I'm beginning to think these Bush boys might be the most forgetful boys since the Professor Backwards...First it was Kenny Boy and then Shrub forgets his name and starts calling him Mr. Lay. Shrub can't remember his military duty and now we have another acorn being forgetful...Hell! I thought it was dyslexia these boys suffered from. Now we find out it is I CAN't REMEMBER Nuttin Syndrome these Bush boys suffer.
"Tell Him...The Vice President's Son" Called
"There was no conflict of interest," third Bush son Neil told reporters after the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) in Washington issued a notice of intent in January 1990 to hold a hearing on the failure of Silverado Banking Savings and Loan. Neil had been a member of Silverado's board of directors from 1985 to 1988. *45 Federal regulators shut down Silverado shortly after George Bush was elected president in 1988. The federal bailout cost U.S. taxpayers $1 billion.
Neil was responding to charges made in an OTS report that he had "breached his fiduciary duty" to Silverado by engaging in unethical business deals while a board member of the Denver savings and loan. The report documented that Neil personally profited from questionable Silverado loans to his business partners, Ken Good and Bill Walters. Good and Walters later defaulted on $132 million in loans to Silverado, leaving the taxpayers to pick up the tab.
The OTS report alleged that Neil failed to disclose his business connections to Good and Walters when he voted to approve a $900,000 line of credit to Good International, Inc. Neil got Silverado to write a letter of recommendation to authorities in Argentina, where Good International, in partnership with Neil's JNB Exploration Company, was exploring for gas and oil. Good also gave the President's third son a $100,000 loan to invest in the commodities market, which Bush was never required to repay.
Neil failed to inform Silverado that Walters had contributed $150,000 to the initial capitalization of JNB Exploration, or that Walters' Cherry Creek National Bank in Denver extended a $1.5 million line of credit to JNB Exploration. Neil put up a paltry $100 in start-up funds in 1983 when he founded JNB Exploration, but over the next five years was paid $550,000 in salary drawn from the Cherry Creek National Bank line of credit.
Neil brought few business skills to his job at JNB Exploration but he was adept at cashing in on his family name. "Tell him Neil Bush called," Neil once told the secretary of a wealthy Denver oil entrepreneur. "You know, the vice president's son."
"Neil knew people because of his name," acknowledged Evans Nash, one of Neil's partners at JNB Exploration. "He's the one that got us going. He's the one that made it happen for us."
When Neil left JNB Exploration in 1989, the company had yet to discover a profitable gas or oil well.
Neil: The Sensitive One
Neil's business partners also included shady characters with ties to the world of covert operations. In 1985, Good received an $86 million loan from the Dallas Western Savings Association, which was tied to Robert Corson, a Texas developer and reputed CIA operative, and Herman Beebe, Sr., a convicted Mafia associate of Louisiana mob boss Carlos Marcello.
Neil profited from the Western Savings loan to Good, because the loan helped Good buy Gulfstream Land and Development, a Florida real estate company. Good made Neil a board member of one of Gulfstream's subsidiaries in 1988. Bush was paid $100,000 a year to attend occasional Gulfstream board meetings before it went out of business in 1990.
Investigative reporter Pete Brewton identified Corson as a CIA operative in a long Houston Post series on CIA links to organized crime and failed savings and loans. "One former CIA operative told the Post that Corson frequently acted as `a mule' for the agency, meaning he would carry large sums of money from country to country," Brewton wrote.
Corson's Vision Banc Savings in Kingsville, Texas, loaned about $20 million to Mike Atkinson, a Corson associate, for a Florida land deal put together by Lawrence Freeman. Freeman, who laundered money for Santos Trafficante, Jr., was also tied to veteran CIA operative Paul Helliwell. In the Bahamas, Helliwell set up Castle Bank and Trust Ltd., which was the CIA's primary financial front in Latin America and the Caribbean during the 1960s and 1970s. Castle laundered funds for the Agency's covert operations against Cuba.
Walters had ties to Richard Rossmiller, a Beebe associate. In the mid-1970s, Walters was a part-owner with Rossmiller, of Peoples State Bank in Marshall, Texas, at the same time as Rossmiller was doing business with Beebe.
Wayne Reeder, another Beebe associate, a big borrower from Silverado, defaulted on a $14 million loan. Reeder was involved in an unsuccessful arms deal with the Contras. Reeder accompanied his partner, John Nichols, in 1981 to a weapons demonstration attended by Contra leaders Eden Pastora and Raul Arana, both of whom were interested in buying military equipment from Nichols. |
