The Bush Family and Covert Finances

Al Martin and some others have written that the Bush family was active in intelligence community financial opertions. Some have implied that they may have prfitted in some way, as did other people tied to intelligence work.

Jeb Bush was particularly adept in real estate schemes, but Al Martin, a former Office of Naval Intelligence operative, recalled Bush discussing with him how he was going to take down M Corporation. Martin also claimed that Bush had caused Broward Savings and Loan to write off $3.85 million in loans to Bush Realty. His partner was Armando Codina, a Cuban exile. Bush used the money to purchase a building which was later reevaluated by FDIC at $505,000. The balance of the loan was not repaid.

They bought the downtown office building in 1984 for seven million, using Edward Houston to front the deal and contribute $4.56 millikon. He borrowed the money from Broward Federals Savings. When the $1.7 for renovations and the $1 million reserve is added, the total cost is over $9 million. In the end, the $4.56 loan was closed out for $505,000 . Yet, Bush and Cordina paid the IRS $1.3 million, an acknowledgement that the building was worth a lot more than $505,000. Nothing was done about their use of a “straw borrower,” but ordinary folks playing this trick would have had endless legal problems. The Great American Bank and Trust Company of Marvin Warner also lost $9 million in a deal that involved Bush.

Jeb Bush was also involved in the Marine Research and Development Corporation. It was involved in many things, including direct trade with Cuba through licenses held by two Hungarian intelligence operatives that Jeb claimed not to have known. It also moved drugs and limited partnership securities. When the prime minister of Turks and Caicos Islands tried to interfere with a drug shipment, his parliament lifted the sovereign immunity that went with his office and he was tried in the US for moving drugs. Securities deals were used to entrap Democrats.

After first experiencing a good deal from MRDC, the Dems would buy into a bad deals. Then they faced loss of their funds if the investigated some things too closely or the eventual return of their money. Among them were Congressmen Bill Alexander , Ron Dellums , Steve Solarz, and Senators Dale Bumpers and David Prior. General Secord said that “If a Democrat doesn’t have a problem that we can control him with, we"ll create one for him” Dellums, who already had financial problems, was given another--cocaine addiction. Senator David Boren was entrapped in a gay relationship on an agriculture subcommittee trip in 1984 and became a solid backer of the intelligence community.

Jeb Bush was also involved in Gulf Oil Drilling Supply Company, a former C.I.A. proprietary firm or cut-outs. It held some old, pumped out wells. This scam involved several hundred millions in useless securities and even cost some big New York Banks and Merrill Lynch.

Neil was mainly involved in real estate schemes in several states Neil Bush was a director of Silverado Savings, whose crash cost the taxpayers about $1.6 billion. However, Bush was only responsible for a little less than $200 million in losses. He became a director of the bank at age 30 and helped two people who had invested in his energy company obtain large loans. He did not disclose his business relationship with either or the fact that he received a salary for serving on one of those boards. Bush survived the mess with a $50,000 fine. Five directors of the bank were banned for life from involvement in federally insured institutions, Bush was just told to refrain from unsafe financial practices.

Neil Bush faced charges of defrauding Silverado Savings and Loan of millions of dollars. The daughter of Judge Richard Matsch was mysteriously murdered, and Bush was freed of all of the charges with the proviso that he could no longer serve as a bank director. ( The same judge later got the Timothy McVeigh case.) The Silverado collapse cost the American taxpayers over one billion dollars.

Much evidence suggests that Neil continues to handle the day to day affairs of the Bush family throughout the world. The late Sherman Skolnick insisted that he uses his far flung accounts to launder drug money and funds from illicit weapons sales and gold smuggling. He and Jeb often pass funds through the Chicago unit of the major French bank, Credit Lyonnais. When Florida Secretary of State, Katherine Harris was in a position to help the Bushes launder money because she had the ability to hide records of shell corporations. This “laundrylady” worked through another French banking house, Banque Paribas.

George W. Bush participated at a distance in family real estate ventures. He had good connections with American International Group and other insurance providers and arranged to provide insurance and/or guaranty fidelity instruments for the deals. At worst it amounted to skirting the law, unless it could be proven he knew what his brothers were up to. The deals were often based on assets fraudulently obtained from HUD or options to buy land rather than land actually held. On a few occasions, banks got burned. But this was fairly rare.

Banks here and abroad were used to unload the shares, and they were assured they would be made whole along with god profits. When prices plunged, something would be done to pump up prices so tht banks could recover losses and make a profit. Stock would be “back doored@ to the bankers and marketers at this point. Another round of profit-taking for the insiders occurred when there was a “Areverse split” of the stock. Insiders gained profits without making an investment and sometimes big GOP contributors were enabled to participate in the same way.One of these deals involved the refinancing of a HUD backed property along the Overtown, Hialeah bodder. There were 830 apartments inbaibted by Blacks and Hispanics. The operation was called “Blackboard” and involves seven refinancing that the usual circle, but Secord’s code name was “Blackbird.” Each time HUD lost money. Not one penny was used to improve these places.

Another profitable program was the processing of fraudulent HUD loan applications. There is no evidence that the Bush family was involved in this, but it has been suggested that the intelligence community used this one to raise money for its operations. To do this well required recruiting some licensed real estate brokers. Of course, the cooperation of state and federal attorneys and a few judges was also required. The most effective of these scams operated out of the Denver HUD office. Several billion dollars was involved in this fraud. Eventually one man went to prison and two federal judges were discredited. At lest 17 cases of fraud against HUD by government operatives have come to light since the mid-1980s.