The Reagan-Bush campaign allegedly made a deal with Iranian radicals holding 52 Americans, including some CIA agents, as hostages after they overthrew the U.S.-backed Shah. The deal, which Bush and another key 2000 Floridagate figure, James Baker, reportedly participated in, was that if the radicals held the hostages until after the election, the Reagan administration would give them millions of dollars in arms and other materials. The hostage issue was a primary factor in Carter's defeat - the hostages were suspiciously released minutes after Reagan's inauguration. Iran got the secret arms shipments and also benefited from later secret deals during the Reagan administration known as the Iran-contra scandal. 1
According to Kevin Phillips, an author who was the chief elections analyst for the 1968 Nixon campaign and a U.S. Justice Department official in the Nixon administration who would know a dirty trick when he saw it, Richard Allen, the Reagan campaign's foreign policy chief, said H.W. Bush asked him to look into the Iran hostages and report back to former CIA officer Theodore Shackley, another Reagan campaign official. ABC newsman Pierre Salinger said a French intelligence officer confirmed that a meeting between Reagan campaign officials and Iranian officials took place on Oct. 18-19, 1980, and that file disappeared. Former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir also confirmed the meeting. In addition, a Russian document said H.W. and others met with the Iranians, and that the team "disrupted" Carter's negotiation's for the release of the hostages. "What the Russians described was a large-scale violation of U.S. law," Phillips wrote. 2
Moderate Democrats like Stansfield Turner, Carter's CIA director, and Press Secretary Jody Powell believed there was a plot. Bush Sr. himself did not help cool suspicions when he crowed in Texas on Election Night, 1980: "The ticket is in like a burglar." 3
Later, Carol Gray, the wife of Bush lawyer Boyden Gray, said she saw Bush and Donald Gregg, a CIA agent, laughing at a party about a button that read, "Who is Max Gomez?" Gomez was a CIA agent who helped sell arms to the Nicaraguan contras who tried to overthrow an elected liberal government there after Congress forbid such sales during the Reagan-Bush presidency. "They were above the law," Gray said. 4
Before he left the White House, Bush covered up his illegal dealings during the Iran-contra scandal by pardoning Caspar Weinberger, Elliott Abrams, and others, thus making sure a drawn-out trial did not occur. Bush officials also erased many computer files at the White House and in other agencies.
During his father's 1988 presidential campaign, W. Bush broke the rules when it came to dealing with female reporters. It was one thing to be called "the enforcer from hell" when dealing with staff members; it was quite another to publicly cuss out women media members. Susan Watters, who then wrote for Women's Wear Daily, said he cursed at her for nothing. "He was scary, real scary," she said. Sandra McElwaine, who called Bush "one of nastiest people I have ever encountered," said he turned on her during a lunch at the Federal City Club after she merely asked a question. He yelled at her that it was a "goddamn lie and furthermore, who are you to be interrupting my lunch?" 5
During the primary campaign, Bush helped convince his father to go dirty on Bob Dole and did some of the slimy work himself, as he publicly criticized him for divorcing his wife. The elder Bush had the gall to say, "In my family, loyalty is a strength." Several Bush family members had divorced before, and it wouldn't be long before Neil and Sharon went their separate ways. 6
The younger Bush also was key to convincing Poppy to use the racist Willie Horton ad against Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis, who had a big early lead in polls. An ad run in North Dakota showed Horton and said, "Imagine life with Jesse Jackson as secretary of state." Dukakis never mentioned the possibility of choosing Jackson as a cabinet member. Even Barry Goldwater told Bush to "knock it off and start talking about the issues." 7
Then, Republican political consultant Mary Matalin called the younger Bush a "political terrorist" for his dirty deeds. 8
During his 1992 losing presidential campaign, the elder Bush approved an illegal search for Clinton's passport files. Texas billionaire Ross Perot, who waged an independent campaign against Bush, also accused the Bush team of engaging in dirty tricks against him, such as disrupting his daughter's wedding. 9
Cheney did his part. In 1990 before the Persian Gulf War, Cheney, as secretary of defense, recommended that H.W. Bush not seek approval of Congress for that war, which would violate the law. Bush did not go along with Cheney's advice. Cheney was also a principle schemer of making sure the defense budget was not reduced after the fall of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. 10
Texas voters' purge
Texas had its own voter purge almost two decades before Florida attempted to strike some 60,000 voters from the rolls with false accusations of felony convictions. In 1982, lists were provided to Texas election officials that made mostly false accusations of felony convictions against voters. The accused included public officials who successfully sued for slander. The state also hired armed officers at minority voter precincts and posted signs warning voters against casting illegal ballots. Charles Knutson pointed out in a Democrats.com report that the Texas purge probably involved Bush mastermind Karl Rove, who worked for then-Texas Republican Gov. Bill Clements in 1982. 11
Another case involved the 1984 landslide presidential election of the late Republican Ronald Reagan. In heavily Republican Dallas, where both Bush and Cheney lived at one time and which hosted the 1984 Republican national convention, there were 217 ballots cast in a precinct that had zero registered voters. That did not affect the outcome of the election, but it lent another example of the fraud that has existed for a long time.
In 1986, Michael Shamos, a Pennsylvania computer scientist, testified during a Texas hearing that the computer hardware and software used to tabulate voters' ballots could easily be manipulated.
"Computers can be manipulated remotely, by wire or radio, or by direct physical input," Shamos said. "The memories on which these computers operate can easily fit into a shirt pocket and can be substituted in seconds. The software can be set to await the receipt of a special card, whose presence will cause all the election counters to be altered. This card could be dropped into the ballot box by any confederate. The possibilities for this type of tampering are endless, and virtually no detection is possible once tabulation has been completed." 12 Furthermore, even if the software is not altered, there could still be problems, he said. "Many tests performed on such programs have revealed faulty logic and wildly incorrect results," Shamos said.
Suzan Kesim, then-vice president of a security consulting firm in South Bend, Ind., also testified in the same Texas hearing that "many of the computer auditing procedures used by the banking industry that have been tried and true could easily be modified or used as they are for auditing elections....Fraud possibilities include 'hidden programs.'"
Rove's tricks in Texas campaigns
As a consultant to Texas Gov. Bill Clements in his 1982 re-election bid, Rove pulled many dirty tricks out of his filthy sleeves. He distributed a mock newspaper suggesting that Democratic challenger Mark White was drinking while driving when he had an accident as a college student in which no one died. This was particularly hypocritical since Laura Bush, the wife of the key Rove client, might have been drinking when she ran a stop sign and killed another motorist as a youth. Still, such tricks didn't work as Clements lost to White. 13
Four years later, Rove pulled more foul tricks, which did the trick in helping Clements beat White. Some were petty; Rove would instruct Clements' campaign financial officials to only list three or four names of donors per page on campaign finance reports to make it more costly and difficult to copy the report. Rove's tactics were explained in a 1986 memo he wrote: "Anti-White messages are more important than positive Clements messages. Attack. Attack. Attack." 14
One trick was more than blatant. On Oct 5, 1986, a security company employee that Clements' campaign hired found a bugging device in Rove's office behind a picture frame near Rove's desk. Rove called the offices of the Texas Department of Public Safety, U.S. attorney, and Travis County district attorney, claiming he was called by the FBI and told to secure the area. That was one of numerous lies; the FBI did not tell him to do that. 15
Rove also wasted little time in organizing a press conference that day, which just so happened to coincide with the only debate between Clements and White. Rove blamed the White campaign, saying, "things had been popping up for weeks that no one should have known about." A White spokesman called Rove's accusations bizarre and implied his campaign knew certain things due to leaks.16
White was told of the bugging charge right before the debate, which obviously rattled him and helped Clements gain ground. A DPS investigation pointed to a representative of the security company planting the bug. One guard refused to take a polygraph. And an FBI source said Rove was at the top of the suspect list, with no evidence of a break-in and the suspicious timing that led officials to believe it was an inside job. Helen Eversberg, a U.S. attorney, even said she had evidence to implicate Rove, although she released a statement right before the 1986 election saying "at this time" she had no reason to believe Rove was involved. 17
About a year after the bugging, Patricia Tierney Alofsin said she was at a dinner party with Rove, who "all but came out and said 'I did it.' He was proud of it. It was sort of like, 'We really screwed you over, didn't we?'" 18
The tricks didn't stop. Rove cultivated a relationship with right-wing FBI agent Greg Rampton, a Mormon who carried a Bible and primarily investigated Democrats, often lunching with him. Rampton, in fact, was believed to have squelched the FBI investigation into the alleged Rove bugging in 1986. Rampton spent two years investigating Democrat Garry Mauro, a former land commissioner who ran against Bush for governor in 1998 and believed Rove set him up. Mauro once called Rove "an evil man." "When we had the U.S. attorney and the FBI [as Democrats], we didn't go sit down with the FBI and tell 'em to go get somebody," Mauro said. "Karl Rove thought that was always okay." 19
When the Mauro investigation went nowhere, Rove and Rampton turned to populist Democratic Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower. Rove would often call the offices of The Dallas Morning News with information about Hightower during the investigation, spreading rumors about an alleged contribution kickback scheme. Rove also asked employees in the Department of Agriculture to give any allegations of wrongdoing to him, which Rove would then allegedly take to Rampton. Employees said they were intimidated by Rampton. 20
Hightower was not charged, but three aides, including Deputy Agriculture Commissioner Mike Moeller, were convicted. Moeller and McRae served 27 months in prison.
Rick Perry was another Rove client who benefited by the dirty tricks. During Perry's campaign against Hightower in 1990, which Perry eventually won, Perry sent out a fundraising letter claiming that Hightower's office was under investigation by the FBI, although the indictments would not come until after the 1991 general election. Perry went on to name Larry Beauchamp, the district attorney investigator in the Hightower case, as an "ethics advisor."
Through the years, Rampton and Rove have denied they had a close relationship. In 2000, Rampton told columnist Molly Ivins that he had not talked to Rove about the Hightower case. Yet in 1989, Rove himself wrote in a response to a question from a Senate committee reviewing whether he was qualified for a position with the federal Board for International Broadcasting, "This summer I met with agent Greg Rampton of the Austin FBI office at his request regarding a probe of political corruption in the office of Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower." 21
Rove also told a Texas Senate committee reviewing his appointment to the East Texas State University Board of Regents in 1991 that he talked with Rampton during the Hightower investigation "two or three times." When he was asked by a senator if he knew Rampton, Rove replied, "It depends - would you define 'know' for me?" 22
In 1992, Rove helped keep the story alive about how state Railroad Commissioner Lena Guerrero, a rising star in the Texas Democratic Party, had lied about graduating from college. He circulated press releases and called reporters. The story effectively ended Guerrero's political career.
Rovian axe swings to the right
The Rovian axe could also swing to the right. In 1992, Rove, with help from conservative syndicated columnist Robert Novak, with whom he often dined and would become entwined in the Valerie Plame CIA outing in 2003, smeared Robert Mosbacher Jr., H.W. Bush's then-campaign manager. Rove was mad that Mosbacher gave John Weaver, a Rove competitor, the bulk of a $1 million direct mail contract. Rove spread a story that Mosbacher had been replaced in Texas by another campaign manager, which Novak repeated in a column. Bush reportedly dismissed Rove from his campaign for doing that. 23
Rove also spread rumors that Weaver sexually solicited another man at a state Republican event. Rove's tactics would eventually drive Weaver from the Republican Party. 24
Tom Pauken, a conservative Republican, said Rove did whatever he could to undercut him when he was chairman of the Texas Republican Party in the mid-1990s. Rove diverted money from the state party to Bush's political accounts controlled by Rove, Pauken said. Rove recruited John Cornyn to run against Pauken in the 1997 attorney general's race and probably got Barry Williams to go negative on Pauken in that campaign. 25
Two Christian-right candidates for the Texas State Board of Education, Bob Offutt and Donna Ballard, raised Rove's ire after they endorsed Steve Forbes in the 2000 Republican primary. Rove raised a lot of money for their opponents. The list goes on.
When an investigation occurred against one of Rove's clients, Rove wasted little time calling it political. Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle was such a target after he secured an indictment in 1993 against Rove client Kay Bailey Hutchison for using state workers in her political campaign when she was state treasurer. Rove even testified that Earle tipped off reporters before raiding Hutchison's office, which proved to be another lie. 26
Rove cheated in other ways, such as using his connections with Bush to influence lawsuits against tobacco giant Philip Morris, a Rove client. After Attorney General Dan Morales filed a lawsuit against Morris, Rove commissioned a poll against Morales and personally dropped off the results at Bush's office. Morales eventually won the state a $15.3 billion settlement, but it could have been even more without Rove's work.
Rove even cheated in trying to build a two-story garage at his home in the Austin area that was against deed restrictions. He was forced to stop the plans after neighbors won a legal challenge against him.
Bill Israel, a journalism teacher who once taught a course with Rove on politics and the media at the University of Texas at Austin, said that Rove not only displayed a vindictive streak, but an overly controlling one. "He insists on absolute discipline from staff: nothing escapes him; no one who works with him moves without his direction," Israel wrote. "In Texas, though he was called 'the prime minister' to Gov. George W. Bush, it might have been 'Lord,' as in the divine, for when it came to politics and policy, it was Rove who gave, and Rove who took away." 27
The problem in dealing with Rove is "establishing a clear chain of culpability," Israel added. "Rove once described himself as a die-hard Nixonite; he is, like the former president, both student and master of plausible deniability."
In that UT-Austin class they taught in the late 1990s, Israel said Rove preached the gospel of negative campaigning to students. After Israel later wrote an editorial criticizing Bush's policies after Sept. 11, Israel said Rove sent him hate mail under a fake name - Thor.
Filth in Bush's first governor campaign
In 1994, the Bush-Rove campaign for Texas governor needed to do something to lessen Gov. Ann Richards' popularity. So Rove organized an effective whisper campaign, mostly in the churches and small businesses of East Texas, about Richards promoting numerous gays in her administration and even being a lesbian herself. Republican Sen. Bill Ratliff of Mount Pleasant, the Bush campaign's regional political chairman, even took the whispers public, as he criticized Richards for "appointing avowed homosexual activists" to state jobs. 28
The idea behind whisper campaigns was to start them undercover, make sure Bush kept his distance and publicly claimed he had nothing to do with them, and use others to actually perform the dirty deeds. Bush himself had the gall to publicly say he was disappointed that Richards chose to "attack me personally." "The Bush campaign in 1994 effectively used surrogates to spread any campaign message the campaign thought needed to be carried," said Chuck McDonald, a Richards’ spokesman in that campaign. 29
There was little doubt who was behind those whispers, he added. "Clearly, Karl Rove has a formula, and everything in 1994, in 1998 [Bush's governor re-election year] and [in 2000] fits within that formula," McDonald said. 30
Bush's main motivation for running for governor wasn;t to do something to help the state - it was out of a personal vendetta against Clinton more than against Richards, although Bush certainly didn't appreciate her "silver spoon" comment at the 1988 Democratic National Convention. In the early part of the 1994 race, Dallas sportswriter Randy Galloway cornered Bush and told him Richards was "too popular" to be beaten. "Randy, I'm not running against her," Bush said. "I'm running against the guy in the White House."
"The way he said it was like a blood oath," Galloway recalled. 31
The campaign included more than just cheating through smears, but cheating through outright lies. For example, Bush said would say that crime was up in Texas, but only some numbers were up in a few categories. The actual crime rates were down in all categories. 32
Rove goes dirty in Alabama
Rove also ran dirty campaigns in other states. In 1994, the Business Council of Alabama called on Rove to manage the campaigns of some Republicans for the state supreme court. It was a tall order; a Republican had not won election to that court in more than a century. So the only way Rove, who had helped elect Republican judges in Texas through debauchery, could change that was to cheat.
In one race between Republican challenger Perry O. Hooper and Democratic Chief Justice Ernest "Sonny" Hornsby, Rove focused on a case involving a wealthy Alabama doctor who sued BMW after discovering that his new car had been damaged by acid rain and repainted, and won a $4 million verdict. Rove accused Hornsby of getting much of his campaign funds from "wealthy personal-injury trial lawyers" who perpetuated such cases and called him an "activist liberal judge," both of which were lies. One ad featured a made-up scene involving Hornsby calling a lawyer to solicit campaign funds before a trial involving that attorney and was made to appear like it was true.
On election day, officials announced that Hornsby actually won by a slim 304-vote margin. In a hypocritical move in which Rove did exactly what he and other Republicans mauled Democrat Al Gore over in the 2000 presidential race, Rove demanded a recount and began a public campaign to "win over" the people of Alabama. A former staff member of that campaign said, "Our role was to try to keep people motivated about Perry Hooper's election, and then to undermine the other side's support by casting them as liars, cheaters, stealers, immoral - all of that." 33
Rove was smarter than Gore since he called for an entire statewide recount and did not just focus on a few Republican-strong counties. Rove even hired investigators to come up with supposed fraud, such as machines that had failed to count all votes. Rove lied about poll watchers being threatened with arrest, nursing home patients' votes being cast for them, and Democrats going to cemeteries to write down the names of dead people to supposedly put on absentee ballots.
Hooper publicly said Hornsby stole the election, which came down to a dispute over absentee ballots that had been excluded because they weren't notarized as required by law, much the same as in 2000 in Florida. Rove found a man who publicly claimed the vote of his son, who was overseas in the military, was among those that was not being counted.
The dispute stretched into the following year, as Rove and Republicans were far more willing to fight such matters than Gore and Democrats. On Inauguration Day, both candidates showed up to be crowned. The legal battle went on for almost a year, and Hornsby even appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court after a lower court gave the election to Hooper. Eventually, the Democrat conceded, as they usually do.
Rove was involved in another judicial race that same year between Republican Harold See and Democratic incumbent Mark Kennedy, former Alabama Gov. George Wallace's son-in-law. Rove's attacks against Kennedy included false charges that he was using funds from a nonprofit children's foundation he worked with for his campaign. Kennedy won that race in 1994, but he chose not to run after that term, partly due to the Rovian tactics, which included a false whisper campaign that Kennedy was a pedophile. Students from the University of Alabama law school, where See taught, helped spread that under-the-radar campaign.
"Mark is not your typical Alabama macho, beer-drinkin', tobacco-chewin', pickup-drivin' kind of guy," said Joe Perkins, who managed the Democratic campaigns of several Rove opponents. "He is a small, well-groomed, well-educated family man, and what they tried to do was make him look like a homosexual pedophile. That was really, really hard to take." 34
But in 1996, the tactics worked for See against Democratic incumbent Kenneth Ingram, when Rove took the blame-his-own-bugging incident a little farther. Rove anonymously attacked his own candidate through fliers and blamed his opponent for those attacks. He ordered campaign staff to anonymously distribute fliers to people's homes with messages that personally attacked See and his family.
"I was told, 'Do not hand it to anybody, do not tell anybody who you're with, and if you can, borrow a car that doesn't have your tags,'" one staffer said. See "won" that election through such blatant cheating. 35
Bush cheats Texas taxpayers as governor
As governor of Texas, Bush couldn't even put in a full day of work in, cheating taxpayers once again. At most, he "worked" seven-and-a-half hours a day and would take off for two-hour lunch breaks that included working out and playing video games. He refused to read the details of reports that could help him make key decisions, always asking for summaries from staff aides. That's why he rarely talked without a script and would sound like he didn't understand problems when he answered impromptu questions. 36
Bush also cheated as governor when he was called to jury duty in 1996 and didn't fill out questions about if he had ever been accused in a criminal case. Counsel Alberto Gonzales said Bush did not have to serve on a jury because he might be called in to pardon parolees. The real reason was to hide Bush's drunk-driving conviction, which came out in 2000. 37
Even in his 1998 re-election campaign in which he was a shoo-in to win, Bush couldn't help but cheat when he finally agreed to only one "debate" against Democratic opponent Garry Mauro. Bush's team changed the debate rules, only agreeing to debate Mauro in isolated El Paso on a Friday night when many Texans were consumed by high school football. Bush also banned national media representatives. 38
As he got ready to take over the White House in late 2000, Bush broke state rules by not consulting with Texas State Library officials before deciding where to place his scant formal governor papers. He sent the papers to his father's presidential library at Texas A&M so they could not be easily accessed, a decision that library officials successfully challenged to the attorney general. 39
Rove's dirty business deals
While Bush was performing his dirty deeds in the Texas Governor's house, Rove was amassing a fortune from political consulting that eventually enabled him to own homes in Washington, D.C., and Florida - both worth more than $1 million. Before running Bush's 2000 presidential campaign, Rove had to promise Bush he would sell his consulting business, which he did in a smelly deal made with two former employees of Rove's, Todd Olsen and Ted Delisi.
Rove ended up receiving about 20 percent of the Bush campaign's budget, and the business bought by Olsen and Delisi raked in millions in Republican contracts, even though the Rove friends were political neophytes. Rove also obtained other perks, such as selling a bed and breakfast in Texas called the River Oaks Lodge for more than double its value to Estadio Partners LLC, whose owners included Olsen and other Rove friends. 40
Halliburton fined, sued due to Cheney’s actions
After Clinton beat H.W. Bush in 1992, Cheney, who had been defense secretary, was out of a job. So he turned to his friends in the defense industry to help secure him the CEO position at Halliburton Co., a defense and oil company based in Texas. Even though Cheney had no experience in running such a business, he held the position from 1995 until 2000 and lived in a wealthy Dallas suburb.
Cheney's value to Halliburton was seen in the company obtaining many more billions of dollars in government contracts and loans than it had received before 1995. He did that not just with his name and contacts, but by substantially increasing Halliburton's political action committee contributions to mostly Republican politicians and committees, from $67,000 in 1992 to $500,000 in 1998. For the 1998 to 2000 election cycle, Halliburton was one of the top corporate donors in the country, ranking up there with Exxon and Enron, according to watchdog group Open Secrets. 41
Another of Cheney's legacies at Halliburton was leading the acquisition of a subsidiary called Dresser Industries. Dresser struck lucrative deals with Iraq's Hussein, while Halliburton did business with Libya and Iran. The deals were made while there was an embargo not to trade with counties like Iran and Libya. 42
Kellogg Brown & Root, another Halliburton subsidiary, agreed in 2003 to pay the U.S. government $2 million to settle allegations it defrauded the military by submitting false claims for delivery orders between 1994 and 1998. 43
Cheney also approved fraudulent accounting practices to conceal financial weaknesses in Halliburton from stockholders, according to a lawsuit filed in 2002 by conservative watchdog organization Judicial Watch. The effect of Cheney's actions was to "materially inflate Halliburton's revenues and earnings from 1998 onward," Judicial Watch's legal brief stated. "For example, in the fourth quarter of 1998, the company reported $175 million of pre-tax operating profits, more than half of which ($89 million) resulted from the undisclosed change in accounting principle in violation of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles." 44
In 1998, Cheney pulled in $4.4 million in salary and benefits from Halliburton and made almost $2 million the following year. In May 2000, he cashed in 100,000 Halliburton shares to gain another $5.1 million and sold the rest of his shares in August 2000 for $18.5 million. A short time later, the value of shares of Halliburton's stock plunged amid asbestos lawsuits and cleanup costs.
Well into 2005, Cheney continued to receive more than $150,000 a year in deferred compensation from Halliburton, even though he was supposed to divest himself of all conflicts of interest. Halliburton was the fastest-growing contractor during the Bush administration's first five years, seeing its contracts increase more than 600 percent, according to a federal accountability report. 45
Other Bush family deceit
In the late 1980s, many business types were involved in the savings and loan scandal, which cost taxpayers at least $300 billion. Neil Bush was one of them, leading Silverado Savings & Loan in Colorado into default, costing taxpayers $1 billion. Some said federal regulators delayed the investigation enough so that the order to shut down Silverado came after the 1988 presidential election and would not hurt Papa Bush.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. settled the Silverado case for $49.5 million, but Neil Bush never paid a dime, with insurance policies covering the payments. A Bush family friend even organized a legal defense fund for Neil, who arrogantly called federal investigators "government bullies."
"He seemed to believe it was his birthright to profit at the nation's expense," writer Steven Wilmsen wrote. 46
Footnotes
1. John Dee. "Coup 2K." Lumpen Magazine, January 2001.
2. Kevin Phillips. American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush. New York: Viking, 2004, pp. 284, 287-88.
3. Kitty Kelley. The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty. New York: Doubleday, 2004, pp. 373-74.
4. Ibid., p. 396.
5. Ibid., p. 451.
6. Sandy Johnson, "Bush Says Iran-Contra 'Exhaustively Looked At' - But Questions Persist." The Associated Press, Jan. 11, 1988.
7. Kitty Kelley. The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty. New York: Doubleday, 2004, pp. 463.
8. Bill Minutaglio, First Son: George W. Bush and the Bush Family Dynasty. New York: Times Books, 1999, p. 12.
9. Ibid., p. 261.
10. John Nichols, Dick: The Man Who is President. New York: The New Press, 2004, pp. 95, 109.
11. Charles Knutson, "The Texas Blueprint for the Stolen Election," Democrats.com, 2001.
12. Addison-North Dallas Register, May 1989.
13. Wayne Slater. "Rivals again fault Bush over rumors; Governor and aides deny starting, spreading rumors." The Dallas Morning News, December 2, 1999.
14. James Moore & Wayne Slater. Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2003, p. 149.
15. Ibid., p. 33.
16. David Maraniss, "Texas Campaign Office Bugged Aide to GOP Challenger Accuses Governor's Camp of Eavesdropping." The Washington Post, Oct. 7, 1986.
17. James Moore & Wayne Slater. Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2003, pp. 52-53.
18. Ibid., p. 57.
19. Ibid., p. 13.
20. Ibid., pp. 74, 89, 91.
21. Molly Ivins. "Rove: What It Means to 'Know'" The Texas Observer, Aug. 25, 2000.
22. Ibid.
23. Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, "Woes Beset Bush in Texas." Chicago Sun-Times, Sept. 18, 1992.
24. James Moore & Wayne Slater. Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2003, pp. ??
25. Louis Dubose. "Bush's Hit Man: Karl Rove wins . . . by any means necessary." The Texas Observer, March 16, 2001.
26. Ibid.
27. Bill Israel, Editor & Publisher, July 5, 2005.
28. Wayne Slater. "Rivals again fault Bush over rumors; Governor and aides deny starting, spreading rumors." The Dallas Morning News, December 2, 1999.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. Gail Sheehy. "The Accidental Candidate," Vanity Fair, Oct. 2000.
32. Molly Ivins. Who let the Dogs in? New York: Random House, 2004, p. 169.
33. Joshua Green. "Karl Rove in a Corner." The Atlantic Monthly, Nov. 2004.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
36. Gail Sheehy. "The Accidental Candidate," Vanity Fair, Oct. 2000.
37. James Moore & Wayne Slater. Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2003, p. 276.
38. Bill Minutaglio, First Son: George W. Bush and the Bush Family Dynasty. New York: Times Books, 1999, p. 10.
39. John Dean. Worse than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush. New York: Little, Brown & Co., 2004, pp. 56-57.
40. Miriam Rozen, "The Nerd Behind the Throne." Dallas Observer, May 13, 1999.
41. "Top Contributors to Federal Candidates," 1998-2000 cycle, OpenSecrets.org.
42. Andrew Metz and James Toedtman, "Halliburton's a Factor." Newsday, Oct. 5, 2004.
43. Don Thompson, "Defense contractor settles military fraud lawsuit for $2 million." The Associated Press, Feb. 8, 2002.
44. Stephen S. Stephens, Lyle Lionbarger and Deanna J. Lionbarger v. Halliburton Company, Richard B. Cheney, et. al., Judicial Watch lawsuit and press release, July 10, 2002.
45. T.D. Allman, "The Curse of Dick Cheney." Rolling Stone, Aug. 25, 2004; HalliburtonWatch.org.
46. Steven Wilmsen, "The Corruption of Neil Bush." Playboy, June 1991.
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