Just after the Sandy Hook murders we began hearing that a private weapons conglomerate called Freedom Group would be dismantled. Almost a year later, however, we learn the panic to sell was premature.

Freedom Group was formerly set up in 2006, two years before the end of George W. Bush's second term, although it first came on the scene prior to Dubya's election, in 1998, just as he was putting together the financing to spearhead his 2000 campaign. 

Cartoon from devinlong

Before 9/11/2001, we had no idea (did we?) that planes would eventually fly into the World Trade Center and allow Georgie the opportunity to charge into Saddam's Iraq to get even for what the bully had done to his daddy. 

We couldn't have known then about the future War on Terror. Could we? 

Unless ... there were members of his team who remembered how their own trust funds had been created by war. Were they, even then, whispering in Georgie's ear?

It was in September 2002 that he made a speech in Houston about Saddam, saying, 

"After all, this is the guy who tried to kill my dad at one time."  

The attempted assassination of former President Bush had occurred back in April, 1993, only two months after the elder Bush left office. Seventeen perpetrators, who had hidden explosives in a Toyota Landcruiser were caught and arrested before the Bush family even arrived in Kuwait. The visit itself took place and continued without noticeable incident, only being announced by the newly installed President Clinton after the trip was over. Two of the Bush sons, who were never named, were with their parents, as well as John Sununu, Houston lawyer James A. Baker III, and Dillon Read banker, Nicholas Brady. 

Dubya Bush was never satisfied with what he felt were Clinton's weak efforts at containing the Iraqis. He was looking for an excuse, even a flimsy one, to go back into Iraq, guns blasting. But the bankers had to get the money together to elect him to office. They would want to arrange capital investments in order to replenish their expenses as well.

Donald Rumsfeld jumped on the Cerberus bandwagon before January 2001, according to his financial disclosure form that year, which shows he owned a limited partnership interest in Cerberus Institutional Partners valued at more than half a million dollars, from which he earned $51,000 income during the disclosure period. The private equity fund had been managed by the ultra-secretive Stephen Feinberg since 1992.

Rummy's tax form in 2001

In an August 2012 issue of Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi quoted the founder of the private equity firm as follows:

"We try to hide religiously," explained Steven Feinberg, the CEO of a takeover firm called Cerberus Capital Management that recently drove one of its targets into bankruptcy after saddling it with $2.3 billion in debt. "If anyone at Cerberus has his picture in the paper and a picture of his apartment, we will do more than fire that person," Feinberg told shareholders in 2007. "We will kill him. The jail sentence will be worth it."

John Snow and Dan Quayle also became involved with Cerberus, helping steer it to invest in 2004 in IAP Worldwide Services, Inc., which provided logistics for the Defense Department and  disaster-relief services for federal and state agencies. IAP's chief executive, Al Neffgen, was hired from Kellogg, Brown and Root, the Halliburton subsidiary Dick Cheney had chaired before leaving to help the second George Bush become the 43rd U.S. President.


The name Cerberus comes from Roman mythology. It was the name given to the three-headed dog who guarded the entrance to Hades (Hell), to keep the living from gaining access to their dead loved ones imprisoned there. Capturing this ravenous beast was the last and most difficult of the twelve labors Hercules was sentenced to perform. The symbolism seems above and beyond any intellectual acumen one would expect from Dubya Bush. Perhaps his Skull and Bones brothers at Yale were backing him up?

This is all simply part of how the military-industrial corporate complex we have often been warned about really works. Wall Street operatives see dollar signs whenever government does anything, and they insist on getting commissions when the government privatizes those functions and steers the contracts their way. Lobbyists are chosen from retiring military personnel and former Congressional staffs to promote the government's need for more and more contracts which they can capture. 

Actually, however, only the legal forms have changed from prior days. The process by which those with banking connections, i.e. inherited capital to invest, use their family and social ties to pool funds to elect political sycophants to do their bidding has not changed. The new corporate structure, however, does assist these elite banking types in keeping the names on the accounts hidden. 

Transition of Private Banking

Bert Walker III

George Herbert Walker III (Yale, Skull and Bones, 1953), was the son of Poppy Bush's favorite Uncle Herbie--G.H. Walker, Jr. After Yale Bert got his law degree from Harvard, then enlisted in the JAG Corps in the Air Force for two years, before joining his grandfather's investment bank, G.H. Walker and Co. in 1958. He became the bank's chairman in 1972 and helped raise funds for his nephew to run for President.  

The private banking company had been founded in 1900 by Prescott Bush's father-in-law, Bert's grandfather, who was also a grandfather of Bert's first cousin, Poppy Bush. With 14 offices by 1973, G.H. Walker and Co. acquired the Laird brokerage firm at about the same time the events that led to the Watergate scandal were unfolding. Shortly thereafter the newly merged investment bank merged with White, Weld in 1974, only to be taken over by Merrill, Lynch within four years' time. 

Ten years younger than Poppy, Bert III was named the Missouri Finance Chairman for President Nixon in 1972, the year following Poppy's appointment to head the U.S. delegation to the United Nations in New York City.

Bert's Yale and Bones classmate, William Henry Donaldson, got an MBA from Harvard and took his first job at the Walker family's bank. Then in 1959 Donaldson had left Walker to start Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette (DLJ), which he co-headed until 1973. 
 

"Donaldson's first job on Wall Street was at the old brokerage G. H. Walker and Co, run by Bush's uncle Herbert Walker," we were informed in December 2002, just over a year after the Enron scandal erupted. Pres. George W. Bush apparently felt the need to send Donaldson to head the SEC at that time--not surprising, since researchers like Malcolm S. Salter have discovered many strange dealings going on at Enron through DLJ maneuvers. 

The Financial Times (FT) wrote in a 2002 special report:

"Chase and Citi both underwrote a lot, but the advisory work and the real brains behind [the partnerships] was from CSFB and DLJ," says a former Enron employee. As a result, they were well rewarded. CSFB and DLJ were the leading underwriters of Enron securities, managing $7.4bn of the $25bn of stocks and bonds it issued, according to data from Bloomberg News.

The Zurich subsidiary of White, Weld and Co. AG was subsequently renamed Clariden Finanz AG (and later still Clariden Bank). In 1970 Credit Suisse and White, Weld set up a holding company for Clariden called WW Trust. Four years later Credit Suisse became the largest shareholder in WW Trust, which was renamed Société anonyme financière du Crédit Suisse et de White Weld (CS andWW).


In 1978, when Merrill Lynch bought White Weld and Co., White Weld dropped out of its Eurobond partnership with Credit Suisse, prompting CS to approach Dillon Read, which turned it down. First Boston then stepped in, creating Financiére Crédit Suisse-First Boston, a 50-50 joint venture widely known as Credit Suisse First Boston. 


a couple decades later was acquired by Swiss Bank Corporation, to form the core of that firm's U.S. investment banking business. Swiss Bank Corporation itself subsequently merged with Credit Suisse arch-rival Union Bank of Switzerland to form UBS AG.


Swiss-born Robert L. Genillard became a general partner of White, Weld and Co. in 1958 and a member of its management committee in 1964. He moved to Geneva to establish in the early 1960s, as Chairman and Chief Executive, the firm of Credit Suisse White Weld. Genillard is regarded as one of the main architects and developers of the Eurocapital market (Eurobond) in which the firm he led played a dominant role, along with his colleague, John Cattier, of White, Weld in Zurich. His professional writings and accomplishments have been widely published. During the last twenty years, Genillard has also been quite active in industry, notably with ties – since 1970 – to the Thyssen-Bornemisza Group

Three men from the Credit Suisse branch at Chiasso were arrested in 1977 in a bank fraud scandal that initially estimated losses of at least $100 million. A month later prosecutors raised it to $400 million, and the scandal would eventually incur total losses of $1.2 billion.

Charged with "misrouting" fiduciary accounts to a Liechtenstein-based holding company that invested the money in three Italian businesses, it seems likely the bank branch could be connected back to the 1973 kidnapping of the son of J. Paul Getty, when it was reported
that "ransom money from six Italian kidnappings, including that of Getty, grandson of the man reputed to be among the world's richest men, had been found in two banks in Chiasso" after a government magistrate had given the banks a list of names of people believed to have been behind numerous kidnappings in the border area. Events that led up to the scandal were described as follows:

In an operation that apparently has been going on for several years but was only publicly disclosed by the bank on April 14, more than $800 million in Italian lire had been transported illegally out of Italy by wealthy residents who were trying to hide the money, beat the taxes or protect their capital against a Communist take-over. The funds were deposited in the Credit Suisse branch at Chiasso, a picturesque Swiss village "within suitcase-carrying distance" of the Italian border. There, branch manager Ernst Kuhrmeier and two deputies allegedly put the funds into trust accounts that were not recorded on the bank's official books. They then allegedly funneled them, along with loan guarantees, to a front operation — nothing more than a mailing address — in the tiny principality of Liechtenstein.

Three Chiasso lawyers who acted as front men for the Vaduz, Liechtenstein, holding company named Texon-Finanzanstalt, were also arrested. Rainer Gut, a former partner in New York’s Lazard Freres, was second in line of those remaining, and he became chairman in 1983 following the retirement of Otto Aeppli.

In May 2007 a private equity firm with an intriguing name, Cerberus Capital Management, stepped in to relieve German car manufacturing corporation giant Daimler of an unsuccessful nine-year attempt to merge with Chrysler. Credit Suisse First Boston had represented the American company in that 1998 merger, while Daimler-Benz sought advice from Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank. 

Credit Suisse Bank, based in Basel with a New York branch, had, since 1962 often partnered in London Eurobond trades (a market in which companies raise funds by issuing bonds denominated in currencies other than their own) with White, Weld & Co., an investment bank with longstanding ties to Harvard, founded in Boston during the days of the old China trade. The partnership continued through a long chain of events that ended with a takeover in 1978.

In 1975 the scion of the Weld family, William Weld, a litigator at the Hill and Barlow firm in Boston, married Susan Roosevelt, a Harvard-educated attorney with the Boston law firm of Gaston Snow-Ely Bartlett. Susan's father, Quentin Roosevelt II, son Theodore Roosevelt Jr., was a grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt and first cousin of the famous spy Kermit (Kim) Roosevelt, Jr.

Susan Roosevelt Weld was born in 1949, shortly before her Uncle Kim, Middle Eastern expert in the Central Intelligence Agency, was up to his neck in Arab intrigue.

Copeland

A review of 1969 book, The Game Of Nations, written by Miles Copeland--a State Department employee and officer in the O.S.S. who allegedly helped set up the CIA--stated that it was an "open secret that Washington has been up to the elbows in Middle Eastern plots and counterplots but the degree of involvement and specific details are now for the first time exposed in a book just published in London." Delving into the CIA's role in the 1953 Iran coup, reviewer C.L. Sulzberger wrote for the NY Times Syndicate:

Kermit (Kim) Roosevelt, a C.I.A. Middle East expert, was loaned to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles to supervise "Operation Ajax" in August 1953, physically ousting the Mossadegh government of Iran and restoring the Shah. An American military attache helped arrange for a Nazi officer, Lt. Gen. Wilhelm Farmbacher, to assist Nasser in training his army. American officials were instrumental in getting to Cairo the famous Otto Skorzeny, an SS officer, and during his short Egyptian stay Skorzeny brought in "about a hundred Germans." 

Copeland says: "A certain well-known major general of the American Army" played a part in this affair.

Copeland's most fascinating revelations concern the Nasser revolution in Egypt. According to him Washington decided in 1952 that "Egypt was the place to start" an attempt to produce forward-looking, pro-American Arab governments. That February Roosevelt tried to organize a "peaceful revolution" under the umbrella of King Farouk. In March — four months before Nasser's coup — Roosevelt met representatives of Nasser's conspiracy. The plan to change things under Farouk was dropped.

American officials and Nasser's representatives reached "a private understanding that the preconditions for democratic government did not exist and wouldn't exist for many years" in Egypt. In July Nasser seized power (with no American assistance) and Nasser's right-hand man, Ali Sabri, immediately informed Ambassador Jefferson Caffery that Nasser wanted
"friendly relations" with Washington.

Copeland says Caffery arranged with Nasser "for the loan to the Egyptian government of perhaps the leading practitioner of 'black' and 'gray' propaganda in the western world, Paul Linebargcr," a former expert for the O.S.S. (forerunner of the C.I.A.).

Nasser asked for limited American military aid — up to $40 milhon. Copeland observes: 

"As I will show later on, it was the State Department's delays in granting this comparatively small amount which caused Nasser to turn to the Soviets — with the result, that he got many limes over the $40 million which he originally asked from us."

In August 1953 Roosevelt was sent on a secret mission (says Copeland) to try and end the impasse between Egypt and Britain on Suez base negotiations. In November 1954 two U.S. colonels, Albert Gebhardt and Wilbur Eveland, discussed an arms deal with Nasser "for internal security purposes."A tentative military agreement was announced in January 1955 but by September, when Washington had done nothing, Nasser sent a personal warning to Roosevelt that he was about to make an arms accord with Russia. Roosevelt and Copeland flew to Cairo.

 See also two excerpted interviews with Miles Copeland.

Cerberus paid $7.4 billion for the Chrysler shares.

Cerberus in mythology

Further details in the article revealed some history of Cerberus activity involving Canadian corporations:

Talks begin soon between the United Auto Workers and Detroit’s car makers on a national contract and analysts expect Cerberus, headed by former U.S. treasury secretary John Snow, to push for radical changes at its money-losing Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge operations.

The announcement sent shudders through much of Chrysler’s work force, despite assurances from Chrysler CEO Tom LaSorda that there are no major plans under discussion with Cerberus to cut jobs beyond a previously announced restructuring plan.

Magna chairman Frank Stronach formally announced last Wednesday his firm had teamed up with Toronto-based buyout firm Onex Corp. (TSX:OCX) to make an offer for Chrysler that was rumoured to be valued at about US$4.6 billion.

However, the partners were outbid by more than $2 billion by Cerberus, a company well known in Canada after leading a buyout of Air Canada (TSX:AC) and becoming the Montreal carrier’s largest shareholder.

The sale of 80.1 per cent of Chrysler to Cerberus Capital Management LP unwinds the messy $36-billion marriage in 1998 that was set up to create the ultimate global automotive powerhouse.

 Krisher hinted in the article, which was only one of many on that page concerning the deal, that it was concern about the responsibility for paying workers' pensions that led to the surprise agreement with Cerberus:

Germany-based DaimlerChrysler AG said it would keep a 19.1-per-cent stake in the renamed Chrysler Holdings LLC. The private company will be run by Cerberus, which said it would keep the present management in place.

So anxious was DaimlerChrysler to end the transatlantic tie-up that it could be on the hook to pay as much as $650 million — in exchange for being absolved for $19 billion in retiree healthcare costs that will be the responsibility of the new Chrysler owners.

The $7.4-billion deal works this way:

Cerberus will invest $5 billion in the new Chrysler’s automotive operations, $1.05 billion in Chrysler’s financial arm and pay $1.35 billion to DaimlerChrysler.

But the German automaker agreed to absorb $1.6 billion in restructuring-related costs and loan the new company $400 million. Depending on whether the loan is repaid, its out-of-pocket costs could ultimately total $650 million.

Cerberus has steadily been building strength in the automobile business. It led a consortium that bought a majority stake last year in General Motors Acceptance Corp., the financial arm of GM, and planned to invest in ailing auto parts giant Delphi Corp.

One of the other stories revealed powerful names connected to United States Republican political leaders during the post Nixon-phase that led up to the first President Bush:

 

Chrysler Bldg.

Research tells us that, historically, the car manufacturing company founded by Walter Percy Chrysler in 1925 acquired the Dodge Brothers Company three years later. Walter owned a huge estate on Long Island and also built in Manhattan what was then the world’s tallest skyscraper, named for himself, and was named by Time as the 1929 Man of the Year.

When Chrysler (a "minnow") bought Dodge (the "whale") in 1928, he "rescued a failing business which was barely meeting its payrolls" from the investment bank of Dillon, Read & Company, which was "unfamiliar with the automobile industry and as absentee owners were not able to keep the firm operating efficiently." One year before the great crash which served as the death knoll of many financial fortunes, 1928 was a year which saw Clarence Dillon climb steadily higher as he linked his investments to the family whose wealth rose exponentially as demand for petroleum, the automobile's fuel source, climbed ever higher.

Dillon had bought the Dodge manufacturer in 1924, accumulating $55 million in debt owed primarily to the Dodge family heirs, which Chrysler assumed in 1928, as well as giving Dillon, Read & Co. $170,000,000 in Chrysler stock. This transaction thus assured Anna Thomson Dodge Dillman, a widow of one of the Dodge Brothers, of being able to purchase the former residence of Samuel Prescott Bush in Columbus, Ohio.

Hugh Dillman McGaughey, an actor who had dropped his last name, had lived with his parents near the Bushes' Marble Cliff mansion--at 1903 Concord Road in Upper Arlington. Prescott Bush's father, Samuel P. Bush, president of Buckeye Steel Casting, had purchased a 2.7-acre building site at 1550 Roxbury Road in 1907 and the following year completed construction of the family's home overlooking the bluff of Marble Cliff in Columbus, Ohio. The two homes were less than a half mile from each other, and the McGaugheys moved to the Roxbury home following the purchase by the new Mrs. Dillman.

When Dillman [McGaughey] married Mrs. Dodge in 1926, newspapers speculated that "her share of the $145,000,000 estate left by her husband is believed to have made her the richest woman in the world." Mr. James B. McGaughey had been a tailor in Columbus, where his daughters worked with him in his business. Perhaps he had gone to school briefly with Flora Bush's brother, Robert E. Sheldon, Jr., who was a year or two older and lived at 1599 Roxbury, just down the street from the Bush residence:

Samuel built his family’s home, one of the first to be built in Upper Arlington, in 1908. All of the Sheldon siblings lived within walking distance from Flora and Samuel, and they all belonged to Arlington Golf and Riding Club, later to be known as Scioto Country Club, of which Samuel, along with developers of the new suburb, was a founding member.  By far the grandest home was the mansion at 1599 Roxbury, owned by Flora’s brother, Butler Sheldon, who also served as mayor of the community in 1909. Butler succeeded his father as President of Columbus Railroad, Columbus Light and Power, Columbus Traction and  Sheldon Dry Goods.  Their sister, Mary Sheldon, married Carl J. Hoster, a grandson of a native of Germany and operator of the family brewery in downtown Columbus.  He also was president of the Hoster-Columbus Associated Breweries, the U.S. Brewers Association, vice-president of the Ohio Trust Company and director of Columbus Railway & Light Company—no doubt a result of his marriage into the Sheldon family.