Monday, September 12, 2011

Bush Makes Secret Trip To Carmel

It's not often that a former president slips in and out of town for a visit without notice. Former President George W. Bush did that just last Friday. Only Fox 59 News reported after the fact that Bush had visited the Carmel mansion of Forrest Lucas on Friday and played a round of golf at Crooked Stick. The purpose of Bush's event according to Fox 59 News was to attend an event hosted by the Indiana chapter of the Young Presidents Organization.

The man who led America during the 9/11 terror attacks visited Indiana just prior to the 10-year anniversary of the tragic event.
Former President George W. Bush showed up at Forest Lucas' mansion in Carmel Friday to attend a private event hosted by the Indiana chapter of the Young Presidents Organization.
Earlier on Friday, the 43rd presdient enjoyed a round of golf with Pete Dye at Crooked Stick golf club in Carmel.
Governor Mitch Daniels also attended the event at the Lucas mansion. Daniels was Bush's budget director during his first term as president and was sought after to run for president himself. Daniels decided against a run for the White House due to family reasons.

According to the book, "JFK: The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot To Assassinate John F. Kennedy," the Young Presidents Organization is closely associated with Harvard Business School and the CIA. The books says the organization is made up of men who are presidents of their own companies and under the age of 40. The CIA's role is to introduce young leaders in foreign countries for the purpose of opening export-import talks and franchising discussions. The book talks about how the CIA's first Director, Allen Dulles, who was a close friend of George H.W. Bush's father, Prescott Bush, went to Puerto Rico to an event hosted by the YPO just as the Bay of Pigs operation was being launched by President John F. Kennedy in Cuba. In Dulles' absence, his underlings made key operational decisions in what turned out to be a failed mission that badly embarrassed the Kennedy administration. Kennedy, in turn, sacked Dulles, a move that angered the powers within the growing military industrial complex former President Dwight Eisenhower had warned the country against and as the story goes, led them to plot his assassination.

It would be interesting to learn a little bit more about who started the Indiana chapter of the YPO and who their members are. The company's website doesn't identify the Indiana chapter's members. I wouldn't be surprised if Beurt SerVaas, a former OSS officer, had a role in founding the Indiana chapter. YPO has been masked in secrecy since its founding by Ray Hickok of Hickok Manufacturing in 1950. According to the organization's website, former GE CEO Jack Welch and billionaire Warren Buffet were on hand to help the organization celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2000. According to Russ Baker's book, "Family of Secrets", both Bush and his father worked for the CIA fresh out of college before ever entering politics. George H.W. Bush would later become Director of the CIA during the Ford administration.

5 comments:

Maple Syrup Maven said...

If he didn't want pickets, he had to come secretly!

Marycatherine Barton said...

It certainly would be interesting to know who started the Indiana chapter of the Young Presidents Organization.

I was surprised to read the Wayne Madsen Report homepage yesterday and see that he commented that Bush's vice-president Dick Cheney was the master puppeteer behind 9/11. (I'm thinking that he might be Netanyahu.}

John Michael Vore said...

A Google Search for "Young Presidents Association, Indiana," - on page 3 begins to list members from their on-line, publicly available biographies, yielding 19 members, 2 of whom died in 2011: Stephen M. Huse; David A. Resnick; Larry S. Tavel (Dr. Tavel); Jesse N. Jones (deceased, 2011), Brian Mann; George Weathersby (YPO-elected CEO, 2008, former chair, Indiana Commission for Higher Education); Bradley B. Chambers; Christopher Reid; Bob Lauth; Kathy Reehling; Jeff McDonald; Devin Anderson (at E&A Industries, with Al Hubbard); Steven F. Walker; Brian Buchanan; John F. Ackerman; Dave Lucas (Live-360); Devin Anderson (Franklin College Board of Trustees); Brian K. Acton (BMW Constructors); John M. "Mike" Blakley; Andy Sheil (deceased, 2011)

Gary R. Welsh said...

Thanks for sharing, JMV. Interesting list of folks, including many who have benefited generously from government contracts and government handouts. Al Hubbard, of course, was Bush's roommate in college. George Weathersby, also a Harvard grad, got his start working for Beurt SerVaas' Curtis Publishing. Here's information available on the Internet about his bio:

Twenty-five years ago, Weathersby entered the world of private enterprise as president of Curtis Publishing Company. Subsequently, he served as president of the Ontario Corporation, an Indiana-based aerospace manufacturer, president of a New York-based venture capital fund, and president and CEO of the American Management Association.

George has served on the boards of several start-up high technology companies as well as on the boards of well-established companies, including Holcim (US), Inc., AOI Medical, Bostwick Laboratories, and previously USA Funds, Cambridge Parallel Processing, and Electronic Retailing Systems International.

Weathersby has served on the boards of Butler University, University of Southern Indiana, Park Tudor School (Indianapolis), Governor's High School for Science, Mathematics and the Humanities (Muncie), the Education Commission of the States (Denver), as well as the Indiana State Board of Vocational and Technical Education.

Weathersby holds degrees from the University of California, Berkeley (BS in engineering physics, MS in nuclear engineering, and MBA in managerial economics) and Harvard University (SM and PhD in decision and control theory). He has received honorary doctoral degrees from the University of San Francisco and the University of Southern Indiana.

John Michael Vore said...

With the reporting from Notre Dame on the racist tendencies of Tea Partiers, and the national reporting which shows Tea Partiers being fed/led by billionaire donors, one wonders if a sheet of paper can fit between the Indiana Tea Party and the Young President's Organization, a seemingly quite well-off group (of course, one never begrudges business success, just the disguising of it behind "grass-roots" efforts)?

I've tried to reply to your 05 Sept post on the Left's response to the Tea Party, Gary: as national commenters have said, the Fox clip was edited, cutting off Hoffa before he could finish the sentence the Right finds most disturbing. It would've still been upsetting to the Right, but less inflammatory if seen in the context of a complete sentence. Fox really should be more honest when it edits clips to change content.

At any rate, your 05 Sept post brought me "out of retirement": Ideas Without Ideology--under editing for a book containing entries from the last ten years--has returned: "Tea Party Distress Disorder," here:

http://ideaswithoutideology.blogspot.com/2011/09/ideas-without-ideology-returns-tea.html

I have also challenged the Indiana Tea Party to a debate on the Constitution anywhere, anytime. As of yet, no response--perhaps predictably?-jmv