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ORIGINAL RESEARCHBill Berkowitz The tumultuous and tawdry travels of Neil BushThese days, while President George W. Bush is all about convincing the American public that he has a "Plan for Victory" in Iraq, his younger brother, Neil, is all about taking advantage of the family name. While in a series of speeches the president has been trumpeting a 35-page National Security Council document titled, "Our National Strategy for Victory in Iraq," brother Neil has been globetrotting with high-powered comrades and touting his company's prospectus. Over the past six months, Neil Bush, the son of former President George Herbert Walker Bush and Barbara Bush and the younger brother of the president, has been shepherded around several former Soviet republics by a man wanted for fraud by Russian authorities, and has showed up in the Philippines and Taiwan at the side of a self-styled messiah. If people know anything at all about the star-crossed Neil Bush it likely relates to either his role in the failed Silverado Savings and Loan scandal during the 1980s, which cost taxpayers more than $1 billion, or, more recently, the lurid details of his divorce from his wife of 23 years. After a brief hiatus from the public spotlight, Neil Bush is back. Within a three-month period, Bush has shown up in Latvia, Ukraine and Georgia with Russian fugitive Boris Berezovsky, and has appeared at the side of the Unification Church's Rev. Sun Myung Moon in Taiwan and the Philippines. In September, Bush visited Latvia with Boris Berezovsky, described by the Washington Post as "a fugitive Russian tycoon who made millions in the violent scramble for control of Russian government assets after the fall of communism." Bush, whom the St. Petersburg Times characterized as "the scandal-tainted brother of the U.S. president," and Berezovsky, who currently lives in London where he has received political asylum, was toodling around the former Soviet republics to promote Ignite! Learning (website), the Texas-based interactive education software company Bush founded in 1999. Berezovsky took Bush "on a tour of countries from the former Soviet Union that have spun out of Moscow's sphere of influence," the newspaper pointed out. In June, it was Ukraine, then Georgia, "where Berezovsky's longtime partner and Tbilisi power broker Badri Patarkatsishvili was on hand to wine and dine the U.S. president's brother." "He asked me to think about possible projects in the regions that I know about," Berezovsky said. "I've known this region for a long time. The CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States] is my area of expertise." According to the newspaper, Berezovsky, "a former Kremlin king-maker ... served a stint as executive secretary of the Commonwealth of Independent States under former President Boris Yeltsin." He later clashed with Russian President Putin shortly after he was elected in 2000. Ken Leonard, the president of Ignite!, said that he had no knowledge of any political problems that Berezovsky, who is a shareholder in the company, might have. "We know him in terms of his relationship directly with the company," he said. The newspaper also pointed out that the U.S. Embassy in Moscow had disavowed any knowledge of Bush's activities, while the State Department denied any "involvement in, or any role in arranging, the activities of these two private individuals in Riga." Leonard refused to discuss the company's earnings or profits, nor would he comment on how many schools were using the company's software. He did point out, however, that "thousands of students" had access to it in a number of states, including Texas, Florida, Washington and California. The company has start-up projects in Latin America and South Korea, and is eager to move into the former Soviet space. The Bush/Berezovsky trip resulted in several countries ordering "10 of Ignite!'s science courses for pilot programs in their schools," the St. Petersburg Times reported. "So far, the agreement is to use the English-language U.S. curriculum available in existing material, Leonard said. But the programs, if successful, might be first translated into Russian and then localized to meet each country's curriculum, he said." While traipsing through Eastern Europe with Berezovsky raised some eyebrows, the St. Petersburg Times reported that other Bush business deals are also controversial. During his divorce proceedings, Neil Bush said he was co-chairman of Crest Investment Corporation, a company based in Houston, Texas, that invests in energy and other ventures. He said that he received $15,000 every three months for working an average three or four hours a week. One of Bush's "business partners" is Jamal Daniel, "a Syrian-American businessman, who is co-chairman with Bush of a fund called Crest Investment Company." According to the newspaper, "Daniel boasts important connections with leaders and their families in the Middle East, including former Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, the Financial Times reported in a December 2003 investigative article on the Daniel-Bush relationship." Last year, despite being a "little-known fund," Crest Investment Company was "granted lucrative rights to develop a plant to process liquefied natural gas near Freeport, Texas, in the process pushing out ExxonMobil, which had first rights to develop the plant." Jamal Daniel was also a member of the advisory board of New Bridge Strategies, a low-profile Washington firm set up to help companies invest in postwar Iraq. Directors of New Bridge include political heavyweights Joe Allbaugh, the former manager of the Bush-Cheney election campaign in 2000, and Ed Rogers, a former senior White House aide to President Bush. Neil and the Rev. Sun Myung MoonMore recently, Bush showed up in the Philippines and Taiwan at the side of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, the head of the controversial Unification Church. In the Philippines, Bush attended the inaugural convocation of the Universal Peace Federation (UPF) in Manila, the Manila Bulletin reported. Bush, along with other "peace leaders" joined with Moon in meeting with Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. The president "praised Moon for his global peace efforts and God-centered, family-centered economic and social initiatives in various parts of the world, including projects in a number of Philippine cities," the Manila paper reported. Moon's tour has come up with a new way of promoting world peace, which he is calling the "World Peace King Bridge-Tunnel": "For thousands of years, Satan used the Bering Strait to separate East and West, North and South, as well as North America and Russia geographically. I propose that a bridge be constructed over the Bering Strait, or a tunnel be dug under it, so that it will be able to connect the world super highway starting from the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa to Santiago in Chile,and from London to New York, making the world a single community." Moon's Philippine trip, one stop on a 100-day tour that is taking him to 100 cities in 67 nations and covering nearly 100,000 miles, is also centered on building momentum for his idea of developing a faith-based path to peace by re-vamping the United Nations. John Gorenfeld, a veteran investigative reporter and a longtime chronicler of Moon's sojourns, described to me Moon's thinking on another ongoing project, his attempt to transform the United Nations. "Moon speaks in parables from the Book of Genesis. He says the U.N. is like Cain, but he wants to build a second entity that is like Abel. Ideally, his 'Abel U.N.' -- a body fusing all religions -- would be embraced by the U.N. But if not, he wants to set up his own alternative diplomatic machine to outshine the U.N." During a May 2003 meeting with President Bush at the White House, Philippines President Arroyo suggested that the United States might consider co-sponsoring the proposal, the conservative online news magazine, NewsMax.com reported. According to that report, the president "expressed deep interest and asked his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to study the matter." "Some 3,000 people, including Vice President Annette Lu, US President George W. Bush's younger brother Neil Bush and Washington Times president Joo Dong Moon, listened to Reverend Moon's speech at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei," the Taipei Times reported. Neil Bush is no stranger to showing up at out of the way places searching for business: One month after 9/11, Bush showed up at an international technology conference in Dubai where he was hunting for investors for Ignite! A few months later, he was in Saudi Arabia, where he delivered the keynote address on the concluding day of the three-day Jeddah Economic Forum. Bush told conferees that the best way to change perceptions in the United States about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was to expand their political lobbying. Divorced and fancy freeStained by his involvement in the savings and loan debacle, Neil Bush's reputation was further soiled by revelations contained in a deposition that was part of his divorce from his ex-wife Sharon. In those documents, Bush revealed details about rewarding business deals and a series of sexual encounters with women in Asia. Sharon Bush's lawyer, Marshall Davis Brown, questioned Bush about an August 2002 contract with Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., a firm backed by Jiang Mianheng, the son of former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, that would pay him $2 million in stock over five years: "You have absolutely no educational background in semiconductors do you?" "That's correct," Bush responded. "And you have absolutely over the last 10, 15, 20 years not a lot of demonstrable business experience that would bring about a company investing $2 million in you?" In the deposition, Bush also admitted to having had a series of sexual encounters with Asian woman, while on trips to Thailand and Hong Kong. According to Bush, the women knocked on his door, entered and engaged in sex with him. According to a CNN report, Bush "said he did not know if they were prostitutes because they never asked for money and he did not pay them." "Mr. Bush, you have to admit it's a pretty remarkable thing for a man just to go to a hotel room door and open it and have a woman standing there and have sex with her," Brown said. "It was very unusual," Bush said. Last month, Bush took time away from his busy schedule to attend a White House dinner in honor of Britain's Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla. Reverend Moon has been a longtime friend to the Bush family. After supporting Bush's election in 2000 through his flagship publication, the Washington Times, the newspaper's foundation sponsored a prayer luncheon attended by some 1,700 religious, civic, and political leaders the day before Bush's inauguration. In 1995, former President George H. W. Bush received $10,000 to speak at a Moon-sponsored Buenos Aires banquet that launched the Reverend's Latin American publication, "Tiempos del Mundo" (Times of the World). "A lot of my friends in South America don't know about the Washington Times but it is an independent voice," the former president said. "The editors of the Washington Times tell me that never once has the man with the vision interfered with the running of the paper, a paper that in my view brings sanity to Washington DC." sign in, or register to email stories or comment on them.
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MORE ORIGINAL RESEARCHBill Berkowitz PERC receives Templeton Freedom Award for promoting 'enviropreneurs'Right Wing foundation-funded anti-environmental think tank grabbing a wider audience for 'free market environmentalism' On the 15th anniversary of Terry Anderson and Donald Leal's book "Free Market Environmentalism" -- the seminal book on the subject -- Anderson, the Executive Director of the Bozeman, Montana-based Property and Environment Research Center (PERC - formerly known as the Political Economy Research Center) spoke in late-January at an event sponsored by Squaw Valley Institute at the Resort at Squaw Creek in California. While it may have been just another opportunity to speak on "free market environmentalism" and not the kickoff of a "victory tour," nevertheless it comes at a time when PERC's ideas are taking root.
Bill Berkowitz Neil Bush of Saudi ArabiaDuring recent visit, President’s brother describes the country as a 'kind of tribal democracy' In late February, only a few days after Saudi Arabia beheaded four Sri Lankan robbers and then left their headless bodies on public display in the capital of Riyadh, Neil Bush, for the fourth time in the past six years, showed up for the country's Jeddah Economic Forum. The Guardian reported that Human Rights Watch "said the four men had no lawyers during their trial and sentencing, and were denied other basic legal rights." In an interview with Arab News, the Saudi English language paper, Bush described the country as "a kind of tribal democracy."
Bill Berkowitz Newt Gingrich's back door to the White HouseAmerican Enterprise Institute "Scholar" and former House Speaker blames media for poll showing 64 percent of the American people wouldn't vote for him under any circumstances Whatever it is that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has come to represent in American politics, the guy is nothing less than fascinating. One day he's espousing populist rhetoric about the need to cut the costs of college tuition and the next day he's talking World War III. One day he's claiming that the "war on terror" may force the abridgement of fundamental first amendment rights and the next he's advancing a twenty-first century version of his Contract with America. At the same time he's publicly proclaiming how "stupid" it is that the race for the presidency has already started you know that he's trying to figure out how to out finesse Rudy, McCain and Romney for the nomination. And last week, when Fox News' Chris Wallace cited a poll showing that 64 percent of the public would never vote for him, he was quick to blame those results on how unfairly he was treated by the mainstream media back in the day.
Bill Berkowitz American Enterprise Institute takes lead in agitating against IranDespite wrongheaded predictions about the war on Iraq, neocons are on the frontlines advocating military conflict with Iran After doing such a bang up job with their advice and predictions about the outcome of the war on Iraq, would it surprise you to learn that America's neoconservatives are still in business? While at this time we are not yet seeing the same intense neocon invasion of our living rooms -- via cable television's news networks -- that we saw during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, nevertheless, a host of policy analysts at conservative think tanks -- most notably the American Enterprise Institute -- are being heeded on Iran by those who count - folks inside the Bush Administration.
Bill Berkowitz After six years, opposition gaining on George W. Bush's Faith Based InitiativeUnmentioned in the president's State of the Union speech, the program nevertheless continues to recruit religious participants and hand out taxpayer money to religious groups With several domestic policy proposals unceremoniously folded into President Bush's recent State of the Union address, two pretty significant items failed to make the cut. Despite the president's egregiously tardy response to the event itself, it was nevertheless surprising that he didn't even mention Hurricane Katrina: He didn't offer up a progress report, words of hope to the victims, or come up with a proposal for moving the sluggish rebuilding effort forward. There were no "armies of compassion" ready to be unleashed, although it should be said that many in the religious community responded to the disaster much quicker than the Bush Administration. In the State of the Union address, however, there was no "compassionate conservatism" for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Bill Berkowitz Frank Luntz calls Republican leadership in Washington 'One giant whining windbag'On the outs with the GOP, legendary degrader of discourse is moving to California He doesn't make great art; nothing he does elevates the human spirit; he doesn't illuminate, he bamboozles. He has become expert in subterfuge, hidden meanings, word play and manipulation. Frank Luntz has been so good at what he does that those paying close attention gave it its own name: "Luntzspeak."
Bill Berkowitz Spooked by MoveOn.org, conservative movement seeks to emulate liberal powerhouseFueled with Silicon Valley money, TheVanguard.org will have Richard Poe, former editor of David Horowitz's FrontPage magazine as its editorial and creative director As Paul Weyrich, a founding father of the modern conservative movement and still a prominent actor in it, likes to say, he learned a great deal about movement building by closely observing what liberals were up to in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Bill Berkowitz Ward Connerly's anti-affirmative action jihadFounder and Chair of the American Civil Rights Institute scouting five to nine states for new anti-affirmative action initiatives Fresh from his most recent victory -- in Michigan this past November -- Ward Connerly, the Black California-based maven of anti-affirmative action initiatives, appears to be preparing to take his jihad on the road. According to a mid-December report in the San Francisco Chronicle, Connerly said that he was "exploring moves into nine other states."
Bill Berkowitz Tom Tancredo's missionThe Republican congressman from Colorado will try to woo GOP voters with anti-immigration rhetoric and a boatload of Christian right politics These days, probably the most recognizable name in anti-immigration politics is Colorado Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo. Over the past year, Tancredo has gone from a little known congressman to a highly visible anti-immigration spokesperson. "Tancredo has thoroughly enmeshed himself in the anti-immigration movement and with the help of CNN talk show host Lou Dobbs, he has been given a national megaphone," Devin Burghart, the program director of the Building Democracy Initiative at the Center for New Community, a Chicago-based civil rights group, told Media Transparency.
Bill Berkowitz Institute on Religion and Democracy slams 'Leftist' National Council of ChurchesNew report from conservative foundation-funded IRD charges the NCC with being a political surrogate for MoveOn.org, People for the American Way and other liberal organizations If you prefer your religious battles sprinkled with demagoguery, sanctimoniousness, and simplistic attacks, the Institute on Religion and Democracy's (IRD) latest broadside against the National Council of Churches (NCC) certainly fits the bill.
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