Carla Hills and other Gilead members

George Pratt Shultz (born December 13, 1920) is an American economist, statesman, and businessman. He served as the United States Secretary of Labor from 1969 to 1970, as the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury from 1972 to 1974, and as the U.S. Secretary of State from 1982 to 1989. Before entering politics, he was professor of economics at MIT and the University of Chicago, serving as Dean of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business from 1962 to 1969. Between 1974 and 1982, Shultz was an executive at Bechtel, eventually becoming the firm's president. He is currently a distinguished fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

According to an article in the May 5 issue of New Yorker magazine, several bin Laden family members -- part of a large, Saudi Arabian family that made a fortune in the construction business -- invested about $10 million in a private equity fund operated by former subsidiary of Bechtel before Sept. 11.

Fremont Group, a San Francisco-based private investment firm, once was a unit of Bechtel, and its board still includes Bechtel CEO Riley P. Bechtel and former U.S. Secretary of State and former Bechtel President George P. Shultz, along with several current Bechtel directors.

Fremont spokeswoman Pat Harden confirmed bin Laden's family had invested $10 million in a Fremont fund, but she said the family had no ownership stake in Fremont and its investment was made "well before the events of Sept. 11."

During the 1980s, current Bush warlord Don Rumsfeld acted as a paid shill for a Bechtel pipeline project in the Middle East, operating with the blessing of the Reagan-Bush administration's secretary of state, George Schultz --Bechtel's former president (and now "senior counsel" to the company).

Shultz was well known for outspoken opposition to the "arms for hostages" scandal that would eventually become the Iran Contra situation. In a 1983 testimony before the U.S. Congress, he said that the Sandinista government in Nicaragua was "a cancer in our own land mass", that must be "cut out". He was also opposed to any negotiation with the government of Daniel Ortega: "Negotiations are a euphemism for capitulation if the shadow of power is not cast across the bargaining table."

George Shultz left office on January 20, 1989, but continues to be a strategist for the Republican Party.[citation needed] He was an advisor for George W. Bush's presidential campaign during the 2000 election, and senior member of the so-called "The Vulcans", a group of policy mentors for Bush which also included among its members Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Condoleezza Rice. One of his most senior advisors and confidants is former ambassador Charles Hill, who holds dual positions at the Hoover Institution and Yale University. Shultz has been called the father of the "Bush Doctrine", because of his advocacy of preventive war.[14] He generally defends the Bush administration's foreign policy.[14]