When George W. Bush was first running for governor of Texas, Washington editor David Corn took a look at Bush family activities on behalf of Enron in Argentina–itself now suffering the results of untamed financial markets. We reprint this November 21, 1994, article to show how Enron’s connections with the Bushes stretch not just to Washington but around the world.
–The Editors
Several years ago, says Rodolfo Terragno, a former Argentine Cabinet Minister, he received a telephone call from George W. Bush, son of the then-Vice President. When he hung up, Terragno was annoyed, he recalls, for the younger Bush had tried to exploit his family name to pressure Terragno to award a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Enron, an American firm close to the Bush clan.
During this past year, as George W. campaigned across Texas to replace Governor Ann Richards, he portrayed himself as a successful businessman who relied on “individual initiative,” not his lineage. Contacted in Buenos Aires, Terragno, now a member of the Chamber of Deputies, offered an account that challenges Bush’s campaign image.
In 1988, Terragno was the Minister of Public Works and Services in the government of President Raúl Alfonsín. He oversaw large industrial projects, and his government was considering construction of a pipeline to stretch across Argentina and transport natural gas to Chile. Several US firms were interested, including the Houston-based Enron, the largest natural gas pipeline company in the United States. But Terragno was upset with the corporation’s representatives in Argentina. They were pressing Terragno for a deal in which the state-owned gas company would sell Enron natural gas at an extremely low price, and, he recalls, they pitched their project with a half-page proposal–one so insubstantial that Terragno couldn’t take it seriously. Terragno let the Enron agents know he was not happy with them.
It was then, Terragno says, that he received the unexpected call from George W. Bush, who introduced himself as the son of the Vice President. (The elder Bush was then campaigning for the presidency.) George W., Terragno maintains, told the minister that he was keen to have Argentina proceed with the pipeline, especially if it signed Enron for the deal. “He tried to exert some influence to get that project for Enron,” Terragno asserts. “He assumed that the fact he was the son of the [future] President would exert influence…. I felt pressured. It was not proper for him to make that kind of call.”
George W. did not detail his relationship with the pipeline project or with Enron, according to Terragno. The Argentine did not know that Enron and the Bush set are cozy. President Bush is an old friend of Kenneth Lay, Enron head for the past ten years and a major fundraiser for President Bush. After the 1992 election left Secretary of State (and Bush pal) James Baker jobless, he signed as a consultant for Enron. An article by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker last year disclosed that Neil Bush, another presidential son (the one cited by federal regulators for conflict-of-interest violations regarding a failed savings and loan), had attempted to do business with Enron in Kuwait. The Enron company and the family of its top officers have donated at least $100,000 to George W. Bush’s gubernatorial campaign.
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Shortly after Terragno’s conversation with George W., more Bush-related pressure descended on him, the former minister claims. Terragno says he was paid a visit by the US Ambassador to Argentina, Theodore Gildred. A wealthy California developer appointed ambassador by President Reagan, Gildred was always pushing Terragno to do business with US companies. This occasion, Terragno notes, was slightly different, for Gildred cited George W. Bush’s support for the Enron project as one reason Terragno should back it. “It was a subtle, vague message,” Terragno says, “that [doing what George W. Bush wanted] could help us with our relationship to the United States.”
Terragno did not OK the project, and the Alfonsín administration came to an end in 1989. Enron was luckier with the next one. The pipeline was approved by the administration of President Carlos Saúl Menem, leader of the Peronist Party and a friend of President Bush. (The day after Menem was inaugurated, Neil Bush played a highly publicized game of tennis in Buenos Aires with Menem.) Argentine legislators complained that Menem cleared the pipeline project for development before economic feasibility studies were prepared.
Replying to a list of questions from The Nation asking whether George W. Bush spoke to Terragno about the pipeline project and whether he had any business relationship with Enron, Bush’s gubernatorial campaign issued a terse statement: “The answer to your questions are no and none. Your questions are apparently addressed to the wrong person.” This blanket denial covered one question that inquired if George W. Bush had ever discussed any oil or natural gas projects with any Argentine official. George W.’s response on this point is contradicted by a 1989 article in the Argentine newspaper La Nacion that reported he met that year with Terragno to discuss oil investments. (The newspaper noted that this meeting took place in Argentina, but Terragno says he saw Bush in Texas.)
Theodore Gildred, a private developer again, is traveling in Argentina; his office says he is unavailable. An Enron spokesperson comments, “Enron has not had any business dealings with George W. Bush, and we don’t have any knowledge that he was involved in a pipeline project in Argentina.”
In late August, several members of the Chamber of Deputies–Terragno not among them–submitted a request for information, calling on President Menem to answer dozens of questions about the business activities of the Bush family in Argentina. (In 1987, Neil Bush created a subsidiary of his oil company to conduct business there. In early August, a Buenos Aires newspaper reported that on a forthcoming trip to Argentina the former President would lobby the Menem government to allow a US company to build a casino there. The onetime President said this was not true.) One of the deputies’ queries was, Does Menem know whether George W. Bush attempted to capitalize in Argentina on his father’s position? So far Menem has not responded.
