Reply #15: The Bushes are not the Browns... [View All]

[Baby Snooks]

Brown & Root was founded by George and Herman Brown with money they borrowed from their brother-in-law Dan Root who was the Root in Brown & Root. After Herman Brown died in 1962, George Brown sold Brown & Root to Halliburton but remained head of Brown & Root and it was his connection to LBJ that resulted in the contracts Halliburton and Brown & Root obtained during the Vietnam War. Part of the profit from the sale of Brown & Root established the Brown Foundation which is a philanthropic foundation in Houston with assets of around $1 billion which initially came from Halliburton. One of the daughters of George Brown is a large contributor to Democrats and Democratic causes. But some question the money itself and where it came from. It came from Halliburton. It was and is Democratic money and so while Halliburton may be heavily entrenched within the Republican Party at this point, during the Vietnam war it was heavily entrenched within the Democratic Party. The term blood money comes to mind. And in the case of Halliburton the blood money is to be found in both parties.

There is no connection to the Bushes except for Dresser Industries which became part of Kellogg-Brown & Root in 1999.

As for the Harrimans, unless I am mistaken it was always maintained that neither Averell nor Roland Harriman knew what was really being funded by Prescott Bush and they didn't care simply because they were only interested in the income from the investments and were not as directly involved in the business of the bank as some assumed. Pamela Harriman had an affair with Averell Harriman during World War II and later married him and they became involved with the Democratic Party in the 1980s with fundraising and networking and were regarded by some as the "final say" in the Democratic Party. She initially wanted Al Gore to run for president and it was a Democratic "kingmaker" from Texas named Bob Strauss who convinced her that Clinton would be the better choice in 1992. Bob Strauss was a Democrat but he was also good friends with George HW Bush who of course lost to Clinton in 1992. Texas has been intertwined with the presidential elections since 1980. And the intertwining is between both Republicans and Democrats. And sometimes curiously so as in the case of Bob Strauss.

Whatever Pamela Harriman knew about the Bushes she kept to herself although of course some wonder if she was murdered to make sure she kept it to herself.

One of the accusations made by the US government against Brown Brothers Harriman was that it had laundered money for Fritz Thyssen when Hitler attempted to seize the Thyssen assets.

There is also the matter of Riggs Bank which laundered money for Pinochet which is made more interesting by the fact that Riggs Bank had bought a private bank owned by Jonathan Bush, George HW Bush's cousin, about the time it began laundering the money for Pinochet. So you have that aspect of the Bushes, money laundering, that adds to the conspiracy theories about them. Similar accusations of money laundering were made about them with regard to the BCCI bank scandal. The real scandal of Riggs Bank is the matter of an account that was used by Princess Haifa, whose husband Prince Bandar was the Saudi ambassador, to funnel money to several of the 9/11 hijackers in California at one point. After 22 years Prince Bandar and Princess Haifa were suddenly called back to Saudi Arabia. On urgent family business. And of course the Riggs Bank investigation was dropped.

There are Bush connections to most everything. Just not to Halliburton.