--- In OliveStarlightOrchestra_at_yahoogroups.com, mayhem <meurtre_at_e...>
wrote:
> > Wonderful. You pretty much said everything I've wanted to say but
with
> > intelligence. I do recommend that both you and Joy apply for jobs
at
> > Bechtel to get a share of the millions that will "trickle down".
> > You're not Executive Level?!? Would you settle for $40,000/year
plus
> > free parking?
>
> Hey. We're *both* executive level.
>
You're both highly intelligent but with way too much scruples,
honesty, and integrity. Therefore neither of you would last two
seconds in a true Executive Level position. Eadington might last
longer due to his golf game but...
> > And no one has mentioned that Bush has struck out once maybe twice
by
> > not getting the persons supposedly responsible for (supporting)
> > terrorism. Bin Laden still lives and Hussein may be alive
somewhere.
>
> I don't believe that Hussein is alive. But if he is, he's certainly
pretty
> distracted by trying to stay that way. And he no longer controls
Iraq.
>
But even if still alive he has some influence and can still issue
call-to-arms and can still appear as some sort of propaganda image. He
might not strap on a boomboom backpack but he could help quite a few
Palestinian terror groups by making an in-person appearance.
> > Regime change is fine and dandy but if we're combating terrorism,
it
> > makes sense to eliminate the head honchos and on that count Bush
has
> > failed mightily. With even bin Laden alive there's a known source
-
> > with major dinero - promoting terrorism.
>
> Not with all his assets frozen he ain't.
>
> And I kind of think that he will be tracked down eventually. It
hasn't
> really been that long. Sometimes it takes Mossad years to take down
> terrorists--but they always do, sooner or later.
>
You think *ALL* his assets are frozen? If still alive he likely
grabbed a few big bundles of cash before skedaddling plus he likely
has a few accounts under pseudonyms. He's probably shacking up with
his sons, a few "wicked women" and having orgies every night - the
bastard.
Mossad is good but not that good. And our track record on intelligence
matters has suffered quite recently as well.
> > And what if in Iraq the people desire a Taliban-like regime? Will
we
> > (cough) militarily suggest otherwise?
>
> That one is an easy answer: universal suffrage. Including women.
Solves
> a couple of problems at once.
>
*IF* given a chance to implement it. If a conservative Islamic element
takes over suffrage won't be an issue; it won't happen.
> > Is it even Democracy we want to promote?
> > http://www.chrononhotonthologos.com/lawnotes/repvsdem.htm
>
> We live in a democratic republic, colloquially referred to as a
democracy.
>
>
Ummm and our political house is in such wonderful order that we want
others to emulate it?!? Freakin' scary. I would hope that other
nations would see our political system and try to improve upon it. I
know I'm getting tired of voting for the lesser of two evils.
H.S.T. For President!!!
***** More Liberal Propaganda - For Old Times Sake *****
Bush Family Value$
A Mother Jones classic: Back in 1992, Mother Jones dug into the
dubious financial dealings of then-President George Bush's three sons.
With one of them now running for dad's former office, we thought we'd
bring the story out for an encore.
by Stephen Pizzo
September/October 1992
In 1991, President Bush bristled at a flurry of news accounts that
questioned the business ethics of three of his sons. "The media ought
to be ashamed of itself for what they're doing," Bush complained.
"They [the boys] have a right to make a living, and their
relationships are appropriate," added a White House spokeswoman in
June 1992.
Since George Bush has raised "family values" as a campaign issue
repeatedly, though, it seems only fair to take a look at his own
family. A computer search showed that over the past five years stories
have periodically surfaced chronicling the individual business antics
of the president's sons -- each riding comfortably through life in the
slipstream of his father's growing power and influence.
Although a handful of good reporters for the New York Times, LA Times,
Village Voice, and Wall Street Journal have diligently been digging
through business records for months, something has been missing: an
overview that "connects the dots" in the myriad deals that have been
examined, making it clear that cashing in on influence has become a
pattern of behavior extending through the first family.
Instead of criticizing reporters, the president might more wisely
begin listening to those in government who have watched his sons with
mounting worry. A year ago, I sat across a desk from a Secret Service
agent who had been assigned to Bush-family security. I rattled off the
names of a half-dozen questionable characters who had found their way
into business deals with the Bush boys. How had these characters been
allowed to get even close to the president's sons?
The agent slumped back in his chair and sighed. "We warn them," he
said in a whisper. "But that's all we can do. We can't stop these kids
from associating with someone they want to be with. All we can do
after warning them is to sweep these guys with metal detectors when
they come around."
What follows is a sourcebook of concerns about the president's three
sons.
George W. Bush
None of George Bush's offspring is more his father's son than George
W. Bush. George Jr., or "Shrub" as Molly Ivins refers to him, began
his own Texas oil career in the mid-1970s when he formed Bush
Exploration. Like the business dealings of his brothers, George's
company was not a success, and it was rescued in 1983 by another oil
company, Spectrum 7, run by several staunch and well-heeled
Reagan-Bush supporters. But by mid-1986, a soft oil market found
Spectrum also near bankruptcy.
Many oil companies went belly-up during that time. But Spectrum had
one asset the others lacked -- the son of the vice-president. Rescue
came in 1986 in the form of Harken Energy, just in the nick of time.
Harken absorbed Spectrum, and, in the process, Junior got $600,000
worth of Harken stock in return for his Spectrum shares. He also won a
lucrative consulting contract and stock options. In all, the deal
would put well over $1 million in his pocket over the next few years
-- even though Harken itself lost millions.
Harken Energy was formed in l973 by two oilmen who would benefit from
a successful covert effort to destabilize Australia's Labor Party
government (which had attempted to shut out foreign oil exploration).
A decade later, Harken was sold to a new investment group headed by
New York attorney Alan G. Quasha, a partner in the firm of Quasha,
Wessely & Schneider. Quasha's father, a powerful attorney in the
Philippines, had been a staunch supporter of then-president Ferdinand
Marcos. William Quasha had also given legal advice to two top
officials of the notorious Nugan Hand Bank in Australia, a CIA
operation.
After the sale of Harken Energy in 1983, Alan Quasha became a director
and chairman of the board. Under Quasha, Harken suddenly absorbed
Junior's struggling Spectrum 7 in 1986. The merger immediately opened
a financial horn of plenty and reversed Junior's fortunes. But like
his brother Jeb, Junior seemed unconcerned about the characters who
were becoming his benefactors. Harken's $25 million stock offering in
1987, for example, was underwritten by a Little Rock, Arkansas,
brokerage house, Stephens, Inc., which placed the Harken stock
offering with the London subsidiary of Union Bank -- a bank that had
surfaced in the scandal that resulted in the downfall of the
Australian Labor government in 1976 and, later, in the Nugan Hand Bank
scandal. (It was also Union Bank, according to congressional hearings
on international money laundering, that helped the now-notorious Bank
of Credit and Commerce International skirt Panamanian money-laundering
laws by flying cash out of the country in private jets, and that was
used by Ferdinand Marcos to stash 325 tons of Philippine gold around
the world.)
Stephens, Inc., also helped introduce the BCCI virus into US banking
in 1978 when it arranged the sale of Bert Lance's National Bank of
Georgia to BCCI front man Ghaith Pharoan. (The head of Stephens, Inc.,
Jackson Stephens, is a member of President Bush's exclusive "Team 100,
" a group of 249 wealthy individuals who have contributed at least
$100,000 each to the GOP's presidential-campaign committee.)
If any of these associations raised questions in the mind of George
Bush, Jr., he had little incentive to voice them. Besides getting
Harken stock through the deal, Junior was paid $80,000 a year as a
consultant (until 1989, when his wages were increased to $120,000;
recently they were reduced to $45,000). He was also allowed to borrow
$180,375 from the company at very low interest rates. In 1989 and
1990, according to the company's Securities and Exchange Commission
filing, Harken's board "forgave" $341,000 in loans to its executives.
In addition, Junior took advantage of the company's ultraliberal
executive stock purchase plan, which allowed him to buy Harken stock
at 40 percent below market value.
Such lavish executive compensation would suggest a company doing quite
well indeed. But in reality, Harken had little going for itself. One
Wall Street analyst called Harken's web of insider stock deals and
mounting debt "a lot of jiggery-pokery." Harken was not making money
and could not have continued into 1990 without at least some means of
convincing lenders and investors that the company would soon find a
lot of oil.
Suddenly, in January 1990, Harken Energy became the talk of the Texas
oil industry. The company with no offshore-oil-drilling experience
beat out a more-established international conglomerate, Amoco, in
bagging the exclusive contract to drill in a promising new offshore
oil field for the Persian Gulf nation of Bahrain. The deal had been
arranged for Harken by two former Stephens, Inc., brokers. A company
insider claims the president's son did not initiate the deal -- but
feels that his presence in the firm helped with the Bahrainis. "Hell,
that's why he's on the damn board," the insider says. "...You say, 'By
the way, the president's son sits on our board.' You use that. There's
nothing wrong with that."
Junior has told acquaintances conflicting stories about his own
involvement in the deal. He first claimed that he had "recused"
himself from the deal; "George said he left the room when Bahrain was
being discussed 'because we can't even have the appearance of having
anything to do with the government.' He was into a big rant about how
unfair it was to be the president's son. He said, 'I was so scrupulous
I was never in the room when it was discussed.'"
Junior alternately claimed, to reporters for the Wall Street Journal
and D Magazine, that he had opposed the arrangement. But the company
insider says, to the contrary, that Junior was excited about the
Bahrain deal. "Like any member of the board, he was thrilled," the
associate says. "His attitude was, 'Holy shit, what a great deal!'"
Through the Bahrain deal, the ties between BCCI and Harken Energy grew
tighter. Sheikh Khalifah, the prime minister of Bahrain and brother of
the emir, was also a shareholder in BCCI -- and it was Khalifah who
played the key role in selecting Harken for the job. Sheikh Abdullah
Bakhsh, in turn, was a business associate of BCCI front man Ghaith
Pharoan; he bought a chunk of Harken's stock and placed his
representative, Talat Othman, on Harken Energy's board of directors.
Did Junior or any of the other Harken Energy executives trade on the
Bush name in these speculative business deals? None of the principals
will answer questions. But this much is known: after the
Harken-Bahrain deal was settled, Othman was added to the list of
fifteen Arabs who met with President George Bush and National Security
Adviser Brent Scowcroft three times in 1990 -- once just two days
after Iraq invaded Kuwait -- while serving on Harken's board of
directors.
The promise of hitting it big in the oil-rich gulf was certainly
critical for Harken. News of the Bahrain deal kept investors buying
stock and lenders making loans. Still, Harken had nowhere near the
capital required for such a large offshore operation halfway around
the world. This required real money. But not to worry: The billionaire
Bass brothers stepped up to the plate and said they'd be happy to
underwrite the cost of the drilling in return for a piece of the
action. (Robert Bass is a member of President Bush's Team 100; he and
other Bass family members have contributed $226,000 to George, Sr.'s,
cause since 1988.)
But even well-heeled friends like the Bass brothers could not protect
Harken from the troubles of the world. Just four months after the
Bahrain deal was sealed, storm clouds developed over the gulf region,
threatening the oil-exploration deal. In May 1990, the U.S. State
Department sent a chilling but still classified report to Scowcroft.
The report warned that Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was out of
control and was threatening his neighbors:
May 16, 1990
SECRET
Attached is a paper containing a list of options for responding to
recent actions and statements by the Government of Iraq. ...We ask
that you pass this paper to Robert Gates [CIA] for his review.
Under "options" the memo suggested:
Ban Oil Purchases: The largest benefit Iraq receives from the US is
through our oil purchases...
PRO -- A total ban on oil purchases would have some short-term impact.
CON -- Such action might also have an impact on US Oil prices.
Oil companies had learned, during the years of the long Iran-Iraq war,
that trouble in the gulf hurts companies with oil interests because,
for one thing, at the first sound of a rifle shot in the gulf region,
Lloyds of London jacks up insurance rates on oil tankers and company
installations. The "wartime" rates are very high and cut deeply into
company profits and investor confidence. If things really get out of
hand, pipelines are destroyed and waterways are mined.
The secret memo augured ill for Harken's fledgling venture. To
compound matters, that same month, Harken's own financial advisers at
Smith Barney produced a hand-wringing report voicing alarm at the
company's rapidly deteriorating financial condition. (A former company
official told Mother Jones that Harken owed more than $150 million to
banks and other creditors at the time.) Since Harken wasn't producing
anything, it was hard to find a revenue stream, unless you count the
river of fees, stock options, and salaries running into the pockets of
Junior and other top Harken executives. Junior, as a member of
Harken's restructuring committee, could not have been ignorant of the
report, since the board had met in May and worked directly with the
Smith Barney consultants.
In June 1990, Junior suddenly unloaded the bulk of his Harken stock --
212,140 shares -- for a tidy $848,560. A former business associate
says that Junior's motivation was his desire to buy an expensive new
house in Dallas, for which he wanted to pay cash. The June 1990
transaction was an insider stock sale, and security laws required that
it be reported no later than July 10, 1990. But Junior filed no such
report, at least not then.
Then, in August, Iraqi troops marched into Kuwait, and Harken shares
plummeted 25 percent. Junior would have lost $212,140 if he'd waited
to sell his shares until then. Still, he didn't file his SEC
disclosure until seven months later, in March 1991 -- well after U.S.
troops had finished fighting and the gulf war had moved off the front
pages. Harken stock rebounded briefly, but quickly collapsed again.
Were government secrets discussed, directly or indirectly, that would
have given Harken Energy a leg up in exploiting the Bahrain deal? The
White House won't say. If Junior traded on exclusive, nonpublic,
insider information, he committed a gross violation of SEC rules.
Taken together, the company's critical need for success in its
Bahraini deal and a possible oil embargo to be imposed by his father
provided Junior with strong motivation to bail out of Harken stock
before the public discovered either piece of news. (SEC spokesman John
Heine says he is unaware of any enforcement action pending.)
The folks at Harken Energy weren't the only ones in Texas taking care
of Junior during the 1980s. He was appointed the managing partner of
the Texas Rangers baseball team, even though his partnership
contribution was only a fraction of the team's purchase price. Among
those coughing up the money to buy the Rangers were William DeWitt and
Mercer Reynolds, major contributors to the president's campaign who
had also been in on the rescue of Junior's oil company.
Junior doesn't deny that being a Bush has helped him become a
millionaire. "I recognize what my talents are and what my weaknesses
are," he told Texas reporters last year. "I don't get hung up on it.
Being George Bush's son has its pluses and minuses in some people's
minds. In my thinking, it's a plus."
Junior might have been thinking that among the minuses were questions
about his role at Harken. As this article was being prepared -- and in
the midst of extensive interviewing of former and current Harken
business associates -- Junior announced a six-month leave of absence
as a consultant and member of the Harken board. His role in the
presidential campaign, the statement said, precluded Junior's active
involvement at Harken through the remainder of 1992.
In any case, Junior is stepping away from a company in deep trouble.
Harken stock is trading near its all-time low. Recently, test wells in
Bahrain turned up dry and the company has not produced anything else.
"Harken is not hard to understand -- it's easy," says Charles Strain,
an energy-company analyst in Houston. "The company has only one real
asset -- its Bahrain contract. If that field turns out to be dry,
Harken's stock is worth, at the most, 25 cents a share. If they hit it
big over there, the stock could be worth $30 to $40 dollars a share.
It's a pure crapshoot."
John Ellis ("Jeb") Bush
After graduating from Texas University, Jeb Bush served a short
apprenticeship at the Venezuelan branch of Texas Commerce Bank in
Caracas before settling in Miami, in 1980, to work on his father's
unsuccessful primary bid against Ronald Reagan. Campaigning for Dad
was hardly a paying job. But Jeb was about to learn that being one of
George Bush's sons means never having to circulate a résumé.
In the next few years, financial support flowed to Jeb through Miami's
right-wing Cuban community. Republican party politics and a series of
business scandals -- including Medicaid fraud and shady S&L deals --
were inextricably intertwined. A former federal prosecutor told MJ
that, when he looked into Jeb's lucrative business dealings with a
now-fugitive Cuban, he considered two possibilities -- Jeb was either
crooked or stupid. At the time, he concluded Jeb was merely stupid.
Jeb and Armando Codina
Shortly after arriving in Miami, Jeb was hired by Cuban-American
developer Armando Codina to work at his Miami development company as
an agent leasing office space. A couple of years later, Jeb and Codina
became business partners, and in 1985 they purchased an office
building in a deal partly financed by a savings and loan that later
failed.
The $4.56 million loan, from Broward Federal Savings in Sunrise,
Florida, was granted in such a way that neither Codina's nor Bush's
name appeared on the loan papers as the borrowers. A third man, J.
Edward Houston, borrowed the $4.56 million from Broward and then
re-lent it to the Bush partnership. When federal regulators closed
Broward Savings in 1988, they found the loan, which had been secured
by the Bush partnership, in default.
As Jeb's father was finishing his second term as vice-president and
running for the presidency, federal regulators had two options: to get
Jeb Bush and his partner to repay the loan, or to foreclose on their
office building. But regulators came up with a third solution. After
reappraising the building, regulators decided it wasn't worth as much
as was owed for it. The regulators reduced the amount owed by Bush and
his partner from $4.56 million to just $500,000. The pair paid that
amount and were allowed to keep their office building. Taxpayers
picked up the tab for the unpaid $4 million.
After the Broward Savings deal was revealed, Jeb described himself and
his partner as "victims of circumstances."
Jeb and Camilo Padrera
By 1984, Jeb had been made chairman of the Dade County Republican
party, and it was as Republican party chief that he nuzzled up to con
man Camilo Padreda. Padreda was serving as Dade County GOP finance
chairman and had raised money for the party from Miami's Cuban
community. (He had also been a counterintelligence officer for deposed
Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.) Padreda made his living as a
developer who specialized in deals with the corrupt Department of
Housing and Urban Development. In 1986, he hired Jeb as the leasing
agent for a vacant commercial-office building, which Padreda had built
with $1.4 million in federal loans -- loans approved by HUD officials,
oddly enough, even though they knew there was already a glut of vacant
office space in Miami.
Like so many of those who would attach themselves to the Bush sons
over the years, Padreda brought some hefty luggage with him. In 1982,
four years before teaming up with Jeb, Padreda, along with another
right-wing Cuban exile, Hernandez Cartaya, was indicted and accused of
looting Jefferson Savings and Loan Association in McAllen, Texas. The
federal indictment charged that the pair had embezzled over $500,000
from the thrift. (Cartaya was also charged with drug smuggling, money
laundering, and gun running.) But the Jefferson Savings case would
never go to trial.
Soon after the indictment, FBI officials got a call from someone at
the CIA warning the agents that Cartaya was one of their own -- a
veteran of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion -- according to a
prosecutor who worked on the case. In short order, the charges against
Padreda were dropped and the charges against Cartaya were reduced to a
single count of tax evasion. (Assistant U.S. Attorney Jerome Sanford
was furious and filed a demand with the CIA, under the Freedom of
Information Act, for all documents relating to the agency's
interference in his case. The CIA, citing national-security reasons,
denied Sanford's request.)
In 1989, Houston Post reporter Pete Brewton wrote about Jefferson
Savings and Cartaya in a series of stories alleging that CIA
operatives and contractors had systematically misused at least
twenty-six savings and loans during the 1980s as part of a secret
program to fund illegal "off-the-shelf" covert operations,
particularly those aiding the Nicaraguan contras. (CIA officials
denied the charge, but admitted to the House intelligence Committee in
1990 that former CIA operatives had been working at four of the S&Ls
named in Brewton's article. A CIA spokesman claimed that agency
operatives had done nothing illegal.)
The Jefferson Savings affair occurred four years before Jeb Bush met
Padreda, and it is possible he missed earlier reports. But he could
hardly have passed over the next batch of stories involving Padreda's
questionable practices, because they were spread across the front
pages of Miami's papers in 1985, just months before the two teamed up.
These stories, in Jeb's hometown paper, alleged that Padreda had
improperly influenced a local politician -- the Dade County manager,
to be precise, who'd been made a secret partner when Padreda ran into
trouble getting a parcel of land rezoned. The property was promptly
rezoned, and the county official made a quick $127,000 profit when
Padreda, in turn, "sold" it to an offshore Padreda partnership. That
partnership was controlled from Panama by a fugitive Miami attorney,
who had already been indicted for laundering drug money. (The official
resigned, but Padreda was not charged in the case.)
Yet the 1985 scandal did not seem to lessen Jeb's enthusiasm for
Camilo Padreda. Jeb enthusiastically accepted the task of finding
tenants for Padreda's empty HUD-financed office building. Padreda, the
government officials involved, and Jeb all refused to answer questions
about the scandal. But of allegations that Padreda engaged in illegal
behavior, there remains no doubt. In 1989, he pleaded guilty to
charges that he defrauded HUD of millions of dollars during the 1980s.
Jeb and Miguel Recarey
With Miami awash in empty office space in 1986, it was no small event
when bagged International Medical Centers as a key tenant for
Padreda's HUD-financed building. IMC, which leased nearly all the
space in Padreda's vacant building, was at the time one of the
nation's fastest-growing health-maintenance organizations (HMO) and
had become the largest recipient of federal Medicare funds.
IMC was run by Cuban-American Miguel Recarey, a character with a host
of idiosyncrasies. He carried a 9-mm Heckler & Koch semiautomatic
pistol under his suit coat and kept a small arsenal of AR-15 and Uzi
assault rifles at his Miami estate, where his bedroom was protected by
bullet-proof windows and a steel door. It apparently wasn't his
enemies Recarey feared so much as his friends. He had a long-standing
relationship with Miami Mafia godfather Santo Trafficante, Jr., and
had participated in the illfated, CIA-inspired mob assassination plot
against Fidel Castro in the early 1960s. (Associates of Recarey add
that Trafficante was the money behind Recarey's business ventures.)
Recarey's brother, Jorge, also had ties to the CIA. So it was no
surprise that IMC crawled with former spooks. Employee résumés were
studded with references to the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency,
and the Cuban Intelligence agency; there was even a fellow who claimed
to have been a KGB agent, An agent with the U.S. Office of Labor
Racketeering in Miami would later describe IMC as a company in which
"a criminal enterprise interfaced with intelligence operations."
Recarey also surrounded himself with those who could influence the
political system. He hired Jeb Bush as IMC's "real-estate consultant."
Though Jeb would never close a single real-estate deal, his contract
called for him to earn up to $250,000 (he actually received $75,000).
Jeb's real value to Recarey was not in real estate but in his help in
facilitating the largest HMO Medicare fraud in U.S. history.
Jeb phoned top Health and Human Services officials in Washington in
1985 to lobby for a special exemption from HHS rules for IMC. This
highly unusual waiver was critical to Recarey's scam. Without it, the
company would have been limited to a Medicare patient load of 50
percent. The balance of IMC's patients would have had to be private --
that is, paying -- customers. Recarey preferred the steady flow of
federal Medicare money to the thought of actually running a real HMO.
Former HHS chief of staff McClain Haddow (who later became a paid
consultant to IMC) testified in 1987 Jeb that directly phoned then-HHS
secretary Margaret Heckler and that it was that call that swung the
decision to approve IMCs waiver.
Jeb admits lobbying HHS for the waiver, but denies talking to
Secretary Heckler -- and denies as well the charge that his call won
the HHS exemption. "I just asked that IMC get a fair hearing," said
later. After the IMC scandal broke in 1987, Heckler left the country,
having been appointed U.S. ambassador to Ireland, a post she held
until 1989. (Heckler is now a private citizen living in Virginia. We
left a detailed message with her secretary, outlining our questions,
but she declined to respond.)
In any case, the highly unusual waiver by federal officials allowed
IMCs Medicare patient load to swell -- to 80 percent -- and the money
poured in. At its height in 1986, IMC was collecting over $30 million
a month in Medicare payments; in all, the company would collect $1
billion from Medicare. (Jeb would not discuss the IMC affair with
Mother Jones. But in an opinion piece he wrote for the Miami Herald
last May, he insisted that he had worked hard for IMC, looking for
real-estate deals, and had earned his $75,000 in commissions. While
acknowledging making a telephone call to one of Heckler's assistants
on IMC Is behalf, he claimed the waiver was not granted on his
account. The allegation of a connection, Jeb wrote, "is unfair and
untrue.")
Despite Jeb's involvement, trouble began brewing for IMC when a
low-level HHS special agent in Miami, Leon Weinstein, discovered that
Recarey was defrauding Medicare through overcharges, false invoicing,
and outright embezzlement. Weinstein had been following Recarey's
activities since 1977, and as early as 1983 he believed he had enough
information to put together a case. However, he found his HHS
superiors less than receptive; they took no action on Weinstein's
information.
But Weinstein kept digging and in 1986 renewed his investigation of
Recarey and IMC -- and again his HHS superiors blocked the probe.
"Washington just refused to pursue my evidence," Weinstein, now
retired, told Mother Jones last spring. "And they made it perfectly
clear that I was not to pursue IMC. When I did, they threatened me and
threatened my job."
Weinstein dug in his heels. "I had them this time. I told my superiors
I would fight this time because I had nothing to fear. I had just
reached retirement age. They immediately backtracked," he says.
Weinstein was allowed to continue his investigation -- though HHS
still took no formal action against Recarey. Eventually Weinstein
turned to Congressmen Barney Frank (D-NY) and Pete Stark (D-CA) with
his information, sparking congressional hearings into the scandal.
Had it been up to HHS, Recarey would still be running his Medicare
racket. But by chance, the now-disbanded U.S. Miami Organized Crime
Strike Force was also investigating Recarey. (Recarey was bribing
union officials in order to get them to sign workers up as patients at
IMC, apparently so that IMC could meet its reduced non-Medicare
patient requirements of 20 percent.) "We didn't know anything about
the HHS investigation," former Organized Crime Strike Force special
attorney Joe DeMaria says. "Recarey was bribing union officials....
But HHS never contacted us or told us anything."
Before Recarey's trial on bribery charges began, DeMaria's
investigators also caught Recarey using his former spooks to wiretap
IMC employees in an effort to discover who was talking to federal
agents. DeMaria had Recarey indicted a second time, for the illegal
listening devices. During Recarey's trial on the bribery charge, a
lawyer who handled the bribe money testified that the money IMC gave
him was not bribe money but "commissions" he had earned while doing
work for the company. "See, that commission thing was Recarey's MO.
They didn't call them bribes, they called them commissions," DeMaria
explains.
After he was convicted, Recarey resigned from IMC and was immediately
replaced by John Ward. (Ward had been law partner to Reagan-Bush
campaign manager John Sears. And Sears had also been a lobbyist for
IMC.) But Recarey's Medicare scam would never get to a public
courtroom airing. Before his trial on the wiretap charge, Recarey
skipped the country. His getaway was remarkable: just in time for his
flight, the normally tight-fisted IRS expedited a $2.2 million
income-tax refund, which Recarey claimed he had coming.
The tax refund was a windfall for Recarey. "Yeah, that was his getaway
money," says a former IRS investigator who worked in the Miami office
at the time but asked not to be named. "Though there is a special IRS
procedure to expedite tax refunds for companies in financial distress,
I don't think you can overlook the possibility that there was
influence from the administration."
Recarey's last act before becoming a fugitive was an attempt to wire
$30,000 into the bank account of Washington consultant and lobbyist
Nick Panuzio -- whose partner was then managing George Bush's 1988
presidential campaign. (The wire transfer failed only because, in his
haste, Recarey had gotten Panuzio's account number wrong.) It was only
after Recarey was safely out of the country that the U.S. attorney in
Miami -- a political appointee -- filed formal charges of Medicare
fraud against him.
Whistle-blower Leon Weinstein retired in disgust from HHS and tried to
get the IMC case before a judge by filing a Qui Tam suit. Such suits
allow a private citizen to sue to recover money for the government in
return for a share of any settlement. In his case, Weinstein named IMC
and Recarey as defendants. But HHS continued to fight Weinstein, first
challenging his right to bring such a suit and later accusing him of
stealing HHS documents before leaving his job. When the courts
supported Weinstein, HHS then stepped in, took over his lawsuit, and
shouldered him out. The case remains in the courts and is still
unresolved.
HHS officials now pursuing the litigation claim that Recarey defrauded
the Medicare system of at least $12 million. Leon Weinstein says the
government is lowballing the loss and that Recarey's take from his IMC
scam could easily be many times that figure.
Since skipping Miami in 1987, Recarey has been living comfortably in
Caracas, Venezuela. Thomas Holladay, the consul general of the U.S.
Embassy in Caracas, told Mother Jones that officials there were aware
of Recarey's presence and had formally requested his extradition. "We
made a formal request for his extradition," Consul General Holladay
says. "But we can't do anything until the Venezuelans turn him over to
us, and they have not done that." The conversation then ended
abruptly. "You know, I'm really not supposed to be talking to you
about this," Holladay says.
In May, following inquiries from Mother Jones, Congressman Pete Stark,
who sits on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, wrote to both
the Department of Justice and the Venezuelan ambassador in Washington,
demanding an explanation for six years of inaction on the Recarey
case.
Jeb and the Contras
The fact that Recarey is living free in Caracas rather than in
shackles at Fort Leavenworth could well be a result of the role IMC
may have played in Oliver North's secret contra-supply network. Though
members of the House Intelligence Committee claimed they found no
reason to believe that Recarey was using IMC's Medicare facilities and
funds to aid the contras, the evidence that IMC was involved remains
compelling. In 1985, the same year that Jeb Bush was dialing for
dollars to HHS officials for IMC, Jeb also hand-carried a letter from
Guatemalan physician Dr. Mario Castejon to the White House -- directly
to his father's office in the Executive Office Building. Dr.
Castejon's letter to Vice President Bush requested U.S. medical aid
for the contras. George Bush penned a note back to the doctor,
referring him to Lt. Col. Oliver North -- whose pro-contra activities
the president now claims he knew little about.
An entry in North's diary reads:
22-Jan-85
Medical Support System for wounded FDN in Miami -- HMO in Miami has
oked to help all WIA [wounded in action] ... Felix Rodriguez.
(Rodriguez was a former CIA official who advised Vice-President Bush's
national-security adviser, Donald Gregg, currently U.S. ambassador to
South Korea.)
Veteran CIA operative Jose Basulto told the Wall Street Journal in
1987 that he had personally attended meetings at IMC headquarters in
Miami along with contra leader Adolfo Calero and Felix Rodriguez.
Basulto also said that he had personally brought sick and wounded
contras to IMC hospitals in Miami, where they received free medical
treatment. Former HHS agent Leon Weinstein is not surprised that
Recarey has not been returned to the United States. "My investigation,
" Weinstein says, "led me to conclude that there may have been a
deliberate attempt to obstruct justice...because Recarey, his
hospital, and his clinics were treating wounded contras from
Nicaragua...and part of the $30 million a month he was given by the
government to treat Medicare patients was used to set up field
hospitals for the contras."
Jeb and "Manny" Diaz
Manuel C. Diaz, another Jeb Bush business associate, runs a commercial
nursery with headquarters in Homestead, Florida. Manny Diaz's previous
business sidekick, Charles Keating, Jr., is now sitting in a
California prison. But during Keating's days at the helm of the $6
billion Lincoln Savings, Diaz became a Keating insider, confidant, and
beneficiary. For example, in 1987, as federal regulators closed in on
his crumbling empire, Keating instructed his attorneys to transfer a
large chunk of prime Phoenix real estate to Diaz, for just $1. And
right before filing for personal bankruptcy, Keating transferred his
$2 million mansion on the island of Cat Cay in the Bahamas to Diaz.
At the same time Diaz was palling around with Keating, Jeb, then
serving as Florida's secretary of commerce, arranged a private meeting
for Diaz with Florida's Republican governor Bob Martinez. Promptly
afterward, Diaz Farms landed a lucrative, $1.72 million,
state-highway-landscaping contract -- despite the fact that Diaz had
little prior highway-landscaping experience. This raised howls of
protest and charges of political influence-peddling from other
contractors. But state officials explained that the extraordinary
speed in issuing the contract had occurred because the state was
anxious to spruce up 113 miles of freeway for the coming visit of the
pope.
Did Jeb know about Diaz's business association with Charles Keating?
Did he have reason to believe Diaz was qualified for the Florida
highway contract that he helped Diaz land? These are the kinds of
detailed questions that the Florida chairman of the Bush re-election
campaign refuses to answer.
Neil Bush
In the March/April issue of Mother Jones, I detailed Neil Bush's
activities and therefore only sketch his involvement here. Neil served
as a director of Silverado Banking, Savings and Loan in Denver,
Colorado, from 1985 until 1988. During that time, the now-dead thrift
made over $200 million in loans to Neil's two partners in JNB
Exploration, Neil's abysmally unsuccessful oil company. Silverado's
failure was due at least in part to the fact that Neil's two partners
welshed on $132 million in loans.
Federal regulators determined that, while Silverado was pumping loans
to Neil's two associates, Neil was completely dependent on the two men
for his income. The failure of Silverado -- its closure delayed until
after the 1988 election -- cost taxpayers about $1 billion. After
almost two years of hand-wringing had passed, an expert hired by
regulators declared that Neil suffered from an "ethical disability,"
and he was required to pay a $50,000 fine for his ethical lapses at
Silverado. Neil's estimated $250,000 in legal bills generated by the
scandal are reportedly being paid for him by a banking-industry
lobbyist who is fighting to get banks deregulated.
After Silverado failed, Neil started a new oil company, Apex Energy.
This time, his money came from a $2.35 million loan through a Small
Business Administration program, a loan arranged by an old family
friend. When news of this reached the press in March 1991, the SBA
discovered that the companies through which the loan was approved were
technically insolvent, and it gave them up to thirty months to
"self-liquidate." This meant that Apex would have to repay its
SBA-guaranteed loans. Neil took this as his cue to move on, and he
left Apex -- and its debts -- for others to worry about. If Apex
Energy can't be sold for more than it owes, the SBA, and ultimately
the taxpayers, will be stuck with the difference. The last time we
checked, Apex's only known asset was an oil lease, which the company
had purchased from Neil for $150,000 before he bailed out. That means
taxpayers could get stiffed for another $2.2 million as a result of
Neil Bush's wheeling and dealing. The public won't learn the precise
outcome until later this year, though. The SBA allowed thirty months
for liquidation of the SBA investment in Apex, putting the resolution
date just past the 1992 general election.
President George Bush claims that only a return to traditional family
values can cure the "poverty of spirit" that plagues places like our
decaying inner cities. But after a closer look, particularly at his
adult children, one cannot help but wonder about the values that
matter to his own family.
Bush says he is proud of his sons. One of them rented himself out to a
crooked developer who scammed HUD and helped pry millions out of
Medicare to fuel a giant health-care scam. A second may have profited
from an insider stock transaction in a gulf oil deal at the very time
that U.S. soldiers were dying to make that region safe for oil. And
the third son ran a savings and loan into the ground while shoveling
millions of its taxpayer-backed dollars into the pockets of two
deadbeat partners.
When President Bush speaks of the lack of family values he, of course,
is referring to broken marriages, single mothers, and inner-city kids
who join gangs and sell dope. But are these the only villains -- or
the most important ones -- responsible for the shredded social fabric?
What about well-to-do white boys who trade on family connections,
welsh on loans, run with con men, and leave financial ruin in their
wake as they line their own pockets? What about grown men, with access
to the most powerful public office in the land, who participate in
scandal but show no remorse for any of it -- and who take no
responsibility for the consequences of their own actions?
It's certainly reasonable for candidate Bush to engage the public in a
discussion of family values, to use his office as a bully pulpit on
modern morals. But what of George Bush's inability or unwillingness to
grasp the crisis of values festering within his own family? The
pattern of behavior by the president's three sons raises questions --
about them and their father. These issues have yet to get the
prime-time exposure of fictional Murphy Brown's fictional fatherless
child.
Stephen Pizzo is author of Inside Job: The Looting of America's
Savings and Loans.
Research assistance by Peter Willmert and Chris Rosché.
Received on 2003-04-24 15:27:54