Mr. GEORGE H. W. BUSH, President of the Zapata Oil.....
Raymond
President of the Zapata Oil.....
Various writers have suggested that Zapata Off-Shore, and Bush in
particular, cooperated with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
beginning in the late 1950s
Zapata's filing records with the U.S.Securities and Exchange
Commission are intact for the years 1955-1959, and again from 1967
onwards. However, records for the years 1960-1966 are (conventially)
missing. The commission's records officer stated that the records
were
inadvertently placed in a session file to be destroyed by a federal
warehouse and that a total of 1,000 boxes were pulped in this
procedure. The destruction of records occurred either in October 1983
(according to the records officer) or in 1981 shortly after Bush
became Vice President of the United States (according to, Wison
Carpenter, a record analyst with the commission).
Allegations by former CIA staff
US Army Brigadier General Russell Bowen wrote that there was a cover-
up of Zapata's CIA connections:
"If the people knew what we had done, they would chase us down the
street and lynch us."
-- George HW Bush;
"Well, we took care of that SOB, (Kennedy) didn't we?"
--- David Sanchez Morales, Bush CIA Cleaners Operation
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/CIAmorales.htm
http://search.aol.com/aol/search?query=David+Morales&s_it=keyword_rol...
David Sanchez Morales, ... close connections to the intelligence
community and Bush.....Morales feared being killed by the CIA. On one
occasion he told a friend: “I know too much”.
Operation 40.... George Bush was very close to members of Operation
40
in the early 1960s.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKoperation40.htm
Bush, in fact, did work directly with the anti-Castro Cuban groups in
Miami before and after the Bay of Pigs invasion, using his company,
Zapata Oil, as a corporate cover for his activities on behalf of the
agency. Records at the University of Miami, where the operations were
based for several years, show George Bush was present during this
time.
[10]
Another writer[11] quotes four former U.S. intelligence officials
saying Bush was involved with the CIA prior to the Bay of Pigs:
Robert T. Crowley and William Corson of the CIA:
Bush was officially considered a CIA business asset, according to
Crowley and Corson. "George's insecurities were clay to someone like
Dulles", William Corson said. To recruit young George Bush, Robert
Crowley explained, Dulles convinced him that "he could contribute to
his country as well as get help from the CIA for his overseas
business
activities." [Bush] was, according to Corson, "perfect at talent
spotting and looking at potential recruits for the CIA. You have to
remember, we had real fears of Soviet activity in Mexico in the
1950s.
Bush was one of many businessmen that would be reimbursed for hiring
someone the CIA was interested in, or simply carrying a message." --
Chapter 2 page 14
John Sherwood of the CIA:
Bush was at first a tiny part of OPERATION MONGOOSE, the CIA's code
name for their anti-Castro operations. According to the late John
Sherwood, "Bush was like hundreds of other businessmen who provided
the nuts-and-bolts assistance such operations require... What they
mainly helped us with was to give us a place to park people that was
discreet." --Chapter 2 page 16
An anonymous official connected to "Operation Mongoose":
George Bush would be given a list of names of Cuban oil workers we
would want placed in jobs... The oil platforms he dealt in were
perfect for training the Cubans in raids on their homeland. --Chapter
2 page 16
John Loftus, in his book Secret War quotes former U.S. intelligence
officials reporting the same story:
The Zapata-Permargo deal caught the eye of Allan Dulles, who the "old
spies" report was the man who recruited Bush's oil company as a part
time purchasing front for the CIA. Zapata provided commercial
supplies
for one of Dulles' most notorious operations: the Bay of Pigs
Invasion. --Chapter 16 page 368
Finally, according to Cuban intelligence official Fabian Escalante in
The Cuba Project: CIA Covert Operations 1959-62, Jack Crichton and
George H.W. Bush raised funds for the CIA's Operation 40.
"Tracy Barnes functioned as head of the Cuban Task Force. He called a
meeting on January 18, 1960, in his office in Quarters Eyes, near the
Lincoln Memorial in Washington, which the navy had lent while new
buildings were being constructed in Langley. Those who gathered there
included the eccentric Howard Hunt, future head of the Watergate team
and a writer of crime novels; the egocentric Frank Bender, a friend
of
Trujillo; Jack Esterline, who had come straight from Venezuela where
he directed a CIA group; psychological warfare expert David A.
Phillips, and others. The team responsible for the plans to overthrow
the government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 was
reconstituted, and in the minds of all its members this would be a
rerun of the same plan. Barnes talked at length of the goals to be
achieved. He explained that Vice-President Richard Nixon was the
Cuban
"case officer", and had assembled an important group of businessmen
headed by George Bush [Snr.] and Jack Crichton, both Texas oilmen, to
gather the necessary funds for [Operation 40]. Nixon was a protege of
Bush's father [Prescott], who in 1946 had supported Nixon's bid for
congress. In fact, [Presott] Bush was the campaign strategist who
brought Eisenhower and Nixon to the presidency of the United States.
With such patrons, Barnes was certain that failure was impossible."
--
Page 43-44
Fabian Escalante was in the Department of State Security (G-2) in
Cuba
in 1960. At the time of the Bay of Pigs, Escalante was head of a
counter-intelligence unit and was part of a team investigating a CIA
operation called Sentinels of Liberty, an attempt to recruit Cubans
willing to work against Castro. His information about Bush apparently
comes from a counterintelligence operation against Tracy Barnes of
the
CIA.
Allegations of the involvement of a former CIA officer in the
foundation of Zapata
On January 8, 2007, newly released internal CIA documents revealed
that Zapata had in fact emerged from Bush's collaboration with a
covert CIA officer in the 1950s. According to a CIA internal memo
dated November 29, 1975, Zapata Petroleum began in 1953 through
Bush's
joint efforts with Thomas J. Devine, a CIA staffer who had resigned
his agency position that same year to go into private business, but
who continued to work for the CIA under commercial cover. Devine
would
later accompany Bush to Vietnam in late 1967 as a "cleared and
witting
commercial asset" of the agency, acted as his informal foreign
affairs
advisor, and had a close relationship with him through 1975.[12]
Bay of Pigs
George Bush on Zapata oil rig, c.1963The CIA codename for the Bay of
Pigs invasion of April 1961 was "Operation Zapata".[13] Through his
work with Zapata Off-Shore, Bush is alleged to have come into contact
with Felix Rodriguez, Barry Seal, Porter Goss, and E. Howard Hunt,
around the time of the Bay of Pigs operation.[14]
CIA liaison officer Col. L. (Leroy) Fletcher Prouty alleges[15] that
Zapata Off-Shore provided or was used as cover for two of the ships
used in the Bay of Pigs invasion: the Barbara J and Houston. Prouty
claims he delivered two ships to an inactive Naval Base near
Elizabeth
City, North Carolina, for a CIA contact and he suspected very
strongly
that George Bush must have been involved:
They asked me to see if we could find – purchase – a couple of
transport ships. We got some people that were in that business, and
they went along the coast and they found two old ships that we
purchased and sent down to Elizabeth City and began to load with an
awful lot of trucks that the Army was sending down there. We deck-
loaded the trucks, and got all of their supplies on board. Everything
that they needed was on two ships. It was rather interesting to note,
looking back these days, that one of the ships was called the
Houston,
and the other ship was called the Barbara J. Colonel Hawkins had
renamed the program as we selected a name for the Bay of Pigs
operation. The code name was "Zapata." I was thinking a few months
ago
of what a coincidence that is. When Mr. Bush graduated from Yale,
back
there in the days when I was a professor at Yale, he formed an oil
company, called "Zapata", with a man, Lieddke, who later on became
president of Pennzoil. But the company that Lieddke and Mr. Bush
formed was the Zapata Oil Company. Mr. Bush's wife's name is Barbara
J. And Mr. Bush claims as his hometown Houston, Texas. Now the triple
coincidence there is strange; but I think it's interesting. I know
nothing about its meaning. But these invasion ships were the Barbara
J
and the Houston, and the program was "Zapata." George Bush must have
been somewhere around.[16]
John Loftus writes: "Prouty's credibility, however has been widely
attacked because of his consultancy to Oliver Stone's film JFK." but
notes on page 598 that: "While his credibility has suffered greatly
because of his consultancy to Oliver Stone's film JFK, his
recollections about the CIA supply mission have been confirmed by
other sources."[17]
Nevertheless, researcher James K. Olmstead claims to have discovered
a
CIA memorandum which states that the boats were leased, not
purchased,
by the Garcia Line Corporation with offices in Havana and New York
City. The owners were Alfredo Garcia and his five sons. The CIA was
using the Rio Escondido for "exfiltrating anti-Castro
leaders......prior to 1961 BOP planning." It had brought out Nino
Diaz, and Manolo Ray. Its captain Gus Tirado was well known to the
CIA. Eduardo Garcia met with two CIA agents in NYC and D.C. to
arrange
the use of the Garcia ships for the invasion. The alleged price was
$600.00 per day per ship plus fuel, food and personnel.
Eduardo selected and hired 30 men who were "executioners for Batista"
Miro Cardona of the Frente and the CIA did not like the choice of men
hired to protect the Garcia ships. "Nobody questioned that Eduardo
was
coming along with the expedition. "I'm going to be in charge of my
ships", he said.
Memorandum From the Chief of WH/4/PM, Central Intelligence Agency
(Hawkins) to the Chief of WH/4 of the Directorate for Plans
(Esterline) The Barbara J (LCI), now enroute to the United States
from
Puerto Rico, requires repairs which may take up to two weeks for
completion. The sister ship, the Blagar, is outfitting in Miami, and
its crew is being assembled. It is expected that both vessels will be
fully operational by mid-January at the latest. In view of the
difficulty and delay encountered in purchasing, outfitting and
readying for sea the two LCI's, the decision has been reached to
purchase no more major vessels, but to charter them instead. The
motor
ship, Rio Escondido (converted LCT) will be chartered this week and
one additional steam ship, somewhat larger, will be chartered early
in
February. Both ships belong to a Panamanian Corporation controlled by
the Garcia family of Cuba, who are actively cooperating with this
Project. These two ships will provide sufficient lift for troops and
supplies in the invasion operation.
The Bay of Pigs operation was directed out of the "Miami
Station" (also known as "JM/WAVE"), which was the CIA's largest
station worldwide. It housed 200 agents who handled approximately
2,000 Cubans. Robert Reynolds was the CIA's Miami station chief from
September 1960 to October 1961. He was replaced by career-CIA officer
Theodore Shackley, who oversaw Operation Mongoose, Operation 40
(including Porter Goss, Felix Rodriguez, Barry Seal), and others.
When
Bush became CIA Director in 1976 he appointed Ted Shackley as Deputy
Director of Covert Operations. When Bush became Vice President in
1981, he appointed Donald Gregg as his National Security Advisor.
Kevin Phillips[18] discusses George Bush's "highly likely" peripheral
role in the Bay of Pigs events. He points to the leadership role of
Bush's fellow Skull and Bones alumni in organizing the operation. He
notes an additional personal factor for Bush: the Walker side of the
family (who initially funded Zapata Corporation) had apparently lost
a
small fortune when Fidel Castro nationalized their West Indies Sugar
Co. Edwin Pauley was "known for CIA connections", according to
Phillips, it was Pauley who put Pemargo's Diaz and Bush together.