"During WWI, it was reported that Prescott Sheldon Bush (W's grandfather, Poppy's father) had received the Cross of the Legion of Honor, the Victoria Cross, and the Distinguished Service Cross 'for a deed of rare valor and great military importance' YET, 'Four weeks after the news of the decorated Prescott Bush appeared in the newspaper, the following Notice appeared: 'A cable received from my son, Prescott S. Bush, brings word that he has not been decorated, as published in the papers a month ago. He feels dreadfully troubled that a letter, written in a spirit of fun, should have been misinterpreted. He says he is no hero and asks me to make explanations. I will appreciate your kindness in publishing this letter.... Flora Sheldon Bush.' Prescott Bush was discharged in mid-1919, and returned for a short time to Columbus, Ohio. But his humiliation in his home town was so intense that he could no longer live there. The 'war hero' story was henceforth not spoken of in his presence."

Simon Rozenkier is suing Bayer and Schering for complicity in grotesque medical experiments performed on him by Nazi doctor Josef Mengele and fellow torturers from I.G. Farben. Incredibly, Bush is trying to have Rozenkier's case dismissed. He writes: "After my years of [military] service to this country in Korea, I always expected the president of the United States to stand by me against my persecutors. I never realized that Prescott Bush, Bush's grandfather, made a fortune on Wall Street during the 1930s selling war bonds for Nazi Germany and 'cloaking' American assets owned by German companies [also partners of I.G Farben!]. Now I understand why the Bush administration is urging the presiding judge to dismiss my case and placing legal closure for corporate perpetrators ahead of moral and financial closure for victims of the Holocaust. The apple never falls far from the tree." Perhaps Joe Conason and Eric Alterman would like to reconsider their dismissal of the Prescott Bush story.

Herbert Parmet writes: "In the summer and fall of 1942, Congress, under the authority of the Trading With the Enemy Act, seized the first group of entities, the UBC, the Holland-American Trading Corporation, and the Hamburg-American Line. Buchanan's diligence has discovered that the latter 'reportedly smuggled Nazi spies into the U.S. before the war and encouraged U.S. 'Patriots' to travel to Germany and proselytize for Hitler in the early 1930s.' Much of this is confirmed by the new documentation. The UBC was not a 'bank' at all but 'in reality a clearing house' for many assets and enterprises held by Fritz Thyssen, a German steel magnate who has written about his role in helping to finance the Third Reich. Located close to Bush's 59 Wall Street office, it was 'founded in 1924 by W. Averell Harriman on behalf of Thyssen and his Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart N. V. of Holland.'"

From Connie Cook Smith's weblog: "In the 10/22/03 issue of The New York Observer, Joe Conason writes about George W. Bush's grandpa -- Prescott Bush's money-laundering and lengthy support for the Nazis -- until Congress forced the man to stop in late 1942. Yet Joe apparently believes that's all there is to it. He writes: 'Imputing Nazi sympathies to the President or his family (now) ought to be beneath his adversaries.' Joe and I are usually on the same page, politically. But minimizing the Bush-Nazi connection is a deep disservice to all Americans, who have a right to know the horrific truth. Joe-- and any interested reader -- ought to check out the Congressional Record, September 4, 1969. (It's not yet available online, but it can be viewed at all federal deposit libraries in most large cities). Here's what you will find: George Bush Sr., then a congressman, sponsored testimony from race scientists William Shockley and Arthur Jensen."

"In 1980, when George H.W. Bush was elected vice president, he placed his father's family inherence in a blind trust. The trust was managed by his old friend and quail hunting partner, William 'Stamps' Farish III. Bush's choice of Farish to manage the family wealth is quite revealing in that it demonstrates that the former president might know exactly where some of his inheritance originated. Farish's grandfather, William Farish [Sr.], on March 25th, 1942, pleaded 'no contest' to conspiring with Nazi Germany while president of Standard Oil in New Jersey. He was described by Senator Harry Truman in public of approaching 'treason' for profiting off the Nazi war machine. Standard Oil, invested millions in IG Farben, who opened a gasoline factory within Auschwitz in 1940. The billions 'Stamps' inherited had more blood on it then Bush, so the paper trail of UBC stock would be safe during his 12 years in presidential politics." Thanks to GWB, Stamps Farish is now our Ambassador to London.

Nico Pitney writes: "You missed an impressive milestone last week, if you did not have one eye watching the news ticker. The Associated Press, the largest newsgathering organization in the world, released a story about the ties between George W. Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush, and Nazi Germany. It was their first report on this subject in more than 60 years... This story, and the fact that it was completely ignored by the mainstream press for so long, is eerie in its own right. Given the ties being found between the Bush circle, Saudi royalty and the bin Laden family, and the mainstream media's equally eerie reluctance to cover them, the Prescott Bush story is pretty damned disturbing." Sleeping with the Evil-Doers: Hitler, the Bin Ladens, Noriega, Hussein, Iran-Contra -- that's just Bush Family "bidness" for ya.

Indian Country Today reports, "'They dug up Geronimo's body in 1918. His body is at the Skull and Bones Museum. Grandfather Prescott Bush dug it up,' [former San Carlos Apache tribal councilman Raleigh] Thompson said. The grave robbing was exposed when Apache leaders received a photo and information in the 1980s... of the cult museum's display of Geronimo's remains in a glass cage [and] a copy of a Skull and Bones Society log book, in which the 1918 grave robbery was recorded. According to the Skull and Bones log book entry, Prescott Bush, grandfather of George W. Bush, and five other officers at Fort Sill, Okla., desecrated Geronimo's grave... [Apache leaders] met with Skull and Bones officials and Jonathan Bush, George HW Bush's brother, in NYC in 1986. However, Thompson said the skull that the Skull and Bones Society offered to return to the Apache delegation was that of a young boy, not Geronimo, and the Apache leaders refused it... 'I think they switched the skull on us.'"

To make sure John Buchanan's powerful exposes about Prescott Bush's Nazi ties get the exposure they deserve, Democrats.com sent copies to progressive journalists and bloggers. Jesse Berney, who edits the excellent Wage Slave Journal, wrote a commentary (http://www.wage-slave.org/archives/00000281.html) criticizing us for circulating Buchanan's story. What do you think? Should Democrats.com call attention to Buchanan's explosive work? Or should we help the Bush family and Karl Rove scrub the truth from our collective consciousness? Join the discussion in Democrats.community

Investigative reporter John Buchanan broke 60 years of silence recently when he uncovered documents showing Prescott Bush's business was seized by Congress in 1942 for trading with the enemy. Now Buchanan has gone even further, documenting Prescott's role in many more Nazi-related businesses as late as 1951. "[Democrats.com co-founder Bob] Fertik and others, including former Justice Department Nazi war crimes prosecutor John Loftus... believe Prescott Bush and the Harrimans should have been tried for treason. Now, say Fertik and Loftus, there should be a Congressional investigation into the Bush family's Nazi past and its concealment from the American people for 60 years. 'The American people have a right to know, in detail, about this hidden chapter of our history,' says Loftus, author of The Secret War Against the Jews. 'That's the only way we can understand it and deal with it.'"

Chris Floyd uses Bush's "their-killing-implies-our-progress" line to invent quotes by figures from the past -- including Grandpa Prescott. "The more successful we are on the ground, the more these killers will react," said Prescott Bush, director of Union Banking Corporation, the day after a World War II raid by British bombers damaged operations of UBC's Silesian American Corporation near Oswiecim, Poland. "The more progress we make on the ground, creating jobs and increasing profits for our German partners and our shareholders in the Homeland, the more desperate these killers become... I'm sure that whatever happens -- even if, say, our assets are seized by the United States government under the Trading with the Enemy Act or some such -- we will not be charged as traitors, collaborators or sugar daddies for Hitler, but will actually have our assets returned after the war so we can cash them in and launch a family political dynasty based on war profiteering and military aggression."

"Buchanan - What is the most damning single thing you've learned in your 20 years of working on this? Loftus - That it wasn't just the Nazis. The Harrimans backed a Communist-Soviet front of international trade and they sold the Czar's gold to support the Bolsheviks and fund the Russian Revolution. W. Averell Harriman also did business through other Brown Brothers Harriman and Harriman Fifteen Corp. enterprises that did business with Joseph Stalin as he purged his opposition. Buchanan - How many people died while Brown Brothers Harriman and the Bush-Walker-Harriman partnership did business with Stalin? Loftus - Millions, including American and Allied soldiers and people in concentration camps, both in Germany and Russia." Hey, this is just business as usual for the Wasp Mafia. Bush Sr. would go on to sell weapons to BOTH Iran and Iraq during the 80's. The Bushes and the Bin Ladens have done business for years (esp. the Carlyle Group). Salem Bin Laden invested in Dubya's oil companies.

The Bush Family is clearly in shock over John Buchanan's discovery of documents proving Prescott Bush treasonously financed the Nazis. Now they are trying to whitewash Prescott's sins by beatifying Prescott's wife Dorothy. "The new Indian Field Road headquarters of the Greenwich chapter of the American Red Cross is named in honor of the late Dorothy Walker Bush, a Greenwich Red Cross motor corpswoman during World War II, mother of former President Bush and grandmother of the current resident... 'Ma was ready for Hitler, Barbara Bush said during a short address to about 75 Red Cross donors." We wonder - was Dorothy "ready for Hitler" before August 1942, when Prescott was illegally - treasonously - financing Hitler, or after? And don't overlook the fact that her husband Prescott was the junior partner to her very important father George Herbert Walker - the "HW" in GHWB and the "W" in GWB.

John Sugg writes that Prescott Bush's Nazi business-based "financial empire is what enabled the C-student, affirmative-action-for-the-privileged Yale grad to launch the career that led to his 2000 electoral putsch. Moreover, the patterns established by the previous generations have disturbing echoes today in the Bush family's intricate connections to Saudi Arabia and the bin Laden family. 'That's the relevance,' Sheldon Drobny, a Chicago investment banker who is starting a liberal talk show network, told me. 'Trading with the enemy is trading with the enemy. It doesn't matter what enemy it is at the time.' It's an astounding story - one you won't read in the same media that daily stuffed our heads with rumor, innuendo, suspicion and a few facts about Bill Clinton's sexual foibles. As Drobny puts it, the mounting significance of the Bush-Nazi evidence is that it unmasks Big Media's 'sins of suppressing the news.'" And the suppression continues at NY Times, PentaPost, LA Times, etc...

"Once the U.N. headquarters and a vast international city of skyscrapers were supposed to rise [in Greenwich CT], amid the genteel estates and rolling hills of this wealthy suburb. To obtain the land for this new city, a State Department official in 1946 proposed to use eminent domain to seize several dozen estates, not the least those of Time publisher Henry Luce, financier John S. Rockefeller and Wall Street banker and future U.S. Sen. Prescott Bush, father to the former president and grandfather to the current one. This proposal [enraged] Greenwich estate owners. In a revolt of the gilt-laden, the landowners fashioned a campaign called 'No to UNOville!' With a referendum and a few dirty tricks, they beat back the plan... 'The anti-U.N. folks raised a ton of money,' Udain recalled, 'and they began spreading rumors that camels would walk down the streets.' There was uglier stuff, too. This was a WASP enclave, and many whispered of Jews and Russians taking over downtown Greenwich."

Karl Rove is clearly terrified of John Buchanan's explosive expose documenting Prescott Bush's TREASONOUS Nazi fortune. On "Special Report with Brit Hume," right-winger Byron York attacked the Bush-Nazi link as "the farthest fringes of the political debate." He attacked venture capitalist Sheldon Drobny, who is launching a liberal talk radio network, for writing with perfect accuracy: "Very few Americans know that Prescott Bush, our president's grandfather, supplied Nazi Germany with support for its re-armament. The information is documented, but is not known by most Americans because, as in any successful, fascist regime, the press is prevented from publishing it." Hey Brit, why don't you invite John Buchanan on to your show to show your audience the PROOF??? E-mail Hume@foxnews.com

Joe Conason is one of our favorite "patriotic progressive" journalists. But sometimes even Conason is simply wrong - as with his attack on those of us who are calling attention to the astonishing revelation by investigative reporter John Buchanan that W's famous grandfather Prescott made his fortune financing the Nazi war machine. Prescott's Union Banking Corp. was seized by Congress under the "Trading with the Enemy Act" on 10/20/1942 - that's REAL treason, not Ann Coulter's kind. Yet in 1951, Prescott walked away with $750,000 ($5 million today), which helped finance his campaign for U.S. Senate in 1952. This stunning fact was scrubbed from history during Prescott's lifetime, so his Connecticut voters never knew, nor did those who voted for his son and grandsons. But previously hidden WWII-era records are now revealing the truth. So the LIVING Bushes are now LYING - through an authorized biography of Prescott that scandalously scrubs his treasonous business dealings.

Indian Country Today: "Alexandra Robbins, author of 'Secrets of the Tomb,' said law enforcement officers should determine if the secret Skull and Bones Society, to which the Bush family belongs, has stolen items in its possession, including the remains of Geronimo. 'Why haven't law enforcement officers been in there in the last 200 years,' Robbins said of the secret tomb in Connecticut. 'If they truly do have Geronimo's skull, then that is appalling,' Robbins told Indian Country Today in a telephone interview, following her appearance on 60 Minutes... [She] believes a 1918 Skull and Bones logbook is authentic. It chronicles grandfather Prescott Bush and other army officers desecrating the grave of Geronimo in Fort Sill, Okla... 'I have heard from a lot of Native Americans that want to set up a protest. I think they should, to settle this matter once and for all... [Former] President Bush said that he preferred it remain secret,' Robbins said, quoting Bush's press secretary."

Counterspin's Hesiod writes, "THE EDUCATION OF HOWARD KURTZ: Howie examines 'Bush hatred' in his latest piece in the Washington Post. One example he casually throws on the pile, is this item: '[Byron] York also notes that Sheldon Drobny, who is arranging financing for a liberal talk radio network, has alleged online that the resident's grandfather, Prescott Bush, did business with the Third Reich but that 'as in any fascist regime, the press is prevented from publishing it.' You write that, Howie, as if you think it's not true! We all know different, now, don't we? E-mail Howard Kurtz , and politely ask him to correct the record. Make sure you send him supporting links, documenting Prescott Bush's involvement in a Nazi financial front operation . Before this week, the last time any mainstream news organization did a story on Prescott Bush's dealings with Nazis, was during World War II!"

In a letter to the Democrats.com News Editor, investigative reporter John Buchanan writes, "The 'biography' you refer to is a hoax ('Duty, Honor, Country: The Life and Legacy of Prescott Bush' by Mickey Herskowitz). It shows to a scary and obvious extent how far the Bush family and their corporate co-conspirators will go to conceal its criminal and treasonous past, which will now be exposed to the world, thanks to individual citizens like you who are rising up and demanding the truth... I am demanding publicly... that the right-wing 'religious' publisher, Rutledge Hill Press, withdraw it from bookstores and apologize to the American people... It is a joke, an outright fraud... PLEASE help bring the righteous rage of the people down on them with incoming e-mails" to lstone@rutledgehillpress.com, gstone@rutledgehillpress.com, lhoneybone@rutledgehillpress.com, byork@nationalreview.com, kobeirne@nationalreview.com, comments.lowry@nationalreview.com

"On December 13, 1941, six days after the attack at Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt signed the 'Trading With the Enemy Act'. This act banned business dealings with the enemies of the US. Prescott Bush ignored this and continued to do business with the Nazis... [In the summer of 1942,] the NY Tribune had discovered and written on the Bush-Thyssen connection. The Tribune hung the moniker of 'Hitler's Angel' on Bush. On October 20, 1942, after investigation by the US government, Vesting Order 248 was executed [and] Bush lost his power in the Union Banking Corporation. Bush resigned as managing director in 1943, but still retained his stock interests... Bush received $750,000 [about $5 million in today's dollars] for his share of UBC, a princely sum in 1951, but nothing compared to the millions the Thyssen family got back. Prescott used some of this Nazi cash to bankroll his son George Herbert Walker Bush's first business enterprise and to support [Prescott's] successful bid for Senate in 1952."

After 61 years, AP reports: "Bush's grandfather was a director of a bank seized by the federal government because of its ties to a German industrialist who helped bankroll Adolf Hitler's rise to power, government documents show. Prescott Bush was one of seven directors of Union Banking Corp., a NY investment bank owned by a bank controlled by the Thyssen family, according to recently declassified National Archives documents reviewed by AP... Reports of Bush's involvement with the seized bank have been circulating on the Internet for years and have been reported by some mainstream media. The newly declassified documents provide additional details about the Union Banking-Thyssen connection. Trent Duffy, a spokesman for Bush, declined to comment... Union Banking was seized by the government in October 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act... The new documents were first reported by freelance writer John Buchanan in The New Hampshire Gazette." Search Democrats.com for "Prescott".

Indian Country Today: "A secret society at Yale University boasts of harboring skulls and bones of humans and members of that society have become some of the most powerful people in America by virtue of the network established by the society. Resident George W. Bush, his father and grandfather are and were members of the Skull and Bones Society... In 1986 some members of the Skull and Bones Society contacted members of the Apache Nation, the San Carlos Apache specifically and told them the Skull and Bones Society had Geronimo's skull on display. The story was told how a written journal detailed the raid on the Chiricahua Apache's grave at Fort Sill, Okla. And that Patriarch [Prescott] Bush led the dig [in 1918].... It is the belief of the Fort Sill Apache, where Geronimo died and where his family resided that the skull at the Skull and Bones Society is not that of their revered and historic leader, Darrow said. It may be a skull of another of the Chiricahua leaders, Mangas Colorados."

John Buchanan writes: "After 60 years of inattention and even denial by the U.S. media, newly-uncovered government documents in The National Archives and Library of Congress reveal that Prescott Bush, the grandfather of... George W. Bush, served as a business partner of and U.S. banking operative for the financial architect of the Nazi war machine from 1926 until 1942, when Congress took aggressive action against Bush and his 'enemy national' partners... Major U.S. media outlets, including ABC News, NBC News, The New York Times, Washington Post, Washington Times, Los Angeles Times and Miami Herald, have repeatedly declined to investigate the story when information regarding discovery of the documents was presented to them beginning Friday, August 29. Newsweek U.S. correspondent Michael Isikoff, famous for his reporting of big scoops during the Clinton-Lewinsky sexual affair of the 1990s, declined twice to accept an exclusive story based on the documents from the archives."

"'History is a reminder of what's possible.' These were the words spoken by... Bush as he emerged from a guided tour of the gas chambers at Auschwitz... What precisely [he] meant by this banal comment is not clear. However, given Bush's political record--assembly-line executions in Texas, Guantanamo's Camp X-Ray, the indefinite imprisonment of US citizens without charges, two preemptive wars--it could be open to the most sinister of interpretations. There is no doubt that the visit to Auschwitz was choreographed to serve immediate policy objectives: invoking the horrors of Hitler's concentration camps to further an agenda of militarism and domestic repression. Perhaps no greater disservice could be done to the memory of the six million Jews and the millions of others who were murdered by the Nazis. In Bush's case, covering up the historical origins of fascism in Germany serves a particular, indeed personal, function." Namely, Prescott Bush made his fortune financing the Nazis.

After 1942, the US media buried the fact that Prescott Bush traded with the Nazis. But there was this BRIEF note in the Polish edition of Newsweek in January: "BUSH Family profited from slave work by prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Prescott Sheldon Bush, grandfather of George Walker Bush, had financial dealings during World War II with the Nazis, amassing a family fortune as a banker. Prescott Bush, was a shareholder of the company United Banking Corporation, working with industrialist Fritz Thyssen from the Nazistowskiego Silesian Consolidated Steel Corporation, where Auschwitz prisoners worked. The American press blew the whistle in 1942, and the U.S. government conducted an audit of USA UBC's books. The Roosevelt administration shut down UBC's operation under the Trading with the Enemy act signed in 1941[correction: 1942]. The Company was allowed to continue operations, but with restrictions. Namely, no more dealing with Nazis." Demand US coverage for this story!

"George W. Bush has toured the former Nazi death camps at Auschwitz and Birkenau." No doubt, the US Media will fail to mention that Prescott Bush was a financier of the Nazis. The assets of Prescott's companies were seized in 1942, under the Trading with the Enemy Act. Given his family's history, it is surreal that Bush said, "The sites are a sobering reminder of the power of evil and the need for people to resist evil." Yes Bush, but your family participated in this evil. Your visit is a sobering reminder of the evil power of the Bush family. And now this evil has found its greatest expression -- with you as the arrogant, despotic leader of the (formerly) free World. "Mankind must come together to fight such dark impulses," he said. "May God bless the victims and their families and may we always remember.'" Except that Bush does not want us to remember that his family made their fortune financing the Nazis.

Toby Rogers writes: "According to classified documents from Dutch intelligence and US government archives, ...George W. Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush made considerable profits off Auschwitz slave labor. In fact, ...Bush himself is an heir to these profits from the holocaust which were placed in a blind trust in 1980 by his father, former president George Herbert Walker Bush." From Page 3 of this article: "Nobody's made the connection before between Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation, Auschwitz and Prescott Bush,' John Loftus told Clamor. 'That was the reason why Auschwitz was built there. The coal deposits could be processed into either coal or additives for aviation gasoline.' A portion of the slave labor force in Poland was 'managed by Prescott Bush,' according to a Dutch intelligence agent. In 1941, slave labor had become the lifeblood of the Nazi war machine. The resources of Poland's rich steel and coal field played an essential part in Hitler's invasion of Europe."

Marc Ash writes, "In October of 1942, under the Trading With the Enemy Act, the U.S. government halted operations at NY's Union Banking Corporation. A bank official was charged with 'Running Nazi front groups in the United States.' His name: Prescott Bush. Prescott Bush, father of future U.S President George Herbert Walker Bush and grandfather of George W. Bush, had been hard at work on behalf of his Nazi partners. In flagrant violation of U.S. law, Prescott Bush had worked tirelessly to launder money, procure raw materials, arrange transportation and provide guidance for the Nazi war effort and the German army he had helped to build... It was the German people who, with their faith in country and leadership, and even their loyalty to the Fatherland, made possible the greatest nightmare the world has ever known. It is those same German people who stand today before Europe and the world in unflinching opposition to this latest world conquering force."

Susie Davidson writes, that many sources "attest to a definite link between the Bush family and the Nazis... Prescott Bush, W’s grandfather, was a principal in New York’s Union Banking Corporation from the late 1930’s-1940’s.This bank was owned by key Nazi industrialists, who funneled money into it through another bank located in Holland. [Toby Rogers says that] Union Banking became an ‘out and out Nazi money-laundering machine.’ [In 1942] the U.S. government siezed Prescott’s banking operations under the Trading With the Enemy Act]. Nonetheless, when the bank was liquidated in 1951, [W’s family] received $1.5 million in proceeds... The powerful partners in these ignoble ventures are reputedly those who boosted the Bushes into the CIA and government positions. [The 1942 seizures came too late]; Bush’s family had already centrally financed and armed Hitler and the Nazi war industries." Neil Bush was even named after one of the Bush Nazi bid'ness cronies!

Writes Toby Rogers: "While the Enron scandal currently unfolds, another Bush family business scandal lurks beneath the shadows of history that may dwarf it... According to classified documents from Dutch intelligence and US government archives, George W. Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush made considerable profits off Auschwitz slave labor. In fact, Bush himself is an heir to these profits from the holocaust which were placed in a blind trust in 1980 by his father, former president George Herbert Walker Bush... A case can be made that the inheritors of the Prescott Bush estate could be sued by survivors of the Holocaust and slave labor communities... A portion of the slave labor force in Poland was 'managed by Prescott Bush,' according to a Dutch intelligence agent... There is no question that the Bush family needs to donate at least $1.5 million [approx. $10 million in today's dollars] to the proper holocaust reparation fund."

Writes Anne Kornblut [w/corrections]: "Starting with [proven] accusations that Prescott Bush was a Nazi collaborator before [and AFTER] Pearl Harbor, the Bush dynasty has generally been viewed with suspicion and at times outright hostility by Jewish Americans. The elder President Bush outraged the Jewish community with a series of perceived insults [as well as having old Nazi collaborators in his '88 campaign]. [And] the younger Bush… once expressed doubt about whether non-Christians could get into heaven… Prescott Bush was a director of a New York bank where rich Germans who supported the Nazis stashed millions in personal wealth. He was still a director at the bank, Union Banking Corp., when its assets were frozen under the Trading With the Enemy Act in 1941 [WRONG, it was on 10/20/42]—a fact that has provided endless fodder for leftists and conspiracy theorists.". At least Anne didn't call them 'terrorists'! (See scans of docs at www.mbpolitics.com/bush2000/VestingExplain.htm).

The article also suggests that the asset seizure caused Prescott to have a change of conscience, so that he became active in the war bond effort, rather than that this facade of patriotism was a cynical ploy by an exposed traitor. The article later portrays Prescott as a hero of sorts for maneuvering against Joe McCarthy. But Prescott may have been worried that McCarthy would look into his firm Brown Brothers Harriman's alleged business deals in the Soviet Union. These allegations seem plausible given BBH's international scope, and the fact that Averell Harriman was at one time our ambassador to the Soviet Union. Note also how the article reinforces the familiar Bush family myths about their belief in "loyalty", "family" and "noblesse oblige." For good measure, there is even a quote by one of the Bushes implying that Prescott's traitorous values were steeped in the "Ten Commandments!" (Part Two begins with a few paragraphs about the asset seizure and cover-up).

In a two-part series on the rise of the Bush Dynasty, the Boston Globe mentions that Dubya's grandfather Prescott Bush partnered with Nazi industrialists, until his assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, when our troops were days away from fighting the Nazis in North Africa. Although the article appears to whitewash this sordid history, this still may be the first time that a major national paper has covered it -- since the cover-up almost 60 years ago. Maybe readers of newsletters and sites like Democrats.com helped get this secret out -- so that the Bush/Rove propaganda machine now has to deal with it? The article seems to try to put the best face on this major crack in the Bush family facade. It implies that the Nazi partnership was merely a bad business deal, rather than that Prescott Bush built and ran one of the most extensive networks of Nazi front companies for more than a decade. (Part One below discusses the period before the asset seizure).

Bush visited DC's Holocaust Museum Wednesday, where he made statements about the importance of remembering the horror of the Holocaust. But Bush did not apologize for -- let alone even acknowledge -- his own family's long history of Nazi alliances. Before WWII, his grandfather Prescott Bush and his great-grandfather Bert Walker set up a series of front companies with Nazi industrialists, including the notorious Thyssen family and IG Farben -- best known for supplying gas for the camp ovens. Eventually, Prescott Bush's companies' assets were seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act in 1942, when our troops were days away from fighting the Nazis in Africa. In 1980 the Bush network was linked to Nazi Klaus Barbie's Bolivian coup. In 1988, journalist Russ Bellant exposed the presence of old Nazi collaborators in the Bush presidential campaign. George W. played a key role in the Bush '88 campaign. (To read more, go to our "Compass" search engine, enter "nazi" and scroll down.)