Released on = November 19, 2006, 9:20 am

Press Release Author = John A. Schulman

Industry = Energy

Press Release Summary = But Bush used Supreme Court to seal pertinent records to
kill investigation

Press Release Body = Anyone who is so naïve to believe that President Bush is an
honest man just trying to serve our nation needs to do just an hour of reading to
learn the truth about his oil deals with Saddam Hussein over the last thirty years
just as Congressmen Henry Gonzalez did in the 1990s as follows:

http://www.theconspiracy.us/9505/0027.html

{1} For further info on a possible Zapata Petroleum/drug trafficking connection, see
*The Immaculate Deception* by Russell S. Bowen. Carson City: America West
Publishers, 1991. ISBN 0- 922356-80-7

{2} Regarding the alleged Bush/Saddam connection:

MAJOR MEDIA HIDES BUSH-SADDAM-BCCI KICKBACK SCAM
(From *The Spotlight*, August 19, 1991)

Should President George Bush be prosecuted for engaging in secret, illegal
international business deals with Iraqi dictator
Saddam Hussein?

That was the provocative topic of the March 28 [1991] broadcast of *The Spotlight*\'s
nightly call-in talk forum RADIO FREE AMERICA [RFA] with host Tom Valentine.

Valentine\'s guest was veteran researcher Sherman Skolnick of Chicago, who has been
investigating Bush\'s involvement in a burgeoning scandal which has been ignored by
the Establishment media.

Skolnick can be reached at the Citizens Committee to Clean Up the Courts, 9800 South
Oglesby, Chicago, Illinois [60617].

Skolnick also maintains a regular five-minute telephone commentary, changed
regularly, through which he brings updates about his research about both local and
national news. The telephone number is (312) 731-1100.

Skolnick was interviewed again on RFA on August 6 [1991], in which he reiterated
these charges and gave additional details.

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TOM VALENTINE:
Former CIA Director-turned-President of the United States George
Bush has a lot of skeletons in his closet, doesn\'t he?

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
The press has published, without too many details, that there was
$200 billion in oil shipments from Iraq to the West over the past
five years and that Saddam Hussein siphoned off kickbacks of 5
percent. That\'s $10 billion.

The press did not see fit to mention -- at any time -- who [else]
was involved in those kickbacks. It was none other than Saddam\'s
partner in private business ventures -- George Herbert Walker Bush.
VALENTINE:
You\'re kidding us, aren\'t you?

SKOLNICK:
No. I\'m going to show you step by step. The bulk of the money went through the Bank
of Credit and Commerce International [BCCI]. That bank was formed in the 1970s with
seed money from the Bank of America, the largest shareholders of which are the
Rothschilds of Chicago, Paris, London and Switzerland.

A director of a BCCI holding company, First American Bank in Washington, D.C., is
Clark Clifford [former secretary of defense and leading Democratic Party figure].
More about Clifford later.

The bank is also linked to the financial affairs of former President Jimmy Carter
and his friend and one-time budget director, banker Bert Lance.

Some of the details about the Democrats who have been involved in this whole affair
have been published, for example, in the May 3 [1991] issue of the *Wall Street
Journal*.

During the 1988 presidential campaign, additionally, BCCI was one of the major
financiers of the Michael Dukakis campaign.

VALENTINE:
What happened to BCCI?

SKOLNICK:
On the Columbus Day weekend in 1988 at the behest of the Reagan White House, BCCI\'s
facilities in the United States were seized, including their branch in Chicago. It
was claimed that BCCI was in the drug-money laundering business.

BCCI operates in 73 countries and has 400 branches.

BCCI financed the Democratic Party in the United States and arranged deals for
Republicans outside the United States.

VALENTINE:
Why did the Reagan-Bush White House move against BCCI?

SKOLNICK:
There were two purposes behind the seizure of the BCCI Chicago branch:

One, to stop BCCI\'s funding of the Dukakis campaign so that Dukakis would have no
money for television advertisements in the remaining weeks of the 1988 campaign.

Two, to impound and suppress records at the Chicago branch regarding kickbacks to
Saddam which tend to incriminate George Bush in his joint business ventures with the
Iraqi dictator.

I point out another thing: The same bank has records showing joint business ventures
between Gen. Manuel Noriega, former dictator of Panama, and George Bush.

VALENTINE:
You\'ve found that there is also a link to a BCCI branch in Florida as well?

SKOLNICK:
Yes. In January of 1990, the federal prosecutor in Tampa had former top officials of
BCCI\'s Florida branch on trial. They were allowed to escape prison with only a slap
on the wrist and a small penalty.

Here\'s why: They told the Justice Department that if they were going to go to prison
that they had documents from their bank showing that George Bush had private
business ventures through their bank with a series of dictators including not only
Saddam and Noriega but others as well.

What\'s interesting is that the records of the Florida branch of BCCI were not
seized, but the Chicago branch records were seized. The reason for this is that the
bulk of the $10 billion in kickbacks to Saddam went through the Chicago branch.

This is almost certainly the same reason that the Justice Department is not
interested in bringing charges against the Chicago bankers. They can use the same
threat against Bush that the Florida bankers have made.

The Justice Department not only seized the Chicago branch records
to damage the Dukakis campaign, but to cover up the joint business ventures between
Bush and various dictators, as I\'ve mentioned.

Another bank, the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro [BNL], is also involved in these deals.
Their Chicago subsidiary also had records relating to these deals.

VALENTINE:
Hasn\'t Congressman Henry Gonzalez [D-Texas] been looking into this?

SKOLNICK:
Rep. Gonzalez, chairman of the House Banking Committee, was in
the process of seizing these records via a congressional subpoena.

However, on December 28, 1990 a federal judge in Chicago, Brian Duff, who is tied in
with the Federal Reserve, impounded those records and chased Gonzalez\'s attorney out
of court and called him names, saying he was acting like \"an 800-pound gorilla.\"

The judge ordered Gonzalez not to use any of the records that he already has and
ordered him to give the other documents back.

All of this appears in the court records. In the March 25 [1991] issue of *The
Spotlight* you published the docket number of the case in question, which is in the
U.S. District Court in Chicago.

It is the People of the State of Illinois ex rel William C. Harris vs the Board of
Governors of the Federal Reserve System. It is
case No. 90 C 6863.

Here we have two foreign banks operating in Chicago that were part of these deals.

VALENTINE:
How did these deals involving Bush work?

SKOLNICK:
It\'s technical, so bear with me: Saddam\'s oil was shipped to
Texaco. In 1985 a Texas jury, at the behest of Pennzoil, issued
the largest damage verdict in American history against Texaco.
Pennzoil claimed that Texaco damaged them in a deal with Getty
Oil.

Who owns Pennzoil? George Bush and his friends.

Some of this came out in an obituary in the *Chicago Tribune* on
March 4. It referred to \"George Bush and his partner William
Liedtke Jr. and Liedtke\'s brother.\" It said that \"In the mid-
1950s [the Liedtke brothers] teamed up with then-oilman George
Bush and John Overbee to form Zapata Petroleum Co.\"

\"Then they went on to form Pennzoil.\"

VALENTINE:
Everybody knows about Bush and Zapata Oil but hardly anybody
knows about his connection to Pennzoil.

SKOLNICK:
Texaco appealed to the Texas Supreme Court, which upheld the
verdict but refused to review it. Thereafter there were stories
in the press in various parts of the country that judges on the
Texas Supreme Court are \"corrupt.\"

Texaco went to the U.S. Supreme Court because they were told that
they had to put up a $12 billion \"appeals bond.\" (It would have
been the biggest appeals bond in the history of the world.)

Bush leaned on the Supreme Court -- let\'s say it like it is --
Bush corrupted the Supreme Court to grant no remedy to Texaco.
Believe me, legal scholars were scratching their heads, but
there\'s no doubt about what happened.

VALENTINE:
How did Bush benefit from this court judgement?

SKOLNICK:
As a result of this, Texaco fell under the domination and
supervision of Pennzoil.

Where did the kickbacks to Saddam reportedly come from? They came
from the deals between Texaco and its subsidiaries purchasing oil
from Iraq. There\'s where the $200 billion comes from and 5
percent of that is $10 billion.

There\'s no way in the world that Bush would not have known about
those kickbacks, which he obviously supervised. As far as the
kickbacks, there has been something published about them.

The November 29, 1989 issue of the *Wall Street Journal* reported
that \"IRS officials say that officials of the BNL got $290,000 in
kickbacks from Saddam in his deals.\"

The nature of these \"deals\" are left out of the article.
Obviously, some of these deals are the ones in which Bush was
involved.

As I perceive it, there has been falsification of records and
obstruction of justice. By what right does the White House lean
on the Supreme Court to damage Texaco for the benefit of George
Bush and his Pennzoil company?

VALENTINE:
Those are very heavy allegations.

SKOLNICK:
Let me go one step further. In the last couple of weeks the press
is trying to put all of the blame for the Noriega deals and for
the Saddam deals on Clark Clifford.

I\'ve interviewed several sources who know Clifford and his wife.
His wife is going around crying to friends that her husband is
about to be indicted and framed by the White House to protect
Bush himself from going to prison.

I don\'t know if Clark Clifford is an angel or not, but I do know
it\'s wrong to blame all of this on Clifford and ride him into
jail without Bush going along behind him.

They are trying to make it look like the BCCI scandal is a
Democratic Party albatross and focus everything on Clifford.

I don\'t say any of this lightly. I\'m saying that there is a
reasonable basis for grand juries to indict George Bush.

As far as I\'m concerned there\'s only one independent source in this country, and
those are grand jurors.

If there are any grand jurors out there listening, they have the
opportunity here. They don\'t have to wait for the chief judge or
the prosecutor.

Our grand jurors can use their power to investigate these transactions that have
been summarized here involving Bush, Noriega and Saddam along with BCCI and BNL.
There\'s enough here to prosecute Bush.

VALENTINE:
Has there been anything in the Establishment press about any of this?

SKOLNICK:
The *Wall Street Journal* on March 25 of this year did admit that a lot of Saddam\'s
kickbacks went through BCCI, but they obviously didn\'t go into these details even
though they have good reporters who could have dug up these matters. If I could dig
it up, they could have too.

VALENTINE:
What is Rep. Gonzalez doing about all this?

SKOLNICK:
I\'ve talked to several sources close to Gonzalez [and they said] that he is
considering going before Congress and demanding that the Justice Department
prosecute Bush on these kickbacks to Saddam that went through BCCI and BNL, which
Bush knew about and which his financial interests in those oil companies arranged.

Gonzalez\'s closest friends say that the only thing preventing the Congressman from
going on the floor of the House and urging Bush\'s prosecution is that the White
House is invoking some sort of \"national security\" matter involving these two banks.




Web Site = http://www.whatreallyhappened.com

Contact Details = John Shulman
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Suite 1125
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