Home > Bush’s buddy says "You should be very careful about publishing that information"

Bush’s buddy says "You should be very careful about publishing that information"

by Open-Publishing - Tuesday 14 February 2006
3 comments

Governments USA

See the original article at http://www.nwmeridian.com/content/060210_01_p1.php

The case involves a former senior Bush regime official, Donald Evans, (formerly the commerce secretary, now in charge of the Katrina fund) and a close personal friend of Bush, Bill Saxon. After communicating with the author of this article, from Northwest Meridian today, I have an update for readers. The author of the original article wrote the following to Saxon while compiling the report, asking him some very simple questions:

Mr Saxon, We are preparing an article on the Thomas family and their involvementwith the Maderas Tucan mill in Olancho Honduras. We would appreciate ifyou could answer a few questions:

In some of your correspondence you claim that Richard Nolan Thomas IIand his father Richard Nolan Thomas Sr. had placed an illegal laborclaim in Honduran court, however in the same and other correspondenceyou state that you knew about the claim and that its purpose was to freethe mill of other encumbrances. Could you clarify why in letters toDonald Evans and other parties you claim that this lawsuit was illegal?

I have a copy of the letter of intent was was signed by your manager, JDHodges, and Gary Thomas detailing the deal to purchase the millequipment for $7.8M. It does not discuss the physical property, doesthis imply that you knew the land would be transferred by the Thomases labor lien? Further the letter of intent states that you would be paid in full before any of your investors. Did your investors agree to give yourclaim higher priority?

Richard Thomas disagrees with the $7.8M price tag in the letter ofintent, he alleges that Gary was only authorized to make a deal forcloser to $2M. Why did Gary agree to such a high price? Did Gary and Ollie ever make good on any payments under the agreement?

What is the current status and disposition of the mill, have youforeclosed on it effectively due to non-payment?

We have systematically uncovered a chain of evidence that shows thatGary and Ollie were stealing from Proforh and were negotiating customerchecks in their own bank, and falsifying inventory reports. They alsofalsified shipping documents to Travis Holman (for which he has a >$2Moutstanding judgment against Gary) in order to steal payments from himand subsequently shipped the product directly to his customers andaccepted their payments. Did you ever become aware of that situation, ifso, when?

Did you have direct conversation with the US embassy in Honduras torequest their assistance, or only with Evans?

Could you provide a copy of the contract between the Thomas family andMaderas Tucan?

Is there anything else you think I should know?

You would have thought Mr Saxon would be able to answer the questions point by point, but, he didn’t, he replied as follows, according to the author of the Northwest Meridian article:

"let me warn you about publishing any thing that you do not know to be true...by the questions you have asked me, it appears you have some very bad information and I repeat, you should be very careful about publishing that information, if that is what you are planning to do"

Forum posts

  • Please do what you can to distribute this story as far and wide as possible - if the governmetn can kidnap someone for the economic benefit of an old college buddy, who knows what else they will try to get away with...

  • http://www.guardian.co.uk/US_election_race/Story/0,2763,412481,00.html

    And the businessman at the apex of the corporate pyramid of which Charter was the underpinning was the man who made Bush rich, a market wizard called Richard Rainwater.

    There is no reason why - or suggestion that - Bush, Rainwater or any senior executives involved knew what was going on inside the hospitals. But the companies that owned the hospitals - Crescent Real Estate and a spin-off called Crescent Operating, set up specially to manage them - lie at the centre of a network defining Bush’s career.

    Crescent was founded and chaired by Rainwater, who with others catapulted Bush into politics and became entwined with his rise, both as donors to his campaigns and beneficiaries from his policies. The failure of deregulation is at the heart of the Charter Behavioral story. And last week health care reforms were endorsed as a priority by Bush and his deputy, Dick Cheney. Their aim is to cut public costs and amplify the role of the private sector.

    ......

    Within two days of transmission of the CBS programme, the US government regulatory machine, that Bush now heads but derides, moved in. President Clinton ordered a review of Charter’s hospitals, and units were closed in New Hampshire, Virginia, Alaska, California and Georgia.

    Charter went into free fall: the company sold 53 of its remaining hospitals; the Justice Department joined the regulatory authorities and opened a nationwide criminal investigation still in progress, alleging ’fraud and abuse...and false claims’, to quote Magellan’s own filing with the government. Magellan said it was co-operating with the investigations; no findings have been made. In February this year, Charter filed for bankruptcy. Crescent Operating took over what was left of the hollow empire.

    But how much did Bush know about his investment with Crescent? The Observer has opened one eye of the blind trust to question how much Bush knew about where his money was invested. Crescent’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows that on 4 April 1997 - three months after Crescent bought into Charter - the Lone Star Trust owned 4,220 shares in Crescent; the documents are available to anyone taking trouble to examine them.

    A further document at the commission, dated December 1998, shows that the previous 29 January, one year after the Charter purchase, Lone Star Trust sold its shares in Crescent at a profit of $114,000.

    A reason for the sale was given: Bush was concerned about a conflict of interests involving Crescent’s investments in the casino business, to which he was politically opposed. Crescent’s gambling ambitions had dogged Bush during his election to the governorship in 1994 and returned to haunt him as Rainwater announced his intention to buy Station Casinos of Las Vegas.

    There is another twist to the Crescent stock sale: Bush’s trust sold this ’blind’ stock when shares were at their peak value of $40 each - for a total of $168,800. Shortly after the sale, Crescent’s stock plunged to $21 per share.

    Later in 1998, the Lone Star Trust was liquidated as Bush prepared his bid for the presidency. In November of that year, John Goff resigned from Charter Behavioral’s board.

    ......

    Now, i’m not too well up on these sorts of financial matters, but surely if the Lone Star trust was liquidated in 1998, there is something rather strange going on with this Lone Star Trust, and LSTF LLC? How, when this Lone Star Trust was liquidated in 1998, could it have held a 50% share in this company "organized "for the purpose of the production of trees for commercial sales" in 2001? How could Bush receive an income from a liquidated company, 3 years after the fact?

    • Right around August 2001 is when Richard and Dick took over managing the mill and it started turning a profit...