the time, Bath was the sole U.S. business representative for Salem bin Laden, head of the wealthy Saudi Arabian family and a brother (one of 17) to Osama bin Laden. It has long been suspected, but never proven, that the Arbusto money came directly from Salem bin Laden.

Philip Uzielli, a wealthy investor and the owner of Executive Resources, a company based first in the Dutch West Indies and later in Panama. Uzielli put $50,000 into one of the early Arbusto partnerships. In January 1982, his company bought ten percent of Arbusto's stock for a cool $1 million. The investment made Uzielli Arbusto's largest benefactor. The million-dollar purchase price was at least three times more than the stock he bought was worth. http://www.publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/report.asp?ReportID=431&L1=10&L2=10&L3=0&L4=0&L5=0

Harken Energy was a Persian Gulf oil company which was formed in 1973. In September 1986, Harken Energy Corp. was a medium-sized, diversified corporation founded by Phil Kendrickthat, had been purchased in 1983 by a New York lawyer, Alan Quasha. Quasha seemed interested in acquiring not just an oil company, but the son of the Vice President. Harken agreed to acquire Spectrum 7 in a deal that handed over one share of publicly traded stock for five shares of Spectrum, which at the time were practically worthless. [WP, July 30, 1999.]http://www.consortiumnews.com/2000/081500a2.html

Alan Quasha's father is William Quasha and is a Filipino banker, who had been at strong supporter of President Ferdinand Marcos. William Quasha owned 21 percent of Harken's stock. He also had advised top officials in Australia's Nugan Hand Bank, a CIA operation, which was involved in drug trafficking operations which originated in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. http://www.publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/report.aspReportID=431&L1=10&L2=10&L3=0&L4=0&L5=0

When Harken ran into trouble a year later, Saudi Sheik Abdullah Taha Bakhsh purchased a 17.6 percent stake in the company. Bakhsh was a business partner with Gaith Pharaon in Saudi Arabia; his banker there just happened to be Khalid bin Mahfouz. A Palestinian-born investor Talat Othman of Chicago was on the Board of Harken Energy, representing Sheik Abdullah Bakhsh of Saudi Arabia. http://www.tylwythteg.com/enemies/slick1.html

In 1987, Jackson Stephens (an Arkansas billionaire and shareholder of First American bank) made arrangements with Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) to provide $25 million to Harken Energy in return for a stock interest in that company. As part of the deal, Sheikh Abdullah Bakhsh, a Saudi real estate billionaire, joined Harken Energy's board as a major investor. Union Bank of Switzerland, which ordinarily didn't invest in small U.S. firms, would make an exception, giving Harken $25 million in exchange for a stock interest. At the time, UBS was a joint-venture partner with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International -(BCCI) a Geneva-based bank.

Stephens was owner of a Little Rock brokerage firm which underwrote Harken Energy's $25 million stock offering. Stephens Incorporated placed the Harken Energy stock offering with the Nugan Hand Bank and the London subsidiary of Union Bank of Switzerland. During the next decade the Union Bank of Switzerland assisted BCCI in avoiding taxes by moving cash from its bank in Noriega's Panama to other locations throughout the world. http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/jphuck/Book4Ch.3.html

... the network of connections between Bush and BCCI is so extensive that the Wall Street Journal concluded from their investigation of the matter in 1991 by stating: “The number of BCCI-connected people who had dealings with Harken—all since George W. Bush came on board—raises the question of whether they mask an effort to cozy up to a presidential son.” (or Pres. Bush Sr.).

By 1988, that equity in Harken Energy reached $70 million.. Harken's major investors included billionaire currency speculator George Soros, and university fund investor Harvard Management Co. When Salem bin Laden died in 1988, powerful Saudi Arabian banker and BCCI principal Khalid bin Mahfouz inherited his interests in Houston. Bath ran a business for bin Mahfouz in Houston and joined a partnership with bin Mahfouz and Gaith Pharaon, BCCI’s frontman in Houston’s Main Bank.

bin Mahfouz is a former director of the infamous BCCI international bank, which triggered a $12-billion U.S. bankruptcy scandal in the early 1990s. He was indicted in the U.S. for a $300-million bank fraud and facing civil claims exceeding $10 billion, he arranged a $225-million settlement with prosecutors and agreed to a permanent prohibition on owning banks in the U.S.

Worst of all, bin Mahfouz allegedly has been financing the bin Laden terrorist network—making Bush a U.S. citizen who has done business with those who finance and support terrorists. According to USA Today, bin Mahfouz and other Saudis attempted to transfer $3 million to various bin Laden front operations in Saudi Arabia in 1999. ABC News reported the same year that Saudi officials stopped bin Mahfouz from contributing money directly to bin Laden. Bin Mahfouz’s sister is also a wife of Osama bin Laden.

Sources:

http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/25/25/feature3.shtml/projectcensored/projectcensored.shtml

http://www.random-abstract.com/archives/00000292.html

BCCI the largest criminal bank in human history, in 1972, was the center of a global laundry and a conduit for transactions involving arms, drugs, and nuclear technology.

BCCI founder Agha Hasan Abedi was committed to the development of an Islamic atomic bomb, even donating 500 million rupees for the creation of Pakistan's Gulam Ishaq Research Institute for nuclear development. (BCCI paid the lawyer for Dr. Abdul Qader Khan, head of Pakistan's nuclear program, who a Dutch court convicted in 1983 of stealing the blueprints for a uranium enrichment factory. Three Pakistanis indicted in Houston in 1984 had tried to buy nuclear triggers using BCCI gold. A Pakistani-born Canadian, indicted in Philadelphia in 1987 for conspiracy to export restricted specialty steel and metal to enhance nuclear explosions, paid for the materials through BCCI Toronto. Etc.)

(Source; Professor John Metzger of Michigan State University and http://www.sumeria..net/politics/binladen.html

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO109C.html

In December, 1977, Jackson Stephens introduced Bert Lance to Agha Hasan Abedi (the founder of BCCI). According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, they discussed the possibility that Abedi purchase the stock of Financial General Bankshares (later called First American Bankshares) held by Lance, Stephens and others and concocted a plan to take over Lance's stock of the National Bank of Georgia U.S. SEC v Lance et. al.). The SEC found out about the plan and sought a restraining order to prevent a foreign bank from taking over a U.S. bank. Years later it would be revealed that Abedi and accomplise Gaith Pharoan went right ahead anyway succeeding with the takeover in 1982. (Corporate Crime Reporter, July 22, 1991). Abedi used frontman Gaith Pharoan to act as his intermediary, taking over Bert Lance's stake in the National Bank of Georgia for BCCI. In 1990, BCCI was convicted of money laundering for the Columbian Cocaine Cartels in Miami. Perhaps the most mysterious aspect of the Justice Dept's investigation of BCCI involved BCCI bank records from Panama City relating to General Noriega which simply ``disappeared'' in transit to Washington while under heavy guard by the Drug Enforcement Administration. After an internal investigation, the D.E.A. said it had no idea what happened to the documents. (Source: Christic Institute, 1991) http://www.totse.com/en/politics/international_banking_money_laundering/bcci91.html

Panana President, Gen. Manual Antonio Noriega was trafficking in drugs and money Laundering. Noriega was using the banks in Panama to launderer billion of dollars for the Columbian drug cartels and allowed drug traffickers to refuel their drug airplanes in Panama.

In 1991, BCCI collapsed and millions of investors in 73 countries lost their life savings. According to the Wall Street Journal, "BCCI represents the biggest bank robbery in history...(January 18, 1994)." And that BCCI was a "$10billion or so" heist. (Wall Street Journal, October 28, 1994.)

Stephens' principal motive in bringing BCCI to America was apparently to connect up his own financial institutions to the global laundry--not only First American, but those in Little Rock also. To avoid the type of SEC scrutiny involved in the Financial General takeover, Webster Hubbell, who had represented Stephens' software company Systematics, was employed to draw up the charter for the Arkansas Development Finance Authority (ADFA). The structure for the laundry was then in place.

One form of Stephens' laundry worked through front companies set up by bond broker Dan Lasater. These companies would deposit cash in banks such as Stephens' Worthen Bank, which would not fill out reporting forms. In return for this service, the companies would be obligated to buy bonds issued by the ADFA, and underwritten by Stephens' investment bank Stephens Inc. Stephens would thus be compensated for the laundering service in the form of an investment banking fee.

The money from the bond issue, meanwhile, would go back to the same front companies. That is, in effect the companies bought their own bonds and paid Stephens a fee for the service.

The participation of the ADFA, a state government institution, eliminated SEC scrutiny. ADFA formally issued and "guaranteed" the bonds, and thus collected a fee in the process. Some of these fees were translated into "loans" to the political friends of the Governor of Arkansas, William Jefferson Clinton, now President of the United States.

At other times ADFA was itself the core of the laundry. At the end of December 1988, for example, the ADFA deposited $50 million in Fuji Bank in the Cayman Islands. Fuji Bank subsequently purchased the industrial development loan of POM, Inc., a parking meter and arms production company owned by Seth Ward, Webster Hubbell's father-in-law. Hubbell was also POM's corporate attorney. (Source; Professor John Metzger of Michigan State University and http://www.sumeria..net/politics/binladen.html

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO109C.html http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~pdscott/q4c.html

In 1986 that the board of Harvard Management, a subsidiary established by the university to manage its endowment. Harvard Management was led by Robert G. Stone Jr. Stone was in the Texas oil business and knew the elder Bush. Harvard Management directed that the endowment invest some 5 percent of its $5 billion in assets in private oil and gas companies. Harken Energy in 1990, was the seventh-largest stock holding in Harvard's portfolio, about $50 million, bigger even than the university's stake in Exxon Corp. In all, Harvard Management risked 1 percent of the university's endowment in the small, struggling company, a surprisingly large bet by any measure, but particularly given Harken's dismal prospects. Harvard bailed out Harken several times and poured millions into the company in 1989, 1990, and 1991, all while Bush's father was president and his son still a director of the firm. In 1991 when Harvard University's prestigious endowment fund admitted it had just experienced its worst loss ever, of $92 million, in related to oil and gas investments, including ailing Harken.

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FBI Director Robert Mueller, was the top honcho of the Justice Department's, Criminal Division, during the senior Bush's administration and was instrumental in suppressing and/or destroying evidence and scaring off and covering up about witnesses to protect the Bush Family connections with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International.(Source: New York Times, July 6, 2001, in a story by Neil A. Lewis). ----- FBI agents had wanted to check into two members of the bin Laden family, Abdullah and Omar (top Saudi Arabian royals), but were told to stay away by superiors -- until September 13, 2001. Less-than-happy FBI agents gave some 30 pages long, marked "SECRET" to reporters.

Report of this story won the California State University School of Journalism's Project Censored Award in 2002.

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/7310#2.1

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