Roger Stone is a well-known Washington insider who has long been known as a behind-the-scenes political operator with numerous connections both on Capitol Hill as well as various White House personnel dating back to Richard Nixon’s administration. His influence has recently blossomed in pace with his many television and internet radio appearances related to his authorship of four books, just as he quickly ascended up the barometer of successful authors, The New York Times Bestseller List. His specialty, exposés of “real crime” political scandal—having put his past subjects (Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Bill and Hillary Clinton) under scrupulous examination, exposing many of their long-buried official secrets—has recently been directed to his latest quarry, as revealed in its title: Jeb! And the Bush Crime Family. Co-written with Saint John Hunt—another author with his own “insider” connections through his father E. Howard Hunt, a very active CIA operator—who also lived through some of the most traumatic national U.S. events of the 20th century.

Jeb! and the Bush Crim... Roger Stone, Saint Joh... Best Price: $0.49 Buy New $7.48 (as of 05:15 EST - Details) The stage is set from the first pages of the Introduction, A Dynasty of Duplicity: “In only four generations that [Bush] family has seen two presidents, one senator, a director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and two governors. They have been involved in and enabled two world wars, countless other wars, the control of oil, the funding of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi movement . . . drug smuggling on an international scale, and the gutting of America’s savings and loans to the tune of billions of dollars. How could they have pulled this off? Why aren’t they all in prison? This is their story. This is the story of the Bush family.” (p. xx).

From there, the book traces Jeb’s direct involvement in this tangled web of nefarious family shenanigans, starting with his experience in prep school at the prestigious Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. Former Congressman John LeBoutillier stated in the Foreword of the book that he had personally been told, independently and on separate occasions, by four different men who knew Jeb Bush during those years, that he had been the main drug and alcohol dealer all during that period. One went even further, saying, “I never knew at the time why Jeb walked around the campus with his jaw hanging open . . . he was stoned all the time!”

The model established in the early pages—numerous credible, cited sources, all coming forward with similar and compatible stories of various unethical or criminal acts attributed to Jeb Bush and/or his fellow family members—is repeated throughout the book, giving its many stunningly adroit assertions the kind of veracity that makes the work extremely compelling. That some of the worst, and clearly criminal, acts have been previously vetted by others, without bringing libel charges to those who have previously made them, give them, even more, viability. If these alleged, extremely criminal, acts have never been denied, much less litigated under the libel laws, then it is reasonable to conclude that the reason for that is that there is intrinsic truth to the assertions. But Stone and Hunt have gone well beyond previously vetted accusations in their iconoclastic new book, so one should not erroneously conclude that that this is merely a rehash of old stories.

And some of the most interesting insights proffered by these swashbuckling authors have nothing to do with assertions of criminality. One illustration of that relates to the fact that dynamic megalomaniacs who become president of the most powerful nation in history do not necessarily share all the personal characteristics of previous, similarly deluded, occupants of the Oval Office. For example, a former congressman who used to shower with “Poppy” (George H. W.) Bush stated that he noticed that in one respect, he did not share Lyndon Johnson’s prized attribute of a large penis (he used to affectionately call it “Jumbo”), because “Poppy” was ” . . . a . . . well . . . just an average little guy;” the congressman used to tell the story in the context that, unlike “Teddy” Roosevelt’s “Big Stick” metaphor, this president carried a “little stick.” This story may seem unimportant to some, but it works for others because stories like this make political exposes all that more interesting to read.

Most of the stories are much more somber and chilling than that. For example, a number involve allegations of “Poppy’s” father, former Senator Prescott Bush, and his grandfather, George Herbert Walker, being involved in business relationships with men who helped finance Adolf Hitler’s reign of terror. Specifically, Prescott Bush was said to have managed a portion of the slave labor force from Auschwitz, therefore becoming “an active participant in the murder of innocent men, women and children in his slave labor camp, as these souls were literally worked to death.” (p. 86).

During “Poppy’s” CIA tenure he was said to have been involved in such maleficent operations as the Iran-Contra scandal to the extent of arguably micro-managing it, only to deny his involvement later with the statement that he was “out of the loop” and caught completely unaware of it. Stone presents evidence that not only “Poppy” was involved in it but Jeb was up to his ears in it as well, especially the part involving importation of cocaine, an operation that led ultimately to the murder of Barry Seal, one of the CIA pilots who had flown many missions to bring drugs into the U.S. Without going into enough detail to “spoil” the reader, let it just be said that what Stone and Hunt have written here about all of the blatantly criminal acts should be enough to provide sufficient evidence to allow federal prosecutors to respond to Stone’s question in the second paragraph, above: “Why aren’t they all in prison?”

As he explained in his previous book about the Clinton’s “War on Women” there is a reason why this has never been done before and it is the same one: “Elite Deviance” a term used by Professor David Simon in his book of that title: “[A] phenomenon in which those with enough wealth, political influence, and personal connections can immunize themselves from the consequences of illegal acts that in the rest of the world would bring severe, if not life-ending, repercussions . . . The history of the Bush Crime Family is a century-long, multi-generational tradition of elite deviance.” (pp. xx-xxi)

Roger Stone is the classical kind of journalist that Edmund Burke—the 18th Century British politician of high principles and squeaky-clean scruples—coined the term “Fourth Estate” for, implicitly describing their function (to augment the other three branches of the federal government) as the ultimate watchdog of politicians. Burke foresaw the phenomenon that many politicians like the Bushes and Clintons have become: The kind who are seduced into straying from the herd, to use the power of their positions to advance—not the interests of the nation—their own narrow political, financial and other personal interests, such as the creation of faux “legacies” to create legends designed to extol their record of “servicing” the country. Stone is one of the few such journalism practitioners left of that dying breed.

Anyone interested in the real story of the Bush family, especially the recent presidential contender (who, interestingly, dropped out of the primaries one week after the Stone/Hunt book was released) will find no better, more up-to-date, uncompromising and well-written book on the subject than this one. It is a guaranteed “page-turner” that never falters from delivering incisive truths and profound insights with every page and chapter. With his fourth entry into books of political intrigue, Roger Stone has produced a veritable tour-de-force of uniquely original material. Politicians of every stripe should be very careful to “mind their manners” and be true to their sworn oath to support the Constitution and the laws of the land, which is the only guarantee of how they might stay on his good side and avoid his brand of uncompromising, eagle-eyed scrutiny.

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