Zapata Petroleum
Background
After graduating from Yale (where he was in Skull and Bones like his father, Prescott Bush), George H.W. Bush was recruited by his father's business partners and fellow bonesmen Roland and W. Averrell Harriman to work for Dresser industries (now Halliburton) in the oil and military industries.[1]
In 1953, H.W. and John Overbey formed a new business with Hugh Liedtke and Bill Liedtke named Zapata Petroleum Corporation (after the 1952 film Viva Zapata! in which Marlin Brando portrayed Mexican rebel Emiliano Zapata). [2]
The corporation was based in Midland, Texas. Hugh Liedtke became president, and George Bush became vice president of the new business venture. In 1954, the parent company formed Zapata Off-Shore Company, of which Bush was named president. In 1959, the company was split, leaving the Liedtkes with control of Zapata Petroleum Corporation and establishing Bush as the head of Zapata Off-Shore.[3]
Big Oil
In 1958, drilling contracts with the seven largest U.S. oil producers included wells 40 miles (64 km) north of Isabela, Cuba, near the island Cay Sal.
CIA Operations & Cover-Up
During the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis, Zapata allowed the CIA to use its oil rigs as listening posts. In 1988, Barron's also reported that Zapata was "a part time purchasing front for the Central Intelligence Agency."[4]
Also in the early 1960s, Zapata arranged several secret deals with Oil Executive and UC Regent Edwin Pauley, who was working closely with CIA Director John McCone, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and future California Governor & President Ronald Reagan to defeat anti-war, civil rights, and environmental justice protests across University of California campuses.[5] With the help of Halliburton, a join venture was organized between Bush, Pauley, and Mexican politician Jorge Díaz Serrano under the name of Permargo, building on previous deals between Zapata and Pauley's Pan American Petroleum.
The deal with Permargo is not mentioned in Zapata's annual reports, and SEC records are missing. Zapata's filing records with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission are intact for the years 1955–1959, and again from 1967 onwards. However, records for the years 1960–1966 are missing. The commission's records officer admitted that 1,000 boxes of records were placed in a session file to be destroyed and then pulped by a federal warehouse. The destruction of records occurred either in October 1983 (according to the records officer), or in 1981 shortly after H.W. Bush became Vice President of the United States (according to, Wison Carpenter, a record analyst with the commission). In 1988, a Bush spokesman claimed that the deal lasted only from March to September 1960. However, Zapata sold the oil-drilling rig Nola I to Pemargo in 1964.[6]
Pennzoil
In 1963 the Liedtkes merged several oil companies, including Zapata Petroleum and South Penn Oil, to form the Pennzoil Company. Hugh Liedtke was the first president of Pennzoil.[7]
Sources
- ↑ Russ Baker, Family of Secrets (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009) pp. 23–28.
- ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/01/obituaries/george-bushs-life-in-13-objects.html; Amy Schoenfeld Walker + Amy Marsh, Dec 1 2018, The New York Times
- ↑ National Archives Catalog #10480871, "Zapata Petroleum Corporation" https://catalog.archives.gov/id/10480871
- ↑ Ann Louise Bardach (2009). Ch: "The Island and the Empire" in "Without Fidel: A Death Foretold in Miami, Havana and Washington." p. 60
- ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_W._Pauley
- ↑ Jonathan Kwitny, "The Mexican Connection: A look at an old George Bush business venture", Barron's September 19, 1988. Cited with further discussion by Russ Baker, Family of Secrets (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009) pp. 37 and 503.
- ↑ National Archives Catalog #10480871, "Zapata Petroleum Corporation" https://catalog.archives.gov/id/10480871