President's uncle makes big bucks from Iraq

The Iraq war has produced winners and losers. And one small but significant winner is William "Bucky" Bush, brother of one President and uncle to the present one.

The good fortune of "Uncle Bucky", as he is known within the family, has been to hold a seat on the board of Engineered Support Systems Inc (ESSI), a St Louis company that has flourished as a military contractor to the Pentagon in Iraq.

Last month its shares hit a record US$60.39 - more or less exactly at the moment the presidential uncle chose to sell 8438 options worth around US$450,000, according to obligatory reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and disclosed by the Los Angeles Times yesterday.

William Bush denies his presence on the board has had anything to do with the company's success in boosting revenues to around US$1 billion in 2005, in part because of no-bid contracts relating to the war.

Noting that he joined the company in 2000, before his nephew was elected, "Bucky" Bush says he has not lobbied anyone in Washington to send contracts ESSI's way.

"I don't make any calls to the 202 [Washington, DC] area code," he told the Times.

In fact Bush, 66, has long been a prominent member of the St Louis business community, and was state chairman in Missouri for the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign.

"Having a Bush doesn't hurt," said Dan Kreher, a senior ESSI executive.

The company has supplied a variety of equipment to the US military effort in Iraq, including a US$49 million contract to refurbish military trailers and an US$18 million deal to provide communications services to the Coalition Provisional Authority which ran post-Saddam Iraq until June 2004.

In 2003, ESSI was awarded contracts for equipment to help to search for, and protect US soldiers from, Iraq's alleged chemical and biological weapons - which turned out to have been a figment of the imagination of the Bush Administration.

But some of that Government business is now under scrutiny. The Pentagon has announced that US$158 million of contracts won by ESSI in 2002, including work on a new air cargo loading device called Tunner, is being reviewed by its inspector-general for suspected "anomalies."

Bush says he cashed in his options because they were about to expire, and not because he was unhappy with the company. He told the Times that he would have preferred the company was not involved in Iraq, "but unfortunately we live in a troubled world".

- INDEPENDENT