George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

Certain national news accounts early in 1991 featured the observations on President
Bush's childhood by his elderly mother Dorothy. She was said to be a resident of Hobe
Sound, Florida. More precisely, the President's mother lived in a hyper-security
arrangement created a half-century earlier by Averell Harriman, adjacent to Hobe Sound.
Its correct name is Jupiter Island.
During his political career, George Bush has claimed many different `` home '' states,
including Texas, Maine, Massachusetts and Connecticut. It has not been expedient for
him to claim Florida, though that state has a vital link to his role in the world, as we shall
see. And George Bush's home base in Florida, throughout his adult life, has been Jupiter
Island.
The unique, bizarre setup on Jupiter Island began in 1931, following the merger of W.A.
Harriman & Co. with the British-American firm Brown Brothers.
The reader will recall Mr. Samuel Pryor, the `` Merchant of Death. '' A partner with the
Harrimans, Prescott Bush, George Walker and Nazi boss Fritz Thyssen in banking and
shipping enterprises, Sam Pryor remained executive committee chairman of Remington
Arms. In this period, the Nazi private armies (S.A. and S.S.) were supplied with
American arms--most likely by Pryor and his company--as they moved to overthrow the
German republic. Such gun-running as an instrument of national policy would later
become notorious in the `` Iran-Contra '' affair.
Samuel Pryor's daughter Permelia married Yale graduate Joseph V. Reed on the last day
of 1927. Reed immediately went to work for Prescott Bush and George Walker as an
apprentice at W.A. Harriman & Co.
During World War II, Joseph V. Reed had served in the `` special services '' section of the
U.S. Army Signal Corps. A specialist in security, codes and espionage, Reed later wrote a
book entitled Fun with Cryptograms.@s2
Now, Sam Pryor had had property around Hobe Sound, Florida, for some time. In 1931,
Joseph and Permelia Pryor Reed bought the entirety of Jupiter Island.
This is a typically beautiful Atlantic coast `` barrier island, '' a half-mile wide and nine
miles long. The middle of Jupiter Island lies just off Hobe Sound. The south bridge
connects the island with the town of Jupiter, to the north of Palm Beach. It is about 90
minutes by auto from Miami--today, a few minutes by helicopter.
Early in 1991, a newspaper reporter asked a friend of the Bush family about security
arrangements on Jupiter Island. He responded, `` If you called up the White House,
would they tell you how many security people they had? It's not that Jupiter Island is the
White House, although he [George Bush] does come down frequently. ''
But for several decades before Bush was President, Jupiter Island had an ordinance
requiring the registration and fingerprinting of all housekeepers, gardeners and other non-