HARKEN COVER-UP
COLLAPSES

Dubya Approved Insider Trading, Market Manipulation

Covert Bail Out By Poppy Oil Backer And Hussein Crony

White House Stonewall Breached

George W. Bush has consistently told the press and the American people that everything they need to know about his shady dealings with the Harken Energy Corporation are well-established matters of record. The Securities and Exchange Commission, Bush has asserted, "fully looked into the matter, they looked at all aspects of it, and they did so in a very thorough way, and the people that looked into it said there is no case." Bush’s own S.E.C. Chairman, Harvey Pitt, has agreed, and has refused to reopen the S.E.C.’s suspended investigation into Harken or release files on the case, because, he says, there is nothing new.

“Unless there is a reason to reopen ancient history,” Pitt said on Meet the Press, “we should move on with the future and start helping today’s investors.”

But now, according to major reports in the Wall Street Journal and the Boston Globe, the White House cover-up on Harken has begun to collapse. There is plenty that is new.

These reports document how a long-time Bush family political supporter, Robert J. Stone, Jr., in league with the Cabot family oil interests, manipulated the Harvard Management Company to invest millions in Harken in an off-the books arrangement that bailed the failing company out of a liquidity crisis, kept hidden from Harken investors and the S.E.C., in 1990.

The reports further show that the financial guarantor of the deal was none other than Robert Abboud of First City Boston -- the one-time head of the U.S.-Iraq Business Forum, a close political supporter of Bush’s father, a personal friend of Saddam Hussein, and a figure with a longtime history of dubious financial and political dealings.

Finally, the reports show that George W. Bush, as a member of Harken’s audit committee, personally signed off on the secret deals, the deception of investors, and the manipulation of Harken’s stock price.

As a result of that manipulation, the S.E.C. then justified its suspension of its investigation into possible fraud in the younger Bush’s earlier Harken dealings – an investigation whose files still remain under lock and key thanks to Harvey Pitt.

“It seems to be a simple case of Aeneas [Harvard Management Company’s venture capital arm] bailing out Harken,” Dala Bharan, the accounting expert consulted by the Wall Street Journal, said.

The timing of that bail-out is all-important – coming at a time that salvaged George W. Bush’s sinking reputation as a businessman and fended off official federal investigations.

So are the off-the-books methods, which are almost identical to the kinds of arrangements that the thieves at Enron indulged in.

And the persons involved make the reports all the more alarming.

Why has Robert J. Stone refused for two months to return the phone calls of the Wall Street Journal? What did he get in exchange for his largesse?

And what did Robert Abboud – a name that sticks out like a sore thumb – get out of the deal?

Will the Media Whores question Ari Fleischer about Bush’s pattern of false and misleading statements about his Harken dealings and his continuing cover-up?

Will they ask Harvey Pitt whether he will noe reopen the S.E.C. investigation into Harken?

Will they follow up on the roles played by Robert J. Stone, Jr., the Bush political contributor who manipulated Harvard Management Company to save Dubya; and Robert Abboud, former presdent the U.S.-Iraq Business Forum, who sealed the deal for Dubya?

Developing slickly...