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Articles : "War on Terror"How the Bush Family Makes a Killing from George’s Presidency
Halliburton scored almost $1.2 billion in revenue from contracts related to Iraq in the third quarter of 2006, leading one analyst to comment: “Iraq was better than expected … Overall, there is nothing really to question or be skeptical about. I think the results are very good.”
Very good indeed. An estimated 655,000 dead Iraqis, over 3,000 dead coalition troops, billions stolen from Iraq’s coffers, a country battered by civil war – but Halliburton turned a profit, so the results are very good.
Very good certainly for Vice President Dick Cheney, who resigned from Halliburton in 2000 with a $33.7 million retirement package (not bad for roughly four years of work). In a stunning conflict of interest, Cheney still holds more than 400,000 stock options in the company. Why pursue diplomacy when you can rake in a personal fortune from war?
Yet Cheney isn’t the only one who has benefited from the Bush administration’s destructive policies. The Bush family has done quite nicely too. Just a few examples:
Bush Sr.
Bush’s dad has strong connections to the Carlyle Group, a massive private equity investment firm whose Chairman Emeritus is Frank Carlucci, a former college roommate of Donald Rumsfeld’s and former Defense Secretary under Ronald Reagan. Imagine the pull Carlucci has with today’s White House…
But Carlucci has another secret weapon – Bush Sr. Amid conflict-of-interest allegations, the elder Bush resigned from the Carlyle Group in 2003, but reportedly remains on retainer, opening doors to lucrative profits in the Middle East and elsewhere. Bush Sr.’s specialty is Saudi Arabia; in fact, he was at a Carlyle investment conference with Osama bin Laden’s estranged brother, Shafiq bin Laden, when the 9/11 attacks took place.
Carlyle specializes in military and security investments, and with Bush Jr. in office, the company’s profits have soared; it received $677 million in contracts in 2002, then a whopping $2.1 billion in 2003. Carlyle’s investors currently enjoy an equity capital pool of over 44 billion dollars.
In January 2006, Bush Sr. wrote China’s Foreign Affairs Ministry that it would be “beneficial to the comprehensive development of Sino-US relations” if Beijing approved the sale of a Chinese bank to a consortium which included Carlyle. Bluntly put, Bush Sr. asked China to grant Carlyle a lucrative business deal or risk his son’s wrath. Foreign policy at its finest.
William H. T. “Bucky” Bush
George’s “Uncle Bucky” joined the board of military contractor Engineered Support Systems Inc. (ESSI) in 2000 and perhaps not surprisingly, the value of the company’s governmental contracts has strongly increased with Bush Jr. in office. Uncle Bucky earns monthly consulting fees as well as options to buy stock at favorable prices, and considering that ESSI’s stock tripled two weeks after 9/11 then settled into comfy territory, it’s safe to say that George’s uncle is doing quite well. In fact, Bucky cashed out on 8,438 stock options in January 2005, earning himself a cool $450,000 in the process. As of 2005, he still owned options on 45,000 more shares of the company’s stock and accrues more each year.
War is profitable for ESSI, or as an executive explained: “The increasing likelihood for a prolonged military involvement in Southwest Asia by U.S. forces well into 2006 has created a fertile environment for the type of support … products and services that we offer.”
But lest anyone conclude that Bucky has opened doors for the company, ESSI’s vice-president of investor relations explained in 2005, “The fact his nephew is in the White House has absolutely nothing to do with Mr Bush being on our board or with our stock having gone up 1000 per cent in the past five years.” Absolutely nothing at all.
Neil Mallon Bush
Neil rose to infamy in the 1980s as director of the Colorado-based Silverado Savings and Loan; after Silverado collapsed due to mismanagement and corruption, US taxpayers were stuck with the billion-dollar bailout, yet Neil managed to escape the crisis with a small fine and no jail time. It helps to have a dad as Vice President.
In 1993, Neil joined Bush Sr. in Kuwait to drum up business in the Middle East, and today, he makes a profit by helping companies cash in on the occupation of Iraq. For example, in late 2003, The Financial Times reported that Neil earned $60,000 per year through the Crest Investment Company, a private firm generating contracts in Iraq. Crest was headed by Jamal Daniel, a longtime Bush family contact, who was also on the advisory board of New Bridge Strategies, a company specifically set up “with the aim of assisting clients to evaluate and take advantage of business opportunities in the Middle East following the conclusion of the U.S.-led war in Iraq.”
In 2003, Neil’s messy divorce proceedings revealed that he was to get $2 million in stock options from a Chinese semiconductor firm despite having limited education or business experience in that area; critics complained that the Chinese company was buying access to his brother, the president. Neil later testified that on repeated business trips to Asia, he’d had sex with women who showed up at his hotel rooms, presumably prostitutes hired by companies trying to curry favor with the White House.
Neil has also profited from George’s disastrous No Child Left Behind educational policy. His company, Ignite! (partially owned by Bush Sr. and funded by Crest Investment) has been awarded with lucrative federal contracts to place its educational products in school districts across the country.
Marvin Pierce Bush
Marvin joined Bush Sr. and Neil on their Middle Eastern sales trip in 1993 and then made a mint in the investment banking business. He is a co-founder of Winston Partners, a private investment firm whose investments in military and security firms profit from Bush’s “war on terror.”
Having a sibling as president has helped Marvin in other ways, too. He is on the board of HCC Insurance Holdings, Inc., which had insured parts of the World Trade Center; HCC benefited from the 9/11 insurance bailout legislation pushed through by brother George.
Marvin was also on the board of Securacom, a company which provided electronic security for both Dulles International Airport and the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Marvin stepped down in 2000, but how intriguing that Bush’s brother was so well connected to the security of two critical locations on that fateful day.
In short, the “results are very good” for the Bush dynasty, perhaps even “better than expected,” thanks to George’s stint in the Oval Office. Dad’s still setting up international deals. Uncle Bucky’s cashing in his stock options. Brothers Neil and Marvin are laughing all the way to the bank.
It’s just the American people who have paid the ultimate price.
Action Ideas:
1. For more on war profiteering, head over to Halliburton Watch and Corp Watch. Catch a screening of the new Robert Greenwald film entitled Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers.
2. If you’re searching for information on contemporary foreign policy issues, coupled with an opportunity to take positive action, check out Women’s Action for New Directions. The site offers in-depth coverage of Hot Topics, such as war and nuclear weapons, as well as fact sheets and other resources. Visit WAND’s Take Action! center for petitions to sign and opportunities to contact Congress, the White House and the media about the peace and security issues you care about most.
Heather Wokusch is the author of The Progressives’ Handbook: Get the Facts and Make a Difference Now and can be reached at www.heatherwokusch.com.
Posted by anthony
Anthony Lappé is GNN's Executive Editor. He's written for The New York Times, Details, New York, Paper, The Fader and Vice, among many others. He has worked as a producer for MTV and Fuse. He is the co-author of GNN's True Lies and the producer of their Iraq doc,...
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Posted by anthony on Wednesday, November 26th 2003
seems like the only one not making money off the war is me.
I’ll bet I could replace Haliburton’s meal preparation. Who’d want some oil company making your food when you can have MCDONALDS?
Stop and think it over
Try and put yourself in their unique position
If they get rich and profit from war
It’s a family tradition
haha i love mcnuggets. i loved them 20 years ago when it wasn’t even really chicken. send the troops happy meals!
George Soros invested $100 million in Carlyle (I believe in the late 90s). Can someone find out if and when he pulled out? (I’m assuming he did, given his anti-Bush PR).
Former UK prime minister John Major also is/was in Carlyle. Years back, when Soros made a run on the British Pound, then PM Major said he would buy up to 15 billion pounds to protect Sterling. Soros said that was about how much he was going to sell all at once. So the Pound fell and Soros made the largest profit ever made by a currency-trader in one day — he made 1 billion Pounds, quite a staggering sum.
Strange how Soros and Major wound up in Carlyle together afterward. No hard feelings for Major, I suppose, because the billlion Sterling bill was passed on to the English public, not him.
The currency manipulation performed by Soros & others during the late 90s (Asian Economic Crisis) which devastated entire economies did wonders for Carlyle (where he was an investor). George HW Bush and the Carlyle squad merrily went about buying up suddenly under-valued Asian companies that had to be sold in the cash-poor wake of the crisis. Once hit, the poorer countries then had to receive IMF loans on the condition that they first accepted Neoliberal ‘restructuring programs’.
After it all settled down, the Asian countries did exactly what the Americans hoped: they bought up billions in greenbacks and treasuries (to avoid any further crises), which now are worth less and less as the years go by.
Bet your ass it is, tingbudong.
Carlyle… State Street… Citibank… Brown Bros. Harriman… Halliburton…
Enron. WorldCom. Tyco. ABB (who survived theirs).
Rummy… Bush… Bush Sr… Cheney… Andy Card… Ron Logue…
Fritz Thyssen. Prescott Bush. Irene DuPont. John J. Raskob. William Doyle. Grayson Murphy.
Look around.
McNuggets were good back before I started eating actual chicken. In fact, they’re still pretty good….must be the grease. I dunno, I don’t eat much fast food anymore.
This is a good article to post as the elections draw near.
I’ll never forget when GHWB was questioned about his sons’ involvement in the Silverado caper and why Neil was not inedited, GHWB reply was… “The system works, I have faith in it.” My thoughts on his comment were “Yea right, it works when it is twisted for your family.”
“The system works, I have faith in it.”
Yep the fact that he was guilty fraud and walked clean away proves that for the extreemly rich and powerful the system does indeed “work”.
When you’re at the top of the system, the allegorical “admin,” the system does indeed bend for you and those you care about. I wonder how close George is to his brothers anyway…like actual close, not how many cards they get at Christmastime close.
In that family? I wonder if they were “close” enough to be able to turn their backs on one another. How many kids you figure GHWB REALLY had? We know how many LIVED.
How many kids you figure GHWB REALLY had? We know how many LIVED
What do you mean by that statement??
Ya think they were smothering each other as they slept when they were youngsters?
what’s interesting to me is how many democrats are profiting as well. i wonder what changes (if any) to this structure would come about supposing, say, the dems take back either house. or even the presidency.
house – next month; presidency in ’08, to clarify…
Doliver, one of the dems’ fave wet-dreams is a dem congress (Petosi as speaker of the house) which successfully impeaches both Bush and Cheney, making Petosi the first woman president. Of course, the dems, even though I have always and likely always will vote dem, are just another part of the ruling class. And as long as we have a ruling class there will be corruption, wars, genocide and all the other cool things rulers have always given us. And if by some miracle we could overthrow the ruling class, leaders of that movement would become the new ruling class. Only when the mass of people turn away from governments will it end. And that’s doesn’t seem likely this afternoon, nor tomorrow for that matter.
Power elites are nepotistic fucks. Shock.
well it seems a good thread on gnn, gasp. it does suck that many times revolutionaries simply turn into authoritarian dicks, making the whole shebang continue in oppressive fashion. it also seems for our own survival, and the planets, we will indeed have to fight these oligarchs, and bearing in mind the fate of past revolutions, do what we can to limit the abuse of power. getting rid of institutions like the state and corporations is a good place to start. going about it…. gonna be tough (but such is life, death being certain all one can do then is fight for what believes in. for me that’s the planet and change, i’m fighting for it.)
“How many kids you figure GHWB REALLY had? We know how many LIVED
What do you mean by that statement??
Ya think they were smothering each other as they slept when they were youngsters?”
Wow, talk about competitive Ivy League childhoods.