Talk:James R. Bath

Attribution
It wouldn't terribly surprise me to know that Bush I recruited Bath into the CIA, but this needs to be attributed; just saying "it has been reported" isn't good enough. --Treybien 12:25, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Connection?
Anyone working on this article know if there is a family connection between James Reynolds Bath and Mercer Reynolds? Arminius 21:34, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Attribution Continued
Jim being family, I can tell you for a fact that he was recruited by Bush 1 to serve in the CIA. In a CIA book, there is a chapter entitled "CIA takes a Bath" in which it describes some of JB's involvement. Queenie3086 (talk) 18:14, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Is he notable??
Is everyone who Bush knows notable? I know there are allegations around all this, but it seems tenditous to have an article on this guy. 12.5.61.130 (talk) 19:08, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * He is notable as a director of the now defunct ICCB, once the world's 7th largest bank, and bankers to terrorist groups. The bank was forcefully shut down. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_Credit_and_Commerce_International#Former_directors)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Totsubo (talk • contribs) 11:56, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

bin Laden
Merely mentioning Bath's association with the bin Laden family and his being investigated by FinCEN along with a Bush son and referring readers to books written by this and that author is a TOTAL WikiCopout. This man was obviously a large part of GW Bush's National Guard service and later business dealings so the info needs to be available ON his Wiki page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by RealNaturopath (talk • contribs) 07:08, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Protecting the Gulf Coast
As an Guard vet who skipped NO drills in my 6 years, I had to chuckle at that phrase. I don't know what kind of unit he was in, but the average soldier or airman would never dream of "skipping" even a single drill--let alone two years' worth as W. reportedly did (Beth Lester (May 3, 2004). "Gaps Remain In Bush Guard Service". CBS News. Retrieved 2012-10-22.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.92.99.145 (talk) 20:21, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

In need of a total rewrite, notability a big question
The article's sourcing, style, and content are totally inadequate and massively depressing. Who says that Bath was a director of BCCI? This was the very first thing put in the article in 2004. In fact, this was almost the only thing in the article, and it is still being mentioned as Bath's claim to notability.

The source listed in 2004 was The Modern History Project. This site still says: "Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) (Director of, dates uncertain)". It lists only two sources, both of which it says are from 2002. One is an article by Frances Richard, "Toward a Diagram of Mark Lombardi". The original page now has a Russian language messages that says "Site www.wburg.com not configured on the server"; the robot.txt forbids crawling, so it's not on archive.org, either. I found what appears to be copy of the article on a site that Wikipedia blocks for copyright violations (search for Frances Richard, "Toward a Diagram of Mark Lombardi" and mark_lombard3.html); in this version of the page Richard says "Although Bath was not personally implicated in the BCCI fiasco..." No need to cite more. Nowhere does Richard say that Bath was a director of BCCI.

The second article was a columbus live article that is long gone and untraceable even through archive.org, but the MHP mentions that it was by Bob Fitrakis. A google search on Fitrakis and Bath turned up an article by Fitrakis called On Bush, drugs and hypocrisy from 2004; same author, same subject, possibly same article (it mentions events in 2002, may be a reposting). In this article Fitrakis says, "James R. Bath was an investor in George W.'s Arbusto Oil Company. Bath was also an investor in BCCI." No need to cite more. Nowhere does Fitrakis say that Bath was a director of BCCI. (Fitrakis also provides no source for his claim that Bath "invested" in BCCI.)

Yet BCCI is an over-documented event. There were no fewer than four books written about it, plus the Kerry-Brown report. Bath is not mentioned in Adams and Frantz's book on BCCI, A Full Service Bank. He is not mentioned in Dirty Money, a revised U.S. edition of the UK book Bankrupt, by Nick Kochan and Bob Whittington. He is not mentioned in the Kerry-Brown report on BCCI, despite Fitrakis, who seems to be saying there is something about him in there.

The article cites a 2001 story in Time by Jonathan Beaty, who also wrote a book about BCCI (The Outlaw Bank); in both the article and the book, Beaty merely says that Bath was an "acquaintance" of a BCCI director. Nowhere does he say Bath was a director of BCCI. The same for Gurwin and Truell's book on BCCI, False Profits. In none of these books anywhere is it ever claimed that Bath was a director of BCCI, or even invested in BCCI, only that he did business with Khaled bin Mahfouz, who was indeed a director of BCCI.

To know a director and to be a director are two different things. To confuse these two completely different things is impossible, yet this claim has been in the article since 2004. More than ten years is ridiculous. I have deleted the claim. Put it back and you damn well better have a source, and it better not be MHP, or NDDB, or an article about the art of Mark Lombardi. Just too much. Rgr09 (talk) 18:27, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Claim that Bath was employed by CIA and Salem Bin Laden
These were simply mentioned as facts in the info box and sourced to a link on cbc that no longer exists. This is unacceptable sourcing practice. Both claims are disputed and must be discussed, not just stuck into the infobox with non-existent sources. Rgr09 (talk) 00:44, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

See also section
There are no sources for Bath having an interest in, holding a position in, or having been employed by BCCI. I have removed this see also. Nor is there any explanation why there is a link to the article on Allegations of CIA assistance to Osama bin Laden. Bath is not mentioned in that article. Rgr09 (talk) 01:00, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

content-free links
Bath's birthdate originally had a link to http://www.publicbackgroundchecks.com, which returned "nothing found". In fact, the lookup was originally performed with the birthdate as a variable, so that whatever this was, it wasn't a source for Bath's birthdate. Rgr09 (talk) 01:26, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Bath's background and national guard service
The article's biography section originally stated: Bath, a native of Natchitoches, Louisiana, moved to Houston in 1965 at age 29 to join the Texas Air National Guard, where he became friends with George W. Bush. In 1972, he and Bush were both suspended from flying for failing to show up for a scheduled physical exam.

The article gave as the source for ALL of this an article in the NY Times on Michael Moore's film Farenheit 9/11. This article gives no personal information on Bath at all, but does mention that both Bath and Bush were suspended from flying for the National guard in 1972 because they failed to show up for a scheduled physical exam. According to the article, the point of this in Moore's movie is that this information was released twice, by the air force and the White House. However, the White House release expunged Bath's name from the copy of the records it released. Although the article doesn't spell it out, my impression is that Moore treats this as proof that Bush attempted to disguise his 'ties' with Bath, in order to disguise his financial ties with Saudi financiers, such as Khalid bin Mahfouz, and also allegedly with Salem Bin-laden, a half brother of Osama Bin-laden. I have not seen Moore's movie so if I am mistaken correct me.

Whatever the point, it cannot be made by just dropping in this mention of suspension for flying, which is literally a 'no head and no tail' comment. I've removed it for now. If it is to be used to make the points mentioned above, these have to be spelled out, and put in some sort of rational order with a reasonable connection to the rest of the article, and given a real source. Bush's alleged connections with Saudi businessmen through Bath are vaguely mentioned at the end of the article. That will have to do for now. If someone wants to work this up, go ahead, I can see people are just panting to improve the article. I'll continue looking at it as well, now that I understand the background.

Anyway, at this point not only is Bath's birthdate unsourced, his birth in Natchitoches, Louisiana is unsourced, and his move to Houston in 1965 unsourced. I find it unbelievable that Bath moved to Houston just to join the Texas Air National Guard, so I want a source for that too. That Bath became friends with Bush in the Texas Air National Guard is unsourced as well. I am also curious, since Bush is 10 years younger than Bath, how they were even in the Texas Air National Guard at the same time. Rgr09 (talk) 05:20, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

More on Bath's background
I should not have written so quickly. The sentence discussed above as I finally edited it was: Bath, a native of Natchitoches, Louisiana, moved to Houston in 1965 at age 29 to join the Texas Air National Guard, where he became friends with George W. Bush. The very next sentence says: In the late 1960s, after working for Atlantic Aviation, Bath moved to Houston and became an aircraft broker. This is sourced to Craig Unger's Book The House of Bush. Looking it up, both sentences come from Unger's book, page 19, except that the mention of becoming friends with George W. Bush is not there. I find this whole thing incomprehensible. Craig Unger has a reputation as a good investigative reporter, so it is disappointing to find this kind of bad copy editing in a published book of his. As I said above, I find it hard to understand why Bath would move to Texas just to join the Air National Guard. Was he working for Atlantic Aviation when he joined the national guard? The book says Atlantic Aviation was in Delaware. Did he quit the national guard, go to Delaware, work for Atlantic Aviation, then quit Atlantic and move back to Houston? Did he then go back to the national guard and start flying again, where he met George W. Bush? This failure to spell out connections is bad for anyone who wants to use Unger's book as a source. For now, I will put Unger's name at the front of this, skip the mention of moving to Houston in 65 order to join the air guard, and go with the rest. If anyone can untangle this knot, please leave a note here explaining what's gone wrong. Rgr09 (talk) 05:44, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Structure and source
Have restructured article so it is not just a random set of sentences, but there is not much material to make an article from. In the new section on Bath biography, sources a mess, parts of the article copied verbatim out of Beaty article, yet it was not listed as the source for them, while material sourced to Beaty actually does not appear in his article. Beaty actually dates to 1991, even though Time magazine's website says it is from 2001. This is the second article I've found where Time's website has been off by over 10 years, be careful those of you using the website.

It looks like there are even more contradictions between the Beaty story and the already contradictory claims of Ungar. I question whether this stuff is even worth keeping in the article; if there is no reliable (non-contradictory) information, I firmly believe that silence is better. Of course many people writing for Wikipedia have a different attitude.

I put the material on Southwest Airport Services into another section; this was merged from a separate article on SAS, but it was only a few sentences, and there are possibly still more contradictions waiting. Anyway, there seems to be no reason to separate this from the other stuff in the biography section, so I will merge the two, after which there will probably be only one sentence left from the original article on SAS. Really, why bother merging? It just made even more of a mess of the Bath article. In such cases I urge those discussing 'to keep or not to keep' to consider this. Merging can and does damage the destination article when a trivial or troubled source article is inserted into it. People who vote to merge should bear some responsibility for fixing this.

The third section is absurd. Instead of doing the work of writing the article, these books are just tossed in with the claim that Bath's relationship with x, y, and z are discussed in. Some of this stuff looks like book spam to me, and some of it has gotten highly negative reviews, such as Baker and Palast. I'll try to do something, but it won't be much. Rgr09 (talk) 11:22, 18 October 2015 (UTC)


 * I agree with you. This is a WP:BLP, so WP:REDFLAG claims need to be addressed carefully. If there are reliable secondary sources discussing the specific claims of Baker, Moore, etc. then maybe that material could be mentioned here. Primary sourced claims should likely go. - Location (talk) 18:14, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Bath and Salem bin Laden
There are a number of sources for the Bath's relationship with the bin Laden family. The best documented and most widely reviewed books I have found are Steve Coll's book on the bin Laden family, and Craig Unger's book on the Saudis and the Bushes. Based on these, I have put Bath's business relation with Salem bin Laden back in the article and added it to the lead, since this is the real reason Bath is viewed as notable.

I took out a paragraph on a company Bath supposedly started in the Cayman Islands since it was totally unsourced. I also have no idea why it was in there in the first place. My feeling now is that this article is essentially a very bloated footnote to one claim about George W. Bush's business ties: that Bush did business with Salem bin Laden. I haven't yet tracked this down to a particular person, and the history of this kind of stuff is often very obscure; perhaps it is not relevant who first said it. Why it matters is also a question I have trouble answering. Unger is probably the most prominent critic of Bush's relationship with the Saudis, so I'll try to something there. Rgr09 (talk) 06:32, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

More revisions
I have dropped Southwest Air Services from the article. I don't see any notability in it at all. Please leave a note here if you know of a reason why it should be included in the article. I have also put the key claim about Bath into the article with the best sources I could find. If there are problems with this, please leave a note here. I have deleted all the anti-Bush screeds from the article, including Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. This article is not the place for a reading list of books about George Bush. Rgr09 (talk) 04:18, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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Bath and Charles White
I have sourced the claim that Mafhouz and Bin Laden invested in Arbusto Energy to a former partner of James Bath, Charles White. White made this claim to several reporters. The most detailed version I have found was on the CBC show which is now cited in the article. White's claim was examined in several books, which I have also now cited in article, including Steve Coll's The Bin Ladens, and Craig Unger's House of Bush, House of Saud. Both reject the claim as having unsupported. Rgr09 (talk) 12:22, 6 July 2016 (UTC)