Posted on 07/15/2002 8:07:49 AM PDT by xsysmgr
If he asked you to release the file, you would?"
"I would if he asked."
That brief exchange, between NBC's Tim Russert and Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Harvey Pitt might mean weeks, and possibly months, of continued controversy over President Bush's decade-old business dealings with the Harken Energy Corporation.
On Meet the Press Sunday, Russert asked Pitt whether the files from the SEC's early-90s investigation of the Harken stock sale should be made public. Pitt at first resisted answering. "I think this is ancient history," he said, "and the president should do whatever he thinks is appropriate, but unless there is a reason to reopen ancient history, we should move on with the future and start helping today's investors." When Russert persisted, Pitt finally said he would release the files, if the president asked him to.
The files question is an issue that has been hanging in the air at the SEC for several days — and there has been more than a little reluctance to take any action. "We don't generally give them out," one source said last week. "Undoubtedly they name other people who are not public figures and therefore there is no right to have their names in public. I assume there are all kinds of thorny issues. But at the same time, at some point, the issue gains a critical mass have you have no choice but to find some way to do it."
One overlooked aspect of the controversy is that the SEC has already released some of its Harken documents — with Bush's consent. In 1998, the public-interest group Center for Public Integrity made a Freedom of Information Act Request for the papers as part of an examination of the business history and finances of each major presidential candidate. Bill Allison, the center's managing editor, says the SEC originally turned down a request for Bush/Harken documents. Then the center appealed the decision, and later, Allison says, "We got a letter from the SEC from their Freedom of Information Office telling us that the subject of the investigation [Bush] had waived any privilege claim over the documents and they could send them to us." (Bush had also waived attorney-client privilege to give the material to the SEC) The center used the information for its book The Buying of the President 2000 and for later articles about Bush's business dealings. Now, with the issue again in the news, the center has posted the documents on its website.
The documents provide an invaluable look into the Harken investigation. Several of them are memos which outline the evidence SEC experts examined and explain how they reached the decision not to take action against Bush or anyone else. In the end, the SEC concluded that 1) Bush did not have any non-public information that would have constituted insider trading when he sold his Harken shares, 2) he did not act with any intent to deceive federal regulators, and 3) Harken's stock was not immediately affected by bad economic news that came after Bush's decision to sell, meaning the issue did not meet the threshold definition of insider trading.
The memos make clear that SEC investigators went through a lot of paperwork, and also generated more themselves. "In its investigation the staff reviewed thousands of pages of documents produced by Harken and Bush, interviewed witnesses, met with counsel for Harken and Bush, and consulted with the Office of Economic Analysis on the issue of materiality," says one memo.
What would happen if those "thousands of pages of documents" were made public? Do they contain information that would show wrongdoing on Bush's part? Given the tone and conclusiveness of the documents that we have already seen, it seems highly unlikely that the SEC investigators would have ignored smoking-gun evidence pointing to Bush's guilt. And even if they had, it seems unlikely that such evidence, if it existed, would have remained secret through Bush's 1994 and 1998 campaigns for governor of Texas, and his 2000 presidential race, when his political opponents were searching for any scrap of derogatory information to use against him.
Now it appears increasingly likely that Bush will be forced to authorize Pitt to release the remaining documents. First, the president can't claim that SEC rules prevent the release, because Pitt himself has said he'll give them out if Bush asks. Second, if he had no objection to the release of some of the papers to the Center for Public Integrity, it would be difficult for him to resist further release now. And third, he is under growing political pressure to do so. For example, yesterday Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a possible Democratic presidential challenger in 2004, said that because of the stock sale, "There is a large cloud hanging over [Bush's] head, which I am afraid if he doesn't eliminate it soon, by giving full disclosure, will diminish his moral authority....Right now it is critically important that the president of the United States ... open up the files and let the American people see what was there." Lieberman was just one of many Democrats calling for the same thing.
What should Bush do? All the available evidence suggests that he did nothing wrong in the Harken deal. In the past he has waived privileges to allow others to see the documents related to the deal. Now, with so many of his political enemies accusing him of having something to hide, he might as well do so again and release all the papers.
Democrats are leap-in-the-dark desperate -- far more than I'd previously imagined. There they were, swarming the Sunday public affairs shows harping on Harken, a buy-a-pig-in-a-poke, going over the same old ground, hoping to breath this corpse new life.From the hue-and-cry, the raging frenzy and ferment on CNN, you'd never know this matter's been probed, sifted, panned, winnowed, mined, parsed, analyzed, scrutinized and dissected ad nauseam -- by SEC huntsmen, no less. Every Harken 'scent' had been followed, every Harken 'clue' had been sought, every Harken hole and corner pried into; in the chase for dirt on George W., no stone had been left unturned.
Conclusion? Much to the chagrin of inquisitors, there's no there, there. In fact, Bush's clean as a whistle. Yet no-one's been more closely or rigorously examined..
Then again, the Harken brouhaha has nothing to do with facts, nothing to do with ethics, propriety or minding one's P's and Q's, and everything to do with tearing to pieces/trampling to dust a man whose sterling reputation has defied every filthy attempt to besmirch it by political terrorists unconstrained by decency nor truth.
Bush is a man of honor, honest to a fault, virtuous -- always a cut above the rest, a pillar of the community. No one has produced a shred of evidence suggesting otherwise.
His moral bona fides with the public has Democrats fearing and trembling, his skyhigh polls strike terror in their hearts. Couple this with looming elections and small wonder Democrat blood runs cold these days.
While the media trollops say Democrats have seized a winning issue, portraying them as on the offensive, a tour of the political landscape, post-9/11, tells another story.
Democrats have struggled tooth-and-nail to morph Enron, WorldCom, Tyco et al from business to White House scandals, from shame and disgrace on Wall Street to skullduggery in the Oval Office. Crooked executives like Ken Lay and Bernard Ebbers, operatives like Skilling, Fastow and Kopper became, in a sense, All the President's Men</>.
Who's responsible for fraud at WorldCom?
Bush!
Who caused Enron's careen into bankruptcy?
Bush!
Who cooked the books at Tyco?
Bush!
Who shredded documents at Arthur Andersen?
Bush!
Who inflated profits at Xerox?
Bush!
Who inflated cable subscriptions at Adelphia?
Bush!
Has it worked?
Judging from the polls, the effort to make Bush the poster child of corporate greed has not only failed, it's backfired..
Accusing the President of being a white collar criminal, no better than Ken Lay or Bernard Ebbers, Democrats foolishly over-played their hand, and firmly positioned their party as being anti-business. This cedes the middle ground to Bush.
It's why, on the economy, Bush is still preferred over Democrats in Congress, who are seen as more interested in scoring partisan points and fixing blame than fixing the problem.
Question: Why hasn't it 'worked'?
Bush's stubbornly impervious popularity has Democrats and the media elite utterly flummoxed.
That his ratings have withstood the brunt of the most uninterrupted, unremitting raking fire his enemies could muster signals some unusual dynamic at work.
Actually, the phenomena is nothing more than the typical 'rallying 'round the flag' effect.
The colossal political capital and credibility Bush amassed for his formidable performance in the 9/11 aftermath essentially insulates him from such partisan attacks. His steady hand, even-tempered and unflappable poise amid circumstances which would easily tax the skills of the most experienced leader won him the hearts and minds of many who, pre-9/11, were more or less on the fence. By so personally attacking the President as a drooling halfwit, pre-9/11, Bush's adversaries basically sealed their own fate.
In the eyes of most Americans, Bush's chorus of critics, having lied about him pre-9/11, don't have much credibility today.
In short, the more fire the President draws from his partisan enemies, the more the American people rally behind him, particularly if the attacks are generally perceived as unfair and/or politically motivated.
The principle is doubly true during times of war.
Anyway, that's...
My two cents...
"JohnHuang2"
You just need to meet new friends. The networking insider manipulating guild.
Well, we might find out who the Sugar Daddy was that bought his Harken stock right when he needed to sell.
Just Luck, I guess. Just like making a few dollars off of his Rangers sale. That guy sure is Lucky, huh?
Why, ALMOST as Lucky as Dick Cheeney, HAVING to sell his Halliburton stock and then it goes down. That guy sure is Lucky, huh?
I just can't get over the LUCK politicians have!
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