http://prorev.com/2006/01/all-in-family-bushes-and-clinton.htm
Tuesday, January 31, 2006 ALL IN THE FAMILY: THE BUSHES AND THE CLINTONS
[For more than a decade, the Review has pointed out the close connection between the Clintons and the Bush, so it's nice to have it confirmed by a member of the family - family in this case being used in its prosecutorial rather than biological sense]
GREG PIERCE, WASHINGTON TIMES - President Bush says Bill Clinton has become so close to his father that the Democratic former president is like a member of the family. Former President George Bush has worked with Mr. Clinton to raise money for victims of the Asian tsunami and the hurricane disaster along the Gulf Coast. Asked about his father and Mr. Clinton, Mr. Bush quipped, "My new brother." "That's a good relationship. It's a fun relationship to watch," Mr. Bush said in an interview on CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday. While attending Pope John Paul II's funeral, Mr. Bush said, "It was fun to see the interplay between Dad and Clinton. One of these days, I'll be a member of the ex-presidents' club. . . I'll be looking for something to do." He said ex-presidents share rare experiences that others cannot understand. "And so I can understand why ex-presidents are able to put aside old differences," he said. Mr. Bush said he has checked in with Mr. Clinton occasionally. "And you know, he says things that makes it obvious -- that makes it obvious to me that we're kind of, you know, on the same wavelength about the job of the presidency. Makes sense, after all, there's this kind of commonality," he said. Mr. Bush jokingly referred to speculation that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former president's wife, will seek the Democratic nomination for president. He had earlier referred to the former first lady as "formidable." "Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton," he said, referring to how Bill Clinton had followed his father, and Hillary Clinton could follow him.
[Now some earlier clues. Clinton served as a regional facilitator for the Reagan-Bush administration activities in Latin America including the notorious operation at Mena, from which the CIA shipped arms south with drugs reportedly coming back on the return flights. The job of someone like Clinton was to look the other way and not squeal on Reagan and Bush, especially about the drug trade in Arkansas. The elder Bush has considerable reason to be grateful]
PROGRESSIVE REVIEW - [In 1984] Clinton bodyguard, state trooper LD Brown, applies for a CIA opening. Clinton gives him help on his application essay including making it more Reaganesque on the topic of the Nicaragua. According to Brown, he meets a CIA recruiter in Dallas whom he later identities as former member of Vice President Bush's staff. On the recruiter's instruction, he meets with notorious drug dealer Barry Seal in a Little Rock restaurant. Joins Seal in flight to Honduras with a purported shipment of M16s and a return load of duffel bags. Brown gets $2,500 in small bills for the flight. Brown, concerned about the mission, consults with Clinton who says, "Oh, you can handle it, don't sweat it." On second flight, Brown finds cocaine in a duffel bag and again he seeks Clinton's counsel. Clinton says to the conservative Brown, "Your buddy, Bush, knows about it" . . .
PROGRESSIVE REVIEW - In 1984, Ronald Reagan wants to send the National Guard to Honduras to help in the war against the Contras. Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis goes to the Supreme Court in a futile effort to stop it but Clinton is happy to oblige, even sending his own security chief, Buddy Young, along to keep an eye on things. Winding up its tour, the Arkansas Guard declares large quantities of its weapons "excess" and leaves them behind for the Contras.
PROGRESSIVE REVIEW - In 1985, Terry Reed is asked to take part in Operation Donation, under which planes and boats needed by the Contras "disappear," allowing owners to claim insurance. Reed has been a Contra operative and CIA asset working with Felix Rodriguez, the Contra link to the CIA and then-Vice President Bush's office. Reed later claims he refused, but that his plane was removed while he was away. In 1987 Terry Reed's plane is returned but, according to his account, he is asked not to report it because it might have to be "borrowed" again. Reed later says that he had become aware that the Contra operation also involved drug running and had gotten cold feet. He also believed that large sums of drug money were being laundered by leading Arkansas financiers. He went to Felix Rodriguez and told him he was quitting. Reed was subsequently charged with mail fraud for having allegedly claimed insurance on a plane that was in fact hidden in a hanger in Little Rock. The head of Clinton's Swiss Guard, Capt. Buddy Young, later assistant FEMA director, will claim to have been walking around the North Little Rock Airport when "by an act of God" a gust of wind blew open the hangar door and revealed the Piper Turbo Arrow.
SAM SMITH, SHADOWS OF HOPE, 1994: [Clinton] appears willing to ignore the great residue of Reagan-Bush offenses, especially those growing out of the war on drugs and attempts to gag and intimidate government and defense workers. And he seems similarly disinterested in unclosed cases of political racketeering such as those involving BCCI and BNL. Said one activist lawyer who has met with Attorney General Reno: "She's closing her ears to all of that." Reno, who was clearly more interested in protecting law enforcement agencies than in finding the truth about the Waco massacre, also early bought the Bush administration line in the BNL bank case. She agreed to a plea bargain by Christopher P. Drogoul, the former Atlanta manager of the Italian bank who had claimed that US intelligence officials were aware of loans made to Iraq. Reno declared that she did not think the case had been mishandled by the Bush administration, despite a federal judge's charge that Drogoul and his Atlanta bank colleagues were "pawns and bit players" in a secret deal to provide arms for Iraq and that the Clinton administration's exoneration of its predecessors was only possible "in never-never land."
PROGRESSIVE REVIEW - The select House committee looking into the transfer of secret technology to China has filed a secret report on how it happened, illustrating once again the first principle of intelligence: don't let the American people know what the other side already does. As a result of this bipartisan clamp on the scandal, we have no idea as to whether the egregious practices of the Clinton administration were matched by those of Reagan and Bush or not. The implication is, of course, that everybody does it, which means that everybody for the past 20 years has been helping American corporations build up the Chinese economy just as we allowed American industry to transform Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union into worthy adversaries. We do know that the Clinton Administration took large sums of barely laundered campaign contributions from the Chinese government and ignored its own national security and diplomatic advisors in loosening export restrictions. The two biggest beneficiaries: Hughes, primarily a Republican donor; and Loral, primarily a Democratic one. The biggest losers: Americans and the security of their country.