George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

But even the enormities of Chairman Mao Liedkte were destined to be eclipsed in the
political and regulatory climate of savage greed created with the help of the Reagan-Bush
administration and George Bush's Task Force on Regulatory Relief. Even Liedkte's
colossal grasping was about to be out-topped by a small Wall Street firm which,
primarily during the second Reagan-Bush term (when Bush's influence and control were
even greater) assembled a financier empire greater than that of J.P. Morgan at the height
of Jupiter's power. This firm was Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts (KKR) which had been
founded in 1976 by a partner and some former employees of the Bear Sterns brokerage of
lower Manhattan, and which by late 1990 had bought a total of 36 companies using some
$58 billion lent to KKR by insurance companies, commercial banks, state pension funds,
and junk bond king Michael Milken. The dominant personality of KKR was Henry
Kravis, the man who inspired actor Michael Douglas (Kravis's former prep school
classmate at the Loomis School) when Douglas played the role of corporate raider
Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone's movie "Wall Street." Henry Kravis was in particular the
motor force behind the KKR leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco, which, with a price tag of
$25 billion, was the largest transaction of recorded history.
Henry Kravis's epic achievements in speculation and usury perhaps had something to do
with the fact that he was a close family friend of George Bush.
As we have seen, when Prescott Bush was arranging a job for young George Herbert
Walker Bush in 1948, he contacted Ray Kravis of Tulsa, Oklahoma, whose business
included helping Brown Brothers, Harriman to evaluate the oil reserves of companies.
Ray Kravis had quickly offered George a job, but George declined it, preferring to go to
work for Dresser Industries, a much larger company. That was how George had ended up
in Odessa and Midland, in the Permian basin of Texas. Ray Kravis over the years had
kept in close touch with Senator Prescott Bush and George Bush, and young Henry
Kravis had been introduced to George and had hob-nobbed with him at various
Republican Party and other fund-raising events. Henry Kravis by the early 1980's was a
member of the Republican Party's elite Inner Circle.
Bush and Henry Kravis became even more closely associated during the time that Bush,
ever mindful of campaign financing, was preparing his bid for the presidency. Among
political contributors, Henry Kravis was a very high roller. In 1987-88, Kravis gave over
$80,000 to various senators, congressmen, Republican Political Action Committees, and
the Republican National Committee. During 1988, Kravis gave $100,000 to the GOP
Team 100, which meant a "soft money" contribution to the Bush campaign. Kravis's
partner George Roberts also anted up $100,000 for the Republican Team 100. In 1989,
the first year in which it was owned by KKR, RJR Nabisco also gave $100,000 to Team
100. During that year, Kravis and Roberts gave $25,000 each to the GOP.
During the 1988 primary season, Kravis was the co-chair of a lavish Bush fundraiser at
the Vista Hotel in lower Manhattan at which Henry's fellow Wall Street dealmakers and
financier fatcats coughed up a total of $550,000 for Bush. Part of Kravis's symbolic
recompense was to be honored with the prestigious title of co-chairman of Bush's
Inaugural Dinner in January, 1989. One year later, in January 1990, Kravis was the