Gerald Harp [EMAIL PROTECTED] responded:
In a message dated 1/1/99 9:44:44 PM Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
writes:
Other persons with offices there, according to the
1956 Dallas City Directory, included George DeMohrenschildt, Suite
1639-40;
Linda, is this the guy who turned out to be a sort of facilitator for Lee
Harvey Oswald?
+
DeMohrenschildt, who was a petroleum geologist, was well acquainted with a
number of people involved in the oil industry, including George Bush. I
will attach a brief excerpt of some of his involvements.
Linda
DALLAS OIL MEN AND BANKERS
Zapata Petroleum was first formed in 1953. By his own account, George Bush moved to
Houston at a point in 1959 when Zapata Petroleum spun off its subsidiary, Zapata
Off-Shore [ZOS], each corporation buying out the other's interest. The initial
investors in the parent corporation were procured by Brown Brothers, Harriman (whom
George represented) and by Gulf Oil (whose agents were Bill and Hugh Liedtke). The
Liedtkes' father was the Oklahoma general counsel to the Mellons' Gulf Oil Corp.
As a member of Houston's petroleum community, Bush made contact with other members of
the same "investment" class of businessmen, including: (1) W.S. Farish-an heir to a
fortune in Standard Oil of New Jersey and Sears Roebuck stock-invested through his
family's investment banks-as well as connected by marriage to Houston's famous Rice
family, Howard Hughes, and the Neuhaus family who controlled the investments of
multi-millionaire oilman Hugh Cullen; (2) James A. Baker III-whose family of
lawyer/bankers had created and controlled the Rice University endowment, and set up
the law firm of Baker Botts; Baker became a partner at the firm of Andrews, Kurth,
which was set up by attorney Frank Andrews-long-time lawyer for the railroads which
consolidated to form the Atkinson, Topeka and Santa Fe. Andrews had been the family
attorney for Howard Hughes, Sr. And also advised Howard Jr. in the making of his will
at age 19 when he married the niece of W.S. Farish's wife. Hughes' mother's sister
married Dr. Fred Lummis, whose mother was a sister of Farish's wife.
Zapata Offshore set up its headquarters in the Houston Club Building, the building
which also housed the offices of investor W.S. Farish III of Underwood Neuhaus Co.
After the split from the Liedtkes' company, Bush entered into a joint venture with
Jorge Diaz Serrano in a Mexican drilling company called Permargo, which received
lucrative contracts from Pemex. Permargo had been founded by Edwin Pauley, whom FDR
had named to be Secretary of the Navy, but whose appointment was blocked by the
Senate.1 Instead, Pauley went to Mexico City, where he worked with George Bush and
other associates during the years preceding the Bay of Pigs operation (the code name
of which was "Operation Zapata"). Serrano left Permargo to become head of Pemex in
1975, but in 1983 was convicted of defrauding the Mexican government.2 Jonathan
Kwitny, the investigative reporter checking into the story, discovered that Zapata's
corporate records from 1960 to 1966, stored at the SEC, had been "inadvertently
destroyed" shortly after Bush became U.S. Vice-President.3
1. Dresser Industries
In 1961 Zapata Offshore joined a consortium with Dresser Industries4 and General
Dynamics to bid on the Mohole Project, which was awarded to Brown Root.5 In 1950
Dresser Industries had relocated its headquarters to Dallas with a large branch office
in Houston-the center of the oil and gas industry. Before the 1961 bid Dresser had
rejected the opportunity to acquire Brown Root, whose chairman, Herman Brown, was
the organizer of Houston's own political action committee; Herman's brother George R.
Brown, was for many years head of the Rice Institute board of governors and was Lyndon
Johnson's biggest contributor and fund-raiser. The Rice board controlled the assets
and companies of Howard Hughes, not the least important of which was the patent for
the three-cone rolling cutter rock bit. According to the history of Dresser, written
by Darwin Payne:
A lawyer and inventor named Howard R. Hughes, father of an even more famous son who by
now had expanded the family enterprises into the motion picture and aircraft
industries, had invented this unique bit, with three revolving cutting elements,
before World War I. It was one of the most important contributions of the century to
the art of drilling. The company he formed, Hughes Tool Company, now controlled some
80 percent of the bit business. Dresser inquired into the possibility of acquiring
the company, sought persistently but in vain to win an audience with the younger
Hughes, and finally realized that the firm was not available under any circumstances.
Neither was the second most important company in the field, Reed Roller Bit, although
a deal had seemed imminent until its principal owner balked at the last
