions for the US Government's war effort, and channeled Government assistance to needy weapon makers (though why they needed it was a profound mystery to outsiders). Although only a relative 'small fry' in business himself, he was now perfectly placed to give the nod to particularly profitable contracts for others and receive "kickbacks" in return, from transactions that were handily shrouded in wartime secrecy. And sure enough, fat war contracts now flowed to Buckeye Steel. It was Samuel Prescott Bush, then, who began the long tradition of the" patriotic" Bushes, the proud American family who just happen to be always making money from war. The aftermath After World War I there were enquiries into the huge and senseless slaughter during that monstrous conflict, and into those who benefited by it. In one such, people such as Samuel Bush were labeled Merchants of Death when it became clear both that large armaments companies had deliberately fostered an arms race to stimulate their business and that some officials had conspired to assist their wholesale profiteering. Strangely, most (but fortunately not all) of the detailed US records of the Samuel Bush wartime transactions later disappeared from the relevant Archives and have never been recovered. This pattern was not to be unique. The present President has busily censored damaging reports, tried to block enquiries, and sealed off many records from public scrutiny, some permanently. Wherever the Bushes have been, "cleaners" seem to follow them. In 1944 Samuel Bush's Buckeye Steel was to be awarded a huge government arms contract, to make armor casings for shells. For a second time this Bush was to profit from" fighting the Germans", this time a Nazi state that his own son had been instrumental in founding and nourishing. The revulsion that followed World War I led to attempts to regulate the arms trade, and prevent arms dealers from ever again entering into corrupt alliances with politicians and military personnel. Today, however, under the Presidency of George W. Bush the appalling situation that existed prior to W.W.I now prevails again in America. A Government of "war from business and business from war" now controls the world's only superpower. And once more the Bush family thrives as others suffer and die. Let's continue the full story with the next generation of the Bush family. Prescott Bush Prescott Soldiers On *By the time Prescott Bush was a teenager, the Bushes were sufficiently established to be regarded as part of the aspirational elite who were shaping the new, booming economy of the United States in the early twentieth century. Although regarded by some as still a "minor league" family in the New England aristocracy of wealth and power, their children were now able to attend the "right" schools and universities, and be in a position to advance further should the opportunities arise. Prescott Bush attended Yale University. There the tall (6 ft 4 in), athletic and handsome young man formed an advantageous close friendship with E. Roland "Bunny" Harriman, younger son of the immensely wealthy Harriman family. "Bunny's" father, railroad baron & stock broker E.H.Harriman was denounced by President Theodore Roosevelt as an "undesirable citizen" guilty of "deep-seated corruption" for issuing tens of millions of dollars of fraudulent railroad stock; but Harriman had managed to keep the cash and become one of America's richest men. As a close chum of "Bunny" Harriman, Prescott was "tapped" (recruited) with him for the infamous Skull and Bones Society ,whose many wealthy and well-placed "Patriarch" graduates were to assist him throughout his rise in life. Skull and Bones The Tomb, New Haven At a number of private US colleges there are "secret societies" where the children of the rich form hidden and often snobbish cliques, to establish lifelong networks of advantage. Some of these groups practise bizarre initiations, regular group bonding ceremonies with weird mumbo-jumbo rituals, and the usual extreme horseplay of overprivileged adolescents with time on their hands. Of all these the most powerful and secretive is the Skull and Bones Society of Yale. Founded by the scion of an opium trader, Skull and Bones is notorious for its focus on death rituals and perverse sexual interrogation. The group houses a collection of stolen skulls and other macabre objects - reputedly including Hitler's silverware - in its windowless headquarters in New Haven, Connecticut, a building known to members as the Tomb. Outsiders are never permitted entry, and those attempting to investigate Skull and Bones may be discouraged by subtle or less than subtle means. The Skull and Bones society is immensely wealthy. For example it possess its own private island (Deer Island) with an exclusive "retreat", and owns much property at Yale. Members include many leading corporate and financial figures, senior lawyers and justices, some ranking FBI and CIA personnel (the CIA has been a haven of Bonesmen), and politicians. Both President's Bush are "Patriarchs" (graduate members) of Skull and Bones, many of whose alumni have assisted and protected their family's rise from the days of Prescott Bush at Yale. "Bonesmen", as with similar networks, are sworn to assist each other wherever possible in life. However in the real world they sometimes become enemies or even political rivals. The Geronimo Incident *Prescott Bush graduated BA from Yale in 1917. He had enlisted in the Connecticut National Guard in 1916 and then attended US Army Officer training. Now he joined the army as a captain of field artillery, and in 1918 was posted to Fort Sill, Oklahoma. There, with fellow Skull and Bones members Neil Mallon, Ellery James and four other novice captain accomplices, he led a grave-robbing incident involving the remains of the famous Chiricahua Apache chief Geronimo ,who had been buried at Fort Sill in 1909. Geronimo's skull, elbow bone and some belongings were taken to the Tomb (Skull & Bones HQ) in New Haven, and are evidently still there, on display in a glass cage. Despite Apache grievance, law enforcement officers have never entered the Tomb to reclaim them, so powerful is the Skull and Bones in the legal and judicial worlds (most members in any case regard it as their duty to deceive outsiders to protect their secrets). Postscript: An attempt to negotiate a settlement to this shameful issue with Jonathan Bush, President George H. W. Bush's brother, in NYC in 1986 ended without agreement, and the Skull and Bones Society lawyer Endicott P. Davison then blandly denied all, despite the existence of substantial physical evidence supplied by a "Bonesman" with a conscience. In the Bush world, truth is what you can get away with. With Prescott gone off to play soldier boy, his chum E. Roland "Bunny" Harriman hurriedly married a Miss Gladys Fries. It's interesting to note that although he and Prescott were frequently in each other's company throughout their lives thereafter, neither attended the other's wedding. The newlyweds then departed for Washington, for Roland in a singular coincidence had secured a position in the War Department in connection with ordnance, the same current area of concern as that of Prescott's father Samuel Bush. Don't Mention the War *Later in 1918 Captain Prescott Bush was sent to the European War, by now running towards its last bloody days. He was attached to the 158th Field Artillery Brigade in France, and later to the occupation forces in Germany. When evidently bored from a lack of wartime "action", Bush amused himself & he thought his readers by writing a humorous letter in which he claimed to have been awarded the Victoria Cross, the Legion of Honor, and the Distinguished Service Cross, under circumstances that were clearly preposterous. However in the fevered war atmosphere of the time the letter was taken seriously, & published in a newspaper as factual. This led to a scandal as a result of which Bush was unable to remain in his hometown of Columbus Ohio when he returned there in mid 1919. The "phony war hero" label, though unjustified, was a permanent humiliation thereafter. However there is no evidence to support the view that bitterness over this incident pushed Bush towards Nazi sympathies. Seeking Employment *Now at a loose end, Bush attended the 1919 reunion of his Yale class, where fellow Skull & Bonesman Wallace Simmons offered him a job in his St. Louis, Missouri, railroad equipment company. Bush accepted, and moved to St. Louis, where his" fortunate connections" were soon to offer him further and better opportunities. In 1919 wealthy Missouri corporate wheeler- dealer George Herbert Walker obliged the Harriman family patriarch by forming the W.A. Harriman & Co. private bank for the Harriman sons to have something to do. Walker, who took the posts of bank president and chief executive, was a "colourful" character, a former champion boxer whose hobbies were described as "golf, hunting, drinking scotch and beating his (four) sons to a pulp." However he was more polite towards the far richer Harrimans, whose elder son W. Averell Harriman was made chairman of the bank, and joint owner with his younger brother, Prescott's friend " Bunny". At this time Prescott Bush met George Herbert Walker's daughter Dorothy, wooed her, & married her in 1921. They were to have four sons - George, Prescott Jr., Jonathan and William - and a daughter Nancy. With little success from his own business efforts, Bush was tapped by his old Yale chum "Bunny" to work firstly for the Harriman-controlled U.S. Rubber Co. in 1924, & then in 1926 directly for the W. A. Harriman bank itself. In 1931 the Harriman bank was to merge with the British-American firm Brown Bros. and Co. to form Brown Brothers Harriman , with E.Roland Harriman as vice-president and Prescott Bush now a full partner. "Bert" Walker retired from the bank to his own G.H Walker & Co. Prescott Bush, who had gradually come to run the day-to-day operations of WA Harriman & Co., now became a managing partner of the merged entity. BBH was to be eventually the most important private banking house in America. Prescott Bush had reached the zone of serious money. W (William) Averell Harriman, as a young man W.Averell Harriman was the elder of the two heirs of railroad baron and stock market manipulator E H Harriman. The Harriman brothers were handsome, influential and immensely rich. Averell Harriman later formed an association with the Democratic Party, becoming at various times Governor of New York State, Ambassador to Moscow and Special Presidential Envoy. His brother remained a registered Republican. It is believed that embarrassment over Harriman's Democratic Party connections (resented by many in the party) is the reason the US Democratic Party has refused to raise the Bush-Harriman Nazi connections as an election issue, despite ample evidence. Averell Harriman (centre), Special Presidential Envoy, with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, Moscow Conference, August 1942 The First Sniff of Oil *As a result, Prescott also sat on several corporate boards alongside "Bunny" Harriman, including (1929 -1952) Dresser Industries .Dresser was an oil equipment company, on whose board the pair installed Yale classmate Henry Neil Mallon as chairman. Mallon was a fellow Skull and Bonesman and one of the Geronimo grave-robbers. In 1948 Mallon was in turn to hire Prescott's son George Herbert Walker Bush, later the first President Bush, to work at Dresser. (George H.W. Bush later named one of his own sons, Neil Mallon Bush). In September 1998, Dresser merged with Halliburton , a company much in the news recently. The Bushes, the Walkers, the Harrimans and their connections remained close socially as well as in business. If we dip into the New York Times social pages of December 12 1941 for example we see the annual "Gay Thirties Dinner Dance" for charity being held on the Starlight Roof of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. At this event, apparently named after the average age of its subscribers, we find that the rollcall includes E.Roland "Bunny" Harriman present as President of the Boys' Club of New York, and the Prescott Bushes as guests at his table. Another glance at the NYT shows a wedding on November 11 1950 uniting a Miss Marie Abbie Walker, daughter of Mr. & Mrs. Charles Herbert Walker, with a John Malcolm Lilley, late of Yale. One of the bridesmaids is a Joan Harriman. The bridegroom, it transpires, is an employee of the Rockefeller-owned Standard Oil Co. and the grandson of a Samuel Bush. The German Ships *Meanwhile in 1920 the Harrimans had initiated their "German connection", relaunching Germany's Hamburg-Amerika Line , whose steamships the Harrimans had somehow acquired after the ships were confiscated by the US at the end of WWI. They now took a half share in the line, & until 1940 had complete control of the US end. At the other end was to be Baron Rudolph von Schroeder, vice president and director of the Hamburg-Amerika Line, treasurer of the support organization for the Nazi Party's private armies and a gentleman who sent his grandson Baron Johann Rudolph for a tour of Prescott Bush's Brown Brothers Harriman offices in New York City in December 1932, shortly before Hitler took power in Germany. When the elected German government tried (unsuccessfully) to make the Nazi Party private armies disband in 1932, the Hamburg-Amerika Line distributed propaganda attacks against it for doing so. After the Nazi takeover, Hamburg-Amerika was henceforth to provide free passage to individuals going abroad for Nazi propaganda and spying purposes, to subsidise pro-Nazi newspapers in the USA, and in general act as a conduit for the Nazi cause. Bush, Soviet Russia, the Thyssens and the Nazi Connection *But shipping was just the beginning. WA Harriman & Co. linked with the Hamburg-based Warburg bank to make widespread investments in the new German Republic in the 1920s. Germany was then democratic, but from Berlin they also made huge secretive oil & mining deals with Soviet Russia through commissar Leon Trotsky and KGB founder Felix Dzerzhinsky, helping advance the Soviet state so detested out loud at the time by the Republican Party. The start of the Great Depression saw heavy financial losses by both Bush and the Harrimans. Indeed Prescott Bush was soon in deep water as a partner. The German Government's moratorium on debt repayments put his own business accounts heavily into the red. The Harrimans had deep pockets though, & magnanimously compensated their protégé Prescott for his shortfalls. In the nature of bankers this was not a straightforward gift however, and relied on new income for the company to resolve the money owed, although Bush was also paid a generous salary to live on in the meantime. Losses were not the name of the game for long, however. Despite the ruinous Depression there was still money to be made out there, and in Germany soon a whole new political order to make it from. Germany had given the Harrimans and Bush a problem, and Germany could resolve it. The opportunity was made the most of. While in Berlin in 1922 W. Averell Harriman had become acquainted with leading German industrialist and steel magnate Fritz Thyssen , and agreed to set up a bank for Thyssen in New York. As a result the Union Banking Corporation (UBC) was established in August 1924 in the Manhattan offices of WA Harriman & Co., with George Herbert Walker as president. Thyssen with Hitler The UBC was no ordinary bank. It was a front in the US for Thyssen, who bankrolled & boosted Adolf Hitler from his early days of the beer hall "putsch" of 1923 onwards, and without whose money and support Hitler could not have come to power. Moreover the Thyssen industrial group became leading builders of the German war machine. In the end (late 1938) Thyssen, a Catholic, rejected Hitler and resigned his State positions after Hitler's murderous intentions towards the Jewish race (and any opposition) became crystal clear. Thyssen fled Germany in 1939. He was eventually arrested in France by the Vichy regime, intending to flee to South America but having failed to leave soon enough during the rapid fall of France, and was sent back to imprisonment in Germany. However his confiscated companies remained in Nazi hands and their Harriman-Bush connection continued as before. Prescott Bush, his pal "Bunny" Harriman and six others were directors of the UBC from 1934 to 1943, wholly within the Nazi era. Moreover it was Prescott who ran the business day-to-day. Prescott and W. Averell Harriman were also the sole directors of the Harriman Fifteen Corporation, which occupied the prestigious address of 1 Wall Street New York (Prescott's father-in-law George Herbert Walker was the company president). Much of Harriman Fifteen's investments were in the Silesian Holding Company, which owned mining operations in Poland. In the Nazi era, Silesian was to boost its profits using slave labor from the death camps. On 4 January 1933, in the midst of a political crisis and struggle for the Chancellorship in Germany, Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler and his crony Rudolf Hess met the influential politician Franz von Papen, a former Chancellor, at the office of merchant banker Kurt von Schroeder, in Cologne. Schroeder, some of whose other family connections are mentioned above, was amongst other things a co-director of theThyssen-Huautte foundry. The other co-director was Johann Groeninger, who also happened to be on the board of the Union Banking Corporation with Prescott Bush. At this time the Nazi's funding was exhausted from fighting two general elections in seven months. As well, in the second of those elections the Nazi share of representatives elected to the Reichstag had fallen significantly (from 230 to 196). Yet Hitler emerged from this meeting with two trump cards. First, an understanding with von Papen that was to lead to Hitler assuming the Chancellorship on January 30. As a result, a murderous demagogue was soon able to seize dictatorial power, with appalling future consequences for humanity. Secondly, the Nazis received substantial funding to revitalise their party, from a source unknown. Indeed no one since has ever been able to identify the source of this particular critical payment. For like many other trails of our investigation, any relevant paperwork has conveniently vanished. Given the von Schroeder connection however, there is an obvious candidate. Fritz Thyssen In his book "I Paid Hitler", published in several Allied countries in 1941 after his imprisonment by the Nazis he had now broken with, Thyssen confessed "For ten years before he came to power I supported Hitler and his party. I myself was a National Socialist (Nazi)". Much of the book is in fact a rather transparent attempt by Thyssen to distance himself from "Der Fuhrer" in retrospect, and downplay his own role while "dishing dirt" on other prominent figures of the era. However Thyssen did support Hitler financially from 1923, and in the critical 1930-33 period donated possibly over three million German marks to the Nazis (the amount is disputed & he admits only to a million, but there are no doubts the figure was substantial ). In return Thyssen gained control of the German steel industry and was given high-sounding positions in the Nazi regime .His American operations were managed during the Nazi era by Prescott Bush, until seized by the US government in late 1942. After WWII Thyssen regained control of his companies, less a 15% "fine", but died in 1951 while visiting his daughter in Argentina. If the Harrimans & Prescott Bush were not directly involved in promoting Hitler to power they were certainly remarkably quick to take advantage of the new situation. For in May 1933 negotiations were concluded in Berlin between Hjalmar Schacht, Hitler's new economics minister, and a US international attorney (John Foster Dulles) to coordinate Nazi-American trade. Coincidentally or not, Kurt von Schroeder was one of the principal German advisers assisting this negotiation. A syndicate of 150 firms and individuals was formed as a result, and it was headed by none other than the Harriman International Company. On the Side of the Enemy *As war approached in Europe, Prescott Bush & the Harrimans continued to happily rake in the profits from various enterprises that were "in the possession of and have been operated by the (Nazi) German government and have undoubtedly been of considerable assistance to that country in its war effort" (as described in a US Govt. investigative report). Bush held at least thirteen other directorships, including the board of the Simmons Company (later a major financial contributor to the campaigns of both Bush presidencies), the Continental Bank & Trust Company of New York, and United States Guaranty Trust. Why did Prescott Bush & the Harrimans not stick to those, and divest themselves of their Nazi connections, disassociate themselves once it was clear what was really happening in Germany? After all, even Thyssen himself had finally rejected Hitler. But no, on the contrary the shameful truth is they went on during the 1930's as if nothing was changed, and continued to make money from banking for the Nazis, and from being closely involved with the companies that were building the German military might that was to overrun Europe and threaten to annihilate free Western civilisation. After Germany invaded Poland, the US Govt. blocked Nazi payments to the Silesian-American Corporation's US bondholders. Undeterred, George Herbert Walker tried three times to arrange subterfuge schemes so the money could come in through Switzerland. The next year (1940), the UBC's US assets were frozen, so Prescott Bush & the Harrimans tended to the Thyssen US affairs allegedly for nothing, as a gesture to their client. It seems unlikely that they were not well compensated later, after Thyssen was freed. Once US soldiers were dying in a war for which the Thyssen companies were providing much of the physical means, the US authorities could no longer stomach what was in effect treason. After October 20 1942, under the Trading With the Enemy Ac t, the U.S. Government ordered the seizure of Nazi German operations in the US. Companies seized that Prescott Bush was heavily involved with included the Union Banking Corporation (UBC), Holland-American Trading Corporation, the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation & the Silesian-American Corporation. All property of the Hamburg-Amerika Line had already been sequestered two months before. W. Averell Harriman was also chairman of the Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation, an American group owning one-third of a complex of steel-making, coal-mining and zinc-mining activities in Germany and Poland, in which one Friedrich Flick owned two-thirds. Flick, later imprisoned after the Nuremberg war crimes trials, was with Fritz Thyssen the major co-owner of the German Steel Trust, and from 1932 contributed large sums to the Nazi Party. Like Thyssen, Flick's money helped finance the Nazis private armies, the black-shirted S.S. (Schutzstaffel) and the brown-shirted S.A. storm troopers (Sturmabteilung), who together destroyed German democracy on the streets, paving the way for Hitler's rise to absolute power. Prescott Bush concentrated on the Harriman's German activities, and with his father-in-law George Herbert Walker directly supervised the Flick-Harriman operations. Some have claimed that Bush had consciously promoted a "Hitler Project" as being good for Germany and business, others that he was just blinded by greed. There is no proof that Prescott was himself ever a Nazi or identified with their beliefs - just unassailable evidence of an amoral banker and businessman happy to make money out of the Nazis and to assist their foreign financial dealings in any way possible, as long as there was profit in it. As to the charge that Bush and the Harrimans personally and intentionally worked to bring Hitler to power, because they thought it would be best for Germany, business and their own pockets, the minimum we can say is "not proven, but cannot be excluded, and circumstantial evidence must cast them under a cloud". Fortunately for Bush and the Harrimans, their ubiquitous circle of friends and Bonesmen kept their names out of the official announcements concerning the seized companies. No charges were ever laid against them, moreover. Most Americans today have never heard of the Bush-Harriman involvement with the Nazis, and to this day the major media of the USA have generally not investigated these matters, for reasons their corporate directors seem reluctant to discuss. In this context we note that: *Prescott Bush was a director of CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System, the large media network). *E. Roland Harriman was a director of Newsweek magazine. He also purchased the New York Daily Herald in 1924 and later made further media investments. *Barbara Bush (wife of President Bush Snr.) is the daughter of Marvin Pierce, who was executive vice-president and later head of the McCall Corporation magazine publishing group. *Samuel Bush's son James Bush married Janet Newbold, daughter of the owner of the Evening Star newspaper of Washington. *The Fox TV network and News Corp . newspaper empire are controlled by Rupert Murdoch, an ardent Bush supporter. * Clear Channel Communications fields 1,200 pro-Bush radio stations across the USA. *There are many other US media connections influenced by Bonesmen, and by relatives and friends of the Bushes, Walkers & Harrimans. So the doubtful "independence" of the large US media on an issue like this could only be resolved by its investigatory actions proving otherwise. So far it has failed the test miserably. Unless this situation is reversed, the charge "corrupt and biased" in this area is difficult to refute. Nor did it end there . After WWII, a further eighteen additional Brown Brothers Harriman and UBC-related client assets were seized under The Trading with the Enemy Act. Some showed a continued relationship with the Thyssen family after the first 1942 seizures. Worse, after the war Bush and the Harrimans did further business for related concerns moving assets into Switzerland, Panama, Argentina & Brazil. This flight of Nazi capital, especially to Latin America, was to lead to much corruption there and protect & assist Nazi holdouts for many years. How time blurs memories. Today the name Thyssen is more often remembered in connection with the wonderful art collections of Fritz's younger brother Baron Thyssen Bornemisza de Kaszon, and his younger wife the ultra-glamorous Baroness von Thyssen. And the Bushes parade themselves as the defenders of civilisation against totalitarianism, when they made a fortune being exactly the opposite. The Legacy *Many people might believe that Prescott Bush should have been punished for his misdeeds. Most would say that if the profits and blood money he gained from dealing for the Nazis were not confiscated that would be an outrage. But Prescott Bush got away with it all. He was by now extremely well-connected in general, plus his Skull and Bones membership gave him hidden high-placed allies throughout the decision-making levels of Government. So not only did he keep all the money he had made from his Nazi front company dealings, in 1951 Prescott Bush also received US$750,000 (worth about US$5.3 million in today's values) for his single share in the UBC bank. Some of all this money was used to help fund both his son George Herbert Walker Bush's first business enterprise, and to support his (Prescott Bush's) own political campaigns. With his big money connections it was an easy step for Prescott to become (1947 -1950) Connecticut Republican finance chairman. He could also easily afford a first unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate in 1950, followed by a triumphant bid in the second of two contests in 1952. The Bushes were now launched onto the stage of public power. The nauseating truth then is that the present US President's family fortune was largely built on corrupt arms trading and Nazi profits, which have helped propel two Bushes to the White House. Worse, the present President's grandfather's efforts had the effect of helping put Hitler in power. The family for whom it seems that "it's all just business" apparently has no qualms even today about its past*. Which is perhaps not so surprising when we look at the later dealings of the Bush dynasty, their Saudi-Bin Laden connections, their scandalous business activities and their willingness to start a war which benefited them personally but which has plunged America into a Vietnam-style maelstrom. In summary, there is considerably more circumstantial evidence today to suggest that President Bush's grandfather helped put Hitler in power than there was ever genuine evidence in the hands of George W. Bush when he took America to war in Iraq, claiming a threat of current and developing weapons of mass destruction. If this comparison is not instructive to the voters of America, then we must despair for the future of Western democracy. And if these same facts do not persuade the US media to examine the Bush background more closely, then those same media that followed the war-at-all-costs bandwagon in 2003 without critically examining its credentials have already weighed themselves in the balance and been found wanting. *Although President Bush Sr. may have kept a few secretly. An interesting sidelight in a family in which dynastic names are carried forward proudly is that George Herbert Walker Bush and his wife Barbara Bush named their daughter Dorothy after George's mother, another daughter (Pauline Robinson) after Barbara's mother, one son after Barbara's father (Marvin), another son after George's mother's father & himself (George), a third son (Jeb, actually John) probably after his brother Jonathan, but omitted his own father's name entirely. Instead he called his other son Neil Mallon, after the man who gave him his first big job. However the name Prescott has been used again elsewhere in the Bush line, and true to form it crops up most dishonourably on Presidential election night 2000 in the amazing Fox News scam of that evening. (see Part Three). ** On 1 October 2004 the US Air Forces's No.2 weapons buyer, Darleen Druyun, was sentenced to nine months imprisonment after admitting to inflating prices on a Boeing contract and giving Boeing confidential pricing data from a European rival, in connection with future employment at the giant aerospace company. The corruption investigation was pushed by" honest John" Pentagon watchdog Senator John McCain. However the Bush administration is refusing to allow Senate Armed Services Committee investigators access to over 100 emails connected to Marvin Sambur, the No.1. Air Force weapons buyer. Meanwhile Air Force Secretary James Roche, a former vice-president of the huge Northrop Grumman aircraft and weapons systems conglomerate, and White House official Robin Cleveland are also under investigation for a "conflict of interest" ... To be continued... -- -------------------------------------------------------- http://cyberjournal.org "Apocalypse Now and the Brave New World" http://www.cyberjournal.org/cj/rkm/Apocalypse_and_NWO.html Posting archives: http://cyberjournal.org/cj/show_archives/?date=01Jan2006&batch=25&lists=newslog Subscribe to low-traffic list: •••@••.••• ___________________________________________ In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
