Not many, if any, news reports have focused on the unpublicized connections of this Bush administration's family members with politically—and financially—sensitive operations. Business Week recently noted that "dads and sons and other relatives reign so widely in this administration that there have never been so many family combos in an administration at the same time." And the British Economist has said that "George Bush's Washington is a study in family influence." End of storyfew details.

But there are a small number of journalists with enough patience, energetic curiosity and research ability to dig for some of those untold details. One of them is our occasional contributor Margie Burns, a scholarly investigator with a Ph.D. who teaches English literature at the University of Maryland in Baltimore when she is not probing Internet sources for her next article.

She has written for us on White House connections with Halliburton (September 15, 2003); the Bush family's profiteering in Iraq (February 1, 2004); and the right-wing Washington "neocons" who promoted the U.S. invasion of Iraq (May 1, 2004).

or more than 20 years the Bush family has had extensive business ties to Middle East geopolitics. Among other connections, during the 1990s certain suites at the Watergate office building in Washington, rented by the embassies of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, were also home to a Bush-linked private investment firm.

The investment company, called the Kuwait-American Corporation (KuwAm), backed and largely controlled a security company named Stratesec and an aircraft company named Aviation General. Both Stratesec and Aviation General convened their annual shareholders' meetings from 1999 through 2001 in Suite 900 at the Watergate, then rented by the Saudi embassy.

Marvin P. Bush, the youngest brother of George W. Bush and a director of Stratesec, was reelected annually to his directorship there, near the Saudi Arabian Airlines offices. In 2002, the companies moved their shareholders meetings to the Watergate's Suite 500, held by the Kuwaiti embassy.

Aviation General was founded in the early 1980s as Commander Aircraft. It manufactured and sold private planes to international clients. Stratesec was founded as Securacom (formerly the engineering firm Burns and Roe Securacom). It was reinvented shortly after the first Gulf War, and thereafter marketed large security contracts to big clients, including the World Trade Center, Washington's Reagan National Airport and Dulles International Airport, various municipalities and airlines.

Stratesec and Aviation General shared top executives, including Wirt D. Walker III, a distant relative "in the Walker branch of the Bush family," according to a former colleague, and Mishal Yousef Saud Al Sabah of the Kuwaiti ruling family. Walker and Al Sabah also headed KuwAm, the backer of Stratesec and Aviation General.

TIGHT LINKS—The boards and shareholders of the three companies—the investment firm KuwAm, the security company Stratesec, and the aircraft company Aviation General—were tightly connected. Walker, a director at all three companies, was at various times CEO and chairman of the board at Stratesec while at the same time managing director at KuwAm, including when Stratesec hired KuwAm for corporate secretarial services at $2,500 a month. Stratesec, which was de-listed on the American Stock Exchange in the fall of 2002 and went bankrupt, also paid Walker $130,500 annually for consulting, according to its quarterly filings. Both Stratesec and Aviation General are bankrupt now, and KuwAm has relocated its headquarters from the Watergate to Walker's home in McLean, Virginia, a Washington suburb.

Mishal Al Sabah, son of the former Emir of Kuwait and ex-son-in-law of the current Emir, also served on the boards of both KuwAm and Stratesec and sometimes as chairman of KuwAm. Walker and Al Sabah were major shareholders in both companies. According to interviews Walker has given, their close relationship began when Al Sabah came to America at age 15. When Al Sabah turned 21, he invested in Walker's companies, including KuwAm, where another Al Sabah relative also served on the board.