The Secret Problem with Jeb: Why Another Bush is not the Solution 2/2

by Nomad

In the previous post we examined the kind assistance Jeb Bush, gave a Cuban exile turned business and how that led to one of the largest Medicare frauds in American history. In this post, we will look into some other possible reasons why Jeb Bush (and his father) would have been so eager to help Recarey and his friends.

The Exiled Mobster

With Jeb Bush's help in overcoming certain Medicare regulations, Cuban businessman and Bush business partner Miguel Recarey was able to amass a fortune in a very short time.

In exchange, he provided free and no-questions medical care to Nicaraguan right wing rebels, otherwise known as Contras. When the scheme collapsed, Bush and high level Bush administration officials successfully helped Recarey avoid prosecution and even had the kindness to give him a bonus for his services in the form of a hefty IRS check.
But Bush and company were not the only people involved in Recarey Medicare fraud. If he had friends in high places, Recarey also has important contact in the lower realms too.

Back in 1988, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Sydney P. Freedberg of the Wall Street Journal, wrote of Miguel Recarey’s longstanding connection with Florida underworld boss Santo Traffincante, Jr. It was alleged by Miguel Recarey's associates that the medical company IMC was, in fact, financed by the Miami mafia don Trafficante.

Born in Tampa, Florida, on 15th November, 1914, Trafficante took over the gambling business when his father died of stomach cancer in August, 1954. He had been sent to manage operations in Havana and, working with the dictator of Cuba, Fulgencio Batista, Santo was able to make a name for himself. All of that came to an abrupt end, when the Marxist rebels took over the country and threw the corrupt regime and all of its cronies out of the country in January, 1959.

For Trafficante, it spelled disaster.

In fact the man once considered the most powerful mafioso in Batista-era Cuba actually spent time in prison before being deported to the United States. (Admittedly, he never served time in any American prison.)

These disgruntled and determined gangsters were an attractive asset to the CIA. They had all the contacts, the informers and the muscle that it took to return the island to American control.

According to one source,

In September 1960 Johnny Roselli and Sam Giancana, took part in talks with Allen W. Dulles, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), about the possibility of murdering Fidel Castro. In 1961 Roselli persuaded Trafficante to join the conspiracy. Meyer Lansky also became involved in this plot and was reportedly offering a million-dollar reward for the Cuban leader's murder.

And this is supported by his later testimony. In testimony to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) in 1978, Santo Trafficante Jr. would reveal to stunned congressmen that he had been recruited for the Castro project by fellow mobster John Rosselli, who had testified in 1975 before the Church Committee about efforts to kill Castro.

As Russ Baker reports in the book, Family of Secrets, in April 1976, while [George Bush, Sr] was the director of the CIA , Rosselli was again called before the Church Committee, this time to testify about a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy. Three months later, the committee decided to recall Rosselli for additional testimony.

It was, however, a little too late. He had disappeared several days before that and later turned up inside a fifty-five-gallon steel fuel drum floating in Dumfounding Bay near Miami. He had been strangled and shot, and his legs had been sawed off.

And, yes, he was very dead.

As with most conspiracies, we find the usual hard-to-believe coincidences. The question is what do they actually represent? Is it a random detail or a piece of some larger puzzle?

Family Jewels

Trafficante is a prime example of this unnerving pattern of coincidence. Before Castro overthrew the Cuban dictator Batista, Trafficant openly operated a couple of international casinos in Havana and was suspected of having behind the scenes interests in other syndicate-owned establishments. One of these was the Tropicanna Club.

The House Committee on Assassinations has this to say:

Included among Jack Ruby's closest friends was Lewis McWillie. McWillie moved from Dallas to Cuba in 1958 and worked in gambling casinos in Havana until 1960. In 1978, McWillie was employed in Las Vegas, and law enforcement files indicate he had business and personal ties to major organized crime figures including Meyer Lansky and Santos Trafficante.

In August of 1959, Lewis McWillie invited Jack Ruby to visit Cuba where he was supervising the gambling activities in Havana’s Tropicana Hotel. Later, McWillie was involved in the campaign to have Fidel Castro overthrown.

(If that wasn’t suspicious enough, just before Kennedy was assassinated on 22nd November, 1963, Ruby made contact with Trafficante, and another Mafia leader, Carlos Marcello, ostensively about a problem he was having with the American Guild of Variety Artists (AGVA) and a stripper/ dancer he had fired.)

As we have seen, the downfall of Batista when Castro seized power had been utter disaster for Trafficante. For the CIA recruiters it was easy pickings.

After Fidel Castro's revolutionary government seized the assets of Trafficante's Cuban businesses and expelled him from the country as an "undesirable alien," Trafficante came into contact with various U.S. intelligence operatives, and was involved in several unsuccessful plans to assassinate Castro.

Many of these claims and connections were verified in 2007 by the declassification of CIA documents about attempts to kill Castro, called “Family Jewels” documents.

Suspicions that Trafficante, along with Carlos Marcello, mob boss of New Orleans in the 1950s and 1960s, Teamster president Jimmy Hoffa, and Chicago boss Sam Giancana, were involved in some way with the John F. Kennedy assassination have been alleged repeatedly but have not been proven.

One source seems to confirm the Mafia role in the Kennedy assassination, or at least Trafficante had some inside information prior to the murder:

Anti-Castro exile Jose Aleman told HSCA investigators that in late 1962, Trafficante had told him that Kennedy would not be re-elected, because "he is going to be hit." Aleman believed that from the context of the conversation, Trafficante meant that the "hit" would come from Jimmy Hoffa.

But, is there any real proof that George H. W. Bush worked with the anti-Castro groups?
In fact, there is.

The Greatest Scandal to Rock the Nation
Although Bush has claimed not to have been a member of the CIA until he became CIA director under president, Gerald Ford, US Army Brigadier General Russell Bowen, in his book, The Immaculate Deception: The Bush Crime Family Exposed revealed:

Bush, in fact, did work directly with the anti-Castro Cuban groups in Miami before and after the Bay of Pigs invasion, using his company, Zapata Oil, as a corporate cover for his activities on behalf of the agency. Records at the University of Miami, where the operations were based for several years, show George Bush was present during this time.

Robert T. Crowley, CIA employee adds:

To recruit young George Bush, Allan Dulles [CIA director] convinced him that "he could contribute to his country as well as get help from the CIA for his overseas business activities."

Another piece of evidence comes from the top. A letter written by the long time head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, states clearly that George Bush was working with the CIA and had inside information about Anti-Castro groups working in Miami. (Bush, for his part, dismissed the email, saying that it had to refer to a different George Bush.)

The contents of the letter describe the concerns that Anti-Castro groups in Florida have about being held responsible for the murder of JFK.
"The substance of the forgoing information was orally furnished to Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency and Captain William Edwards of the Defense Intelligence Agency on November 23, 1963, by Mr. V.T. Forsyth of this Bureau."
Another interesting document from the FBI concerning George Bush, Sr turned up quite a few years ago. It strongly suggests that Bush warned the FBI of a possible assassination attempt on Kennedy hours before the actual murder and that he would proceeding to Dallas on the day of Kennedy's arrival. (In the warning, Bush warned not of Oswald but of a completely innocent student named James Parrott.

As CIA operative Rafael "Chi Chi" Quintero Ibaria, reportedly recruited by George Bush, Sr. as part of the Cuban invasion force, once said, “ "If I was to tell what I know about Dallas and the Bay of Pigs, it would be the greatest scandal that has ever rocked to nation."

Reportedly working with another Cuban exile and former police chief under Batista, Felix Rodriguez, CIA operative George Bush recruited, organized and trained Cuban exiles in Florida and across the Gulf region for the Bay of Pigs invasion. This operation reportedly utilized the assistance for organized crime.

Rodríguez would later prove to be an embarrassment for George Bush in the Reagan Era. His name comes up repeatedly in the Walsh report, the official investigation into the Iran-Contra affair. In 1986, Rodriguez, as old friend to George Bush, had daily contact with the Bush office and many in the administration grew concerned about his inability to keep mum about his high level contacts in the Reagan presidency.

Too many people were keeping too many secrets.. and not all that well.

This was, in fact, the very time that Jeb Bush, perhaps in an effort to keep the lid on his father’s illegal association with the Cuban Mafia, his role in the Bay of Pigs and the possible indirect involvement in the Kennedy assassination- was pulling strings and doing favors for Recarey.

Second Thoughts

All in all, it's a family-sized can of worms that the Republican party would be opening for itself.

The Bush Brand- with all of its dirty business through the years- has finally caught up with it. Like all of the Bushes, Jeb Bush has a tainted history, with threads woven into the history of the darker side of his father’s career.

Compared to Mitt Romney and Bain Capital, compared to Newt Gingrich’s embarrassing ouster from his position in the Speaker of the House, compared to Rick Santorum’s daily mutterings and utterances, Bush’s history has the real potential of unraveling the entire Bush legacy. The Bay of Pigs, The Kennedy Assassination, The Iran-Contra Scandal, certain nagging doubts about the 9-11, the catastrophic handling of the Iraq invasion and occupation, the economic collapse of 2008, all of these bear the Bush family fingerprints. Nearly every American blunder in the last 50 years, in fact, have ties to one Bush or another.

For all of the frustrated Republican voters seeking a means of salvation from the dismal line-up on the GOP nomination in 2012, we can say only this. Before you consider a brokered convention and before you consider drafting Jeb Bush, you might want to think twice.

Still it would be a fitting way to dissolve the Republican party altogether.

_____________________________

POSTSCRIPT: Here's a video made back in the days when Ron Paul had brown hair. And here is what he says about George H.W. Bush. Whether what he says is accurate or not, it's still important to remember that any brokered convention is very likely to bring up this dark history and Jeb Bush's possible involvement.