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White House Watch: Credibility problem
WASHINGTON, July 17 (UPI) -- As he often does, President George W. Bush took on a slightly pained expression Wednesday when a reporter asked him why he wouldn't release SEC documents about his $850,000 stock transaction at Harken Energy Company -- where he was investigated for failing to report the sale promptly to the government. "As to a look at Harken," he told the inquiring reporter, "the SEC, as a result of Freedom of Information requests, has released the documents and the key document said there is no case." Bush has been making this explanation with some minor variations since he first ran for governor of Texas nearly a decade ago. There is nothing to find in Harken, he always claims. It is a dry hole. Professional Securities and Exchange Commission investigators, government employees he stresses, not political appointees, made that determination and that should settle the matter. But it never has. Harken comes up again and again, now undermining the president's effort to reassure Americans about the economy and his administration's ability to discipline fraud and malfeasance in major corporations like WorldCom that revealed last month it had hidden $3.8 billion in debts. WorldCom -- like Enron Corp., where Bush supporter Ken Lay was chief executive -- and a score of other major corporations have been accused of cooking the books over the last nine months, leaving thousands of employees out of work and millions of stockholders out of luck. No matter how many times Bush tells his tale, there are always two questions unanswered: why won't Bush order the SEC to divulge the complete record on its Harken investigation and who bought the nearly $850,000 in stock 12 years ago? The White House pooh-poohs reporter questions as being a nonsensical comparison with the billions manipulated at Enron and WorldCom, but to Bush, the Harken sale may have been on of the most crucial of his business career, clearing debts so he could invest in the Texas Rangers baseball team which led, in turn, to the $15 million windfall he got from the team's sale several years later. It is with that windfall that Bush ran for governor and the rest -- as they say -- is history.

posted by West 7:28 PM