by Russ Baker
In fact, a serious investigation would have turned up a surprising lead. In de Mohrenschildt’s battered address book was an entry for “Bush, George H. W. (Poppy) 1412 W. Ohio also Zapata Petroleum Midland.”
There is no evidence that anyone interviewed the recently departed CIA director.
THE SAME MONTH that de Mohrenschildt died, so did Paul Raigorodsky, his onetime White Russian mentor. On November 22, 1976, while Poppy Bush was still CIA director, author Michael Canfield paid a visit to Raigorodsky. The oilman told the researcher, “I told everything I knew to the Warren Commission. What is your interest in all of this?” When Canfield answered, “Oh, I’m just curious, that’s all.” Raigorodsky retorted, “But don’t you know that curiosity killed the cat?”54
Yet it was Raigorodsky, not Canfield, who was soon dead, on March 16, 1977, less than two weeks before his friend de Mohrenschildt’s death, at a time when HSCA investigators were seeking to interview both men about the assassination. Raigorodsky, who suffered from chronic gout, is said to have died of natural causes.
CHAPTER 13
Poppy’s Proxy and the Saudis
ONE DAY IN MARCH 1976, SEVERAL months after Poppy Bush was sworn in as CIA director, W.’s old National Guard buddy Jim Bath, who had just launched his own aircraft brokerage, picked up the phone and heard a voice from afar.1 The caller, according to accounts Bath has provided, was interested in buying an F-27 turboprop, an unexceptional and sluggish medium-range plane that no one else seemed to want. The man said his name was Salem bin Laden.
Bath personally flew the F-27 to Saudi Arabia to make the delivery—an arduous trip since the plane averaged an airspeed of just 240 knots, or about 275 miles per hour.2 He remained in the city of Jidda for three weeks and became close to bin Laden, who was then the thirty-year-old heir to the Saudi Bin Laden Group. This was a vast construction and engineering empire that built roads, schools, hospitals, and hotels and had played a key role in the modernization of Saudi Arabia.3
Bath also grew friendly with another young scion, Khalid bin Mahfouz, then twenty-five, heir to the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia, the biggest bank in the kingdom. The bin Laden and bin Mahfouz families were close with Saudi king Fahd.
Almost immediately, this seemingly random connection turned into a formal business arrangement. On July 8, 1976, Salem bin Laden signed a notarized trust agreement in Harris County, Texas, establishing Bath’s role as his business representative in the United States. Mahfouz, too, hired Bath.
Salem bin Laden was the eldest of fifty-four children of Mohammed bin Laden, a one-eyed bricklayer who became a close friend of King Faisal and then the most powerful construction magnate in Saudi Arabia. After Mohammed died in a 1967 air crash, King Faisal sent the head of his own construction company to serve as a kind of trustee for the bin Ladens until Salem was old enough to take the reins.4 One of Salem’s half brothers, Osama, would go on to lead the terrorist network al-Qaeda. While Osama became estranged from the Saudi royals, most of the family, including Salem, would remain very much in the fold.5
Certainly, the bin Ladens and bin Mahfouzes were stars in the Saudi firmament. Thus the question: How did it happen that Jim Bath, close friend and National Guard minder to George W. Bush and acquaintance of Poppy Bush, suddenly became a business partner of these two powerful Saudi families just weeks after Poppy took over at the CIA? Is it likely that this was mere coincidence? Bath clearly preferred that explanation. When the author Craig Unger obtained a rare interview with Bath several years ago and asked him how he came to be in business with these powerful Saudis, Bath offered the story of the unexpected phone call, although he claimed not to recall what year it had taken place.
Thus, Unger wrote in his book House of Bush, House of Saud, that Bath said the call came “sometime around 1974.” This claim appears to have been off by two years, considering that he had not even launched his airplane brokerage until 1976—just after his friend Poppy Bush became the head of American intelligence. One wonders if that misstatement could have been an accident. More likely, neither Bath nor Bush would have wanted anyone to note the synchronicity of these events.
If people had looked more deeply into Bath’s activities, they would have discovered what appeared to be a covert private foreign policy benefiting the wealthy and implemented by Poppy Bush and his associates—with Jim Bath acting as a key intermediary to the Saudi royal house.
Indeed, the year 1976, when Jim Bath went into business with the two young Saudis, was a strategic turning point. Poppy Bush was a central participant in an effort to secretly engineer a deepening of the relationship between America and the kingdom. One purpose was to ensure a stable supply of oil for America. Another was to create a vehicle for evading congressional restrictions on covert operations by enlisting the Saudis as outside funders, surrogates, and cutouts—trusted confidential intermediaries. The result was a secret intelligence partnership that would come to rival that between the United States and Israel.
The story of this secret partnership is directly connected to the story of how the Saudi royal family became the benefactors of the Bush family. It also raises questions—not answered here—that warrant further investigation. These include the urgency with which the George W. Bush administration moved to transport members of the extended bin Laden family from the United States back to Saudi Arabia in the early hours after the September 11 attacks—even in contravention of the no-fly rules in effect at the time.6 These and other questions, explored in books, articles, and even in Michael Moore’s controversial award-winning film Fahrenheit 9/11, provide an intriguing perspective for contemplating the material that follows.
A Bath or a Sheep-Dipping?
Ostensibly, Jim Bath came to the attention of the Bush family in 1969, when W. reported for duty at Ellington Air Force Base, to a unit in which Bath was already serving. The two promptly became buddies. This was a little surprising, really, given that George W. Bush has tended to socialize almost exclusively with people of his own social and economic class. James Reynolds Bath did not go to Yale. He was not an oil heir or from a Wall Street blue-blood clan. He was older than W., had grown up in a small town in modest circumstances, and had already served an impressive stint in the Air Force before moving to Houston and joining the Air National Guard. He was not the typical Champagne Unit prince.
As a youth, Bath had developed two interests that he would maintain through much of his adult life: media and flying. Upon graduation from Louisiana State University with a degree in publishing management, Bath joined the Air Force, where he served as a fighter pilot for five years. While there he did publicity work, partly as a top aide to a powerful military officer. Later, while living in Texas, Bath would own and fly a V/STOL plane, typically used by the CIA in Vietnam for short-field takeoffs and landing on rugged mountain airstrips.7
Because of Bath’s skills and background, he would have been a prime candidate for what is called “sheep-dipping.” In this process, the Air Force typically loans a pilot to the CIA, and the pilot ostensibly becomes a civilian, but all his military records are transferred over to a clandestine department within the Air Force. The pilot gets routine promotions and retirement credit points, just as if he were on active duty, except that this part of his record is missing from files released under the Freedom of Information Act. If there are “missing” periods within a span of military service, when no active duty is documented, that is a sign that a flier was sheep-dipped.
(In fact, when I asked the military for Bath’s records, I got an extraordinary runaround, with two different records centers insisting that the other ought to have the file. The George W. Bush administration never did provide me with his records.)
Oftentimes, a dipped sheep’s own family and friends are kept in the dark and told simply that the individual has resigned from the Air Force to become a civilian.8
In 1965, Bath received an honorable discharge, and at the age of twenty-nine, he moved to Houston, where he joi
ned the Texas Air National Guard as a part-time member of the 147th Fighter Wing at Ellington Air Force Base.
Jim Bath was a unit star, and a versatile one. “Bath could fly upside down on your wing,” recalls Dr. Richard Mayo, another member of the unit.9 “He was a supremely talented guy. He was charming, smart, trained in journalism and PR, and a fabulous pilot.” All that made him a valued asset for Colonel Walter B. “Buck” Staudt, the unit’s highly political and ambitious commandant. It also gave Bath enviable connections to powerful men who were looking not just to keep their sons out of Vietnam, but to put the best possible spin on the situation as well. People like Lloyd Bentsen, John Connally, and soon Poppy Bush were well aware of Bath’s usefulness, and so were indebted to him.
Bath’s decision to join the Texas Air National Guard would have been purely voluntary, since he had already fulfilled his military service obligation. As a “weekend warrior,” working in aircraft sales for a Dallas-based company (Brown Aero), Bath was hired in 1968 as Houston vice president for Atlantic Aviation. That firm, a holding of the fabulously wealthy Du Pont family of Delaware, has been identified as associated with the CIA.10 Among other things, Bath would be given the exclusive contract to sell the corporate jet manufactured by Israeli Aircraft Industries in the United States.
During these years, Bath appeared regularly as a speaker before the Houston Chamber of Commerce, the Kiwanis, and other business and social groups. In 1966, Bath and Poppy Bush were both on the lecture circuit, with the congressional candidate and the Guardsman making the rounds of the same set of civic and fraternal associations.
Bill White, Bath’s former longtime business partner, said Bath told him that he would still be “cleaning the toilets in the aircraft” instead of running the show for Atlantic had Poppy Bush not intervened. If correct, this would place Bath and Poppy in cooperation at least as early as 1968, the year W. was admitted to Bath’s Guard unit.
Suspended Disbelief
When the younger George Bush arrived at Ellington Air Force Base from his Georgia pilot training in late 1969, he and Jim Bath quickly became a dynamic duo. Both were charmers, both liked to wisecrack and push the limits, both enjoyed a good party. But Bath far outshone his younger friend: people considered the Louisianan smart, focused, an engaging speaker, and an amazing pilot.
Bath seemed to have been tasked with both minding W. and turning his mediocre performance and party-boy lifestyle into something more conducive to future prospects. Hence the press release, cited in chapter 8, which sang George W. Bush’s praises as a pilot to local newspapers. Bath had impressed Poppy Bush, and the two are said to have become regular dining companions.
But was the relationship between Bath and Poppy strong enough that the elder Bush could prevail upon Bath—as he had so often with others—for a major sacrifice in a greater cause? Would he take a dive for Poppy’s trouble-prone namesake? There are indications that this may have happened.
As noted earlier, George W. Bush left the 147th Fighter Wing in May of 1972. He would later claim that he had left his unit and moved temporarily to Alabama because of a keen desire to work on the Senate campaign of his father’s friend Winton Blount. But records show that at the time of his departure he was experiencing problems in the cockpit and had stopped flying. It appears that for some reason W. began having trouble handling his F-102’s controls and may have been judged a danger to himself and others. Under this scenario, the flying problems necessitated creation of an excuse for leaving the unit, i.e., getting out of town.
Years later, when Bush’s cessation of flying became a subject of speculation, Bush’s White House staff explained that his departure for Alabama had caused him to miss his annual pilot’s physical exam, and that this in turn had caused his routine suspension from flying.
To bolster this, the White House released a document that showed Bush’s suspension for failure to take a physical. The document also showed that a second airman from Bush’s unit had been suspended around the same time for the same reason. One might have concluded from this that such suspensions were commonplace. One might have concluded—if one did not know the identity of the other airman, whose name the White House had redacted from the form, purportedly to protect his privacy.
But Marty Heldt, an Iowa railroad worker, corn farmer, and amateur researcher, came forward to identify the mystery man, based on an unredacted document copy he had obtained in 2000 through a Freedom of Information request and posted to his Web site.11 The airman who was suspended along with W.? Major James R. Bath.12
Once this information became known, some wondered if it could be a coincidence that the two good friends were suspended at the same time for the same reason. And since W.’s real reason seemed to be that he needed an excuse to justify that he had let down the Guard—and perhaps disappointed his family—Bath would need some reason too.
But unlike W., Bath’s Guard service was not compulsory; it was a beloved avocation. If W. had purportedly been suspended for failure to take his physical on account of his being out of state, Bath had no such excuse. Also perhaps significant is that while George W. Bush appears never to have piloted aircraft of any kind again after the suspension, Bath returned to the sky after he left the unit, flying commercial and private planes.
One conclusion, then, was that Bath had agreed to take a dive in order to provide W. with cover. If this is correct, and Poppy did ask Bath to essentially provide cover for W., he would have been taking another page straight out of the spymaster’s playbook—something like the two George Bushes in the CIA at the same time, and the Tyler, Texas, alibi.
In fact, both George W. and Jim Bath have played along, with the men portraying their dual suspensions as minor matters, and as commonplace.13 “It happens all the time, especially in the Guard,” Bath told the author Craig Unger. “In a regular squadron it is real easy to get your physical, but in a Guard unit, it is a different kettle of fish because the flight surgeon is also a civilian . . . The base is a ghost town except when the whole unit is there. When you fall out of requirements, it is no big deal, you are simply not able to be on the flying schedule. That is it, full stop.”
But in fact, being suspended is apparently not a minor matter, and such a lapse would have been highly unusual for any unit member; for two men to be suspended at the same time for the same reason was extraordinary. When I asked General Belisario J. Flores (Ret.), a former assistant adjutant general of the Texas Air National Guard, he told me that suspensions for missing flight physicals were rare. Moreover, he said, he had never, in all his years with the Texas Air National Guard, heard of two members of the same unit being suspended from flying for failure to take physicals, much less at the same time.14
From the point of view of the National Guard, which had invested so much time and money in these men, it defies reason that the punishment for missing a physical exam would be suspension from flying. For such an offense, I was told by a cross-section of military people, a crack flier like Bath would most likely have been ordered to take the exam at a later date.
For someone like Bush, who had not completed his compulsory military service, the consequences could have been more severe; indeed, a Guardsman in this situation without Bush’s connections might have found himself ordered to Vietnam, where the war at this time was very much a hot one. (Logic alone suggests that if everyone knew they could abandon their obligations during an unpopular war by simply not taking a medical exam, the drain on the military would be substantial.)
According to General Flores, the ongoing failure to take a required physical would definitely have triggered disciplinary action. In a 2004 interview, Flores told me: “If a person does not fulfill his training requirements, he is counseled by his commander, then meets a board, and then the case is forwarded for further action.” He said that a special board would have to be convened, and during this time the person suspended from flying would continue to serve in a nonflying capacity. In any event, a record of the board proceedings
should have been created. Yet no such record regarding the disposition of the Bush and Bath cases has ever been released. Nor is it even known to exist.
Was there more to Bush’s grounding than simply nerves?
When reporters raised allegations that Bush had been grounded for using drugs, Bath characterized it as a “bogus issue.” Bath has declined to publicly explain precisely why he and Bush—whom he calls “Geo,” after the name on his Guard uniform—had failed to take their physicals. “I’m telling you that it [drug use] did not happen. It is beyond laughable. I wasn’t with him 24/7, but Geo did not use drugs. Geo did not use drugs, and I really know the facts.”15 Actually, as noted in chapter 8, the facts were a little more complicated in W.’s case. And they certainly were in Bath’s. His own divorce proceedings involved allegations by his ex-wife of his use of cocaine and its detrimental effects on his business and personal life.
