Bush Defends His Business Tenure

MILWAUKEE –– President Bush defended in a snappish tone Tuesday his own business experience with a corporation accused of fishy accounting.

"Everything I do is fully disclosed; it's been fully vetted," the president said as he paused to speak with reporters during a church appearance in Wisconsin. "Any other questions?"

Bush was responding to a journalist who asked for his reaction to New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who said in Tuesday's newspaper that Bush's recent campaign against corporate malfeasance draws on "firsthand experience of the subject."

Bush, in 1989, was on the board of directors and audit committee of Harken Energy when the company masked $10 million in losses by reporting a profit on the sale of a subsidiary to a group of Harken insiders borrowing money from the company itself.

The Securities and Exchange Commission ruled the transaction phony and forced the company to restate its 1989 earnings. The SEC also investigated Bush for insider trading after he sold nearly $850,000 of Harken stock shortly before its mounting debt was publicly disclosed.

The SEC eventually closed its investigation of Bush without taking action against him, although The Dallas Morning News has quoted a 1993 letter from the SEC to Bush's lawyer emphasizing that its decision "must in no way be construed as indicating that (Bush) has been exonerated."