And Now Comes Jeb
Attachment 29511
Despite the claim that Jeb is the smart Bush baby, his profile is not that much different from his brother’s. Both were heavily involved in G.H.W.’s Presidential campaigns, both enjoy significant support from Wall Street and London, both claim policies of “compassionate conservatism,” whose true meaning is fascism with a democratic face.
After graduating from the University of Texas with a degree in Latin American studies, Jeb’s first job was as a banker, first in Texas and then in Venezuela. He worked for Texas Commerce Bank, a bank associated with G.H.W’s close advisor and former Secretary of State Jim Baker. Jeb came back to the United States to work for his father’s 1980 Presidential campaign in Florida. He immediately inserted himself into Miami’s Cuban exile networks, a hotbed of continuing anti-Castro and other CIA operations.
Based on Armando Codina’s fanatical support of G.H.W., and knowledge that the Bush name would open many doors, the wealthy Cuban real estate investor made Jeb his partner. Codina put Bush’s name on his company roster and gave him 40% of the profits despite the fact that Jeb had no experience in real estate. According to the St. Petersburg Times, one Miami real estate deal in 1984 was typical. Bush invested just $1,000 in an office building called Museum Tower. By 1990, he sold out for $346,000, all courtesy of Codina.
In 1992, Mother Jones examined the Bush family’s business dealings. With respect to Jeb, after detailing several shady deals, it spoke to a prosecutor who dealt with Jeb’s association with Miguel Recarey. He told them that in considering whether Jeb was a crook, or merely stupid, he concluded that Jeb was stupid.
Jeb.Bush_
The Recarey case is typical. Recarey was a Cuban exile who, according to the Washington Post,
“collected assault rifles, traveled with heavy security, and had his office wired with sophisticated eavesdropping equipment. He had a checkered past that included jail time for income tax evasion. He bragged about his ties to Tampa crime boss Santo Trafficante, Jr.”
Trafficante, of course, played a central role in CIA assassination attempts against Fidel Castro.
Recarey had a booming health maintenance organization, IMC, which was participating in a federal pilot project to test the viability of HMOs in reducing Medicare costs. When he needed a special waiver to expand his business, Jeb joined in a lobbying effort for Recarey in Washington, D.C., after receiving a $74,000 consulting fee from Recarey on a real estate deal which never took place. IMC collapsed amidst charges of massive Medicare fraud. Recarey fled the country after receiving an expedited IRS refund on taxes, finding sanctuary first in Venezuela, then in Spain.
But IMC was more than a federal boondoggle funded by Bush “free enterprise,” “kill them by cutting medical care” proponents. According to Oliver North’s notebooks from the Iran/Contra scandal, IMC was providing free medical treatment for G.H.W.’s illegal Contra “freedom” fighters.
Numerous sources place Jeb playing a central role in G.H.W.’s illegal activities on behalf of the Contras. Miami was a central recruiting ground for the Contras, and a hotbed of the money laundering which funded their activity after Congress prohibited federal funding in 1984. G.H.W. had escaped indictment by Lawrence Walsh in the Iran-Contra scandal by claiming he was “out of the loop.” As the Walsh investigation was winding down and there was no possibility that G.H.W. would be prosecuted, he turned over a long-subpoenaed diary which stated that he knew more than anyone about this covert action. When G.H.W. became President, he pardoned all the key Reagan Administration officials Walsh had indicted.
In their efforts to fund the Contras covertly, the CIA and G.H.W. turned to the Saudis, who put in millions, and to drug running, particularly cocaine. Early in the operation, the CIA obtained a waiver from Attorney General William French Smith, which excused them from reporting drug-running activities by “contractors.” The Contra drug-running and financing activities included support from the Medellín cartel and networks associated with former Nazi Klaus Barbie. More significantly, the Contras were savage killers who engaged in genocide throughout Central America. Journalists who sought to expose the Contra role in the flood of cocaine that hit the United States, including the San Jose Mercury’s Gary Webb, were subjected to harassment, ridicule, and firing by their publishers. Years later, the CIA admitted that it knew that Contra financing involved drug dealing.
In 1986, at the height of the Contra efforts, Jeb joined the five-person board of a new Swiss-owned bank in Miami called the Private Bank and Trust. The Miami Herald described the bank as a place where “the money of wealthy foreigners,” mostly Latino investors, “is managed—very discreetly.” The newspaper noted the bank’s “extreme secrecy.” Some of its clients were said to be linked to the drug cartels. Four years later, federal regulators seized the private bank, based on misappropriation of client funds.
Jeb also partnered in business with Richard Lawless, Jr., a former top CIA official and a major figure in the Iran/Contra dealings. Lawless was reportedly close to central figures in the Contra scandal, including lawyer David Addington and Alan Fiers, Jr.
These efforts of Jeb and his father on behalf of CIA-connected terrorists were not limited to the Contras. Jeb and his father were both crucial to the pardon of Orlando Bosch, who blew up a Cuban civilian airliner carrying the Cuban Olympic fencing team, and engaged in other terrorist incidents. Bosch’s pardon was opposed by the Justice Department, which noted that he was an unrepentant terrorist. There is much evidence that G.H.W. sat on intelligence as CIA chief which could have prevented the assassination of Orlando Letelier, a leading opponent of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, on the streets of Washington, D.C.
In his 1994 run for the Florida governorship, Jeb advocated privatizing every aspect of government. His program called for a popular referendum on any tax increases. He adopted what he called a “Phoenix plan” for welfare reform, limiting assistance to two years by the state, abolishing federal assistance to Florida for welfare, requiring recipients to name the fathers of their children, submit to random drug tests, and to work. He advocated doubling the number of Florida’s prisons, ending parole, and jailing juveniles rather than having them “in therapy.” His most frequently stated topic was acceleration of death penalty executions in Florida, allowing only one appeal, and abolishing the right to habeas corpus guaranteed in the Florida constitution. He campaigned for privatizing education through vouchers and charter schools.
Jeb started his gubernatorial campaign with a wide lead based on a significant national mobilization of funds from the Bush networks. G.H.W., appearing in Florida to campaign for his favorite son, acted like the man who was all used up. According to press accounts, he started crying when he attempted to talk about Jeb at campaign rallies. When Bush’s opponent Lawton Chiles finally took the gloves off and shined a light on Jeb’s business dealings, Jeb lost. In 1998, he ran again, adopting the same moderate, really no-issues campaign, that had been employed by G.H.W. in his race for Congress. The Democratic Party candidate was an effective “no show,” and the party itself had imploded, just prior to the campaign, based on a walk-out by the Black Caucus, some of whom supported Jeb.
In his 1994 campaign and after, Jeb attributed his shady business activities prior to the governorship to his being “naive.” Following his stint as governor, however, the same pattern continued. Determined, as he said, “to make a lot of money,” he hooked up with a company called InnoVida, whose chief executive was Carlos Osorio. According to the subsequent SEC complaint against Osorio, he recruited Jeb because he thought it would “add an air of legitimacy to InnoVida.” One of the company’s owners had been convicted of cocaine trafficking prior to the Bush association. Another board member had also been arrested for smuggling cocaine. The company’s dirty financial dealings had resulted in multiple lawsuits. All of this information was publicly available, had Bush engaged in the most basic due diligence. He joined InnoVida anyway. The company went belly-up in a shower of indictments and jail terms.
Jeb Bush became an advisor to Lehman Brothers shortly before its collapse, and was even approached to use Bush family influence to seek a bailout deal through Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim. He sat on the Board of the British Barclay’s bank, which was a central player in the Libor rate-fixing scandal.
With respect to foreign policy, Jeb appears to be an unrepentant neo-conservative despite his effort to surround himself with G.H.W.’s so-called “realist” faction. He signed the manifesto for the Project for a New American Century in 1987, a document critical in engineering the never-ending genocide and terrorism in the Middle East. He now calls for U.S. military interventions against Iran, and similar policies which could readily ignite World War III. In short, he is, in every respect, a member of the species “Bush,” a species which has, at best, evolved from Nazi to universal fascist.
[1] The most important of the newer books on the Bush family are Russ Baker’s extensively researched Family of Secrets, and Kevin Phillips’ The Bush Dynasty. Robert Parry continues to be the most diligent reporter on the Bush family’s secret government apparatus.
EIR [PDF version of this article]
Bush Family Treason
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