Saudi Terrorist And Harken Energy
Per capita income in Saudi Arabia fell from $28,600 in 1981 to $6,800 in 2001. The country's birth rate has soared, becoming one of the highest in the world. Its police force is corrupt, and the rule of law is a sham. Saudi Arabia almost certainly leads the world in public beheadings, the venue for which is often a Riyadh plaza popularly known as Chop-Chop Square. Illegal arms routinely flow into and out of the country.
If an election were held in Saudi Arabia today, if anyone who wanted to could run for the office of president, and if people could vote their hearts without fear of having their heads cut off afterward (in the town square), Osama bin Laden would be elected in a landslide--not because the Saudi people want to wash their hands in the blood of the dead of September 11, but simply because bin Laden has dared to do what even the mighty United States of America won't do: stand up to the thieves who rule the country.
(Rumors in Saudi Arabia say that) the royal family is obsessed with gambling, alcohol prostitution, and parties. And the commissions and other outlays to fund their vices are constant. Most of these Saudi Princes live off a royal stipends, which ran from $800 to $270,000 a month. The princes knew they were breaking the treasury--all told, their brethren numbered 10,000 to 12,000. They fear Crown Prince Abdullah--Fahd's half brother, a seventy-one-year-old reformer who was next in line for the throne--will cut back on their stipends, or even eliminate them if Fahd died? The House of Saud currently has some 30,000 members. The number will be 60,000 in a generation. A prince might sire forty to seventy children during a lifetime of healthy copulation.
Popular preachers all over Saudi Arabia call openly for a jihad against the West. The kingdom's mosque schools have become a breeding ground for militant Islam. In recent years the Saudi education system has been largely entrusted to Wahhabi fundamentalists, as a form of appeasement that many in the royal family hope will direct the fundamentalists' animus at foreign targets, its products are generally ill prepared to compete in a technological age or a global economy.
Recent attacks in Bali, Bosnia, Chechnya, Kenya, and the United States, not to mention those against U.S. military personnel within Saudi Arabia, all point back to these schools--and to the House of Saud itself, which, terrified at the prospect of a militant uprising against it, shovels protection money at the fundamentalists and tries to divert their attention abroad
Recent examples of Saudi support for the fundamentalists abound. In 1997 a high-ranking member of the royal family coordinated a $100 million aid package for the Taliban. Most of the more than 650 al Qaeda prisoners being held at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba--"the worst of the worst," according to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld--are rumored to be Saudis.
Abdul Aziz was funding radical Wahhabi causes and was gaining strength and popularity as a result. (in a power play against the Saudi Princes to become the next King) They had little doubt that money was going to clerics and causes that were associated with Osama bin Laden. Abdul Aziz hadn't rediscovered his faith, of course: he was courting favor with the Wahhabis because he knew he would need their support to become king. In September of 1997 he helped to coordinate that $100 million aid package for the Taliban, even though the Taliban were protecting bin Laden--a man who not only had vowed to overthrow the House of Saud but also seemed increasingly capable of doing so. Abdul Aziz was buying support wherever he could find it and he shared some of bin Laden's
chief grievances. In December of 1999 the press finally caught wind of Abdul Aziz's penchant for backing radical Islamic causes.
Sa'd al Burayk, who in turn was giving the money to Islamic groups dedicated to killing Russian soldiers and civilians in Chechnya.
Prince Nayef, Saudi Arabia's grim Interior Minister, stalled the FBI investigation for years of the Khobar Towers terrorist bombing.
Even after the 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which were organized by Osama bin Laden from his bases in Afghanistan, the Saudi royals continued to aid the Taliban and its main supporter in the region, Pakistan. Furthermore, the United States had known since 1994 that the Saudis were supporting Pakistan's nuclear development program, ultimately contributing upwards of a billion dollars.
BCCI the largest criminal bank in human history, in 1972, was the center of a global laundry and a conduit for transactions involving arms, drugs, and nuclear technology. BCCI founder Agha Hasan Abedi was committed to the development of an Islamic atomic bomb, even donating 500 million rupees for the creation of Pakistan's Gulam Ishaq Research Institute for nuclear development. (BCCI paid the lawyer for Dr. Abdul Qader Khan, head of Pakistan's nuclear program, who a Dutch court convicted in 1983 of stealing the blueprints for a uranium enrichment factory. Three Pakistanis indicted in Houston in 1984 had tried to buy nuclear triggers using BCCI gold. A Pakistani-born Canadian, indicted in Philadelphia in 1987 for conspiracy to export restricted specialty steel and metal to enhance nuclear explosions, paid for the materials through BCCI Toronto. Etc.)
(Source; Professor John Metzger of Michigan State University and "http://www.sumeria.net/politics/binladen.html" "http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO109C.html"
The mosaic of BCCI connections surrounding Harken Energy may prove nothing more than how ubiquitous the rogue bank's ties were. But the number of BCCI-connected people who had dealings with Harken
Among those relationships:
-- Sheik Khalifah bin-Salman al-Khalifah, the prime minister of Bahrain and a brother of the country's ruling emir, is identified on an October 1990 shareholder list as one of the 45 investors who own parent company BCCI Holdings (Luxembourg) S.A. The emir played a role in approving the Harken transaction.
-- Sheik Abdullah Bakhsh, a major Harken shareholder represented by Mr. Othman on the company's board, has been a co-investor in Saudi Arabia with alleged BCCI front man Ghaith Pharaon, and used Khalid bin-Mahfouz, until recently a principal BCCI shareholder, as his banker.
-- Harken's investment bankers helped BCCI gain its foothold in U.S. banking, and they also arranged for a Swiss bank to help rescue Harken from its debt woes in 1987 -- a Swiss bank that was at the time a joint-venture partner with BCCI.
-- Harken's consultant on the Bahrain deal counts Kamal Adham, a principal owner of BCCI, as a close friend and has had a long acquaintance with BCCI's Mr. Pharaon.
http://www.random-abstract.com/archives/00000292.html
The CIA's Directorate of Intelligence avoided writing national intelligence estimates--appraisals, drawn from various U.S. intelligence services, about areas of potential crisis--on Saudi Arabia, knowing that such estimates, especially when negative, have a tendency to find their way onto the front pages of U.S. newspapers, where they might have an undesired effect on public opinion.
FBI Director Robert Mueller, was the top honcho of the Justice Department's, Criminal Division, during the senior Bush's administration and was instrumental in suppressing and/or destroying evidence and scaring off and covering up about witnesses to protect the Bush Family connections with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International.(Source: New York Times, July 6, 2001, in a story by Neil A. Lewis).
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FBI agents had wanted to check into two members of the bin Laden family, Abdullah and Omar (top Saudi Arabian royals), but were told to stay away by superiors -- until September 13, 2001. Less-than-happy FBI agents gave some 30 pages long, marked "SECRET" to reporters.
Report of this story won the California State University School of Journalism's Project Censored Award in 2002.
"http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/7310" l "2.1"
Almost every Washington political insider (former elected government official) worth mentioning has been involved with companies doing major deals with Saudi Arabia. Spending a lot of money was a tacit part of the U.S.-Saudi relationship practically from the very beginning: the Americans would buy Saudi Arabia's oil and would provide the Saudis with protection and security; the Saudis would buy American weapons, construction services, communications systems, and drilling rigs (for example, Carlyle Group) . In the global-economics game this is known as "recycling," and in this case it worked well: two-way trade between Saudi Arabia and the United States grew from $56.2 million in 1950 to $19.3 billion in 2000--an average annual growth rate of nearly 70 percent. The first George Bush and Vice President under the second, has been a frequent beneficiary of Saudi money.
Just to make sure that no one upsets the workings of this system, perhaps by meddling in internal Saudi affairs, Saudi Arabia now keeps possibly as much as a trillion dollars on deposit in U.S. banks--an agreement worked out in the early eighties by the Reagan Administration, in an effort to get the Saudis to offset U.S. government budget deficits. The Saudis hold another trillion dollars or so in the U.S. stock market. This gives them a remarkable degree of leverage in Washington. If they were suddenly to withdraw all their holdings in this country, the effect, though perhaps not as catastrophic as having a major source of oil shut down, would still be devastating.
The U.S.-Saudi relationship would not be as cozy as it is without the fifty-four-year-old Prince Bandar. He ranks low on the royal bloodline. Prince Bandar once told associates that he is very careful to look after U.S. government officials when they return to private life. "If the reputation then builds that the Saudis take care of friends when they leave office." Practically every deal with the Saudis eventually becomes hard to trace and tons of money is spent in buy good PR for Saudi Arabia.
In mid-2002 word leaked to the press that the semiofficial Defense Policy Board, chaired by the notorious cold warrior Richard Perle, had sponsored a report declaring Saudi Arabia to be part of the problem of international terrorism rather than part of the solution. Saudi Arabia, the report stated, was "central to the self-destruction of the Arab world and the chief vector of the Arab crisis and its outwardly-directed aggression." It went on to say, "The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader." Within hours Colin Powell was on the phone to the Saudi Foreign Minister, assuring him--and through him, the royal family--that such apostasy was not and never would be the official stance of the Bush Administration. To reinforce the message, President Bush invited Bandar down to the family ranch at Crawford, Texas.
In June of 1984, Prince Bandar started paying out $30 million from the royal family so that Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North could buy arms for the Nicaraguan contras.
A visit in the early nineties to the summer home of George H.W. Bush, in Kennebunkport, Maine, earned the Prince Bandar the affectionate family sobriquet "Bandar Bush." Bandar reciprocated by inviting Bush to hunt pheasant on his estate in England. For good measure he also contributed a million dollars to the construction of the Bush Presidential Library, in College Station, Texas. King Fahd sent another million to Barbara Bush's campaign against illiteracy. (He had donated a million dollars to Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign against drugs four years earlier.) Bandar was once Colin Powell's racquetball partner.
In 1992 he persuaded King Fahd to donate $20 million to the University of Arkansas's new Center for Middle Eastern Studies, a gesture of respect for the Arkansas governor who had just been elected President.
"http://foi.missouri.edu/evolvingissues/fallhouseofsaud.html"
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NEWS AND VIEWS YOU DON'T HAVE TO LOSE: June 2003
Bush, Harken Energy and links to Saudis, Osmam bin ladin, BCCI. and drug money laundering
In 1979, Bush’s first business, Arbusto Energy, (was started with some $18,000 of his own money) obtained financing from James Bath, a Houstonian and close family friend. One of many investors, Bath gave Bush $50,000 for a 5 percent stake in Arbusto. At the time, Bath was the sole U.S. business representative for Salem bin Laden, head of the wealthy Saudi Arabian family and a brother (one of 17) to Osama bin Laden. It has long been suspected, but never proven, that the Arbusto money came directly from Salem bin Laden.
Bush collect $4.7 million from his father’s friends (50 investors) and associates to start Arbusto Celanese CEO J.D. Macomber and venture-capitalist W.H. Draper III put together $172,550. "http://www.indianexpress.com/columnists/suni/20010519.html"
Philip Uzielli, a wealthy investor and the owner of Executive Resources, a company based first in the Dutch West Indies and later in Panama. In January 1982, Uzielli's company bought ten percent of Arbusto's stock for a cool $1 million, and later put invested $38,237. The investment made Uzielli Arbusto's largest benefactor. The million-dollar purchase price was at least three times more than the stock he bought was worth. Arbusto's book value was $382,376. "http://www.publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/report.asp?ReportID=431&L1=10&L2=10&L3=0&L4=0&L5=0"
Bush jr. renamed his company Bush Exploration. In the oil-patch depression of the mid-1980s, Mercer Reynolds III and William O. DeWitt (two people who became big contributors to Bush Senior’s campaign) bought Bush Exploration, merging it with Spectrum 7 Energy Corp. "http://www.indianexpress.com/columnists/suni/20010519.html"
Philip Uzielli, a director of Spectrum 7."http://www.random-abstract.com/archives/00000292.html"
(In 1986) Spectrum 7, was bought by Harken Energy. Bush and his two partners got $2 million in stock in exchange for a company that had lost $400,000 in the six months prior to the sale. Bush himself got stock worth about $500,000 and an annual consulting fee of $120,000, later reduced to $50,000 {1}
Another sources says Bush jr. got $227,000 worth of Harken stock, and a lot more. He was named to the board of directors, made $80,000 to $100,000 a year well into the 1990s as a "consultant" to Harken, and was allowed to buy Harken stock at 40% below face value.
Bush jr. also borrowed $180,375 from Harken at very low rates; the company's 1989 and 1990 SEC filings said it "forgave" $341,000 in loans to unspecified executives.
"http://www.realchange.org/bushjr.htm" l "financing"
Harken Energy was a Persian Gulf oil company which was formed in 1973. In September 1986, Harken Energy Corp. was a medium-sized, diversified corporation founded by Phil Kendrickthat, had been purchased in 1983 by a New York lawyer, Alan Quasha. Quasha seemed interested in acquiring not just an oil company, but the son of the Vice President. Harken agreed to acquire Spectrum 7 in a deal that handed over one share of publicly traded stock for five shares of Spectrum, which at the time were practically worthless. [WP, July 30, 1999.]"http://www.consortiumnews.com/2000/081500a2.html"
In June 1990, Bush sold two-thirds of the Harken stock he had acquired in the Spectrum 7 deal at $4 a share for $848,560 –$318,430 more than it was worth when he got it. {2 - "http://www.texasobserver.org/showArticle.asp?ArticleID=562"
Alan Quasha's father is William Quasha and is a Filipino banker, who had been at strong supporter of President Ferdinand Marcos. William Quasha owned 21 percent of Harken's stock. He also had advised top officials in Australia's Nugan Hand Bank, a CIA operation, which was involved in drug trafficking operations which originated in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. "http://www.publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/report.aspReportID=431&L1=10&L2=10&L3=0&L4=0&L5=0"
When Harken ran into trouble a year later, Saudi Sheik Abdullah Taha Bakhsh purchased a 17.6 percent stake in the company. Bakhsh was a business partner with Gaith Pharaon in Saudi Arabia; his banker there just happened to be Khalid bin Mahfouz. A Palestinian-born investor Talat Othman of Chicago was on the Board of Harken Energy, representing Sheik Abdullah Bakhsh of Saudi Arabia. "http://www.tylwythteg.com/enemies/slick1.html" In 1987, Jackson Stephens (an Arkansas billionaire and shareholder of First American bank) made arrangements with Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) to provide $25 million to Harken Energy in return for a stock interest in that company. As part of the deal, Sheikh Abdullah Bakhsh, a Saudi real estate billionaire, joined Harken Energy's board as a major investor. Union Bank of Switzerland, which ordinarily didn't invest in small U.S. firms, would make an exception, giving Harken $25 million in exchange for a stock interest. At the time, UBS was a joint-venture partner with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International -(BCCI) a Geneva-based bank.
Stephens was owner of a Little Rock brokerage firm which underwrote Harken Energy's $25 million stock offering. Stephens Incorporated placed the Harken Energy stock offering with the Nugan Hand Bank and the London subsidiary of Union Bank of Switzerland. During the next decade the Union Bank of Switzerland assisted BCCI in avoiding taxes by moving cash from its bank in Noriega's Panama to other locations throughout the world. "http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/jphuck/Book4Ch.3.html"
Another source says:
Harken Energy's $25 million stock offering was underwritten by Stephens, Inc., an Arkansas bank whose head, Jackson Stephens. Stephens placed the offering with the London subsidiary of Union Bank of Switzerland, which (according to the Wall Street Journal) was not known as an investor in small American companies.
Union Bank of Switzerland did have other connections; it was a joint-venture partner with the notorious BCCI in a Geneva-based bank, and was involved in a scandal surrounding the Nugan Hand Bank, a CIA operation in Australia whose executives were advised by William Quasha, the father of Harken's chairman (Alan Quasha.) Union Bank was also involved in scandals surrounding Panamanian money laundering by BCCI, and Ferdinand Marcos' movement of 325 tons of gold out of the Phillipines.
After the Harken Energy won its Bahrain deal (see next item), the billionaire Bass brothers of Texas offered to underwrite the drilling operation.
"http://www.realchange.org/bushjr.htm" l "financing"
... the network of connections between Bush and BCCI is so extensive that the Wall Street Journal concluded from their investigation of the matter in 1991 by stating: “The number of BCCI-connected people who had dealings with Harken—all since George W. Bush came on board—raises the question of whether they mask an effort to cozy up to a presidential son.” (or Pres. Bush Sr.).
By 1988, that equity in Harken Energy reached $70 million.. Harken's major investors included billionaire currency speculator George Soros, and university fund investor Harvard Management Co.
When Salem bin Laden died in 1988, powerful Saudi Arabian banker and BCCI principal Khalid bin Mahfouz inherited his interests in Houston. Bath ran a business for bin Mahfouz in Houston and joined a partnership with bin Mahfouz and Gaith Pharaon, BCCI’s frontman in Houston’s Main Bank.
bin Mahfouz is a former director of the infamous BCCI international bank, which triggered a $12-billion U.S. bankruptcy scandal in the early 1990s. He was indicted in the U.S. for a $300-million bank fraud and facing civil claims exceeding $10 billion, he arranged a $225-million settlement with prosecutors and agreed to a permanent prohibition on owning banks in the U.S.
Worst of all, bin Mahfouz allegedly has been financing the bin Laden terrorist network—making Bush a U.S. citizen who has done business with those who finance and support terrorists. According to USA Today, bin Mahfouz and other Saudis attempted to transfer $3 million to various bin Laden front operations in Saudi Arabia in 1999. ABC News reported the same year that Saudi officials stopped bin Mahfouz from contributing money directly to bin Laden. Bin Mahfouz’s sister is also a wife of Osama bin Laden.
Sources:
"http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/25/25/feature3.shtml/projectcensored/projectcensored.shtml"
http://www.random-abstract.com/archives/00000292.html
BCCI the largest criminal bank in human history, in 1972, was the center of a global laundry and a conduit for transactions involving arms, drugs, and nuclear technology. BCCI founder Agha Hasan Abedi was committed to the development of an Islamic atomic bomb, even donating 500 million rupees for the creation of Pakistan's Gulam Ishaq Research Institute for nuclear development. (BCCI paid the lawyer for Dr. Abdul Qader Khan, head of Pakistan's nuclear program, who a Dutch court convicted in 1983 of stealing the blueprints for a uranium enrichment factory. Three Pakistanis indicted in Houston in 1984 had tried to buy nuclear triggers using BCCI gold. A Pakistani-born Canadian, indicted in Philadelphia in 1987 for conspiracy to export restricted specialty steel and metal to enhance nuclear explosions, paid for the materials through BCCI Toronto. Etc.)
(Source; Professor John Metzger of Michigan State University and "http://www.sumeria.net/politics/binladen.html" "http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO109C.html"
In December, 1977, Jackson Stephens introduced Bert Lance to Agha Hasan Abedi (the founder of BCCI). According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, they discussed the possibility that Abedi purchase the stock of Financial General Bankshares (later called First American Bankshares) held by Lance, Stephens and others and concocted a plan to take over Lance's stock of the National Bank of Georgia U.S. SEC v Lance et. al.). The SEC found out about the plan and sought a restraining order to prevent a foreign bank from taking over a U.S. bank. Years later it would be revealed that Abedi and accomplise Gaith Pharoan went right ahead anyway succeeding with the takeover in 1982. (Corporate Crime Reporter, July 22, 1991).
Abedi used frontman Gaith Pharoan to act as his intermediary, taking over Bert Lance's stake in the National Bank of Georgia for BCCI. In 1990, BCCI was convicted of money laundering for the Columbian Cocaine Cartels in Miami.
Perhaps the most mysterious aspect of the Justice Dept's investigation of BCCI involved BCCI bank records from Panama City relating to General Noriega which simply ``disappeared'' in transit to Washington while under heavy guard by the Drug Enforcement Administration. After an internal investigation, the D.E.A. said it had no idea what happened to the documents. (Source: Christic Institute, 1991) "http://www.totse.com/en/politics/international_banking_money_laundering/bcci91.html"
Panana President, Gen. Manual Antonio Noriega was trafficking in drugs and money Laundering. Noriega was using the banks in Panama to launderer billion of dollars for the Columbian drug cartels and allowed drug traffickers to refuel their drug airplanes in Panama.
In 1991, BCCI collapsed and millions of investors in 73 countries lost their life savings. According to the Wall Street Journal, "BCCI represents the biggest bank robbery in history...(January 18, 1994)." And that BCCI was a "$10billion or so" heist. (Wall Street Journal, October 28, 1994.)
Stephens' principal motive in bringing BCCI to America was apparently to connect up his own financial institutions to the global laundry--not only First American, but those in Little Rock also. To avoid the type of SEC scrutiny involved in the Financial General takeover, Webster Hubbell, who had represented Stephens' software company Systematics, was employed to draw up the charter for the Arkansas Development Finance Authority (ADFA). The structure for the laundry was then in place.
One form of Stephens' laundry worked through front companies set up by bond broker Dan Lasater. These companies would deposit cash in banks such as Stephens' Worthen Bank, which would not fill out reporting forms. In return for this service, the companies would be obligated to buy bonds issued by the ADFA, and underwritten by Stephens' investment bank Stephens Inc. Stephens would thus be compensated for the laundering service in the form of an investment banking fee.
The money from the bond issue, meanwhile, would go back to the same front companies. That is, in effect the companies bought their own bonds and paid Stephens a fee for the service.
The participation of the ADFA, a state government institution, eliminated SEC scrutiny. ADFA formally issued and "guaranteed" the bonds, and thus collected a fee in the process. Some of these fees were translated into "loans" to the political friends of the Governor of Arkansas, William Jefferson Clinton, now President of the United States.
At other times ADFA was itself the core of the laundry. At the end of December 1988, for example, the ADFA deposited $50 million in Fuji Bank in the Cayman Islands. Fuji Bank subsequently purchased the industrial development loan of POM, Inc., a parking meter and arms production company owned by Seth Ward, Webster Hubbell's father-in-law. Hubbell was also POM's corporate attorney. (Source; Professor John Metzger of Michigan State University and "http://www.sumeria.net/politics/binladen.html" "http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO109C.html"
"http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~pdscott/q4c.html"
In 1986 that the board of Harvard Management, a subsidiary established by the university to manage its endowment. Harvard Management was led by Robert G. Stone Jr. Stone was in the Texas oil business and knew the elder Bush. Harvard Management directed that the endowment invest some 5 percent of its $5 billion in assets in private oil and gas companies.
Harken Energy in 1990, was the seventh-largest stock holding in Harvard's portfolio, about $50 million, bigger even than the university's stake in Exxon Corp. In all, Harvard Management risked 1 percent of the university's endowment in the small, struggling company, a surprisingly large bet by any measure, but particularly given Harken's dismal prospects.
Harvard bailed out Harken several times and poured millions into the company in 1989, 1990, and 1991, all while Bush's father was president and his son still a director of the firm.
In 1991 when Harvard University's prestigious endowment fund admitted it had just experienced its worst loss ever, of $92 million, in related to oil and gas investments, including ailing Harken.
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David Armstrong in the Observer, July 12, 1991, reported that Harken Oil Company “has direct links to institutions involved in drug smuggling, foreign currency manipulation, and the C.I.A.’s well-documented role in the destabilization of the Australian government. While it should be stressed that none of the players involved in Harken stand accused of any improper or illegal activity, the company’s association with these institutions raises serious questions.”
George W. used $600,000 from the Harken stock sale to buy a tiny slice of the Texas Rangers; and when the Rangers were sold last year for $250 million, the second-largest amount ever paid for a baseball team, George W. emerged with more than $14.9 million. What had made the ball club so valuable was a gift from the public — a $200 million stadium mostly paid for by a sales tax that the citizens of Arlington, Texas, had overwhelmingly voted to assume.
"http://www.bushfiles.com/bushfiles/fertilize_bushes.html"
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In 1999, says Ivins, Dubya was personally flogging the only bill he designated ‘emergency legislation’, a $45 mn tax-break for owners (Exxon, mainly) of marginally productive oil and gas wells — ‘there’s a lot of people hurting’, said Dubya, the bleeding heart.
In 1997, Bush gave big oil polluters like Exxon a huge reprieve, and prevented the environment authorities from coming down heavily on them. These companies contributed $260,648 to his 1998 gubernatorial campaign and $243,900 to his presidential campaign — a South Texas oil-and-gas operator then gave another $101,000, and four energy company CEOs another $325,000.
http://www.indianexpress.com/columnists/suni/20010519.html
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