[lbo-talk] "Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton" (?)

[Joseph Wanzala]

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.