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Raw Blame History

Education and early business career

Bush received a bachelor's degree in history from Yale University in 1968 and a Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School in 1975.¹ He entered Yale in 1964 and became president of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity.² Yale's Class of 1968 included Bush and the journalist Jacques Leslie.³ He enlisted in the Texas Air National Guard in 1968, two weeks before graduation, at the end of his draft deferment,² and served as an F-102 fighter pilot.¹ He was discharged from the Air Force Reserve on November 21, 1974.²

After Harvard he moved back to Midland, Texas, and began a career in the energy business.¹ Craig Unger wrote that Bush's company, Arbusto Energy, did not start operations until March 1979, several months after Bush lost his 1978 congressional race, and that Bush had listed Arbusto on his resume during that campaign.⁴ The Houston Chronicle reported in 1992 that Bush Exploration, the general partner in the Arbusto limited partnerships, "went through several mergers, eventually evolving into Harken Energy Corp."⁵ Unger wrote that in 1986 the Dallas energy firm Harken Energy, then known as Harken Oil and Gas and partly owned by Harvard University and George Soros, bought Bush's company for $2.25 million in stock, and that Bush received roughly $600,000, a seat on the board, and a consultancy paying between $50,000 and $120,000 a year.⁴ Harken's 1993 annual report states that Bush had served as a consultant to Harken since April 1987.⁶ Unger quoted Harken founder Phil Kendrick: "His name was George Bush. That was worth the money they paid him."⁴ Bush resigned from Harken's board of directors effective October 26, 1993, and terminated the consulting agreement; Harken's proxy statement of April 25, 1994 and its annual report of March 28, 1994 record the resignation, and the annual report lists a Form 8-K filed November 19, 1993 on the subject.⁷⁶

Texas Air National Guard

The panel that reviewed the CBS News broadcast described Bush as having served in the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, commanded by Jerry B. Killian, from May 1968 to October 1973.⁸ FactCheck.org reported in February 2004 that Bush's last recorded day of service was July 30, 1973 and that he was released with an honorable discharge eight months before the end of the six-year term for which he had signed up.⁹ In a February 2004 NBC interview Bush said: "I got an honorable discharge, and I did show up in Alabama."⁹

The White House released summaries of Bush's Texas Air National Guard service records and pay documents on February 10, 2004. Democracy Now! reported that the documents included "payroll sheets never before made public," and that the release came amid questions about an alleged gap in his service between May 1972 and May 1973.¹⁰

On September 8, 2004, the CBS News program "60 Minutes Wednesday" broadcast a segment, produced by Mary Mapes, that presented four documents allegedly from the personal files of Killian, commander of the squadron in which Bush served.⁸ An independent review panel of former Attorney General Richard Thornburgh and former Associated Press chief executive Louis Boccardi, appointed by CBS on September 22, 2004, dated its report January 5, 2005, and CBS issued it on January 10, 2005.⁸¹¹ The panel wrote: "The Panel has not been able to conclude with absolute certainty whether the Killian documents are authentic or forgeries." It also wrote that the problems with the segment "were caused primarily by a myopic zeal to be the first news organization to broadcast what was believed to be a new story about President Bush's TexANG service." The first of the panel's listed defects was "The failure to obtain clear authentication of any of the Killian documents from any document examiner."⁸ The panel identified the source of the documents as retired Texas Army National Guard Lieutenant Colonel Bill Burkett.⁸ In a statement of January 10, 2005, CBS chairman Leslie Moonves announced that Mapes was terminated, and that Josh Howard, Mary Murphy and Betsy West were relieved of their duties and asked to resign.¹¹

Arbusto, Harken and the Texas Rangers

In 1992 the Houston Chronicle reported that James R. Bath, a Houston investor, had put $50,000 into limited partnerships "controlled by George W. Bush," Arbusto '79 and Arbusto '80.⁵ The newspaper wrote: "There is no available evidence to show whether the money came from Saudi interests." The Chronicle reported that Bush said that, to his knowledge, Bath's investment was from personal funds and that no Saudi money was invested in Arbusto.⁵ Unger quotes Bath on the same point: "One hundred percent of those funds were mine. It was a purely personal investment," and Bath adds that Salem bin Laden and Khalid bin Mahfouz "never met Bush."⁴ Unger wrote that Bath "put up $50,000 for 5 percent of the stock" of Arbusto and describes him as Bush's National Guard friend, and that critics have asserted that money may have gone from Khalid bin Mahfouz and Salem bin Laden through Bath into Arbusto, but that "no hard evidence has ever been found to back up that charge."⁴

The same Chronicle article reported that, in sworn depositions, Bath said he "represented four prominent Saudis as a trustee," one of whom was Saudi Sheik Salem M. Binladen. According to a 1976 trust agreement, as the newspaper reported it, "drawn shortly after Bush was appointed director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Saudi Sheik Salem M. Binladen appointed Bath as his business representative in Houston." The Chronicle reported that Bath was the sole director of Skyway Aircraft Leasing Ltd., which a court document showed to be owned by Khalid bin Mahfouz, and that Bath purchased the Houston Gulf Airport on behalf of Binladen in 1977. It also reported that Bath had "previously denied having worked for the CIA," and that according to Bill White, a former real estate business associate of Bath who had litigated against him, Bath said he had assisted the CIA in a liaison role with Saudi Arabia since 1976. The Chronicle reported that the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and the Federal Bureau of Investigation were reviewing accusations that Bath guided Saudi money to Houston to influence United States policy.⁵

Unger wrote that Bath, who served in the Texas Air National Guard, befriended the young Bush, who began pilot training in 1970 at Ellington Air Force Base, that in the mid-1970s Bush introduced Bath to his father, and that by 1976 Salem bin Laden had appointed Bath his American business representative.⁴ Unger wrote that the press speculated about Bath's connections to the Bush family, to John Connally, to the CIA, to Bank of Credit and Commerce International and to figures in the Iran-Contra affair, and that Bath denied to Time that he was in the CIA but later said: "There's all sorts of degrees of civilian participation [in the CIA]."⁴ Pete Brewton wrote that in 1976 Bath started an airplane company, Jim Bath and Associates, with Johnson M. "Jack" Taylor, and that several months after its founding Bath "was named as a trustee for Sheikh Salem bin Laden of Saudi Arabia," with the job of handling all of bin Laden's North American investments and operations, citing Bath's resume.¹² Jonathan Beaty and S. C. Gwynne wrote that Bill White, whom Beaty had flown in for debriefing during his research for Time magazine, alleged that his former business partner Bath "was a CIA agent with strange ties to both BCCI and President George Bush." In their account White told Beaty that Bath said he had been recruited "by George Bush himself in 1976, when Bush was director of the agency," that Bath and "George, Jr.," flew in the same Air National Guard unit, and that Bath said Bush wanted him involved with the Arabs and in the aviation business. They wrote that White also said Bath had been investigated by the Drug Enforcement Administration, and that most of Bath's investments, including Skyways Aircraft Company, "were really fronts for Mahfouz and other Saudis connected with BCCI." White's account of his falling out with Bath was an "admittedly adversarial relationship," in the authors' words.¹³

Harken, in Unger's account, drew investors linked to BCCI. Unger wrote that in 1987 Arkansas investment banker Jackson Stephens began raising $25 million from the Union Bank of Switzerland to invest in Harken, that the deal fell through, and that Stephens then introduced Harken to the Jeddah real estate investor Abdullah Taha Bakhsh, whose investment gave him 17.6 percent of Harken's stock; Unger adds that Bakhsh, Khalid bin Mahfouz and Harken denied that Bakhsh's role had anything to do with BCCI.⁴ The Chronicle reported in 1992 that Bakhsh was among Harken's top shareholders and that Harken had been granted offshore drilling rights off Bahrain.⁵ Unger wrote that in January 1990 Harken, which had never drilled outside the United States, won exclusive offshore drilling rights in Bahrain over Amoco, that Bush said he thought the Bahrain deal "was a bad idea" and "had no idea that BCCI figured into Harken's financial dealings," and that Bush "went along with it when the final vote came."⁴ Unger wrote that neither Bush nor Harken had direct contact with bin Mahfouz or BCCI.⁴

Bush sold 212,140 shares of Harken stock on June 22, 1990, at $4 per share, for $848,560.¹⁴¹⁵ Harken announced a loss of $23.2 million on August 20, 1990.¹⁵ A Securities and Exchange Commission memorandum drafted for the files on April 9, 1991, as the Center for Public Integrity reported it, noted that Bush had on four occasions filed late Form 4 reports for Harken stock transactions worth more than $1 million. The tardiest, 34 weeks late, reported the June 22, 1990 sale.¹⁴ Salon reported that the SEC did not receive the Form 4 for the sale until March 4, 1991.¹⁵ In an October 1993 memorandum, the Securities and Exchange Commission stated 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." The same memorandum said that the termination "must in no way be construed as indicating that the party has been exonerated or that no action may ultimately result."¹⁵

In April 1989 Bush and a group of partners bought the Texas Rangers baseball club from Eddie Chiles for $86 million. Bush borrowed $500,000 from a Midland bank to buy a 1.8 percent stake.¹⁶ In 1998 Tom Hicks bought the team for $250 million. The partners had raised Bush's stake to 11.8 percent, and his share of the proceeds was $14.9 million on an investment of $606,302.¹⁶ The Center for Public Integrity also reported that Richard Rainwater, who had put far more money into the club, received $25 million.¹⁶

Caterair and the Carlyle Group

The Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein addressed the Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association in April 2003, and the remarks were recorded. Democracy Now! broadcast the recording on July 3, 2003, and introduced it as concerning Caterair International, on whose board of directors Bush served.¹⁷ Rubenstein said that Carlyle bought the airline catering business from Marriott and lost its investors' money after the Gulf War, that someone asked him to put on the board a man who was "down on his luck a bit," and that the man "spent three years" on the board. In the recording, Rubenstein said: "His name is George W. Bush. He became President of the United States."¹⁷ Joe Conason, writing in Salon, called the arrangement "the comfy sinecure" that Carlyle provided to Bush.¹⁷ Briody, the author of The Iron Triangle, stated on the same broadcast that George H.W. Bush had worked for Carlyle as a senior adviser since 1998, and that Fred Malek put Bush on the Caterair board as a favor and received in return favors from the administration, in Briody's words "certain F.A.A. restrictions and things like that for the airline business."¹⁷

Skull and Bones

Bush was a member of Skull and Bones, the Yale senior society. Leslie wrote in Salon in March 2000 that "Bush, on the other hand, joined Bones."³ Leslie reported that Bill Minutaglio, in his biography First Son, recorded that Bush considered joining a society called "Gin and Tonic" but was swayed when his father, then a congressman, conducted the tapping ritual himself.³ Leslie wrote that the elder Bush's membership in Bones "probably was the sole reason George W. was chosen," a view he presented as his own.³

September 11 and the August 6, 2001 briefing

The September 11, 2001 attacks were carried out by hijackers of al-Qaeda. On August 6, 2001, Bush received a President's Daily Brief item titled "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US." The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States reported that it was the 36th item briefed that year relating to Bin Ladin or al Qaeda, and "the first devoted to the possibility of an attack in the United States." The Commission wrote: "The President told us the August 6 report was historical in nature."¹⁸

The Joint Inquiry of the House and Senate intelligence committees produced a final section, commonly called the "28 pages," that was classified after its 2002 publication. The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence announced on July 15, 2016 that the Obama administration had decided to declassify "the Joint Inquiry's only wholly classified section."¹⁹ The committee chairman, Devin Nunes, said: "this section does not put forward vetted conclusions, but rather unverified leads that were later fully investigated by the Intelligence Community."¹⁹ The website 28pages.org states that when the joint inquiry report was published in 2002, the 28 pages "were fully redacted at the insistence of the George W. Bush administration."²⁰

Detention and interrogation program

On September 17, 2001, Bush signed a covert action Memorandum of Notification "granting the CIA unprecedented counterterrorism authorities," including authority to capture and detain individuals. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's study of the program, released in summary in December 2014, records that the memorandum "made no reference to interrogations or coercive interrogation techniques."²¹

The Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel issued two memoranda dated August 1, 2002. The first, from Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee to John Rizzo, Acting General Counsel of the CIA, concerned the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah. It states that it "memorializes our previous oral advice, given on July 24, 2002 and July 26, 2002, that the proposed conduct would not violate this prohibition," refers to ten techniques to be used in what the CIA had described as an "increased pressure phase," and concludes: "we conclude that the interrogation procedures that you propose would not violate Section 2340A." It states that the memorandum is "our best reading of the law" and that "there are no cases construing this statute."²² The second, addressed to White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, concluded that "Physical pain amounting to torture must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death," and that "under the current circumstances, necessity or self-defense may justify interrogation methods that might violate Section 2340A."²³ John Yoo, then a deputy assistant attorney general, sent a July 13, 2002 letter to the CIA's acting general counsel on the subject.²¹ These opinions are commonly called the "Torture Memos."

The Committee found that the Office of Legal Counsel "relied on CIA representations," that the Department of Justice "did not conduct independent analysis or verification of the information it received from the CIA," and that "Those representations were inaccurate in material respects."²¹ Its first finding reads: "The CIA's use of its enhanced interrogation techniques was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees."²¹ Its finding on the techniques reads: "The interrogations of CIA detainees were brutal and far worse than the CIA represented to policymakers and others."²¹ Internal CIA records describe the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as evolving into a "series of near drownings."²¹ The study reports that the CIA restricted access to the program until September 6, 2006, "by which time 117 of the 119 known detainees had already entered CIA custody."²¹

On the President's knowledge, the Committee found: "According to CIA records, no CIA officer, up to and including CIA Directors George Tenet and Porter Goss, briefed the president on the specific CIA enhanced interrogation techniques before April 2006."²¹ The study records that, when briefed in April 2006, the president "expressed discomfort with the 'image of a detainee, chained to the ceiling, clothed in a diaper, and forced to go to the bathroom on himself.'"²¹ Its seventh finding reads: "The CIA impeded effective White House oversight and decision-making."²¹ The CIA's June 2013 response to the study quotes Bush's memoir as stating that he discussed the program "with then-DCIA Tenet in 2002, prior to application of the techniques on Abu Zubaydah, and personally approved the techniques." The Committee's text adds that a memoir by former CIA acting general counsel John Rizzo disputes this account, and quotes Rizzo as writing that the one senior national security official of that period "who I did not believe was knowledgeable about the E.I.T.s was President Bush himself."²¹ The CIA's response states that "CIA records are contradictory and incomplete regarding when the President was briefed, but President Bush himself says he was briefed in 2002, before any techniques were used."²¹

The CIA operated detention facilities outside the United States. The study redacts the host countries. The European Court of Human Rights ruled on July 24, 2014, in the case of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, that Poland had hosted a secret CIA prison.²⁴ Reports and litigation also associate detention sites with Romania, Thailand, and Afghanistan.

Warrantless surveillance

Bush authorized a program that the NSA protected under the cover term Stellar Wind, which the inspectors general called the President's Surveillance Program (PSP).²⁵ The Stellar Wind program was first authorized by the President on October 4, 2001, in a Top Secret Presidential Authorization issued to the Secretary of Defense, and the NSA General Counsel was read into the program on that day.²⁵ The last Presidential Authorization expired on February 1, 2007.²⁵ The inspectors general wrote that the President "authorized the NSA to intercept, without judicial approval or oversight, the content of international communications involving many U.S. persons."²⁵ The program's collection portion was revealed in The New York Times and publicly confirmed by the President in December 2005.²⁵ The NSA Inspector General was not read into the program until August 2002; according to the NSA General Counsel at the time, the President would not allow the Inspector General to be briefed before that date.²⁵

The Department of Justice Inspector General found it "extraordinary and inappropriate that a single DoJ attorney, John Yoo, was relied upon to conduct the initial legal assessment of the PSP," and that the lack of oversight of Yoo's work "contributed to a legal analysis of the PSP that, at a minimum, was factually flawed."²⁵ The inspectors general concluded that the collection under the PSP and under FISA afterward "resulted in unprecedented collection of communications content and metadata."²⁵ Title III of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 required reviews by the inspectors general of the DoD, DoJ, CIA, NSA and ODNI, and the joint report is dated July 10, 2009.²⁵

The collection was authorized by presidential orders rather than by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. On June 27, 2013 The Guardian published a top-secret draft report by the NSA's inspector general and reported that the collection of bulk internet metadata began under the Stellar Wind program.²⁶ The Guardian had identified Edward Snowden on June 9, 2013 as the source of its NSA disclosures.²⁷

Iraq

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's 2004 report on prewar intelligence about the weapons programs of Saddam Hussein found that "A series of failures, particularly in analytic trade craft, led to the mischaracterization of the intelligence." The report concluded that the assessment that Iraq "is reconstituting its nuclear program" was not supported by the intelligence provided to the Committee. The report concerned the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons programs, and concluded that most of its key judgments were "either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence reporting."²⁸

The Iraq Survey Group's 2004 report, the Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the Director of Central Intelligence, stated that Saddam Hussein wanted to recreate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capability, "which was essentially destroyed in 1991," after sanctions were removed, and that "Saddam Husayn ended the nuclear program in 1991 following the Gulf war. ISG found no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart the program."²⁹

The Robb-Silberman Commission, reporting on March 31, 2005, found that "Virtually all of the Intelligence Community's information on Iraq's alleged mobile biological weapons facilities was supplied by a source, code-named 'Curveball,' who was a fabricator."³⁰ The Commission described "a story of Defense Department collectors who abdicated their responsibility to vet a critical source; of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analysts who placed undue emphasis on the source's reporting," and of Intelligence Community leaders who failed to tell policymakers about Curveball's flaws in the weeks before war.³⁰ Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi told The Guardian in 2011 that he was Curveball, that he had told a German official about mobile bioweapons trucks throughout 2000 after the BND, the German intelligence service, approached him, and that he fabricated the accounts to bring down Saddam Hussein's government.³¹

The Senate Armed Services Committee minority staff report of October 21, 2004, prepared for Senator Carl Levin, stated that the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy had inappropriately produced an alternative analysis, exaggerating a connection between Iraq and al-Qaida, as the Department of Defense Inspector General summarized it.³² The Robb-Silberman Commission concluded: "We conclude that it was the paucity of intelligence and poor analytical tradecraft, rather than political pressure, that produced the inaccurate pre-war intelligence assessments."³⁰ It reported that "analysts universally asserted that in no instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments," and also wrote: "it is hard to deny the conclusion that intelligence analysts worked in an environment that did not encourage skepticism about the conventional wisdom." It summarized the post-war findings of the Iraq Survey Group: "The ISG found no evidence that Iraq had tried to reconstitute its capability to produce nuclear weapons after 1991."³⁰

The Department of Defense Inspector General's report of February 9, 2007, requested by Senators Pat Roberts and Carl Levin, reviewed the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy headed by Douglas Feith, including the Policy Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group and the Policy Support Office. The report states: "The actual Office of Special Plans had no responsibility for and did not perform any of the activities examined in this review." Its results section states that the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy "developed, produced, and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al-Qaida relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community, to senior decision-makers. While such actions were not illegal or unauthorized, the actions were, in our opinion, inappropriate." The Under Secretary of Defense for Policy did not concur, stating that the actions were not intelligence activities and, even if they were, would be appropriate because they responded to direction from the Deputy Secretary of Defense.³² At the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing of February 9, 2007, Chairman Levin read the conclusion of his October 2004 report: "An alternative intelligence assessment process was established in the Office of Under Secretary for Policy, Douglas Feith, that was predisposed to find a significant relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda."³³ Senators Chuck Hagel and Olympia Snowe, in additional views to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's second report, wrote: "We endorse the DoD IG's finding that the OUSDP personnel's actions were inappropriate."³⁴

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's second report, on whether public statements by officials were substantiated, was approved by a vote of 10 to 5 on April 1, 2008 and released on June 5, 2008. The report reviewed five speeches, including that of Vice President Dick Cheney in Nashville on August 26, 2002, and states that the Vice President's August 2002 speech was not reviewed by the intelligence community and that intelligence officials could not find evidence that the President's September 2002 address to the United Nations General Assembly was reviewed by it.³⁴ Its Conclusion 12 states: "Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa'ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa'ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence." Its Conclusion 15 states: "Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information."³⁴ Senator Jay Rockefeller told the Senate that "the committee did conclude that the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact, when in reality it was unsubstantiated and often contradicted what they were saying, or even was nonexistent."³⁵ Senator Orrin Hatch, joined by Vice Chairman Kit Bond and Senator Richard Burr, wrote in additional views that the Phase Two investigations "devolved from the beginning into partisan disagreement."³⁴

Mark Danner wrote in 2006 that the memorandum of a July 2002 meeting with Tony Blair recorded the head of British intelligence, "C," reporting on his Washington visit, and that Washington was engaged in a campaign to see to it that "the intelligence and facts" would be "fixed around the policy."³⁶ The memorandum, dated July 23, 2002 and written by Matthew Rycroft, was first published by The Sunday Times on May 1, 2005 and records: "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."³⁷

White House, "Biography of President George W. Bush" (archived, georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov). Sworn in January 20, 2001 and January 20, 2005; 46th Governor of Texas; born July 6, 1946, in New Haven; bachelor's degree in history from Yale University in 1968; F-102 fighter pilot in the Texas Air National Guard; Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School in 1975; moved back to Midland to begin a career in the energy business; assembled the partners who bought the Texas Rangers in 1989; elected Governor of Texas on November 8, 1994 and re-elected on November 3, 1998. https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/president/biography.html ↩︎
Biography.com, "George W. Bush." Eldest son of George H.W. and Barbara Bush, presidency, Yale enrollment in 1964, Delta Kappa Epsilon presidency, Texas Air National Guard enlistment in 1968, Air Force Reserve discharge on November 21, 1974. https://www.biography.com/us-president/george-w-bush ↩︎
Jacques Leslie, "Yale," Salon, March 1, 2000. Leslie identifies himself as a member of the Yale Class of 1968 who was asked to join Skull and Bones, and cites Bill Minutaglio's biography First Son for the account of Bush's tapping. Sole source for the Minutaglio account. https://www.salon.com/2000/03/01/yale/ ↩︎
Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud (Scribner, 2004), pp. 32 to 33 (Bath, Bush and the CIA denial), 100 (Bath's statement and the Arbusto allegation), 115 (Bath's $50,000 and the March 1979 start of operations), 116 to 117 (the 1986 Harken deal and Kendrick), 118 (no direct contact with BCCI), 119 to 120 (Stephens, Union Bank of Switzerland, Bakhsh), 121 to 122 (Bahrain). The Bath, Bakhsh and Bahrain passages rest on Unger's cited reporting, including the Wall Street Journal, 1991. ↩︎
Jerry Urban, "Bush Said Friend's Arbusto Investment Was His Own, Not Saudi Money," Houston Chronicle, June 4, 1992. Sole source for the sworn-deposition, trust-agreement and Bill White passages, which the newspaper attributes to court documents and to the litigants. Reproduced at https://911timeline.s3.amazonaws.com/1990s/houstonchronicle060492.html ↩︎
Harken Energy Corporation, Form 10-K for 1993, filed March 29, 1994 (SEC accession 0000950134-94-000289), Item 10, "Certain Matters Involving Directors and Executive Officers," and the list of Form 8-K reports. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/313478/0000950134-94-000289.txt ↩︎
Harken Energy Corporation, Schedule 14A proxy statement filed April 25, 1994 (SEC accession 0000950134-94-000454): "Effective as of October 26, 1993 Mr. George W. Bush resigned as a Class B Director of the Company." https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/313478/0000950134-94-000454.txt ↩︎
Report of the Independent Review Panel (Dick Thornburgh and Louis D. Boccardi) on the September 8, 2004 "60 Minutes Wednesday" segment "For the Record" concerning President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service, January 5, 2005, pp. 1 (the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, May 1968 to October 1973, and the four documents), 3 to 5 (executive summary: "The Panel has not been able to conclude with absolute certainty whether the Killian documents are authentic or forgeries"; "myopic zeal"; defects 1 to 10). Archived copy of the CBS News posting: https://web.archive.org/web/2005id_/http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/complete_report/CBS_Report.pdf ↩︎
FactCheck.org, "New Evidence Supports Bush Military Service (Mostly)," February 2004, including Bush's NBC interview. https://www.factcheck.org/2004/02/new-evidence-supports-bush-military-service-mostly/ ↩︎
Democracy Now!, "White House Opens Bush Military Records, Questions Remain," headlines, February 11, 2004. https://democracynow.org/2004/2/11/headlines/white_house_opens_bush_military_records_questions_remain ↩︎
CBS News, statement of Leslie Moonves on the Independent Review Panel's report, January 10, 2005 (archived copy at cbsnews.com). The statement names the panel as Dick Thornburgh and Louis Boccardi, notes the 224-page report, and announces that Mary Mapes was terminated and that Josh Howard, Mary Murphy and Betsy West were relieved of their duties and asked to resign. https://web.archive.org/web/20050115000000/http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/complete_report/cbs_response.pdf ↩︎
Pete Brewton, The Mafia, CIA & George Bush (S.P.I. Books, 1992), p. 221, citing "Resume of Jim R. Bath." Sole source for the Jim Bath and Associates account as Brewton gives it. ↩︎
Jonathan Beaty and S. C. Gwynne, The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI (Random House, 1993), pp. 226 to 230, giving the account of Bill White. Sole source for the passages so cited. ↩︎
Knut Royce, "Bush violated security laws four times, SEC report says," Center for Public Integrity, October 4, 2000. The article describes the April 9, 1991 SEC memorandum and its figures. https://publicintegrity.org/politics/bush-violated-security-laws-four-times-sec-report-says/ ↩︎
Salon, "Harken," July 13, 2002, quoting the SEC memorandum of October 1993 and the Harken loss announcement. https://www.salon.com/2002/07/13/harken/ ↩︎
Center for Public Integrity, "How George W. Bush scored big with the Texas Rangers." https://publicintegrity.org/politics/how-george-w-bush-scored-big-with-the-texas-rangers/ ↩︎
Democracy Now!, "Exclusive: Why The Carlyle Group Pushed George W. Bush Off Its Board," broadcast and rush transcript, July 3, 2003. Includes the recording of David Rubenstein's April 2003 remarks, Joe Conason's column in Salon, and the remarks of Dan Briody. Sole source for the Rubenstein remarks and for Briody's account of Fred Malek. https://www.democracynow.org/2003/7/3/democracy_now_exclusive_why_the_carlyle ↩︎
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report (GPO, 2004), pp. 260-261, including the text of the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Brief item. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-911REPORT/pdf/GPO-911REPORT.pdf ↩︎
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, "Intel Committee publishes declassified '28 pages,'" July 15, 2016, including the statement of Chairman Devin Nunes. https://intelligence.house.gov/2016/07/15/intel-committee-publishes-declassified-28-pages/ ↩︎
28pages.org, statement on the classification history of the 28 pages. Sole source for the classification attribution to the George W. Bush administration. https://28pages.org/ ↩︎
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program, S. Rept. 113-288 (declassified December 2014): Findings and Conclusions (#1, #3, #5, #6, #7), the Memorandum of Notification of September 17, 2001, p. 39 and notes 17 and 178 (the April 2006 briefing, Bush's memoir, the CIA's June 2013 response and the Rizzo memoir), and the Yoo letter of July 13, 2002. https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/publications/CRPT-113srpt288.pdf ↩︎
Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel, Memorandum for John Rizzo, Acting General Counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency, "Interrogation of al Qaeda Operative," August 1, 2002 (signed by Jay S. Bybee), pp. 1 and 18. https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/legacy/2010/08/05/memo-bybee2002.pdf ↩︎
Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel, Memorandum for Alberto R. Gonzales, Counsel to the President, "Standards of Conduct for Interrogation under 18 U.S.C. §§ 2340-2340A," August 1, 2002, PDF pp. 1, 2 and 46. https://www.justice.gov/olc/file/886061/dl ↩︎
Open Society Justice Initiative, case page for Al-Nashiri v. Poland, summarizing the European Court of Human Rights judgment of July 24, 2014. https://www.justiceinitiative.org/litigation/al-nashiri-v-poland/mk ↩︎
Inspectors General of the Department of Defense, Department of Justice, Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Report on the President's Surveillance Program, July 10, 2009, Volume I and the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General volume, as released April 24, 2015 in New York Times Co. v. U.S. Department of Justice, No. 14 Civ. 3776 (S.D.N.Y.). Preface (Title III), cover term (p. 12), the NSA General Counsel read in on October 4, 2001 (PDF p. 35), the NSA Inspector General read in August 2002, the Presidential Authorizations list and expiry of February 1, 2007, the Yoo findings, and the conclusions on "unprecedented collection." ACLU-hosted copy. https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/document/foia/StellarWind_IG_Report_OCRd_reduced.pdf ↩︎
Glenn Greenwald and Spencer Ackerman, "NSA collected US email records in bulk for more than two years under Obama," The Guardian, June 27, 2013, publishing a top-secret draft report by the NSA inspector general. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/27/nsa-data-mining-authorised-obama ↩︎
Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill and Laura Poitras, "Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations," The Guardian, June 9, 2013. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance ↩︎
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq, S. Rept. 108-301 (2004), p. 14 (Conclusion 1). https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRPT-108srpt301/pdf/CRPT-108srpt301.pdf ↩︎
Special Advisor to the Director of Central Intelligence, Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq's WMD (the Duelfer report), September 30, 2004, "Regime Strategic Intent" and "Nuclear" key findings. Archived copy of the CIA posting: https://web.archive.org/web/2012id_/https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/iraq_wmd_2004/Comp_Report_Key_Findings.pdf ↩︎
Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, Report to the President of the United States, March 31, 2005, pp. 45, 48, 50 and 51. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-WMD/pdf/GPO-WMD.pdf ↩︎
Martin Chulov and Helen Pidd, "Defector admits to WMD lies that triggered Iraq war," The Guardian, February 15, 2011. Sole source for Janabi's account of his dealings with the BND. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/feb/15/defector-admits-wmd-lies-iraq-war ↩︎
Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, Review of the Pre-Iraqi War Activities of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Report No. 07-INTEL-04, February 9, 2007 (declassified), Executive Summary, pp. i and ii. https://irp.fas.org/agency/dod/ig020907-decl.pdf ↩︎
Senate Committee on Armed Services, hearing "Briefing on the Department of Defense Inspector General's Report on the Activities of the Office of Special Plans Prior to the War in Iraq," S. Hrg. 110-232, February 9, 2007, opening statement of Chairman Levin, quoting the conclusion of the committee minority staff report of October 2004. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-110shrg35438/pdf/CHRG-110shrg35438.pdf ↩︎
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Report on Whether Public Statements Regarding Iraq by U.S. Government Officials Were Substantiated by Intelligence Information, S. Rept. 110-345 (June 5, 2008), pp. 1 to 2 (the five speeches and the intelligence review of them), Conclusion 12 (p. 71), Conclusion 15 (p. 82), Additional Views of Chairman Rockefeller (p. 89), Additional Views of Senators Hagel and Snowe (pp. 97 to 98) and Additional Views of Senator Hatch joined by Vice Chairman Bond and Senator Burr (p. 166). https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/publications/110345.pdf ↩︎
Congressional Record, Senate, June 5, 2008, pp. S5133-S5135 (Sen. Rockefeller on prewar Iraq intelligence). https://irp.fas.org/congress/2008_cr/rock060508.html ↩︎
Mark Danner, "The Secret Way to War," The New York Review of Books, April 6, 2006. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2006/04/06/the-secret-way-to-war/ ↩︎
Matthew Rycroft to David Manning, "Iraq: Prime Minister's meeting, 23 July," as published in "The secret Downing Street memo," The Sunday Times, May 1, 2005 (archived copy). https://web.archive.org/web/2005id_/http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1593607,00.html ↩︎

42 KiB Raw Blame History