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December 19, 2000 | Barbara Bush and George H. W. Bush's brother, Prescott Bush, belong to a political organization, AmeriCares. AmeriCares is a CIA front that supports rightwing military operations while
posing as a humanitarian group.
The late J. Peter Grace, the chair of AmeriCares from 1982 to 1995, also worked with the ultra-right racist think tank, the Liberty Lobby. Grace was the key participant in Project Paperclip, a covert
operation which recruited 900 Nazi scientists to work in the U. S. after World War II. Many of those Nazis had been found guilty of experimentation on humans. ("Censored 1999: The News That Didn't
Make The News," Seven Stories Press, 1999)
Sara Flounders is a writer and co-coordinator of the International Action Center (IAC), a group that has opposed U. S. sanctions on third-world countries. In an article published in "Censored 1999,"
Flounders reported that Barbara Bush was then AmeriCares ambassador-at-large.
Flounders said George H. W. Bush's brother, Prescott Bush, was on AmeriCares board of directors. As former CIA director, George H. W. Bush is aware of J. Peter Grace's part in bringing Nazi scientists to
the U. S., and of Grace's work with the Liberty Lobby.
Here's a brief look at the Liberty Lobby's history: According to Deborah Lipstadt (Denying the Holocaust, Penguin Books, 1994), the far-right organization, the Liberty Lobby, was founded by Willis A. Carto. Lipstadt says that The Wall Street Journal has labeled Carto and the Liberty Lobby anti-Semitic. She writes that investigative columnist, Drew Pearson, identified Carto as a Hitler "fan." Pearson said the Liberty Lobby is "infiltrated by Nazis who revere the memory of Hitler."
Lipstadt writes that The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) describes Carto as the most powerful anti-Semite in the U. S. The ADL also says the Liberty Lobby heads a "publishing and organizational complex that
for more than two decades has propagated anti-Semitism and racism in the United States."
Carto once sued The Wall Street Journal for calling the Liberty Lobby anti-Semitic. The District Court for the District of Columbia ruled against Carto saying it would be hard to find a case where
evidence of anti-Semitism was "more compelling."
Conservative William F. Buckley once said the Liberty Lobby is a "hotbed of anti-Semitism," and the conservative magazine Human Events reported that Carto has long been a Hitler sympathizer. Lipstadt says
Carto has a "revulsion for Jews and a belief in the need for an absolutist government that would protect the 'racial heritage' of the United States."
Lipstadt writes that the racist Carto also believes Jewish people and African-Americans are "at the root of civilization's problems." Carto argued during World War II that Jewish influence on American
policy had blinded the U. S. to the advantages of uniting with Hitler. He later organized the Joint Council for Repatriation, for the purpose of returning all black Americans to Africa.
In 1957, Carto told Judge Tom P. Brady, founder of the anti-civil-rights organization, the White Citizens' Council, that the Citizens' Council should unite with the Joint Council for Repatriation but keep
the link between the two groups secret. At the time, Brady was also a member of the Mississippi Supreme Court.
Why would George H. W. Bush, his brother Prescott, and Barbara Bush actively support an organization whose chair worked with the Liberty Lobby? If that were the only thing amiss about AmeriCares and its
history, it might be different, but there's more.
AmeriCares also funnels money and "humanitarian" supplies to various right wing military forces, including, for example, contra forces in Afghanistan. Sara Flounders says the AmeriCares Web site reveals
that its shipments tend to go "wherever the CIA is most active."
The New York Times, August 13, 1985, reported that a front organization of Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church (The Nicaraguan Freedom Fund) funneled $350,000 to AmeriCares. New York Newsday, April
13, 1988, reported that AmeriCares tax returns showed AmeriCares gave cash and supplies to Contra leader Adolfo Calero.
Former AmeriCares chair, J. Peter Grace, also played a prominent role in putting together the fascist coup that overthrew democratically elected Salvador Allende in Chile. Sara Flounders says AmeriCares
presents itself on its web site as the "humanitarian arm of Corporate America."
One corporation, the large oil company Amoco, has given more than $46 million to AmeriCares. Flounders mentions that Amoco was a direct beneficiary of the Gulf War.
In the context of the recent presidential election, where the complaints of thousands of disenfranchised African-American and Jewish voters were largely ignored by Jeb and George W. Bush, the Bush
family's willingness to actively support an organization once chaired by J. Peter Grace is not surprising.
AmeriCares' support of ultra-rightwing regimes, and Grace's help in bringing Nazis to the U. S. and his assistance in overthrowing democratically elected leaders, are actions that fit right in with what
happened in the 2000 election.
If it should turn out that African-Americans were definitely targeted for "voter cleansing,"—if black people were in fact falsely declared felons and deliberately removed from voter roles by the
thousands, that would seem to be standard practice for folks who knowingly and contentedly hobnob with reactionary regimes, and who tacitly condone people such as J. Peter Grace and his peers.
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