July 4, 2007 (LPAC)--Covert billions that the British poured into American bank accounts of former Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar bin-Sultan, originating with the BAE Systems-Saudi Arabia Al-Yamamah deal went through Washington DC-based Riggs Bank, as recent headline coverage in the British press on the BAE scandal has revealed. Our investigation is now bringing to light a nexus of action and an institutional interlock between Riggs Bank, the host of the BAE slush funds; the Bush-family-tied Carlyle Group, which is the U.S.-based corporate partner of BAE; and the Bush networks in government.

John Carter Beese, Jr. , a veteran of the Bush-connected Baltimore investment bank Alexander Brown & Sons over most of a 20-year span, was a pivotal figure in the founding of the merger-and-acquisition giant private equity fund, Carlyle Group.

Beese's contacts with the Bush networks go back at least as far as 1980, when he was the financial co-chairman of George Herbert Walker Bush's failed Presidential bid. It was at that time that Beese is said to have met Bush's Texas friend Joe Allbritton , just when Allbritton was buying into Riggs Bank. Bush had previously become director of Allbritton's Houston Interstate Bank after leaving his post as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1976. Allbritton would eventually control 41% of Riggs' stock, and Beese would become a Riggs executive in 1998.

Beese, who committed suicide earlier this year, began his career with Alexander Brown in 1978, directly after graduating from Rollins College in Florida, where he had befriended Dubya's brother Marvin. Beese evidently became the protege of Alexander Brown's chief executive A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard , and by 1987, at the age of 30, Beese had become a principal of the Brown firm.

That same year, 1987, Beese became a founding director of the Carlyle Group, along with a small handful of people closely aligned with then-Vice President George H. W. Bush.

Beese was central in arranging the funding for Carlyle, which likely ran through Alexander Brown, and, reportedly, Mellon networks.

After helping to create Carlyle, Beese then shifted into the federal government, taking a George H.W. Bush appointment in 1990 as the director of the Overseas Private Investment Corp. (OPIC), an office which directs government aid to U.S. corporations doing business abroad.

In 1992, Beese became a Commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission, where he was "a strong voice for 'market-based solutions' to securities regulatory issues."

In other words, he sought to essentially abolish the organization he was working for. In 1994, with this experience under his belt, Beese went back to Alexander Brown.

In 1998, after having previously carrying out a bond sale for them through Alexander Brown, Beese joined Riggs Bank directly. Beese convinced his old friend Joe Allbritton to set up a $100-million venture capital division called Riggs Capital Partners, which Beese then chaired. While not much is known about this division's activities, this is just after Riggs had absorbed J. Bush & Co., the private banking business of Dubya's uncle (George H.W. Bush's brother) Jonathan Bush. Jonathan Bush had founded his business in 1970, with the explicit intent of "provid[ing] discreet banking services for the Washington D.C. embassies."

Investigators would later report that it was in 1998 that overseers first began to note irregularities in Riggs' activities.

In 2001, Beese became a director of Riggs, with specific responsibility for compliance issues--in other words, keeping the bank clear of regulatory oversight.