The Family (54 page)
As chairman of the Dade County GOP, Jeb frequently called his father for political favors, and in 1986 he asked George to come to Florida to campaign for Bob Martinez, the Republican candidate for governor. “The kids were always calling the Vice President’s office with requests,” said Bush’s deputy chief of staff, “but Jeb’s calls usually got the old man’s best attention . . . I think he trusted Jeb’s political instincts.”
Jeb’s hard-right politics—“I’m a hang-’em-by-the-neck conservative”—and his vociferous support of the contras appealed to his father and boosted Jeb’s popularity in the conservative, anti-Communist Hispanic community of Dade County. Jeb’s access to fabulously wealthy Cubans made him invaluable to his father’s political staff as they prepared their 1988 run for a Bush presidency. Jeb’s request for his father to campaign for Martinez was immediately put on the Vice President’s schedule, and George made several trips to Florida. When Martinez won, he appointed Jeb to be Florida’s secretary of commerce, a job Jeb held for twenty months. It enabled him to travel abroad on trade missions to Latin America and Asia, pursuing further business opportunities for himself and his state. After George was elected President in 1988, he appointed Martinez—who had been defeated in his bid for reelection—“drug czar.”
As Florida’s secretary of commerce, Jeb awarded a $160,000 state contract to Richard Lawless, a former CIA agent, to promote Florida in the Far East. After Jeb quit his state job, Lawless paid him $528,000 for various real-estate services. Lawless also donated $35,000 to the Republican Party and $5,000 to Jeb’s first gubernatorial campaign.
Jeb started a second company with Hank Klein, Bush-Klein Realty, to sell real estate. His new partner wondered if politics would get in the way of business.
“I asked him, ‘What does your dad think of your going into business with a liberal Democrat?’” Klein said. “Jeb told me that his father thought about it a minute, then said, ‘It’s okay—as long as you make money together.’
“I said, ‘Spoken like a true Republican.’”
After his father became President, Jeb phoned with more requests—autographed photos, presidential cuff links, and presidential endorsements. When he managed the 1989 congressional campaign of Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in a race against ten other candidates for the congressional seat once held by Representative Claude Pepper, Jeb asked his father to endorse the prominent Cuban American. George agreed and flew to Florida on Air Force One to appear with her during her campaign in Miami. He declared, “I am certain in my heart I will be the first American president to set foot on the soil of a free and independent Cuba.”
Ros-Lehtinen won the seat and became the first Cuban-born American and the first Hispanic female to sit in Congress, which further enhanced Jeb and his father in the eyes of the anti-Castro community. Heading an economic mission to Japan a few months later, Jeb attended a seminar at which pamphlets were distributed describing him as “political heir” to the President and as having “the strongest connections to the White House among the members of the Bush family.”
Jeb accumulated a great deal of his net worth during his father’s presidency. After working in the 1988 presidential campaign, Jeb formed a private partnership, Bush-El, with David Eller of M&W Pump. The two men, who met through the Dade County GOP, sought to sell giant water pumps to poor countries, including Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Panama, Taiwan, and Thailand. Perhaps their most lucrative deal occurred in Nigeria, where they pursued a $74 million loan from the Export-Import Bank to finance the sale of pumps for irrigation and flood control.
Two months after his father’s inauguration, Jeb walked into the office of Nigerian President Ibrahim Babangida in Lagos and presented him with an autographed copy of President Bush’s inaugural address. Jeb and his business partner were visiting Nigeria with their wives for five days, ostensibly for the dedication of a $3.6 million M&W manufacturing plant.
In advance of the trip the President’s son had informed the State Department that he was traveling on business and “did not want any special treatment”—shades of his Uncle Prescott. And despite the President’s cable to foreign embassies not to accord preferential treatment to his family, Jeb was red-carpeted every step of the way. He told reporters that the meeting with the Nigerian President was a “brief courtesy call” for the President to thank M&W for its investment in Nigeria. The Ambassador’s report to the State Department described a longer meeting, which covered human rights in Cuba, the value of close U.S.-Nigeria ties, and President Babangida’s desire to visit the United States. After Jeb passed on the Nigerian President’s request, a White House state visit was scheduled, although it was postponed at the last minute because of unrest among Nigeria’s Muslims.
After Jeb’s trip, President Bush sent a handwritten message to the Nigerian President by diplomatic pouch: “I want to thank you for receiving Jeb and Columba Bush and for the hospitality they were shown at all their events in Nigeria. They came back singing the praises of your country and very grateful to you.”
On Jeb’s second trip to Nigeria, he was accompanied by M&W’s Nigerian agent, Al-Haji Mohammed Indimi, who carried a suitcase full of Nigerian cash, which he used to bribe Nigerian officials. Jeb later told the press he knew nothing about the bribes. After Jeb’s visit, the Export-Import Bank approved eight direct loans of $74.3 million on Nigeria’s pending purchase of pumps from M&W. The U.S. government later accused David Eller of inflating his prices and using the loan money to pay for the bribes and a large commission to Indimi. The business partner of the President’s son was not charged with criminal fraud. By the time of the government’s investigation, Jeb had departed. Having made $196,000 in commissions from Bush-El, Jeb sold his share of the company to Eller for $452,000. He had worked there for six years.
While the Vice President was discouraging his second son’s political ambitions, his third son, known in the family as “Mr. Perfect,” was about to bring the Bushes their most public humiliation. His parents had always described Neil Bush as “the ideal child” because in his eagerness to please them he did the unpleasant chores no one else wanted to do. “Neil brings us nothing but happiness,” George wrote shortly after his son’s birth. He was saying the same thing thirty years later.
“He drove us all crazy, growing up, because he made us look just horrible,” Marvin, son number four, told a reporter. Neil said it was his way of making up for his poor grades, which were attributable to his dyslexia. “I always found ways to compensate,” he said. “I was nicer. I volunteered to rake the yard when the others were bailing out.”
John Claiborne Davis, the former assistant headmaster at St. Albans, said he had the unenviable duty of getting Neil into a good college. “He was a perfectly charming guy,” recalled Davis, “but not a spectacular student. Still, I managed to get him into Tulane because of who his father was. Thank God, Barbara Bush didn’t press me to get him into Yale. I think she was quite happy that I swung Tulane for him . . . Neil earned a bachelor’s degree in international relations and then a master’s degree in business . . . How he ever got into graduate school—and finished—I’ll never know. At St. Albans we gave out three types of diplomas: one was a diploma with merit, which was for someone at the top of his class. Then there was a diploma with commendation for the B+ students, and, finally, there was a certificate of graduation with no distinction whatsoever . . . That’s the certificate that Neil got.
“He had applied to Rice first because he said he wanted to be in Texas, but Rice is a good school with high academic standards, and they turned him down. So I suggested he apply to Tulane in New Orleans . . . I had placed several of our boys there, and I thought I could get him in . . . I remember visiting during the first semester to see how our students were doing. I took Neil and two black boys from St. Albans out to dinner at Commander’s Palace. We all ordered lobster, but poor Neil didn’t know what to do with his fish fork. When the waitress came, he said, ‘How do I eat this thing?’ She put the napkin around his neck like a bib on a baby. She cracked the shell of the fish for him, put his fork in, and spoon-fed him his first bite. ‘That’s how you do it, sonny,’ she said. The other boys and I winked at each other; we couldn’t believe that Neil had never had lobster before, especially after all those summers at Kennebunkport . . . I guess I had just assumed there was a minimum level of sophistication in the Bush household.”
Howard Means, who taught Neil English at St. Albans, did not make that assumption, especially after meeting Neil’s parents. “It was probably thirty years after I had taught Neil that I met Barbara and George Bush. He had been out of office for several months, and they were at a party standing all by themselves. No one was paying any attention to them, so I walked over and introduced myself.
“‘Mr. President,’ I said, ‘I taught Neil at St. Albans. How is his grammar these days?’
“‘Well, he’s fine but he still ends a sentence with a proposition.’”
Means waited for Bush to laugh at his gaffe, but the President apparently did not realize he had made one.
Following graduation from Tulane’s business school, Neil campaigned as a full-time volunteer for his father in 1980, working in New Hampshire with former Governor Hugh Gregg. There he met Sharon Lee Smith, a schoolteacher. They were married in the summer of 1980 at Kennebunkport and moved to Denver so that Neil, like his father and his brother George, could get into the oil and gas business. Neil started his apprenticeship with Amoco as a lease negotiator for thirty thousand dollars a year. He planned to follow his father’s trajectory—make a fortune and go into politics. He had his heart set on becoming governor of Colorado.
“They’d talk about how G.W. was going to run for governor of Texas and Jeb would run for governor of Florida and Neil would run for governor of Colorado,” said Douglas Wead, a Bush family friend who served as a special assistant in the first Bush White House. “The family would have bet on Jeb. But if you just observed their personalities, you’d say Neil . . . He’s relaxed, he’s funny, he’s a better speaker than anybody in the family . . . He could easily have been a congressman.”
Being the son of the Vice President swung open doors that would have been closed to any other young man without social entrée. Neil and Sharon quickly became part of Denver’s social scene. Neil played squash at the exclusive Denver Club, and Sharon did volunteer work at the Children’s Hospital, the city’s most socially prestigious charity. Both were invited to the very best parties.
Within two years Neil decided to start his own oil business, although the oil boom had peaked in 1981. With James Judd and Evans Nash, he formed JNB Exploration in 1983. Neil and his partners only put up $100 apiece and bankrolled their company with $1 million from two Denver developers, Kenneth Good and Bill Walters. As president of JNB Exploration, Neil paid himself sixty thousand dollars a year. He hung a framed picture of his father on the wall of his office, and on his desk he displayed a nameplate that read “Mr. Bush.” Neil told visitors the nameplate had come from the U.S. Senate seat that once belonged to his grandfather Prescott Bush.
Impressed by Neil’s lineage, Kenneth Good wanted to further ingratiate himself with the Vice President’s son, so he lent Neil $100,000 to invest in commodities. Neil lost the investment, but Good forgave the loan. Walters also lent Neil $100,000, but he held on to the paper. In the spring of 1985 both men introduced Neil to their banker, Michael Wise, the president of Silverado Savings and Loan. Wise asked Neil if he’d like to join Silverado’s board of directors.
“I didn’t pretend to be an expert on the savings and loan business, but Wise said that was O.K.,” Neil recalled. His director’s fee was eight thousand dollars a year. “I guess it would be naive to think that the Bush name didn’t have something to do with it,” he added. Neil said he accepted Wise’s offer because he was eager to be respected as a businessman. “I was looking to further establish my roots in this town. I was under the impression then that joining the board of a financial institution is a way to establish one’s reputation in the community and to give you exposure to the people who are the players in a community, the people who make a difference.”
Ronald Reagan had deregulated the savings-and-loan industry in 1982, which allowed S&Ls to make riskier investments with less government oversight. Neil’s only banking experience had been a summer job filling out forms in the trust office of a Dallas bank. He was hardly qualified to provide adequate oversight of Silverado’s business practices or to see the questionable deals intended to cover up losses caused by bad loans.
Over the next three years, Neil encouraged Silverado to approve $200 million in loans to Bill Walters and Kenneth Good without fully disclosing to the other directors that both men were part owners of Neil’s company, JNB Exploration. Nor did Neil mention that he owed Walters $100,000 for a personal loan and that he had been forgiven another $100,000 loan by Good. When Kenneth Good offered to buy 80 percent of JNB and promised to put $3.1 million into the company by September 1987, Neil leaped. “It was a sweet deal,” he said.
Too sweet, thought Evans Nash, who was concerned about Neil’s relationship with the high-flying developer. Good lived lavishly, even by big-spending standards, and Neil seemed too dazzled by Good’s $10 million home that covered thirty-three thousand square feet and featured an indoor handball court and indoor and outdoor tennis courts. Good sped around Denver in a Maserati and flew to Monte Carlo on a private jet. “He was kind of free with his money,” Neil said. “He went for high-risk ventures, which is probably why he was interested in my oil business.”
Neil was not at all concerned that Good had persuaded Silverado to forgive $8 million in loans that he could not pay, but Nash was; he wanted out. He sold his interest in JNB Exploration to Neil, who immediately increased his salary to $120,000 a year, plus tax-free bonuses. He also joined the Petroleum Club and refinanced his house with a $300,000 mortgage from Silverado, which gave him a 2 percent break on the interest rate.