Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years
Authors: Russ Baker
Tags: #Political Science, #Presidents & Heads of State, #Presidents, #20th Century, #Government, #Political, #Executive Branch, #General, #United States, #Historical, #Biography & Autobiography, #Business and Politics, #Biography, #history
F
AMILY OF
S
ECRETSThe Bush Dynasty,
America’s Invisible Government,
and the Hidden History of the
Last Fifty YearsRUSS BAKER
When a governor or any state official seeks elective national office, his (or her) reputation and what the country knows about the candidate’s background is initially determined by the work of local and regional media. Generally, those journalists do a competent job of reporting on the prospect’s record. In the case of Governor George W. Bush, Texas reporters had written numerous stories about his failed businesses in the oil patch, the dubious land grab and questionable funding behind a new stadium for Bush’s baseball team, the Texas Rangers, and his various political contradictions and hypocrisies while serving in Austin.
I was one of those Texas journalists. I spent about a decade trying to find accurate information on Bush’s record in the Texas National Guard. My curiosity had been prompted by his failure to adequately answer a question I had asked him as a panelist in a televised debate with Ann Richards during the 1994 gubernatorial campaign. Eventually I published three books on Bush and his political consigliere, Karl Rove. During Bush’s presidency, many other volumes, written by insiders and others, would add greatly to the picture of the man’s character and policies.
So when Russ Baker first approached me about the book he was planning to write, I admit to being a bit dismissive. W. was concluding his second term, and given the number of capable authors who had scrutinized the president, there seemed little new that might be learned about this famous son of a former president or his family. Every source seemed to have been run to the ground already by his predecessors and there appeared to be no documents left undiscovered. In fact, it was hard not to feel a bit offended by Baker’s conviction that I and other reporters might have missed important material or witnesses. A new set of eyes can often recast a story with a fresh perspective, but additional information seemed difficult, if not impossible, to acquire from the collegial Texas political community. Even Texas Democrats had boarded the Bush train, and the extended circle of family and friends were famous for an unwavering loyalty that was unlikely to surrender any news.
Baker, though, was undaunted; he was convinced the full story was untold. He went after the National Guard puzzle with a vigor that I had long since abandoned because I was convinced the Bush team had scrubbed the files in a manner that left little hope for revelation. Baker, however, chased down new witnesses; he dug deeper into the details of Bush’s friends in the “champagne unit” and uncovered close relationships to Saudi financiers that appeared to turn the unlikely into the possible for Bush and his broad protectorate. He found inexplicable money trails in the Permian Basin oil patch of West Texas and followed them wherever they led, which was not too distant from the bin Laden family and various Saudi princes. Baker does a much more comprehensive job of documenting Bush’s irresponsible behavior in his youth than did every journalist in Texas that had heard stories of pregnant girlfriends, secret abortions, drunk driving, and walking away from an officer’s commission in the Texas Air National Guard.
While
Family of Secrets
records how Bush’s lack of youthful accountability informed the President’s faulty behavior as a leader, it goes far beyond just digging up lost nuggets of information. Baker turns the same unflinching scrutiny on W.’s father, the first President Bush, and the evidence that there was also an untold backstory to Bush Senior’s ascension. Through witnesses, documents, and analysis, Russ Baker views George H.W. Bush’s experiences through an entirely different historical lens, and the data are too compelling to be ignored. In fact, they are quite convincing that we, collectively, missed an entire dimension of the man’s life. In the tangle of dark and mysterious relationships that comprise the Bush power structure, Baker has gleaned new meaning in the connections. Baker brings to the table a mass of evidence that the first Bush president was secretly involved in the CIA long before he became the agency’s director, and appears to have spent decades developing lucrative financial and political relationships in the United States and abroad, which were foundational to almost every public achievement of the Bush family.
Family of Secrets
probes not only the little-known, but the utterly inexplicable. Why, in the hours following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, did George H. W. Bush call investigators to finger a possible suspect who, Baker’s research shows, turns out to have been an innocuous fellow actually serving as a minor functionary at the Houston Republican Party offices run by the future president himself? Bush had claimed for years to not be able to recall where he was the day Kennedy was gunned down, but Baker has the record of H. W. Bush’s whereabouts and anyone who reads his reconstruction of them will want an accounting less facile than “I can’t remember.” There is no conspiracy theory here, simply information that has been corroborated and never before reported, and it cries out for an explanation.
As damning as Baker’s work is for the Bush family, it is also revelatory regarding our nation’s government. The disturbing reality revealed in fine detail here is that there are unseen forces at work on every presidency, and their interests are rarely, if ever, the same as those of the electorate. Defense contractors, multi-national energy corporations, pharmaceutical giants, Wall Street princes— indeed virtually all businesses that can afford to hire a lobbyist—are constantly engaged in trying to shape a policy that improves their bottom lines and gets the president to over-value their perspectives.
Evidence that their power has not waned is manifest in many of the Bush policies that remain unchanged in the administration of President Barack Obama. The new president has continued to funnel money into the bailout of megalithic financial services firms even as their former executives become members of his cabinet and guide his policies. The Obama White House is also investing American taxpayer funds in auto manufacturing firms that the market appears to have already decided no longer have a viable product. Warrantless surveillance, which he condemned on the campaign trail, lingers and risks infecting the integrity of every other promise made by the current president. If you wonder why the “Change” president has so far made relatively few substantive structural changes,
Family of Secrets
suggests an answer.
Russ Baker’s masterwork frightens, not just because of what it documents about the Bush family, but because it also demonstrates the extent to which crude and simple tactics enable corporate and political leviathans to affect the course of American history. In a different frame of reference, one which Baker builds through relentless investigation, we come to a new critical analysis about our country and its leadership. Baker’s case here is so convincing that it tends to make previous versions of history and journalism appear naïve, and as difficult as that makes his challenge of proving that we have missed the true story, he writes and reports with the confidence of a man who has seen the dark lands beyond the mountains.
History is not what we know; it is what has truly happened. Often, the reality of events is hard to process because it shakes our system of beliefs. A crazy, lone gunman is a much more comforting notion in our democracy than a vast apparatus that can bring down presidents. Give us a simple explanation that easily encapsulates the horrible and then we can retain forever all that we have held to be true. If there was any genius in the Bush administration, it was the understanding that Americans did not want to confront complexities and had a great need of “bad guys” to blame for what had gone wrong. They gave us the black and white images that assuaged our lazy intellects and reinforced our comforting misconceptions about the way our country and the wider world conducts its business.
Family of Secrets
will force every reader to confront conventional wisdom about our democracy and our presidency. This book is a significant contribution to our national discourse and is the type of journalism that is essential if a free republic is to be sustained.
A hundred years from now historians will be reading this book to understand what happened in America in the first part of the twenty-first century. The rest of us need to read Russ Baker’s
Family of Secrets
today and make certain we do not shirk from the important task of shining lights into the dark corners of our democracy.
James Moore
Austin, Texas
July 7, 2009