The Best Enemies Money Can Buy
From Hitler To Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden - Insider Connections and the Bush Family's Partnership with Killers of Americans
Brown Brothers, Harriman - BNL- and the Carlyle Group
By
Michael C. Ruppert
[© Copyright 2001. All Rights Reserved, Michael C. Ruppert and From The Wilderness Publications, www.copvcia.com. May be reprinted or distributed for non-profit purposes only.]
FTW, Oct. 9, 2001 - Since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, major media powerhouses and the increasingly influential alternative media alike have begun to focus attention on Bush family connections and a long history of arming and financing America's attackers in the months and years prior to the outbreak of war. Recent stories in the Wall Street Journal (Sept. 27 & 28, 2001), ABC News (Oct. 1, 2001), as well as a host of reports from so-called alternative news sources have begun to focus attention on the Bush family's profit-making role in creating and arming our enemies.
The following is a more comprehensive look at the documented history of these relationships that will also open some new avenues of inquiry for the press, Congress and the American people.
In a world now filled with biowarfare agents, backpack nuclear devices, and chemical weapons like Sarin gas -- where there are people in many countries with reasons to oppose the United States -- the Bush Administration is following predictable strategies in a way that redefines the concept of brinksmanship. Human survival may depend upon the will and the ability of both the Congress and the press to focus on these relationships and to take appropriate action. Moreover - and I am not the first to say this - if a national security priority is to seize the financial assets of those who support terrorists, then perhaps we should start right here at home.
---
Adolph Hitler
Meticulous research, including U.S. government records from the era, along with contemporaneous news stories from the New York Times and other papers is presented in the 1992 book entitled, "George Bush, The Unauthorized Biography" by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin, Published by The Executive Intelligence Review and located at http://www.tarpley.net/bushb.htm. The following is sourced entirely from Chapter II of this essential work. [Note: Although FTW does not always agree with conclusions reached by the Executive Intelligence Review, or its founder Lyndon La Rouche, we have never found a single flaw in any of their factual research. History is history, no matter who presents it. And this history is essential to understanding our era.]
George W. Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush, was the Managing Director of the investment bank Brown Brothers, Harriman from the 1920s through the 1940s. It was Brown Brothers, in conjunction with Averell Harriman, the Rockefeller family, Standard Oil, the DuPonts, the Morgans and the Fords who served as the principal funding arm in helping to finance Adolph Hitler's rise to power starting in 1923. This included direct funding for the SS and SA channeled through a variety of German firms. Prescott Bush, through associations with the Hamburg-Amerika Steamship line, Nazi banker Fritz Thyssen (pronounced Tee-sen), Standard Oil of Germany, The German Steel Trust (founded by Dillon Read founder, Clarence Dillon), and I.G. Farben, used the Union Bank Corporation to funnel vast quantities of money to the Nazis and to manage their American interests. The profits from those investments came back to Bush allies on Wall Street. Thyssen is universally regarded as having been Hitler's private banker and ultimate owner of the Union Bank Corporation.
Early support for Hitler came from Prescott Bush through the Hamburg-Amerika Steamship line -- also funded by Brown Bothers -- that funneled large sums of money and weapons to Hitler's storm troopers in the 1920s.
According to Tarpley and Chaitkin, "In May 1933, just after the Hitler regime was consolidated, an agreement was reached in Berlin for the coordination of all Nazi commerce with the U.S.A. The Harriman International Company... was to head a syndicate of 150 firms and individuals, to conduct all exports from Hitler Germany to the United States."
Furthermore, a 1942 U.S. government investigative report that surfaced during 1945 Senate hearings found that the Union Bank, with Prescott Bush on the board, was an "interlocking concern" with the German Steel Trust that had produced:
- 50.8% of Nazi Germany's pig iron
- 41.4% of Nazi Germany's universal plate
- 36% of Nazi Germany's heavy plate
- 38.5% of Nazi Germany's galvanized sheet
- 45.5% of Nazi Germany's pipes and tubes
- 22.1% of Nazi Germany's wire
- 35% of Nazi Germany's explosives
The business relationships established by Bush in 1923 continued even after the war started until they became so offensive and overt as to warrant seizure by the U.S. government under the Trading with the Enemy Act in 1942.
In 1942, "Under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the government took over Union Banking Corporation, in which Bush was a director. The U.S. Alien Property Custodian seized Union Banking Corp.'s stock shares...
"... all of which shares are held for the benefit of... members of the Thyssen family, [and] is property of nationals... of a designated enemy country."
"On October 28, the government issued orders seizing two Nazi front organizations run by the Bush-Harriman bank: the Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation."
"Nazi interests in the Silesian-American Corporation, long managed by Prescott Bush and his father in law George Herbert Walker, were seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act on Nov. 17, 1942..." These seizures of Bush businesses were reported in a number of American papers including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Prescott Bush went on to become an influential Republican Senator from Connecticut who went on to be a regular golfing partner of President Dwight Eisenhower. His attorneys were the lawyers John Foster and Allen Dulles, the later became the CIA Director under Eisenhower.
Saddam Hussein
After becoming President in January 1989, Prescott Bush's son, George Herbert Walker Bush - father of our current President - authorized a series of programs that not only armed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein but also provided him with technology that assisted in his development of chemical weapons like Sarin gas, and biological weapons, which he still possesses. Apologists for Bush (the elder) say that, after the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s left the region unstable, he was just trying to establish a new balance of power. Not so. Bush directives and policies, including relationships with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), and the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL) were directly and deliberately responsible for creating the army the U.S. fought in 1991.
A story by Russ W. Baker, in the March/April issue the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), provided the most compelling overview of Iraqgate that I have seen.
"ABC News Nightline opened last June 9 with words to make the heart stop ÔIt is becoming increasingly clear,' said a grave Ted Koppel, Ôthat George Bush, operating largely behind the scenes throughout the 1980s, initiated and supported much of the financing, intelligence, and military help that built Saddam's Iraq into the aggressive power that the United States ultimately had to destroy...
"Why, then, have some of our top papers provided so little coverage?" Baker poignantly asks.
" The result: readers who neither grasp nor care about the facts behind facile imagery like The Butcher of Baghdad and Operation Desert Storm. In particular, readers who do not follow the story of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, which apparently served as a paymaster for Saddam's arms buildup, and thus became a player in the largest bank-fraud case in U.S. history.
"Complex, challenging, mind-boggling stories (from Iran-Contra to the S&L crisis to BCCI) increasingly define our times: yet we don't appear to be getting any better at telling them...
"Much of what Saddam received from the West was not arms per se, but so-called dual-use technology -- ultra sophisticated computers, armored ambulances, helicopters, chemicals, and the like, with potential civilian uses as well as military applications. We've learned that a vast network of companies, based in the U.S. and abroad, eagerly fed the Iraqi war machine right up until August 1990, when Saddam invaded Kuwait.
"And we've learned that the obscure Atlanta Branch of Italy's largest bank, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, relying partly on U.S. taxpayer-guaranteed loans, funneled $5 billion to Iraq from 1985 to 1989. Some government-backed loans were supposed to be for agricultural purposes, but were used to facilitate the purchase of stronger stuff than wheat. Federal Reserve and Agriculture department memos warned of suspected abuses by Iraq, which apparently took advantage of the loans to free up funds for munitions. U.S. taxpayers have been left holding the bag for what looks like $2 billion in defaulted loans to Iraq.
"... In fact, we now know that in February 1990, then Attorney General Dick Thornburgh [appointed by George H.W. Bush] blocked U.S. investigators from traveling to Rome and Istanbul to pursue the case...
"... As New York Times columnist William Safire argued last December 7, ÔIraqgate is uniquely horrendous: a scandal about the Systematic abuse of power by misguided leaders of three democratic nations [The U.S., Britain, and Italy] to secretly finance the arms buildup of a dictator."
From Hitler To Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden - Insider Connections and the Bush Family's Partnership with Killers of Americans
Brown Brothers, Harriman - BNL- and the Carlyle Group
By
Michael C. Ruppert
[© Copyright 2001. All Rights Reserved, Michael C. Ruppert and From The Wilderness Publications, www.copvcia.com. May be reprinted or distributed for non-profit purposes only.]
FTW, Oct. 9, 2001 - Since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, major media powerhouses and the increasingly influential alternative media alike have begun to focus attention on Bush family connections and a long history of arming and financing America's attackers in the months and years prior to the outbreak of war. Recent stories in the Wall Street Journal (Sept. 27 & 28, 2001), ABC News (Oct. 1, 2001), as well as a host of reports from so-called alternative news sources have begun to focus attention on the Bush family's profit-making role in creating and arming our enemies.
The following is a more comprehensive look at the documented history of these relationships that will also open some new avenues of inquiry for the press, Congress and the American people.
In a world now filled with biowarfare agents, backpack nuclear devices, and chemical weapons like Sarin gas -- where there are people in many countries with reasons to oppose the United States -- the Bush Administration is following predictable strategies in a way that redefines the concept of brinksmanship. Human survival may depend upon the will and the ability of both the Congress and the press to focus on these relationships and to take appropriate action. Moreover - and I am not the first to say this - if a national security priority is to seize the financial assets of those who support terrorists, then perhaps we should start right here at home.
---
Adolph Hitler
Meticulous research, including U.S. government records from the era, along with contemporaneous news stories from the New York Times and other papers is presented in the 1992 book entitled, "George Bush, The Unauthorized Biography" by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin, Published by The Executive Intelligence Review and located at http://www.tarpley.net/bushb.htm. The following is sourced entirely from Chapter II of this essential work. [Note: Although FTW does not always agree with conclusions reached by the Executive Intelligence Review, or its founder Lyndon La Rouche, we have never found a single flaw in any of their factual research. History is history, no matter who presents it. And this history is essential to understanding our era.]
George W. Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush, was the Managing Director of the investment bank Brown Brothers, Harriman from the 1920s through the 1940s. It was Brown Brothers, in conjunction with Averell Harriman, the Rockefeller family, Standard Oil, the DuPonts, the Morgans and the Fords who served as the principal funding arm in helping to finance Adolph Hitler's rise to power starting in 1923. This included direct funding for the SS and SA channeled through a variety of German firms. Prescott Bush, through associations with the Hamburg-Amerika Steamship line, Nazi banker Fritz Thyssen (pronounced Tee-sen), Standard Oil of Germany, The German Steel Trust (founded by Dillon Read founder, Clarence Dillon), and I.G. Farben, used the Union Bank Corporation to funnel vast quantities of money to the Nazis and to manage their American interests. The profits from those investments came back to Bush allies on Wall Street. Thyssen is universally regarded as having been Hitler's private banker and ultimate owner of the Union Bank Corporation.
Early support for Hitler came from Prescott Bush through the Hamburg-Amerika Steamship line -- also funded by Brown Bothers -- that funneled large sums of money and weapons to Hitler's storm troopers in the 1920s.
According to Tarpley and Chaitkin, "In May 1933, just after the Hitler regime was consolidated, an agreement was reached in Berlin for the coordination of all Nazi commerce with the U.S.A. The Harriman International Company... was to head a syndicate of 150 firms and individuals, to conduct all exports from Hitler Germany to the United States."
Furthermore, a 1942 U.S. government investigative report that surfaced during 1945 Senate hearings found that the Union Bank, with Prescott Bush on the board, was an "interlocking concern" with the German Steel Trust that had produced:
- 50.8% of Nazi Germany's pig iron
- 41.4% of Nazi Germany's universal plate
- 36% of Nazi Germany's heavy plate
- 38.5% of Nazi Germany's galvanized sheet
- 45.5% of Nazi Germany's pipes and tubes
- 22.1% of Nazi Germany's wire
- 35% of Nazi Germany's explosives
The business relationships established by Bush in 1923 continued even after the war started until they became so offensive and overt as to warrant seizure by the U.S. government under the Trading with the Enemy Act in 1942.
In 1942, "Under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the government took over Union Banking Corporation, in which Bush was a director. The U.S. Alien Property Custodian seized Union Banking Corp.'s stock shares...
"... all of which shares are held for the benefit of... members of the Thyssen family, [and] is property of nationals... of a designated enemy country."
"On October 28, the government issued orders seizing two Nazi front organizations run by the Bush-Harriman bank: the Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation."
"Nazi interests in the Silesian-American Corporation, long managed by Prescott Bush and his father in law George Herbert Walker, were seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act on Nov. 17, 1942..." These seizures of Bush businesses were reported in a number of American papers including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Prescott Bush went on to become an influential Republican Senator from Connecticut who went on to be a regular golfing partner of President Dwight Eisenhower. His attorneys were the lawyers John Foster and Allen Dulles, the later became the CIA Director under Eisenhower.
Saddam Hussein
After becoming President in January 1989, Prescott Bush's son, George Herbert Walker Bush - father of our current President - authorized a series of programs that not only armed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein but also provided him with technology that assisted in his development of chemical weapons like Sarin gas, and biological weapons, which he still possesses. Apologists for Bush (the elder) say that, after the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s left the region unstable, he was just trying to establish a new balance of power. Not so. Bush directives and policies, including relationships with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), and the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL) were directly and deliberately responsible for creating the army the U.S. fought in 1991.
A story by Russ W. Baker, in the March/April issue the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), provided the most compelling overview of Iraqgate that I have seen.
"ABC News Nightline opened last June 9 with words to make the heart stop ÔIt is becoming increasingly clear,' said a grave Ted Koppel, Ôthat George Bush, operating largely behind the scenes throughout the 1980s, initiated and supported much of the financing, intelligence, and military help that built Saddam's Iraq into the aggressive power that the United States ultimately had to destroy...
"Why, then, have some of our top papers provided so little coverage?" Baker poignantly asks.
" The result: readers who neither grasp nor care about the facts behind facile imagery like The Butcher of Baghdad and Operation Desert Storm. In particular, readers who do not follow the story of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, which apparently served as a paymaster for Saddam's arms buildup, and thus became a player in the largest bank-fraud case in U.S. history.
"Complex, challenging, mind-boggling stories (from Iran-Contra to the S&L crisis to BCCI) increasingly define our times: yet we don't appear to be getting any better at telling them...
"Much of what Saddam received from the West was not arms per se, but so-called dual-use technology -- ultra sophisticated computers, armored ambulances, helicopters, chemicals, and the like, with potential civilian uses as well as military applications. We've learned that a vast network of companies, based in the U.S. and abroad, eagerly fed the Iraqi war machine right up until August 1990, when Saddam invaded Kuwait.
"And we've learned that the obscure Atlanta Branch of Italy's largest bank, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, relying partly on U.S. taxpayer-guaranteed loans, funneled $5 billion to Iraq from 1985 to 1989. Some government-backed loans were supposed to be for agricultural purposes, but were used to facilitate the purchase of stronger stuff than wheat. Federal Reserve and Agriculture department memos warned of suspected abuses by Iraq, which apparently took advantage of the loans to free up funds for munitions. U.S. taxpayers have been left holding the bag for what looks like $2 billion in defaulted loans to Iraq.
"... In fact, we now know that in February 1990, then Attorney General Dick Thornburgh [appointed by George H.W. Bush] blocked U.S. investigators from traveling to Rome and Istanbul to pursue the case...
"... As New York Times columnist William Safire argued last December 7, ÔIraqgate is uniquely horrendous: a scandal about the Systematic abuse of power by misguided leaders of three democratic nations [The U.S., Britain, and Italy] to secretly finance the arms buildup of a dictator."
