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 B
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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surfaced in the years that followed. Bush increasingly spent his time on politics, and others were brought in to transform the company into a larger entity that could more credibly run global operations. According to former Zapata executive Bob Gow:
After George lost his first bid for public office . . . we had a number of discussions with a man named Bill Clements, who was president of a company named Sedco . . . I was very surprised to become aware during some of those discussions that George did not really care if Bill Clements was to be head of a combined company of Zapata and Sedco. I believe he would have been happy to have Bill Clements assume that role . . . George’s real interest was in politics. 49
(Clements did not take over Zapata, but the two companies did enter into a joint venture in the Persian Gulf. Clements became deputy defense secretary under Nixon, and then governor of Texas, where he gave a job to an eager new arrival to the state named Karl Rove.)
Bush’s reward for all his troubles may have come in 1965, when one of the company’s rigs was ostensibly lost in Hurricane Betsy. For the first time in its history, the insurance giant Lloyds of London paid out an oil-platform disaster claim without physical evidence. Zapata received eight million dollars for a rig that had cost only three million. 50
The fate of the rig remains a mystery. “The platform was stable at the time,” recalled Vincent “Buddy” Bounds, the last man evacuated from it. “I remember we were taken off just before dark . . . I was surprised to hear it disappeared without a trace; it was awfully big.” 51 Poppy’s brother Bucky recalled the fears expressed by Zapata Offshore staff that it would be impossible for an insurance claim to be paid because of the absence of any wreckage. But Poppy himself was calm, reassuring his people that “everything is going to be all right.” 52
In February 1966, Poppy left Zapata to run for Congress. Members of his circle stepped in at the offshore company to ensure continuity. One of them was Poppy’s former aide William Stamps Farish III, who also began managing Poppy’s assets in a blind trust. Farish fit in nicely. He was heir to an oil fortune, and his family went way back with the Bushes. In 2001, he was named ambassador to Britain by George W. Bush. 53
The financials of Zapata, like those of latter-day Enron, were almost impossible to understand. This appears to have been by design. A bit of this can be gleaned from the words of the company’s former executive Bob Gow, another in a small army of Bush loyalists who show up repeatedly in the family story—and by extension the nation’s.
Resetting the Sales
Bob Gow may be the only person in American history to be employed by one future president (Poppy Bush—at Zapata) and to later employ another (George W.—at Gow’s post-Zapata agricultural mini-conglomerate Stratford of Texas).
In 2006, I traveled to Mexico, to the western Yucatán, and met with Gow on his bamboo plantation not far from the Mayan ruins at Uxmal. I also obtained Gow’s self-published memoirs, the five hundred pages of which include much about Zapata, bamboo, beeswax, and catfish, but manage to say little about the Bushes and their doings. Gow did, however, admit that he did some spying for the CIA.
Gow was a member of the country’s mostly invisible elites. The family was certainly well connected. His grandfather’s company played a role in the building of the Boston subway. His father was called to Washington in World War II and rose rapidly in the war-mobilization hierarchy. (His role was similar role to that of Samuel Bush in the First World War.) After the war, the Gows returned to Massachusetts, where Bob attended Groton. His roommate was Ray Walker, a cousin of George H. W. Bush.
Bob Gow and Ray Walker would room together again at Yale, and both would be inducted into the 1955 class of Skull and
After George lost his first bid for public office . . . we had a number of discussions with a man named Bill Clements, who was president of a company named Sedco . . . I was very surprised to become aware during some of those discussions that George did not really care if Bill Clements was to be head of a combined company of Zapata and Sedco. I believe he would have been happy to have Bill Clements assume that role . . . George’s real interest was in politics. 49
(Clements did not take over Zapata, but the two companies did enter into a joint venture in the Persian Gulf. Clements became deputy defense secretary under Nixon, and then governor of Texas, where he gave a job to an eager new arrival to the state named Karl Rove.)
Bush’s reward for all his troubles may have come in 1965, when one of the company’s rigs was ostensibly lost in Hurricane Betsy. For the first time in its history, the insurance giant Lloyds of London paid out an oil-platform disaster claim without physical evidence. Zapata received eight million dollars for a rig that had cost only three million. 50
The fate of the rig remains a mystery. “The platform was stable at the time,” recalled Vincent “Buddy” Bounds, the last man evacuated from it. “I remember we were taken off just before dark . . . I was surprised to hear it disappeared without a trace; it was awfully big.” 51 Poppy’s brother Bucky recalled the fears expressed by Zapata Offshore staff that it would be impossible for an insurance claim to be paid because of the absence of any wreckage. But Poppy himself was calm, reassuring his people that “everything is going to be all right.” 52
In February 1966, Poppy left Zapata to run for Congress. Members of his circle stepped in at the offshore company to ensure continuity. One of them was Poppy’s former aide William Stamps Farish III, who also began managing Poppy’s assets in a blind trust. Farish fit in nicely. He was heir to an oil fortune, and his family went way back with the Bushes. In 2001, he was named ambassador to Britain by George W. Bush. 53
The financials of Zapata, like those of latter-day Enron, were almost impossible to understand. This appears to have been by design. A bit of this can be gleaned from the words of the company’s former executive Bob Gow, another in a small army of Bush loyalists who show up repeatedly in the family story—and by extension the nation’s.
Resetting the Sales
Bob Gow may be the only person in American history to be employed by one future president (Poppy Bush—at Zapata) and to later employ another (George W.—at Gow’s post-Zapata agricultural mini-conglomerate Stratford of Texas).
In 2006, I traveled to Mexico, to the western Yucatán, and met with Gow on his bamboo plantation not far from the Mayan ruins at Uxmal. I also obtained Gow’s self-published memoirs, the five hundred pages of which include much about Zapata, bamboo, beeswax, and catfish, but manage to say little about the Bushes and their doings. Gow did, however, admit that he did some spying for the CIA.
Gow was a member of the country’s mostly invisible elites. The family was certainly well connected. His grandfather’s company played a role in the building of the Boston subway. His father was called to Washington in World War II and rose rapidly in the war-mobilization hierarchy. (His role was similar role to that of Samuel Bush in the First World War.) After the war, the Gows returned to Massachusetts, where Bob attended Groton. His roommate was Ray Walker, a cousin of George H. W. Bush.
Bob Gow and Ray Walker would room together again at Yale, and both would be inducted into the 1955 class of Skull and
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