by Russ Baker
37. It is unknown how much gold Marcos sold to the Central Bank. But, according to the Sea-graves’ Gold Warriors, “Most of his gold was already refined, and once in the Central Bank could be moved directly into the international market—if a way could be found to disguise it from the inevitable statisticians, a question of complicating the paper chase.” Based on what they were told by gold industry officials, the Seagraves go on to explain that Marcos began a program to lease quantities of dormant bullion to banks—and that this was actually cover for Marcos to move large quantities of “black gold” (i.e., gold unacknowledged by world markets) out of the Philippines. They also cite eyewitness accounts of Marcos’s personal plane ferrying gold to a Zu rich bank, and way bills that they say document the use of commercial planes for that purpose as well.
38. “Together Again,” Time, July 13, 1981.
39. Jeffrey Toobin, “The Dirty Trickster,” New Yorker, June 2, 2008.
40. Ed Rollins with Tom DeFrank, Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms: My Life in American Politics (New York: Broadway, 1996), pp. 214–15.
41. In later years, Poppy would serve on the advisory board of Barrick Gold Company, which minesfor strategic metals in Central Africa.
42. As strange as a “Communist Takeover Fund” sounds, NATO actually created stay-behind networks all over Eu rope after World War II. One example is a secret paramilitary force called Operation Gladio, which was originally set up to resist a potential Communist takeover in Italy. See Daniel Williams, “Italy Was Warned of Iraq Attack; Report of Threats to Nasiriyah Base Were Disregarded,” Washington Post, December 8, 2003. It then helped spark right-wing military coups in Greece and Turkey on NATO’s behalf. See Craig Unger, “The War They Wanted, the Lies They Needed,” Vanity Fair, July 2006.
43. Russ Baker and Adam Federman with response by Alan G. Quasha and Terence R. McAuliffe,“Hillary’s Mystery Money Men,” Nation, November 5, 2007.
44. Nugan Hand had been involved in drug-trafficking operations that originated in Southeast Asiaduring the Vietnam War. When the bank got into trouble in the Philippines, its operatives turned to Quasha for legal help. According to one Nugan Hand salesman, Quasha gave them atypical legal advice—urging them to flee the country. “He said, ‘You could wind up in jail.’ ” See Jonathan Kwitny, The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA (New York: W. W. Norton and Company), p. 36.
45. Steve Dvin, “Homer Williams Develops Opportunity with Wits, Charm,” Oregonian (Portland, Oregon), July 5, 1998.
46. Ibid.
47. Jeff Gerth, “Marcos U.S. Bank Dealings Modest,” New York Times, March 22, 1986.
48. William Glaberson, “The Marcos Verdict; The ‘Wrong’ Court,” New York Times, July 3, 1990.
49. Robert Trigaux, “Bush Built Success on Harken Sale,” St. Petersburg Times, July 21, 2002.
50. According to SEC filing “Axp Selected Series Inc N-30D,” SEC File 811-04132, March 31, 2003. Available online at www.secinfo.com/dsvr4.a44.c.htm.
51. L. J. Davis, “Where Are You Al?” Mother Jones, November–December 1993.
52. Most of the Harken shares handled by UBS were snapped up by Abdullah Bakhsh, a Saudireal estate magnate, who bought the stock through a Netherlands Antilles shell company. Though he became Harken’s third-largest stockholder, with a 17.6 percent stake, he rarely met with company officials, instead sending a representative to sit on the Harken board. Back in Saudi Arabia, Bakhsh was a business partner of Ghaith Pharaon, the fellow who had partnered with Jim Bath in Main Bank, and whom the Federal Reserve had labeled a “front-man” for BCCI. (Harken filings from the 1990s, though enormously complicated, seem to show additional UBS involvement with the company through partnerships with affiliated Harken entities.)
53. In an interview, Senn said: “ ‘Petty apartheid,’ the physical separation of the races, is about to disappear. The grand scheme of apartheid, a wholesale democratic solution including ‘one man–one vote’ will, however, take time . . . ‘One man–one vote’ to me is not a world religion.” Khulumani et al. v. Barclays National Bank et al. brief, available at www.kosa.org/documents/Swiss_campaign_amici_curiae.pdf
54. Alexander L. Taylor III, “Swiss Secrets Are Put to a Vote,” Time, May 28, 1984.
55. www.kosa.org/documents/Swiss_campaign_amici_curiae.pdf
56. Anton Rupert also launched Quadrant Management Inc., a corporate takeover and reorganization firm that principally manages the U.S. assets of a company called North American Resources, a company that is a joint venture between the Quasha family and Financière Richemont SA, a Swiss tobacco and luxury goods company that had just formed, and whose board Quasha joined. Financial interests were held by a Bermuda-based trust controlled by his mother. Thus, Quasha was deeply involved with a network of Swiss, Luxembourg, American, and offshore entities centered on this relationship. The main function of the consortium appeared to be twofold: controlling natural resources (timber, etc.) and assembling baubles for the rich under one corporate roof.
57. Amoco had already advanced in talks with Bahrain and had an inside track. The tiny emirate,strongly allied with Saudi Arabia, hadn’t hit paydirt since 1932, but seismic surveys showed a large undersea geological formation—potentially worth billions.
58. Quasha insisted that the deal had nothing to do with the Bush connection. Yet Harken’s exploration chief, Monte Swetnam, recalled to the Wall Street Journal mentioning names of company directors to the Bahrainis, including invoking W.’s name at least twice. See Thomas Petzinger Jr., Peter Truell, and Jill Abramson “Family Ties: How Oil Firm Linked to a Son of Bush Won Bahrain Drilling Pact,” Wall Street Journal, December 6, 1991. Whatever role the Bush connection played during the negotiations, it seems likely that it was the basis for Harken’s entry into those negotiations in the first place.
59. The official story of how Bahrain found Harken is as follows: The Bahraini oil minister contacteda longtime friend, a Houston oil consultant with Mideast experience named Michael Ameen. For a previous employer, Ameen had dealt closely with the Saudi royal family, including Kamal Adham, the former chief of Saudi intelligence and a key BCCI figure. Ameen was also close to Ghaith Pharaon’s family and had been a friend of Abdullah Bakhsh, the big Harken shareholder, for twenty-five years. Ameen says that ten minutes after he got the oil minister’s call for his advice on which of hundreds of oil companies should get the Bahrain contract, and while pondering this deeply, his phone happened to ring. On the other end was a Harken investment banker at Stephens Inc. in Little Rock. Soon Ameen, who would later receive a $100,000 fee from Harken, was escorting Harken delegations to London and Bahrain.
60. An unnamed institutional client “offered” to take W.’s shares off his hands. Bush is said to have initially declined, but to have told the stockbroker on the deal, Ralph Smith at the Los Angeles– based Sutro & Co., to check back in two weeks. Meanwhile, Harken’s lawyers issued a memo to Harken staffers warning against selling stock based on insider information. One week passed, and Bush called Smith back. Despite the apparent warning not to do so, he went ahead and sold 212,140 Harken shares for $4 per share, netting $848,560.
61. Author interview with Steve Rose, September 27, 2006.
62. Documents from the Securities and Exchange Commission and elsewhere, gathered by Harvard Watch, a student and alumni group, and the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity.
63. Cited by the Center for Public Integrity. It’s worth noting that Harken itself did business with Enron, as confirmed by a 1990 letter of credit between the two firms.
64. “President Urges Congress to Support Nation’s Priorities,” George W. Bush press conference,July 8, 2002.
65. R. G. Ratcliffe, “Business Associates Profit During Bush’s Term as Governor,” Houston Chronicle, August 16, 1998.
66. Alan Quasha’s ties to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign were detailed in Baker and Fed-erman,“Hillary’s Mystery Money Men.”
67. Eamon Javers, “Is
Obama Good for Business?” Business Week, February 13, 2008.
17: PLAYING HARDBALL
1. Prescott Bush was captain of the varsity baseball team at Yale, where he played first base. George H. W. Bush lacked his father’s physical prowess, and batted near the bottom of the lineup, but he too eventually served as Yale team captain. W. “played sparingly” for the Yale freshman team. For more, see Peter Schweizer and Rochelle Schweizer, The Bushes: Portrait of a Dynasty (New York: Doubleday, 2004), p. 90. Prescott, Poppy, and W. were all members of the Yale cheerleading squad. See Simone Berkower, “Cheerleading of the ’20s: Epitome of Masculinity,” Yale Daily News, January 28, 2008.
2. James Moore and Wayne Slater, Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2003), p. 152.
3. For Barbara’s public comments, see Bill Minutaglio, First Son: George W. Bush and the Bush Family Dynasty (New York: Three Rivers, 1999), p. 243. The concern that it would be seen as a referendum was expressed by several sources interviewed by the author.
4. Author interview with Doug Wead, December 14, 2006.
5. Kevin Sack, “George Bush the Son Finds That Oil and Blood Do Mix,” New York Times, May 8, 1999.
6. Author interview with Comer Cottrell, June 20, 2006.
7. Because shares were bought from various owners over time, there is some disagreement onthe total amount paid.
8. W. served on the board of Carlyle subsidiary Cater Air. Carlyle Group’s advisers and board members have included Poppy Bush, James Baker, Clinton chief of staff Mack McLarty, former British prime minister John Major, and former Philippine president Fidel Ramos.
9. Author interview with Glenn Sodd, June 9, 2006.
10. Jim Landers, “Lawyer Represented Bush on Harken,” Dallas Morning News, September 19, 2004.
11. Elisabeth Bumiller, “For President and Close Friend, Forget the Politics,” New York Times, January 14, 2005.
12. Betts’s father, Allan W. Betts, had, after Yale, been a partner at G. H. Walker and Company,the company run by Poppy Bush’s favorite uncle, Herbie—himself one of the principal owners of a baseball team, the New York Mets. And Allan Betts and his wife had a home in the exclusive enclave of Hobe Sound, Florida, as did the Bushes and many in their intelligence-finance circle. Allan Betts was also for many years director of the Astor Foundation and co-executor of the Vincent Astor estate. Astor not only ran intelligence in the New York area circa World War II, but he also started Newsweek, which was known to have strong ties to intelligence circles in its early days. (Vincent Astor bought Newsweek with Mary Harriman Rumsey, the sister of Averell and Roland Harriman.) Even Betts’s mother had a spy background, having worked in Washington for the OSS during World War II. For the latter point, see the New York Times’ wedding announcement for Allan Whitney Betts and Evelyn Ohman, April 21, 1945.
13. Author interview with Comer Cottrell.
14. Attorney Glenn Sodd, who represented plaintiffs in the suit against the Rangers’ owners, said that he had been led to believe that Eisner may have been one of the investors in W.’s owner group.
15. “Yale Corporation Members,” Yale Herald, October 5, 2001, www.yaleherald.com/archive/xxxii/10.05.01/news/p3yalecorp.html.
16. David Cay Johnston, Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) (New York: Portfolio, 2007), p. 79.
17. Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose, Shrub: The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush (New York: Random House, 2000), p. 38.
18. Johnston, Free Lunch, p. 80.
19. “Best and Worst Legislators Since 1973,” Texas Monthly, www.texasmonthly.com/bestworst.
20. James Langdon’s father had been a member of the all-powerful Texas Railroad Commission,the misleadingly named entity that regulates oil production in the state, during the agency’s primacy in the 1960s and ’70s.
21. Nicholas D. Krist of, “Breaking Into Baseball; Road to Politics Ran Through a Texas Ballpark,” New York Times, September 24, 2000.
22. Greene was also president of the Savings Banc, an Arlington thrift that lost $41.1 million and wastaken over by the federal government. Greene admitted no wrongdoing, and said he was “not unlike literally hundreds of people in the state of Texas and thousands nationwide that were caught up in the disastrous takeover of the S&Ls by the federal government.” See Laura Vozzella, “Many Texas Officials Starred in S&L Scandals,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, January 1, 1996.
23. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Richard E. Greene Appointed EPA Region 6 Administrator,”March 17, 2003, yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/e8f4ff7f7970934e85257359004 00c2e/a0386518e18d1d88852570d6005e7e41!OpenDocument
24. Johnston, Free Lunch, p. 82.
25. Kristof, “Breaking Into Baseball.”
26. Author interview with Jim Runzheimer, June 20, 2006.
27. Johnston, Free Lunch, pp. 77–78.
28. Bill Minutaglio, The President’s Counselor: The Rise to Power of Alberto Gonzales (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), p. 99.
29. Author interview with David Rosen, Midland, Texas, June 24, 2006.
30. Clayton Williams commented that poor weather is just like rape—“if it’s inevitable, just relax and enjoy it.” “Texas Primary; Higher Aspirations from Low Campaign,” New York Times, April 15, 1990.
18: MEET THE HELP
1. Tucker Carlson, Inside Politics, CNN, October 4, 2000. Also see Eric Alterman, What Liberal Media?: The Truth About Bias and the News (New York: Basic, 2003), p. 156.
2. Eric Boehlert, “The Press vs. Al Gore,” Rolling Stone, November 26, 2001.
3. Lou Dubose, Jan Reid, and Carl M. Cannon, Boy Genius: Karl Rove, the Brains Behind the Remarkable Political Triumph of George W. Bush (New York: Public Affairs, 2003), p. 12.
4. Nicholas Lemann, “The Controller,” New Yorker, May 12, 2003.
5. Atwater, who built his arsenal based on weapons he and Rove first developed in the College Republicans,was a notoriously brash dirty trickster and claimed to think of politics as war. He spearheaded a smear on behalf of Poppy’s campaign that sought to exploit Dukakis’s liberal political stances on such topics as gun control, environmental policy, mandatory pledge of allegiance in schools, and the death penalty, among others. Atwater’s most famous attempt to “strip the bark off the little bastard” was an attack-ad project that employed the image of convicted murderer William R. Horton, who was furloughed under a program begun by a Republican governor but supported by Dukakis. Horton kidnapped a couple, torturing the man and raping his girlfriend. Although Horton went by “William,” Atwater rebranded him “Willie” for the television ads. See Tim Hope and Richard Sparks, editors, Crime, Risk and Insecurity (New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 266.
6. Author interview with John Taliaferro, July 11, 2006.
7. In the same period, Taliaferro’s partner, publisher Chris Hearne, remembers going to the P.O. box and finding that someone had mailed in bricks—postage due.
8. James Moore and Wayne Slater, Bush’s Brain (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2003), p. 38.
9. Ibid., p. 40. The statement was attributed to speech writer Matt Lyon, now deceased, by a friend,Patricia Tierney Alofsin, a longtime fixture in Austin governmental circles.
10. Author interview with Royal Masset, May 27, 2004.
11. Psy-ops, or psychological operations, are sophisticated propaganda techniques meant to influence the behavior and state of mind of a targeted person or group. The U.S. military includes special units devoted to psy-ops.