Read Online Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years by Russ Baker - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Russ Baker
Tags: United States, General, Historical, History, Biography & Autobiography, 20th Century, Political, Biography, Political Science, Presidents & Heads of State, Executive Branch, Government, Presidents, Business and Politics
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American corporations that had massive agricultural and mineral operations on the fertile island, including Brown Brothers Harriman, whose extensive holdings included the two-hundred-thousand-acre Punta Alegre beet sugar plantation. 44 After Castro took power, the Eisenhower administration began a boycott of Cuban sugar, which is a crucial component of the island’s economy. The Cubans in turn became increasingly dependent on the USSR as supplier of goods and protector.
Poppy swung into gear the same year that Castro began nationalizing those properties. He severed his ties to the Liedtkes by buying out their stake in Zapata Offshore, and then moved its operations to Houston—which, unlike the remote Midland-Odessa area, had access to the Caribbean through the Houston Ship Channel. 45 Meanwhile, back in Washington, after extensive planning, the Bay of Pigs project began with Eisenhower’s approval on March 17, 1960.
For anyone who asked about the origins of Zapata Petroleum’s name, Bush had a good story. A theater in downtown Midland happened to be showing the Marlon Brando film, Viva Zapata!, a biography of Emiliano Zapata, the Mexican revolutionary. Bush would claim that the partners had a flash that Zapata represented the image of independence their oil company was seeking. Ironically enough, General Zapata had fought for land redistribution on behalf of peasants, with resulting losses for precisely the kinds of people who staked Bush’s companies.
Moreover, Bush and his friends were hardly “independents.” To the contrary, they were connected to some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the country, who owned enormous expanses of land throughout Latin America and elsewhere—exactly the kind of people Zapata loathed. The key thing—and possibly Bush’s telegraphed message—was that Emiliano Zapata gained international repute for one thing: overthrowing a government.
Beyond providing a staging area for Cuban rebels, Zapata Offshore appears to have served as a paymaster. “We had to pay off politicians in Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and elsewhere,” said John Sherwood, chief of CIA anti-Castro operations in the early 1960s. “Bush’s company was used as a conduit for these funds under the guise of oil business contracts . . . The major breakthrough was when we were able, through Bush, to place people in PEMEX—the big Mexican national oil operation.” 46
Bush’s Mexican Connection
The complicated PEMEX affair began in 1960, when Zapata Offshore offered a lucrative secret partnership to a competing Mexican drilling equipment company, Perforaciones Marinas del Golfe, or Permargo. George H. W. Bush did not want this relationship exposed, even decades later. When investigative reporter Jonathan Kwitny tried to document Bush’s precise involvement with Permargo for a 1988 article, he was told by an SEC spokeswoman that Zapata filings from 1960 to 1966 had been “inadvertently destroyed” several months after Bush became vice president. 47
Bush’s Mexican counterpart in this arm’s-length relationship, Jorge Diaz Serrano, was ultimately sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment for defrauding the Mexican people of fifty-eight million dollars. Diaz Serrano later admitted to remaining a personal friend of Bush and visiting the vice president in Washington shortly before his fraud conviction in Mexico. 48 He told Kwitny that Poppy Bush’s interest in the oil business seemed limited: “In those days, I remember very clearly, he was a very young chap and when we were talking business with him at his office, he spent more time on the telephone talking about politics than paying attention to the drilling affairs.” As in other respects, father would be mirrored by son, as George W. Bush, too, would become well-known in the oil business for his preference for anything but the task at hand.
Evidence that Zapata Offshore was more than just Poppy Bush’s oil company
Poppy swung into gear the same year that Castro began nationalizing those properties. He severed his ties to the Liedtkes by buying out their stake in Zapata Offshore, and then moved its operations to Houston—which, unlike the remote Midland-Odessa area, had access to the Caribbean through the Houston Ship Channel. 45 Meanwhile, back in Washington, after extensive planning, the Bay of Pigs project began with Eisenhower’s approval on March 17, 1960.
For anyone who asked about the origins of Zapata Petroleum’s name, Bush had a good story. A theater in downtown Midland happened to be showing the Marlon Brando film, Viva Zapata!, a biography of Emiliano Zapata, the Mexican revolutionary. Bush would claim that the partners had a flash that Zapata represented the image of independence their oil company was seeking. Ironically enough, General Zapata had fought for land redistribution on behalf of peasants, with resulting losses for precisely the kinds of people who staked Bush’s companies.
Moreover, Bush and his friends were hardly “independents.” To the contrary, they were connected to some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the country, who owned enormous expanses of land throughout Latin America and elsewhere—exactly the kind of people Zapata loathed. The key thing—and possibly Bush’s telegraphed message—was that Emiliano Zapata gained international repute for one thing: overthrowing a government.
Beyond providing a staging area for Cuban rebels, Zapata Offshore appears to have served as a paymaster. “We had to pay off politicians in Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and elsewhere,” said John Sherwood, chief of CIA anti-Castro operations in the early 1960s. “Bush’s company was used as a conduit for these funds under the guise of oil business contracts . . . The major breakthrough was when we were able, through Bush, to place people in PEMEX—the big Mexican national oil operation.” 46
Bush’s Mexican Connection
The complicated PEMEX affair began in 1960, when Zapata Offshore offered a lucrative secret partnership to a competing Mexican drilling equipment company, Perforaciones Marinas del Golfe, or Permargo. George H. W. Bush did not want this relationship exposed, even decades later. When investigative reporter Jonathan Kwitny tried to document Bush’s precise involvement with Permargo for a 1988 article, he was told by an SEC spokeswoman that Zapata filings from 1960 to 1966 had been “inadvertently destroyed” several months after Bush became vice president. 47
Bush’s Mexican counterpart in this arm’s-length relationship, Jorge Diaz Serrano, was ultimately sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment for defrauding the Mexican people of fifty-eight million dollars. Diaz Serrano later admitted to remaining a personal friend of Bush and visiting the vice president in Washington shortly before his fraud conviction in Mexico. 48 He told Kwitny that Poppy Bush’s interest in the oil business seemed limited: “In those days, I remember very clearly, he was a very young chap and when we were talking business with him at his office, he spent more time on the telephone talking about politics than paying attention to the drilling affairs.” As in other respects, father would be mirrored by son, as George W. Bush, too, would become well-known in the oil business for his preference for anything but the task at hand.
Evidence that Zapata Offshore was more than just Poppy Bush’s oil company
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