Bank with close ties to Bush administration engulfed in scandal

[Guest guest]

http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=2974

 

Wednesday 25th August 2004 :

 

Bank with close ties to Bush administration engulfed

in scandal

 

By Joseph Kay

 

The Justice Department announced on Friday that it is

launching a criminal investigation into Riggs Bank. In

recent months, the Washington-based bank has become

engulfed in a scandal related to charges of

money-laundering, corruption and terrorist financing.

 

Riggs, which touts itself as “the most important bank

in the most important city in the world,” has been

known for decades as the bank of the Washington elite,

including politicians, foreign ambassadors and the

wealthy. It has held presidential accounts stretching

back to the time of the Civil War, and is a prominent

fixture in the political and social establishment of

the nation’s capital.

 

Or rather, it was a prominent fixture. In July, PNL

Financial Services agreed to buy Riggs for $779

million. The sale will become final by early next

year.

 

The bank’s prominent embassy and international

operations will be shut down in an attempt to bury a

scandal that has the potential of becoming much

larger. That an institution like Riggs could so

quickly disintegrate is an indication of the extent of

the corruption that has overtaken American finance and

government.

 

There are three separate activities for which Riggs

has come under investigation: (1) its relationship

with the Saudi royal family and the potential

financing of two of the September 11 hijackers through

an account owned by the wife of the Saudi ambassador;

(2) its relationship with the corrupt and dictatorial

regime of the oil-rich West African country of

Equatorial Guinea; and (3) its banking business with

the former military dictator of Chile, Augusto

Pinochet.

 

The Saudi accounts

 

The public revelations concerning the bank’s

relationship with Saudi Arabia came mainly through the

publication of a Newsweek article on December 2, 2002

(“The Saudi Money Trail”). The news magazine reported

that in January 2000, two of the hijackers who were on

the plane that crashed into the Pentagon—Nawaf Alhazmi

and Khalid Almihdhar—received monetary aid and other

assistance from Omar al-Bayoumi.

 

Alhazmi and Almihdhar are at the center of suspicions

of US government complicity in the 9/11 attacks—and

for good reason. The CIA had identified the two as

early as January 2000 as Al Qaeda operatives, and the

Washington Post reported in June 2002 that the FBI

also knew of the two from January of 2000. Yet they

were allowed to enter the US and live openly in San

Diego for 18 months prior to the terrorist attacks on

New York and Washington. Newsweek reported in

September 2002 that the roommate of Alhazmi and

Almihdhar in San Diego was an FBI informant!

 

According to the December 2002 Newsweek article on

Riggs Bank, al-Bayoumi “apparently did work for Dallah

Avco, an aviation-services company with extensive

contracts with the Saudi Ministry of Defense and

Aviation, headed by Prince Sultan, the father of the

Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar.

According to informed sources, some federal

investigators suspect that al-Bayoumi could have been

an advance man for the 9/11 hijackers, sent by Al

Qaeda to assist the plot that ultimately claimed 3,000

lives.”

 

Al-Bayoumi may have been receiving assistance in his

activities from sections of the Saudi royal family.

The Newsweek article states: “About two months after

al-Bayoumi began aiding Alhazmi and Almihdhar,

Newsweek has learned, al-Bayoumi’s wife began

receiving regular stipends, often monthly and usually

around $2,000 and totaling tens of thousands of

dollars. The money came in the form of cashier’s

checks, purchased from Washington’s Riggs Bank by

Princess Haifa bin Faisal, the daughter of the late

King Faisal and wife of Prince Bandar, the Saudi envoy

who is a prominent Washington figure and personal

friend of the Bush family. The checks were sent to a

woman named Majeda Ibrahin Dweikat, who in turn signed

over many of them to al-Bayoumi’s wife...”

 

Dweikat’s husband, Osama Basnan, is reported to be a

sympathizer of Al Qaeda and is known to have had

friendly relations with the two hijackers, Alhazmi and

Almihdhar.

 

Al-Bayoumi apparently came under suspicion shortly

after the attacks of September 11. He was picked up by

British intelligence, which found evidence that he had

made two phone calls to diplomats at the Saudi Embassy

in Washington. However, he was released and is

reported to be in Saudi Arabia.

 

Further, according to Newsweek: “Osama Basnan showed

up in Houston last April [2001] while Saudi Crown

Prince Abdullah came to town with a vast entourage en

route to President George W. Bush’s ranch. According

to informed sources, Basnan met with a high Saudi

prince who has responsibilities for intelligence

matters and is known to bring suitcases full of cash

into the United States.”

 

There are suspicions that Basnan may have been a

member of Saudi intelligence, suggesting that Saudi

intelligence was closely monitoring, if not aiding,

the activity of the September 11 hijackers through its

accounts at Riggs.

 

Newsweek noted that the FBI, as of December 2002,

still had an investigation open into the transactions.

In July 2003, the FBI accused Riggs Bank of failing to

abide by anti-money-laundering (AML) regulations.

 

Prior to and after the attacks of September 11, it was

not unusual for Saudi clients to transfers of millions

of dollars in and out of the bank with no questions

asked. This was in violation of AML regulations, which

require the reporting of all transaction involving

such large sums of money.

 

The bank was eventually fined $25 million in May 2004

for violating these regulations. However, the FBI has

issued a statement saying it found no evidence of

terrorist financing. The Bush administration has

refused to release the intelligence behind the

investigation, citing “national security concerns.”

 

Even after the FBI’s accusations in July 2003, the

bank continued to allow massive cash transfers by the

Saudi ambassador. Under pressure, the bank announced

this past March that it was closing all Saudi

accounts.

 

Equatorial Guinea and General Pinochet

 

On July 14, 2004, the Minority Staff of the US Senate

Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, at the

request of Democrat Carl Levin, the ranking minority

member of the subcommittee, issued a report that dealt

mainly with the bank’s accounts for Equatorial Guinea

and Augusto Pinochet.

 

The report found that “the evidence reviewed by the

Subcommittee staff establishes that, since at least

1997, Riggs has disregarded its anti-money laundering

(AML) obligations, maintained a dysfunctional AML

program despite frequent warnings from OCC [Office of

the Comptroller of the Currency] regulators, and

allowed or, at times, actively facilitated suspicious

financial activity.” The OCC, a branch of the Treasury

Department, is responsible for regulating nationally

chartered banks.

 

Equatorial Guinea was Riggs’ largest client. It held

over 60 accounts at the bank, with varied holdings of

$300-700 million. Its ruler, Teodoro Obian Nguema

Mbasogo, came to power in a military coup in 1979 and

is infamous for his corruption and brutality.

Relations with the United States became strained in

the mid-1990s, when the Clinton administration broke

off diplomatic ties. However, these were restored by

the Bush administration in 2003. The country holds

interest for the United States because of its large

oil reserves.

 

Riggs appears to have held both Equatorial Guinea

government treasury accounts and the personal accounts

of Obiang, his family members, and ministers in his

government.

 

According to the subcommittee report, Riggs “serviced

the EG [Equatorial Guinean] accounts with little or no

attention to the bank’s anti-money laundering

obligations...” For example, “Riggs opened multiple

personal accounts for the President of Equatorial

Guinea, his wife, and other relatives; helped

establish shell offshore corporations for the EG

President and his sons; and over a three-year period,

from 2000 to 2002, facilitated nearly $13 million in

cash deposits into Riggs accounts controlled by the EG

President and his wife.”

 

Riggs also opened an account that received large sums

of money from oil companies that did business with

Equatorial Guinea, including Exxon Mobil, Amerada

Hess, Marathon Oil and ChevronTexaco. Riggs allowed

the wire transfer of over $35 million from the account

to two unknown companies. “The Subcommittee has reason

to believe that at least one of these recipient

companies is controlled in whole or in part by the EG

President.”

 

Riggs appears to have acted as a conduit for

large-scale bribes or other corrupt machinations

between the giant oil corporations and the dictator of

a country with which they were eager to do business.

The report also noted that these oil companies made a

number of large payments (sometimes valued at over $1

million) to individual officials or family members for

a variety of services.

 

The manager of Riggs’ accounts for Equatorial Guinea

was Simon P. Kareri, who was eventually fired by the

bank in January 2004. According to a bank employee, on

more than one occasion Kareri visited the Equatorial

Guinean embassy and returned with a suitcase full of

$3 million in cash, which was deposited in the bank

with no reports to financial regulators.

 

According to the subcommittee report, “The bank

leadership permitted [Kareri] ...to become closely

involved with EG officials and business activities,

including advising the EG government on financial

matters and becoming the sole signatory on an EG

account holding substantial funds. The bank exercised

such lax oversight of the account manager’s activities

that, among other misconduct, the account manager was

able to wire transfer more than $1 million from the EG

oil account at Riggs to another bank for an account

opened in the name of Jadini Holdings, an offshore

corporation controlled by the account manager’s wife.”

 

In addition to its dealings with the Saudi royal

family and Equatorial Guinea’s dictator, Riggs had a

close relationship with the former dictator of Chile,

Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet held numerous active

accounts at Riggs between 1994 and 2002, even while he

was under house arrest in Britain and his assets were

supposedly frozen.

 

According to the subcommittee report, “The aggregate

deposits in the Pinochet accounts at Riggs ranged from

$4 to $8 million at a time.... Riggs account managers

took actions consistent with helping Mr. Pinochet to

evade legal proceedings seeking to discover and attach

his bank accounts.... Riggs opened multiple accounts

and accepted millions of dollars in deposits from Mr.

Pinochet with no serious inquiry into questions

regarding the source of his wealth; helped him set up

offshore shell corporations and open accounts in the

names of those corporations to disguise his control of

the accounts; altered the names of his personal

accounts to disguise their ownership; transferred $1.6

million from London to the United States while Mr.

Pinochet was in detention and the subject of a court

order to attach his bank accounts; conducted

transactions through Riggs’ own accounts to hide Mr.

Pinochet’s involvement in some cash transactions; and

delivered over $1.9 million in cashiers checks to Mr.

Pinochet in Chile to enable him to obtain substantial

cash payments from banks in that country.”

 

The scope of the corruption, money-laundering and

other suspicious activities is indeed astonishing.

While it was engaged in these activities, the bank

operated under the not-so-watchful eye of the Office

of the Comptroller of the Currency. In spite of clear

indications of regulatory violations at least as early

as 1997, the OCC took no actions.

 

Particularly closely involved with the OCC’s

investigation into the Pinochet accounts was the

comptroller’s examiner-in-charge, R. Ashley Lee, who

worked at the OCC from 1998 to October 2002. According

to the subcommittee report, “In 2001, [Lee]...advised

more senior OCC personnel against taking a formal

enforcement action against Riggs, because the bank had

promised to correct identified AML deficiencies. In

2002, he ordered examiners not to include a memorandum

or work papers on the Pinochet examination to the

OCC’s electronic database.”

 

Lee went to work for Riggs two weeks later, quickly

becoming an executive vice president and the chief

risk officer. The subcommittee report states: “During

his next 18-months at the bank, he attended a number

of meetings with OCC personnel related to Riggs’ AML

problems,” despite regulations prohibiting former OCC

employees from attending meetings on OCC-related

maters.

 

Ties to the Bush family

 

The revelations of the activities at Riggs Bank

demonstrate how commonplace and extensive criminal

activity has become within the American financial and

political establishment. Not coincidentally, the

bank’s activity has a great deal in common with

certain features prominent in the Bush administration:

the heavy influence of oil interests, the close ties

with the Saudi ruling elite, the funding and support

given to dictators and former dictators, including

General Pinochet.

 

The relationship of Riggs to the Bush administration

is more than tangential. Riggs owns a money management

firm, J. Bush & Co., operated by Jonathan Bush, the

brother of George H.W. Bush and the current

president’s uncle.

 

Jonathan Bush played a very important role in helping

find investors for the various failed oil businesses

that George W. Bush ran before he began his career in

politics. Jonathan Bush also helped raise money for

George H.W. Bush and is a former chair of the New York

Republican State Finance Committee. In 2000, he was

briefly named president and CEO of Riggs Investment

Management Company (RIMCO), a wholly owned subsidiary

of Riggs Bank.

 

While Jonathan Bush appears not to have been directly

involved in the Saudi, Pinochet or Equatorial Guinean

accounts, his position at Riggs is an indication of

the close ties between the bank and the Bush family.

 

Moreover, Riggs is owned by the Allbritton family, a

Texas family with close ties to the Republican

establishment. Joe Allbritton, the former head of

Riggs who bought the bank in the mid-1970s, is a

friend of the Bush family. His son, Robert Allbritton,

is the current chairman and CEO.

 

The Allbritton family is known among the Washington

elite for the party it traditionally holds after the

annual Alfalfa Club dinner, hosted to mark the

birthday of Robert E. Lee, the southern general in the

Civil War. The New York Times (“A Washington Bank, A

Global Mess,” April 11, 2004) notes, “The Alfalfa

roster includes presidents, politicians, diplomats and

business impresarios, all bound together by being

either formidably influential or fabulously rich.

Attendees have included luminaries like Prince Bandar

bin Sultan, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United

States; Jack Valenti, the president of the Motion

Picture Association of America; and others with

surnames like Greenspan, Kissinger and Rehnquist.

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney made

their first joint public appearance after the Sept. 11

terrorist attacks at the Alfalfa gathering in 2002.”

 

Valenti, who, like Allbritton and Bush, is a former

Texas businessman, is also on the board of directors

of Riggs Bank.

 

A television station also owned by Allbritton was in

the news earlier this year after it refused to air an

ad critical of the Bush administration’s policy in

Iraq.

 

Perhaps even more than the Enron scandal, the Riggs

scandal is a deeply political scandal. No doubt, much

of what went on at Riggs remains to be uncovered. With

the announced sale of Riggs to PNL, which will be

completed by early next year, the owners of the bank

are clearly attempting to contain the scandal’s

fallout.

 

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/aug2004/rigg-a24_prn.shtml

 

by : Joseph Kay

Wednesday 25th August 200

[Guest guest]

-

J

N

Sunday, August 29, 2004 8:31 PM

Bank with close ties to Bush administration engulfed in scandal

 

 

Wednesday 25th August 2004 :

Bank with close ties to Bush administration engulfed in scandal

13 comment(s).

 

 

 

By Joseph Kay

 

The Justice Department announced on Friday that it is launching a criminal

investigation into Riggs Bank. In recent months, the Washington-based bank has

become engulfed in a scandal related to charges of money-laundering, corruption

and terrorist financing.

 

Riggs, which touts itself as " the most important bank in the most

important city in the world, " has been known for decades as the bank of the

Washington elite, including politicians, foreign ambassadors and the wealthy. It

has held presidential accounts stretching back to the time of the Civil War, and

is a prominent fixture in the political and social establishment of the nation's

capital.

 

Or rather, it was a prominent fixture. In July, PNL Financial Services

agreed to buy Riggs for $779 million. The sale will become final by early next

year.

 

The bank's prominent embassy and international operations will be shut

down in an attempt to bury a scandal that has the potential of becoming much

larger. That an institution like Riggs could so quickly disintegrate is an

indication of the extent of the corruption that has overtaken American finance

and government.

 

There are three separate activities for which Riggs has come under

investigation: (1) its relationship with the Saudi royal family and the

potential financing of two of the September 11 hijackers through an account

owned by the wife of the Saudi ambassador; (2) its relationship with the corrupt

and dictatorial regime of the oil-rich West African country of Equatorial

Guinea; and (3) its banking business with the former military dictator of Chile,

Augusto Pinochet.

 

The Saudi accounts

 

The public revelations concerning the bank's relationship with Saudi

Arabia came mainly through the publication of a Newsweek article on December 2,

2002 ( " The Saudi Money Trail " ). The news magazine reported that in January 2000,

two of the hijackers who were on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon-Nawaf

Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar-received monetary aid and other assistance from

Omar al-Bayoumi.

 

Alhazmi and Almihdhar are at the center of suspicions of US government

complicity in the 9/11 attacks-and for good reason. The CIA had identified the

two as early as January 2000 as Al Qaeda operatives, and the Washington Post

reported in June 2002 that the FBI also knew of the two from January of 2000.

Yet they were allowed to enter the US and live openly in San Diego for 18 months

prior to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. Newsweek reported in

September 2002 that the roommate of Alhazmi and Almihdhar in San Diego was an

FBI informant!

 

According to the December 2002 Newsweek article on Riggs Bank, al-Bayoumi

" apparently did work for Dallah Avco, an aviation-services company with

extensive contracts with the Saudi Ministry of Defense and Aviation, headed by

Prince Sultan, the father of the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince

Bandar. According to informed sources, some federal investigators suspect that

al-Bayoumi could have been an advance man for the 9/11 hijackers, sent by Al

Qaeda to assist the plot that ultimately claimed 3,000 lives. "

 

Al-Bayoumi may have been receiving assistance in his activities from

sections of the Saudi royal family. The Newsweek article states: " About two

months after al-Bayoumi began aiding Alhazmi and Almihdhar, Newsweek has

learned, al-Bayoumi's wife began receiving regular stipends, often monthly and

usually around $2,000 and totaling tens of thousands of dollars. The money came

in the form of cashier's checks, purchased from Washington's Riggs Bank by

Princess Haifa bin Faisal, the daughter of the late King Faisal and wife of

Prince Bandar, the Saudi envoy who is a prominent Washington figure and personal

friend of the Bush family. The checks were sent to a woman named Majeda Ibrahin

Dweikat, who in turn signed over many of them to al-Bayoumi's wife... "

 

Dweikat's husband, Osama Basnan, is reported to be a sympathizer of Al

Qaeda and is known to have had friendly relations with the two hijackers,

Alhazmi and Almihdhar.

 

Al-Bayoumi apparently came under suspicion shortly after the attacks of

September 11. He was picked up by British intelligence, which found evidence

that he had made two phone calls to diplomats at the Saudi Embassy in

Washington. However, he was released and is reported to be in Saudi Arabia.

 

Further, according to Newsweek: " Osama Basnan showed up in Houston last

April [2001] while Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah came to town with a vast

entourage en route to President George W. Bush's ranch. According to informed

sources, Basnan met with a high Saudi prince who has responsibilities for

intelligence matters and is known to bring suitcases full of cash into the

United States. "

 

There are suspicions that Basnan may have been a member of Saudi

intelligence, suggesting that Saudi intelligence was closely monitoring, if not

aiding, the activity of the September 11 hijackers through its accounts at

Riggs.

 

Newsweek noted that the FBI, as of December 2002, still had an

investigation open into the transactions. In July 2003, the FBI accused Riggs

Bank of failing to abide by anti-money-laundering (AML) regulations.

 

Prior to and after the attacks of September 11, it was not unusual for

Saudi clients to transfers of millions of dollars in and out of the bank with no

questions asked. This was in violation of AML regulations, which require the

reporting of all transaction involving such large sums of money.

 

The bank was eventually fined $25 million in May 2004 for violating these

regulations. However, the FBI has issued a statement saying it found no evidence

of terrorist financing. The Bush administration has refused to release the

intelligence behind the investigation, citing " national security concerns. "

 

Even after the FBI's accusations in July 2003, the bank continued to allow

massive cash transfers by the Saudi ambassador. Under pressure, the bank

announced this past March that it was closing all Saudi accounts.

 

Equatorial Guinea and General Pinochet

 

On July 14, 2004, the Minority Staff of the US Senate Permanent

Subcommittee on Investigations, at the request of Democrat Carl Levin, the

ranking minority member of the subcommittee, issued a report that dealt mainly

with the bank's accounts for Equatorial Guinea and Augusto Pinochet.

 

The report found that " the evidence reviewed by the Subcommittee staff

establishes that, since at least 1997, Riggs has disregarded its anti-money

laundering (AML) obligations, maintained a dysfunctional AML program despite

frequent warnings from OCC [Office of the Comptroller of the Currency]

regulators, and allowed or, at times, actively facilitated suspicious financial

activity. " The OCC, a branch of the Treasury Department, is responsible for

regulating nationally chartered banks.

 

Equatorial Guinea was Riggs' largest client. It held over 60 accounts at

the bank, with varied holdings of $300-700 million. Its ruler, Teodoro Obian

Nguema Mbasogo, came to power in a military coup in 1979 and is infamous for his

corruption and brutality. Relations with the United States became strained in

the mid-1990s, when the Clinton administration broke off diplomatic ties.

However, these were restored by the Bush administration in 2003. The country

holds interest for the United States because of its large oil reserves.

 

Riggs appears to have held both Equatorial Guinea government treasury

accounts and the personal accounts of Obiang, his family members, and ministers

in his government.

 

According to the subcommittee report, Riggs " serviced the EG [Equatorial

Guinean] accounts with little or no attention to the bank's anti-money

laundering obligations... " For example, " Riggs opened multiple personal accounts

for the President of Equatorial Guinea, his wife, and other relatives; helped

establish shell offshore corporations for the EG President and his sons; and

over a three-year period, from 2000 to 2002, facilitated nearly $13 million in

cash deposits into Riggs accounts controlled by the EG President and his wife. "

 

Riggs also opened an account that received large sums of money from oil

companies that did business with Equatorial Guinea, including Exxon Mobil,

Amerada Hess, Marathon Oil and ChevronTexaco. Riggs allowed the wire transfer of

over $35 million from the account to two unknown companies. " The Subcommittee

has reason to believe that at least one of these recipient companies is

controlled in whole or in part by the EG President. "

 

Riggs appears to have acted as a conduit for large-scale bribes or other

corrupt machinations between the giant oil corporations and the dictator of a

country with which they were eager to do business. The report also noted that

these oil companies made a number of large payments (sometimes valued at over $1

million) to individual officials or family members for a variety of services.

 

The manager of Riggs' accounts for Equatorial Guinea was Simon P. Kareri,

who was eventually fired by the bank in January 2004. According to a bank

employee, on more than one occasion Kareri visited the Equatorial Guinean

embassy and returned with a suitcase full of $3 million in cash, which was

deposited in the bank with no reports to financial regulators.

 

According to the subcommittee report, " The bank leadership permitted

[Kareri] ...to become closely involved with EG officials and business

activities, including advising the EG government on financial matters and

becoming the sole signatory on an EG account holding substantial funds. The bank

exercised such lax oversight of the account manager's activities that, among

other misconduct, the account manager was able to wire transfer more than $1

million from the EG oil account at Riggs to another bank for an account opened

in the name of Jadini Holdings, an offshore corporation controlled by the

account manager's wife. "

 

In addition to its dealings with the Saudi royal family and Equatorial

Guinea's dictator, Riggs had a close relationship with the former dictator of

Chile, Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet held numerous active accounts at Riggs between

1994 and 2002, even while he was under house arrest in Britain and his assets

were supposedly frozen.

 

According to the subcommittee report, " The aggregate deposits in the

Pinochet accounts at Riggs ranged from $4 to $8 million at a time.... Riggs

account managers took actions consistent with helping Mr. Pinochet to evade

legal proceedings seeking to discover and attach his bank accounts.... Riggs

opened multiple accounts and accepted millions of dollars in deposits from Mr.

Pinochet with no serious inquiry into questions regarding the source of his

wealth; helped him set up offshore shell corporations and open accounts in the

names of those corporations to disguise his control of the accounts; altered the

names of his personal accounts to disguise their ownership; transferred $1.6

million from London to the United States while Mr. Pinochet was in detention and

the subject of a court order to attach his bank accounts; conducted transactions

through Riggs' own accounts to hide Mr. Pinochet's involvement in some cash

transactions; and delivered over $1.9 million in cashiers checks to Mr. Pinochet

in Chile to enable him to obtain substantial cash payments from banks in that

country. "

 

The scope of the corruption, money-laundering and other suspicious

activities is indeed astonishing. While it was engaged in these activities, the

bank operated under the not-so-watchful eye of the Office of the Comptroller of

the Currency. In spite of clear indications of regulatory violations at least as

early as 1997, the OCC took no actions.

 

Particularly closely involved with the OCC's investigation into the

Pinochet accounts was the comptroller's examiner-in-charge, R. Ashley Lee, who

worked at the OCC from 1998 to October 2002. According to the subcommittee

report, " In 2001, [Lee]...advised more senior OCC personnel against taking a

formal enforcement action against Riggs, because the bank had promised to

correct identified AML deficiencies. In 2002, he ordered examiners not to

include a memorandum or work papers on the Pinochet examination to the OCC's

electronic database. "

 

Lee went to work for Riggs two weeks later, quickly becoming an executive

vice president and the chief risk officer. The subcommittee report states:

" During his next 18-months at the bank, he attended a number of meetings with

OCC personnel related to Riggs' AML problems, " despite regulations prohibiting

former OCC employees from attending meetings on OCC-related maters.

 

Ties to the Bush family

 

The revelations of the activities at Riggs Bank demonstrate how

commonplace and extensive criminal activity has become within the American

financial and political establishment. Not coincidentally, the bank's activity

has a great deal in common with certain features prominent in the Bush

administration: the heavy influence of oil interests, the close ties with the

Saudi ruling elite, the funding and support given to dictators and former

dictators, including General Pinochet.

 

The relationship of Riggs to the Bush administration is more than

tangential. Riggs owns a money management firm, J. Bush & Co., operated by

Jonathan Bush, the brother of George H.W. Bush and the current president's

uncle.

 

Jonathan Bush played a very important role in helping find investors for

the various failed oil businesses that George W. Bush ran before he began his

career in politics. Jonathan Bush also helped raise money for George H.W. Bush

and is a former chair of the New York Republican State Finance Committee. In

2000, he was briefly named president and CEO of Riggs Investment Management

Company (RIMCO), a wholly owned subsidiary of Riggs Bank.

 

While Jonathan Bush appears not to have been directly involved in the

Saudi, Pinochet or Equatorial Guinean accounts, his position at Riggs is an

indication of the close ties between the bank and the Bush family.

 

Moreover, Riggs is owned by the Allbritton family, a Texas family with

close ties to the Republican establishment. Joe Allbritton, the former head of

Riggs who bought the bank in the mid-1970s, is a friend of the Bush family. His

son, Robert Allbritton, is the current chairman and CEO.

 

The Allbritton family is known among the Washington elite for the party it

traditionally holds after the annual Alfalfa Club dinner, hosted to mark the

birthday of Robert E. Lee, the southern general in the Civil War. The New York

Times ( " A Washington Bank, A Global Mess, " April 11, 2004) notes, " The Alfalfa

roster includes presidents, politicians, diplomats and business impresarios, all

bound together by being either formidably influential or fabulously rich.

Attendees have included luminaries like Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Arabia's

ambassador to the United States; Jack Valenti, the president of the Motion

Picture Association of America; and others with surnames like Greenspan,

Kissinger and Rehnquist. President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney made

their first joint public appearance after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks at the

Alfalfa gathering in 2002. "

 

Valenti, who, like Allbritton and Bush, is a former Texas businessman, is

also on the board of directors of Riggs Bank.

 

A television station also owned by Allbritton was in the news earlier this

year after it refused to air an ad critical of the Bush administration's policy

in Iraq.

 

Perhaps even more than the Enron scandal, the Riggs scandal is a deeply

political scandal. No doubt, much of what went on at Riggs remains to be

uncovered. With the announced sale of Riggs to PNL, which will be completed by

early next year, the owners of the bank are clearly attempting to contain the

scandal's fallout.

 

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/aug2004/rigg-a24_prn.shtml

 

 

by : Joseph Kay

Wednesday 25th August 2004

 

 

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> Bank with close ties to Bush administration engulfed in scandal

27th August 2004 - 17h35

 

First and foremost, the Department of Justice is going to investigate?

Yeah, Right, and we all just got off the turnip truck. To date just how many

times has the Department of Justice conducted investigations and how many other

than small items have ever come to light? How about an investigation into the

theft of the election in 2000, how about investigations into voting fraud in

2002..I think you get my point. Like the fox guarding the hen house. Robert D.

Daily 404 Mill Street W. Frankfort, IL. 62896

 

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> Bank with close ties to Bush administration engulfed in scandal

27th August 2004 - 22h42

 

i think that the public should be made aware of the fact that g.w. bush's

granddad was on the board of the union bank during the nazi days, and that the

bush money (their current fortune)is blood money from the murdered jews. they

cashed in the paintings, money and treasures that belonged to these murdered

victims, and laundered it through the Union bank. I don'tunderstndhow the

American people could allow this president to stay in power one moreminteThis

shows me that our news media is so deceptive and full of lies and half-truths

thatAmerican citizens are constantly being lied to and deceived by this

administration. What Ihave to say is " shame, ahame shame! This whole regime

should be brought down, the soonerthe better. Also, shame on the lying media,

especially Fox. The American people deserveto know the whole truth behind this

corrupt regime that is currently in power. Our countrydeserves much, much

better, and I feel it is to our peril if we don't wake up and dosomething about

it. Thanks...

 

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> Bank with close ties to Bush administration engulfed in scandal

28th August 2004 - 02h52

 

dept of justice to overwhelmed prosecuting teenagers for sharing music on

line to investigate.

 

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> Bank with close ties to Bush administration engulfed in scandal

29th August 2004 - 05h43

 

I am a veteran of the Korean war. The problem is that the american people

without computers do not know the truth about George W Bush. The news media does

not attack Bush on any issue, like the way he attacks the war veterans. The news

media lie to and deceive the american people, they do not report the wrongs that

Bush has done and is still doing. They simply cover up for Bush and do not

report what they know about him.. What I do not understand is why there is no

protests against the news media. Look at the protests going on at the republican

convention in New York right now. Why can't we have similar protests against

CNN, FOX, MSNBC, and other television news networks? Bush can do anything he

wants to do because he has the television news networks on his side and he

controls the republican congress and senate. We had better take a stand against

the news media and we had better do it quick. This country cannot stand another

four years of George W Bush.

 

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> Bank with close ties to Bush administration engulfed in scandal

29th August 2004 - 15h35

 

Anonymous- I think the only way that things can be made " right " in this

country is with prayer; I don't want to make anyone paranoid- but there needs to

be a change. I don't know how many of you are " believers " out there but we all

need to start praying. The truth of the matter is that corruption is how many

" elite " families in this country have become and remained rich.I don't know if

this will get printed- if it doesn't- oh well!!! I will still continue to pray.

But there has been a bad stench for many, many years before any of us was born

(a previous responder wrote about the Bush family's ties to Nazi Germany). That

was before my grandmother was born- that is pretty deep-seeded- wouldn't you

say? But I know someone that is more rich, more powerful, and much much much

older. Pray to GOD- He was here before any of this corruption was created and He

will makes things right. After all we must all reap what we sow. Another thing

is that God didn't cause 9/11 to happen- no one should believe that bologna!!!

Things are just coming to ahead. Take care everyone and don't stop believing in

the power of Love and God, and Goodness

 

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> Bank with close ties to Bush administration engulfed in scandal

28th August 2004 - 06h22

 

Will you be updating this article to include any ties to Bush regarding

the arrest of Mrs. Thatcher's son? Isn't that where Bush wants to set up oil

drilling?

 

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> Bank with close ties to Bush administration engulfed in scandal

29th August 2004 - 02h44

 

Why is there not more news on this devasting outbreak of deceit and cover

up.

 

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> Bank with close ties to Bush administration engulfed in scandal

29th August 2004 - 07h36

 

Who is George Bush? How did he become the 41st U.S. President?

 

He is said to be a man of the " old establishment, " who " chose to seek his

fortune as an independent oilman.... " @s1

 

In fact, Bush was never " independent. " Every career step in his upward

climb relied on his family's powerful associations. The Bush family joined the

Eastern Establishment comparatively recently, and only as servitors. Their

wealth and influence resulted from their loyalty to another, more powerful

family, and their willingness to do anything to get ahead.

 

For what they did, Bush's forebears should have become very famous, or

infamous. They remained obscure figures, managers from behind the scenes. But

their actions--including his father's role as banker for Adolf Hitler--had

tragic effects for the whole planet.

 

It was these services to his family's benefactors, which propelled George

Bush to the top.

 

this is from a book about the bush family

 

 

 

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> Bank with close ties to Bush administration engulfed in scandal

29th August 2004 - 07h41

 

President George Herbert Walker Bush was born in 1924, the son of Prescott

S. Bush and Dorothy Walker Bush. We will begin the George Bush story about a

decade before his birth, on the eve of World War I. We will follow the career of

his father, Prescott Bush, through his marriage with Dorothy Walker, on the path

to fortune, elegance and power. Prescott Bush entered Yale University in 1913. A

native of Columbus, Ohio, Prescott had spent the last five years before college

in St. George's Episcopal preparatory school in Newport, Rhode Island. Prescott

Bush's first college year, 1913, was also the freshman year at Yale for E.

Roland ( " Bunny " ) Harriman, whose older brother (Wm.) Averell Harriman had just

graduated from Yale. This is the Averell Harriman who went on to fame as the

U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union during World War II, as a governor of New

York State, and as a presidential advisor who was greatly responsible for

starting the Vietnam War. The Harrimans would become the sponsors of the Bushes,

to lift them onto the stage of world history. In the spring of 1916, Prescott

Bush and " Bunny " Harriman were chosen for membership in an elite Yale

senior-year secret society known as Skull and Bones. This unusually morbid,

death-celebrating group helped Wall Street financiers find active young men of

" good birth " to form a kind of imitation British aristocracy in America. World

War I was then raging in Europe. With the prospect that the U.S.A. would soon

join the war, two Skull and Bones " Patriarchs " , Averell Harriman (class of

1913) and Percy A. Rockefeller (class of 1900), paid special attention to

Prescott's class of 1917. They wanted reliable cadres to help them play the

Great Game, in the lucrative new imperial era that the war was opening up for

London and New York moneycrats. Prescott Bush, by then a close friend of " Bunny "

Harriman, and several other Bonesmen from their class of 1917 would later

comprise the core partners in Brown Brothers Harriman, the world's largest

private investment bank. World War I did make an immense amount of money for the

clan of stock speculators and British bankers who had just taken over U.S.

industry. The Harrimans were stars of this new Anglo-American elite. Averell's

father, stock broker E.H. Harriman, had gained control of the Union Pacific

Railroad in 1898 with credit arranged by William Rockefeller, Percy's father,

and by Kuhn Loeb & Co.'s British-affiliated private bankers, Otto Kahn, Jacob

Schiff and Felix Warburg. William Rockefeller, treasurer of Standard Oil and

brother of Standard founder John D. Rockefeller, owned National City Bank (later

" Citibank " ) together with Texas-based James Stillman. In return for their

backing, E.H. Harriman deposited in City Bank the vast receipts from his

railroad lines. When he issued tens of millions of dollars of " watered "

(fraudulent) railroad stock, Harriman sold most of the shares through the Kuhn

Loeb company. The First World War elevated Prescott Bush and his father, Samuel

P. Bush, into the lower ranks of the Eastern Establishment. As war loomed in

1914, National City Bank began reorganizing the U.S. arms industry. Percy A.

Rockefeller took direct control of the Remington Arms company, appointing his

own man, Samuel F. Pryor, as the new chief executive of Remington. The U.S

entered World War I in 1917. In the spring of 1918, Prescott's father, Samuel P.

Bush, became chief of the Ordnance, Small Arms and Ammunition Section of the War

Industries Board.@s2 The senior Bush took national responsibility for government

assistance to and relations with Remington and other weapons companies. This was

an unusual appointment, as Prescott's father seemed to have no background in

munitions. Samuel Bush had been president of the Buckeye Steel Castings Co. in

Columbus, Ohio, makers of railcar parts. His entire career had been in the

railroad business-- supplying equipment to the Wall Street-owned railroad

systems. The War Industries Board was run by Bernard Baruch, a Wall Street

speculator with close personal and business ties to old E.H. Harriman. Baruch's

brokerage firm had handled Harriman speculations of all kinds.@s3 In 1918,

Samuel Bush became director of the Facilities Division of the War Industries

Board. Prescott's father reported to the Board's Chairman, Bernard Baruch, and

to Baruch's assistant, Wall Street private banker Clarence Dillon. Robert S.

Lovett, President of Union Pacific Railroad, chief counsel to E.H. Harriman and

executor of his will, was in charge of national production and purchase

" priorities " for Baruch's board. With the war mobilization conducted under the

supervision of the War Industries Board, U.S. consumers and taxpayers showered

unprecedented fortunes on war producers and certain holders of raw materials and

patents. Hearings in 1934 by the committee of U.S. Senator Gerald Nye attacked

the " Merchants of Death " -- war profiteers such as Remington Arms and the

British Vickers company --whose salesmen had manipulated many nations into wars,

and then supplied all sides with the weapons to fight them. Percy Rockefeller

and Samuel Pryor's Remington Arms supplied machine guns and Colt automatic

pistols; millions of rifles to Czarist Russia; over half of the small-arms

ammunition used by the Anglo-American allies in World War I; and 69 percent of

the rifles used by the United States in that conflict.@s4 Samuel Bush's wartime

relationship to these businessmen would continue after the war, and would

especially aid his son Prescott's career of service to the Harrimans. Most of

the records and correspondence of Samuel Bush's arms- related section of the

government have been burned, " to save space " in the National Archives. This

matter of destroyed or misplaced records should be of concern to citizens of a

constitutional republic. Unfortunately, it is a rather constant impediment with

regard to researching George Bush's background: He is certainly the most

" covert " American chief executive. Now, arms production in wartime is by

necessity carried on with great security precautions. The public need not know

details of the private lives of the government or industry executives involved,

and a broad interrelationship between government and private-sector personnel is

normal and useful. But during the period preceding World War I, and in the war

years 1914-1917 when the U.S. was still neutral, interlocking Wall Street

financiers subservient to British strategy lobbied heavily, and twisted U.S.

government and domestic police functions. Led by the J.P. Morgan concern,

Britain's overall purchasing agent in America, these financiers wanted a world

war and they wanted the United States in it as Britain's ally. The U.S. and

British arms companies, owned by these international financiers, poured out

weapons abroad in deals not subject to the scrutiny of any electorate back home.

The same gentlemen, as we shall see, later supplied weapons and money to

Hitler's Nazis. That this problem persists today, is in some respect due to the

" control " over the documentation and the history of the arms traffickers. World

War I was a disaster for civilized humanity. It had terrible, unprecedented

casualties, and shattering effects on the moral philosophy of Europeans and

Americans. But for a brief period, the war treated Prescott Bush rather well. In

June, 1918, just as his father took over responsibility for relations of the

government with the private arms producers, Prescott went to Europe with the

U.S. Army. His unit did not come near any fire until September. But on August 8,

1918, the following item appeared on the front page of Bush's home-town

newspaper: High Military Honors Conferred on Capt. Bush For Notable Gallantry,

When Leading Allied Commanders Were Endangered, Local Man is Awarded French,

English and U.S. Crosses. International Honors, perhaps unprecedented in the

life of an American soldier, have been conferred upon Captain Prescott Sheldon

Bush, son of Mr. and Mrs. S.P. Bush of Columbus. Upon young Bush ... were

conferred: Cross of the Legion of Honor, ... Victoria Cross, ... Distinguished

Service Cross.... Conferring of the three decorations upon one man at one time

implies recognition of a deed of rare valor and probably of great military

importance as well. From word which has reached Columbus during the last few

days, it appears as if the achievement of Captain Bush well measures up to these

requirements. The incident occurred on the western front about the time the

Germans were launching their great offensive of July 15.... The history of the

remarkable victory scored later by the allies might have been written in another

vein, but for the heroic and quick action of Captain Bush. The ... three allied

leaders, Gen. [Ferdinand] Foch, Sir Douglas Haig and Gen. [John J.] Pershing ...

were making an inspection of American positions. Gen. Pershing had sent for

Captain Bush to guide them about one sector.... Suddenly Captain Bush noticed a

shell coming directly for them. He shouted a warning, suddenly drew his bolo

knife, stuck it up as he would a ball bat, and parried the blow, causing the

shell to glance off to the right.... Within 24 hours young Bush was notified ...

[that] the three allied commanders had recommended him for practically the

highest honors within their gift.... Captain Bush is 23 years old, a graduate of

Yale in the class of 1917. He was one of Yale's best- known athletes ... was

leader of the glee club ... and in his senior year was elected to the famous

Skull and Bones Society....@s5 The day after this astonishing story appeared,

there was a large cartoon on the editorial page. It depicted Prescott Bush as a

small boy, reading a story-book about military heroism, and saying: " Gee! I

wonder if anything like that could ever truly happen to a boy. " The caption

below was a rehash of the batting- away- the-deadly-shell exploit, written in

storybook style.@s6 Local excitement about the military " Babe Ruth " lasted just

four weeks. Then this somber little box appeared on the front page: Editor State

Journal: A cable received from my son, Prescott S. Bush, brings word that he has

not been decorated, as published in the papers a month ago. He feels dreadfully

troubled that a letter, written in a spirit of fun, should have been

misinterpreted. He says he is no hero and asks me to make explanations. I will

appreciate your kindness in publishing this letter.... Flora Sheldon Bush.

Columbus, Sept. 5.@s7 Prescott Bush later claimed that he spent " about 10 or 11

weeks " in the area of combat in France. " We were under fire there.... It was

quite exciting, and of course a wonderful experience. " @s8 Prescott Bush was

discharged in mid-1919, and returned for a short time to Columbus, Ohio. But his

humiliation in his home town was so intense that he could no longer live there.

The " war hero " story was henceforth not spoken of in his presence. Decades

later, when he was an important, rich U.S. Senator, the story was whispered and

puzzled over among the Congressmen. Looking to be rescued from this ugly

situation, Captain Bush went to the 1919 reunion of his Yale class in New Haven,

Connecticut. Skull and Bones Patriarch Wallace Simmons, closely tied to the arms

manufacturers, offered Prescott Bush a job in his St. Louis railroad equipment

company. Bush took the offer and moved to St. Louis--and his destiny. A

Thoroughbred Marriage Prescott Bush went to St. Louis to repair his troubled

life. Sometime that same year, Averell Harriman made a trip there on a project

which would have great consequences for Prescott. The 28- year-old Harriman,

until then something of a playboy, wanted to bring his inherited money and

contacts into action in the arena of world affairs. President Theodore Roosevelt

had denounced Harriman's father for " cynicism and deep-seated corruption " and

called him an " undesirable citizen. " @s9 For the still- smarting Averell to take

his place among the makers and breakers of nations, he needed a financial and

intelligence-gathering organization of his own. The man Harriman sought to

create such an institution for him was Bert Walker, a Missouri stock broker and

corporate wheeler- dealer. George Herbert ( " Bert " ) Walker, for whom President

George H.W. Bush was named, did not immediately accept Harriman's proposal.

Would Walker leave his little St. Louis empire, to try his influence in New York

and Europe? Bert was the son of a dry goods wholesaler who had thrived on

imports from England.@s1@s0 The British connection had paid for Walker summer

houses in Santa Barbara, California, and in Maine-- " Walker's Point " at

Kennebunkport. Bert Walker had been sent to England for his prep school and

college education. By 1919 Bert Walker had strong ties to the Guaranty Trust

Company in New York and to the British-American banking house J.P. Morgan and

Co. These Wall Street concerns represented all the important owners of American

railroads: the Morgan partners and their associates or cousins in the

intermarried Rockefeller, Whitney, Harriman and Vanderbilt families. Bert Walker

was known as the midwest's premier deal-arranger, awarding the investment

capital of his international-banker contacts to the many railroads, utilities

and other midwestern industries of which he and his St. Louis friends were

executives or board members. Walker's operations were always quiet, or

mysterious, whether in local or global affairs. He had long been the " power

behind the throne " in the St. Louis Democratic Party, along with his crony,

former Missouri Governor David R. Francis. Walker and Francis together had

sufficient influence to select the party's candidates.@s1@s1 Back in 1904, Bert

Walker, David Francis, Washington University President Robert Brookings and

their banker/broker circle had organized a world's fair in St. Louis, the

Louisiana Purchase Exposition. In line with the old Southern Confederacy family

backgrounds of many of these sponsors, the fair featured a " Human Zoo " : live

natives from backward jungle regions were exhibited in special cages under the

supervision of anthropologist William J. McGee. So Averell Harriman was a

natural patron for Bert Walker. Bert shared Averell's passion for horse breeding

and horse racing, and easily accommodated the Harriman family's related social

philosophy. They believed that the horses and racing stables they owned showed

the way toward a sharp upgrading of the human stock--just select and mate

thoroughbreds, and spurn or eliminate inferior animals. The First World War had

brought the little St. Louis oligarchy into the Confederate-slaveowner-oriented

administration of President Woodrow Wilson and his advisors, Col. Edward House

and Bernard Baruch. Walker's friend Robert Brookings got into Bernard Baruch's

War Industries Board as director of national Price Fixing (sic). David R.

Francis became U.S. ambassador to Russia in 1916. As the Bolshevik Revolution

broke out, we find Bert Walker busy appointing people to Francis's staff in

Petrograd.@s1@s2 Walker's earliest activities in relation to the Soviet state

are of significant interest to historians, given the activist role he was to

play there together with Harriman. But Walker's life is as covert as the rest of

the Bush clan's, and the surviving public record is extremely thin. The 1919

Versailles peace conference brought together British imperial strategists and

their American friends to make postwar global arrangements. For his own intended

international adventures, Harriman needed Bert Walker the seasoned intriguer,

who quietly represented many of the British-designated rulers of American

politics and finance. After two persuasion trips west by Harriman,@s1@s3 Walker

at length agreed to move to New York. But he kept his father's summer house in

Kennebunkport, Maine. Bert Walker formally organized the W.A. Harriman & Co.

private bank in November 1919. Walker became the bank's president and chief

executive; Averell Harriman was chairman and controlling co-owner with his

brother Roland ( " Bunny " ), Prescott Bush's close friend from Yale; and Percy

Rockefeller was a director and a founding financial sponsor. In the autumn of

1919, Prescott Bush made the acquaintance of Bert Walker's daughter Dorothy.

They were engaged the following year, and were married in August, 1921.@s1@s4

Among the ushers and grooms at the elaborate wedding were Ellery S. James,

Knight Woolley and four other fellow Skull and Bonesmen from the Yale Class of

1917.@s1@s5 The Bush-Walker extended family has gathered each summer at the

" Walker country home " in Kennebunkport, from this marriage of President Bush's

parents down to the present day. When Prescott married Dorothy, he was only a

minor executive of the Simmons Co., railroad equipment suppliers, while his

wife's father was building one of the most gigantic businesses in the world. The

following year the couple tried to move back to Columbus, Ohio; there Prescott

worked for a short time in a rubber products company owned by his father. But

they soon moved again to Milton, Mass., after outsiders bought the little family

business and moved it near there. Thus Prescott Bush was going nowhere fast,

when his son George Herbert Walker Bush--the future U.S. President--was born in

Milton, Mass., on June 12, 1924. Perhaps it was as a birthday gift for George,

that " Bunny " Harriman stepped in to rescue his father Prescott from oblivion,

bringing him into the Harriman-controlled U.S. Rubber Co. in New York City. In

1925 the young family moved to the town where George was to grow up: Greenwich,

Connecticut, a suburb both of New York and of New Haven/Yale. Then on May 1,

1926, Prescott Bush joined W.A. Harriman & Co. as its vice president, under the

bank's president, Bert Walker, his father-in-law and George's maternal

grandfather--the head of the family.@s1@s6

 

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> Bank with close ties to Bush administration engulfed in scandal

29th August 2004 - 07h43

 

Prescott Bush would demonstrate strong loyalty to the firm he joined in

1926. And the bank, with the scope and power of many ordinary nations, could

amply reward its agents. George Bush's Grandfather Walker had put the enterprise

together, quietly, secretly, using all the international connections at his

disposal. Let us briefly look back at the beginning of the Harriman firm--the

Bush family enterprise--and follow its course into one of history's darkest

projects. The firm's first global lever was its successful arrangement to get

into Germany by dominating that country's shipping. Averell Harriman announced

in 1920 that he would re-start Germany's Hamburg- Amerika Line, after many

months of scheming and arm-twisting. Hamburg-Amerika's commercial steamships had

been confiscated by the United States at the end of the First World War. These

ships had then become the property of the Harriman enterprise, by some

arrangements with the U.S. authorities that were never made public. The deal was

breathtaking; it would create the world's largest private shipping line.

Hamburg-Amerika Line regained its confiscated vessels, for a heavy price. The

Harriman enterprise took " the right to participate in 50 percent of all business

originated in Hamburg " ; and for the next twenty years (1920-1940), the Harriman

enterprise had " complete control of all activities of the Hamburg line in the

United States. " @s1@s7 Harriman became co-owner of Hamburg-Amerika. The

Harriman-Walker firm gained a tight hold on its management, with the

not-so-subtle backing of the post-World War I occupation of Germany by the

armies of England and America. Just after Harriman's public statement, the St.

Louis press celebrated Bert Walker's role in assembling the money to consummate

the deal: " Ex-St. Louisan Forms Giant Ship Merger " " G. H. Walker is Moving Power

Behind Harriman-Morton Shipping Combine.... " The story celebrated a " merger of

two big financial houses in New York, which will place practically unlimited

capital at the disposal of the new American-German shipping combine.... " @s1@s8

Bert Walker had arranged a " marriage " of J.P. Morgan credit and Harriman family

inherited wealth. W.A. Harriman & Co., of which Walker was president and

founder, was merging with the Morton & Co. private bank--and Walker was

" [p]rominent in the affairs of Morton & Co., " which was interlocked with the

Morgan-controlled Guaranty Trust Co. The Hamburg-Amerika takeover created an

effective instrument for the manipulation and fatal subversion of Germany. One

of the great " merchants of death, " Samuel Pryor, was in it from the beginning.

Pryor, then chairman of the executive committee of Remington Arms, helped

arrange the deal and served with Walker on the board of Harriman's shipping

front organization, the American Ship and Commerce Co. Walker and Harriman took

the next giant step in 1922, setting up their European headquarters office in

Berlin. With the aid of the Hamburg-based Warburg bank, W.A. Harriman & Co.

began spreading an investment net over German industry and raw materials. From

the Berlin base, Walker and Harriman then plunged into deals with the new

dictatorship of the Soviet Union. They led a select group of Wall Street and

British Empire speculators who re-started the Russian oil industry, which had

been devastated by the Bolshevik Revolution. They contracted to mine Soviet

manganese, an element essential to modern steelmaking. These concessions were

arranged directly with Leon Trotsky, then with Feliks Dzerzhinsky, founder of

the Soviet dictatorship's secret intelligence service (K.G.B), whose huge statue

was finally pulled down by pro-democracy demonstrators in 1991. These

speculations created both channels of communication, and the style of

accomodation, with the communist dictatorship, that have continued in the family

down to President Bush. With the bank launched, Bert Walker found New York the

ideal place to satisfy his passion for sports, games and gambling. Walker was

elected president of the U.S. Golf Association in 1920. He negotiated new

international rules for the game with the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St.

Andrews, Scotland. After these talks he contributed the three-foot-high silver

Walker Cup, for which British and American teams have since competed every two

years. Bert's son-in-law Prescott Bush was later secretary of the U.S. Golf

Association, during the grave political and economic crises of the early 1930s.

Prescott became USGA President in 1935, while he was otherwise embroiled in the

family firm's work with Nazi Germany. When George was one year old, in 1925,

Bert Walker and Averell Harriman headed a syndicate which rebuilt Madison Square

Garden as the modern Palace of Sport. Walker was at the center of New York's

gambling scene in its heyday, in that Prohibition era of colorful and bloody

gangsters. The Garden bloomed with million-dollar prize fights; bookies and

their clients pooled more millions, trying to match the pace of the

speculation-crazed stock and bond men. This was the era of " organized "

crime--the national gambling and bootleg syndicate structured on the New York

corporate model. By 1930, when George was a boy of six, Grandpa Walker was New

York State Racing Commissioner. The vivid colors and sounds of the racing scene

must have impressed little George as much as his grandfather. Bert Walker bred

race horses at his own stable, the Log Cabin Stud. He was president of the

Belmont Park race track. Bert also personally managed most aspects of Averell's

racing interests-- down to picking the colors and fabrics for the Harriman

racing gear.@s1@s9 >From 1926, George's father Prescott Bush showed a fierce

loyalty to the Harrimans and a dogged determination to advance himself; he

gradually came to run the day-to-day operations of W.A. Harriman & Co. After the

firm's 1931 merger with the British-American banking house Brown Brothers,

Prescott Bush became managing partner of the resulting company: Brown Brothers

Harriman. This was ultimately the largest and politically the most important

private banking house in America. Financial collapse, world depression and

social upheaval followed the fevered speculation of the 1920s. The 1929-31 crash

of securities values wiped out the small fortune Prescott Bush had gained since

1926. But because of his devotion to the Harrimans, they " did a very generous

thing, " as Bush later put it. They staked him to what he had lost and put him

back on his feet. Prescott Bush described his own role, from 1931 through the

1940s, in a confidential interview: I emphasize ... that the Harrimans showed

great courage and loyalty and confidence in us, because three or four of us were

really running the business, the day to day business. Averell was all over the

place in those days ... and Roland was involved in a lot of directorships, and

he didn't get down into the " lift- up-and-bear-down " activity of the bank, you

see-- the day- to-day decisions ... we were really running the business, the day

to day business, all the administrative decisions and the executive decisions.

We were the ones that did it. We were the managing partners, let's say.@s2@s0

But of the " three or four " partners in charge, Prescott was effectively at the

head of the firm, because he had taken over management of the gigantic personal

investment funds of Averell and E. Roland " Bunny " Harriman. In those interwar

years, Prescott Bush made the family fortune which George Bush inherited. He

piled up the money from an international project which continued until a new

world war, and the action of the U.S. government, intervened to stop him.

 

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> Bank with close ties to Bush administration engulfed in scandal

29th August 2004 - 07h45

 

1. Washington Post, Aug. 16, 1991, p. A1. 2. Gen. Hugh S. Johnson to Major

J.H.K. Davis, June 6, 1918, file no. 334.8/168 or 334.8/451 in U.S. National

Archives, Suitland, Maryland. 3. Bernard M. Baruch, My Own Story (New York:

Henry Holt and Co., 1957), pp. 138-39. Baruch related that " our firm did a large

business for Mr. Harriman.... In 1906 Harriman had [us] place heavy bets on

Charles Evans Hughes in his race for Governor of New York against William

Randolph Hearst. After several hundred thousand dollars had been wagered, [our

firm] stopped. Hearing of this, Harriman called ... up. `Didn't I tell you to

bet?' he demanded. `Now go on.'| " 4. Alden Hatch, Remington Arms: An American

History, 1956, copyright by the Remington Arms Co., pp. 224-25. 5. The Ohio

State Journal, Columbus, Ohio, Thursday, Aug. 8, 1918. 6. The Ohio State

Journal, Friday, Aug. 9, 1918. 7. The Ohio State Journal, Friday, Sept. 6, 1918.

8. Interview with Prescott Bush in the Oral History Research Project conducted

by Columbia University in 1966, Eisenhower Administration Part II; pp. 5-6. The

interview was supposed to be kept confidential and was never published, but

Columbia later sold microfilms of the transcript to certain libraries, including

Arizona State University. 9. Theodore Roosevelt to James S. Sherman, Oct. 6,

1906, made public by Roosevelt at a press conference April 2, 1907. Quoted in

Henry F. Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company,

1931), p. 452. Roosevelt later confided to Harriman lawyer Robert S. Lovett that

his views on Harriman were based on what J.P. Morgan had told him. 10. See The

Industries of St. Louis, published 1885 by J.M. Elstner & Co., pp. 61-62 for

Crow, Hagardine & Co., David Walker's first business; and p. 86 for Ely &

Walker. 11. See Letter of G.H. Walker to D.R. Francis, March 20, 1905, in the

Francis collection of the Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Missouri, on

the organization of the Republicans and Democrats to run the election of the

mayor, a Democrat acceptable to the socially prominent. The next day Walker

became the treasurer and Francis the president of this " Committee of 1000. " See

also George H. Walker obituary, St. Louis Globe-Democrat, June 25, 1953. 12.

Letter of Perry Francis to his father, Ambassador David R. Francis, Oct. 15,

1917, Francis collection of the Missouri Historical Society. " ... Joe Miller

left for San Francisco last Tuesday night, where he will receive orders to

continue to Petrograd. I was told by Mildred Kotany [Walker's sister-in-law]

that Bert Walker got him his appointment through Breck Long. I didn't know Joe

was after it, or could have helped him myself. He will be good company for you

when he gets there.... " 13. Private interview with a Walker family member,

cousin of President Bush. 14. Prescott Bush, Columbia University, op. cit., p.

7. 15. St. Louis Globe Democrat, Aug. 7, 1921. 16. This is the sequence of

events, from Simmons to U.S. Rubber, which Prescott Bush gave in his Columbia

University interview, op. cit.,) pp. 7-8. 17. Public statement of Averell

Harriman, New York Times, Oct. 6, 1920, p. 1. 18. St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Oct.

12, 1920, p. 1. 19. Sports-as-business has continued in the family up through

George Bush's adult life. Bert's son George Walker, Jr.--President Bush's uncle

and financial angel in Texas--co-founded the New York Mets and was the baseball

club's vice president and treasurer for 17 years until his death in 1977. The

President's son, George Walker Bush, was co-owner of the Texas Rangers baseball

club during his father's presidency. 20. Prescott Bush, Columbia University, op.

cit., pp. 16-22.

 

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> Bank with close ties to Bush administration engulfed in scandal

29th August 2004 - 15h55

 

Anonymous- Wow!!! That was very interesting!!! Thank you for that history;

I've never heard that story before. Thanks again!!!

 

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> Bank with close ties to Bush administration engulfed in scandal

29th August 2004 - 08h33

 

I am so sorry , I seem to get carried away, but the Bush clan is very old

and very scary, all should be scared shi**tless of what the want to do to this

country.. please read about the history of these people. Eugenics is what they

want

 

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