Jump to content
The Education Forum

Russ Baker: Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty


John Simkin

Recommended Posts

Guest Robert Morrow

Ray Lee Hunt, a son of H.L. Hunt, is a very prominent businessman in Dallas, Texas, the USA today. He has also been on the board of Dresser Industries, a CIA related firm and a key platform of influence for George Herbert Walker Bush.

http://www.nndb.com/people/521/000055356/

Check out the curriculum vitae of Ray Lee Hunt. It sure hits on all the hot buttons: oil industry executive, former member of the Dallas Fed, appointee by George W. Bush to the very plum position on the President's Foreign Advisory Intelligence Board.

Ray L. Hunt

AKA Ray Lee Hunt

Born: 6-Apr-1943

Birthplace: New York City

Gender: Male

Religion: Methodist

Race or Ethnicity: White

Sexual orientation: Straight

Occupation: Business

Party Affiliation: Republican

Nationality: United States

Executive summary: Chairman of Hunt Oil

Father: H. L. Hunt (Texas oilman, d. 1974)

Mother: Ruth Ray

Brother: Nelson Bunker Hunt

Brother: Lamar Hunt (co-founder American Football League, owner KC Chiefs)

Wife: Nancy Ann Hunter

University: Economics, Southern Methodist University (1965)

Administrator: Trustee, Southern Methodist University

Hunt Oil CEO (1976-)

Hunt Oil (1958-)

Member of the Board of Bessemer Venture Partners

Member of the Board of Dresser Industries (-1998)

Member of the Board of EDS (1996-)

Member of the Board of Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas (as Chairman)

Member of the Board of Halliburton (1998-2007)

Member of the Board of King Ranch

Member of the Board of Pepsi (1996-)

Member of the Board of Verde Realty

Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (2001-03)

Phi Delta Theta Fraternity

American Petroleum Institute Board Member

Americans for Truth in Politics

Bush-Cheney '04

Dallas Petroleum Club Former President

Elizabeth Dole Committee

FreedomWorks

Friends of John Boehner

Friends of Senator D'Amato 1998 Committee

George W. Bush for President

John McCain 2008

Kay Bailey Hutchison for Senate

McCain for Senate '98

National Petroleum Council

National Republican Congressional Committee

Santorum 2000

Santorum 2006

Steele for Maryland

George W. Bush Presidential Library

Woodrow Wilson Award for Corporate Citizenship

Google Ray Lee Hunt and learn more: https://www.google.c...662fec27b9e4b73

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 74
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Guest Robert Morrow

Folks, please read this excellent essay by Russ Baker. Russ Baker drew some critical parts of his research from ace JFK researcher Bruce Campbell Adamson.

http://whowhatwhy.com/2011/02/19/unanswered-questions-as-obama-anoints-hw-bush/

"Unanswered Questions as Obama Anoints HW Bush"

Posted By Russ Baker

Pres. Obama gives Medal of Freedom to George H. W. Bush

On February 15, President Obama bestowed the Medal of Freedom, the United States’ highest award, to a group of people which includes former president George H.W. Bush. Having spent five years researching the elder Bush and discovering a staggering array of secrets to the man’s life—none of them favorable, I was curious why Obama gave Bush the medal.

Officially, it goes to individuals “who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.” In fact, it goes to all kinds of people for all kinds of reasons. In the case of Bush, it was an obligatory Washington ritual for a former President who is in the last chapter of his life.

Notwithstanding the inevitability of the process, President Obama needed to trot out some explanation or other as to why each recipient was deserving. In remarks at the ceremony [1], he said that H.W.’s “His life is a testament that public service is a noble calling….his humility and his decency reflects the very best of the American spirit.” And he referred to Mr. Bush’s “extraordinary life of service and of sacrifice.”

His life has certainly been extraordinary. Though whether “decency” is the right term, or whether his activities “reflect the very best of the American spirit,” or whether his has been a “life…of sacrifice” seem to be debatable.

There’s another side to the elder Bush. It goes to the heart of his purported “humility,” and whether it is truly humility—or his need to hide so many secrets. Especially as it relates, remarkably, to the assassination of another president, John F. Kennedy.

Here are some questions that must be asked of George H.W. Bush, while he is still around to be asked. These questions are based on revelations from my book, Family of Secrets: the Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years [2], copies of which can be found in major American bookstores and libraries, including the Library of Congress. The underlying points are all documented and footnoted—and some of these questions have appeared before in an earlier post on this site and others.

-Former president Bush, we all know that you served for a single year as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. What about the fact trail suggesting that, just like the Russian leader Vladimir Putin, you actually spent your entire adult life prior to becoming vice president working in covert operations—but unlike Putin, have not admitted that? What about documentation showing that, as far back as the early 1950s, your small but hyperactive company, Zapata Offshore, was commercial cover for super-secret ops?

-Some years ago you claimed not to remember where you were on the morning of Nov. 22, 1963? Have you since been able to recall?

-Can you tell us about your decades-long friendship with George de Mohrenschildt, the man who was in and out of Lee Harvey Oswald’s house on almost a daily basis in the year before the Kennedy assassination?

-Did you, as characterized in an FBI memo, work as a CIA officer in tandem with Cuban exiles at the time of the Kennedy assassination?

-Why have you never spoken publicly about the documented call you made to the FBI on Nov 22, 1963, in which you identified yourself fully and claimed to have information on a possible suspect in Kennedy’s death? What was the purpose of that call, in which you mentioned your whereabouts at the time of the call, 1:45pm, as Tyler, Texas, i.e. about 99 miles away but just a short flight on the private plane on which you were traveling? Why did you tell the FBI that you were en route next to Dallas and would stay at the Sheraton there when you had already been at the Sheraton the night before—and right after that call flew to Dallas but only to switch planes and fly back immediately to Houston? Why were you giving the FBI the impression you would be staying in Dallas the night after the assassination instead of letting them know you had stayed there the night before the assassination?

-Why was your own assistant at the home of the man you would finger as a suspect in the shooting, and why did he end up providing the man with an alibi? Was the ultimate purpose of that call not to cause the alleged suspect any permanent harm, but merely to use the call as an excuse to state in government files that you were in a place other than Dallas?

-Since you claimed not to remember where you were when Kennedy was killed, how is it that after these FBI memos surfaced, your wife Barbara suddenly found and published an old letter placing you and her in Tyler, Texas shortly after the shooting?

-On the day of the assassination, were you in touch with your friend and Republican running mate Jack Crichton, a military intelligence figure who was connected to figures forcing their way into the pilot car of Kennedy’s motorcade? The same Crichton who controlled the man who served as the interpreter between Oswald’s wife and police and reframed her words so as to implicate Oswald in Kennedy’s shooting? The same Crichton who was working out of a secret underground communications bunker below the streets of Dallas? The same Crichton whose secret military intelligence unit counted dozens of men who simultaneously held jobs as Dallas police officers? The same Crichton who did secret oil industry intelligence work in the Middle East while you did intelligence related oil industry work via your company, Zapata Offshore?

-Finally, do you know people who consider the events of November 22, 1963 to, in their minds, “reflect the very best of the American spirit?” You say almost nothing, ever, about the Kennedy assassination, even skipping over it in your own memoir, which details much more trivial events of the same year. Why is that? And why then, in your eulogy for former President Ford, a member of the increasingly-discredited Warren Commission, did you go out of your way to oddly praise him for promoting the increasingly-discredited “single bullet theory?” You said:

“After a deluded gunman assassinated President Kennedy, our nation turned to Gerald Ford and a select handful of others to make sense of that madness. And the conspiracy theorists can say what they will, but the Warren Commission report will always have the final definitive say on this tragic matter. Why? Because Jerry Ford put his name on it and Jerry Ford’s word was always good.”

Why did you, so bizarrely, smile when you uttered those words?

Now, with your Medal of Freedom, given you by a Democratic president who ran as an agent of change, you truly seem to be enjoying the last laugh.

[1] remarks at the ceremony:

[2] Family of Secrets: the Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years: http://www.familyofsecrets.com/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Robert Morrow

Tom Scully: "At the heart of it is Skull and Bones, CIA, General Dynamics, Big Texas Oil, Chicago Mob.... not that dissimilar from what Torbitt detailed.... and it may have taken JFK out, and put two Bushes in."

Don't forget Lyndon Johnson, my friend. He was at the epicenter of the JFK assassination and he served all those interests well, including the Bushes. I think Bruce Campbell Adamson found evidence that LBJ had loaned GHW Bush a helicopter for his 1966 congressional campaign.

I think George Herbert Walker Bush was one of the CIA gremlins "making it all happen" for Lyndon Johnson and folks like H.L. Hunt and Clint Murchison, Sr.

Bruce Campbell Adamson told me that the names that kept coming up in his research over and over in his study of the JFK assassination were Lyndon Johnson and George Herbert Walker Bush. Adamson researches in a way similar to you: he looks for links and connections and investigates further. Bruce Campbell Adamson was the researcher who first found the name of GHW Bush listed in the address book of George De Mohrenshildt.

The same interests that supported Lyndon Johnson were the same interests that supported George Herbert Walker Bush: CIA, military hawks, most importantly Texas oil executives, Brown and Root (Halliburton). Both GHW Bush and Lyndon Johnson were heavily "mobbed up."

I think "Farewell America" does a better job of detailing than the Torbitt document does.

Edited by Robert Morrow
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ray Lee Hunt, a son of H.L. Hunt, is a very prominent businessman in Dallas, Texas, the USA today. He has also been on the board of Dresser Industries, a CIA related firm and a key platform of influence for George Herbert Walker Bush.

http://www.nndb.com/people/521/000055356/

Check out the curriculum vitae of Ray Lee Hunt. It sure hits on all the hot buttons: oil industry executive, former member of the Dallas Fed, appointee by George W. Bush to the very plum position on the President's Foreign Advisory Intelligence Board.

Ray L. Hunt

AKA Ray Lee Hunt

Born: 6-Apr-1943

Birthplace: New York City

Gender: Male

Religion: Methodist

Race or Ethnicity: White

Sexual orientation: Straight

Occupation: Business

Party Affiliation: Republican

Nationality: United States

Executive summary: Chairman of Hunt Oil

Father: H. L. Hunt (Texas oilman, d. 1974)

Mother: Ruth Ray

Brother: Nelson Bunker Hunt

Brother: Lamar Hunt (co-founder American Football League, owner KC Chiefs)

Wife: Nancy Ann Hunter

University: Economics, Southern Methodist University (1965)

Administrator: Trustee, Southern Methodist University

Hunt Oil CEO (1976-)

Hunt Oil (1958-)

Member of the Board of Bessemer Venture Partners

Member of the Board of Dresser Industries (-1998)

Member of the Board of EDS (1996-)

Member of the Board of Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas (as Chairman)

Member of the Board of Halliburton (1998-2007)

Member of the Board of King Ranch

Member of the Board of Pepsi (1996-)

Member of the Board of Verde Realty

Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (2001-03)

Phi Delta Theta Fraternity

American Petroleum Institute Board Member

Americans for Truth in Politics

Bush-Cheney '04

Dallas Petroleum Club Former President

Elizabeth Dole Committee

FreedomWorks

Friends of John Boehner

Friends of Senator D'Amato 1998 Committee

George W. Bush for President

John McCain 2008

Kay Bailey Hutchison for Senate

McCain for Senate '98

National Petroleum Council

National Republican Congressional Committee

Santorum 2000

Santorum 2006

Steele for Maryland

George W. Bush Presidential Library

Woodrow Wilson Award for Corporate Citizenship

Google Ray Lee Hunt and learn more: https://www.google.c...662fec27b9e4b73

Robert,

I think you're an excellent researcher, and I'd be the first person to join anyone of your causes to bring down a dirty, sex scandalist politician. But when you say something like this!

It sure hits on all the hot buttons:

The only hot buttons you're pushing on for now, is to know he has a job, I mean what else is there in the way of him being related to Kennedy's assassination other then providing a whole lot of information that in the end only says Ray Lee Hunt has a job and is connected to these people. Nothing wrong with that Robert, remember, I'm on your side.

Edited by Scott Kaiser
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Jim,

I, as do many on this forum and around the world admire you. You are a tremendous researcher, however, your inordinate ways to be a skeptic is no more informative then Siskel and Ebert. I don't believe that one person knows it all, and taking a stab at what you assume is no better then someone who provides no facts.

I have grown to like you and your pretty web-sites, I find that most individuals on here love to self promote their information, web-site, theory or book. And there is nothing wrong with that, thats at all good, so long as whats being told does not mislead the American people.

Edited by Scott Kaiser
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Robert Morrow

Jim, do you recall Bill Lord, who was Marine and a roommate of Lee Harvey Oswald, and Bill Lord's letter to President Jimmy Carter?

Lord wrote the letter because a journalist/investigator was pressuring him to talk about Oswald and one of his intimidation tactics was to bring up the names of his boss Jim Allison and a young Midland businessman named George W. Bush, the son of George Herbert Walker Bush who was CIA director from 1976 to mid January, 1977. GWB would have been around age 30 at this time.

Do you know who that journalist/"researcher"/investigator who was throwing around the Bush name to get Bill Lord to talk?

Wim Dankbaar has said it was Edward Epstein!!

Munch on that a while. Edward Epstein was using the name of the son of George Herbert Walker Bush as a bludgeon to get Bill Lord to tell him all he knew about Oswald. This is the same Edward Epstein that saw George De Mohrenshildt just before De Mohrenshildt committed suicide (yes, I think it was a suicide).

Read this: http://jfkmurdersolved.com/bush3.htm

A portion of the letter of Bill Lord to President Carter:

"One of the parties which has blitzed me with telephone calls trying to persuade me to tell them what I know about Oswald, is engaged in a very costly project which allows them to locate, interview, monitor, and influence every single available person who ever knew Lee Oswald--and this, just in advance of the new governmental investigation by the house select committee on Assassinations. I finally consented, not to grant an interview, but to allow the publication's representative to explain their project to me in person. After a lunch interview with this researcher, I was told that if I had refused even to meet with him, pressure was in the offing from two Midland men: Mr. Jim Allison, publisher of the ultra-conservative Reporter-Telegram, my employer (out of necessity, and for the moment!), and Mr. George Bush, Jr.

... Shortly thereafter, my mother discovered that her telephone had been tampered with. The casing around the dialing aparatus had been pulled out about one-half inch... we cannot doubt that someone entered the house at a time when I was at work and my mother was away; she returned to the house, however, at an unaccustomed time... I have been in anguish for weeks, Mr. President, trying my best to laugh at my apprehensions and to see these events as fortuitous ones... Speaking as the man who spent more than two weeks in the same ship's cabin with Lee Oswald at the time of his 1959 "defection", and speaking as a man who has been the subject of the above."

Edited by Robert Morrow
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Jim, do you recall Bill Lord, who was Marine and a roommate of Lee Harvey Oswald, and Bill Lord's letter to President Jimmy Carter?

Lord wrote the letter because a journalist/investigator was pressuring him to talk about Oswald and one of his intimidation tactics was to bring up the names of his boss Jim Allison and a young Midland businessman named George W. Bush, the son of George Herbert Walker Bush who was CIA director from 1976 to mid January, 1977. GWB would have been around age 30 at this time.

Do you know who that journalist/"researcher"/investigator who was throwing around the Bush name to get Bill Lord to talk?

Wim Dankbaar has said it was Edward Epstein!!

Munch on that a while. Edward Epstein was using the name of the son of George Herbert Walker Bush as a bludgeon to get Bill Lord to tell him all he knew about Oswald. This is the same Edward Epstein that saw George De Mohrenshildt just before De Mohrenshildt committed suicide (yes, I think it was a suicide).

Read this: http://jfkmurdersolved.com/bush3.htm

A portion of the letter of Bill Lord to President Carter:

"One of the parties which has blitzed me with telephone calls trying to persuade me to tell them what I know about Oswald, is engaged in a very costly project which allows them to locate, interview, monitor, and influence every single available person who ever knew Lee Oswald--and this, just in advance of the new governmental investigation by the house select committee on Assassinations. I finally consented, not to grant an interview, but to allow the publication's representative to explain their project to me in person. After a lunch interview with this researcher, I was told that if I had refused even to meet with him, pressure was in the offing from two Midland men: Mr. Jim Allison, publisher of the ultra-conservative Reporter-Telegram, my employer (out of necessity, and for the moment!), and Mr. George Bush, Jr.

... Shortly thereafter, my mother discovered that her telephone had been tampered with. The casing around the dialing aparatus had been pulled out about one-half inch... we cannot doubt that someone entered the house at a time when I was at work and my mother was away; she returned to the house, however, at an unaccustomed time... I have been in anguish for weeks, Mr. President, trying my best to laugh at my apprehensions and to see these events as fortuitous ones... Speaking as the man who spent more than two weeks in the same ship's cabin with Lee Oswald at the time of his 1959 "defection", and speaking as a man who has been the subject of the above."

This is very interesting! Thanks Robert for this...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Robert Morrow

Scott, many longtime JFK researchers, especially those well versed in the Lyndon Johnson angle, think that H.L. Hunt was one of the key players in the JFK assassination. H.L. Hunt, who I suggest you read up on, was an ultra-reactionary with deep military ties, was LBJ's biggest supporter and he hated the Kennedys with a purple passion.

1) http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKhuntHL.htm

2) http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKSinvestOil.htm

3) http://www.amazon.com/LBJ-The-Mastermind-JFK-Assassination/dp/1616083778/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331267237&sr=1-1

Ray Lee Hunt is his son. And he is very well plugged in today at the highest levels of business, politics, intelligence and the Bush family. Ray Lee Hunt, a popular Texas businessman, was even on the board of the Dallas Fed. Ray Lee Hunt is extremely wealthy and power plugged in on steroids.

There is also a school of JFK researchers who think that George Herbert Walker Bush was one of the CIA guys "making it all happen" for Lyndon Johnson and the Texas oil men in the JFK assassination.

George W. Bush, our president from 2001-2009, is the son of GHW Bush.

Ray Lee Hunt, the son of H.L. Hunt, was one of the biggest supporters of George W. Bush. I think both of their fathers were involved in the JFK assassination along with Lyndon Johnson.

My point is: the cover up is perpetual because there are powerful business and political families who have a lot to lose TODAY, both in status and power, if the truth about the JFK assassination were broadly accepted in detail form.

For example, Jeb Bush, the son of GHW Bush and brother of GWB, wants to be president in 2016. His son, George P. Bush - many Texas political observers think it is only a matter of time before the Bush family runs him for governor of Texas ... then the presidency.

Edited by Robert Morrow
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On September 17, 1976, the CIA requested that the FBI locate de Mohrenschildt, because he had "attempted to get in touch with the CIA Director."[41] On September 5, 1976, De Mohrenschildt had written a letter to the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, George H. W. Bush asking for his assistance. The letter said:

Hi Robert,

Funny you say this;

There is also a school of JFK researchers who think that George Herbert Walker Bush was one of the CIA guys

Because many have tried to defend GWB for not being CIA at that time, I believe that even Bush himself says he wasn't CIA until 75-76, here is a letter from George De Mohrenschildt to Bush, and Bush writing back to George. Although, the letter doesn't say much to incriminate himself (meaning Bush) he's certainly smart enough not to slip up. What I do know is he is wanted for "human neglect" and should be indicted for (war crimes) just as the Nazi's were tracked down and killed one by one. George should also face his accusers.

George De Mohrenschildt,

You will excuse this hand-written letter. Maybe you will be able to bring a solution to the hopeless situation I find myself in. My wife and I find ourselves surrounded by some vigilantes; our phone bugged; and we are being followed everywhere. Either FBI is involved in this or they do not want to accept my complaints. We are driven to insanity by the situation. I have been behaving like a damn fool ever since my daughter Nadya died from [cystic fibrosis] over three years ago. I tried to write, stupidly and unsuccessfully, about Lee H Oswald and must have angered a lot of people — I do not know. But to punish an elderly man like myself and my highly nervous and sick wife is really too much. Could you do something to remove the net around us? This will be my last request for help and I will not annoy you any more. Good luck in your important job. Thank you so much.

George Bush wrote back:

Let me say first that I know it must have been difficult for you to seek my help in the situation outlined in your letter. I believe I can appreciate your state of mind in view of your daughter's tragic death a few years ago, and the current poor state of your wife's health. I was extremely sorry to hear of these circumstances. In your situation I can well imagine how the attentions you described in your letter affect both you and your wife. However, my staff has been unable to find any indication of interest in your activities on the part of Federal authorities in recent years. The flurry of interest that attended your testimony before the Warren Commission has long subsided. I can only speculate that you may have become "newsworthy" again in view of the renewed interest in the Kennedy assassination, and thus may be attracting the attention of people in the media. I hope this letter had been of some comfort to you, George, although I realize I am unable to answer your question completely. George Bush, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. [CIA Exec Reg. # 76,51571 9.28.76]

Edited by Scott Kaiser
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Tom Scully

....This was apparently a big deal for companies like Stanolind, which had no foreign production at all until it went into Cuba. Affording to its filing, it was formed in Havana in 1950 "to assure continuity of management and stability of policy for shareholders of twenty-four oil companies in South America" (25) That is it was some kind of holding company with a focus on "Stability" in Latin American countries, which could reasonably be assumed to refer to creating conditions of political stability favorable to the exploration activities.

The Empire Trust Company, a New York-based bastion of power and wealth, appears to have played a key role in the financing of the Cuban venture. A short item in the New York Times of May 14, 1956, noted:

Election of Charles LEslie Rice, a vice president of the Empire

Trust Company of New York, as a voting trustee of the Cuban-

Venezuelan Oil Voting Trust, was announced over the week-end.

Empire Trust's John Loeb had a network of associates that amounted to "something very like a private CIA," wrote Stephen Birmingham in Our Crowd: The Great Jewish Families of

New York.(26) Empire worked hard to protect its foreign investments and especially its stake in the defense contractor General Dynamics. Empire entrusted its affairs in Texas to Baker Botts, the law firm of James Baker's family(27) Besides Rice, another Empire Trust director was Lewis MacNaughton, a Dresser Industries board member from 1959 to 1967.

[Dresser industries, as Baker shows earlier in the book, was an oil drilling equipment company with global intelligence connections that in some ways remind one of Howard Hughes Hughes Tool Co. The company connected the Harriman, Bush, Walker and Mallon families, and was a key platform for both H.W. Bush's political career in Taxes and, in the more literal sense, for CIA operations against Fidel Castro's Cuba in the late 1950's and the early (but how late??) 1960s --N.H.]

MacNaughton was the employer of George Bouhe, the Russian emigre who would later introduce George de Mohrenschildt to Lee Harvey Oswald. Perhaps the most curious of the Empire Trust figures was Jack Crichton, a longtime company vice president who joined Empire in August 1953 and remained through 1962. (28)

Crichton, who had been hired soon after leaving the military in 1946 by oil industry wunderkind Everette DeGolyer, quickly, quickly became a go-to guy for numerous powerful interests seeking a foothold in the energy arena. He started and ran a baffling array of companies, which tended to change names frequently. These operated largely bellow the radar, and fronted for some of North America's biggest names, including the Bronfmans (Seagram's liquor), the Du Ponts, and the Kuhn-Loeb family of financiers. According to his former lawyer Crichton traveled to the Middle East on oil-related intelligence business. On behalf of prominent interests, he was involved with George de Mohrenschildt in his oil exploration venture in Pre-Castro Cuba. In a 2001 oral history, Crichton volunteered that he was a friend of George de Mohrenschildt's: "I liked George. He was a nice guy." (29)

By 1956, in addition to his other duties, Crichton started a military intelligence reserve unit on the side. (30) On the day of Kennedy's assassination, as will be elaborated upon in Chapter 7, he would arrange for a member of the Dallas Russian Community to rush to Marina Oswald's side and provide translations for investigators--which were far from literal translations of her Russian words and had the effect of implicating her husband in Kennedy's death. Shortly after the assassination, Crichton would become the GOP nominee for governor of Texas in a race against the incumbent John Connally, who had recovered from his wounds of November 22. On the same ticker was the Republican nominee for the United States Senate, Poppy Bush. Unfortunately for the rich and powerful behind the Cuban oil venture in the 19560s, just as the possibility of extracting vast wealth from that small island drew increasing interest from Wall Street, Fidel Castro's revolution was gaining strength. At the same time, what look to have been intelligence operations under oil industry cover were moving into position, as Poppy Bush began moving his rigs to Howard Hughes's Cay Sal Bank in the Bahamas.

On January 1, 1959, Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba, and the next day Casto's Army marched into Havana.

On November 22, 1959, the New York Times reported that the new Cuban government had approved a law that would reduce the size of private companies. These claims were now limited to twenty thousand acres, a major setback for companies such as CVOVT, with its fifteen million acres. (31).

According to the Times, big foreign oil companies had already spent more than thirty million dollars looking for oil over the preceding twelve years. The article cited petroleum industry sources speculating that nationalization of the refining industry was soon to come. The government also imposed a 60 per cent royalty on oil production believed to be the highest anywhere. Standard Oil of New Jersey had, according to the article invested thirty-five million dollars in a Cuban refinery, and other companies had invested comparable sums. (32)

Among other things, the new law put an end to the go-go days of the Cuban-Venezuelan Oil Voting Trust stock. That story was summed up neatly in William A. Doyle's syndicated advice column, the Daily Investor," on August 14, 1961:

Q.I bought some shares of Cuban-Venezuelan Oil Voting Trust a couple years ago.

This stock was listed on the American Stock Exchange but I never see it quoted

there any more. What's the trouble?

A. The trouble is spelled C-a-s-t-r-o.When that bearded dictator took over the

government in Cuba, he started kicking American investors smack in the pocket-

book. The Cuban-Venezuelan Oil Voting Trust story is somewhat involved. But

its chief cause of grief came when the Communist-oriented Cuban government

refused to explore its concession to explore for oil. That just about wrecked this

outfit. The stock's price dropped. You won't find the shares quoted on the

American Stock Exchange, because this stock was de-listed from that exchange,

as of Dec. 1, 1960. Technically, it is still possible to buy and sell these shares in

the over-the-counter market. But you'll be lucky if you can get 10 cents a share.(33)

Brown Brothers Harriman [very very close Bush-Malon ties discussed earlier in book] also had a stake in Cuban affairs that went back at least to the 1920's. ITs affiliate, the Punta Alegre Sugar Corporation, controlled more than two hundred thousand acres in the province of Cameguey (34). Officials of the firm served on the board of Punta Alegre up to the moment that Castro expropriated its land-- and even afterward, as the sugar company began moving its remaining assets to the United States.

The CIA's Allen Dulles responded quickly to developments on the island. He created the Cuban Task Force, with teams in charge of clandestine operations, psychological warfare, and economic and diplomatic pressure. Out of these emerged Operation 40, an elite group of Cuban exiles who, after specialized training, were to infiltrate Cuba and deal a mortal blow to the revolution, including the assassination of its principal leaders.

The chief of the task force was Tracy Barnes, a Yale graduate and Dulles's wartime OSS comrade who was related to the Rockefeller clan by marriage. More than a decade earlier, Barnes's first CIA job had been as deputy director of the Psychological Strategy Board, a little-known entity that explored everything from the use of psychotropic drugs as truth serum to the possibility of engineering unwitting assassins, i.e. Manchurian Candidates. Later, he worked on the successful 1954 operation to overthrow the democratically elected president of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz. Barnes had received propaganda support form David Atlee Phillips and E. Howard Hunt, including the distribution of faked photographs

purporting to show the mutilated bodies of Arbenz opponents.

Phillips and Hunt would be hounded by allegations that they had been present in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Both men consistently denied it. But according to his son St. John Hunt, E. Howard began confessing knowledge of a plot against Kennedy near the end of his life and named Phillips as one of the participants.(35)

Hunt and Phillips attended the first meeting of the Cuba Task Force, held January 18, 1960 in Barnes office. Barnes spoke at length on the objectives. He explained that Air Force General Charles Cabell, a Texan (and brother of Dallas's mayor), would be in charge of air cover for an invasion, and that VIce President Richard Nixon, whose brief included some national security areas, was the administration's Cuba "case officer."

In his memoirs, former Cuban intelligence official Fabian Escalante asserted that Nixon had met with an important group of Texas businessmen to arrange outside funding for the operation. Escalente, whose service was vaunted for its U.S. spy network, claimed that the Texas group was headed by George H.W. Bush and Jack Crichton. Escalente's assertion cannot be easily dismissed: Crichton's role in covert operations, about which extensive new information is provided in chapter 7 was little understood at the time Escalante published his memoirs. (36)

In March 1960, the Eisenhower administration signed off on a plan to equip and train Cuban exiles, and drills soon began in Florida and Guatemala. One of Dulles's top three aides, the covert operations chief Richard M. Bissell (Yale '32), was made director. Around this time, George de Mohrenschildt happened to take a business trip to Mexico City , where the CIA station was deeply involved in the coming attractions.

By the fall of 1962, when de Mohrehschildt was devoting much of his time to squiring Lee Harvey Oswald, he had gained entree to the creme de la creme of the petroleum world. One longtime buddy of his and of Poppy Bush's, offshore drilling expert George Kitchel, would tell the FBI in 1964 that de Mohrenschildt counted among his good fiends the oil tycoons Clint Murchison, H.L. Hunt, John Mecom, and Sid Richardson. Other commission testimony revealed that in the couple of years prior to the Kennedy assassination, de Mohrenschildt had traveled frequently from Dallas to Houston, where he visited with figures such as George Brown of Brown and Root, the construction and military contracting giant that helped launch LBJ's career, and Jean de Menil of Schlumberger, the huge oil services firm.

Several of these men had even sent de Mohrenschild abroad on business; one could be forgiven for wondering if these trips were in fact what the CIA calls "commercial cover." George Brown had dispatched him to Mexico, where his mission seemed to be heading off a Mexican government oil deal with the Soviet deputy premier Anastas Mikoyan, who arrived at the same time. (37) Murchison dispatched him to Haiti on several occasions. In 1958, he went to Yugoslavia on what was said to be business for Mecom--whose foundation, the San Jacinto Fund, was later identified as a CIA funding conduit.

The Warren Commission knew at least pieces of all this. Yet in 1964, after two and a half days of testimony by George de Mohrenschildt and his wife Jeanne, the commission would conclude that George was essentially an eccentric if well-connceted figure whose life encompassed a series of strange coincidences. (Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, The Powerful Forces That Put It Into the White House, and What Their Influence Means For America) p. 79-84)

http://paw.princeton.edu/memorials/51/21/index.xml

Charles Leslie Rice Jr. '41

Published in May 7, 1997, issue

Les Rice died Feb. 11, 1997, in Red Bank, N.J. His last six years were spent in a wheelchair after back surgery, but his optimism never dimmed.

He was our class's Pyne Prize winner. His wife, Pauline Seaberg, died in 1992.

Les came to Princeton from high school in La Grange, Ill. He majored in history, joined Charter, played varsity football, and was active with Orange Key and the Republican Club. He remained a trustee of the American Whig-Cliosophic Society for many decades following graduation. Les joined the Army in 1941 and rose to captain, winning a Bronze Star and Cluster.

Following the war, Dean Mathey '12, Princeton's patron-saint trustee, benefactor, and Wall St. magician, recruited Les as his protege. Having learned much from Mathey at Empire Trust Co., Les set out on his own. He was president and CEO of Gulf States Land & Industries, Inc., working in Texas and living in New Jersey. He retired in 1980 and continued to be active in his Mandan Corp. in Red Bank and in a host of local charities.....

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?mode=searchResult&absPageId=562406

Found in: HSCA Segregated CIA Collection (microfilm - reel 27: JURE - MRP)

9377 JMZIP PM SkCUR MRP EXILE LEADER JOAQUIN GODOY Y SOLIS HAS FIREND IN NYC NAMED MR JACK COGSWELL ADDRESS 125 E 57TH ST COGSWELL ,HAS INFORMED GODOY THAT MR LESLIE RICE ADDRESS 20 BROAD ST. NYC

RIF#: 104-10271-10021 (11/22/61) CIA#: 80T01357A

HUNTER ADVANCES TO SEMI-FINALS; Beats Brunie in Heights ...

New York Times - Feb 14, 1925

9 -- 7, and Dean Mathey and dam Hardy defaulted to Harry Brunle and John S. McCloy. Brunle and AfcCloy will meet Tilden and Nell Sullivan in the upper ...

McCloy was still referred to as "John S. McCloy" in newspaper reporting in the 1970's.

Dean Mathey was a tennis star in his college days at Princeton and still held his own at age 35 against the younger McCloy and Brunie. Brunie was the best man in McCloy's wedding. Brunie married the tennis star of the late 1920's, Anna Hubbard Brunie. Anna was divorced from Charles Hubbard. Anna's son, Charles Jr., was an usher in the 1955 wedding of Albert B. Carter, Jr. of the CIA. So were Tom Devine and Alexander Aldrich. McCloy succeeded Aldridge's father, Winthrop, as chairman of Chase Bank, and Brunie was appointed under Mathey as president of Empire Trust.

Scott and Robert, will you have the decency to cease filling this thread with your posts? I resurrected this dormant thread to share original research, and it seemed in a very short period that the two of you filled a full page with posts that seem to offer nothing new, but resulted in obscuring the details I thought some other members might find of interest. No need to reply! Thank you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Robert Morrow

Tom Scully,

I posted material relevant to the Bush family, particularly the fact that GHW Bush and Ray Lee Hunt were both close associated with Dresser Industries.

I posted other material, written by Russ Baker, pertaining to unanswered questions about GHW Bush.

I refrained from commenting on the fact that Roy Cohn was a well known homosexual who died of AIDS in response to your comment addressed to me.

There is no need for you to reply.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Tom Scully

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?mode=searchResult&absPageId=972973

NO TITLE pg 2

Found in: FBI - HSCA Subject File: Antonio De Varona

VARONA NY SI stated that he had no knowledge of this possibl ting between MARQUEZ STERLING and VARONA [ (,() C LESLIE RICE Jonnell Gas Company 20 Broad Street NYC on 5/24/60 advised that he had spoken

RIF#: 124-90055-10098 (05/24/60) FBI#: 105-76826-NR

CABLE: MRP EXILE LEADER JOAQUIN GODOY Y SOLIS HAS FIREND IN NYC NAMED ME. JACK COGSWELL pg 2

Found in: HSCA Segregated CIA Collection (microfilm - reel 27: JURE - MRP)

9377 JMZIP PM SkCUR MRP EXILE LEADER JOAQUIN GODOY Y SOLIS HAS FIREND IN NYC NAMED MR JACK COGSWELL ADDRESS 125 E 57TH ST COGSWELL ,HAS INFORMED GODOY THAT MR LESLIE RICE ADDRESS 20 BROAD ST. NYC

RIF#: 104-10271-10021 (11/22/61) CIA#: 80T01357A

http://www.google.com/search?q=alvord+%22general+dynamics%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:unofficial&client=firefox-nightly#hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-nightly&hs=Am9&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aunofficial&tbs=ar:1&tbm=nws&sclient=psy-ab&q=%22was+director+of+the+Crown+Drug+Company%2C+the+General+Dynamics+...%22+jonnell&oq=%22was+director+of+the+Crown+Drug+Company%2C+the+General+Dynamics+...%22+jonnell&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=12&gs_upl=3503062l3508637l2l3511045l11l11l0l0l0l0l520l1581l5.5.5-1l11l0&gs_l=serp.12...3503062l3508637l2l3511045l11l11l0l0l0l0l520l1581l5j5j5-1l11l0&psj=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=91c5be38b58163d7&biw=1440&bih=695

EC ALVORD, 68, CAPITAL LAWYER; Tax Specialist and Ex-Aide...

New York Times - Jan 17, 1964

Mr. A was director of the Crown Drug Company, the General Dynamics ... Loan and Finance ICorporation and Jonnell Gas, Inc. I He contributed articles on ;legal .

http://www.google.com/search?q=alvord+%22general+dynamics%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:unofficial&client=firefox-nightly#q=alvord+%22general+dynamics%22&hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-nightly&hs=VRU&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:unofficial&tbm=nws&prmd=imvns&source=lnt&tbs=ar:1&sa=X&psj=1&ei=YolaT_6gNcyctwfrg7D4Dg&ved=0CA4QpwUoBQ&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=91c5be38b58163d7&biw=1440&bih=695

DIRECTORATE CUT; STOCK RISE VOTED; Board of General ...

New York Times - Feb 27, 1957

The General Dynamics Corporation yesterday proposed to double its authorized ... Otherwominees for the board are Ellsworth C. Alvord, Sylvan C. Coleman, .

Left Article: Redbank Register page 1, 27 October, 1961 http://209.212.22.88/data/rbr/1960-1969/1961/1961.10.27.pdf

Right Article w/Photo: New York Times 17 Jan, 1950. p. 35

6968037613_3da089f463_b.jpg6821880048_27187ab65a_b.jpg

More on related coincidental relationships:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=10776&view=findpost&p=242851

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=18741&view=findpost&p=246733

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 9 months later...

Russ,

On page 11 of your book you wrote the following regarding the Hoover memo:

Several years later, in 1991, former Texas Observer editor David Armstrong would track down the other person listed on the Hoover memo, Captain William Edwards. Edwards would confirm that he had been on duty at the Defense Intelligence Agency the day in question. He said he did not remember this briefing, but that he found the memo plausible in reference to a briefing he might have received over the phone while at his desk. While he said he had no idea who the George Bush was who also was briefed, Edwards’s rank and experience was certainly far above that of the night clerk George William Bush.

There was no note for this claim and I found no other trace of Armstrong having spoken to Edwards on the Internet. Did he publish an account of this? If so can you provide a link or at least the title/date/publication?

Edwards' account actually makes it seem more likely George William Bush was the recipient of the briefing. Both were on watch duty “the night in question”, if Edwards “ did not remember this briefing” it possible didn't remember it either. Edwards' “experience” may have been “far above that of...Bush” but (unless he was Navy) his rank was only one pay grade the novice CIA agent's.

PS - MODS shouldn't this thread and the one linked below be merged?

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=15172&st=0&p=177134

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...
  • 5 years later...

Endlessly fascinating old Education Forum thread here, which I have been perusing today in relation to recent discussions about GHWB and Dubya Bush on 1/22/63.

My recent forum questions on these subjects are, obviously, about a decade behind those in the research community discussions here.

Better late than never.

The only reference to Dubya Bush and JFK on this thread was about Lee Harvey Oswald's Marine Corps friend Bill Lord's letter to President Jimmy Carter in (?)1977.

Bill Lord mentioned to Carter that two men-- apparently, Edward Epstein and George W. Bush -- were pressuring him to find out what he knew about Oswald!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now

×
×
  • Create New...