Evelyn Pringle March 2005
Another Profiteering Scheme
Neil Bush has a $60,000-a-year employment contract with a top adviser to a Washington-based consulting firm set up to help companies secure contracts in Iraq, according to the November 11, 2004 Financial Times.
Neil disclosed this employment during a divorce deposition on March 3, 2003. He testified that he was co-chairman of the Houston-based, Crest Investment Corporation, which invests in energy and other ventures, and said he received $15,000 every three months for a average 3 or 4 hours of work a week doing "miscellaneous consulting services."
"Such as?" his ex-wife's Attorney asked.
"Such as answering phone calls when Jamal Daniel, the other co-chairman, called and asked for advice," Neil answered.
Crest's co-chairman, Daniel, sits on the advisory board of New Bridge Strategies, a firm set up in March 2003, just in time to cash in on the Iraq reconstruction contracts, by a group of businessmen with close ties to the Bush family, and both Bush administrations.
The firm's chairman is Joe Allbaugh, who was W's campaign director in the 2000, and who was appointed Director of FEMA once Bush took office.
In addition to paying him for "consulting" work, Crest has provided funding for Neil's educational software company Ignite! In fact, Daniel sometimes introduces himself as a founding backer of the company, and has persuaded the families of prominent leaders in the Middle East to invest in Ignite, according to the December 11, 2003 Financial Times.
Overall, Crest goes to great lengths to show Neil how much it values his membership on the team. For instance, when Neil got remarried in 2004, Daniel held a wedding reception at his home, and Crest arranged a 5-year rent-free cottage for Neil and his new bride in Kennebunkport, Maine, so they could spend time near Mom and Pop Bush whenever they wanted to.
Another Jackpot - Thanks To Brother W
As usual, during his deposition, Neil forgot to mention a few facts about his earnings potential with Crest. First of all, he didn't mention that he attached his signature to letters soliciting business for New Bridge in obtaining contracts in Iraq, and two, that he attached his name as a reference for an extremely lucrative proposal submitted by Crest to obtain a lease on a parcel of property located on the island of Quintana, Texas, that will result in payments of at least $2 million a year to Crest.
When W took office in 2001, he vowed to make it easier for companies to build coastline facilities to store liquefied natural gas (LNG), a cooled and condensed form of natural gas, shipped in from countries around the world.
That promise sent US companies scrambling to secure coastline property on which to build the LNG processing facilities. One company looking to enter the market was Crest. Although the firm had no experience whatsoever in LNG processing, it had a very influential asset, a co-chairman by the name of Neil Bush.
One property of specific interest was Quintana Island, located in the Texas gulf, because it was accessible to cargo ships. The right to grant a lease to the land belonged to the Brazos River Harbor Navigation District.
If it could gain approval, the Crest LNG facility would be the first such facility in Texas, and only one of a few in the entire country.
The Harbor Commission was so enthralled with a proposal from Crest, that it offered the company an all-exclusive lease without soliciting for any other bids. The proposal was approved even though ExxonMobil owned the right to a first refusal on that part of the island, under a 1998 agreement, and even though the Commission knew that another company, Cheniere Energy, was interested in building a nearly identical facility on the exact same parcel of land.
When asked why the commission chose to grant the initial deal to Crest, Phyllis Saathoff, managing director of the Commission, said, "We worked it out and could accommodate [the Crest proposal], so we did," according to the LA Times on October 29, 2004.
To this day, Neil's connection to the firm is not widely known. However, Saathoff said that when Crest approached the commission with the project, it provided Neil's name as a reference.
How Did Crest Pull It Off?
The chronology of events that led to the Commission's approval of the Crest proposal is contained in court documents from a lawsuit filed against Crest, by Cheniere Energy, a firm with experience in LNG processing.
In 2000, Crest and Cheniere began discussing the possibility of a joint venture to build an LNG facility. After W's election, negotiations picked up speed and Cheniere provided a detailed, "confidential" briefing on its plans to Crest, according to court records.
In early 2001, Cheniere submitted an initial proposal for the project to the Commission. However, without telling Cheniere, Crest went forward and submitted a similar proposal to the Commission, according to court records.
The commission set a date of March 22, 2001, to meet with Cheniere officials about the firm's proposal, but the meeting was abruptly canceled. The very next day, on March 23, 2001, the Commission held an emergency session and met with Crest representatives, and granted the company, with no experience in LNG processing, an exclusive, 3-year lease option on the island property.
Cheniere then filed the lawsuit against Crest. But the two companies ended up settling out of court by becoming partners on the project. After other partners were added, the Freeport LNG consortium was created.
Crest To Handle Political Permits
An internal Freeport memo specified that Cheniere would be responsible for operational aspects of the project, and to no one's surprise I'm sure, Neil's company, Crest, was designated to "handle the political permitting side."
Crest has supported W in his campaigns and some of the firm's representatives have key Washington connections. According to harbor commission memos, Daniel is friends with Energy Secretary, Spencer Abraham, and Crest executive, Dee Osborne, was a guest of Commerce Secretary, Don Evans, on a 2002 US trade mission to Chile and Peru, the Times reported.
In addition to Neil's obvious inside track with W, Crest was able to garner other political support for the project's approval by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX), was one of 4 members of Congress who signed a letter in support of approving the project, and Daniel's buddy, Spencer Abraham, also lent the backing of his office at the Department of Energy.
On December 12, 2002, the Commission approved the terms of a 30-year lease. However, Texas law required that it solicit for bids on any lease extending beyond 10 years. The Commission claimed it advertised for proposals in late December, 2002, but said no other bids were submitted.
The Crest-Quintana project was one of the first to benefit from the Bush administration's changes in regulations that streamlined federal permitting, relaxed financial reviews and made it easier to comply with safety standards.
Although the changes in the regulations were made after Freeport filed its initial application, the changes were applied retroactively to the project. In June, 2002, the FERC approved the project and gave the company a 5-year completion date. The final version of the lease was signed on March 28, 2003.
An important fact that Neil forgot to mention in his deposition is that once the plant goes into operation, Crest is guaranteed payments of at least $2 million a year from the partnership. However, unless Neil decides to dump his new wife, which might require his participation in another deposition, we will likely never know how much of the $2 million ends up in the Bush trough each year.
James Smith, director of Public Citizen-Texas, a watchdog group focused on energy issues, described the Crest profiteering scheme correctly when he told the LA Times on October 29, 2004, that the deal appeared to be "another classic example of Bush family cronyism paying off."
Showing posts with label Neil Bush. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Neil Bush. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Prince Neil Bush & Silverado
Evelyn Pringle December 2004
One upon a time in 1980, Neil Bush married his sweetheart, Sharon, and they moved to Denver, Colorado, away from all the other members of the Bush family. “Neil got a $30,000 job negotiating mineral leases for Amoco. Denver was an oil-fueled boomtown, and soon the handsome son of the vice president was charming the swells at the soirees of Denver's social set,” according to the Dec 28, 03 Washington Post.
In 1982, Neil and 2 of his co-workers quit Amoco and formed their own oil company, JNB Exploration. According to the Oct 29, 2000 St Petersburg Times, although Neil put up only a few hundred dollars, the other two partners made him president. They decided to put Neil in charge of raising money, because "Neil knew people because of his name," partner, Evans Nash, said.
Among the people that Neil hit up for cash were a couple of Denver real estate high-rollers, Bill Walters and Ken Good. Walters was a flamboyant "mogul known as "the Donald Trump of Denver." Good owned the largest home in Colorado, a $10 million mansion with a special plumbing system that pumped Scotch, gin and vodka throughout the house," according to the WP.
Initially Walters invested $150,000 and set up a $1.75 million line of credit for JNB at a bank he owned. Good invested $10,000 and pledged loans worth $1.5 million. Good also lent Neil $100,000 and said it didn't have to be paid back unless Neil made money.
As President of the company, Neil decided to pay himself a salary of $66,000 a year, more than 2 times what he made at Amoco. Over a period of 5 years, JNB drilled over 25 wells in four states, without finding a drop of oil. The company would have definitely went under if not for the money that Good and Walters poured into it.
The good friend that he was, Bush soon positioned himself in a way that would allow him to repay his 2 buddies. In 1985 he accepted an invitation to sit on the board of directors at Silverado Savings & Loan, which by that time had already lent millions to Walters and Good. As a director, Neil voted to approve loans of over $100 million for his 2 partners.
Neil was on the board from 1985 to 1988, and during that time, Silverado lent Walters an additional $106 million and Good another $35 million, even as it became obvious that their real estate empires were crashing.
Good used some of the money to buy JNB, at a time when it too was losing money. But the sale came with great news for Neil. Good doubled his salary to $120,000 and gave him a $22,000 bonus. He also made Neil a director of one of his other companies which paid him a salary of $100,000 a year.
Life was grand for the Neil Bush family. The coffers were skyrocketing.
What The Hell Happened?
The failure of hundreds of Savings and Loans during the 1980s, as detailed in such sources as Stephen Pizzo's Inside Job, cost taxpayers an estimated $500 billion, according to the July 31, 1990 LA Times.
A US House committee concluded that over three-quarters of all S&L insolvencies appeared to be linked to serious misconduct by senior insiders or outsiders. In 1988, the comptroller of the currency found that less than 10 percent of recent bank failures had been caused solely by economic factors, according to Inside Job, p 305.
One thing is for sure, Neil Bush was one of those insiders. Good and Walters never repaid a dime of their loans, and in 1988 Silverado collapsed. The main reason cited for its demise was their failure to repay the $132 million.
And come to find out, the team’s money-making efforts were not limited to the US. According to the March 16, 2001 Austin Chronicle, Federal banking regulators later followed the trail of defaulted loans to Neil’s oil ventures, in particular JNB International, which was awarded drilling concessions in Argentina -- despite its complete lack of experience in international oil and gas drilling. It probably helped that the Bush family had cultivated close ties with the fabulously corrupt Carlos Menem, former president of Argentina, the Chronicle noted.
When JNB's rights and obligations were assumed by other investors, Neil tried to get another company, Plains Resources, to invest in Argentina. Plains wasn't buying. But it was hiring, and picked up Neil as a consultant for its Argentine market -- because, as Plains executive Carlos Garibaldi told The New York Times' Jeff Gerth in 1992, Neil had "traveled [in Argentina] and played tennis with President Menem," the Chronicle reported.
Learning to play tennis is definitely going to be added to my things to-do list.
For God’s Sake Quit Whining!
When regulators determined that Neil's deals with Good and Walters constituted "multiple conflicts of interest," Neil answered the charge by telling reporters that "self-serving regulators" were persecuting him because he was the President's son.
Nobody bought his "poor me" line and in fact, it didn’t take long for Neil to become the Poster Boy for the entire S&L scandal once "Jail Neil Bush" signs started popping up in Washington and Denver.
To this day, Neil claims he did nothing wrong. "I happened to be one of hundreds of other American businessmen and women who served as an outside director on the board of a savings and loan institution that failed during the 1980s," he wrote in an e-mail. "I regret that the institution's failure cost taxpayers so much money," according to the December 28, 2003 WP.
Well I’ve got news for him, as a taxpayer so do I regret it.
According to Stephen Pizzo in Mother Jones on September 1, 1992, "After almost two years of hand-wringing had passed, an expert hired by regulators declared that Neil suffered from an "ethical disability," and he was required to pay a $50,000 fine for his ethical lapses at Silverado."
The deal was so good that Neil decided to drop his appeal of the case. As usual, "family friends" raised money to pay the $50,000 fine.
While 5 other Silverado directors were barred from working for any federally insured institution for life, Neil was only ordered to "desist from any acts, omissions or practices involving any conflicts of interest, unsafe or unsound practices or breaches of fiduciary duty."
In other words, quit being a crook. Big deal.
Neil suffered absolutely no consequences. Thomas "Lud" Ashley ... "came to the rescue," Barbara Bush said in her book, and raised money for his legal bills.
And Lud sure did. An estimated $250,000 was reportedly paid by the banking-industry lobbyist who was fighting to get banks deregulated, according to Pizzo in Mother Jones. So whether or not it was out of friendship is debatable.
In the end, the fiasco cost taxpayers $1.3 billion all total. But Neil’s now ex-wife Sharon, claims it cost the family as well.
"I remember having one chair in the whole living room," said Sharon. "It was a tough time. We had to move and sell the house," according to the October 10, 2004 ABC News.
It sounds to me like she should have bought more furniture with our money.
About That $100,000 Loan
Neil ultimately admitted that his seat on the board at Silverado had nothing to do with his expertise. He told Time Magazine, "(I)f I were to sit here and deny that the Bush name didn't have something to do with it," while trying to explain why, at the young age of 30, he was invited to sit on the board of a federally insured institution, at a time when the average age of a director was 57 and only about 1% were under 35.
I think the purpose of the invite is more than obvious and requires no further explanation.
In what I’m sure was an oversight, it seems that Neil forgot to list his business relationship with Good on his Silverado conflict-of-interest form when he accepted the $100,000. But then $100,000 probably didn’t seem like a significant amount of cash, considering that by the time he filled out the form he had already helped approve over $100 million worth of loans for Good.
Another thing Neil apparently forgot to mention was that by the time the form was filled out, he was completely dependent on Good and Walters as his main source of income.
"I know it sounds a little fishy," he said when he testified before members of Congress and told them that the $100,000 did not have to be repaid. What it was, "was an incredibly sweet deal," he said.
In 1990, Neil finally got around to reporting the $100,000 as income on his tax return, 6 years late.
A sideline to this tale that is rarely mentioned, is that Neil’s dad directly benefited from the Silverado looting right along with his son. Good gave the old man $100,000 too, for his 1988 campaign, at a time when Bush was not only the VP, but chairman of the Reagan’s Task Force on Regulation of Financial Services as well.
This cozy little set up renders a whole new meaning to the line about the "fox in the henhouse." Apparently $100,000 was the going rate for Bush bribes in the 80s.
How Did Neil Stay Out Of Jail?
Another interesting aside to the story is how the public closure of Silverado was delayed until after the 1988 election. Shortly before the event, when regulators wanted to close the doors, a call from Washington delayed the closing for 45 days which meant the public would not learn about its newly acquired $1.3 billion debt until after Bush won.
So the question remains, how did Neil manage to stay out of jail after regulators determined that his conduct "involved significant conflicts of interest and constituted multiple breaches" of his fiduciary duties?
The answer to that question involves a story within a story, and one cover-up covered-up by a second.
To be able to follow this scheme, partial knowledge of the cast and characters is necessary. The Federal regulatory agencies in place during the S&L debacle were the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB) and its successor agencies, the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) and the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS).
Of course those agencies were stacked with Bush political appointees. For instance, Secretary of the Treasury, Nicholas Brady, was a longtime Bush friend. The guy picked to head the OTS was Timothy Ryan, who served in the 1988 Bush campaign, and whose appointment got approved despite intense Congressional opposition.
The cast of characters includes Neil, Good, and Walters, and others involved were, Michael Wise, Chairman and CEO of Silverado; Kermit Mowbray, President of the Topeka Kansas Federal Home Loan Bank (directed by the FHLBB in Washington); Dorothy van Cleave, S&L Examiner; and Terry Sandefur, S&L Analyst.
Although the media, for whatever reasons, let the public believe that President Bush had remained neutral while his son's shady dealings were bubbling under the radar, the old man’s fingerprints were all over the mess from start to finish.
At the time, Steven Wilmsen, the Denver Post financial reporter, did write several key stories about the scandal for the Post and the Denver Business Journal, and he later wrote the book, "Silverado, Neil Bush and the Savings and Loan Scandal."
Wilmsen says Silverado was engaged in fraud as early as 1984, and that Kansas Federal Home Loan Bank "actually approved most of Silverado's illegal and wildly imprudent transactions" from 1984 to 1988. The man responsible for "those approvals was Kermit Mowbray, president of the Topeka bank," Wilmsen says. (p 150)
Regulators actually discovered the illegalities in late 1986, when Dorothy van Cleave and Terry Sandefur were assigned to look at Silverado’s books. That’s when the whole scheme began to unravel. The two regulators soon realized that Silverado had been on the edge for years and wondered why it hadn't been caught before then.
Based upon the documents they had examined, van Cleave and Sandefur began a full-scale investigation with 20 examiners allotted for the task. They later deemed the situation so critical that they could not wait for the examination to be completed, and decided to issue a cease and desist order which would have put Silverado under tight government control.
Then something very strange happened. After a meeting with Silverado's management, and a phone call to Topeka, van Cleave and Sandefur were told that Mowbray said to drop the order.
And more strange things kept on happening. In August 1988 the Colorado savings and loan commissioner issued a capital call, which is the first step in a government takeover. When that happened, Neil resigned immediately, saying that he did not want regulators to be constrained by his presence on the board.
Neil being considerate about not trying to wield influence through his position of power with a father in the WH? What a joke! It was a little late in the game for that phony act. "The truth of the matter," Wilmsen writes, "was that Neil already was under investigation by the regulators." (p 182)
On January 27, 1987, van Cleave had asked investigators in Washington to look into insider trading at Silverado. That’s when regulators began discovering all the conflicts of interest between Neil, Walters, and Good.
As it turns out, having Neil on the board allowed Silverado to get away with murder for years. According to testimony by the top gun of the banking regulators in June, 1990, his presence on the board was "a material part of the unconscionable delays in taking over Silverado" as far back as 1986.
Neil should have known that the scam couldn’t go on forever. I mean it's not like they didn’t know they were being watched. Greed must be a more powerful emotion than fear.
By the fall of 1988, Neil, and his dad, knew they were in deep trouble. Wilmsen believes the Bush campaign would have been seriously damaged if the American people had found out that his son "was in the thick of the greatest financial scandal in the nation's history."
He notes "some troubling coincidences in the events that unfolded in the months between Neil's resignation and Silverado's closing" on December 9, 1988. (p 182).
For instance, on October 21, 1988, the Colorado S&L commissioner called Mowbray and told him of the plan to close Silverado before the end of October. Mowbray ordered a halt to the proceedings saying a call had come from Washington telling him to hold off closing Silverado for 45 days. No one seemed to know why. Mowbray later told the House Banking Committee that he could not remember who called him or the reasons given by the caller for requesting the 45 day delay. (p 183)
Oh well, that’s understandable in the last days of a presidential campaign with all the excitement. I guess we shouldn’t have expected the poor guy to remember every little conversation he had with people in Washington. But perhaps members of the committee should have at least tried to help jog his memory with phone records from the oval office.
Where was Ken Starr when we needed him?
That 45-day extension cost taxpayers a bundle. According to Wilmsen, the "cost of that delay is in the hundreds of millions of dollars. In late September, regulators estimated the cost of Silverado's closure to be between $400 million and $600 million. When the thrift was finally closed December 9, it cost $1 billion." (p 184)
Cover-Up of the Cover-Up
In 1990, the Bush Treasury Department declared it was mounting a thorough investigation of the entire S&L matter. Here’s what the President told the country about his plans to deal with the S&L scoundrels on June 22, 1990: "We will not rest until the cheats and the chiselers and the charlatans spend a large chunk of their lives behind the bars of a federal prison," he said.
I guess he meant every cheat, chiseler and charlatan except for his son.
The truth is that by using the power of the White House, Bush was able find ways to sabotage both the investigations and the prosecutions of wrongdoers in order to keep Neil out of prison. When FBI field offices said they needed 400 more agents to help with the 21,000 uninvestigated S&L fraud referrals in their files, Bush only approved half the number of agents requested and he actually reduced the amount of money Congress had authorized to spend on criminal prosecutions.
Not long after Clinton took office, it became obvious that high ranking people in the Bush regulatory agencies had engaged in activities that definitely warranted investigation. However, because of the Republican smoke-screen thrown up with Whitewater, Clinton’s hands were tied. Any attempt to investigate the RTC and OTC would have been touted as an attempt to interfere with the Whitewater investigation.
At one point, the Treasury Department did ask the FBI for an investigation into the Bush White House pressure put on federal regulators to delay the closing of Silverado until after the election. But it went nowhere once it was presented to Bush's good friend, Attorney General Dick Thornburgh.
In the end, Bush was able to block every attempt to hold Neil responsible for his action.
Neil (but not his wife) lived happily ever after (free from prison), and the moral of the story is, contrary to what many people believe, crime does pay. At least for corporate crooks named Bush.
One upon a time in 1980, Neil Bush married his sweetheart, Sharon, and they moved to Denver, Colorado, away from all the other members of the Bush family. “Neil got a $30,000 job negotiating mineral leases for Amoco. Denver was an oil-fueled boomtown, and soon the handsome son of the vice president was charming the swells at the soirees of Denver's social set,” according to the Dec 28, 03 Washington Post.
In 1982, Neil and 2 of his co-workers quit Amoco and formed their own oil company, JNB Exploration. According to the Oct 29, 2000 St Petersburg Times, although Neil put up only a few hundred dollars, the other two partners made him president. They decided to put Neil in charge of raising money, because "Neil knew people because of his name," partner, Evans Nash, said.
Among the people that Neil hit up for cash were a couple of Denver real estate high-rollers, Bill Walters and Ken Good. Walters was a flamboyant "mogul known as "the Donald Trump of Denver." Good owned the largest home in Colorado, a $10 million mansion with a special plumbing system that pumped Scotch, gin and vodka throughout the house," according to the WP.
Initially Walters invested $150,000 and set up a $1.75 million line of credit for JNB at a bank he owned. Good invested $10,000 and pledged loans worth $1.5 million. Good also lent Neil $100,000 and said it didn't have to be paid back unless Neil made money.
As President of the company, Neil decided to pay himself a salary of $66,000 a year, more than 2 times what he made at Amoco. Over a period of 5 years, JNB drilled over 25 wells in four states, without finding a drop of oil. The company would have definitely went under if not for the money that Good and Walters poured into it.
The good friend that he was, Bush soon positioned himself in a way that would allow him to repay his 2 buddies. In 1985 he accepted an invitation to sit on the board of directors at Silverado Savings & Loan, which by that time had already lent millions to Walters and Good. As a director, Neil voted to approve loans of over $100 million for his 2 partners.
Neil was on the board from 1985 to 1988, and during that time, Silverado lent Walters an additional $106 million and Good another $35 million, even as it became obvious that their real estate empires were crashing.
Good used some of the money to buy JNB, at a time when it too was losing money. But the sale came with great news for Neil. Good doubled his salary to $120,000 and gave him a $22,000 bonus. He also made Neil a director of one of his other companies which paid him a salary of $100,000 a year.
Life was grand for the Neil Bush family. The coffers were skyrocketing.
What The Hell Happened?
The failure of hundreds of Savings and Loans during the 1980s, as detailed in such sources as Stephen Pizzo's Inside Job, cost taxpayers an estimated $500 billion, according to the July 31, 1990 LA Times.
A US House committee concluded that over three-quarters of all S&L insolvencies appeared to be linked to serious misconduct by senior insiders or outsiders. In 1988, the comptroller of the currency found that less than 10 percent of recent bank failures had been caused solely by economic factors, according to Inside Job, p 305.
One thing is for sure, Neil Bush was one of those insiders. Good and Walters never repaid a dime of their loans, and in 1988 Silverado collapsed. The main reason cited for its demise was their failure to repay the $132 million.
And come to find out, the team’s money-making efforts were not limited to the US. According to the March 16, 2001 Austin Chronicle, Federal banking regulators later followed the trail of defaulted loans to Neil’s oil ventures, in particular JNB International, which was awarded drilling concessions in Argentina -- despite its complete lack of experience in international oil and gas drilling. It probably helped that the Bush family had cultivated close ties with the fabulously corrupt Carlos Menem, former president of Argentina, the Chronicle noted.
When JNB's rights and obligations were assumed by other investors, Neil tried to get another company, Plains Resources, to invest in Argentina. Plains wasn't buying. But it was hiring, and picked up Neil as a consultant for its Argentine market -- because, as Plains executive Carlos Garibaldi told The New York Times' Jeff Gerth in 1992, Neil had "traveled [in Argentina] and played tennis with President Menem," the Chronicle reported.
Learning to play tennis is definitely going to be added to my things to-do list.
For God’s Sake Quit Whining!
When regulators determined that Neil's deals with Good and Walters constituted "multiple conflicts of interest," Neil answered the charge by telling reporters that "self-serving regulators" were persecuting him because he was the President's son.
Nobody bought his "poor me" line and in fact, it didn’t take long for Neil to become the Poster Boy for the entire S&L scandal once "Jail Neil Bush" signs started popping up in Washington and Denver.
To this day, Neil claims he did nothing wrong. "I happened to be one of hundreds of other American businessmen and women who served as an outside director on the board of a savings and loan institution that failed during the 1980s," he wrote in an e-mail. "I regret that the institution's failure cost taxpayers so much money," according to the December 28, 2003 WP.
Well I’ve got news for him, as a taxpayer so do I regret it.
According to Stephen Pizzo in Mother Jones on September 1, 1992, "After almost two years of hand-wringing had passed, an expert hired by regulators declared that Neil suffered from an "ethical disability," and he was required to pay a $50,000 fine for his ethical lapses at Silverado."
The deal was so good that Neil decided to drop his appeal of the case. As usual, "family friends" raised money to pay the $50,000 fine.
While 5 other Silverado directors were barred from working for any federally insured institution for life, Neil was only ordered to "desist from any acts, omissions or practices involving any conflicts of interest, unsafe or unsound practices or breaches of fiduciary duty."
In other words, quit being a crook. Big deal.
Neil suffered absolutely no consequences. Thomas "Lud" Ashley ... "came to the rescue," Barbara Bush said in her book, and raised money for his legal bills.
And Lud sure did. An estimated $250,000 was reportedly paid by the banking-industry lobbyist who was fighting to get banks deregulated, according to Pizzo in Mother Jones. So whether or not it was out of friendship is debatable.
In the end, the fiasco cost taxpayers $1.3 billion all total. But Neil’s now ex-wife Sharon, claims it cost the family as well.
"I remember having one chair in the whole living room," said Sharon. "It was a tough time. We had to move and sell the house," according to the October 10, 2004 ABC News.
It sounds to me like she should have bought more furniture with our money.
About That $100,000 Loan
Neil ultimately admitted that his seat on the board at Silverado had nothing to do with his expertise. He told Time Magazine, "(I)f I were to sit here and deny that the Bush name didn't have something to do with it," while trying to explain why, at the young age of 30, he was invited to sit on the board of a federally insured institution, at a time when the average age of a director was 57 and only about 1% were under 35.
I think the purpose of the invite is more than obvious and requires no further explanation.
In what I’m sure was an oversight, it seems that Neil forgot to list his business relationship with Good on his Silverado conflict-of-interest form when he accepted the $100,000. But then $100,000 probably didn’t seem like a significant amount of cash, considering that by the time he filled out the form he had already helped approve over $100 million worth of loans for Good.
Another thing Neil apparently forgot to mention was that by the time the form was filled out, he was completely dependent on Good and Walters as his main source of income.
"I know it sounds a little fishy," he said when he testified before members of Congress and told them that the $100,000 did not have to be repaid. What it was, "was an incredibly sweet deal," he said.
In 1990, Neil finally got around to reporting the $100,000 as income on his tax return, 6 years late.
A sideline to this tale that is rarely mentioned, is that Neil’s dad directly benefited from the Silverado looting right along with his son. Good gave the old man $100,000 too, for his 1988 campaign, at a time when Bush was not only the VP, but chairman of the Reagan’s Task Force on Regulation of Financial Services as well.
This cozy little set up renders a whole new meaning to the line about the "fox in the henhouse." Apparently $100,000 was the going rate for Bush bribes in the 80s.
How Did Neil Stay Out Of Jail?
Another interesting aside to the story is how the public closure of Silverado was delayed until after the 1988 election. Shortly before the event, when regulators wanted to close the doors, a call from Washington delayed the closing for 45 days which meant the public would not learn about its newly acquired $1.3 billion debt until after Bush won.
So the question remains, how did Neil manage to stay out of jail after regulators determined that his conduct "involved significant conflicts of interest and constituted multiple breaches" of his fiduciary duties?
The answer to that question involves a story within a story, and one cover-up covered-up by a second.
To be able to follow this scheme, partial knowledge of the cast and characters is necessary. The Federal regulatory agencies in place during the S&L debacle were the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB) and its successor agencies, the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) and the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS).
Of course those agencies were stacked with Bush political appointees. For instance, Secretary of the Treasury, Nicholas Brady, was a longtime Bush friend. The guy picked to head the OTS was Timothy Ryan, who served in the 1988 Bush campaign, and whose appointment got approved despite intense Congressional opposition.
The cast of characters includes Neil, Good, and Walters, and others involved were, Michael Wise, Chairman and CEO of Silverado; Kermit Mowbray, President of the Topeka Kansas Federal Home Loan Bank (directed by the FHLBB in Washington); Dorothy van Cleave, S&L Examiner; and Terry Sandefur, S&L Analyst.
Although the media, for whatever reasons, let the public believe that President Bush had remained neutral while his son's shady dealings were bubbling under the radar, the old man’s fingerprints were all over the mess from start to finish.
At the time, Steven Wilmsen, the Denver Post financial reporter, did write several key stories about the scandal for the Post and the Denver Business Journal, and he later wrote the book, "Silverado, Neil Bush and the Savings and Loan Scandal."
Wilmsen says Silverado was engaged in fraud as early as 1984, and that Kansas Federal Home Loan Bank "actually approved most of Silverado's illegal and wildly imprudent transactions" from 1984 to 1988. The man responsible for "those approvals was Kermit Mowbray, president of the Topeka bank," Wilmsen says. (p 150)
Regulators actually discovered the illegalities in late 1986, when Dorothy van Cleave and Terry Sandefur were assigned to look at Silverado’s books. That’s when the whole scheme began to unravel. The two regulators soon realized that Silverado had been on the edge for years and wondered why it hadn't been caught before then.
Based upon the documents they had examined, van Cleave and Sandefur began a full-scale investigation with 20 examiners allotted for the task. They later deemed the situation so critical that they could not wait for the examination to be completed, and decided to issue a cease and desist order which would have put Silverado under tight government control.
Then something very strange happened. After a meeting with Silverado's management, and a phone call to Topeka, van Cleave and Sandefur were told that Mowbray said to drop the order.
And more strange things kept on happening. In August 1988 the Colorado savings and loan commissioner issued a capital call, which is the first step in a government takeover. When that happened, Neil resigned immediately, saying that he did not want regulators to be constrained by his presence on the board.
Neil being considerate about not trying to wield influence through his position of power with a father in the WH? What a joke! It was a little late in the game for that phony act. "The truth of the matter," Wilmsen writes, "was that Neil already was under investigation by the regulators." (p 182)
On January 27, 1987, van Cleave had asked investigators in Washington to look into insider trading at Silverado. That’s when regulators began discovering all the conflicts of interest between Neil, Walters, and Good.
As it turns out, having Neil on the board allowed Silverado to get away with murder for years. According to testimony by the top gun of the banking regulators in June, 1990, his presence on the board was "a material part of the unconscionable delays in taking over Silverado" as far back as 1986.
Neil should have known that the scam couldn’t go on forever. I mean it's not like they didn’t know they were being watched. Greed must be a more powerful emotion than fear.
By the fall of 1988, Neil, and his dad, knew they were in deep trouble. Wilmsen believes the Bush campaign would have been seriously damaged if the American people had found out that his son "was in the thick of the greatest financial scandal in the nation's history."
He notes "some troubling coincidences in the events that unfolded in the months between Neil's resignation and Silverado's closing" on December 9, 1988. (p 182).
For instance, on October 21, 1988, the Colorado S&L commissioner called Mowbray and told him of the plan to close Silverado before the end of October. Mowbray ordered a halt to the proceedings saying a call had come from Washington telling him to hold off closing Silverado for 45 days. No one seemed to know why. Mowbray later told the House Banking Committee that he could not remember who called him or the reasons given by the caller for requesting the 45 day delay. (p 183)
Oh well, that’s understandable in the last days of a presidential campaign with all the excitement. I guess we shouldn’t have expected the poor guy to remember every little conversation he had with people in Washington. But perhaps members of the committee should have at least tried to help jog his memory with phone records from the oval office.
Where was Ken Starr when we needed him?
That 45-day extension cost taxpayers a bundle. According to Wilmsen, the "cost of that delay is in the hundreds of millions of dollars. In late September, regulators estimated the cost of Silverado's closure to be between $400 million and $600 million. When the thrift was finally closed December 9, it cost $1 billion." (p 184)
Cover-Up of the Cover-Up
In 1990, the Bush Treasury Department declared it was mounting a thorough investigation of the entire S&L matter. Here’s what the President told the country about his plans to deal with the S&L scoundrels on June 22, 1990: "We will not rest until the cheats and the chiselers and the charlatans spend a large chunk of their lives behind the bars of a federal prison," he said.
I guess he meant every cheat, chiseler and charlatan except for his son.
The truth is that by using the power of the White House, Bush was able find ways to sabotage both the investigations and the prosecutions of wrongdoers in order to keep Neil out of prison. When FBI field offices said they needed 400 more agents to help with the 21,000 uninvestigated S&L fraud referrals in their files, Bush only approved half the number of agents requested and he actually reduced the amount of money Congress had authorized to spend on criminal prosecutions.
Not long after Clinton took office, it became obvious that high ranking people in the Bush regulatory agencies had engaged in activities that definitely warranted investigation. However, because of the Republican smoke-screen thrown up with Whitewater, Clinton’s hands were tied. Any attempt to investigate the RTC and OTC would have been touted as an attempt to interfere with the Whitewater investigation.
At one point, the Treasury Department did ask the FBI for an investigation into the Bush White House pressure put on federal regulators to delay the closing of Silverado until after the election. But it went nowhere once it was presented to Bush's good friend, Attorney General Dick Thornburgh.
In the end, Bush was able to block every attempt to hold Neil responsible for his action.
Neil (but not his wife) lived happily ever after (free from prison), and the moral of the story is, contrary to what many people believe, crime does pay. At least for corporate crooks named Bush.
Prince Neil Bush Far From Charming
Evelyn Pringle December 2004
Once upon a time, Prince Neil Bush was best-known for his role in the collapse of the Silverado Savings and Loan. But here come to find out, he is actually the romeo of the Bush Royal Family.
I say this because last year his videotaped divorce deposition became public and quite frankly, the revelations in it do not paint a picture of strong moral values. As it turns out, while still married to his wife, Princess Sharon, Neil had what can only be described as random sex with a number of women, contracted a venereal disease, had an affair with his mother’s married secretary, and was accused of fathering a child out of wedlock.
I guess the lectures delivered by Neil's "I'm not an obnoxious drunk anymore" brother, George, missed the mark. So much for abstinence and safe sex in the First Royal Family.
Although Neil also testified about several highly questionable business deals in which he received huge amounts of money for little (if any) effort, they were completely overshadowed by the tales of his sexual liaisons with the gals in Thailand and Hong Kong.
I will never forget what W said back when the Clinton pardon scandal hit the headlines with charges that brother-in-law Hugh Rodham had accepted $400,000 to lobby for clemency for two felons. When reporters asked W what advice he would give to his own family members, he said: "My guidance to them is, 'Behave yourself.' And they will."
Oh is that right? ha.ha.ha.ha.ha. The absurdity of that statement is almost as funny as the jokes made about their dad's "read my lips" comment.
A Match Made In Heaven
Prince Neil met Sharon during the 1980 presidential campaign. After a brief courtship, they married, moved to Colorado, had 3 children and remained happily married (or at least Sharon did) for 23 years.
The whole divorce saga began in May, 2002, when Neil informed Sharon that he wanted a divorce in an e-mail. The actual email makes for one hell of a "Dear John" letter. The following is in part, what he had to say to Sharon:
"Your comments at our pool-side dinner with the kids that you and I should race to see who could make a million dollars faster, your belief expressed in different ways that I have not made enough money, your belief that it was easy to make money, and that Jamal Daniel's plotting or Dad's influence will be the magic answer to our financial woes all cause me consternation and reflect the bitterness and anger that has come from the loneliness you described Friday," Neil wrote.
"It is very clear that we are failing to meet each other's core needs. We're almost out of money and I've lost my patience for being compared to my brothers, for being put down for my inability to make money, and tired of not being loved. I'm sure you have felt abandoned and a deep sense of loneliness," he wrote.
Of course, Neil forgot to mention a few things in the email. Like he didn't tell Sharon about his Asian sex romps or that he was already having an affair with Maria Anderson, wife of Robert Andrews, a woman Sharon once regarded as a friend, but who she would later call "Neil's Mexican whore."
In fact, he forgot to mention quite a few things. A review of exhibits from Maria's divorce deposition, reveals that at the same time that Neil penning the Dear John email to Sharon, he was also writing love letters to Maria, evidently looking to get his “core needs“ met with her. In one email he tells Maria, "My heart is breaking with solitude. I can't wait to be free to dedicate all of my passion to love you. I hurt to have you in my arms, to make love with you and be a part of your life.” Prince Neil almost puts Prince Charles to shame.
Neil said he met Maria in 2001 while she was working in his mother’s office. He claims the affair did not begin until January 2002, when they ended up together at a fundraiser for brother Jeb. A few weeks later Neil went to the Maria's house looking to raise money for his new company and I guess it was Andrew’s unlucky day. For when Neil left that day, he not only walked out with $100,000 of Andrew’s money, he also bagged his wife, Maria.
A few weeks later, Maria and Neil took a pre-divorce Honeymoon to Mexico and the rest is history. Neil soon fired off his parting email to Sharon and when he returned to the US from Dubai, he set up a bachelor pad in Houston.
And get this, court records show that Neil and Maria both filed for divorce on the same day, August 26, 2002. What a sentimental couple.
In a July, 2002 interview on KHOU TV in Texas, Sharon said that she had never expected a divorce, "It was totally out of the blue,” she said.
However, Neil told a different tale. Apparently unbeknownst to Sharon, the marriage had been on the rocks for years. In his 270 page deposition, Neil testified that there was "no affection" and "very little sexual activity over the past 10 or 12 years." He told Sharon‘s attorney, "Our marriage has been broken. It's loveless. And there is nothing left to it.”
When she got the email, Sharon says she was taken off guard because 2 days earlier, Neil had given her a ring and said he loved her. When she reached out to her in-laws she claims, "I just really basically was turned off, turned away," Sharon said.
She talked about a conversation between her and Queen Barbara Bush, "I said I think Neil is having a mid-life crisis. You know, I'm worried about his business and maybe stress was leading to this e-mail. And she basically said, you talk to your mother and Neilsy will talk to me. And Neilsy will never abandon his children. And that was it,” according to ABC News on Oct 10, 2004.
As late as April 28, 2003, the day the divorce became finalize, Sharon was telling the judge that she wasn't sure she wanted the divorce. "I believe in working through a marriage," she testified, "and I don't believe in divorce with three children." The judge showed no sympathy and granted the divorce anyways.
All Out War
After Sharon learned of Neil’s affair with Maria, she went on a rampage. She made no secret of the fact that she did not want a divorce, and launched an all out attack on the 2 love-birds. She hired top PR man Lou Colasuonno, a former editor of both the New York Post and the New York Daily News.
Colasuonno's first move was to announce that Sharon was looking for a publisher for a book she planned to write. "This is a woman who has had some wonderful times with the Bushes," Colasuonno told the New York Observer. "But she has seen the dark side, too. And she intends to provide a view of the family that everyone will want to read."
Next he set up a lunch date for his client to meet with the famous author, Kitty Kelley, who was already working on a book about the Bush family. Then he hinted that Sharon might be feeding Kelley Bush family secrets.
Sharon and Kelley enjoyed a 4 hour lunch and Kelley couldn't say enough about how badly poor Sharon was being treated. "I learned a great deal about the Bush family from Sharon," Kelley told The Washington Post. "She told me he's only offering $1,000 a month in support -- take it or leave it. . . . She said that when she told Neil she needs more to live on, Neil Bush said, 'Just get remarried.' Sharon was sobbing as she told me, 'Kitty, I just won't sell my body!' "
PR guy Colasuonno claims that Kelley's disclosure to the Post, prompted the Prince to more than double his offer of settlement to about $30,000 a year. In her interview with ABC on Oct 10, 2004, Sharon said her final divorce settlement allowed for 4 years of alimony at $2,500 a month, and that she may soon have to sell the family home in Houston.
When it was released this year, Kelley’s book contained quotes attributed to Sharon that included the allegation that W snorted cocaine with his brother at Camp David during the first Bush presidency. Sharon quickly denied making that allegation but her PR guy Colasuonno, and 2 others who were at the lunch, backed Kelley’s version of the conversations.
Sharon also told Kelly that at one point, she had even received an implied death threat from Neil. According to Sharon, he left a message on her answering machine telling her that if she didn't shut her mouth, she would find herself "in a dark alley."
So here we have the brother of the current president and the son of an ex-president threatening his soon to be ex-wife with death if she doesn't keep quiet about the family secrets. Are we talking about the Royal First Family here? Or the Mafia?
Kelley and Sharon were both interviewed by Matt Lauer on NBC's Today Show on Sept 13 and 14, 2004, and both ladies stuck to their story, as far as what was said at their 4 hour lunch.
The April 22, 2003 Washington Post, reported that Sharon also met with another author, Julie McCarron, in Houston on April 14, 2003, to explore writing a memoir of her life in the Bush family.
McCarron wrote a memo about their day long session together to Michael Viner, who had agreed to a $200,000-plus book deal to publish Sharon's book "First Family." According to McCarron, they ran into Neil's mistress Maria that day at a restaurant called Grotto. "This was very upsetting to Sharon," McCarron wrote in the memo. In the end, Viner withdrew from the book deal, according to the Post.
McCarron memo said that she met Sharon at the Bush family home in Houston. "She was very teary as we toured her house and looked at the hundreds of framed family photos on the wall," McCarron wrote. "She swore that she had been an excellent wife and mother for more than twenty years. . . . She was very upset that the woman her husband was having an affair with had been on Barbara Bush's staff -- how could she not have known?"
According to McCarron, Sharon "stated that the only thing the Bush family cares about is their money and their public image," McCarron continued. "She was devastated over the end of her marriage and the emotional state of her children. As far as writing a book went, she hadn't thought too much about specifics. She did not want to be perceived as a woman scorned. . . . She wanted to write the story of . . . how a 'perfect' marriage can explode after 22 years . . . how she bought into the image of the perfect family, but couldn't cope when everyone in that family turned against her. The Bush family preached family values while she practiced them," wrote McCarron, as reported in the Post.
"They were my family for almost a quarter-century," Sharon said of the Bushes. "I believed in families, and I believed in the family values. And I thought they did, too. So, I thought I would get help from them," according to ABC News.
I guess poor Sharon thought wrong.
What? No Pillow Talk?
During the deposition, when asked by his wife's attorney whether he'd had affairs during his marriage, Neil disclosed a string of sexcapades that could almost put Bill Clinton to shame. And they were all by chance.
During his business trips to Hong Kong and Thailand, Neil said that he would be sitting in his hotel room, just minding his own business, when all of a sudden there would be a knock at the door and a woman would be standing there wanting to have sex with him. He testified that he had no idea who they were or why they showed up.
Neil told his wife's attorney, "I had sexual intercourse with perhaps three or four, I don't remember the exact number, women, at different times. In Thailand once, I have a pretty clear recollection that there was one time in Thailand and in Hong Kong."
I wonder why he has "a pretty clear recollection" of certain encounters. Is it because they were such memorable events or is it because he caught a venereal disease during one of those particular trists?
Attorney Brown asked Neil about this, "Is that where you caught the venereal diseases?" and Neil said, "No."
Brown asked, "Where did you catch those?" And Neil replied, "Diseases plural? I didn't catch..."
Brown apologized, I guess for being insensitive and said: "Well, I'm sorry. How ... how many venereal diseases do you suffer from?"
"I've had one venereal disease," Neil replied.
To which Brown asked, "Which was?"
"Herpes," Neil said.
Had is past tense. Somebody better inform Neil that once you have Herpes, it's a life-long affliction.
A little later, Sharon’s attorney tried to get Neil to explain more about who these women were. "Were they prostitutes?" he asked.
"I don't -- I don't know," Neil replied.
Brown asked, "Did you pay them for that sex?"
"No, I did not," Neil said.
Brown then asked did you, "Pick them up in a sushi house?"
"No," Neil said. "My recollection is, where I can recall, they came to my room."
You can tell that Brown is having a good time at Neil's expense by the way he ridicules him. "Do you know the name of that hotel? I may go to Thailand sometime," Brown said.
I think it's fairly obviously that some of Neil’s foreign business deals came with perks that he was more than happy to take advantage of.
When asked how he knew what to do when a woman came to the door, Neil replied, "Whatever happened, happened."
That snide comment could lead the mind to any number of visions. If need be, Prince Neil could probably make a few extra bucks by publishing his deposition and marketing it as a soft porn novel.
Sharon's attorney was amazed at Neil's Asian romps. "You have to admit that it's a pretty remarkable thing for a man just to go to a hotel room door and open it and have a woman standing there and have sex with her," he said.
"It was very unusual," Neil replied.
That right there was lie under oath in a civil deposition. Also known as perjury during the Clinton years. How can Neil claim the events were unusual, when by his own admission, they happened at least 3 or 4 times? I say arrest the Prince for lying under oath, and if by any chance he holds a license to practice anything, revoke it.
For those wondering how Sharon felt sitting there listening to the details of Neil's sexcapades, she said, "I was totally devastated, and so were our children upon learning this," reported the New York Post’s PAGE SIX. "I trusted him while he was on all those foreign trips and kept the home fires burning while raising three great children . . . His behavior has been appalling. Where are the family values?"
That's a very good question. Where's the moral outrage from the Bush family over Neil’s behavior?
In fairness to Neil, the Asian trips were not all play and no work. It's just that the sex stories overshadow the curious financial deals that were discussed in the same deposition.
So if these women were not perks from foreign investors seeking to gain influence through the President's brother, who were they? Wasn't there any pillow talk whatsoever?
What does Neil expect us to believe? That 3 or 4 different women spotted him in a hotel lobby and found him so irresistible that they slipped a bellhop $50 to get his room number? For anyone even considering this scenario, go take a good look at Neil and decide whether anyone would willingly pay one dime for a romp in the sack with him.
In July 2002, Sharon appeared for a live interview on KHOU-TV News. By that time, the TV station had obtained a copy of Neil’s videotaped deposition and played excerpts from the deposition that contained his own accounts of the Asian sexcapades.
After that, an all-out publicity war began. Neil's Attorney, John Spalding, called reporters with a story that Sharon had yanked hair out of Neil's head so she could make a voodoo doll and put a curse on him.
"It was bizarre," Spalding said, "She literally pulled his hair and yanked it out of his head. He told me about it."
Sharon admitted that she took some of Neil’s hair, but said it came from his barber's floor and it was not for a voodoo doll. She told the Houston Chronicle that because Neil was acting so erratic, she wanted to test the hair for drug use. The tests were inconclusive, she said.
Three-Some Gangs Up On Princess Sharon
When Sharon found out about Neil and Maria's affair, she began claiming that Neil and Maria had been sleeping together for years and that Neil was the father of Maria's 2-year-old son.
Next thing you know, Maria’s husband, Robert, who just happened to also be a business associate of Neil's, claimed that Sharon defamed his son by saying the boy was fathered by Neil and filed a defamation lawsuit against her.
This set off a sandstorm of accusations and demands from all sides. A Texas judge granted Sharon’s demand for DNA samples from Andrews and his son, and even though Neil had already given one DNA sample, Sharon’s attorney got the judge to make him give another. "We require he be forced to give a sample under court supervision," Attorney, David Berg, told UPI on Nov 26, 2003.
"He voluntarily did it before we got to court but not under court supervision," Berg said. "It was a good first step, but we want it under court supervised conditions."
The Houston Chronicle reported the story that, "Neil provided a tissue sample Friday that will be used to determine whether he fathered a child by his girlfriend while she was still married to another man. He hopes the results will settle a paternity question that is at the core of an $850,000 defamation lawsuit against his ex-wife," according to a statement issued by Neil's attorney, John Spalding.
The suit alleged that Sharon had spread the rumor to news outlets, friends and "fast food restaurant employees."
The amount that Andrews demanded from Sharon in damages was significant for 2 reasons. First of all, as part of the divorce settlement, Sharon was allowed to buy the family home from Neil for $850,000. On the exact same day that she closed on the house, Andrews filed the lawsuit and guess how much he asked for? $850,000.
The second reason the demand was significant was that Andrews apparently decided to team up with the guy who stole his wife and help Neil and Maria kill 2 birds with one stone. To stop Sharon from writing a book, Andrews asked that he be awarded all royalties that she might earn from writing any book about the case, according to UPI.
Sharon's attorney was quick to call foul. "We consider it (the suit) vindictive and an attempt to shut her up," Berg said.
"You'd have to be blind not to understand the message when they sued her on the same day that she closed on the house for the same amount of money, an identical amount,” he claimed. "They are sending a message ... It sounds like Andrews is a stalking horse for Bush."
Then Andrew's attorney, Dale Jefferson, thought he'd drive the lets-humiliate-Sharon-knife a little deeper, and went public with a "put-up-or-shut-up" settlement offer:
"We'll put up $850,000 and Sharon Bush can put up $850,000," Jefferson said. "And if she's right and Neil Bush is the father of that child, she gets Mr. Andrews's $850,000, and if we're right, we get her $850,000."
Today, Sharon is not only divorced from Neil, she told 20/20, but completely cut out of the larger Bush clan, what she calls the Bush corporation. She say it is a tight-knit family that sticks together financially, socially, and of course, politically. "Well, you know, we all work together to support George and get him elected. And my father-in-law, to get him elected. It's a family affair. You work hard," Sharon recalled.
All I can say is that I think the Princess deserved a much better retirement package for 23 years of service in the Bush Corporation.
As for the happy couple, on March 6, 2004, Neil and Maria tied the knot. The wedding took place in Houston with most of the Bush clan there to celebrate. Described as a Dom Perignon affair, the wedding was attended by family patriarch and former President George H.W. Bush, as well as prominent guests from the Middle East and China, according to ABC New on Oct 10, 2004.
Jeb, George, and Laura apparently had other plans because they were no shows.
As always with the Bush family, and especially when folks from foreign countries attend a Bush Bash, the Prince and his new Princess were showered with presents. "There were also very lavish gifts," said Mimi Swartz, of Texas Monthly. "I think the couple got matching Bulgari watches, I think someone else gave them an SUV."
Meanwhile, Neil and his new wife are building a multi-million dollar house next door to his parents, reports ABC, where I assume they plan to live happily ever after, or at least until Neil travels to Asia again.
The moral of this story is I guess it's better if half of a couple lives happily ever after than no one at all.
Once upon a time, Prince Neil Bush was best-known for his role in the collapse of the Silverado Savings and Loan. But here come to find out, he is actually the romeo of the Bush Royal Family.
I say this because last year his videotaped divorce deposition became public and quite frankly, the revelations in it do not paint a picture of strong moral values. As it turns out, while still married to his wife, Princess Sharon, Neil had what can only be described as random sex with a number of women, contracted a venereal disease, had an affair with his mother’s married secretary, and was accused of fathering a child out of wedlock.
I guess the lectures delivered by Neil's "I'm not an obnoxious drunk anymore" brother, George, missed the mark. So much for abstinence and safe sex in the First Royal Family.
Although Neil also testified about several highly questionable business deals in which he received huge amounts of money for little (if any) effort, they were completely overshadowed by the tales of his sexual liaisons with the gals in Thailand and Hong Kong.
I will never forget what W said back when the Clinton pardon scandal hit the headlines with charges that brother-in-law Hugh Rodham had accepted $400,000 to lobby for clemency for two felons. When reporters asked W what advice he would give to his own family members, he said: "My guidance to them is, 'Behave yourself.' And they will."
Oh is that right? ha.ha.ha.ha.ha. The absurdity of that statement is almost as funny as the jokes made about their dad's "read my lips" comment.
A Match Made In Heaven
Prince Neil met Sharon during the 1980 presidential campaign. After a brief courtship, they married, moved to Colorado, had 3 children and remained happily married (or at least Sharon did) for 23 years.
The whole divorce saga began in May, 2002, when Neil informed Sharon that he wanted a divorce in an e-mail. The actual email makes for one hell of a "Dear John" letter. The following is in part, what he had to say to Sharon:
"Your comments at our pool-side dinner with the kids that you and I should race to see who could make a million dollars faster, your belief expressed in different ways that I have not made enough money, your belief that it was easy to make money, and that Jamal Daniel's plotting or Dad's influence will be the magic answer to our financial woes all cause me consternation and reflect the bitterness and anger that has come from the loneliness you described Friday," Neil wrote.
"It is very clear that we are failing to meet each other's core needs. We're almost out of money and I've lost my patience for being compared to my brothers, for being put down for my inability to make money, and tired of not being loved. I'm sure you have felt abandoned and a deep sense of loneliness," he wrote.
Of course, Neil forgot to mention a few things in the email. Like he didn't tell Sharon about his Asian sex romps or that he was already having an affair with Maria Anderson, wife of Robert Andrews, a woman Sharon once regarded as a friend, but who she would later call "Neil's Mexican whore."
In fact, he forgot to mention quite a few things. A review of exhibits from Maria's divorce deposition, reveals that at the same time that Neil penning the Dear John email to Sharon, he was also writing love letters to Maria, evidently looking to get his “core needs“ met with her. In one email he tells Maria, "My heart is breaking with solitude. I can't wait to be free to dedicate all of my passion to love you. I hurt to have you in my arms, to make love with you and be a part of your life.” Prince Neil almost puts Prince Charles to shame.
Neil said he met Maria in 2001 while she was working in his mother’s office. He claims the affair did not begin until January 2002, when they ended up together at a fundraiser for brother Jeb. A few weeks later Neil went to the Maria's house looking to raise money for his new company and I guess it was Andrew’s unlucky day. For when Neil left that day, he not only walked out with $100,000 of Andrew’s money, he also bagged his wife, Maria.
A few weeks later, Maria and Neil took a pre-divorce Honeymoon to Mexico and the rest is history. Neil soon fired off his parting email to Sharon and when he returned to the US from Dubai, he set up a bachelor pad in Houston.
And get this, court records show that Neil and Maria both filed for divorce on the same day, August 26, 2002. What a sentimental couple.
In a July, 2002 interview on KHOU TV in Texas, Sharon said that she had never expected a divorce, "It was totally out of the blue,” she said.
However, Neil told a different tale. Apparently unbeknownst to Sharon, the marriage had been on the rocks for years. In his 270 page deposition, Neil testified that there was "no affection" and "very little sexual activity over the past 10 or 12 years." He told Sharon‘s attorney, "Our marriage has been broken. It's loveless. And there is nothing left to it.”
When she got the email, Sharon says she was taken off guard because 2 days earlier, Neil had given her a ring and said he loved her. When she reached out to her in-laws she claims, "I just really basically was turned off, turned away," Sharon said.
She talked about a conversation between her and Queen Barbara Bush, "I said I think Neil is having a mid-life crisis. You know, I'm worried about his business and maybe stress was leading to this e-mail. And she basically said, you talk to your mother and Neilsy will talk to me. And Neilsy will never abandon his children. And that was it,” according to ABC News on Oct 10, 2004.
As late as April 28, 2003, the day the divorce became finalize, Sharon was telling the judge that she wasn't sure she wanted the divorce. "I believe in working through a marriage," she testified, "and I don't believe in divorce with three children." The judge showed no sympathy and granted the divorce anyways.
All Out War
After Sharon learned of Neil’s affair with Maria, she went on a rampage. She made no secret of the fact that she did not want a divorce, and launched an all out attack on the 2 love-birds. She hired top PR man Lou Colasuonno, a former editor of both the New York Post and the New York Daily News.
Colasuonno's first move was to announce that Sharon was looking for a publisher for a book she planned to write. "This is a woman who has had some wonderful times with the Bushes," Colasuonno told the New York Observer. "But she has seen the dark side, too. And she intends to provide a view of the family that everyone will want to read."
Next he set up a lunch date for his client to meet with the famous author, Kitty Kelley, who was already working on a book about the Bush family. Then he hinted that Sharon might be feeding Kelley Bush family secrets.
Sharon and Kelley enjoyed a 4 hour lunch and Kelley couldn't say enough about how badly poor Sharon was being treated. "I learned a great deal about the Bush family from Sharon," Kelley told The Washington Post. "She told me he's only offering $1,000 a month in support -- take it or leave it. . . . She said that when she told Neil she needs more to live on, Neil Bush said, 'Just get remarried.' Sharon was sobbing as she told me, 'Kitty, I just won't sell my body!' "
PR guy Colasuonno claims that Kelley's disclosure to the Post, prompted the Prince to more than double his offer of settlement to about $30,000 a year. In her interview with ABC on Oct 10, 2004, Sharon said her final divorce settlement allowed for 4 years of alimony at $2,500 a month, and that she may soon have to sell the family home in Houston.
When it was released this year, Kelley’s book contained quotes attributed to Sharon that included the allegation that W snorted cocaine with his brother at Camp David during the first Bush presidency. Sharon quickly denied making that allegation but her PR guy Colasuonno, and 2 others who were at the lunch, backed Kelley’s version of the conversations.
Sharon also told Kelly that at one point, she had even received an implied death threat from Neil. According to Sharon, he left a message on her answering machine telling her that if she didn't shut her mouth, she would find herself "in a dark alley."
So here we have the brother of the current president and the son of an ex-president threatening his soon to be ex-wife with death if she doesn't keep quiet about the family secrets. Are we talking about the Royal First Family here? Or the Mafia?
Kelley and Sharon were both interviewed by Matt Lauer on NBC's Today Show on Sept 13 and 14, 2004, and both ladies stuck to their story, as far as what was said at their 4 hour lunch.
The April 22, 2003 Washington Post, reported that Sharon also met with another author, Julie McCarron, in Houston on April 14, 2003, to explore writing a memoir of her life in the Bush family.
McCarron wrote a memo about their day long session together to Michael Viner, who had agreed to a $200,000-plus book deal to publish Sharon's book "First Family." According to McCarron, they ran into Neil's mistress Maria that day at a restaurant called Grotto. "This was very upsetting to Sharon," McCarron wrote in the memo. In the end, Viner withdrew from the book deal, according to the Post.
McCarron memo said that she met Sharon at the Bush family home in Houston. "She was very teary as we toured her house and looked at the hundreds of framed family photos on the wall," McCarron wrote. "She swore that she had been an excellent wife and mother for more than twenty years. . . . She was very upset that the woman her husband was having an affair with had been on Barbara Bush's staff -- how could she not have known?"
According to McCarron, Sharon "stated that the only thing the Bush family cares about is their money and their public image," McCarron continued. "She was devastated over the end of her marriage and the emotional state of her children. As far as writing a book went, she hadn't thought too much about specifics. She did not want to be perceived as a woman scorned. . . . She wanted to write the story of . . . how a 'perfect' marriage can explode after 22 years . . . how she bought into the image of the perfect family, but couldn't cope when everyone in that family turned against her. The Bush family preached family values while she practiced them," wrote McCarron, as reported in the Post.
"They were my family for almost a quarter-century," Sharon said of the Bushes. "I believed in families, and I believed in the family values. And I thought they did, too. So, I thought I would get help from them," according to ABC News.
I guess poor Sharon thought wrong.
What? No Pillow Talk?
During the deposition, when asked by his wife's attorney whether he'd had affairs during his marriage, Neil disclosed a string of sexcapades that could almost put Bill Clinton to shame. And they were all by chance.
During his business trips to Hong Kong and Thailand, Neil said that he would be sitting in his hotel room, just minding his own business, when all of a sudden there would be a knock at the door and a woman would be standing there wanting to have sex with him. He testified that he had no idea who they were or why they showed up.
Neil told his wife's attorney, "I had sexual intercourse with perhaps three or four, I don't remember the exact number, women, at different times. In Thailand once, I have a pretty clear recollection that there was one time in Thailand and in Hong Kong."
I wonder why he has "a pretty clear recollection" of certain encounters. Is it because they were such memorable events or is it because he caught a venereal disease during one of those particular trists?
Attorney Brown asked Neil about this, "Is that where you caught the venereal diseases?" and Neil said, "No."
Brown asked, "Where did you catch those?" And Neil replied, "Diseases plural? I didn't catch..."
Brown apologized, I guess for being insensitive and said: "Well, I'm sorry. How ... how many venereal diseases do you suffer from?"
"I've had one venereal disease," Neil replied.
To which Brown asked, "Which was?"
"Herpes," Neil said.
Had is past tense. Somebody better inform Neil that once you have Herpes, it's a life-long affliction.
A little later, Sharon’s attorney tried to get Neil to explain more about who these women were. "Were they prostitutes?" he asked.
"I don't -- I don't know," Neil replied.
Brown asked, "Did you pay them for that sex?"
"No, I did not," Neil said.
Brown then asked did you, "Pick them up in a sushi house?"
"No," Neil said. "My recollection is, where I can recall, they came to my room."
You can tell that Brown is having a good time at Neil's expense by the way he ridicules him. "Do you know the name of that hotel? I may go to Thailand sometime," Brown said.
I think it's fairly obviously that some of Neil’s foreign business deals came with perks that he was more than happy to take advantage of.
When asked how he knew what to do when a woman came to the door, Neil replied, "Whatever happened, happened."
That snide comment could lead the mind to any number of visions. If need be, Prince Neil could probably make a few extra bucks by publishing his deposition and marketing it as a soft porn novel.
Sharon's attorney was amazed at Neil's Asian romps. "You have to admit that it's a pretty remarkable thing for a man just to go to a hotel room door and open it and have a woman standing there and have sex with her," he said.
"It was very unusual," Neil replied.
That right there was lie under oath in a civil deposition. Also known as perjury during the Clinton years. How can Neil claim the events were unusual, when by his own admission, they happened at least 3 or 4 times? I say arrest the Prince for lying under oath, and if by any chance he holds a license to practice anything, revoke it.
For those wondering how Sharon felt sitting there listening to the details of Neil's sexcapades, she said, "I was totally devastated, and so were our children upon learning this," reported the New York Post’s PAGE SIX. "I trusted him while he was on all those foreign trips and kept the home fires burning while raising three great children . . . His behavior has been appalling. Where are the family values?"
That's a very good question. Where's the moral outrage from the Bush family over Neil’s behavior?
In fairness to Neil, the Asian trips were not all play and no work. It's just that the sex stories overshadow the curious financial deals that were discussed in the same deposition.
So if these women were not perks from foreign investors seeking to gain influence through the President's brother, who were they? Wasn't there any pillow talk whatsoever?
What does Neil expect us to believe? That 3 or 4 different women spotted him in a hotel lobby and found him so irresistible that they slipped a bellhop $50 to get his room number? For anyone even considering this scenario, go take a good look at Neil and decide whether anyone would willingly pay one dime for a romp in the sack with him.
In July 2002, Sharon appeared for a live interview on KHOU-TV News. By that time, the TV station had obtained a copy of Neil’s videotaped deposition and played excerpts from the deposition that contained his own accounts of the Asian sexcapades.
After that, an all-out publicity war began. Neil's Attorney, John Spalding, called reporters with a story that Sharon had yanked hair out of Neil's head so she could make a voodoo doll and put a curse on him.
"It was bizarre," Spalding said, "She literally pulled his hair and yanked it out of his head. He told me about it."
Sharon admitted that she took some of Neil’s hair, but said it came from his barber's floor and it was not for a voodoo doll. She told the Houston Chronicle that because Neil was acting so erratic, she wanted to test the hair for drug use. The tests were inconclusive, she said.
Three-Some Gangs Up On Princess Sharon
When Sharon found out about Neil and Maria's affair, she began claiming that Neil and Maria had been sleeping together for years and that Neil was the father of Maria's 2-year-old son.
Next thing you know, Maria’s husband, Robert, who just happened to also be a business associate of Neil's, claimed that Sharon defamed his son by saying the boy was fathered by Neil and filed a defamation lawsuit against her.
This set off a sandstorm of accusations and demands from all sides. A Texas judge granted Sharon’s demand for DNA samples from Andrews and his son, and even though Neil had already given one DNA sample, Sharon’s attorney got the judge to make him give another. "We require he be forced to give a sample under court supervision," Attorney, David Berg, told UPI on Nov 26, 2003.
"He voluntarily did it before we got to court but not under court supervision," Berg said. "It was a good first step, but we want it under court supervised conditions."
The Houston Chronicle reported the story that, "Neil provided a tissue sample Friday that will be used to determine whether he fathered a child by his girlfriend while she was still married to another man. He hopes the results will settle a paternity question that is at the core of an $850,000 defamation lawsuit against his ex-wife," according to a statement issued by Neil's attorney, John Spalding.
The suit alleged that Sharon had spread the rumor to news outlets, friends and "fast food restaurant employees."
The amount that Andrews demanded from Sharon in damages was significant for 2 reasons. First of all, as part of the divorce settlement, Sharon was allowed to buy the family home from Neil for $850,000. On the exact same day that she closed on the house, Andrews filed the lawsuit and guess how much he asked for? $850,000.
The second reason the demand was significant was that Andrews apparently decided to team up with the guy who stole his wife and help Neil and Maria kill 2 birds with one stone. To stop Sharon from writing a book, Andrews asked that he be awarded all royalties that she might earn from writing any book about the case, according to UPI.
Sharon's attorney was quick to call foul. "We consider it (the suit) vindictive and an attempt to shut her up," Berg said.
"You'd have to be blind not to understand the message when they sued her on the same day that she closed on the house for the same amount of money, an identical amount,” he claimed. "They are sending a message ... It sounds like Andrews is a stalking horse for Bush."
Then Andrew's attorney, Dale Jefferson, thought he'd drive the lets-humiliate-Sharon-knife a little deeper, and went public with a "put-up-or-shut-up" settlement offer:
"We'll put up $850,000 and Sharon Bush can put up $850,000," Jefferson said. "And if she's right and Neil Bush is the father of that child, she gets Mr. Andrews's $850,000, and if we're right, we get her $850,000."
Today, Sharon is not only divorced from Neil, she told 20/20, but completely cut out of the larger Bush clan, what she calls the Bush corporation. She say it is a tight-knit family that sticks together financially, socially, and of course, politically. "Well, you know, we all work together to support George and get him elected. And my father-in-law, to get him elected. It's a family affair. You work hard," Sharon recalled.
All I can say is that I think the Princess deserved a much better retirement package for 23 years of service in the Bush Corporation.
As for the happy couple, on March 6, 2004, Neil and Maria tied the knot. The wedding took place in Houston with most of the Bush clan there to celebrate. Described as a Dom Perignon affair, the wedding was attended by family patriarch and former President George H.W. Bush, as well as prominent guests from the Middle East and China, according to ABC New on Oct 10, 2004.
Jeb, George, and Laura apparently had other plans because they were no shows.
As always with the Bush family, and especially when folks from foreign countries attend a Bush Bash, the Prince and his new Princess were showered with presents. "There were also very lavish gifts," said Mimi Swartz, of Texas Monthly. "I think the couple got matching Bulgari watches, I think someone else gave them an SUV."
Meanwhile, Neil and his new wife are building a multi-million dollar house next door to his parents, reports ABC, where I assume they plan to live happily ever after, or at least until Neil travels to Asia again.
The moral of this story is I guess it's better if half of a couple lives happily ever after than no one at all.
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