PAGE SIX By RICHARD JOHNSON with PAULA FROELICH and CHRIS WILSON
Second wind for Bush-basher
CALL it the book that won't die. "Fortunate Son," which alleges that George W. Bush was arrested in the early '70s for cocaine possession, will finally be published next month.
The book - which the White House says "has been widely dismissed as science-fiction" - originally was slated to be released in late 1999 by St. Martin's Press. But the house backed off when it learned that author J.H. Hatfield had done jail time for trying to hire a hitman.
Industry renegade Sander Hicks, whose Soft Skull Press brags it specializes in "fearless, progressive, punk rock/hip-hop literature," tried to publish the book last year. But it was held up by a lawsuit from a Dallas real estate company that once employed Hatfield. An unflattering mention of the firm was removed from the foreword for the version coming out this month.
The book claims Bush was busted for using cocaine in the early '70s and that no record of the arrest exists because it was expunged in exchange for community service.
Hicks, who calls Hatfield's 1988 conviction for solicitation of capital murder the "result of a workplace conspiracy gone horribly awry," will distribute the tome through Publishers Group West. In a newly added note, Hicks stands by the author, alleging that public opinion "has been created to destroy J.H. Hatfield and his book."
Hatfield, for his part, has added a lengthy afterword intended to boost his credibility by detailing how and where he supposedly learned about Bush's alleged drug use and plea bargain.
Hatfield claims three different sources confirmed the cocaine charge, including a former Yale classmate of Bush, a longtime Bush family friend, and "a high-ranking adviser to Bush who had known the candidate for several years" and who met with Hatfield in Lake Eufaula, Okla.
In a separate note, Hicks identifies the Lake Eufaula source as none other than Karl Rove, Bush's own White House political strategist. Rove was traveling and could not be reached.
But presidential spokesman Scott McClellan denies that Rove ever spoke with Hatfield. In the afterword, Hatfield claims he asked McClellan whether George Bush's work as an inner-city youth counselor at Houston's Project P.U.L.L. in 1972 was a condition of having a cocaine charge purged. According to the book, McClellan "muttered an almost inaudible "Oh, [bleep]" and after hesitating . . . finally said, 'No comment.'"
But McClellan told PAGE SIX: "I'd never talked to the guy. I'd never heard of the guy."