[OPE-L:8663] Bush family money & the Nazi connection

From: Asfilho@aol.com
Date: Mon Mar 24 2003 - 09:31:10 EST


>        Copyright 2000 Sarasota Herald-Tribune Co.
>                        Sarasota Herald-Tribune (Florida)
> 
>                     November 12, 2000, Sunday, ALL EDITIONS
> 
> SECTION: A SECTION, Pg. A10
> 
> LENGTH: 440 words
> 
> HEADLINE: Author links Bush family to Nazis
> 
> BYLINE: STAFF REPORT
> 
> BODY:
> 
>    The president of the Florida Holocaust Museum said Saturday that George 
> W.
> Bush's grandfather derived a portion of his personal fortune through his
> affiliation with a Nazi-controlled bank.
> 
>    John Loftus, a former prosecutor in the Justice Department's Nazi War 
> Crimes
> Unit, said his research found that Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush, was a
> principal in the Union Banking Corp. in Manhattan in the late 1930s and the
> 1940s.
> 
>    Leading Nazi industrialists secretly owned the bank at that time, Loftus
> said, and were moving money into it through a second bank in Holland even 
> after
> the United States declared war on Germany. The bank was liquidated in 1951,
> Loftus said, and Bush's grandfather and great-grandfather received $ 1.5 
> million
> from the bank as part of that dissolution.
> 
>    "That's where the Bush family fortune came from: It came from the Third
> Reich," Loftus said.
> 
>    Loftus made his remarks during a speech as part of the Sarasota Reading
> Festival. The author of "Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, The Nazis and the 
> Swiss
> Banks," Loftus documented the Swiss bank accounts that harbored funds
> confiscated from Holocaust victims and the participation of Italian priests 
> in
> smuggling Nazi war criminals to safe haven in Canada, Central and South 
> America
> and the United States after the war.
> 
>    Although he said he had a file of paperwork linking the bank and 
> Prescott
> Bush to Nazi money, Loftus did not provide that documentation Saturday.
> 
>    Loftus pointed out that the Bush family would not be the only American
> political dynasty to have ties to the "wrong side of World War II." The
> Rockefellers had financial connections to Nazi Germany, he said.
> 
>    Loftus also reminded his audience that John F. Kennedy's father, an 
> avowed
> isolationist and former ambassador to Great Britain, profited during the 
> 1930s
> and '40s from Nazi stocks that he owned.
> 
>    "No one today blames the Democrats because Jack Kennedy's father bought 
> Nazi
> stocks," Loftus said. Still, he said, it is important to understand these
> historical connections for what they tell us about politics today. The 
> World War
> II experience points out how easy it was then -- and remains today -- to 
> hide
> money in multinational funds.
> 
>    That money flows into American politics today, he said, from "a series 
> of
> multinational corporations behaving like pirates. They don't care about
> ideology; they care about money."
> 
>    Loftus' speech left many in tears.
> 
>    "I am absolutely shocked," said Nancy Krauss of Punta Gorda. "I wish 
> this
> would have come out before the election. My husband voted for Bush. I don't
> think he would have voted for him if he would have known."
> 
> 


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