NP? Bush Jr. gets defensive re comparisons to Enron, WorldCom, et al

[Doug Millison]

Bush Defends His Business Tenure


The Associated Press
Tuesday, July 2, 2002; 6:03 PM

MILWAUKEE -- President Bush defended in a snappish tone Tuesday his own
business experience with a corporation accused of fishy accounting.

"Everything I do is fully disclosed; it's been fully vetted," the president
said as he paused to speak with reporters during a church appearance in
Wisconsin. "Any other questions?"

Bush was responding to a journalist who asked for his reaction to New York
Times columnist Paul Krugman, who said in Tuesday's newspaper that Bush's
recent campaign against corporate malfeasance draws on "firsthand
experience of the subject."

Bush, in 1989, was on the board of directors and audit committee of Harken
Energy when the company masked $10 million in losses by reporting a profit
on the sale of a subsidiary to a group of Harken insiders borrowing money
from the company itself.

The Securities and Exchange Commission ruled the transaction phony and
forced the company to restate its 1989 earnings. The SEC also investigated
Bush for insider trading after he sold nearly $850,000 of Harken stock
shortly before its mounting debt was publicly disclosed.

The SEC eventually closed its investigation of Bush without taking action
against him, although The Dallas Morning News has quoted a 1993 letter from
the SEC to Bush's lawyer emphasizing that its decision "must in no way be
construed as indicating that (Bush) has been exonerated."

Democrats said those investigations bear close similarities to current-day
corporate accounting scandals involving Enron, WorldCom and other business
giants that have shaken investor confidence.

Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri called the 1989
transactions by Harken and Bush "very Enron-esque" and said they were
symbolic of how Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, whose former employer
Halliburton is also now under SEC investigation, had helped create a
business climate ripe for accounting fraud.

Republicans say Democrats are just desperate to make political hay in an
election year.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15500-2002Jul2.html