Excerpt follows:
SECRET MONEY
In the mid-1970s, an obscure Saudi money man named Ghaith Pharaon began investing large sums in U.S. banks, first in Detroit and Houston, and then, in 1977, in the National Bank of Georgia, which he acquired from Jimmy Carter’s one-time director of the Office of Management and Budget, Bert Lance.
Only later was it learned that Pharaon was actually a front man for a Pakistani financier named Agha Hasan Abedi, who presided over an outfit bearing the name Bank For Credit & Commerce International. This institution, ostensibly based in Pakistan but with its main offices in London and New York, was in turn bankrolled by moneymen from Saudi Arabia. Among the fat cats were top members of the Saudi royal family and even the Croesus-rich head of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence service, Kamal Adham, a brother-in-law of King Faisal.
The bank — whose false bookkeeping and impending collapse first came to public attention as a result of an expose I published in New York Magazine in June of 1991 — turned out to be a colossal criminal enterprise that touched nearly every country on Earth. The bank was engaged in widespread, pandemic bribery of officials in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas. It laundered money on a global scale, intimidated witnesses and law enforcement authorities, engaged in extortion and blackmail. It supplied the financing for illegal arms trafficking and global terrorism. It financed and facilitated income tax evasion, smuggling and prostitution.
Its main means of operation? Secrecy — the secrecy that came from acting through BCCI-controlled shell companies in every offshore banking center in the world, the exact same modus operandi employed by thousands upon thousands of crooked offshore banks to this very day.
BUSH UNKNOWINGLY TIED IN
Through its fronts and various other disguises, BCCI penetrated the top-most echelons of American business, co-opting and exploiting many of the most visible and influential public figures in America. They ranged from former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, to Robert Magness, the founder and chairman of the nation’s largest cable television company, TCI Inc. For his part, Magness wound up serving as the titular head of a shadowy commodities trading company, Capcom Inc., which laundered billions of dollars of offshore money through the commodities markets of Chicago.
For a period in the 1980s, the bank’s tentacles even touched George W. Bush. This occurred when Bush — who at that point had not yet entered politics, but whose father was vice president in the Reagan administration — sold a small and struggling oil company he had started to a Texas wildcatting outfitter named Harken Energy, which was not much bigger than Bush’s outfit. Doing so set in motion a chain of events that wound up entangling Bush, briefly but awkwardly, in the affairs of not just BCCI but of the bin Laden family itself.
BIN LADEN CONNECTION
One of Bush’s original partners in his oil company - which initially bore the name Arbusto Corp. — had been a fellow named James Bath. Bath in turn had contacts in the Middle East and was actually named in a 1976 trust document as the Houston business representative for none other than Salem M. bin Laden, a half-brother of the infamous Osama bin Laden, who is accused of masterminding the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.
Several published reports from the early 1990s quote an associate of Bath’s named William White — himself an Annapolis graduate and Naval fighter pilot — as claiming that Bath was actually involved in a secret conspiracy to funnel Saudi money into the United States and that he has worked as a CIA liaison to Saudi Arabia since 1976 — the year when Bush’s father, George H. W. Bush, became head of the CIA. White is quoted as saying that Bath ran an aviation business and obtained several aircraft from the CIA. Bath was quoted as denying any involvement with the CIA. In 1988, Salem bin Laden was killed in Texas in a private-plane crash. There has been much conjecture — but no established facts — as to the reasons for, or circumstances of, the crash.
In any event, Houston-based Bath ran a Cayman Islands-based aviation business bearing the name Skyway Aircraft Leasing Ltd., which was actually owned, according to a court document, by a wealthy Saudi banker named Khalid bin Mahfouz. In 1977, Mahfouz — who was reported by The Wall Street Journal in 1999 to be undergoing treatment for drug abuse — joined up with the previously mentioned Saudi front man for BCCI, Ghaith Pharaon, and became an investor in a small Houston bank, Main Bank of Houston, in which Bath himself held a stake.
When Harken needed capital to expand, Bush — by then a member of Harken’s board — helped the company obtain a $25 million infusion from the Union Bank of Switzerland, via an Arkansas investment banker named Jackson Stephens. Few people at the time had yet even heard of BCCI, but Bush would doubtless have been astonished to learn that he was being surrounded by people with ties of one sort or another to the biggest and most crime-infested bank in the history of world capitalism.
For starters, Jackson Stephens, head of the Little Rock investment firm that bears his name, would eventually be named as the promoter of a deal in which BCCI attempted, through various front men, to take over the largest bank in Washington D.C. Bush would also have been astonished to learn that the Persian Gulf patron of his oil patch pal, James Bath — Mr. Khalid bin Mahfouz — was himself an early and large investor in BCCI. Finally, he would doubtless have been surprised to learn that the bank that actually cut the $25 million check for Harken — an outfit bearing the name Banque de Commerce et de Placements — was in fact only half owned by Union Bank of Switzerland. The other half was owned by BCCI.
Those facts would certainly have eliminated much of Bush’s presumed surprise when he subsequently learned that no sooner was the Harken financing completed than Union Bank of Switzerland sold its interest in Harken to a Saudi real estate developer named Abdullah Bakhsh, whom The Wall Street Journal has described as a “sometime business associate of BCCI figures Ghaith Pharaon and Khalid bin Mahfouz.”
As for Mahfouz, who was fined $212 million by the United States for his involvement in BCCI and barred from any further activities in the American banking system, he has now resurfaced - in connection with Osama bin Laden.
A March 2000 press report by the Paris-based Intelligence Newsletter said bin Mahfouz was being held under house arrest in Taif, Saudi Arabia, at the behest of U.S. authorities. The reason: Mahfouz was believed to have provided financial aid to a charitable front organization raising money for Osama bin Laden — the Afghan-based terrorist who had already been linked to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1992 attack on U.S. Servicemen in Somalia, a 1995 bombing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa. A top counter-intelligence source in Washington says Mahfouz is still under house arrest.
These are the types of people Washington now needs to root out of the nation’s — and the world’s — financial systems if it is to cut off the flow of money to the terrorists who have attacked America. But the tentacles not only now reach into just about every major money center bank in the country, they have even brushed up against the early business affairs of the very man who is now rallying America to the fight. In the end, getting the dirty money out of America may prove every bit as hard as pulling bin Laden from the mountains of Afghanistan.
[End of Partial Transcript]
Bush Name Helps Fuel Oil Dealings
Excerpt:
Bush's name, however, was to help rescue him, just as it had attracted investors and helped revive his flagging fortunes throughout his years in the dusty plains city of Midland. A big Dallas-based firm, Harken Oil and Gas, was looking to buy up troubled oil companies. After finding Spectrum, Harken's executives saw a bonus in their target's CEO, despite his spotty track record.
By the end of September 1986, the deal was done. Harken assumed $3.1 million in debts and swapped $2.2 million of its stock for a company that was hemorrhaging money, though it had oil and gas reserves projected to produce $4 million in future net revenue. Harken, a firm that liked to attach itself to stars, had also acquired Bush, whom it used not as an operating manager but as a high-profile board member.
..In fact, Bush lost money for most of his well-connected investors. At the same time, the management fees and other expenses he collected from them kept him in business and enabled him to buy oil reserves for his company's own account, including the reserves that eventually attracted Harken's attention.
Three times during his years in Midland, Bush was saved from financial trouble or stagnation by the appearance of new partners or financial angels who gave him a fresh start. One was a Princeton classmate and friend of James A. Baker III, who was to serve as his father's secretary of state; another was a fellow Yale man who shared Bush's love for baseball.
The third was Harken, which was to save Bush from humiliating failure but also create a target for later criticism. Reporters would scrutinize the deal as early as 1990. Led by then-Texas Gov. Ann Richards, Bush's opponent in the 1994 gubernatorial election, his political critics have asked whether Harken used Bush's name to obtain oil business. Even now, questions linger about a 1990 sale of Harken stock by Bush that was the subject of a probe by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
...The only hope seemed to be finding another angel. Bush, Rea and Conaway started looking for small or medium-sized companies they might approach. Rea remembers they contacted at least one, in Pennsylvania, and were turned down.
Harken ended the search for them. The company had been taken over in 1983 by a group headed by a New York lawyer and management expert, Alan G. Quasha, who seems to have had a penchant for stars on his board. Hungarian-born billionaire George Soros was one; he was listed as the company's biggest stockholder (46.8 percent) in 1986. Representatives of Harvard University's endowment fund and a wealthy Saudi real estate magnate were given seats on the board in 1987.
Bush's name was one of Spectrum's obvious assets, but, according to Jeffrey Laikind, who was on Harken's board at the time, not the most valuable one.
...The merger became final in September 1986, with Harken handing over one share of its publicly traded stock in return for roughly five shares of Spectrum.
...But four years later, his sale of his Harken stock prompted an SEC probe into whether he had engaged in insider trading. The probe centered on Bush's sale of all of his 212,140 shares of Harken stock for $4 a share on June 22, 1990, just before the conclusion of a second quarter that produced huge losses. The transaction was to net Bush $835,307, according to the "notice of proposed sale," signed and dated June 22, that Bush was required to send to the SEC as a member of Harken's board.
...Eight days after Bush's stock sale, Harken wound up its second quarter with operating losses from day-to-day activities of $6.7 million, almost three times the losses it reported for the second quarter of 1989.
The public didn't learn of this until Aug. 20, when the company, now known as Harken Energy, announced in a press release that its overall losses for the quarter, including non-recurring expenses as well as operating losses, totaled $23.2 million. Harken's stock had slipped to $3 a share earlier that month when Iraq's invasion of Kuwait stirred fears that it would endanger a potentially lucrative offshore drilling contract with Bahrain. On Aug. 20, the stock dropped to $2.37.
Did Bush know of the impending losses when he sold his stock in June? Federal securities law prohibits corporate "insiders" from trading "on the basis of" material information that is not publicly known.
Bush says he did not know, even though he had a seat on Harken's three-member audit committee as well as its eight-member board of directors. He said he had no idea Harken was going to get an audit report full of red ink until weeks after he had made the sale.
"I wouldn't have sold if I had," Bush said. "I got clearance by the lawyer [Harken general counsel Larry E. Cummings] to sell this stock. I was mindful that this transaction would be completely scrutinized. I knew the law and I sold at a time that I was cleared to sell."
Bush said he didn't seek a buyer, but was approached by a Los Angeles broker, Ralph D. Smith. Now retired, Smith said he had an institutional client who wanted a large bloc of Harken stock. Smith said he called other Harken officials before calling Bush on June 9, 1990.
"I had no takers until I got to him," Smith said. "It was just like a shot out of the blue."
Bush's lawyer, Robert Jordan, who also represented Harken in the SEC inquiry, said Bush and other board members were not informed until July 13, 1990, in a communication from Harken president Mikel Faulkner that "operating losses were incurred in the second quarter, which will be further quantified and explained." Even then, Jordan said, Faulkner did not provide details. Many companies project and announce expected profits and losses before the end of a quarter, but Jordan said this was not done at Harken.
Asked for a copy of the July 13 communique, or permission to inspect it, Jordan checked with company officials and said they would not allow it. He said Harken has "a policy of keeping internal documents private."
Before Bush's stock sale, Harken's audit committee – Bush, Watson and another Harken director, Talat Othman – met on June 11 with Faulkner and auditors from 
Arthur Andersen & Co., Harken's accountants. Jordan, however, said the committee "did not discuss operating losses that might be coming up, because that would be in the realm of conjecture and speculation." The minutes of the meeting, Jordan said, "show that."
Asked for a copy of the June 11 minutes or permission to inspect them, the company, through Jordan, again declined to make the records available. Jordan said company officials felt that granting the requests would put them on "a slippery slope."
Before giving Bush clearance to sell his stock, Jordan said that company counsel Cummings "checked with Mr. Faulkner at least and maybe others" to see if there was "any material, undisclosed information out there that would prevent the sale." The answer was no, Jordan said.
Faulkner, a certified public accountant who used to work at Arthur Andersen and who has spoken frequently with reporters over the years, declined through Jordan to be interviewed. So did Cummings.
The SEC investigation was launched in April 1991 when it found that Bush apparently failed to submit notice of actual sale of the stock (as distinct from the separate "notice of proposed sale") until eight months after the deadline. Bush said he is sure he did, but the filing couldn't be found.
The inquiry became an issue in the 1994 governor's race when Richards, the incumbent Democrat, challenged its thoroughness, calling it "at best, incomplete, and at worst, a coverup."
Bush was prepared, having obtained a letter from a top SEC official, associate director for enforcement Bruce A. Hiler, a year earlier.
Dated Oct. 18, 1993, three weeks before Bush announced his candidacy for governor, the carefully worded letter was addressed to Jordan and said that "the investigation has been terminated as to the conduct of Mr. Bush, and that, at this time, no enforcement action is contemplated with respect to him."
Bush took that as vindication. "The SEC fully investigated the stock deal," he said in October 1994. "I was exonerated." Supporting Bush, the head of the SEC's enforcement division, William McLucas, went beyond the letter and stated publicly that "there was no case there."
Hiler, however, was more cautious. His statement said it "must in no way be construed as indicating that the party has been exonerated or that no action may ultimately result from the staff's investigation."
How thorough the SEC inquiry was remains unclear. Jordan said Harken provided investigators with "thousands of pages" of documents, including the June 11 minutes and Faulkner's July 13 communique. Investigators interviewed Cummings, stockbroker Smith and a member of the Arthur Andersen auditing team, but they did not talk to Faulkner or any other officers or directors of Harken.
In an interview, McLucas said the investigation was handled "the same way we would handle any inquiry as to [insider] trading or delinquency in reports," but such matters are usually not accorded high priority.
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Records Show What Bush Knew Before Stock Sale
Regulators Concluded in 1992 That He Did Nothing Improper
The Dallas Morning News
By Mark Curriden
September 7, 2000
Days before selling 212,000 shares of stock in a Texas oil company in 1990, George W. Bush received a memo as a company director estimating it might lose $4 million that quarter and faced serious problems refinancing its debt, according to documents made public Wednesday.
The records released by the Securities and Exchange Commission and Mr. Bush's lawyer show Mr. Bush didn't have any information that wasn't publicly available elsewhere. And, his lawyer said, the records were available to federal regulators who investigated Mr. Bush's stock sale and did not alter their 1992 conclusion that the he did nothing improper.
The internal corporate documents, provided by the SEC after Freedom of Information requests from The Dallas Morning News and The Associated Press, offer the most extensive details yet of Mr. Bush's knowledge of Harken Energy Corp.'s financial troubles when he sold his shares for $848,560 in June 1990.
Insider trading allegations have been raised during both Mr. Bush's run for governor and his presidential race. Mr. Bush has said he did not know that Harken was going to report a $22 million loss two months after he sold his stock.
"I absolutely had no idea and would not have sold it had I known," he told The News during his 1994 campaign for governor.
The records released Wednesday show Mr. Bush, a Harken board director and member of its audit committee, received a so-called "flash sheet" in early June 1990 estimating quarterly losses for the company would reach $4 million.
Other reports available to Mr. Bush disclosed that Harken faced a "liquidity crisis" regarding the refinancing of it's $43 million debt. Another told Mr. Bush the company was "in a state of noncompliance" with its lenders.
Those same documents also say the company expected to make a profit in subsequent quarters and that two of its largest stockholders had agreed to refinance its debt.
Federal law prohibits company insiders, such as corporate directors and consultants, from buying and selling stock based on private information they received as an officer of the company.
In separate internal SEC records obtained by the AP, federal investigators concluded in March 1992 that "Bush did not engage in illegal insider trading because it does not appear that he possessed nonpublic information or that he acted with wrongful intent when he sold the Harken stock."
Bush critics have noted that Mr. Bush's father was president at the time of the investigation and that a longtime Bush supporter, Richard Breeden, was then the SEC's general counsel.
Mr. Bush has said he received no special treatment and cited a letter from SEC associate director Bruce Hiler, stating that "the investigation has been terminated as to the conduct of Mr. Bush and that, at this time, no enforcement action is contemplated with respect to him."
Mr. Bush received the 212,156 shares of Harken stock in 1986 when he helped merge Spectrum 7, an oil company of which Mr. Bush was chairman and 15 percent owner. Mr. Bush has said he needed to sell his Harken stock to pay off a loan he got to invest in the Texas Rangers baseball club.
Mr. Bush's lawyer said Wednesday that the information, while new to the presidential campaign, is "old news.''
"The SEC did their job by the book, and this is old news," attorney Robert Jordan said. He said that "the company's financial situation was well-disclosed to the public" through filings at the time with the SEC.
"By the time Bush sold his stock, the cash crisis had been largely resolved," Mr. Jordan said. "By May 21, 1990, the major shareholders had agreed to a credit agreement which put $26 million into the company immediately. ...This stock sale was completely legal and proper."
The SEC investigators never interviewed Mr. Bush about what else he might have known about the company's financial situation before selling the stock.
The investigators said that Mr. Bush did not initiate the sale of his stock, that he was approached by a broker and checked with the company's general counsel about the propriety of the sale before carrying it out.
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