After graduating from Yale in 1948, George Herbert Walker Bush – the son of Prescott Bush and the namesake of Harriman president George Herbert Walker – went to work for Dresser Industries. Dresser Industries, a company deeply involved in oil and gas piplines, had begun to branch into the Middle East.
George H.W. Bush met Henry Neil Mallon, then president of Dresser Industries. Mallon offered him a job in the International Derrick and Equipment Company – a subsidiary of Dresser – in Odessa, Texas. Mallon, of course, had originally been given his job at Dresser by Prescott Bush’s father-in-law, George Herman Walker, back in 1928, so it would appear that he owed the Walker-Bush family a favor. That was just the way things were done back then, I guess. Probably still are. To be fair, George H.W. Bush later returned the favor, by naming his son Neil after Mallon. That’s right, the Neil Bush who single-handedly reamed the American people for over one billion dollars in the Silverado Savings and Loan scandal. From the grave, Henry Neil Mallon is probably giving Bush41 the finger.
In 1953, using money loaned by Brown Brothers Harriman – of which his father, now Senator Prescott Bush, remained managing partner – George H.W. Bush joined forces with three other wildcatters to form Zapata Petroleum Corporation. One of these partners, Hugh Liedtke, later became the chairman at Pennzoil.
The involvement with Zapata Petroleum – and, later, its offshoot Zapata Offshore, Incorporated – made George H.W. Bush’s fortune. By the age of 31, he was a millionaire, at least on paper. After drilling a reported 127 wells with no dry holes, the Zapata stock had risen from an initial price of just seven cents, to $23 a share.
The company itself, however, showed enormous losses for most of its first six years of existence, and continued to lose money until some time after Bush split from the Liedtke brothers and formed the offshoot company Zapata Offshore, Inc. Unlike his earlier wildcat days, Bush realized that the real money was in service provision. Again drawing on his family connections with Brown Brothers Harriman, and his father’s influence in the U.S. Senate, Bush put together an oil drilling service company. Zapata Offshore leased its drilling services to other speculators. Whether the wells hit or missed, Zapata made money.
His fortune increased incrementally through the 1950s. In the early 1960s, he decided to follow his father’s path into politics, and entered a Texas Congressional race against Ralph Yarborough. Yarborough spanked him in the general election, after branding him as a product of eastern elite kingmakers which, for all intents and purposes, he was. Bush came back again several years later to win the seat in the competitive 7th Texas Congressional District.
This launched Bush’s political career, which eventually led to his appointment as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1976, by President Gerald Ford. During his tenure at the CIA, Bush oversaw the training of the Royal Guard serving the Saudi Royal Family. He also hired a young entrepreneur and pilot named Jim Bath, who was a close friend of George W. Bush (they had met while serving in the Air National Guard in 1968), to assist in the privatization of many of the CIA’s proprietary operations (what we now refer to as ‘front organizations’).
Bath, as it turned out, became the Bush family’s most important link with the Saudi Royal Family. Shortly after Jim Bath was ‘hired’ by the elder Bush, Salem bin Laden (the elder brother of Osama bin Laden) formed a business association with Bath. Bath’s role, according to CBS News reports, was to be the bin Laden front man in America, and to invest bin Laden money in various US businesses. This became the first documented link in a long and close relationship between the bin Laden family, who are associated with the Saudi Royal Family, and the Bushes. Later, Jim Bath would openly state that, even when he acted as the bin Ladens’ American representative, he was actually employed by the CIA under the direction of the man who would eventually become Bush41.
While ostensibly still in the employ of the CIA, Bath’s association with the Saudis grew to include Khalid bin Mahfouz, a member of Saudi Arabia's most powerful banking family, the owners of the National Commercial Bank, the principal bank of the Saudi Royal Family.
Just two years later, in 1978, George W. Bush would embark on his first major business venture – an oil research company called Arbusto (‘arbusto’ is Spanish for ‘bush’). Jim Bath invested heavily in this fledgling – and ultimately disastrous – misadventure.
The money? Why, it came from Salem bin Laden and Khalid bin Mahfouz, of course.
By the late 1990’s Mahfouz was no longer associated with National Commercial bank. Some news outlets reported that, following an audit that raised strong suspicions that bin Mahfouz had diverted money from the bank to support Al Qaeda, bin Mahfouz had been shown the door.
Following his ouster, Khalid bin Mahfouz was a fundamental contributor to the organization of a charity organization called the Muwafaq (‘blessed relief’)Foundation. After plowing $30 million into the charity, bin Mahfouz reportedly put his eldest son, Abdulrahman, on the board of directors.
In October of 2001, the U.S. Treasury Department named the Muwafaq Foundation as an Al Qaeda front organization.
Like his grandfather, who had maintained strong Nazi ties long after the attack on Pearl Harbor, George W. Bush had been in bed with the people who funded Al Quaeda for over twenty years before the attacks of 9/11.
Next: The Carlyle Group/PNAC connection
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