Treason In Israel? It Started Long Before Bush's Israel Trip

MS. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON

BuzzFlash,

Bush's speech has been called political treason. Yes, agreed, but, we haven't heard that word "treason" repeated as often as it should have been for all of the seven years that Bush has sat his behind down in the Oval office. (Of course, Bush's father pardoned those who could have testified against him and Clinton stopped those investigations, so Poppy Bush has never paid the price for his crimes while in office. It runs in the family. Their money made off the backs of Americans fighting WWII.)

First, why was it not called treason when Bush and his administration had several or many warnings before 911 and they did nothing? Absolutely nothing! Why was that not considered treason? Why was the Supreme Court's action of taking US law into their own hands and putting their "boy" into the White House not called an act of treason? Why was the Bush administration's outing a CIA agent who tracked terrorists in order to punish her husband not called treason?

Why was it not called treason when Bush allowed bin Laden's family, 100 members, to leave this country before the FBI could talk to them, and the Bush family has been friends with the Saudis today and before Bush was ever put into the White House. Bin Laden was never pursued because he and his followers were used as "terrorist bad guys," that Bush, the cowboy, could always be in their pursuit, yet he wasn't and never intended to be. They are his friends! Why were the Bush GOP's CIA members allowed to "purchase" prisoners for their secret prisons from Pakistan? From secret prisons, torture, ignoring the Geneva Conventions, ignoring the International Criminal Court, disdain for the UN and US treaties, signing statements, vetoes against the American people, to debt, death, and destruction in Afghanistan, Iraq, and New Orleans . . . that's what we have had to live with because members in Congress would not do their job and impeach and prosecute this treasonous administration.

It could almost be a joke if the facts wouldn't tell us that so many people have died or had their lives ruined already by this Supreme Court's illegal and treasonous Bush/Cheney GOP regime . . . how many times does a resident of the US White House, along with his supporters, have to commit treason before he and they are marched out, escorted by the Feds, I wonder? Would any American on the street be treated the same? We all know the answer to that one.

The fact is that Bush only talks to dictatorial nations, and those who are democratically nominated, such as Haiti and Venezuela, Bush and his cohorts try to find reasons to destroy. No, Bush thinks he's too elite to talk to anyone other than those who agree with him, and all despots are going to agree with him, as well as all of those smaller nations that were blackmailed by telling them the US would withhold funds to them. Saddam was doing his own thing and got in the way. Who armed Saddam? The Reagan/Bush/Cheney GOP of the past.

I remember a time when Bush was to witness a parade and people were told not to "look him in the eyes" as they march in front of him. Many of us have read the stories about how paranoid he is and what he has cost US taxpayers because of it. At times, his visits have contained over six thousand people protecting his royal behind. Nothing is too good for Bush, himself, however, people are dying everyday due to his treasonous lies, moldy or bad food, lack of medical care, and faulty equipment. Americans have died in their sleep due to the fear of rape or because some members of the National Guard were in the fifties and sixties. National Guard was used by Bush number one, too; they should never be used as a military support unit period.

Bush has no fear of being made accountable. How many people in the Oval Office ever were made accountable? Bush, to our knowledge, has never been given a blow job while in the halls of the capitol. So, as long as he keeps his pants zipped, he doesn't have to worry about being impeached. Those are the only reasons Republicans have ever seen to be impeachable . . . that kind of arrogance anti-Americanism should never be voted into any seat in Congress.

Bush had to okay this speech of arrogant stupidity that he gave in Israel on the notion that most Americans won't know what his family's past is, or what he is talking about. (How many US schools actually teach any kind of history at all, unless they still teach crazy stuff like Washington chopping down the cherry tree and that he never told a lie, etc.?) Seriously, how many schools, private or public, go into any real detail of US history? And, if they did, would their funding be stopped? Just wondering.

Bush the sociopath, the ex-druggie, the ex-alcoholic, besides holding grudges, also loves to insult and degrade people to their face, (evidently, gives him a great feeling of power over people, but how much more power does he need?) which is what Bush was doing as he spoke to the people of Israel. It's been proven over and over, but people just don't listen . . . children who have been cruel to animals (Bush blew up frogs and now he blows up people) develop and use that same cruelty in many different ways towards humans, which is also listed on the profile of serial killers. We've all witnessed Bush's cruelty over and over and he still is allowed to prance around the country as if he is totally insignificant to this country . . . but, he isn't. He represents the worst this country has to offer the world, and today because of the Bush administration, we have the enemies to prove it.

If US law actually worked as it was supposed to, the Bush/Cheney administration from top to bottom, and the Supreme Court, would have all been put out of US government for their criminal acts. How many judges and other appointees do we have in this country who owe their soul to the Bush GOP's anti-American company store . . . not counting all of those Republicans who are up for election and want to avoid Bush, however, for seven long years and almost eight, they have done nothing but support him loyally.

Crime does not stop because criminals suddenly change. It stops because they are made accountable, then maybe some will change with the right treatment, otherwise, they just become better criminals. The Republican members of Congress failed this country. Instead of taking their oaths of allegiance to the US, they took a loyalty oath to the Bush GOP regime and their corporate supporters. Ours is not a country today under God as many of the Right Wing Republicans like to boast, but under siege by their own.

Just a thought,

Thanks BuzzFlash,

Shirley Smith

(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. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

House of Bush Bad Real Estate Buy

Back in late 2006, it was widely reported in the Latin American media that President Bush, or perhaps his old man, had bought a 100,000-acre farm in a remote area of Paraguay.

What struck people at the time was the choice of country. Paraguay, of course, has gained a certain Club Med status among the world's villains and criminal elements as the place to go when the law's on your tail. The country, ruled for six decades by the dictatorial and fascist Colorado Party of Gen. Alfredo Stroesser, an almost cartoon caricature of a Latin American dictator, has no extradition treaty with any nation.

That's why it has long harbored aging Nazis, bank robbers, and a string of ousted or retired Latin American dictators and their assistants over the years.

Given that President Bush, once he leaves office on January 20, 2009, will no longer have the diplomatic immunity conferred upon heads of state, or the Constitutional protection against indictment by domestic prosecutors, it makes sense that he would be looking for a safe haven from the long arm of the law.

After all, the guy is guilty of a huge laundry list of international crimes, from the Crime Against Peace and Conspiracy against Peace in the UN Charter, to Geneva Convention violations such as approval of torture of prisoners, collective punishment of civilians, the killing of children and child soldiers, the failure to protect occupied citizens, the use of banned weapons, etc., etc., and also of domestic crimes, ranging from political use of government employees, conspiracy, treason, lying to federal officials, defrauding Congress, etc.

No wonder he wants to do what Klaus Barbie, Josef Mengele, and Adolf Eichmann did, and hole up in Paraguay.

Only trouble is, Paraguay may not be such a safe haven for long.

Last month, a former Roman Catholic Bishop with leftist, populist tendencies, Fernando Lugo, surprised almost everyone in Paraguay, and no doubt President Bush, by winning the national presidential election, ousting the Colorado Party for the first time in 61 years. There is talk that among other things, Lugo is thinking of returning Paraguay to the community of nations, by signing some of those extradition agreements.

If he does that, Bush may be stuck having to hide behind his rump squad of Secret Service agents down at the Crawford Ranch, hoping they can keep the process servers from Brattleboro and Marlboro, VT, with their war crimes arrest warrants, at bay.

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006 and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net.

(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. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

America' s Top Crime Family andThe BFEE

We got the "BFEE" from BartCop. It is an acronym; "Bush Family Evil Empire."

There are those who are a part of the BFEE who are not, biologically, a member of the Bush family. Most of them are corporate officers; others are in government. They all suck!

The Bush Family Gets Away with Crimes That Would Land Anyone Else in Jail

By Robert Parry, Consortium News
Posted on November 26, 2007, Printed on November 28, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/68843/

In the history of the American Republic, perhaps no political family has been more protected from scandal than the Bushes.

When the Bushes are involved in dirty deals or even criminal activity, standards of evidence change. Instead of proof "beyond a reasonable doubt" that would lock up an average citizen, the evidence must be perfect.

If there's any doubt at all, the Bushes must be presumed innocent. Even when their guilt is obvious to anyone with an ounce of common sense, it's their accusers and those who dare investigate who get the worst of it. Their motives are challenged and their own shortcomings are cast in the harshest possible light.

For decades -- arguably going back generations -- the Bushes have been protected by their unique position straddling two centers of national power, the family's blueblood Eastern Establishment ties and the Texas oil crowd with strong links to the Republican Right. [For details on this family phenomenon, see Robert Parry's Secrecy & Privilege.]

This reality was underscored again by how major news outlets and the right-wing press reacted to a new piece of evidence implicating George W. Bush in a criminal cover-up in the "Plame-gate" scandal.

Though the evidence is now overwhelming that President Bush was part of a White House cabal that leaked Valerie Plame Wilson's identity as a covert CIA officer and then covered up the facts, major newspapers, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, continue to pooh-pooh this extraordinary scandal.

The latest piece of evidence was the statement from former White House press secretary Scott McClellan that Bush was one of five senior officials who had him clear Karl Rove and I. Lewis Libby in the leak when, in fact, they were two of the leakers.

"The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore the credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq," McClellan said in a snippet released by the publisher of his upcoming memoir.

"So I stood at the White House briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby," McClellan said. "There was one problem. It was not true."

After McClellan's statement touched off a brief furor on the Internet and cable TV shows, his publisher Peter Osnos tried to soften the blow. Osnos told Bloomberg News that McClellan didn't mean that Bush deliberately ordered his press secretary to lie.

"He told him something that wasn't true, but the President didn't know it wasn't true," Osnos said.

(What a load of manure this is. If Bush didn't know, it is because he did not want to know. Does anyone believe for one minute that Libby and Rove would commit what they knew damn well was treason without the go ahead from the president himself, even if that go ahead was given to them directly by the Veep?)

What Bush Knew

But neither McClennan nor Osnos knows what Bush really knew.

The revelatory point in McClellan's statement was that Bush was a direct participant in the campaign to protect Rove and Libby as they lied about their roles in the leak. Previously that was an inference one could draw from the facts, but it had not been confirmed by a White House official.

Indeed, looking at the available evidence, it would defy credulity that Bush wasn't implicated in the Plame-gate leak and the subsequent cover-up, which led to Libby's conviction earlier this year on four counts of perjury and obstruction of justice.

For Bush not to have been involved would have required him to be oblivious to the inner workings of the White House and the actions of his closest advisers on an issue of great importance to him.

From the evidence at Libby's trial, it was already clear that Bush had a direct hand in the effort to discredit Plame's husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, after he had gone public in July 2003 with his role in a CIA investigation of what turned out to be bogus claims that Iraq had sought yellowcake uranium from Niger.

Bush, who had cited those bogus claims in his 2003 State of the Union Address in making his case for invading Iraq, was worried about his credibility when U.S. forces failed to find WMD evidence and when Wilson became the first Washington insider to start questioning Bush's case for war.

He should have been concerned about his credibility when he failed to find Osama bin Laden, the most blamed man on earth for the horror of 9/11. We would not be in a war today were it not for 9/11. Dick Cheney would be several million less wealthy and so would many, many other members of the BFEE. Bush and Cheney would have been long gone from the White House as Bush was clearly headed to be a one-term president. The NeoCons would still be trying to sell their insane foreign policy to another president and the nation would not be nearing bankruptcy, both micro and macro, and the entire world, beginning with the U.S., would not be facing an economic meltdown that may well make the Great Depression look like a picnic the beach. The constitution would surely not be quite so tattered.

So, Bush collaborated with Vice President Dick Cheney in mounting a counter-attack against Wilson. Bush decided to selectively declassify portions of a National Intelligence Estimate in order to undercut Wilson's credibility and agreed to have that information leaked to friendly reporters.

(We, the people, must insist that the president of the United States, or his/her spokesman, speak from the podium alone, anything he/she wishes to communicate to the people. How do we do that? We ignore leaks by anonymous sources when the information being put forth is clearly meant to absolve the president and his/her people of wrong doing and, perhaps, crimes. We don't need to pass a law, that politicians will only find a way of breaking. We only need to make it clear to our elected officials and to the news media that anonymous sources will not be heard. Only the people with the bully pulpit, using the presidential podium will be heard and evaluated by us.)

It was in that context that Libby, Rove and other administration officials went forth to brief reporters, contacts that ended up disclosing that Wilson's CIA wife, Plame, played a role in arranging his work on the CIA investigation. The suggestion was that Wilson's unpaid fact-finding trip to Niger was a case of nepotism or a junket.

(I still don't get this one. Never have. It isn't as if her husband had no knowledge and expertise about Niger and its uranium supply. Joe Wilson had some fairly impressive credentials. The CIA betrayal scandal is so much like Watergate it makes ones head spin. Stupid to the extreme, unless one grasps the whole picture instead of slide by slide....piece by piece.)

Following these press contacts, Plame's identity surfaced in a July 14, 2003, article by right-wing columnist Robert Novak, who had gotten his information from two sources, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and his friend, the president's chief political adviser Karl Rove.

But Rove's work on the Plame leak didn't stop with Novak's article; he continued to peddle the information to other journalists, such as MSNBC's Chris Matthews, who told Wilson a week after Novak's column, "I just got off the phone with Karl Rove. He says and I quote, 'Wilson's wife is fair game.'"

Rove has since disputed the precise "fair game" quote, but he doesn't deny talking to Matthews about Plame's identity. So, we know that a week after the original leaks had blown Plame's undercover status, Bush had not called off the dogs. His closest political adviser still was using the information to undermine Wilson.

Hardball Politics

This pattern of hardball politics, of course, fits with how George W. Bush and others in his family play the game.

His father, George H.W. Bush, would talk about how rough he could be when in "campaign mode." The younger George Bush just extended that pugnacious approach to full-time, aided and abetted by a powerful right-wing media that has carried water for him consistently over the past eight years.

Even American citizens who get in Bush's way feel the lash. Just ask the likes of former weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who challenged Bush's pre-Iraq War claims about WMD, or the Dixie Chicks, who dared to diss the Commander in Chief at one of their concerts.

So, the treatment of Wilson/Plame was part of the standard fare for what happened to Americans who dissented on Bush's war policies. However, this one was a little different because the leak destroyed the career of a covert CIA officer and endangered her network of foreign agents who had been supplying information about WMD in the Middle East.

In September 2003, upset about this collateral damage, the CIA forwarded a criminal complaint to the Justice Department seeking an investigation into the outing of Plame. As far as the CIA was concerned, her classified identity was covered by a 1982 law barring willful exposure of CIA officers who had "served" abroad in the preceding five years.

But Bush and his inner circle could still breathe easily since the probe was under the control of Attorney General John Ashcroft, considered to be a right-wing Bush ally. The White House responded to press inquiries disingenuously, claiming Bush took the leak very seriously and would punish anyone involved.

"The President has set high standards, the highest of standards, for people in his administration," McClellan said on Sept. 29, 2003. "If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration."

Bush personally announced his determination to get to the bottom of the matter.

"If there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is," Bush said on Sept. 30, 2003. "I want to know the truth. If anybody has got any information inside our administration or outside our administration, it would be helpful if they came forward with the information so we can find out whether or not these allegations are true."

Yet, even as Bush was professing his curiosity and calling for anyone with information to step forward, he was withholding the fact that he had authorized the declassification of some secrets about the Niger uranium issue and had ordered Cheney to arrange for those secrets to be given to reporters.

In other words, though Bush knew a great deal about how the anti-Wilson scheme got started -- since he was involved in starting it -- he uttered misleading public statements to conceal the White House role.

Spreading Lies

Also, since the other conspirators knew that Bush already was in the know, they would have read his comments as a signal to lie, which is what they did. In early October, press secretary McClellan said he could report that political adviser Karl Rove and National Security Council aide Elliott Abrams were not involved in the Plame leak.

That comment riled Libby, who feared that he was being hung out to dry. Libby went to his boss, Dick Cheney, and complained that "they're trying to set me up; they want me to be the sacrificial lamb," Libby's lawyer Theodore Wells later said.

Cheney scribbled down his feelings in a note to press secretary McClellan: "Not going to protect one staffer + sacrifice the guy the Pres that was asked to stick his head in the meat grinder because of incompetence of others."

Cheney initially ascribed Libby's role in going after Wilson to Bush's orders, but the Vice President apparently thought better of it, crossing out "the Pres" and putting the clause in a passive tense.

Cheney has never explained publicly the meaning of his note, but it suggests that it was Bush who sent Libby out on the get-Wilson mission to limit damage from Wilson's criticism of Bush's false Niger-yellowcake claim in the State of the Union Address.

Cheney's reference to the "incompetence of others" may refer to those who cleared the false Niger claim in the first place.

We seriously doubt that. Those very same people had knocked down the Niger-claim for the Oct speech. Cheney was probably referring to the people who got caught doing something that could effect the national security for years to come. Incompetence, to the Bushies, always means "getting caught."

Bush's subsequent behavior in the latter half of 2003 adds to the evidence of his guilt.

Assuming Bush was sincere in his desire to get to the bottom of who leaked Plame's identity -- or just wanted to make sure there was no security risk in his inner circle -- he presumably would have ordered an internal White House security probe. But he didn't.

James Knodell, director of the White House security office, conceded before a congressional committee in March 2007 that no internal security investigation was performed; no security clearances were suspended or revoked; no punishment of any kind was meted out to White House political adviser Rove, even after his role in leaking Plame's classified identity was determined.

Knodell, whose job included assessing Executive Branch security breaches, said that what he knew about the Plame case was "through the press." A logical inference from Knodell's inaction was that Bush already knew who had leaked Plame's identity because he was involved in the leak.

(Well, of course he did and it was obvious from the get-go.)

In fall 2003, with no White House security review underway and the criminal probe presumably bottled up in the Justice Department, the cover-up broadened. On Oct. 4, 2003, McClellan added Libby to the list of officials who have "assured me that they were not involved in this."

So, Libby had a motive to lie to the FBI when he was first interviewed about the case. He had gone to the mat with his boss to get his name cleared in the press, meaning it would make little sense to then admit involvement to FBI investigators, especially when it looked as if the cover-up would hold.

"The White House had staked its credibility on there being no White House involvement in the leaking of information about Ms. Wilson," a federal court filing later noted. For his part, Libby began claiming that he had first learned about Plame's CIA identity from NBC's Washington bureau chief Tim Russert after Wilson had gone public.

Reversal of Fortune

This White House cover-up might have worked, except in late 2003, Ashcroft decided he wouldn't be the loyal foot soldier and recused himself because of a conflict of interest. Deputy Attorney General James Comey then picked Patrick Fitzgerald -- the U.S. Attorney in Chicago -- to serve as special prosecutor.

Actually, Ashcroft was caught getting regular briefings about the case. It was only then that Ashcroft recused himself. I remember that it was Chuck Schumer, from New York that outed Ashcroft and demanded that Ashcroft step aside.

Fitzgerald pursued the investigation far more aggressively. Bush's White House countered with a combination of public stonewalling and a continued PR campaign to further discredit Wilson.

Bush's political and media allies dissected every nuance of the Wilson/Plame case to highlight supposed inconsistencies and contradictions.

The Republican National Committee put out nasty anti-Wilson talking points; senior Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee called Wilson a liar; the right-wing media -- aided and abetted by the Washington Post's neoconservative editorial page -- amplified these ugly attacks to the public.

Right-wing lawyer Victoria Toensing received widespread media coverage when she claimed that Plame was not a "covert" officer under the definition of the 1982 law protecting the identities of intelligence agents because it only applied to CIA personnel who had "resided" or were "stationed" abroad in the previous five years.

Toensing argued that since Plame, the mother of young twins, was stationed at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and resided in the Washington area, she wasn't "covert" even if that was her official CIA status. But Toensing was misrepresenting the law that she said she had helped draft while a congressional staffer in the early 1980s.

The actual wording of the law as it pertained to CIA and other clandestine officers was "served" abroad, which is not synonymous with "stationed" or "resided," the words that Toensing had substituted.

One can be stationed or reside inside the United States and still "serve" abroad by undertaking secret missions overseas, which Plame had done.

But many in the right-wing news media and even at prestige newspapers like the Washington Post adopted Toensing's word games as reality. It became an article of faith in some political circles that Plame was not a "covert" officer and that therefore there was "no underlying crime" in the leaking of her identity.

Bush's Guilt?

But what does this ongoing pattern of deception and character assassination against Wilson and Plame suggest about Bush's innocence or guilt?

If Bush were the innocent party that we are supposed to believe, wouldn't he have acted differently? Wouldn't he have called for an end to these attacks on two American citizens who had served their country?

But Bush never tried to halt these cruel diversionary tactics. The White House goal, it appears, was to stir up enough confusion so that the public wouldn't focus on the logical conclusion that Bush was responsible for damaging a CIA operation intended to protect national security.

Chaos and confusion is one of the Bushies favorite tools of war against Americans just as is is the Iraqis.

In October 2005, Fitzgerald indicted Libby on five counts of lying to federal investigators and obstructing justice. Libby was convicted on four of five counts in March 2007 and sentenced to 30 months in jail.

But Bush's role in the cover-up wasn't finished. On July 2, 2007, Bush commuted Libby's sentence to spare him any jail time. The President also left open the possibility that Libby might receive a full pardon before Bush left the White House.

(So much for wanting to get those leakers)

The combination of taking away the stick of jail time and dangling the carrot of a full pardon eliminated any incentive for Libby to turn state's evidence against Bush, Cheney and other senior officials.

In a different era, one might expect major newspapers, like the New York Times and the Washington Post, to erupt in fury over such an obvious case of presidential wrongdoing. One also might have anticipated serious hearings by a Democratic-controlled Congress to get to the bottom of this sorry affair.

But not in this era. Even when former press secretary McClellan became the first White House insider to acknowledge that senior officials, including Bush and Cheney, put him up to spreading lies about the Plame-gate scandal (whatever they knew at the time), there was almost no reaction, except on the Internet and some cable TV shows.

The Post and Times essentially ignored McClellan's statement, apparently buying into the later spin that Bush might not have known then that Libby and Rove were lying. Bush's right-wing apologists already are back on the attack, claiming that McClellan's back-tracking supports Bush's innocence.

The Democrats also don't seem to have the stomach to hold Bush accountable. One presidential hopeful, Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Connecticut, called for the Justice Department to investigate whether Bush had intentionally misled the public.

But the Democrats control both houses of Congress and presumably could compel testimony from many of the principals. They might even be able to force an explanation from special prosecutor Fitzgerald about why he didn't pursue a broader case and what Bush and Cheney told him during their interviews about the Plame leak.

Instead the Democrats appear frightened of the counter-attack that the right-wing media could unleash, especially when major mainstream publications like the Times show little interest in the story and others like the Post actually are helping Bush in his cover-up.

The Dems do appear to be not only afraid but terrified. Wonder why? Couldn't possibly have anything to do with the wire tapping that has been going on since shortly after the Bushies took office, the anthrax attacks on two leading Dems on the Hill (no Republicans received any anthrax laced missives, neither did Fox News.) So, how is the hunt for the anthrax killer going?

But the broader picture appears to be that George W. Bush is just the latest member of the Bush family who can skate away from nearly any wrongdoing without paying a price.

They are a family of evil. From laundering money for Hitler to the Iraq war, these people are criminals who never are punished for their crimes.

Robert Parry's new book is Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq."

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

(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. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Inquiry urged on Hunt Oil contract in Iraq

Democrats say Bush ties may have led to Iraq oil contract

10:48 PM CDT on Monday, October 15, 2007

By DAVE MICHAELS / The Dallas Morning News
dmichaels@dallasnews.com

WASHINGTON – Democratic lawmakers moved Monday toward investigating Hunt Oil's oil exploration contract in Iraq, saying the company's ties to President Bush raised questions about whether it had insider information that helped it reach the deal.

U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, asked Hunt to turn over all Iraq-related communication with the U.S. government by Nov. 2.

The lawmakers also demanded that Ray Hunt, Hunt Oil's chief executive, submit copies of information he may have received about Iraq as a member of Mr. Bush's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

A Hunt spokeswoman said the company would cooperate with the request for "certain limited information."

Spokeswoman Jeanne Phillips said the company's judgment to explore for oil in the Kurdish region of Iraq was made without U.S. government advice.

"As we have stated before, our policy as a company is to act independently when determining where to explore for oil and gas around the world," Ms. Phillips said in a prepared statement.

Mr. Hunt, 64, has not talked about his service on the intelligence board, which meets about six times a year. Its members, all presidential appointees, have security clearances, and much of their work is classified.

Former board members and intelligence experts said its members don't often deal with specific intelligence.

Instead, they focus on broader concerns, such as whether one agency is cooperating with another or how a training program is working.

"Their job is to advise the president about the efficiency of the intelligence systems and where things need to be changed," said Arthur S. Hulnick, a CIA veteran who is now an associate professor of international relations at Boston University.

"It is more management than substantive."

That said, members must study intelligence-gathering efforts if they are expected to judge how the system works, Mr. Hulnick said.

"They clearly have to see it – things like estimates and daily reports, finished intelligence and analyzed intelligence," he said.

Although Mr. Waxman's committee has subpoena power, the lawmakers did not indicate whether they would compel Hunt officials to testify.

"We are in the information-gathering stage," said Natalie Laber, a spokeswoman for Mr. Kucinich. "Before we hold hearings, we gather information."

Mr. Waxman, D-Calif., has held a series of contentious, Iraq-related hearings in recent months, including one at which Democrats grilled Blackwater, the State Department's private security contractor. Members also investigated corruption in the Iraqi government.

Last month, Mr. Bush said he was concerned about Hunt's deal if it jeopardized Iraq's ability to pass a national oil-sharing law. In their letter to Hunt, Mr. Waxman and Mr. Kucinich asserted that Hunt's deal "may have undermined U.S. national policy of working toward the passage of an oil revenue sharing plan."

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's oil minister has called Hunt's deal illegal. Congressional Democrats have jumped into the fray, saying Hunt Oil signed its deal with the Kurdistan Regional Government because it has insider information about the future of Iraq's national oil law.

"Ray Hunt is in a unique position to know what is happening in Iraq," said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

Ms. Phillips said Hunt Oil's decision to enter Iraq was based only on information that "was in the public domain."

Hunt Oil and the Kurdistan Regional Government have said that their deal complies with the national constitution and noted that the agreement calls for sharing revenue with other regions of Iraq. They said Mr. Hunt's political relationships were irrelevant to the firm's decision to explore in Iraq.

"The outcome of the deliberations for the national hydrocarbons law will not affect this agreement one way or another," Qubad Talabani, Washington representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government, said recently.

(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. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Renditions Flights, CIA., Drugs,...Wow Just like Old Times

CIA "rendition" flights as cover for drug smuggling: Did the Inspector General discover the Agency's dirtiest secret?

Anyone who has followed CIA scandals will find no historical parallel to this story. CIA Director Michael Hayden wants to inspect his Inspector General, John L. Helgerson. Helgerson has been looking rather too closely at the CIA's rendition programs.

The Inspector General (or IG) runs the Agency's "internal affairs" department -- in other words, he polices the CIA. Usually, the IG is one of the "old boys," but ocasionally the gig to someone who plays hardball.

In the current case, it appears that Hayden has asked his close aide Robert Deitz (a man who plays Tonto to Hayden's Lone Ranger) to investigate John Helgerson. The IG has been a thorn in Hayden's side for quite some time...

The inspector general’s office also rankled agency officials when it completed a withering report about the C.I.A’s missteps before the Sept. 11 attack — a report that recommended “accountability boards” to consider disciplinary action against a handful of senior officials.

Did the IG uncover the drug connection?

The argument I'm about to make is, in part, speculative. Each reader must judge whether the speculative sections constitute well-grounded deduction or irresponsible conjecture. (For reasons of brevity, this post will rely heavily on previous articles, which contain the off-site links.)

Let's begin with a simple question. Why is CIA Director Hayden taking unprecedented action? What can the IG reveal about the rendition flights that could possibly be worse than what we already know?

Not just prisoners: In the past, I have argued that the program did not simply transfer prisoners to torture-friendly nations. The flights may also have been used for smuggling. I base that claim on three factors:

1. The sheer number of rendition flights.
2. The odd places visited during those flights.
3. A rather large collection of books, available at any university library, documenting the overlap between spies and the drug trade.

Naturally, any such "rogue" use of CIA-controlled aircraft would have to be kept hidden from the Inspector General -- and, in all likelihood, from the owners of record.

Before you dismiss the idea, please read my earlier piece, "The CIA's airlines: What's in the baggage compartment?" As that article notes, just one Gulfstream IV used by the CIA made 488 flights between 2001 and 2005. That single plane can carry twenty passengers. Many other jets were used in this program.

How many "prisoners" could there have been?

CIA rendition flights have taken off and landed in Spain, the U.K., Switzerland, Norway, Portugal, France, the Czech Republic, Ireland, Belgium, Germany, Greece, Thailand, Uzbekistan and other nations. Although officially civilian, the jets are allowed to land at American military bases. Virtually anything could be shipped without detection on those flights.

We now have no fewer than three major episodes linking CIA aircraft to the drug trade.

(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)

The crashed coke jet. The most recent incident involved a Gulfstream II that went down mysteriously in Mexico, after the pilot and passengers had bailed out. Authorities found over three tons of cocaine on board. (See here and here.)

In the 2003-2005 period, that same aircraft was under the control of -- though not technically owned by -- the CIA-linked firm Richmor aviation. During that time, the jet made a series of "rendition" flights.

Just before the recent coke transport flight, the plane was transferred from one mysterious "owner" to another at a dizzying clip. (This is common. When attempting to track the history of CIA aircraft, one should expect to encounter confusing ownership flips and an endless number of on-paper front companies.)

I would ask readers to note the chronology. Richmor's routine use of the jet for "prisoner" flights stopped after 2005 -- when IG John Helgerson started to look into renditions.

The captured Skyway coke jet. This blog has devoted quite a few posts to last year's remarkable capture, on a Mexican tarmac, of a jet laden with five tons of coke. (Here and here and here, and that's for starters.) Although the plane was surrounded by police, the pilot somehow "got away."

(Compare his fate to that of the Gulfstream II pilot: He bailed, was captured, and then tried to bribe his way out of custody. I don't know if the bribe worked; no further news reports have mentioned him.)

The Skyway jet was owned by a noted con artist who, in exchange for protection, allowed "his" plane to be used for various nefarious activities. Although this aircraft underwent the usual rapid ownership transfers just before the bust in Mexico, it still bore the Skyway logo, which strongly resembles the Homeland Security logo.

Skyway was a fake firm associated with In-Q-Tel, a shadowy investment group begun by CIA personnel. Although Skyway head Brent Kovar was a notorious scamster, he has never faced a judge, and his aviation undertaking somehow attracted investment from two very real corporations: The defense giant Titan and Argyll Equities of Boerne, Texas. According to investigator Daniel Hopsicker,

Argyll previously arranged for a $17 million loan to a Mexican businessman, who in turn provided "significant capital" to a

“Chilean narcotics trafficker" named Manuel Vicente Losada, arrested in the Chilean capital of Santiago after being “linked to a shipment of five tons of cocaine which U.S. drug enforcement officials in Miami intercepted over six years ago on the vessel Harbour, as it headed toward Guantanamo Bay.”

"Guantanamo Bay"? asks Hopsicker. The implications hang in the air.

Hopsicker lists a few other indicators that Argyll may have a shady history. No less a figure than Patrick Fitzgerald investigated allegations that Argyll played a role in a scheme to defraud a hedge fund administered by the mother of actor Vince Vaughn.

That, I fear, is a tale for another time. Right now, let us stay focused on the eye-popping allegation that cocaine headed toward Gitmo.

Is Guantanamo being used as a drug transshipment point?

Consider: The recently-crashed Gulfstream II made a number of trips to Gitmo. Why? To transport prisoners? No: News accounts have made clear that the prisoners there were brought in via military craft.

Evergreen. Evergreen airlines is the most famous CIA-linked aviation company; indeed, it is difficult to say where Evergreen stops and the Agency begins. Oddly enough, Evergreen had employed Russell DeFreitas, who was arrested last June for an alleged attempt to blow up JFK airport.

In an earlier post, I argued that DeFreitas was involved with a drug ring while he worked at JFK airport. News accounts link him with the Triniad-based nationalist organization Jamaat Al Muslimeen, which controls much of the organized crime in that part of the world.

Do you believe that Evergreen -- which is to say, the CIA -- would accidentally hire a man connected to a criminal syndicate?

Evergreen is a major player in the "rendition" scandal. Evergreen aircraft were used to transport "prisoners."

And perhaps not just prisoners.

Based on the above, I posit -- but cannot prove -- that Inspector General John Helgerson has been looking into the links between "renditions" and smuggling.

The pattern is difficult to explain away: In each of the three episodes listed above, the scenarios changed after 2005 -- after the IG began to investigate renditions. After 2005, the Gulfstream II underwent a series of weird and hard-to-follow ownership transfers. So did the Skyway jet. DeFreitas left Evergreen to work as a "baggage handler" at JFK (where Evergreen has a presence) -- an interesting gig for someone associated with drug thugs and spooks.

Never before has a CIA Director investigated an Inspector General. Why now?


(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. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

It's not just Junior. The whole family is robbing us blind.

Unfreakin'believable!!!

CREW to Department of Education: Investigate why "No Child Left Behind" funds are being spent on Neil Bush's company

Submitted by crew on 12 September 2007 - 11:40am. Dept. of Education Ignite Neil Bush No Child Left Behind

Congress in the midst of debating legislation to re-authorize the controversial "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB) program. A three-month long investigation by CREW raises serious questions about the use of NCLB funds to pay for products sold by Neil Bush, the younger brother of President George Bush.

CREW is requesting that the Department of Education’s Inspector General (IG) investigate why federal NCLB funds are being spent on educational products sold by Ignite! Learning, a company founded and headed by Neil Bush. Our letter to the IG can be found here.

Neil Bush, who has no education background, is best known for his role in the failure of Silverado Savings and Loan, which cost taxpayers $1.6 billion. CREW is asking the IG to discover why federal money is being funneled to a company with no proven track record of effectiveness, but so happens to be run by the president’s brother.

Congress has set rigorous standards for the types of educational approaches and products on which NCLB funds can be spent, but CREW’s research shows that Ignite! products do not meet those criteria. In fact, there is no scientific data, as defined by NCLB, supporting the effectiveness of Ignite!’s products.

CREW’s three-month investigation revealed that school districts are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, including NCLB funds, on Ignite!’s Curriculum on Wheels (COW), a cart-mounted video projector and hard drive loaded with a year’s supply of Ignite!’s social studies, science, or math curricula. At a standard price of $3,800-$4,200 per unit, the COW is a very expensive device with limited use. A recent New York Times article about the use of the COW in Spotsylvania, Virginia, put the cost into perspective: each school in the district receives $1,000 "to cover all the lab supplies, equipment and other expenses connected with science for an entire year." Adding to the initial expense, schools must pay an annual $1,000 licensing, upkeep and upgrade fee in order to retain the COW for more than one year.

When we sent the letter to the Inspector General, Melanie Sloan issued this statement:

It is astonishing that taxpayer dollars are being spent on unproven educational products to the financial benefit of the president’s brother. The IG should investigate whether children’s educations are being sacrificed so that Neil Bush can rake in federal funds.

If Ignite! is to continue receiving NCLB funding, its products must be held to NCLB’s stringent standards. With the education of our nation’s students at stake, we hope that the IG spearheads an audit immediately.

(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. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Lee Hamilton: Goopers Favorite Democrat (other than Holy Joe, of course)

Anyone who finds themselves interested in Iran/Contra after reading this article, a good place to start learning is at Consortium News, by Robert Parry, one of the last great investigative reporters of our time.

A trip through his archives is enlightening, to say the least, for people who were either to young to remember the scandal or who were busy not paying attention to the congressional hearings on the matter. Admittedly it was a mind-numbing experience to watch those hearings day after day. Nevertheless, it is impossible to understand fully understand the mess in which we currently find ourselves, without knowing what Iran/Contra was really all about, whom the players were and where they are now.

Sam Husseini has an article at Znet that looks back darkly at Lee Hamilton, once (still?) one of the most respected Democrat elder statesmen:

Many think they now see through the Democrats' complicity with the Bush administration's illegal wars and unconstitutional actions. If they think this is new, they don't know that half of it.

Exactly twenty years ago today, on July 13, 1987, I witnessed the Democratic Party establishment covering up -- and therefore helping -- the subversion of the U.S. Constitution. It was actually on national TV, but few seemed to care.

The Iran-Contra hearings were going on. I watched them almost in their entirety, ...

For a while, I was admiring of the co-chairs of the Iran-Contra committee, the Democrats Sen. Daniel Inouye and Rep. Lee Hamilton -- who would go on to co-head the 9/11 Commission and the Iraq Study Commission.

But, following events closely, it became clear Inouye and Hamilton were covering things up things. This became glaring on July 13, 1987 when the following exchange took place as Rep. Jack Brooks, a Democrat from Texas questioned Oliver North:

REP. BROOKS: Colonel North, in your work at the NSC, were you not assigned, at one time, to work on plans for the " continuity of government " in the event of a major disaster?

BRENDAN SULLIVAN (North's lawyer): Mr. Chairman?

SEN. INOUYE: I believe that question touches upon a highly sensitive and classified area so may I request that you not touch on that, sir?

REP. BROOKS: I was particularly concerned, Mr. Chairman, because I read in Miami papers, and several others, that there had been a plan developed by that same agency, a contingency plan in the event of emergency, that would suspend the American constitution. And I was deeply concerned about it and wondered if that was the area in which he had worked. I believe that it was and I wanted to get his confirmation.

SEN. INOUYE; May I most respectfully request that that matter not be touched upon at this stage. If we wish to get into this, I'm certain arrangements can be made for an executive session.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=72&ItemID=13285

I can understand Husseini's point here, especially now that "continuity of government" plans sound more and more suspiciously like potential totalitarian makeovers for our Democracy.

-------------------------------------------------------

Living in Southern Indiana, I used to think of Lee Hamilton as one of the most highly respected names in politics. But I was a little taken aback when he agreed to chair the blatant whitewash (as I saw it) Commission for 911. He also chaired the Iraq Study Group, which I tend to view as having been less a reconsideration of Iraq strategy than an attempt to save W's bacon. In general, he seems to be tight with the Busheviks today. For example,

Lee Herbert Hamilton ...currently serves on the President's Homeland Security Advisory Council

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Hamilton
Isn't that interesting, considering that Homeland Security seems to be little more than a propaganda arm for the Bush administration? Too, I've read that W was considering Hamilton as possible ambassador to the UN back in 2000. What does that say about Hamilton, considering Bush's later infatuation with John Bolton?

So I'm becoming sympathetic to Sam Husseini's view of Hamilton. Who IS Lee Hamilton? His view on impeachment, back in the eighties, sounds eerily similar to Pelosian appeasement today, according to Wikipedia:

As chair of the Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran, Hamilton chose not to investigate President Ronald Reagan or President George H. W. Bush, stating that he did not think it would be "good for the country" to put the public through another impeachment trial.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Hamilton

Was it good for the country, Rep. Hamilton, to put us through two more decades of anti-constitutional and imperial ravishment at the hands of Nixon-Reagan-Bush cronies, cronies who have been gradually building up the Nixon-Reagan-Bush notion of the Imperial Presidency, without ever having to face any real consequences, or push back in defense of the Constitution, which you claimed to embrace during those Iran/Contra hearings, back in the eighties?

In a seemingly reasonable speech from April 6, 2006, about the necessity of meaningful consultation between the President and Congress on foreign policy (ie. respect for Congress' role), Lee Hamilton offered this self-contradictory gem:

...The George W. Bush administration consulted well to forge a national consensus for immediate action in the days and weeks after 9/11.

... consultation must take place, to the extent feasible, prior to decisions, not after they have already been made.

http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=director.things&typeid=...

Is that a sick joke, Rep. Hamilton? Did you forget about how the President crammed the Patriot Act down Congress' throat before many Congressional members had even read it?!

In a September 7, 2006 speech on the aftermath of 911, Hamilton made this curious statement:

Within the executive branch, we recommended the creation of a Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.

To counter terrorism, government has not only increased in size, scope and resources, but it has become more intrusive into the lives of Americans. Much of this intrusiveness has been accepted by Americans. But these powers must be reviewed and – if need be – checked by an independent authority.

The Board is up and running. It must now prove to be a strong voice that offers a second opinion. ...

Within Congress, we recommended strengthening the committees that oversee intelligence and homeland security. ...

The American people will not be as safe as they could be – and their freedoms will not be protected – unless Congress does the hard and unglamorous work of overseeing the executive branch. Our Founders intended for Congress to be a co-equal branch of government to the Executive. It’s time for Congress to start acting like one.

http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=director.things&typeid=...

Well, of course it's good to call for Congress to exert more oversight, but one must recognize that Congress is more than co-equal, according to the Constitution. Congress is the originator of the laws that the President is to execute, and Congress is judge and jury over the President (via impeachment). But, more to the point, what is this absurdity of calling for a "Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board" WITHIN THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH and then calling it "independent authority" and "a strong voice that offers a second opinion"? That's flat out bullshit. If the oversight board is IN the executive branch it is NOT independent, and under this administration, with its track record for muzzling any and all independent voices under its authority, it certainly is NOT a second opinion.

-------------------------

What is Lee Hamilton's game? Why does he talk relentlessly about the importance of bipartisanship, while never (that I know of) mentioning the extreme partisanship of the Bush administration, which he seems to serve as a useful faux Democrat?

I don't know Lee Hamilton, so maybe I've got him all wrong, but I think he's just one more member of the cabal that I think is destroying Democracy in American and creating Empire. Here's perhaps the crowning irony: one of his projects (one of his board memberships)
is the National Endowment for Democracy. Sounds good, right? It's an organization that spreads democracy. How cool is that?

Well here's what the Cato Institute, hardly a screaming lefty organization says about the NED:

"NED, which also has a history of corruption and financial mismanagement, is superfluous at best and often destructive. Through the endowment, the American taxpayer has paid for special-interest groups to harass the duly elected governments of friendly countries, interfere in foreign elections, and foster the corruption of democratic movements."

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=National_Endowment_for_Democr...

Former CIA officer Phillip Agee put it this way:

During the late 1970s there was new thinking at the highest levels of the U.S. foreign policymakers, and they reconsidered whether these ugly murderous military dictatorships of the 1970s were really the best way to preserve U.S. interests in these countries – U.S. interests being defined traditionally as unfettered access to the primary products and raw materials, to the labor and to the markets of foreign countries. This new thinking led to the establishment in 1983 of the National Endowment for Democracy.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=National_Endowment_for_Democr...

So it's not about democracy. It's about imperial control.

And does this kind of intervention remotely relate to Democracy?:

Several articles about the political process in Haiti, Iraq, and the Palestinian-occupied territories have appeared in The New York Times, NPR, and other mainstream US media. The impression is given that the articles are from bona fide journalists, but it transpires that several of them are paid by the NED or its affilated organizations. The case of Regine Alexandre is particularly interesting. She wrote articles for the New York Times, AP, and commented on NPR. It transpires that she is on the NED payroll, and the NED confirmed this fact. However, when confronted with this information both the NYT and NPR failed to respond or take this seriously.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=National_Endowment_for_Democr...

To me that doesn't sound like Democracy in action; it sounds like what I'm beginning to think Lee Hamilton does: it's providing cover for the rise of Empire. Shouldn't we at least ask why Hamilton seems to be Johnny on the Spot when the Bush family needs cover?

Hamilton and Iran/Contra
http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/hamiltoniran-contra.htm

Hamilton and the October Surprise
http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/hamiltonoctsurprise.htm

(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. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Bush's Uncle Under Investigation (surprise, surprise)

I can remember when we all thought that the idea that the Bush famliy, itself, was a sort of Ma and Pa crime ring sounded ludicrous. Yep, even knowing that old Prescott had, sort of, laundered money for the Nazis, even after the U.S. entere the fray.

It's true. The Bushes and Walkers even had their assets frozen.

Nevertheless, we now, to a number, believe that the Bush family, including close family allies, friends and business associates, who are usually guilty of something, themselves, make up the biggest, most dangerous crime family in American History

I see it as almost poetic justice that it is the eldest, self-confessed black sheep of a dark dynasty who finally OUTS a whole damn bed of rattle-snakes, as a result of his high-brow, barely hidden these days, incurious, intellectually challenged, frat boy-routine, as he drags the nation further and further down into an bottomless hell pitt.


By Tim McLaughlin
Reuters

Feb 7, 2007 — NEW YORK (Reuters) - President George W. Bush's uncle, William H.T. "Bucky" Bush, was part of a group of outside directors at a defense contractor who realized about $6 million in unauthorized pay from an options backdating scheme, according to U.S. securities investigators.

Bush and other non-employee directors who served on the board of Engineered Support Systems Inc., now owned by DRS Technologies Inc., are not accused of any wrongdoing in a civil complaint filed on Tuesday by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The SEC complaint, however, says the non-employee directors benefited from stock options not approved by shareholders.

"As a result, the company provided significant additional compensation to its outside directors beyond what shareholders had approved," the SEC complaint said. "These same directors later realized approximately $6 million from the exercise of their addtional stock options."
The complaint did not break out how much Bush and the other outside directors received from a total of 132,000 shares of unauthorized shares.

Bush, whose brother is former President George H.W. Bush, was unavailable for comment. He served on St. Louis-based ESSI's board from 2000 until the St. Louis defense contractor was acquired last year for nearly $2 billion by DRS, which sells engineering services to the U.S. military.

Bush served on ESSI's audit committee and received $2,500 a month in consulting fees, an arrangement that later was ended for him and other outside directors. Bush also received a fixed amount of ESSI shares each year for his work on the board.

Before the DRS deal was approved in January 2006, Bush held ESSI shares worth $3.8 million, SEC filings show.

Between 1995 and early 2005, ESSI's stock climbed nearly 900 percent as the company sold cargo loaders, generators and trailers to the Pentagon. ESSI's board was politically connected and included several retired generals.

The SEC on Tuesday accused ESSI's former chief financial officer, Gary C. Gerhardt, and former controller, Steven J. Landmann, of orchestrating a backdating scheme that spanned six years. In all, executives and directors netted $20 million in unauthorized pay, according to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court in St. Louis.
Continued1. 2. NEXT»


(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. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.