Bush Is No Good Trade

According to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission records, on four separate occasions Gov. George W. Bush disregarded federal statutes by failing to file insider stock trade reports on a timely basis, back-dating one trade by some four months. Moreover, one key trade just a few weeks before Iraq invaded Kuwait -- but reported some eight months late after the Gulf War was over -- netted Bush close to $1 million in profit as he sold stock in Harken Energy, an oil company doing business in the Middle East wherein some of his father's largest contributors also maintained substantial positions.

The SEC under President Bush carried out an incomplete investigation of the younger Bush's pre-Gulf War trade in 1991 after key presidential advisor George Jr. claimed that he filed a report, but that the SEC had most likely lost it. (No one has really asked whether the governor bothered to use registered mail to verify receipt of the documents.)

According to an Oct. 28, 1991, Time Magazine report, SEC spokesman John Heine said, "as far as I know, nobody ever found the 'lost' filing." And, strangely, Bush refused comment to Time regarding either the incident or his involvement with Harken.

The governor also did not reveal the blatant conflicts of interest involved, since the chairman of the SEC was Richard Breedon, former lawyer with Houston firm Baker and Botts and deputy counsel to Bush's father when he was vice president. Breedon received his SEC appointment after the elder Bush became president.

The SEC investigation of George W. was led by general counsel James R. Doty who, according to a UPI report, mysteriously neglected to interview any of the Harken directors. Moreover, Doty had previously served as George W. Bush's personal lawyer in the deal involving his Texas Rangers purchase. So, in the end, the younger Bush was cleared of insider trade wrongdoing by his personal attorney and by his father's vice-presidential counsel, a virtual impossibility for the average U.S. citizen.

That the mainstream media has refused to question Bush regarding what voters might consider a mockery of the criminal investigative process is a story in and of itself -- especially considering it concerns how a possible future president might enforce U.S. laws if he had also broken those statutes.

Consider that Americans who currently hold stocks or mutual funds would never -- by virtually no stretch of the imagination -- be able to obtain access to corporate insider information that could turn a million dollars profit. But reporters following Bush have not broached the subject during the campaign.

Most reports involving Bush's insider oil stock trades refer only to his highly controversial June 22, 1990, million dollar trade made six weeks before Gulf War hostilities broke out in Kuwait -- a trade which was reported eight months later. However, SEC documents between 1986 and 1993 show that Bush acquired 212,152 shares of Harken stock on Nov. 1, 1986, at the time he merged his Spectrum 7 company with Harken. But the future governor did not report the transaction until April 7, 1987 -- more than five months later.

When Bush filed late on April 7,1987, SEC filings show he had purchased another 80,000 shares on March 10, 1987. But strangely, two weeks later, an April 22 filing noted that the 80,000-share purchase was backdated to Dec. 10, 1986. When questioned by the media, Bush's attorney said it was the same 80,000 shares but he could not explain the discrepancy regarding the purchase dates or why Bush even reported the trade two times.

Another SEC filing, this from June 6, 1989, showed that Bush purchased another 25,000 shares of Harken but again waited more than four months to report the transaction.

The Houston Post, recognizing Bush's late SEC filings, noted that he "took eight months to notify the government of his sale of stock in a company on whose board he served" and "also missed the filing deadline for reporting other insider trades involving Harken Energy."

Documents obtained by the Post showed "additional instances in which Bush ... ran afoul of the SEC rule requiring notification." And George W. described himself as a "small, insignificant" Harken stockholder; but news reports examining SEC documents identified Bush as the third largest non-institutional investor.

In October 1991, Time Magazine questioned why the tiny country of Bahrain would stake so much of its financial future on Harken Energy, which it labeled an "obscure, money-losing company with no refineries and no experience in offshore oil exploration." But the magazine also noted that oil-insiders speculated that Bahrain's rulers saw the arrangement as a way to gain influence with the Bush administration.

Mysteriously, primary reporters have also ignored what could point to a nexus regarding foreign policy and personal financial interests. Interestingly, the Village Voice in January 1991 reported that in 1990 the Bush administration signed an agreement with Bahrain that chose the small country as the permanent principal allied base in the Middle East, although it was some 200 miles away from the hostilities in Iraq and Kuwait.

The military-base deal came after Harken announced its Jan. 30, 1990, joint oil-drilling venture with Bahrain. So President Bush's key contributors and his son George W. were carrying on personal financial business with Bahrain at the same time decisions were being made regarding the possibility of a war in the Gulf.

And neither the president nor his adviser, George Jr., let the press know that Bahrain had been permitted to infuse $7.7 million in foreign cash to hire U.S. public relations firm Hill & Knowlton to lobby Congress and the American people; a stunning variety of opinion-forming devices and techniques were employed to inflame U.S. patriotic passions of war while personal financial interests were on the line.

On May 21, 1990, less than ten weeks before Saddam Hussein's troops invaded Kuwait to initiate the Middle East hostilities -- but just four weeks before Bush unloaded the bulk of his Harken stock -- a renegotiated corporate loan agreement featured an unusually high interest rate of 12 percent, less credit for acquisitions, a $750,000 debt fee and even requirements by some of Harken's major stockholders to guarantee $22.5 million in debt, according to Associated Press.

Did Bush know of impending losses when he sold his stock on June 22, 1990, since Federal securities law prohibits corporate insiders from trading "on the basis of" material information that is not publicly known? Bush denied the charge in spite of his positions on the Harken Energy board of directors, audit committee and stock restructuring panel. He added that he had no idea Harken was going to get an audit report full of red ink until weeks after he had made his stock sale.

But U.S. News & World Report said, "there is substantial evidence to suggest that Bush knew Harken was in dire straits. ... Harken's SEC filings make it clear that the company's directors knew radical steps were necessary." The magazine added that "one informed source says Harken's creditors had threatened to foreclose on the company if substantial debt payments were not made." Shortly thereafter, Bush cashed out of Harken.

The April 4, 1991,Wall Street Journal added that "Mr. Bush didn't return their phone calls seeking comment, and the Bush White House said 'it doesn't comment on the activities of the president's children.'"

According to the Washington Post, Harken's audit committee, of which Bush was a member, met with Mikel Faulkner and

auditors from Arthur Andersen & Co.

, Harken's accountants, on June 11, 1990 -- just 11 days before Bush sold his stock on June 22. When asked for a copy of the June 11 minutes or permission to inspect them, the company declined to make the records available.

Bush's insider transaction yielding a profit of $848,560 -- some 250 percent profit on the stock's original value -- came a week prior to the end of a quarter in which the company lost $23 million. The quarterly report was released just a few days after Iraq invaded Kuwait and the Harken stock plummeted. However, as reported in a 1992 Mother Jones report, Bush attended a meeting regarding a revised stock offering in May 1990 working with Smith Barney's financial consultants concerning corporate restructuring.

In an Oct. 11, 1994, UPI report, Bush also claimed that he was not aware of Harken's poor financial condition when he sold the stock, but UPI said that the Dallas Morning News reported on the same day that a corporate official who served with Bush on the audit committee at Harken felt otherwise; Stuart Watson told the Dallas paper that he and Bush were constantly made aware of the company's finances. "You bet we were," said Watson. "We were both trying to keep that company on the straight and narrow."

On March 16, 1992, U.S. News echoed Watson's statement, reporting that "according to documents on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission, his position on the Harken (restructuring) committee gave Bush detailed knowledge of the company's deteriorating financial condition."

Chuck McDonald, spokesman for Texas Gov. Ann Richards' campaign, said that SEC chief counsel in the Bush investigation -- James Doty, George W.'s former attorney -- never talked to George W., Watson or other Harken officials in its 1991 probe. He said, "Was this a real investigation, or was it a whitewash of an insider stock sale by the son of the sitting president?" UPI, which reported McDonald's statement, went on to note that "while Bush claims the SEC investigation absolved him of illegal insider trading, he has refused to release the investigation files."

Harken founder, Phil Kendrick, noted that the company's "annual reports and press releases get me totally befuddled. There's been so much promotion, manipulation and inside deal making." And even Harken chief executive Mikel Faulkner, an accountant, offered advice for those trying to decipher the financial statements: "Good luck. They're a mess."

Press accounts note that Bush requested a letter from the SEC, issued in October 1993, The letter, signed by SEC Associate Director Bruce A. Hiler, said that "the investigation has been terminated as to the conduct of Mr. Bush and that, at this time, no enforcement is contemplated with respect to him." But the letter also stated that "it must in no way be construed as indicating that the party has been exonerated or that no action may ultimately result."

On Oct. 18, 1993, the Bush administration SEC said it would not bring a case against George W. Bush.

Gov. Bush speaks about his outstanding business record on the campaign stump; however, in 1989, U.S. News & World Report said, "Harken Energy lost over $12 million against revenues of $1 billion." Harken President Mikel Faulkner said that in addition to Bush's position as a director at $2,000 per meeting, stock options worth $131,250, 5 percent loans and 40 percent discounts on stock purchases, he was also a consultant to Harken for "investor relations and equity placement" at a salary of $80,000 per year from 1986 until 1989, when his salary jumped to $120,000.

The board was equally generous to Bush in 1990 as "the company lost another $40 million and shareholder equity plunged to $3 million -- down from more than $70 million in 1988." Faulkner declined to say what services George W. has performed as a consultant.

In March 1992, U.S. News said that "Despite repeated requests for interviews, George W. declined to discuss Harken or the reason for his stock sale, saying through an assistant that he 'does not want to read about himself.'" But some might ask whether American voters have a right to know whether a possible president would strictly enforce federal statutes or appoint lenient attorneys with suspect ethical standards leading to fixed politically sensitive investigations.

Moreover, should Bush -- a director of the corporation -- be accountable when huge losses are reported over a period of time, especially as a presidential candidate purporting to have an outstanding entrepreneurial business record at every presidential campaign stop? The answers have real implications regarding presidential character, morality and personal ethics.

Author and commentator Kevin Phillips offered a perceptive look at the Texas governor in the February 2000 issue of Harpers magazine when he said, "We can fairly ask whether George W. Bush is anything more than another scion who has made a decent governor during a period of prosperity and easy growth, and whether the United States can afford nominees who are to presidential politics what legacies are to college fraternities."

"The SEC fully looked into the matter, they looked at every aspect of it ... and the people who looked into it said they have no case,"
George W. Bush - July 8, 2002 - Source

"How thorough the SEC inquiry was remains unclear. Jordan said Harken provided investigators with "thousands of pages" of documents, including the June 11 minutes and Faulkner's July 13 communique. Investigators interviewed Cummings, stockbroker Smith and a member of the Arthur Andersen auditing team, but they did not talk to Faulkner or any other officers or directors of Harken."
The Washington Post - Bush Name Helps Fuel Oil Dealings - By George Lardner Jr. and Lois Romano - Friday, July 30, 1999; Page A1.

Richard C. Breeden - "who was SEC chairman under President Bush's father, former President George H.W. Bush"
Richard C. Breeden - "Serving as 'Assistant' to the President for President George H.W. Bush"
Ex-SEC chairman Richard Breeden named "WorldCom" monitor
James R. Doty - "From May 1990 through December 1992, Mr. Doty was the General Counsel of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, Washington, D.C."
"As General Counsel, Mr. Doty was the chief legal officer of the Commission, responsible for advising the Commission and its staff with respect to interpretations involving questions of law, the conduct of administrative proceedings, the preparation of Commission comments to Congress on pending legislation and the drafting, in conjunction with the appropriate divisions and offices, of legislative proposals sponsored by the Commission."
James R. Doty - "who earlier represented Bush in his purchase of the Texas Rangers, made with the proceeds of his sale of Harken shares"
Harvey L. Pitt - Former Arthur Andersen Attorney

"I absolutely had no idea and would not have sold it had I known,"
George W. Bush - The News during his 1994 campaign for governor. - Source: The Dallas Morning News - By Mark Curriden - September 7, 2000 - Article: Records Show What Bush Knew Before Stock Sale.

Excerpt:

"The records released Wednesday show Mr. Bush, a Harken board director and member of its audit committee, received a so-called "flash sheet" in early June 1990 estimating quarterly losses for the company would reach $4 million.

Other reports available to Mr. Bush disclosed that Harken faced a "liquidity crisis" regarding the refinancing of it's $43 million debt. Another told Mr. Bush the company was "in a state of noncompliance" with its lenders.

Those same documents also say the company expected to make a profit in subsequent quarters and that two of its largest stockholders had agreed to refinance its debt.

Federal law prohibits company insiders, such as corporate directors and consultants, from buying and selling stock based on private information they received as an officer of the company."
Source: The Dallas Morning News - By Mark Curriden - September 7, 2000 - Article: Records Show What Bush Knew Before Stock Sale.

Bush Defends Stock Sale And Vows To Enhance SEC

By Elisabaeth Bumiller and Richard A. Oppel Jr.
July 9, 2002
Source

President Bush defended himself today against a barrage of questions about his own corporate stock dealings even as he vowed to take a tougher line in a speech in New York on Tuesday against corrupt corporate executives.

As pressures mounted today from Democrats in Congress, Mr. Bush repeatedly dismissed assertions that he had failed to properly disclose a 1990 stock sale, saying the criticism was nothing more than a political attack, although he acknowledged that he still did not know why the sale had not been disclosed as promptly as required by law.

"I still haven't figured it out completely," Mr. Bush said in a late afternoon White House news conference hastily announced after his return from a three-day vacation at his parents' summer home in Maine, and only 18 hours before what the White House has billed as a major presidential speech about corporate responsibility.

Asserting that a central element of his proposal is to strengthen the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mr. Bush said, "I'll call for a stronger S.E.C., more investigators and more budget."

As Mr. Bush and Senate Democrats vied to seize political advantage on the corporate responsibility issue today, former top executives of WorldCom invoked their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination rather than answer questions on Capitol Hill about a $4 billion discrepancy in the company's books.

At his news conference, the president was also vague and dismissive about the accounting procedures at a company on whose board he served, the Harken Energy Corporation. Harken was subsequently required by the S.E.C. to restate its earnings.

"In the corporate world, sometimes things aren't exactly black and white when it comes to accounting procedures," Mr. Bush said, referring to Harken.

Seeking to upstage Mr. Bush before his speech on Wall Street — and emboldened by momentum created by fresh scandals at WorldCom and other companies — Congressional Democrats moved to gain the upper hand by trying to broaden significantly the corporate reform legislation that is to be taken up by the Senate on Tuesday.

While the current focus of the legislation is on accounting-related changes, Democrats want to expand the measure to make it simpler to prosecute securities fraud, aid plaintiffs who want to bring private securities fraud lawsuits against corporations, and make it easier for securities regulators to levy fines and impose other penalties on executives and directors who commit wrongdoing.

Mr. Bush also said at his news conference that he wanted to strengthen enforcement powers of the S.E.C. and expressed confidence in Harvey L. Pitt, the chairman of the regulatory agency, whose resignation has been called for by Democratic Congressional leaders in recent days.

The curious timing of the news conference, in the White House press briefing room, appeared intended to distract attention from a day that would have been dominated by news coverage of the beleaguered WorldCom executives. The event also seemed an attempt to place Mr. Bush back in command at the White House after three days of television and newspaper pictures of him fishing and golfing in Maine, many of them accompanied by reports of the president's own corporate stock dealings.

White House officials also seemed intent on getting questions about Mr. Bush's stock dealings out of the way before his speech, which his advisers hope will clear the way for a more straightforward handling by the media of his remarks on Tuesday. But they probably did not anticipate that Mr. Bush's meeting with reporters would be so dominated by questions about Harken.

The scandals in recent weeks at WorldCom, Tyco International and other companies have added so much energy to the drive for corporate reform that the Senate accounting bill, which was struggling just a month ago, is now expected to pass by a wide margin.

Democrats are trying to take greater advantage of that favorable political momentum by adding significant amendments to the bill — proposed by Senator Paul S. Sarbanes, Democrat of Maryland — that may not have had enough support to pass the Senate just weeks ago. Many of these provisions have the support of the Senate majority leader, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, aides said today.

"The Sarbanes bill is a strong bill and a great starting point, but there are a number of areas where it can be strengthened," said Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who plans to offer several amendments.

Asked today about the Sarbanes bill, Mr. Bush said, "We share the same goals, and I'm confident we can get a good piece of legislation out of the Congress."

Mr. Bush added, "My concern on the Sarbanes bill is that there's overlapping jurisdiction, which will make it harder to enforce rules and regulations, not easier."

Mr. Bush insisted that the procedures at Harken were not similar to those at the bankrupt Enron Corporation, and that there was no malfeasance, saying, "There was an honest difference of opinion as how to account for a complicated transaction."

The most sweeping amendment to the Democrats' plan is a proposal by Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont. That proposal creates a new felony for any "scheme or artifice" used to defraud shareholders; increases penalties for shredding or other destruction of evidence; offers new protections to corporate whistle-blowers; and prevents executives who lose securities fraud lawsuits from using bankruptcy to escape fraud-related verdicts and settlements. Mr. Leahy, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has the strong support of Mr. Daschle; many Republicans are also backing most provisions of the measure.

The proposal would, however, also lengthen the amount of time plaintiffs have to file securities fraud lawsuits, a provision many Republicans have objected to. Also, Senator Richard C. Shelby, Republican of Alabama, is expected to offer another plaintiff-friendly amendment that would make it easier for investors to sue accountants, lawyers, investment banks and others who "aid or abet" securities fraud.

In another important amendment, three senators want to write into the law strict responsibilities for corporate lawyers. This proposal, by Mike Enzi, Republican of Wyoming, and Democrats Jon S. Corzine of New Jersey and John Edwards of North Carolina, requires corporate lawyers for publicly traded companies who receive credible evidence of material legal violations to bring the matter to the attention of management and, if ignored, the board.

Mr. Levin plans to offer an amendment that would empower the S.E.C., without first going to court, to ban "unfit" officers and directors from publicly traded companies; fine accountants, lawyers, companies, executives and directors who violate securities laws; and obtain records for financial investigations without disclosing the subpoenas.

Even with all the new political momentum, the Democrats have to be careful, as whatever they pass still faces a showdown in conference committee with a much different legislative package approved in April by the Republican-controlled House. If the Democrats put too many new items on their bill, that could undermine its support among some members and reduce the legislation's momentum.

It is unclear whether Mr. Bush's news conference will put the questions behind him, particularly because he offered less of an explanation today than he and his advisers have in the past for why he was eight months late disclosing his 1990 sale of Harken stock on a document called a Form 4.

In his 1994 race for governor of Texas, Mr. Bush said that he thought he had filed on time but that the S.E.C. had misplaced the proper disclosure forms. Last week, Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary, attributed the late filing to a "mix-up" with Harken's lawyers. Mr. Bush said today, "As to why the Form 4 was late, I still haven't figured it out completely."

Mr. Bush repeatedly said that his stock sale and late filing were old news, and that it had been used against him by his political opponents for years. "People love to play politics," Mr. Bush said. Then he added: "That's nothing new. That happened in 1994. I can't remember if it happened in 1998 or not. It happened in 2000. I mean, this is recycled stuff."

At issue are 212,140 shares of Harken stock that Mr. Bush sold on June 30, 1990, for $4 a share, or $848,560, eight days before Harken finished its second quarter with a loss of $23.2 million. By August, the share price had fallen to $2.37. The S.E.C. investigated on suspicions that the transaction was conducted on the basis of insider information, a potential crime, but dropped the investigation in 1993, saying that "at this time no enforcement action is contemplated."

Today Mr. Bush said that by his accounting, he had actually lost money on the sale. "I sold the stock at 4, and 14 months later — you know, the holding period for capital gains I think was 12 months in those days — the person who bought my stock could have sold it for 8, could have doubled his or her money."

Aides to Senate leaders said they hoped that widening the scope of their bill would illuminate what they believe is a sharp contrast with a weaker plan by the Bush administration.

"I'm afraid he's going to try to blur the difference and get away with something without real teeth in it," said a senior aide to the Democratic leadership. "I think he's going to stand up there, with a great deal of hoopla, and deliver what sounds like a responsible position, but do nothing to support a responsible bill."

Bush to address corporate fraud in Wall Street visit

"The SEC fully looked into the matter, they looked at every aspect of it ... and the people who looked into it said they have no case,"
George W. Bush - July 8, 2002 - Source.

As I documented above the SEC was so tough that they, well, just, well, you know, didn't even interview George W. Bush. LOL! Even Ari Fleischer had to admit it. But it was a tough SEC investigation! Every stone was turned over, much like Janet Reno's talents. Hahahahaha!!!

Press Briefing by Ari Fleischer

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
July 12, 2002
12:02 P.M. EDT
SOURCE

The James S. Brady Briefing Room

Partial Transcript:

Q Can you explain why you think it's appropriate that the President wasn't interviewed on the Harken -- by the SEC, on the Harken situation?

MR. FLEISCHER: I think just as with any type of review of facts and of allegations, when the reviewers determine that the facts and the allegations don't hold up there's no need for an interview. The President would have been willing to have been interviewed if that was the case, he has said so. But I think it underscores exactly what has been discussed many times here, that there is no "there" there. It's all been looked into, the Securities and Exchange Commission has looked into this issue extensively and exhaustively and made the determination there was no "there" there.

Q But how do you react to the fact that the Securities experts say that this kind of lack of interview is highly unusual in this kind of case? I mean, if it had been someone else, there probably would have been an interview.

MR. FLEISCHER: I think it's all been looked at and explored by the Securities and Exchange Commission. And I think if that was the case, if somebody is suggesting that the actions of the Securities and Exchange Commission at the time they looked on this were somehow wrong actions, don't you think the administration that succeeded that administration might have looked at it differently if they had different people at the helm? Obviously, they made no changes to it because it was based on good judgment and the careful, considered judgment of the career people at the Securities and Exchange Commission. That's why in Washington you can go around in circles and circles and circles at a time when an old issue arises out of politics. And, again, there's no "there" there.

Q Ari? Ari?

Q Regardless of whether it was an old issue --

...Q Regardless of whether it was an old issue, Ari, the President did come out on Monday and field dozens of questions about the topic. We haven't seen the Vice President in the same way, come out and field those kinds of questions about his own accounting practices, his own stock practices. Is the President suggesting to him, regardless of whether it's old, it's been investigated, that he, too, come out, face the press, the American people and take questions on it?

MR. FLEISCHER: Let me put it to you this way. After a week of noise about nothing, people are seeing a scandal-seeking Washington that's out of touch with a solution-seeking nation. And that's what this President is focused on: solving the problems that have been created, that have been growing up for a considerable number of years as a result of the bubble in the markets and the corporate excesses that took place as a result of that; and targeting the wrongdoers and people who engage in fraud so that the country can have confidence in the free enterprise system and those people who are responsible in corporate America. And most of corporate America agrees with that, the American people agree with that. And that's where the President's focus is and shall be.

"How thorough the SEC inquiry was remains unclear. Jordan said Harken provided investigators with "thousands of pages" of documents, including the June 11 minutes and Faulkner's July 13 communique. Investigators interviewed Cummings, stockbroker Smith and a member of the Arthur Andersen auditing team, but they did not talk to Faulkner or any other officers or directors of Harken."
The Washington Post - Bush Name Helps Fuel Oil Dealings - By George Lardner Jr. and Lois Romano - Friday, July 30, 1999; Page A1.

I thought the Bush-bots were just telling everybody that Bush and the SEC turned over ALL the documents. LOL!

DEVELOPING: Harvey Pitt, the nation's chief regulator of financial markets, said Friday he 'absolutely' will not resign and that he has the full support of President Bush. Pitt also said he had no plans to release SEC documents involving Bush's controversial sale of Harken Energy Co. stock in 1990... MORE...

"We've had too many cases of people abusing their responsibilities, and people just need to know that the SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] is on it, our government is on it,"
George W. Bush - Source: Insight Magazine.

SEC Chairman Pitt Says He Won't Resign

Atlanta Journal-Constitution
By MARILYN GEEWAX
July 12, 2002
Source

Harvey Pitt, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, said Friday that he "absolutely" will not resign and that he has the full support of President Bush.

"I have a big job to do," said Pitt, the nation's chief regulator of financial markets.

Pitt spoke in an exclusive interview with Cox Newspapers, his first since a growing number of accounting scandals sparked calls for his resignation by high-profile lawmakers of both major political parties.

Pitt said he has no plans to release additional SEC documents involving Bush's sale of Harken Energy Co. stock in 1990.

Critics recently questioned whether Bush benefited from inside information before selling the stock. The president has acknowledged that lawyers at Harken belatedly filed paperwork with the SEC related to the sale.

Pitt said he didn't think the release to the public of all the documents would quiet questions about the president's business dealings at Harken.

"The reason is, first of all, I don't think the president's credibility needs to be increased," he said. "And second, this was thoroughly investigated a decade ago. It was meticulously done . . . so the issue at this juncture is political."

Just before Friday's interview at his SEC office, Pitt met with Bush at the White House to lay out strategies for a new anti-fraud task force, described by Bush as a SWAT team that will crack down on accounting fraud and other kinds of corporate wrongdoing.

The panel includes Pitt, Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson, Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller.

Pitt said Bush's support for him "has been clear all along. . . . It has never wavered."

The president, Pitt said, knows he will be a tough crime fighter because Bush "is aware of what we are actually doing" at the SEC to enforce laws. "I am enormously grateful for his support."

In recent days, more critics have demanded Pitt resign, saying he is the wrong man for the job because he spent 23 years representing the accounting and securities firms he now must police.

On Thursday, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said the agency needs a new leader "whose background and record leave no question" about the SEC's independence and authority.

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) said Pitt's "cozy relationship" with accountants calls into question "whether or not he has the credibility to be the independent regulator he needs to be."

Attacks are 'political'

Pitt said such attacks are "political diatribes" that ignore facts, and he does not agree with those who say he has become a political liability to Bush and to Republicans running for office in November.

"If you look at the people who criticize, you'll notice that all of their criticisms are generic -- they're just sound bites," he said. "No one who sees what we have done could doubt that this is the most effective SEC in history."

Pitt said the SEC has stepped up its pace of enforcement actions and issued numerous new reporting rules and regulations.

"My obligation is to serve the public," he said. "After November, after all of the critics have moved on to the next issue, I'm still going to be here cleaning up the mess" in the accounting world.

Pitt is not daunted by the scope of that task, he said. "This is a historic period -- I want to be part of the solution."

He said he was devastated to learn of accounting irregularities at Enron, WorldCom, Xerox and other major corporations that have led to the loss of tens of thousands of jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars in retirement savings.

"You look at an Enron or a WorldCom, and to me it's devastating," he said. "I won't tolerate it. I will make certain that we do everything in our power to restore the integrity and quality of the accounting profession."

Throughout his career, first as a young SEC lawyer and then as an attorney in private practice, Pitt, 57, has been praised for his legal brilliance and diligent work habits.

But the events of his first year as SEC chairman have been daunting. By his own count, he already has faced four crisises: the economic fallout from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Enron accounting debacle, the felony conviction of accounting firm Arthur Andersen and a stock market plunge tied to the loss of investor confidence.

Pitt may have set himself up for criticism in October, just a month after taking office, when he made a speech to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. He promised a new era at the SEC, saying the commission "has not, of late, always been a kinder and gentler place for accountants."

That phrase has been used time and again to suggest he won't be tough enough on criminal conduct in the industry.

"People are misconstruing what I said," Pitt said Friday.

Accountants used to be reluctant to call the SEC for advice, he said. He was only suggesting that his staff would be more willing to sit down with companies and their auditors to explain the law, and be sure they are following it, he said. His words were taken "wholly out of context" because some people want "to make political capital."

Responsible or timid?

Critics have said Pitt is not aggressive enough, that he asked for a budget increase of $100 million for more staff, yet Congress since has made it clear it would give him about three times as much.

"I wasn't being too timid. I was being responsible" in asking for a modest amount in his first year in office, Pitt said. "I wanted to make a top-to-bottom study of our efficiency" to determine exactly what the budget ought to be.

"We are doing that now," he said. "It will be done by the end of the summer, at which point we may well ask for additional people. But at least our request will be scientific, not this, 'Let's see who can outbid whom and who can come up with the largest number.' "

"There is nothing rotten in the accounting profession."
Harvey Pitt, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission - January, 2002 - SOURCE

Hi, my name is Harvey Pitt, you'll have to excuse me, I'm a recovering Arthur Andersen attorney.

Who Bought Bush's Stock In Problem-Plagued Oil Company And Why?

Associated Press
By Pete Yost
July 12, 2002

WASHINGTON (AP) -- It is a stock market whodunit that has withstood a decade of scrutiny. Who bought George W. Bush's problem-plagued oil company stock just before its value dropped?

The 1990 transaction involving shares of Harken Energy Corp. allowed the future president to pay off a bank loan for his now-famous stake in the Texas Rangers baseball team. The identity of the buyer of the stock has escaped public disclosure.

Federal regulators who examined the deal as a possible insider trade never asked. President Bush says he doesn't know and the White House declines to ask the broker who handled the transaction. Reporters have fared no better in getting to the bottom of the mystery.

Was Bush's sale of Harken stock another instance of a helping hand from family friends? Or was it a simple case of a buyer trying to make a killing in a high-risk investment?

Corporate scandals and failures that have rocked Wall Street in recent months have renewed questions about Bush's own business dealings when he was a Texas oilman. The White House was put on the defensive again Thursday, as it faced questions about the fact that Bush borrowed $180,000 from Harken to buy some of its stock. The loans are a type of transaction that Bush now wants to ban as part of a crackdown on corporate wrongdoing.

In the 1990 stock sale, Bush collected $848,560 when he sold 212,140 shares he had gotten in the merger of his struggling oil company with Harken in 1986.

By the time of the sale, Harken's finances also were in the red. Daily trading activity in the stock was as little as 1,300 shares on the New York Stock Exchange. If Bush had tried to sell such a large amount of Harken stock into the open market, it undoubtedly would have driven the price far below the $4 a share he was paid.

Bush's oil industry career is a history of being bailed out of money-losing ventures. Among the businessmen who came to his rescue before Harken were Cincinnati businessmen Mercer Reynolds III and William O. DeWitt. They eventually invested in the Rangers with Bush, raised more than $3 million for his presidential campaign and served as co-chairmen of Bush's inaugural committee. Reynolds is now U.S. ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

Bush's sale on June 22, 1990, was handled by California stock broker Ralph D. Smith, who says he got a call on June 9 that year from an institutional client who wanted to buy a large block of Harken.

Smith said he then made a couple of "cold calls" to people who owned Harken stock, including Bush.

The broker said there wasn't any arrangement ahead of time to bail Bush out of Harken.

"If there was a rigged buyer, why would he come" to a West Coast brokerage firm? said Smith, who worked for Sutro & Co. in California until his retirement.

The broker said that "if you wanted to do a favor for Bush, you just go to him directly, say here's $800,000 and we'll get this stock transferred."

The 1990 sale triggered an insider trading probe of Bush because he was eight months late in disclosing it to the Securities and Exchange Commission. White House press secretary Ari Fleischer defended the sale by saying Bush had notified the SEC in a timely manner that he intended to sell his shares. However, Bush failed to notify the SEC once the stock actually was sold, as required by law.

On Thursday, a Washington group, the Center for Public Integrity, posted internal SEC documents on the Internet showing that Harken initially was uncooperative in the insider trading probe. The company subsequently provided extensive cooperation to the SEC.

Uncovering little evidence to support an insider trading case, the SEC chose not to interview Bush.

SEC investigators interviewed Smith in the probe, but, according to Smith, they never asked the broker who bought Bush's stock.

Over the past two years, news organizations have tried to persuade Smith to ask the buyer to waive the cloak of confidentiality that surrounds the transaction, but the retired broker has declined.

"They're not going to find out the name of the buyer; it's none of their business," Smith said, adding that he had a professional responsibility not to identify the buyer.

On Thursday, White House spokesman Dan Bartlett said that "it isn't our place" to urge that the buyer step forward.

While Smith declines to name the purchaser, his difficult-to-read handwritten notes turned over to the SEC in the insider trading probe of Bush supply a clue.

The notes for June 9 appear to state that "Geo Bush will sell 212,010 shares in about 2 weeks." The June 22 entry on the day of the sale appears to state, "s/212,140 at 4 to Lee for Bush."

Smith declines to say whether the apparent word "Lee" refers to a person or an entity.

Bush's lawyers have said his investment in the Texas Rangers -- not any inside information about Harken's deteriorating financial performance -- was the motivating factor in selling his shares.

The stock Bush sold for $4 was selling for $3 two months later and fell to around a dollar by the end of 1990. It rebounded to nearly $9 a year after Bush sold. Today it sells for 44 cents a share.

Despite financial losses in 1990 and 1991, Harken's stock price was propped up by the company's highly publicized deal to drill for oil off the coast of Bahrain. The project, which came together while Bush's father was president, never struck any oil. Little Harken beat out major oil companies, including Amoco, for what at the time was thought might be an extremely valuable concession.

Bush's lawyers told the SEC that before the sale, his financial adviser "was bugging him to get liquid" to meet a financial obligation of $600,000 in connection with the Texas Rangers and to pay a tax bill of a couple of hundred thousand dollars. Bush paid off a bank loan he'd taken out for a share of the baseball team.

Bush's $600,000 stake in the Rangers in 1998 brought him $14.9 million when the team was sold.

On the Net: Center for Public Integrity:
www.publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/home.asp

THE HARVARD BOYS DO RUSSIA
"Anne Williamson, a journalist who specializes in Soviet and Russian affairs, details these and other conflicts of interest between H.I.I.D.'s advisers and their supposed clients-the Russian people-in her forthcoming book, How America Built the New Russian Oligarchy. For example, in 1995, in Chubais-organized insider auctions of prime national properties, known as loans-for-shares, the Harvard Management Company (H.M.C.), which invests the university's endowment, and billionaire speculator George Soros were the only foreign entities allowed to participate. H.M.C. and Soros became significant shareholders in Novolipetsk, Russia's second-largest steel mill, and Sidanko Oil, whose reserves exceed those of Mobil. H.M.C. and Soros also invested in Russia's high-yielding, I.M.F.-subsidized domestic bond market.

Even more dubious, according to Williamson, was Soros's July 1997 purchase of 24 percent of Sviazinvest, the telecommunications giant, in partnership with Uneximbank's Vladimir Potanin. It was later learned that shortly before this purchase Soros had tided over Yeltsin's government with a backdoor loan of hundreds of millions of dollars while the government was awaiting proceeds of a Eurobond issue; the loan now appears to have been used by Uneximbank to purchase Norilsk Nickel in August 1997. According to Williamson, the U.S.assistance program in Russia was rife with such conflicts of interest involving H.I.I.D. advisers and their U.S.A.I.D.-funded Chubais allies, H.M.C. managers, favored Russian bankers, Soros and insider expatriates working in Russia's nascent markets."
NOTE: An Inconvenient History - The Russian Money Laundering Pyramid

The Buying Of The President
Indeed, once Bush signed on, business at Harken began to pick up.

"When Harken bought out Spectrum 7, the company was broke and desperately needed a cash infusion.. As the talks with Spectrum 7 progressed, Harken officials were lining up a major new financial backer: Harvard Management Company, Inc. The investment firm's only client is Harvard University; it manages the school's multi-billion dollar endowment.

A month after Bush came on board, Harvard Management agreed to invest at least $20MM in Harken. it would eventually come to own some ten millions shares of Harken's stock, making it one of the company's largest investors.

The Bush name may have helped seal the deal.

Michael Eisenson, a partner in Harvard Management Company, who sat on Harken's board of directors, said that he and other Harvard officials picked Harken after reviewing several proposals from energy companies. "Harken management seemed capable and honest," Eisenson said.

The Bush name certainly would have made an impression on Eisenson's boss, Robert Stone, Jr., who was one of Harvard Management's directors. Stone was the "driving force" behind Harvard's Southwest oil and gas investments, according to Scott Sperling, who worked with Eisenson at Harvard. Stone himself was a player in the Texas oil and gas industry; at the time, he was the chairman of Kirby Exploration, an oil and gas transportation company based in Houston. As a longtime resident of Greenwich, Connecticut, he also knew the Bushes. His father in law, Godfrey Rockefeller, had invested in George Bush's oil drilling ventures in the 1940's. Stone's brother, Galen L. Stone, was the US envoy to Cyprus during the first Reagan-Bush Administration. In 1980 and 1988 he contributed to the elder Bush's presidential campaign.

Harken was Harvard Management's first major investment in Texas wildcat operations, a part of the university's investment history it would rather forget. The investments in oil and gas would eventually generate nearly $200 million in loses for the endowment.

The university's commitment to Harken was suprising in view of the bad shape the company was in. "I took some time and looked at it and I went, God, I don't want to be anywhere near this," a prospective investor in Harken from the late 1980's told the Center. "This thing looks like a train wreck."

By Harken executives' own accounts, the company's financial statements were "a mess" and " a fast numbers game" But insiders insist that Harvard's money managers wouldn't have kept pumping money into Harken if they didn't thing it would become profitable.

For a time, they had reason to believe it would.

The Bahrain agreement, announced on January 30, 1990, seemed to justify Harvard's enthusiasm for Harken. (Note from Solari: See the book "False Profits" on the allegations surrounding the dropping of indictments by the Bush Administration against BCCI's Miami and Caribbean operations and Harken's first non domestic oil deal and alleged relations between the two investor groups).

One of the questions the SEC didn't answer was who bought Bush's stock.

In his statement of intent to sell, which Bush also had to file with the SEC, he said he was putting his 212,140 shares on the open market. That was nearly twenty times the daily volume of stock that traded on average during June 1990; without a buyer willing to absorb such a large block of stock, the share price would have plummeted.

Under questioning by SEC investigators, Ralph Smith, a Los Angeles broker with Sutro & Company, who handled the sale, said that he solicited the shares at the behest of an institutional investor, which he didn't name.

The available evidence suggests that the investor was Harvard. The university increased its holdings in Harken around the time. No new institutional investors appeared on the scene. At the bottom of a spreadsheet Smith used to record his calls to Bush was the name of Michael Eisenson, along with the telephone number of Harvard Management. (Eisenson did not return the Center's telephone calls).

Finally, nine years after its investment in Harken helped save Bush from financial ruin, Harvard Management Company got a deal on a piece of real estate it bought from the Texas Teachers Retirement System. In 1995 the Texas Teachers Retirement System sold the Anatole Hotel in Dallas to a partnership that included the Crow family, which owns a controlling interest in Trammell Crow Company, one of the nation's top real estate management companies, and Harvard Management. Without taking bids, the Texas Teachers Retirement reportedly sold the hotel for $27 million less than it had spent to make improvements on the structure."

Winokur to Join Harvard Corporation
Herbert S. Winokur Jr.

Born in Columbus, Ga., Winokur holds three degrees from Harvard: A.B. '65 ('64), A.M. '65, and Ph.D. '67. His doctoral degree is in applied mathematics (decision and control theory). Since 1987, Winokur has been chairman and chief executive officer of the investment firm Capricorn Holdings Inc., based in Greenwich, Conn. He is also managing general partner of three affiliated limited partnerships, Capricorn Investors, L.P., I, II, and III. The portfolio investments encompass companies with revenues of more than $2 billion and having more than 20,000 employees.

Winokur has maintained close ties to Harvard over the years. A member of the Committee on University Resources since 1989, he has also served since 1995 as a member of the board of directors of the Harvard Management Company. He serves on the advisory committee of Harvard's Mind/Brain/Behavior Initiative, as well as on the Technology and Education Planning Committee of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. He is a member of the Committee to Visit the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and previously served on the FAS Planning Committee for Faculty Recruitment and Development. Co-chair of reunion fundraising efforts for the Class of 1965, he is a member of the New York Major Gifts Steering Committee.

An active board member in both the nonprofit and for-profit worlds, Winokur is an honorary director of the UCLA Medical Center, a former trustee of the Greenwich Academy, and a former co-chair of the New York Historical Society. He is on the board of Second Stage Theatre and until recently served on the board of Project 180, an organization that facilitates the restructuring of nonprofit institutions. He is a member of both the Council on Foreign Relations and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Council, and he chaired the search for the Center's current director. His present and past corporate directorships span a wide range of industries, including information technology, energy, water management, and commercial real estate finance.

Before becoming chairman and CEO of Capricorn Holdings, Winokur served as senior executive vice president of the Penn Central Corp., and played a leading role in the corporation's major restructuring and cost reduction efforts. Previously, from 1974 to 1983, he held senior management positions at Pacific Holding Corp., Victor Palmieri and Co., and Pennsylvania Co., Penn Central's principal operating subsidiary.

From 1969 into the early 1970s, Winokur was co-founder and chairman of the Inner City Fund (later ICF Kaiser International), a management consulting firm specializing in policy planning for senior government and business officials, and which also focused on stimulating minority entrepreneurship. For the two preceding years, following the receipt of his Ph.D., he served as an officer in the U.S. Army, assigned to the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Group Questions Harvard's Ties to Enron

Herbert "Pug" Winokur Jr. - Embattled Enron director to resign from Harvard Management Company

Winokur, a member of the committee that produced the report, has been a director since 1985. Winokur is also affiliated with the National Tank Co., an oil industry supplier, which in 2000 received $370,294 in sales from Enron, according to Enron's most recent proxy.

ENRON - June 6, 2002 - At a Board meeting today, the Board unanimously accepted the resignations, effective today, of the four remaining long-standing directors, Robert A. Belfer, Norman P. Blake, Dr. Wendy L. Gramm and Herbert S. Winokur, Jr.

"There is nothing rotten in the accounting profession."
Harvey Pitt, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission - January, 2002 - SOURCE

Secrecy Surrounds Bush Stock Deal

ASSOCIATED PRESS
July 12, 2002
Source

WASHINGTON- When George W. Bush's sale of oil stock attracted the attention of regulators a decade ago, the Securities and Exchange considered interviewing him about possible insider trading but never did.

The SEC won't say why it didn't talk with Bush, whose father was president at the time.

An SEC memo from 1991 shows that investigators raised the possibility of interviewing Bush about his sale of 212,140 shares in Harken Energy Corp. The investigators told Harken's lawyer that "we would promptly inform him whether we need to speak with Bush," the memo said.

The Harken attorney "volunteered that Bush would consent to a phone interview and/or voluntary testimony," the memo added.

There is no explanation as to why an interview wasn't pursued in thousands of pages of material released by the SEC over the years in the Bush inquiry.

The SEC has declined to release some of the files from its investigation.

The White House has rebuffed repeated requests in recent days that it authorize the release of all the SEC's records on its inquiry, which was closed with no action against Bush.

In its limited number of interviews and extensive gathering of documents from Harken, the SEC uncovered little evidence of insider trading. Harken initially was uncooperative in the inquiry but subsequently provided extensive help to the SEC, waiving attorney-client privilege. The SEC interviewed Harken's in-house counsel who advised Bush concerning the stock sale.

The controversy surrounding Bush and his days as a Texas oilman continued Friday as Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., urged the president to turn over any profits from his sale of Harken stock to a charity for displaced workers.

The stock sale allowed the future president to pay off a bank loan for his stake in the Texas Rangers baseball team.

The identity of the buyer of the stock has never been disclosed.

The SEC never asked. President Bush says he doesn't know and the White House declines to ask the broker who handled the transaction. Reporters have fared no better in getting to the bottom of the mystery.

Bush had gotten the stock in the merger of his struggling oil company with Harken in 1986.

By the time of the sale, Harken's finances also were in the red. Daily trading activity in the stock was as little as 1,300 shares on the New York Stock Exchange. If Bush had tried to sell a large amount of Harken stock into the open market, it undoubtedly would have driven the price far below the $4 a share market price that he was paid.

Bush's sale on June 22, 1990, was handled by California stock broker Ralph D. Smith, who says he got a call on June 9 that year from an institutional client who wanted to buy a large block of Harken.

Smith said he then made a couple of "cold calls" to people who owned Harken stock, including Bush.

SEC investigators interviewed Smith in the insider trading inquiry, but, according to Smith, they never asked the broker who bought Bush's stock. Smith, now retired, says he has a professional responsibility to protect the confidentiality of the buyer.

White House spokesman Dan Bartlett says that "it isn't our place" to urge that the buyer step forward.

Smith's difficult-to-read handwritten notes turned over to the SEC supply a clue about the buyer.

The notes for June 9 appear to state that "Geo Bush will sell 212,010 shares in about 2 weeks." The June 22 entry on the day of the sale appears to state, "s/212,140 at 4 to Lee for Bush." Smith declines to say whether the word that appears to be "Lee" is a reference to a person or an entity.

"There is nothing rotten in the accounting profession."
Harvey Pitt, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission - January, 2002 - SOURCE.

The Center For Public Integrity

http://www.publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/home.asp

Securities and Exchange Commission Documents

Because of a column by Paul Krugman that ran in the New York Times and a follow-up Washington Post story, there has been renewed interest in two reports the Center published on the Public i concerning George W. Bush's days as a director of Harken Energy. We published the first on Oct. 2, 2000 and the second on April 4, 2001.

As a public service, we are offering here in PDF format some of the documents we received from the Securities and Exchange Commission under the Freedom of Information Act.

PDF Format

December 14, 1990 Letter to Harken Energy
Written by Jerry Reidler of the SEC's Division of Corporation Finance, the letter requests additional information on Harken's Aloha sale, among other matters.

April 10, 1991 SEC Memorandum
Written by SEC investigators Herbert F. Janick 3d, Lewis J. Mendelson, and James B. Adelman for the SEC's files, the memorandum notes that Bush was late reporting his Harken stock sales. "Bush's Forms 4 [disclosing the sale of stock by an insider] were filed from 15 to 34 weeks late…"

April 16, 1991 Fax to Harken Energy
Written by Hebert Janick of the SEC's Division of Enforcement, the fax requests a chronology of events leading up to Harken's public announcement of a $23.2 million loss on August 20, 1990.

May 12, 1991 Harken Energy Chronology
Prepared by Harken Energy at the request of the SEC, the document describes "the events and circumstances leading up to the release of Harken's earnings for the period April 1, 1990 through June 30, 1990 …"

July 7, 1991 SEC Office of Economic Analysis Report
Written by Lisa Meulbroek for Janick, Mendelson, Adelman, and Paul Gerlach, the report analyzes the effect of Harken's Aug. 20, 1990 disclosure of its $23.2 million loss and the subsequent effect on the company's share price.

August 21, 1991 SEC Memorandum
Written by Janick, Paul Gerlach, and Adelman and addressed to Bruce Hiler, it traces the circumstances of Bush's sale of Harken stock. "The staff's investigation indicates that there is insufficient evidence to establish three necessary aspects of a possible insider trading case."

March 18, 1992 SEC Action Memorandum
Prepared by the Division of Enforcement, the memorandum summarizes the findings of the SEC investigation.

March 27, 1992 SEC Memorandum
Written by Janick for the file, this memorandum suggests that Bush was unaware of the magnitude of the impending loss at the time he sold his stock. "The vast majority of the [second quarter] loss was unknown to management, let alone Bush." It also notes that the Audit Committee, of which Bush was a member, was not privy to much of the financial information about the company.

April 20, 1990 Letter
From Mikel D. Faulkner, President of Harken Energy, to the board of directors. The letter notes that new conditions on a loan Harken sought “greatly intensifies our current liquidity problem and mandates the infusion of equity into the company.”

May 18, 1990 Letter
From Bruce N. Huff, senior vice president of Harken Energy, to the members of the company’s “special committee,” which included George W. Bush. The letter notes, “It is become evident that it will be necessary to reach a conclusion regarding the fairness of the proposal by the Major Shareholders before permanent waivers of various loan covenant violations and an extension of the due date for specific loan facilities can be obtained from our major banks. Such waivers and extensions will allow the Company to properly report the substantial portion of its debt facilities as long-term and thereby avoid any negative repercussions that might otherwise occur if the Company remains in a state of non-compliance with regard to loan covenants.”

January 9, 1991 Letter
From Bruce N. Huff, senior vice president of Harken Energy, to Edmund Coulson, chief accountant of the SEC. Huff describes in detail Harken’s position on the Aloha sale, and how it was restructured. Huff notes that in April 1990, “The immediate focus of the Company was at that time redirected to raising cash.” He also notes, “By June, 1990, the Company was constrained by its worsening cash and credit situation.”

April 12, 1991 Letter
From Herbert Janick, assistant director of the SEC Enforcement Division, to George W. Bush. The letter requests, “Copies of all Forms 3, 4 and 144, cover letters and attachments thereto that were transmitted by you, or on your behalf, to the Commission during the period September 1, 1986 through the present.”

June 21, 1991 Fax
From Herbert Janick to Joseph A. Cialone 2nd, a Baker & Botts attorney who represented both George W. Bush and Harken Energy. “We appreciate Mr. Bush’s willingness to cooperate in the staff’s inquiry,” Janick wrote in the first paragraph. The fax requests that Bush “voluntarily provide” any documents in his possession received from Jan. 1, 1990 to June 30, 1990 related to, among other things, “unusual charges” stemming from the Aloha transaction.

June 21, 1991 Fax
From Herbert Janick to Joseph A. Cialone 2nd, a Baker & Botts attorney who represented both George W. Bush and Harken Energy. The fax requests that “Harken voluntarily provide copies of all documents concerning, referring, or relating to any policies or procedures of Harken, in effect during the period of January 1, 1990, to the date of Harken’s response to this request, concerning the purchase, sale or ownership of Harken securities by any officer or director of Harken.”

July 17, 1991, SEC Memorandum
From Herbert Janick and Paul Gerlach of the Enforcement Division, the memorandum notes “Harken has asserted attorney-client privilege and refused to produce documents concerning its policies covering the purchase, sale or ownership of Harken securities by officers or directors. Bush has produced a small amount of additional documents which provide little insight as to what Harken nonpublic information he knew and when he knew it.”

July 25, 1991 Fax
From Herbert Janick to Joseph A. Cialone 2nd, a Baker & Botts attorney who represented both George W. Bush and Harken Energy. The letter describes the material that the SEC had requested that Bush and Harken “voluntarily provide.”

To write a letter to the editor for publication, e-mail letters@publicintegrity.org. Please include a daytime phone number.

SEC Records Show Bush Had Some Idea Of Harken's Troubles

THE BOSTON GLOBE
By John Aloysius Farrell
July 13, 2002 - Saturday

WASHINGTON -- Harken Energy Corp. was in bad financial shape, facing restructuring, when George W. Bush sold some $850,000 worth of shares in the company in June 1990. Evidence in government files indicates he had at least partial knowledge of the company's troubles before he sold the stock.

Records from a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation indicate that Bush, who served on Harken's board of directors and was a member of a special committee to deal with the financial troubles, had been warned about the company's crisis by its president, Mikel Faulkner, and other officers before selling his stock.

On April 20, 1990, Faulkner wrote to the members of Harken's board that the company was facing a liquidity crisis and that crucial plans to sell new shares of stock were diminished, because of a slumping oil market. The firm was also facing pressure from its lenders, especially the Bank of Boston, which "greatly intensifies our current liquidity problem," Faulkner wrote.

On May 18, 1990, according to the SEC files, Harken's senior vice president, Bruce Huff, wrote to the special committee -- made up of Bush, Faulkner, and director E. Stuart Watson -- to alert it of the "negative repercussions" that could occur if they did not approve waivers and extensions of corporate loans.

The Bank of Boston refused to renegotiate its loans, and the stock sale had to be put off. In a 1991 letter to the SEC, Huff said that by June 1990, "The company was in the midst of the severe cash crisis."

Bush sold 212,140 shares of Harken stock on June 22, 1990, two months before Harken reported a $23.2 million quarterly loss that was tied, in part, to the restructuring efforts. The SEC investigated him over possible insider trading when the SEC learned of the sale the following spring, eight months after it was required to be reported. The SEC ended its investigation without charging Bush with violating securities laws.

In its last public disclosure preceding Bush's sale, Harken had announced only a $2 million operating loss for the first quarter. Bush says he did not know that Harken was about to post the whopping second-quarter loss that August, even though he was on Harken's three-member special audit committee, as well as its board of directors.

When closing the inquiry in 1991, SEC investigators concluded that Bush was not privy to the full extent of the financial problems facing Harken. They also believed, records show, that proving a case that Bush acted with intent to defraud would be difficult because he had openly consulted the firm's officers and lawyers before selling his stock.

Bush used the proceeds of the Harken sale to pay off a loan he took to buy his interest in the Texas Rangers baseball team. The SEC general counsel at the time Bush was investigated was James Doty, the same lawyer who represented Bush in the Rangers deal.

The Associated Press reported yesterday that a 1991 SEC memo showed the agency considered interviewing Bush when it investigated him but never did. The SEC won't say why it didn't talk with Bush.

1990 Deal Mystery: Who Bought Bush's Shares In Harken?

SEC Officials Didn't Ask; Stockbroker Won't Tell

Associated Press
July 14, 2002
Source

WASHINGTON - It is a stock market whodunit that has withstood a decade of scrutiny. Who bought George W. Bush's oil company stock just before its value dropped?

The 1990 transaction involving shares of Harken Energy Corp. allowed the future president to pay off a bank loan for his now-famous $600,000 stake in the Texas Rangers baseball team.

Federal regulators who examined the deal as a possible insider trade never asked. Bush says he doesn't know, and the White House declines to ask the broker who handled the transaction.

Was Bush's sale of Harken stock another instance of a helping hand from family friends? Or was it a simple case of a buyer trying to make a killing in a high-risk investment?

Corporate scandals and failures that have rocked Wall Street in recent months have renewed questions about Bush's business dealings when he was a Texas oilman. The White House was put on the defensive again Friday, as Rep. Henry A. Waxman of California wrote Bush a letter saying the president should donate the profits from the sale of his Harken stock to a charity that helps displaced workers.

In the 1990 stock sale, Bush collected $848,560 when he sold 212,140 shares he had gotten in the merger of his struggling oil company with Harken in 1986.

By the time of the sale, Harken's finances also were in the red. Daily trading activity in the stock was as little as 1,300 shares on the New York Stock Exchange. If Bush had tried to sell such a large amount of Harken stock on the open market, it would undoubtedly have driven the price far below the $4 a share he was paid.

Bush's oil industry career is a history of being bailed out of money-losing ventures. Among those who came to his rescue before Harken were Cincinnati businessmen Mercer Reynolds III and William O. DeWitt. They eventually invested in the Rangers with Bush, raised more than $3 million for his presidential campaign and served as co-chairmen of his inaugural committee. Reynolds is now U.S. ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

Bush's sale on June 22, 1990, was handled by California stockbroker Ralph D. Smith, who says he got a call June 9 that year from an institutional client who wanted to buy a large block of Harken.

Smith said he made a couple of "cold calls" to people who owned Harken stock, including Bush.

The broker said there wasn't any arrangement ahead of time to bail Bush out of Harken.

The broker said that "if you wanted to do a favor for Bush, you just go to him directly, say here's $800,000 and we'll get this stock transferred."

The 1990 sale triggered an insider trading probe of Bush because he was eight months late in disclosing it to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Uncovering little evidence to support an insider trading case, the SEC didn't interview Bush.

SEC investigators interviewed Smith, but, according to Smith, they never asked the broker who bought Bush's stock.

Over the past two years, news organizations have tried to persuade Smith to ask the buyer to waive the confidentiality that surrounds the transaction, but the retired broker has declined.

Smith's difficult-to-read handwritten notes turned over to the SEC in the insider trading probe of Bush supply a clue.

The notes for June 9 appear to state that "Geo Bush will sell 212,010 shares in about 2 weeks." The June 22 entry on the day of the sale appears to state, "s/212,140 at 4 to Lee for Bush."

Smith declines to say whether the apparent word "Lee" refers to a person or an entity.

Bush's lawyers have said his investment in the Rangers - not inside information about Harken's deteriorating financial performance - was the motivating factor in selling his shares.

The stock Bush sold for $4 was selling for $3 two months later and about a dollar by the end of 1990. It rebounded to nearly $9 a year after Bush sold. Today a share sells for 44 cents.

"There is nothing rotten in the accounting profession."
Harvey Pitt, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission - January, 2002 - SOURCE.

Chairman Pitt Trys To Defend SEC Record

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