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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jlallen who wrote (272912)	7/10/2002 5:20:26 PM
From: Lino...	Respond to of 769667

The Democrats' Harken Lie Democrats and their media allies have for days been complaining that President Bush failed to make timely notification to the Securities and Exchange Commission when he had sold his stake in Harken Energy 12 years ago. Even the Wall Street Journal, no friend of the Democratic National Committee, has picked this mantra, reporting Wednesday that Bush "was 34 weeks late in reporting his sale of 212,140 shares of company stock." But according to the National Review's Byron York, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, there were two forms Bush was supposed to submit to make the legally required notification. One, Form 4, was required a month after the sale. The other, Form 144, was due immediately. It was Form 4 that Bush failed to file on time, says York. That was the form Bush referred to during Monday's press conference, when he told reporters, "As to why the Form 4 was late, I still haven't figured it out completely." But Bush filed Form 144, known as the "Notice of Proposed Sale of Securities," the very day of the sale, exactly as required by law. According to a former SEC commissioner cited by York, Form 144 is by far the more important of the two documents. "The 144 is probably the more market-informative form," said Edward Fleischman, who headed up the Wall Street watchdog agency at the time of Bush's Harken stock sale. "It gives market-watchers an indication of what is coming." Form 4, the one Bush filed late, is "totally retrospective and was originated for a very different purpose," the ex-SEC commissioner said. If Bush wanted to conceal his sale of Harken stock, he certainly couldn't have done it by holding back Form 4, while complying with the regulations regarding Form 144's notification of stock sale. Yet for days, Bush critics have pretended that's exactly what happened. newsmax.com