>X-url: http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0207/S00033.htm
>
>Posting to Headlines Wire of Scoop
>Article: Alastair Thompson
>Date: Thursday, 4 July 2002
>Time: 3:07 pm NZT
>
>
>
>Investigator Who Cleared Bush Gets WorldCom Job
>
>A former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman appointed
>court monitor of WorldCom Inc. on Wednesday was previously responsible
>for clearing U.S. President George W. Bush of insider trading
>concerning his involvement in Harken Energy during the lead up
>to the 1991 Gulf War.
>
>Bush's involvement in Harken Energy in 1990 during the presidency
>of his father resulted just a wrist slapping for George Junior.
>George Bush had failed to file share sales declarations to the
>SEC for eight months during a period when his shares tanked.
>
>
>The 1990 investigation into Harken has been receiving considerable
>coverage in US media in recent days. Interestingly few of the
>media covering the matter however have yet made the connection
>between Harken Energy and the father of the World's Most Wanted
>Terrorist (For more detail see... The GW Bush - Osama Bin Laden
>Connection)
>
>And now it seems more than ironic that a man appointed by George
>Bush Senior as the SEC chairman, and who cleared George Bush
>of any impropriety over Harken (in spite of considerable evidence
>to the contrary) has now been appointed to oversee the largest
>corporate fraud in US history.
>
>U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan selected Richard
>Breeden, who headed the SEC from 1989-1993, to act as the court-appointed
>monitor in the SEC's civil fraud suit against WorldCom.
>
>WorldCom is fighting bankruptcy after announcing last week that
>it improperly accounted for nearly (NZD)$8 billion in expenses.
>
>The appointment appears to beg some questions regarding what
>standards will be followed during Breeden's WorldCom investigation.
>
>Already the pressure has been coming on the President over Harken
>- and the connection to WorldCom has not yet been made by major
>US media.
>
>Yesterday, Bush was door-stopped about a column on Harken that
>appeared in the New York Times.
>
> Reporter: Do you have any response, there's this columnist
>in the New York Times today who says that your role on the Board
>of Harken Energy back in the 1980s and its sale of Aloha Petroleum,
>your sale of stock, that amounts to the same kind of corporate
>misbehavior you're now criticizing.
>
> President Bush: Everything I do is fully disclosed, it's been
>fully vetted.
>
>(See also
Bush Denies Harken Energy SEC Filing Breaches)
>
>On June 19th in his weekly Radio Address President Bush vowed
>that he would fight corporate malfeasance.
>
>'We must have rules and laws that restore faith in the integrity
>of American business. The government will fully investigate reports
>of corporate fraud, and hold the guilty parties accountable for
>misleading shareholders and employees. Executives who commit
>fraud will face financial penalties, and, when they are guilty
>of criminal wrongdoing, they will face jail time,' the President
>said.
>
>(See also
President Bush's Radio Address - WorldCom Scandal
>and Corrupt Corporate Executives To be Held To Account)
>
> Bush's Dirty Energy Trading Secret
>
>The following account of the Harken Energy Scandal says it all
>far better than Scoop can.
>
>It comes from The Daily Enron an independent media website. Numerous
>more references to Breeden's involvement in the apparent George
>W Bush Harken Energy insider trading cover-up can be found on
>the Google Search Engine.
>
> [Its 1990] Harken's Smith Barney financial advisors had just
>delivered a hand wringing report voicing alarm at the company's
>rapidly deteriorating financial condition and mounting debts.
>The company established a restructuring board to which [George
>W.] Bush was appointed. But, the only restructuring Bush did
>involved his own finances.
>
>In June 1990 Bush pulled a Skilling. Claiming ignorance of the
>Harken's financial difficulties or the Smith Barney report, he
>sold his 212,140 shares of Harken Energy banking $848,560.00.
>
>
>Even though the sale fell squarely under the SEC's insider stock
>sale rule requiring almost immediate formal notice, Bush did
>not report the sale until seven months later - after US troops
>had finished fighting Desert Storm. At the time the SEC was headed
>by George H. Bush appointee, Richard Breeden and no action was
>taken against the President's son for his tardiness in reporting
>his insider trades.
>
>Of course, reporting such a sale at the time it occurred could
>have been both revealing and embarrassing. Bush sold his Harken
>stock less than thirty days after his father's National Security
>Advisor, Brent Scowcroft sent the President a secret memo warning
>that hostilities between Iraq and Kuwait were likely. Did dad
>share this information with his son? If so, W. Bush traded on
>"non-public" information of an extraordinary nature indeed.
>
>Less than two months after Bush sold his shares hostilities broke
>out in Gulf and Harken's stock dropped like a stone. The shares
>lost 25% of their value alone on the day Iraq invaded Kuwait.
>Had Bush held his shares until then he would have lost nearly
>a quarter of million dollars. Harken's stock fell to as low as
>.25 a share. Today it trades under a dollar.
>
>- From
Bush Does Not Measure Up to Own Standards - January
>24th
> Links To Other Source Material
>
> Washington Post Reports Breeden's Appointment
>By Devlin Barrett
>Associated Press Writer
>Wednesday, July 3, 2002;
>5:04 PM
>
>NEW YORK -- A former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman
>was appointed court monitor of WorldCom Inc. on Wednesday to
>ensure that documents aren't destroyed and executives don't receive
>outsize payouts from the faltering communications giant. [PARA]U.S.
>District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan selected Richard Breeden,
>who headed the SEC from 1989-1993, to act as the court-appointed
>monitor in the SEC's civil fraud suit against WorldCom for accounting
>improprieties
>
> Full Story Click Here
>
>More Background On Harken Energy and Richard Breeden
>
>NOTES ALL THIS MATERIAL WAS FOUND VIA GOOGLE
>
> Click Here To Search For Yourself
>
>
> TODAY'S JOLT: G.W. Bush = Ken Lay
> BY SETH GITELL THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 2002
>
>But both used and attempted to use their political connections
>to financial advantage. Bush had friends in high places during
>the SEC inquiry. His father was president during much of it,
>and Richard Breeden, a Bush family ally chaired the commission
>during that period as well. There's more. When it came time for
>Bush to pick an ambassador to oil-rich Saudi Arabia last summer,
>he picked not an expert in terrorism or in Islam, but Robert
>Jordan, an expert in oil. Jordan's main qualification? He represented
>Bush in the Harken Energy dispute.
>
> Full Story Click Here
>
> BUSHWHACKED: HUD Fraud, Spooks and the Slumlords of Harvard
>by Uri Dowbenko
>Part 3
>
>
>'In 1987 when creditors were threatening to foreclose, the Junior
>Bush himself made a trip to Arkansas to meet criminal-banking
>kingpin Jackson Stephens, whose Stephens Inc. arranged financing
>for the faltering Harken Energy from a subsidiary of the Unon
>Bank of Switzerland (UBS). Stephens Inc, of course, had ties
>to the notorious CIA money laundry bank, the Bank of Credit and
>Commerce International (BCCI), where drug trafficking and arms-smuggling
>profits mingled freely with looted S&L and fraud-scam proceeds.
>
> Then 1990 Bahrain awarded an exclusive drilling rights contract
>to Harken and the Bass brothers added more equity to the deal.
>Six months later George Bush Jr. sold off 212,140 shares grossing
>him $848,560.
>
> When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait the Harken stock dropped
>suddenly. The SEC was not notified, and no action for insider
>trading was taken against the Junior Bush. Why? SEC chairman
>Richard Breeden was a faithful Bush loyalist.'
>
> Full Story Click Here
>
>ENDS
>
>
>
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>
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>This Story is at http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0207/S00033.htm