This article should be titled "Some of the Facts on Bush and Harken, The President's Story Holds Up Under Scrutiny of the Available Facts, The Ones That We're Allowed To See"
Here are some telling lines. My comments are in brackets, all the rest is from your article, though I lost interest a third of the way through and stopped:
they ignore one important fact: There are already many SEC documents about Harken available to the public.
["many" is not all. Bushes lawyers shouldn't have the right to decide which "many" we see, and if they take that right and continue to refuse to get the SEC files released, there will continue to be questions about why this is, as this article admits.]
. A close review of the documents supports statements made by the president and answers most, if not all, of the questions raised
["the documents" are incomplete, as this Nat'l Review article admits, and "answers most" is not "answers all," and that isn't a "fact" anyway, it's the opinion of TNR.]
Harken's management wanted Bush on its team — his father was then vice-president, and he had extensive connections, as well as knowledge of the oil and gas business. But Harken's officers did not offer Bush an executive role, instead giving him a seat on the board, a chunk of stock worth at least $500,000 at the time, and a consulting contract.
[I won't comment on that one, ahem; he got that boondoggle with his failing company for one reason, and it wasn't his expertise; I just mention this in passing....]
When the sale went through in March 1989, Bush borrowed $600,000 to purchase his stake in the team. At that time, his biggest single asset was his Harken stock, and he decided to sell the stock to pay off the baseball loan.
[It almost looks as though, because the $600,000 loan is mentioned, he sold the stock simply to pay off the loan, and not because he had any way of knowing bad financial news would be coming. If you look again, you see that 15 months had passed between the borrowing and the sale of the stock. Any time anyone sells a stock they can say "The timing wasn't because I thought it was going to go down in two months when the bad news became public, it was because I needed the money for _____" (insert paying off 13 month old loan, insert whatever.)]
In that role, he usually did not receive what were called the Weekly Flash Reports on the company's financial condition; those reports were given only to the board of directors' executive committee. The result, according to an SEC investigative memo, was that Bush was not particularly up to date on the company's finances
[You may buy that nobody on the BOD's exec committee which got the Flash Reports gave a word to the, er, wise to the VP's son, their pal, but I think that that's highly unlikely. I wonder who's been questioned under oath about it.] In one of the documents we've been seeing on SI it was mentioned that Bush and the guy quoted, probably somebody else on the Audit Committee, were kept updated about finances. Anybody got that reference? I'd start with asking whoever was doing the updating if he gave a wink or a nod, and I'd ask whoever played golf with Bush and also had that info, and I'd do it under oath, hehe. Perjury is a very serious crime, whatever the offense, as is obstruction of justice.]
I'm not even half way down the National Review article you call "The Facts." Don't you know spin when you see it?
I'll skip the rest. Except for this.
"In light of the facts uncovered, it would be difficult to establish that, even assuming Bush possessed material nonpublic information, he acted with scienter or intent to defraud," the SEC concluded.
I believe that, intuitively. That he didn't "act with intent to defraud." Even if he "possessed material nonpublic information." Which it is "difficult to establish" "in light of the facts uncovered." I believe he didn't want to defraud anyone, he just wanted to sell before the price went down after the news got out, is all. And I strongly suspect he was given an inside wink. He was on the Auditing Committee, after all, there would have been every excuse in the world to drop a word to him rather than make him and his Dad mad when the word got out and his main asset took a big hit they knew was coming and didn't clue him in on.
But the fact that the available evidence strongly suggests there is no merit to the Democratic allegations does not mean that Tom Daschle and Terry McAuliffe are wrong in their calls for more information. The documents that are available now were not formally released by the SEC, or by anyone else, but instead found their way into the public domain through back channels — perhaps through a congressional office, perhaps from some of those involved in the investigation, or perhaps from leaks inside the commission. The release of more information in a systematic way would undoubtedly help us know more about what went on inside Harken and the SEC.
[I agree with the National Review that more information should be released. I note that "more" is not the same as "all," however. It's TNR wanting both to cover their ass in case something very damaging is released and to keep everything from being released in case there is something damaging there, imo.] |
