“Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency”

[JohnyCanuck]

This is the first installment of a ten-part series to be published on the website http://whowhatwhy.com and based on excerpts from various chapters of the book Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years by Russ Baker. The author of this 10 part series, James Huang, notes that the excerpts quoted don't contain footnotes but the book from which they are drawn is "heavily footnoted and exhaustively sourced".

Part 1. “Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency”
By James Huang on Sep 16, 2013

Poppy’s Secret

When Joseph McBride came upon the document about George H. W. Bush’s double life, he was not looking for it. It was 1985, and McBride, a former Daily Variety writer, was in the library of California State University San Bernardino, researching a book about the movie director Frank Capra. Like many good reporters, McBride took off on a “slight,” if time-consuming, tangent – spending day after day poring over reels of microfilmed documents related to the FBI and the JFK assassination. McBride had been a volunteer on Kennedy’s campaign, and since 1963 had been intrigued by the unanswered questions surrounding that most singular of American tragedies.

A particular memo caught his eye, and he leaned in for a closer look. Practically jumping off the screen was a memorandum from FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, dated November 29, 1963. Under the subject heading “Assassination of President John F. Kennedy,” Hoover reported that, on the day after JFK’s murder, the bureau had provided two individuals with briefings. One was “Captain William Edwards of the Defense Intelligence Agency.” The other: “Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency.”

To:

Director
Bureau of Intelligence and Research
Department of State

(We have been) advised that the Department of State feels some misguided anti-

Castro group might capitalize on the present situation and undertake an unauthorized

raid against Cuba, believing that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy

might herald a change in U.S. policy… (Our) sources know of no (such) plans…

The substance of the foregoing information was orally furnished to Mr. George Bush

of the Central Intelligence Agency and Captain William Edwards of the Defense

Intelligence Agency.

McBride shook his head. George H. W. Bush? In the CIA in 1963? Dealing with Cubans and the JFK assassination? Could this be the same man who was now vice president of the United States? Even when Bush was named CIA director in 1976 amid much agency-bashing, his primary asset had been the fact that he was not a part of the agency during the coups, attempted coups, and murder plots in Iran, Cuba, Chile, and other hot spots about which embarrassing information was being disclosed every day in Senate hearings.

Continued here:
http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/09/16/part-1-mr-george-bush-of-the-central-intelligence-agency/

[NRaleighLiberal]

1. so hard to see the words "Bush" and "Intelligence" in the same sentence....

[Sand Wind]

2. Right sometimes the fruit are not close from the tree. Nt

[whttevrr]

3. Great... thanks... :tsk:

Now anyone clicking on that link will be on an NSA watchlist. Now how am I going to get a job as an internet spy. It's bad enough I once drunk dialed the White house in the 80's...

Now I'll never get a secret clearance...

[Buns_of_Fire]

4. The good news is...

The United States government has now decided to do away with "Secret" clearances due to the Edward Snowden and Aaron Alexis fiascoes (after all, they both had security clearances!) and just give all Americans a "Top Secret" clearance and be done with it.

The bad news is that Supreme Federation Starship Commander Keith Alexander (he of the NSA-1701 command) has now reclassified all government documents as "Maximum Ultra Super Duper Secret" and not even the President is allowed access to them.

[321Morrow]

5. Here are some other good books to read on the JFK assassination.

Another essay on the possible role of CIA GHW Bush in the JFK assassination: http://www.jfkmurdersolved.com/bush.htm

Here are some other good books to read on JFK assassination:

1) LBJ: The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination by Phillip Nelson
2) The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ by Roger Stone
3) JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why it Matters by James Douglass
4) Brothers: the Hidden History of the Kennedy Years by David Talbot
5) The Dark Side of Camelot by Seymour Hersh
6) Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty by Russ Baker
7) Power Beyond Reason: The Mental Collapse of Lyndon Johnson by Jablow Hershman
8) Operation Cyanide: Why the Bombing of the USS Liberty Nearly Caused World War III by Peter Hounam (LBJ engineered the attack on the USS Liberty)
9) Inside the Assassinations Records Review Board Volume 5, by Doug Horne
10) Watch "The Men Who Killed Kennedy - the Guilty Men - episode 9" at YouTube -
best video ever on the JFK assassination; covers well Lyndon Johnson's role
11) Google the essay “LBJ-CIA Assassination of JFK” by Robert Morrow
11) Google “National Security State and the Assassination of JFK by Andrew Gavin Marshall.”
12) Google “Chip Tatum Pegasus.” Intimidation of Ross Perot 1992
13) Google “Vincent Salandria False Mystery Speech.” Read every book & essay Vincent Salandria ever wrote.
14) Google "Unanswered Questions as Obama Annoints HW Bush" by Russ Baker
16) Google "Did the Bushes Help to Kill JFK" by Wim Dankbaar

[JohnyCanuck]

6. I see "Part 2. Viva Zapata" has now been published.

The news business, the policy business, and the intelligence business had a lot in common: they were all about whom you knew and what you knew. In fact, so was the oil business. The Bushes’ skill at cultivating connections was evident in 1953, when Poppy joined forces with a couple of brothers, Hugh and Bill Liedtke, to form Zapata Petroleum. Based on a “hunch” of Hugh Liedtke’s, the company drilled 127 consecutive “wet” holes, and the firm’s stock exploded from seven cents a share to twenty-three dollars a share . . .

snip

Gow portrays Bush as traveling constantly when he was Zapata chief, and far from connected when on premises . . . Though Gow has little to say in his book about the company’s underlying operations or Poppy’s role in them, he proudly notes Zapata’s complex web of foreign ventures. In all probability, the foreign operations had dual functions. Since Zapata was set up with guidance from Neil Mallon, it is likely that the overseas undertakings were modeled in part on Dresser’s. According to the in-house history of Dresser, one of the company’s bolder moves was a then-innovative tax strategy that involved a separate company in the tiny European principality of Liechtenstein. “A considerable benefit was the fact that no American taxes had to be paid on international earnings until the money was returned to the United States.” That is, if the money was ever returned to the United States. And there was another characteristic of funds that were not repatriated: they were out of sight of federal authorities. There was no effective way to know where they went ultimately, or for what purposes.

That was Dresser. Now, Zapata, according to Gow: “Zapata, at that time, consisted of a number of foreign corporations incorporated in each county where our rigs operated . . . It was largely the brainchild of the tax department at Arthur Andersen and the tax lawyers at Baker and Botts . . . Until the profits were brought back to the United States, it was not necessary at that time to pay U.S. taxes on them. Because of the way Zapata operated around the world, it seemed as though it never would be necessary to pay taxes . . . As time passed and Zapata worked in many other countries, Zapata’s cash . . . was in the accounts of a large number (dozens and dozens) of companies located in almost all the countries around the world where Zapata had ever drilled.”

Whether Zapata was partially designed for laundering money for covert or clandestine operations may never be known. But one thing is certain: spy work depends, as much as anything, on a large flow of funds for keeping foreign palms greased. It is an enormously expensive business, and it requires layers and layers of ostensibly unconnected cutouts for the millions to flow properly and without detection.

http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/09/25/part-2-viva-zapata-3/

[Uncle Joe]

7. This is a great and enlightening read!

http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/09/25/part-2-viva-zapata-3/

By most appearances, a number of CIA-connected entities were involved in the operation. Zapata leased the Scorpion to Standard Oil of California and to Gulf Oil. CIA director Dulles had previously served as Gulf’s counsel for Latin America. The same year that Gulf leased Bush’s platform, CIA veteran Kermit “Kim” Roosevelt joined Gulf’s board. This was the same Kermit Roosevelt who had overseen the CIA’s successful 1953 coup against the democratically elected Iranian prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, after Mossadegh began nationalizing Anglo-American oil concessions. It looked like the Bush-CIA group was preparing for operations in the Caribbean basin.

The offshore platforms had a specific purpose. “George Bush would be given a list of names of Cuban oil workers we would want placed in jobs,” said one official connected to Operation Mongoose, the program to overthrow Castro. “The oil platforms he dealt in were perfect for training the Cubans in raids on their homeland.”

The importance of this early Bush connection with Cuba should not be ignored in assessing his connections to contemporaneous events. For example, it sheds light on the 1963 memo from J. Edgar Hoover discovered by reporter Joseph McBride. The memo, which mentioned a briefing about Cuban activity in the wake of the JFK assassination, had been given to “George Bush of the CIA.” Years later, many figures from the Bay of Pigs operation would resurface in key positions in administrations in which Poppy Bush held high posts, and during his presidency. Others would show up in off-the-books operations run by Poppy’s friends and associates.

(snip)

Poppy swung into gear the same year that Castro began nationalizing [American] properties. He severed his ties to the Liedtkes by buying out their stake in Zapata Offshore, and then moved its operations to Houston – which, unlike the remote Midland-Odessa area, had access to the Caribbean through the Houston Ship Channel. Meanwhile, back in Washington, after extensive planning, the Bay of Pigs project began with Eisenhower’s approval on March 17, 1960 . . .


Thanks for the thread, JohnCanuck.