[Uncle Bill]

Excellent, thanks.

Just Keep Snooping Regarding Harken To Prove There's There There

Amid scandals, Bush White House takes a risky path, placing loyalty over public duty

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President Bush, President Kwasniewski Hold Joint Press Conference

Remarks by President Bush and President Kwasniewski of Poland in Press Conference

The East Room

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
July 17, 2002
Source

12:03 P.M. EDT

Partial transcript:

PRESIDENT BUSH: We'll answer some questions. We'll alternate between the American press and the Polish press, three apiece --

Q Mr. President, even while you're calling for transparency in corporate America, you refuse to ask the SEC to turn over documents from its investigation into Harken Energy Corporation, your old company. And the Vice President has answered few questions about his role at Halliburton, his old company, which is now under investigation by the SEC. Why not just clear the air, ask the SEC to release those documents and ask the Vice President to talk about Halliburton in a public forum?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Well, first, the Vice President -- I've got great confidence in the Vice President, doing a heck of a good job. When I picked him, I knew he was a fine business leader and a fine experienced man. And he's doing a great job. That matter will take -- run its course, the Halliburton investigation, and the facts will come out at some point in time.

Secondly, as to a look at Harken, the SEC, as a result of Freedom of Information requests, has released documents, and the key document said there is no case. It was fully investigated by career investigators. Some of you, I think, have talked to the head career investigator, and he's made it clear there was no case.
[End of partial transcript]

"It must in no way be construed as indicating that the party[George W. Bush] has been exonerated or that no action may ultimately result from the staff's investigation." Bruce A. Hiler - associate director of the SEC's enforcement division."

James Doty is a senior partner at Baker Boggs. In the late 1980s, he was George W. Bush's personal lawyer, who helped arrange Bush's purchase of part-ownership of the Texas Rangers.

Doty was then named Securities and Exchange Commission General Counsel.

NPR's Bob Edwards just interview James Doty about all of this -- and Doty has stayed true to White House form, squirming and dissembling about Bush, especially when confronted with hard facts.

Doty told Edwards that, in the Harken deal, Bush "met not only the letter but the spirit of the law," and that he was and is "a compliant person."

Really, Mr. Doty? Then why, in a memo dated July 17, 1991, did SEC investigators complain that Bush and his lawyers were being evasive, hiding behind attorney-client privilege, and withholding crucial information?

When Doty tried to say that the SEC had, in fact, exonerated Bush, Edwards pressed him, asking if the letter has not in fact explicitly stated that Bush had not been exonerated.

Doty: "No, it [the SEC letter] simply says the agency reserved the right to reopen the file..."

Edwards: "Let me find it. Let me find it." Then he quoted directly from the SEC letter, about how Bush had not been exonerated. This caught the smooth velvet Doty off-guard somewhat.

Doty: "I think the release prohibits..the docu..th..the letter prohibits people representing it...as exoneration."

You can listen to the interview here.

NPR - Host Bob Edwards talks with James Doty

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Bushbots for BakerBotts.

Note of interest
on Baker Botts L.L.P.:

• Richard Breeden - Former SEC Chairman - Baker & Botts.
  
• James R. Doty - SEC General Counsel of the United States - Baker & Botts.
  
• Robert Jordan - Attorney representing Bush in Harken scandal - Baker & Botts.

  Elder Bush in Big G.O.P. Cast Toiling for Top Equity Firm
  "James A. Baker III is the current Baker in Baker Botts. Baker was Secretary of State under the first President Bush. He is currently senior counsel to The Carlyle Group."
  

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  The Bass Boys:

  "In 1989, Congress finally came up with $157 billion to bail out the S&Ls. But by that time, the costs were over $200 billion (and they continue to rise to this day). To make up the difference, the Resolution Trust Corporation was formed; it sold off the assets of failed S&Ls, mostly at bargain-basement prices in sweetheart deals.

  For example, Robert Bass, one of the richest men in America, bought American Savings and Loan for $350 million, then received $2 billion in government subsidies to help him resurrect it. (With that much money, you could probably raise the dead.) During one week in 1988, the government promised $8 billion in assistance to nine S&L purchasers; one of them put $20 million down, and the other eight paid nothing."
  Take the Rich Off Welfare - by Mark Zepezauer and Arthur Naiman - Odonian Press, 1996.

  "Which brings us to one of the interesting conundrums encountered in Bush finances. The contract with Bahrain would have been impossible to carry out by Harken alone; it needed big, big bucks. These were supplied by the Bass family of Fort Worth, a clan of billionaires. Was this a quid pro quo or just a happy coincidence? Of course, the Basses may have simply wanted to take a gamble, as they often did. On the other hand, they may have felt some obligation to help George W.’s company as a kind of payback; after all, his father’s administration had given $2 billion in tax-exempt subsidies to a group of “vultures” (to use Newsweek’s generic term) headed by Robert Bass, to help pick the carcass of the $16.3 billion American Savings and Loan, the biggest insolvent S&L in the country, but still very fleshy.

  Robert Bass’ good fortune on that occasion may have had something to do with the fact that he was a member of Vice President Bush’s “Team 100,” a knot of rich men, each of whom contributed $100,000 or more to Bush’s 1988 presidential campaign. On the other hand, so much money, so many favors have been passed back and forth over the years between the Bushes and their incredibly wealthy backers, it is probably foolish to try to figure out all the quid pro quos that tie their daisy chain together."
  SOURCE: The Bush Files

  The Malefactors of Great Wealth
  "When Bush was in the oil business, his failing company, Spectrum 7, was bought by Harken Energy. Bush and his two partners got $2 million in stock in exchange for a company that had lost $400,000 in the six months prior to the sale. Bush himself got stock worth about $500,000 and an annual consulting fee of $120,000, later reduced to $50,000.

  In June 1990, Bush sold two-thirds of the Harken stock he had acquired in the Spectrum 7 deal at $4 a share-$318,430 more than it was worth when he got it. A month before Bush sold his stock, the Harken board appointed Bush and another company director, E. Stuart Watson, to a "fairness committee" to determine how restructuring would affect ordinary stockholders.

  Smith, Barney, Harris, Upham & Co., the financial consultants hired by Harken, told Bush and Watson only drastic action could save the company. So Bush sold his stock before the news became public. According to U.S. News & World Report, there was "substantial evidence to suggest that Bush knew Harken was in dire straits." Insiders liquidating large blocks of stock are required to notify the Securities and Exchange Commission immediately. Bush reported the sale eight months after the federal deadline. Although the SEC does prosecute flagrant violators of insider-reporting rules, according to The Wall Street Journal, first-time violators usually get only a warning letter."

  Beasts of the (Oil) Field
  "Texas Wild! is Ramona Bass’s baby, and if oil looms large in her version of environmental history-and it does-perhaps that’s because oil made Ramona Bass who she is today. The daughter of rancher, oilman and avid hunter Arthur A. Seeligson, Ramona is the wife of Lee Bass-one of the billionaire Bass brothers and chairman of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission. The Bass empire was founded by Lee Bass’s great uncle, Sid Richardson, a wildcatter who struck it rich in the oilfields of West Texas. Bass and his three brothers inherited almost $3 million each from him. Investments in Texaco and Disney made them billionaires."

[American Blood]

I can appreciate the amount of work you have put into this Bill. Your zeal is admirable. Giving you the benefit of the doubt, lets say that maybe half of these accusations and assumptions are true. It doesn't matter. Reasonable people understand that the powerful and influential people of this country do not play by the same rules as you and I do. Bush may be guilty of bad judgement and greed, but who isn't at some point in there lives? Can you say you've never used bad judgement or shown a little greed from time to time Uncle Bill??

No, what matters is what the man does while he is IN office. The hard facts are that most people who read this will not give it too much of a second thought. While some of it may be wrapped in truth, it's mudslinging, and atleast 73% of we fine citizens will see it as just that. Sorry Bill. 73% doesn't lie. You'd better get used to it, or you'll be copying and pasting for years to come.