The mysterious Carlyle Group has been the subject of many conspiracy theories over the years. Many ex political leaders who were on good relations with the Bush administration have been hired by the Group who has paid them fancy salaries for making speeches and such. The Carlyle Group has been referred to in many different ways. It has been called a Bush Cabal slush fund scam*. One of the things that draws attention to it is the fact that it is full of all those former politicians. The Chairman Emeritus of Carlyle Group is Frank C. Carlucci. Maybe you remember him, he was the Deputy Secretary of Defense in 1981-1982 and National Security Adviser in 1987-1989. The present Chairman is Lou Gerstner former Chairman of IBM. Who else is connected with this company you might ask? None other than the President's father, George H. W. Bush Sr. Did you wonder why they get so much business? He is a senior advisor. You have John Major former British Prime Minister who is the Chairman of Carlyle Europe, Dick Darman, former Reagan-Bush director of the Office of Management and Budget and Arthur Levitt, former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission who is also a senior advisor. There are many other famous political names connected with the group in one way or another.

With these kinds of people at the helm of this company, is it no wonder that it gets a lot of business as part of the military industrial complex. This is the type of thing that President Eisenhower advised us to avoid getting trapped in. He said that we should never allow the military industrial complex to get too powerful. Well we failed. This company was the 11th largest defense contractor in the US. It is said that the Carlyle Group uses the same 12 banks that the Bush family uses.

I think that before we go any further we should look at the Carlyle Group and see exactly what type of company it is. It is a private equity investment firm that is worth 91.5 billion dollars and is one of the WORLD'S LARGEST private equity firms. This is according to the Carlyle Group website. They control 64 funds and employ 535 investment professionals. According to the website again, they focus on aerospace and defense, automotive and transportation, consumer and retail, energy and power, financial services, healthcare, industrial infrastructure, real estate, technology and business services and telecommunications and media. I guess this could all be summed up by saying that deal in everything and anything. The companies that they control employ over 415,000 people. The firm was founded in 1987 and was named after the Carlyle Hotel in New York where discussions about forming the company took place. The three founders of the company were Daniel D'Aniello, David M. Rubenstein and William E. Conway. D'Aniello was a self made man. His fortune grew to 2.5 billion in 2007. David M. Rubenstein was an advisor to President Carter. William Conway Jr is another man who was also worth 2.5 billion in 2007. He is the former Chairman of MCI.

There is a story that Rubenstein felt that George W. Bush, who had been a member of the board for three years, should leave. David Rubenstein spoke about his conversation with the younger Bush. "We put [Bush] on the board and [he] spent three years. Came to all the meetings. Told a lot of jokes. Not that many clean ones. And after a while I kind of said to him, after about three years - you know, I'm not sure this is really for you. Maybe you should do something else. Because I don't think you're adding that much value to the board. You don't know that much about the company. He said, well I think I'm getting out of this business anyway. And I don't really like it that much. So I'm probably going to resign from the board. And I said, thanks - didn't think I'd ever see him again. His name is George W. Bush. He became President of the United States. So you know if you said to me, name 25 million people who would maybe be President of the United States, he wouldn't have been in that category. So you never know. Anyway, I haven't been invited to the White House for any thing." **

At one time the Carlyle Group owned US Investigations Services. This was the privatized arm of the United States Office of Personnel Management's Office of Federal Investigations. It no longer owns it. Next time you feel like eating a donut and getting a cup of coffee and go to Dunkin Donuts, you are at a Carlyle Group company. I don't pretend to know the goings on of the Carlyle Group and the only reason that I mentioned them at all is that they are so controversial and there are so many theories about them on the Internet. As we all know, when one talks about Internet conspiracies and theories, one is talking mostly about speculation. That is one of the problems with the Internet. One thing you have to admit though, talking about the Carlyle Group is interesting. It is made interesting just by the fact of who works for the company. Mr Rubenstein was the 165th richest person in the country at one time, I don't know what his ranking is now. He actually owns a copy of the Magna Carta. I am not talking about a recently manufactured copy, but a copy that was made at the time the Magna Carta was drawn up.

One of the few profit making divisions of GM was Allison Transmissions and that was purchased by Carlyle Group. Do you like Baskin Robbins Ice Cream? Apparently so did the Carlyle Group so they bought it. To give you an idea of how powerful the Carlyle Group is, one has only to look at where their offices are located. They are on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. Between the White House and the Capitol building and near FBI headquarters.

 

Legend
* Carlyle Group: Anatomy of a Scam by Uri Dowbenko
**Information Clearing House at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3994.htm