July 6, 2002
Crooks
Alexander Cockburn writing in The New York Press says, "This is exciting. Will Dick Cheney keel over from his fifth heart attack before he becomes the first veep since Spiro Agnew to resign in the face of charges of financial crookery? Or will Bush fire him to divert attention from his own scummy past?"Halliburton reported more than $100 million of disputed costs on big oil contracts as revenues to misrepresent its value in preparation for a merger while Cheney was CEO. Of course Cheney would say he didn't know. Has anyone asked him? Where is he?
In 1990, Cockburn says, "Iraq is menacing Kuwait and thereby casting a shadow over Harken Energy’s only pending contract, a drilling project in Bahrain. Harken’s Smith Barney financial advisers have just issued a bleak assessment of the company’s position and future. Harken sets up a 'restructuring board' and Bush is on it. In June 1990, claiming ignorance of Harken’s desperate plight and the Smith Barney report, Bush sells his 212,140 shares of Harken Energy, banking $848,560."
Bush sold the stock less than 30 days after his father's national security advisor Brent Scowcroft sent Daddy Bush a memo saying hostilities between Iraq and Kuwait were likely. Junior failed to report the sale to the SEC, as legally required, for seven months. At the time the SEC was headed by an appointee of Bush's father, Richard Breeden. Not surprisingly, the Shrub was not penalized.
For more details, see The Daily Enron. -- By David Cogswell