Joe
also owned the Talisman Sugar Company, which was heavily involved in
Florida sugar cane production and partly responsible for the imposition
of disastrous restrictions on the import of sugar from countries in the
Caribbean, a policy that ensured economic instability in the nations of
the West Indies.
St. Joe was also a part owner of Jeb Bush's
firm, the Codina Group, run by Bush's close friend Armando Codina, a
Cuban exile who fled the island as a teen.
On August 2, 2006, WMR
reported: "President George W. and Florida Governor Jeb Bush, two
brothers who owe their offices to the power of the right-wing
Cuban-American community in south Florida, engaged in a macabre and
sinister death watch for Cuban President Fidel Castro while being hosted
by wealthy Cuban-American supporters. As Castro was rushed to the hospital suffering from internal bleeding, the Bush brothers began planning action against the Cuban government and the two Castro brothers -- Fidel and Raul.
"...The
Bush brothers huddled at a Republican National Committee fundraiser
with Jeb Bush's business mentor and partner, wealthy Cuban-American real
estate developer Armando Codina, head of the Codina Group and close
friend of George H. W. Bush.
"Codina sponsored the fundraiser at
his Coral Gables home. Until 1994, the firm was known as the
Codina-Bush Group. Codina and Jeb Bush made a fortune in developing
southern Florida real estate properties. Codina invested $1000 in 1984 in a Miami office tower project and cashed out his shares in 1990 for a hefty $346,000.
"Before he left Codina in 1993, Jeb earned huge commissions for the sale of real estate to Japanese investors. Jeb also sold water pumps
[for irrigation projects as in Afghanistan] to Nigeria in a
questionable deal involving Nigeria's military junta, M&W Pump, and
another Bush company, Bush-El. These deals occurred at the same time
that Jeb Bush was enmeshed in the savings and loan scandal involving
Florida-based financial institutions.
"As reported by WMR last
November, the politically-powerful St. Joe Company has a significant
investment in the Codina Group. After Jeb Bush became governor, he took
care of his real estate business friends, selling them state-owned land
at cut rate prices.
"Joining the Bush brothers in Coral Gables
were the Florida Cuban-American GOP congressional team of Representative
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who best represents the fact that America’s
foreign policies on the Middle East and Latin America have been
outsourced to two vocal and politically powerful special interests --
the Israeli and Cuban exile lobbies. Ros Lehtinen's mother was a
Jewish-Cuban refugee from Cuba.
"Joining the Bush brothers in
the Florida death watch huddle was another GOP brother team,
Representatives Lincoln and Mario-Diaz Balart. The brothers Bush and
Balart and Ros-Lehtinen and Codina have their eyes set on lucrative real estate development
schemes for post-Castro Cuba. The fact that oil has been discovered in
Cuban waters has also earned the interest of the Bush-Cheney petroleum
cartel."
On September 4, 2009, WMR reported on a
more-than-coincidental link between St. Joe and the collapsed financial
empire of now-jailed Sir Allen Stanford.
WMR reported on
Stanford's attorney: "[Carlos] Loumiet is listed as the registered agent
for the Stanford home [in Coral Gables] in a contrivance called Casuarina 20 LLC. Located nearby at 50 Casuarina
is the home of Cuban-American businessman Armando Codina, Jeb Bush’s
longtime friend and business partner who has sat on the boards of
American Airlines and Merrill Lynch.
"In the weeks prior to Jeb
Bush taking over as Governor of Florida, Stanford Trust, in December
1998, inked the sweetheart deal with Arthur M. Simon, the director of
the Florida Division of Baking within the Department of Banking and
Finance to allow the Antigua-based entity to begin issuing CDs in
Florida.
"The deal was signed by Stanford Trust on December 10
and by Simon on December 14. In the interim, Florida's outgoing
Democratic Governor Lawton Chiles died of a heart attack on December 12
in the Governor's Mansion."
Stanford was under investigation for laundering drug money for the CIA through his banks in Antigua, Panama, Colombia, and other countries.
With
opium production again at an all-time high in US-occupied Afghanistan,
it would appear that the Bush family is, once again, reaping the
benefits of the opium trade it once enjoyed in Afghanistan in the 1970s
under King Mohammad Zahir Shah and Prince Mohammad Daoud until the
pro-Soviet coup in April 1978.
In November 1974, Secretary of
State Henry Kissinger visited Kabul and agreed to increase funding for
USAID projects in Afghanistan, including the irrigation programs
benefiting Afghanistan's opium output.
After a few years, Daoud,
who succeeded the King and proclaimed a republic, grew tired of his
Soviet military advisers and Communist Cabinet ministers and began to
dismiss them.
A CIA report states that on April 13, 1977,
"Soviet party leader Leonid Brezhnev launched into a tirade about the
large number of 'experts' from 'NATO countries' involved in various
projects in Afghanistan. He asserted that they were ‘spies’ and demanded
they be sent out of the country."
Brezhnev and his KGB were
undoubtedly aware that the CIA, who was under the directorship of George
H. W. "Poppy" Bush in 1976, and his connected firms like St. Joe were
cashing in on the increase in Afghanistan opium yields.
Moscow
Radio's home service reported on November 24, 1985, "As far back as
1979, a secret deal was concluded between the CIA and the ringleaders of
the Dushman groups of smugglers. The deal made provision, in
particular, for the supply from the USA, in the guise of medical instruments, of equipment for converting raw opium into heroin and morphine.
"At present in the Peshawar region, about 20 such clandestine laboratories are operating. Moreover, the CIA stipulated only one condition:
part of the cash gained from the sale of drugs must be donated to
purchase weapons for the Dushman bands.” The Soviets referred to the
Afghan Mujaheddin groups in Pakistan aided by the CIA as the "Dushman" groups -- Dushman being an Afghan word for "enemies of the revolution.'
"Four
years ago the United States Drug Enforcement Agency recognized that 50%
of the heroin getting to America came from the country receiving the
most aid from the CIA [Afghanistan]. Even so, nothing was done."
After
coming to power in the 1990s, the Taliban drastically curtailed opium
production, totally banning its production in July 2000. Under President
Hamid Karzai, Karzai's family, most notably his younger half brother,
Ahmed Wali Karzai, who is paid by the CIA, is financially benefiting
from the current windfall profits from opium exports.
Opium production is at an all-time high, with an estimated street value now pegged at $3 billion per year.
***
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist, author
and syndicated columnist. He is a frequent political and national
security commentator on Television News and is a regular contributor to
Russia Today. Madsen is the author of Jaded Tasks: Big Oil, Black Ops
& Brass Plates and Overthrow a Fascist Regime on $15 a Day.
(6-24-11) A one-time Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) source revealed to WMR that a Bush family-connected firm, the St. Joe Company, was heavily involved in an irrigation project that provided water to opium-producing fields in southern Afghanistan in the 1970s.
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