bushtrash
Wednesday, September 29, 2004Bin Laden's Swiss stash 2003. The Sydney Morning Herald.
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Bin Laden's Swiss stash
Dec 6, 2003
Swiss investigators have revealed that Osama bin Laden was a beneficiary of a Swiss bank account until 1997.
Fifty-seven other members of the bin Laden family were also listed as beneficiaries of the account at the UBS in Zurich, which was held by two of his half-brothers, an official of the Swiss federal prosecutors' office said.
Andrea Sadecky confirmed a report in the Swiss newspaper Le Temps that said a two-year investigation had found that the al-Qaeda leader was linked to account number 575.167 opened in 1990 by his two half-brothers - Yahia bin Laden, head of the family's Saudi construction group Binladin, and Baqer bin Laden.
The investigation by Swiss authorities began after the September 11 attacks in the US in 2001.
The newspaper said the account was opened in 1990 because the bin Ladens feared Iraq could invade Saudi Arabia and seize their fortune. The account was emptied after the 1991 Gulf War and closed in 1997, it reported.
A spokesman for UBS said: "Osama bin Laden was never a client of the bank and was never an account holder."
It is not known how much money was kept in the account, but the newspaper said Osama bin Laden's share was well below 1 million Swiss francs.
Agence France-Presse
Copyright © 2003. The Sydney Morning Herald.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/12/05/1070351788307.html?from=storyrhs&oneclick=true
Posted by: trash / 8:48 PM 0 comments
bushtrash
bushtrash
An der Seite von Izetbegovic
Auch Osama bin Laden selbst war in Bosnien. »Spiegel-Balkan-Korrespondentin Renate Flottau traf ihn 1993 in Sarajevo; er stellte sich artig vor und sprach vom bosnischen Befreiungskampf, an dem seine Leute auf der Seite der Muslime mitmachen wollten. Er besaß einen Paß des neuen Staates Bosnien-Herzegowina, ausgestellt von der Botschaft in Wien, und rühmte sich, internationale Kämpfer ins Krisengebiet zu schmuggeln«, berichtete das Hamburger Nachrichtenmagazin (38/2001) mit fast acht Jahren Verspätung. Was der Spiegel nicht schrieb, aber die Belgrader Politika (4. und 5. Oktober 2001) nach einem Gespräch mit Flottau: Dieses Zusammentreffen mit bin Laden soll im Präsidentenpalast von Alija Izetbegovic stattgefunden haben. Der genoß bis zu seinem Tod im letzten Herbst höchste Anerkennung in den NATO-Staaten im allgemeinen sowie in den USA und Deutschland im besonderen, war »unser Mann« auf dem Balkan im Kampf gegen die bösen Serben. Warum traf sich der Frontmann der NATO mit bin Laden?
http://www.jungewelt.de/2004/09-11/003.php
Posted by: trash / 8:41 PM 0 comments
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On Eve of Big Tour, Springsteen Says Press Has 'Let The Country Down'
September 27, 2004
NEW YORK On the eve of the Vote for Change tour, one of the stars of the concerts, has a few words for the press.
Springsteen says, "The press has let the country down. It's taken a very amoral stand, in that essential issues are often portrayed as simply one side says this and the other side says that....The job of the press is to tell the truth without fear or favor. We have to get back to that standard."
The problem, according to Springsteen, is that "Fox News and the Republican right have intimidated the press into an incredible self-consciousness about appearing objective and backed them into a corner of sorts where they have ceded some of their responsibility and righteous power."
He also knocks the media for allowing the White House to get away with the "disgraceful" policy of refusing "to allow photographs of the flag-draped coffins of the returning dead."
E&P Staff (letters@editorandpublisher.com) .
Excerpts
Posted by: trash / 5:02 PM 0 comments
Monday, September 27, 2004bushtrash
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Carter fears Florida vote trouble
Voting arrangements in Florida do not meet "basic international requirements" and could undermine the US election, former US President Jimmy Carter says.
He said a repeat of the irregularities of the much-disputed 2000 election - which gave President George W Bush the narrowest of wins - "seems likely".
Mr Carter, a veteran observer of polls worldwide, also accused Florida's top election official of "bias".
In an article in the Washington Post newspaper, Mr Carter, a Democrat, sa
He accused Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood, a Republican, of trying to get the name of independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader included on the state ballot, knowing he might divert Democrat votes.
He also said: "A fumbling attempt has been made recently to disqualify 22,000 African Americans (likely Democrats), but only 61 Hispanics (likely Republicans), as alleged felons."
Mr Carter said Florida Governor Jeb Bush - brother of the president - had "taken no steps to correct these departures from principles of fair and equal treatment or to prevent them in the future".
"It is unconscionable to perpetuate fraudulent or biased electoral practices in any nation," he added.
"With reforms unlikely at this late stage of the election, perhaps the only recourse will be to focus maximum public scrutiny on the suspicious process in Florida."
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/3693354.stm
Posted by: trash / 10:30 PM 0 comments
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NewsweekOct. 4 issue - Deep in the Pentagon, admirals and generals are updating plans for possible U.S. military action in Syria and Iran. The Defense Department unit responsible for military planning for the two troublesome countries is "busier than ever," an administration official says. Some Bush advisers characterize the work as merely an effort to revise routine plans the Pentagon maintains for all contingencies in light of the Iraq war. More skittish bureaucrats say the updates are accompanied by a revived campaign by administration conservatives and neocons for more hard-line U.S. policies toward the countries. (Syria is regarded as a major route for jihadis entering Iraq, and Iran appears to be actively pursuing nuclear weapons.) Even hard-liners acknowledge that given the U.S. military commitment in Iraq, a U.S. attack on either country would be an unlikely last resort; covert action of some kind is the favored route for Washington hard-liners who want regime change in Damascus and Tehran.
—Mark Hosenball
© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.
Posted by: trash / 10:25 PM 0 comments
Bush Familie
bushtrash
Auszuege
Prescott Bushs Schwiegervater George Herbert Walker, 1875 geboren, war Anfang der 20er Jahre ein gemachter Mann. Für den geschäftlichen Erfolg brachte er außergewöhnliche physische Vorausset- zungen mit. Walker war in seiner Jugend Schwergewichtsboxer – ein meistens siegreicher zudem. Er ging gern auf die Jagd, spielte Golf, trank viel Scotch und verprügelte seine Söhne. Eines seiner Enkel- kinder würde ihn einst als »harten alten Bastard« charakterisieren. Walkers Heimat war am Mississippi, im US-Bundesstaat Missouri. Er besaß aber auch eines der luxuriösesten Appartements in Manhattan und mehrere Häuser an der nördlichen US-Ostküste.
Walker leitete eine Geschäftsbank in New York City namens W.A. Harriman & Company. 1922 reiste deren Eigentümer Averell Harriman, der ältere Bruder von Prescott Bushs Yale-Kumpan, nach Berlin, wo er eine Filiale seiner Bank gründete. Dort traf er Fritz Thyssen, der für Deutschlands ökonomische und politische Zukunft schwarz sah und dringend nach einem Standbein in den USA suchte. In Rotterdam hatten die Thyssens kurz zuvor eine holländische Handelsbank gekauft, und deren Direktor wurde nun nach New York geschickt, um mit Walker, dem Chef für das operative Geschäft, und Harriman zu re- den. Das Ergebnis der Verhandlungen bestand in der Gründung der Union Banking Corporation (UBC), die im selben Gebäude residierte wie die Harriman-Bank: 39 Broadway.
Während der nächsten Jahre verkauften Walker und Harriman deutsche Staatsanleihen im Wert von über 50 Millionen Dollar an US-Investoren. 1926 holte Walker seinen Schwiegersohn Prescott Bush
als Vizepräsident zu UBC, und dieser wiederum stellte mehrere seiner Kommilitonen aus der Yale-Abschlussklasse von 1917 an. Der Fokus der Arbeit Bushs lag auf zwei Stahlwerken in Schlesien. Währenddessen finanzierte Thyssen über seine holländische Bank den Erwerb von Immobilien durch Adolf Hitler. Hitler und Thyssen wurden Freunde.
Eine der beiden schlesischen Stahlfabriken, in unmittelbarer Nachbarschaft zu Auschwitz gelegen, wurde von Thyssen und Flick an UBC verkauft. Bush, inzwischen Generaldirektor der Bank, überführte das Werk in die Silesian American Corporation. Sechs Tage nach dem Überfall auf Pearl Harbor am
7. Dezember 1941 unterschrieb US-Präsident Roosevelt den »Trading With the Enemy Act«, der Ge- schäftsbeziehungen zu NS-Deutschland unter Strafe stellte. Prescott Bush schaffte es, noch fast ein ganzes Jahr lang das Stahlwerk neben dem KZ Auschwitz weiterzuführen, als sei nichts gewesen – die meisten Beschäftigten waren längst Zwangsarbeiter aus Kriegsgefangenen- und Konzentrationslagern. Im Oktober und November 1942 platzte den US-Behörden schließlich der Kragen. UBC und Silesian American Corporation wurden direkter Regierungskontrolle unterstellt; alle Geschäfte mit Deutschland waren nun nicht mehr nur untersagt, sondern effektiv unterbunden. Erst 1951, nach dem Tod Thyssens, gaben die US-Behörden UBC an Harriman zurück, und alle Eigentümer ließen sich ihren Anteil versil- bern. Prescott Bush erhielt 1,5 Millionen Dollar.
Mit diesem Geld finanzierte er den Start seiner eigenen politischen Karriere und den Aufbau des ersten Unternehmens seines Sohnes George, der Ölfirma Overbey Development Company. Als George Bush 1980 nach seiner Wahl zum Vizepräsidenten das Familienvermögen – inklusive des Erbes seines Va- ters – in Treuhandverwaltung übergab, suchte er sich als Treuhänder seinen Jagdfreund William Farish III. aus, einen der reichsten Männer in Texas. Dessen Großvater wiederum hatte die Zusammenarbeit zwischen Standard Oil und dem deutschen Chemie-Riesen IG Farben geleitet. Der spätere Präsident Harry Truman, damals noch Senator, hatte den älteren Farish in aller Öffentlichkeit als jemanden be- zeichnet, dessen Geschäftsgebaren an »Landesverrat« heranreiche. Im Vergleich zu Farish nahmen sich die Sünden Prescott Bushs jedenfalls gering aus. Jüdische Organisationen in den USA fordern bis heute, die Bush-Familie solle 1,5 Millionen Dollar an einen Entschädigungsfonds oder an Holocaust-Gedenkstätten geben. Denn Prescott Bush habe in Amerika jenes Geld beschafft, das Thyssen dann Hitler zum Aufbau seiner NSDAP-Strukturen übergeben habe. Und während des Krieges seien mit Bushs Hilfe Zwangsarbeiter ausgebeutet und jene Waffen geschmiedet worden, die später alliierte Soldaten töteten.
Robert von Rimscha: Die Bushs - Weltmacht als Familienerbe
http://www.campus.de/leseprobe/37309-2l.htm
Rezensionen
Aus der Amazon.de-Redaktion
Die Bushs wurden und werden, und dies ist eine weitere Gemeinsamkeit, gemeinhin unterschätzt. Dies jedenfalls meint Robert von Rimscha, der mit Die Bushs. Weltmacht als Familienerbe nach seinem hoch gelobten Buch Die Kennedys ein weiteres ausgesprochen lesens- und bedenkenswertes Familienporträt vorgelegt hat.
Darin legt der Autor sehr anschaulich dar, weshalb man seiner Meinung nach, wenn man Amerika verstehen will, an der Familie Bush nicht mehr vorbeikommt. Ja, am Ende äußert er sogar die Überzeugung, dass unabhängig davon, ob George W. in seinem Amt bestätigt wird, die Bushs Amerika und damit der Welt erhalten bleiben werden.
literaturtest.de
Der langjährige Amerika-Korrespondent des Berliner "Tagesspiegel", Robert von Rimscha, legt nach Die Kennedys - Glanz und Tragik eines amerikanischen Traums nun eine weitere Familiengeschichte vor. Es geht um die "schießwütigen Cowboys" (Heide Simonis) aus Texas, die Bushs. Hauptakteure sind der 41. Präsident der USA, George Bush, dessen Sohn George W. Bush, 43. Präsident der Vereinigten Staaten, und -- nicht zu vergessen -- Barbara Bush, die Frau von Bush senior. Vater und Sohn Bush verbindet, dass eigentlich keiner damit gerechnet hat, dass sie den einflussreichsten Posten in der Weltpolitik bekommen würden.
Rheinischer Merkur, 01.04.2004
"Die Stärke des Autors ist der gut lesbare Stil und die Fähigkeit, komplizierte Sachverhalte klar darzustellen."
Handelsblatt, 02.04.2004
"Argumente statt Polemik - eine lesenswerte Analyse."
Kurzbeschreibung
Gerade in Europa wird die Familie Bush oft unterschätzt. Schon die Wahl des eigenschaftslosen George Bush sen. verursachte Ratlosigkeit; die Wahl seines scheinbar minderbemittelten Sohnes wurde mit völligem Unverständnis quittiert. Dabei repräsentieren die Bushs ein Amerika, das immer populistischer, konservativer und religiöser wird.
Der USA-Kenner Robert von Rimscha erklärt das Phänomen Bush. Er beleuchtet ihren Aufstieg durch ein dichtes Netz geschäftlicher Verflechtungen und sozialer Elite-Zirkel. Heute sind die Bushs so tief in der politischen Landschaft der USA verwurzelt, dass wir vielleicht die Wahl eines dritten Präsidenten namens Bush erleben werden.
Der Verlag über das Buch
Wer die Bushs versteht, versteht Amerika
Robert von Rimscha blickt hinter die Kulissen der amerikanischen Politik und weckt Verständnis für Zusammenhänge, die aus europäischer Sicht oft nur schwer zu verstehen sind. Er beleuchtet die Zugehörigkeit der Familie Bush zur Geldaristokratie und ihren Aufstieg durch ein dichtes Netz geschäftlicher Verflechtungen und sozialer Elite-Zirkel. Dabei wird deutlich, wie tief die Bushs in der politischen Landschaft der USA verwurzelt sind. Jenseits des populären Bush-Bashings liefert der Autor eine differenzierte Analyse der Macht- und Familienstrukturen der Bushs im Kontext des amerikanischen Selbstverständnisses. Er erläutert die Hintergründe für eine Politik, die viel mit Öldollars, Todesstrafe, Abtreibungsgegnerschaft und dem sturen Verteidigen des Rechts auf Waffenbesitz zu tun hat.
Über den Autor
Robert von Rimscha leitet die Parlamentsredaktion des Tagesspiegel in Berlin. Von 1996 bis 2000 arbeitete er als USA-Korrespondent in Washington. Er ist Autor mehrerer Bücher, darunter Die Kennedys – Glanz und Tragik eines amerikanischen Traums (Campus 2001). Er schreibt Meinungsbeiträge u.a. für die Los Angeles Times und den International Herald Tribune und wurde im Mai 2003 mit dem Arthur-F.-Burns-Preis für Kommentare zum transatlantischen Verhältnis ausgezeichnet.
Auszug aus Die Bushs von Robert von Rimscha. Copyright © 2004. Abdruck erfolgt mit freundlicher Genehmigung der Rechteinhaber. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.
Posted by: trash / 10:47 AM 0 comments
Link Genoud
bushtrash
http://www.br-online.de/geld/plusminus/beitrag/20010925/thema_2.html
Posted by: trash / 10:38 AM 0 comments
put options Genoud
bushtrash
Weltweit ermitteln die Finanzaufsichts-Behörden: Es geht um Geschäfte an den Börsen von New York bis Tokio. Der Verdacht: Die Urheber der Terroranschläge könnten Milliarden verdient haben. Eine der effektivsten Methoden dazu sind sogenannte Leerverkäufe. Das ist der Verkauf von Aktien, die im Besitz des Verkäufers sind, ihm aber nicht gehören. Der Spekulant zahlt eine Leihgebühr für das Aktienpaket auf Zeit. Und verkauft die Papiere. - Kommt es dann tatsächlich zum Kurseinbruch kauft er die Titel zu Dumping-Preisen nach und gibt sie zurück.
Für den Spekulanten ein sehr gutes Geschäft. Er kassiert die Differenz zwischen hohem Verkaufs- und niedrigem Einkaufspreis.
Besonders sicher sind diese Geschäfte, wenn man Insider-Kenntnisse hat oder gar Ereignisse selbst herbeiführen kann, die den Markt nach unten treiben. Genau das werfen die US-Behörden bin Laden vor.
Der Luxemburger Finanz-Experte Ernest Backes beschäftigt sich seit Jahren mit Wirtschaftskriminalität im Bankenbereich. Er sagt, es gibt Hinweise auf ungewöhnliche Transaktionen mit denen die Gruppe um bin Laden Geld verdient haben könnte: "Man kann z.B. nachprüfen, ob es in einem bestimmten Zeitabschnitt einen Attacke gegen ein bestimmtes Wertpapier einer bestimmten Fluggesellschaft gegeben hat. Da ja diese Wertpapiere in den Clearingsystemen verwahrt werden , hat man immer weder den Überblick, wer zu welche Zeitpunkt die Besitzer wären."
Die Aufsichtsbehörden haben solche Hinweise, in den USA und in Europa. Auffällig ist vor allem, der plötzliche gigantische Handel mit Optionen auf fallende Kurse bei den Fluggesellschaften American und United.
Explosionsartig nahm bei United Airlines am Donnerstag vor dem Unglück der Umsatz mit sogenannten Put-Optionen zu. 200.000 Stück wurden gehandelt, sonst waren es oft noch nicht einmal 1.000. Und ähnlich ist es bei American Airlines sowie den Versicherungsgesellschaften. Hier könnten Terroristen an den Börsen Milliarden verdient haben.
Die Spur führt nach Angaben von Backes in die Schweiz, zu Konten einer Organisation, die vor Jahren von dem inzwischen verstorbenen Rechtsanwalt Francois Genoud gegründet worden war und offenbar noch immer besteht, sagt Backes: "Einer dieser Berührungspunkte ist, dass der Schweizer Anwalt engste Verbindungen mit der Familie von bin Laden hatte, dass er einer der Berater der Familie, einer ihrer Bankiers war. Gewusst wird, dass er den Terrorismus unterstützte und der Vermögensverwalter des Hitler-Vermögens war und auf der Terrorwelle war."
Die Spuren-Suche bleibt ein schwieriges Geschäft: Welche Verbindungen wirklich bestehen - so sagen Experten - wird sich - wenn überhaupt - nur über die Finanz-Transaktionen ermitteln lassen.
Weitergehende, nicht von uns erstellte, Informationen finden Sie im Internet unter folgenden Links:
Das Börsenlexikon, Begriff "Leerverkauf"
Kurs-Spekulation: Chancen mit Optionsscheinen? Von ARD-Ratgeber Geld&Börse
Optionsscheinrechner
Bundesaufsichtsamt für den Wertpapierhandel
Committee of European Securities Regulators CESR (Der Ausschuss der Europäischen Wertpapieraufsichts-Behörden)
Securities and Exchange Commission SEC (USA)
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Dieser Text gibt den Inhalt des Beitrags der Sendung [plusminus vom 25.09.2001 wieder. Eventuelle spätere Veränderungen des Sachverhaltes sind nicht berücksichtigt
Posted by: trash / 10:36 AM 0 comments
Sunday, September 26, 2004bushtrash
bushtrash
http://talk.workunlimited.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1312540,00.html
How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power
Rumours of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how repercussions of events that culminated in action under the Trading with the Enemy Act are still being felt by today's president
Ben Aris in Berlin and Duncan Campbell in Washington
Saturday September 25, 2004
The Guardian
George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.
The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.
His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.
The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
The debate over Prescott Bush's behaviour has been bubbling under the surface for some time. There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi" connection, much of it inaccurate and unfair. But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis' plans and policies, he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty.
Remarkably, little of Bush's dealings with Germany has received public scrutiny, partly because of the secret status of the documentation involving him. But now the multibillion dollar legal action for damages by two Holocaust survivors against the Bush family, and the imminent publication of three books on the subject are threatening to make Prescott Bush's business history an uncomfortable issue for his grandson, George W, as he seeks re-election.
While there is no suggestion that Prescott Bush was sympathetic to the Nazi cause, the documents reveal that the firm he worked for, Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), acted as a US base for the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, who helped finance Hitler in the 1930s before falling out with him at the end of the decade. The Guardian has seen evidence that shows Bush was the director of the New York-based Union Banking Corporation (UBC) that represented Thyssen's US interests and he continued to work for the bank after America entered the war.
Tantalising
Bush was also on the board of at least one of the companies that formed part of a multinational network of front companies to allow Thyssen to move assets around the world.
Thyssen owned the largest steel and coal company in Germany and grew rich from Hitler's efforts to re-arm between the two world wars. One of the pillars in Thyssen's international corporate web, UBC, worked exclusively for, and was owned by, a Thyssen-controlled bank in the Netherlands. More tantalising are Bush's links to the Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC), based in mineral rich Silesia on the German-Polish border. During the war, the company made use of Nazi slave labour from the concentration camps, including Auschwitz. The ownership of CSSC changed hands several times in the 1930s, but documents from the US National Archive declassified last year link Bush to CSSC, although it is not clear if he and UBC were still involved in the company when Thyssen's American assets were seized in 1942.
Three sets of archives spell out Prescott Bush's involvement. All three are readily available, thanks to the efficient US archive system and a helpful and dedicated staff at both the Library of Congress in Washington and the National Archives at the University of Maryland.
The first set of files, the Harriman papers in the Library of Congress, show that Prescott Bush was a director and shareholder of a number of companies involved with Thyssen.
The second set of papers, which are in the National Archives, are contained in vesting order number 248 which records the seizure of the company assets. What these files show is that on October 20 1942 the alien property custodian seized the assets of the UBC, of which Prescott Bush was a director. Having gone through the books of the bank, further seizures were made against two affiliates, the Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation. By November, the Silesian-American Company, another of Prescott Bush's ventures, had also been seized.
The third set of documents, also at the National Archives, are contained in the files on IG Farben, who was prosecuted for war crimes.
A report issued by the Office of Alien Property Custodian in 1942 stated of the companies that "since 1939, these (steel and mining) properties have been in possession of and have been operated by the German government and have undoubtedly been of considerable assistance to that country's war effort".
Prescott Bush, a 6ft 4in charmer with a rich singing voice, was the founder of the Bush political dynasty and was once considered a potential presidential candidate himself. Like his son, George, and grandson, George W, he went to Yale where he was, again like his descendants, a member of the secretive and influential Skull and Bones student society. He was an artillery captain in the first world war and married Dorothy Walker, the daughter of George Herbert Walker, in 1921.
In 1924, his father-in-law, a well-known St Louis investment banker, helped set him up in business in New York with Averill Harriman, the wealthy son of railroad magnate E H Harriman in New York, who had gone into banking.
One of the first jobs Walker gave Bush was to manage UBC. Bush was a founding member of the bank and the incorporation documents, which list him as one of seven directors, show he owned one share in UBC worth $125.
The bank was set up by Harriman and Bush's father-in-law to provide a US bank for the Thyssens, Germany's most powerful industrial family.
August Thyssen, the founder of the dynasty had been a major contributor to Germany's first world war effort and in the 1920s, he and his sons Fritz and Heinrich established a network of overseas banks and companies so their assets and money could be whisked offshore if threatened again.
By the time Fritz Thyssen inherited the business empire in 1926, Germany's economic recovery was faltering. After hearing Adolf Hitler speak, Thyssen became mesmerised by the young firebrand. He joined the Nazi party in December 1931 and admits backing Hitler in his autobiography, I Paid Hitler, when the National Socialists were still a radical fringe party. He stepped in several times to bail out the struggling party: in 1928 Thyssen had bought the Barlow Palace on Briennerstrasse, in Munich, which Hitler converted into the Brown House, the headquarters of the Nazi party. The money came from another Thyssen overseas institution, the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvarrt in Rotterdam.
By the late 1930s, Brown Brothers Harriman, which claimed to be the world's largest private investment bank, and UBC had bought and shipped millions of dollars of gold, fuel, steel, coal and US treasury bonds to Germany, both feeding and financing Hitler's build-up to war.
Between 1931 and 1933 UBC bought more than $8m worth of gold, of which $3m was shipped abroad. According to documents seen by the Guardian, after UBC was set up it transferred $2m to BBH accounts and between 1924 and 1940 the assets of UBC hovered around $3m, dropping to $1m only on a few occasions.
In 1941, Thyssen fled Germany after falling out with Hitler but he was captured in France and detained for the remainder of the war.
There was nothing illegal in doing business with the Thyssens throughout the 1930s and many of America's best-known business names invested heavily in the German economic recovery. However, everything changed after Germany invaded Poland in 1939. Even then it could be argued that BBH was within its rights continuing business relations with the Thyssens until the end of 1941 as the US was still technically neutral until the attack on Pearl Harbor. The trouble started on July 30 1942 when the New York Herald-Tribune ran an article entitled "Hitler's Angel Has $3m in US Bank". UBC's huge gold purchases had raised suspicions that the bank was in fact a "secret nest egg" hidden in New York for Thyssen and other Nazi bigwigs. The Alien Property Commission (APC) launched an investigation.
There is no dispute over the fact that the US government seized a string of assets controlled by BBH - including UBC and SAC - in the autumn of 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy act. What is in dispute is if Harriman, Walker and Bush did more than own these companies on paper.
Erwin May, a treasury attache and officer for the department of investigation in the APC, was assigned to look into UBC's business. The first fact to emerge was that Roland Harriman, Prescott Bush and the other directors didn't actually own their shares in UBC but merely held them on behalf of Bank voor Handel. Strangely, no one seemed to know who owned the Rotterdam-based bank, including UBC's president.
May wrote in his report of August 16 1941: "Union Banking Corporation, incorporated August 4 1924, is wholly owned by the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V of Rotterdam, the Netherlands. My investigation has produced no evidence as to the ownership of the Dutch bank. Mr Cornelis [sic] Lievense, president of UBC, claims no knowledge as to the ownership of the Bank voor Handel but believes it possible that Baron Heinrich Thyssen, brother of Fritz Thyssen, may own a substantial interest."
May cleared the bank of holding a golden nest egg for the Nazi leaders but went on to describe a network of companies spreading out from UBC across Europe, America and Canada, and how money from voor Handel travelled to these companies through UBC.
By September May had traced the origins of the non-American board members and found that Dutchman HJ Kouwenhoven - who met with Harriman in 1924 to set up UBC - had several other jobs: in addition to being the managing director of voor Handel he was also the director of the August Thyssen bank in Berlin and a director of Fritz Thyssen's Union Steel Works, the holding company that controlled Thyssen's steel and coal mine empire in Germany.
Within a few weeks, Homer Jones, the chief of the APC investigation and research division sent a memo to the executive committee of APC recommending the US government vest UBC and its assets. Jones named the directors of the bank in the memo, including Prescott Bush's name, and wrote: "Said stock is held by the above named individuals, however, solely as nominees for the Bank voor Handel, Rotterdam, Holland, which is owned by one or more of the Thyssen family, nationals of Germany and Hungary. The 4,000 shares hereinbefore set out are therefore beneficially owned and help for the interests of enemy nationals, and are vestible by the APC," according to the memo from the National Archives seen by the Guardian.
Red-handed
Jones recommended that the assets be liquidated for the benefit of the government, but instead UBC was maintained intact and eventually returned to the American shareholders after the war. Some claim that Bush sold his share in UBC after the war for $1.5m - a huge amount of money at the time - but there is no documentary evidence to support this claim. No further action was ever taken nor was the investigation continued, despite the fact UBC was caught red-handed operating a American shell company for the Thyssen family eight months after America had entered the war and that this was the bank that had partly financed Hitler's rise to power.
The most tantalising part of the story remains shrouded in mystery: the connection, if any, between Prescott Bush, Thyssen, Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC) and Auschwitz.
Thyssen's partner in United Steel Works, which had coal mines and steel plants across the region, was Friedrich Flick, another steel magnate who also owned part of IG Farben, the powerful German chemical company.
Flick's plants in Poland made heavy use of slave labour from the concentration camps in Poland. According to a New York Times article published in March 18 1934 Flick owned two-thirds of CSSC while "American interests" held the rest.
The US National Archive documents show that BBH's involvement with CSSC was more than simply holding the shares in the mid-1930s. Bush's friend and fellow "bonesman" Knight Woolley, another partner at BBH, wrote to Averill Harriman in January 1933 warning of problems with CSSC after the Poles started their drive to nationalise the plant. "The Consolidated Silesian Steel Company situation has become increasingly complicated, and I have accordingly brought in Sullivan and Cromwell, in order to be sure that our interests are protected," wrote Knight. "After studying the situation Foster Dulles is insisting that their man in Berlin get into the picture and obtain the information which the directors here should have. You will recall that Foster is a director and he is particularly anxious to be certain that there is no liability attaching to the American directors."
But the ownership of the CSSC between 1939 when the Germans invaded Poland and 1942 when the US government vested UBC and SAC is not clear.
"SAC held coal mines and definitely owned CSSC between 1934 and 1935, but when SAC was vested there was no trace of CSSC. All concrete evidence of its ownership disappears after 1935 and there are only a few traces in 1938 and 1939," says Eva Schweitzer, the journalist and author whose book, America and the Holocaust, is published next month.
Silesia was quickly made part of the German Reich after the invasion, but while Polish factories were seized by the Nazis, those belonging to the still neutral Americans (and some other nationals) were treated more carefully as Hitler was still hoping to persuade the US to at least sit out the war as a neutral country. Schweitzer says American interests were dealt with on a case-by-case basis. The Nazis bought some out, but not others.
The two Holocaust survivors suing the US government and the Bush family for a total of $40bn in compensation claim both materially benefited from Auschwitz slave labour during the second world war.
Kurt Julius Goldstein, 87, and Peter Gingold, 85, began a class action in America in 2001, but the case was thrown out by Judge Rosemary Collier on the grounds that the government cannot be held liable under the principle of "state sovereignty".
Jan Lissmann, one of the lawyers for the survivors, said: "President Bush withdrew President Bill Clinton's signature from the treaty [that founded the court] not only to protect Americans, but also to protect himself and his family."
Lissmann argues that genocide-related cases are covered by international law, which does hold governments accountable for their actions. He claims the ruling was invalid as no hearing took place.
In their claims, Mr Goldstein and Mr Gingold, honorary chairman of the League of Anti-fascists, suggest the Americans were aware of what was happening at Auschwitz and should have bombed the camp.
The lawyers also filed a motion in The Hague asking for an opinion on whether state sovereignty is a valid reason for refusing to hear their case. A ruling is expected within a month.
The petition to The Hague states: "From April 1944 on, the American Air Force could have destroyed the camp with air raids, as well as the railway bridges and railway lines from Hungary to Auschwitz. The murder of about 400,000 Hungarian Holocaust victims could have been prevented."
The case is built around a January 22 1944 executive order signed by President Franklin Roosevelt calling on the government to take all measures to rescue the European Jews. The lawyers claim the order was ignored because of pressure brought by a group of big American companies, including BBH, where Prescott Bush was a director.
Lissmann said: "If we have a positive ruling from the court it will cause [president] Bush huge problems and make him personally liable to pay compensation."
The US government and the Bush family deny all the claims against them.
In addition to Eva Schweitzer's book, two other books are about to be published that raise the subject of Prescott Bush's business history. The author of the second book, to be published next year, John Loftus, is a former US attorney who prosecuted Nazi war criminals in the 70s. Now living in St Petersburg, Florida and earning his living as a security commentator for Fox News and ABC radio, Loftus is working on a novel which uses some of the material he has uncovered on Bush. Loftus stressed that what Prescott Bush was involved in was just what many other American and British businessmen were doing at the time.
"You can't blame Bush for what his grandfather did any more than you can blame Jack Kennedy for what his father did - bought Nazi stocks - but what is important is the cover-up, how it could have gone on so successfully for half a century, and does that have implications for us today?" he said.
"This was the mechanism by which Hitler was funded to come to power, this was the mechanism by which the Third Reich's defence industry was re-armed, this was the mechanism by which Nazi profits were repatriated back to the American owners, this was the mechanism by which investigations into the financial laundering of the Third Reich were blunted," said Loftus, who is vice-chairman of the Holocaust Museum in St Petersburg.
"The Union Banking Corporation was a holding company for the Nazis, for Fritz Thyssen," said Loftus. "At various times, the Bush family has tried to spin it, saying they were owned by a Dutch bank and it wasn't until the Nazis took over Holland that they realised that now the Nazis controlled the apparent company and that is why the Bush supporters claim when the war was over they got their money back. Both the American treasury investigations and the intelligence investigations in Europe completely bely that, it's absolute horseshit. They always knew who the ultimate beneficiaries were."
"There is no one left alive who could be prosecuted but they did get away with it," said Loftus. "As a former federal prosecutor, I would make a case for Prescott Bush, his father-in-law (George Walker) and Averill Harriman [to be prosecuted] for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. They remained on the boards of these companies knowing that they were of financial benefit to the nation of Germany."
Loftus said Prescott Bush must have been aware of what was happening in Germany at the time. "My take on him was that he was a not terribly successful in-law who did what Herbert Walker told him to. Walker and Harriman were the two evil geniuses, they didn't care about the Nazis any more than they cared about their investments with the Bolsheviks."
What is also at issue is how much money Bush made from his involvement. His supporters suggest that he had one token share. Loftus disputes this, citing sources in "the banking and intelligence communities" and suggesting that the Bush family, through George Herbert Walker and Prescott, got $1.5m out of the involvement. There is, however, no paper trail to this sum.
The third person going into print on the subject is John Buchanan, 54, a Miami-based magazine journalist who started examining the files while working on a screenplay. Last year, Buchanan published his findings in the venerable but small-circulation New Hampshire Gazette under the headline "Documents in National Archives Prove George Bush's Grandfather Traded With the Nazis - Even After Pearl Harbor". He expands on this in his book to be published next month - Fixing America: Breaking the Stranglehold of Corporate Rule, Big Media and the Religious Right.
In the article, Buchanan, who has worked mainly in the trade and music press with a spell as a muckraking reporter in Miami, claimed that "the essential facts have appeared on the internet and in relatively obscure books but were dismissed by the media and Bush family as undocumented diatribes".
Buchanan suffers from hypermania, a form of manic depression, and when he found himself rebuffed in his initial efforts to interest the media, he responded with a series of threats against the journalists and media outlets that had spurned him. The threats, contained in e-mails, suggested that he would expose the journalists as "traitors to the truth".
Unsurprisingly, he soon had difficulty getting his calls returned. Most seriously, he faced aggravated stalking charges in Miami, in connection with a man with whom he had fallen out over the best way to publicise his findings. The charges were dropped last month.
Biography
Buchanan said he regretted his behaviour had damaged his credibility but his main aim was to secure publicity for the story. Both Loftus and Schweitzer say Buchanan has come up with previously undisclosed documentation.
The Bush family have largely responded with no comment to any reference to Prescott Bush. Brown Brothers Harriman also declined to comment.
The Bush family recently approved a flattering biography of Prescott Bush entitled Duty, Honour, Country by Mickey Herskowitz. The publishers, Rutledge Hill Press, promised the book would "deal honestly with Prescott Bush's alleged business relationships with Nazi industrialists and other accusations".
In fact, the allegations are dealt with in less than two pages. The book refers to the Herald-Tribune story by saying that "a person of less established ethics would have panicked ... Bush and his partners at Brown Brothers Harriman informed the government regulators that the account, opened in the late 1930s, was 'an unpaid courtesy for a client' ... Prescott Bush acted quickly and openly on behalf of the firm, served well by a reputation that had never been compromised. He made available all records and all documents. Viewed six decades later in the era of serial corporate scandals and shattered careers, he received what can be viewed as the ultimate clean bill."
The Prescott Bush story has been condemned by both conservatives and some liberals as having nothing to do with the current president. It has also been suggested that Prescott Bush had little to do with Averill Harriman and that the two men opposed each other politically.
However, documents from the Harriman papers include a flattering wartime profile of Harriman in the New York Journal American and next to it in the files is a letter to the financial editor of that paper from Prescott Bush congratulating the paper for running the profile. He added that Harriman's "performance and his whole attitude has been a source of inspiration and pride to his partners and his friends".
The Anti-Defamation League in the US is supportive of Prescott Bush and the Bush family. In a statement last year they said that "rumours about the alleged Nazi 'ties' of the late Prescott Bush ... have circulated widely through the internet in recent years. These charges are untenable and politically motivated ... Prescott Bush was neither a Nazi nor a Nazi sympathiser."
However, one of the country's oldest Jewish publications, the Jewish Advocate, has aired the controversy in detail.
More than 60 years after Prescott Bush came briefly under scrutiny at the time of a faraway war, his grandson is facing a different kind of scrutiny but one underpinned by the same perception that, for some people, war can be a profitable business.
Life of Prescott Bush
Saturday September 25, 2004
The Guardian
• 1895 Born, son of Samuel and Flora Bush. Raised in Columbus, Ohio
• 1917 Graduated as a BA from Yale
• 1917-19 Artillery captain in US army. Served in first world war
• 1921 Married Dorothy Walker, daughter of wealthy industrialist, George Herbert Walker. They have five children, including GHW Bush, later to become US president (1988-1992)
• 1924 Joins Harriman Brothers in New York through introduction from father-in-law
• 1930 Partner in Brown Brothers Harriman
• 1942 Assets of companies of which he is director seized under Trading with the Enemy Act
• 1950 Now living in Greenwich, Connecticut, he runs unsuccessfully for Republican party to represent Connecticut in US Senate. Describes himself as "moderate progressive"
• 1952 Runs again in mid-term election and wins. "He looked more like a senator than any senator I've ever met," William Hildenbrand, former secretary to Senate said, according to Kitty Kelley's new Bush family biography, The Family. Takes stand against McCarthyism
• 1956 Re-elected to senate
• 1963 Retires from politics on health grounds
• 1972 Dies
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