Bu$h-Carlyle

Origins of the G.W. Bush-Carlyle-Nazi Axis
By Alex Constantine

Even loyal conservatives must admit that George Bush, Jr. is a strange bird. Texans
have never truly accepted him as one of their own. "Like his father," the UK's
Observer jeered in 1994, "his home-grown credentials are questioned." In general, the
natives were somewhat uneasy about the occasional bizarre antic - like the first day
of a local dove shoot, highlighted by Bush bagging a protected songbird, not the
designated target (Ed Vulliamy, "White Hot Mama fights a Texan Bush War,"
Observer, October 2, 1994). "No real Texan would have done that!" barked then
Governor Ann Richards.

But then, in the mid-90s, the Texas political landscape shifted radically, the old order
crumbling and a home-grown right-wing mutation plowing through the crust.
Democrats had dominated the state since the Civil War, but with missionary zeal the
Christian Right rallied and seized control of the Republican Party, led by the state's
Christian Coalition and Eagle Forum, and went on to demonstrate that any political
machine is mutable, even in the deep South.

But Bush still didn't quite fit the ticket, some Texans felt. True, his business was
petroleum. But shortly after George, Jr. joined the board of Harken Oil, BCCI, the
international bank that parlayed middle eastern oil profits into political influence, not
to mention engaging in child prostitution and arming Iraq, dropped a number of
lucrative drilling contracts in his lap (Petzinger, Truell & Abramson, 'Family Ties,' Wall
Street Journal, December 5, 1991, p. 1). Texans were left to ponder the question:
Why in tarnation was Bush, Jr. in business with the scandal-ridden Shiek Khalifah
bin-Salmon al-Khalifah, the ruling emir of Bahrain? In 1990, the Shiek's name surfaced
on a list of primary shareholders in BCCI's parent company, BCCI Holdings in
Luxembourg. Bush had pulled strings to throw the contracts to Harken. In return,
Harken Oil helped BCCI investment bankers gain a foothold in the U.S.
When the Iraqgate scandal broke, W. attempted to separate himself from it, blaming
a former aide who had gone to work for BCCI and resigned when the press caught
a whiff of the deal.

At the same time, it was clear that Junior had his eye fixed on his father's old eyrie in
Washington. W. had been one of Bush, Sr.'s leading advisors, a "lead player," in "the
campaign to oust White House Chief of Staff John Sununu" (Pertzinger, Truell &
Abramson). He was an old hand at gamesmanship by the time he landed his
gubernatorial seat.
The W.S. Journal looked into Bush's business dealings and found a "complex pattern"
of provocative personal and financial ties, but Bush refused to respond to questions:
"George W. Bush, a managing partner of the Texas Rangers baseball team, declined to
be interviewed," but "he did provide brief responses to written questions through an
intermediary." Where was the Texas moralist with an aversion to "even" the vaguest
appearance of wrong-doing? In hiding.

But still exploiting those personal and financial relationships, of course. In March, 1995,
the regents of the University of Texas, at the behest of Governor Bush, invested $10
million with the Carlyle Group, a merchant bank in the District of Columbia. Carlyle was
chaired by Frank Carlucci, Ronald Reagan's secretary of defense and, since 1989, "a
darling of the corporate sector," per the L.A. Times. Carlucci sits on the board of
numerous mega-corporations, including Bell Atlantic, Ashland Oil and the Kaman
Corporation. Carlyle's sole outside partner is the Mellon Family. Richard Darmon,
economic advisor to Bush, Sr., was on the board. So was James Baker III, former
secretary of state. These investments raised a ruckus in the business press.

Seems G.W. himself had long-standing business ties to the Carlyle Group, a firm bonded
financially with the Bin Laden family of Saudi Arabia. In 1990, he was granted a seat
on the board of Carlyle by former Nixon aide/bagman Fred Malek, a Carlyle advisor (Joe
Conason, "Notes on a Native Son," Harper's, February 2000, p. 49).

Fred Malek, mind you, was the CREEP deputy director who, prompted by Nixon's
trembling belief that "a Jewish cabal" in the Bureau of Labor Statistics was bent on his
destruction, made up a list of Jews in the bureau. Malek was made deputy director of
the Republican National Committee by George Bush, Sr., an old friend. It was Malek
who organized an "ethnic coalition" of Nazis in August 1988, the Heritage Groups
Council, that included the likes of Laszlo Pastor (a Hungarian-American, former fascist
Arrowcross death squad officer and junior diplomatic envoy to Berlin under Hitler), and
Father Florian Galdau (a priest, Vatican P-2 member and New York leader of the Iron
Guard, a latter day version of the old SS-run Romanian terror organization).

Once again, the Bush family distanced itself from scandal. The clan pled ignorance, even
though Bush, Sr. had cherry-picked Malek for the job. Supposedly, they had fooled
everyone, even the conservative National Jewish Coalition, which boasted In 1992 that
"Vice President Dan Quayle, HUD Secretary Jack Kemp, GOP Campaign Manager Fred
Malek and a large number of key Senators, Congressmen and candidates for office
addressed Jewish delegates and community leaders at a series of events hosted by the
NJC during the Republican convention in Houston last month." (NJC Bulletin, September
1992).

On February 2 1990, USA Today's Tom Squitieri wrote that "four key
Republican activists, ousted from George Bush's 1988 campaign amid
charges of anti-Semitic or pro-fascist links, are back working for the party."
These included Fred Malek and Phil Guarino, another pro-Nazi P2 lodger.
George W. Bush ran spin control for his father's 1988 presidential campaign,
and when the Nazi scandal broke ever-so-briefly in the media, GW protected
his father by urging the European fascists to resign from the Heritage Council
(Citizen's Law Web Site,
http://www.citizenslaw.net/bushdynasty_corrupt.htm).