Bush appointees required to answer for drug use, but not Bush

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Below is an excerpt from the Forward section of a book 'Fortunate Son',by Bush family biographer J.H. Hatfield. This book was stripped from bookshelves back in Nov. 1999 and the publisher, 'St. Martin's Press', burned 70,000 copies after recieving alot of pressure from 'Poppy' and son. The following occured beginning on Oct. 19, 1999 as reported by Hatfield:

"...Approximately 104,000 copies of my new biography. 'Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President, had been printed and 87, 933 copies had been shipped to bookstores after St. Martin's publicity director, John Murphy, boasted that The New York Times was running a front page story on the book in their Sunday, October 17 edition. In addition, Murphy claimed that he had arranged for me to be interviewed on the Today Show in a two part segment to be aired the following Monday and Tuesday. When both promotional efforts for the new book failed to materialize, St. Martin's executives panicked.

At the meeting, they urged me to violate my journalistic principles and confidentiality agreements with the three sources quoted the book's controversial Afterword and provide their names to various news agencies in hopes of advancing publicity for Fortunate Son, a request I refused outright.


Murphy, whose reputation was on the line, was instructed by the other publishing company executives to call in all of his 'markers' in the media in order to publicize Fortunate Son and sensationalize the Afterward's allegations that George W. Bush was arrested for cocaine possession in 1972, but had his record expunged after his father arranged for him to perform community service.

Murphy faxed a two-page press release to various news agencies, but he quickly found himself running into a virtual news blackout and lack of media coverage of publication of my new biography of the Texas governor. St. Martin's publicists were told repeatedly "off the record" by news agencies that the Bush presidential campaign was putting pressure on the media, telling reporters that if they covered Fortunate Son, they would find themselves "sitting in folding chairs" outside the press room when Bush got to the White House.

My editor, Barry Neville, and other St. Martin's executives once again desperately urged me to provide the names of my three confidential sources in increments to various reporters while fielding telephone calls in Neviille's office throughout Monday and Tuesday, October 18 and 19, in a an effort to "get the press worked up for the book", but I steadily declined...."

The forward does go on to explain how the book was pulled from the shelves and the flap in the press over censorship:

Online Journal's Linda L. Starr claimed: 'Censorhsip is not done in this country, complete with book burnings and shreddings. This is America, not Nazi Germany.

In the Afterword of his book Hatfield states:

"On August 4, 1999, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle publicly Charged the Press with giving George W. Bush a 'free ride' in regards to the persistent rumors of past cocaine use, adding that it was a "a legitimate question" to expect any presidential candidate to answer to determine if he or she is morally fit to hold the highest elected office in the U.S.

In response to Senator Dashcle's challenge, later the same day the New York Daily News asked Bush and his other eleven political rivals where they had ever used cocain. All of them--except the presidential front-runner, who refused to answer the question--denied ever experimenting with the illegal drug. When the Associated Press asked the same candidates about the general use of the drugs, eight said no, and two acknoledged trying marijuana. Once again, Bush refused to answer the question, contributing to the media's feeding frenzy regarding allegations of his prior drug use by evasively responding: "I've made mistakes in the past and I've learned from my mistakes," branding such rumors "ridiculous and absurd," but declining to lable them false." (pp.299-300)


.......Fresh from a first-place showing in Iowa GOP straw poll on August 14 the Texas governor was forced to amend his stock message when Sam Attlesey of the Dallas Morning News asked whether, as president, Bush would insist that his appointees answer drug-use questions contained in the standard FBI background check. (As president, Bush would nominate candidates for the Supreme Court, other federal judges, cabinet secretaries, foreign ambasadors, and federal prosecutors. All would be required to answer questions "fully and truthfull" regarding illegal drug use on the questionnaire for national security decisionrs, a part of the FBI background check).
After receiving advance word that the new slant on the drug question was going to be asked, Bush conferred with campaign finance chairman Don Evans, finance director Jack Oliver, media adviser Mark McKinnon, chief strategist Karl Rove, and communications director Karen Hughes.
"Imagine the ad our opponents could make if we didn't answer the question" said one Bush campaign adviser. "As president, George W. Bush would maintain a double standard when it comes to illegal drug use by White House employees--one for him and one for everybody else."

Bush's inner circle of campaign officials agreed that the leading presidential candidate should confirm to the Dallas Morning News that he would meet all the standards himself, a response that would "hopefully put a stake in the heart of the coke-use stories."
"As I understand it, the current form asks the question, 'Did somebody use drugs within the last seven years?' and I will be glad to answer the question, and the answer is 'No'," Bush responded during a news conference he called to introduce his new state education commissioner.
However, the Texas governor once again refused to say whether he had ever used cocaine in particular and angrily claimed that his political enemies were peddling unsubstantiated rumors of illegal drug use. "I know they're being planted," Bush said, obviously irritated. "They're ridiculous absurd, and the American people are of sick of this kind of politics." Earlier, he had chided reporters for agian raising the drug issue . Somebody floats a rumor and it causes you to ask a question, and that's the game in American politics, and I refuse to play it," he stated. "That is a game. And you just fell for the trap."

The following day at another media event in Roanoke, Virginia, Bush decided to move the boundary markers yet again, volunteering that at the time his father was inaugurated in 1989 he could have passed even the fifteen-year background check in effect then, dating his drug-free years all the way back to 1974, when he was twenty-eight and a graduate student at Harvard.
But the presidential candidate suddenly drew the line and defined a statute of limitations for only the past twenty-five years after NBC's David Blom noted that current White House appointees were required to list any drug use since their eighteenth birthday.

"I believe it is important to put a stake in the ground and say enough is enough when it comes to trying to dig up people's backgrounds, " Bush said, reverting to his previous position of firmly standing against "trash-mouth politics", and refusing to discuss details about his past. If voter, didn't like that answer he announced, "they can find somebody else to vote for . I have told the American people all I am going to tell them."
Later in the day, Bush continued his stonewall strategy, saying only that parents should counsel their children about the perils of alcohol and drugs. "I think a baby boomer parent ought to say. 'I have learned from the mistakes I may or may not have made, and I'd like to share some wisdom with you, and that is: Don't use drugs. Don't abuse alcohol.' That's what leadership is all about." the presidetial front-runner told reporters while touring oan Ohio Homeless shelter that offered treatment for drug addicts.


Bush has essentially admitted to something. But he refused to say what, creating a political paradox." wrote the editors of USA Today. "If his offense is trivial, why hide it? Voters have shown little inclination to punish candidates for youthful drug use, at least in the cse of marijuana. And if it's substantial, why should those voters be denied the facts?"

"He's been drawing all kinds of distinctions, rather than just giving an anaswer which will put these queries to rest for good," said Mark Rozell, a political scientist at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. "It's sort of piecemeal, hopin-it-will-go-away approach. But this line of inquiry will not goa aaway until he does what only he can do to end it: Tell the flat-out truth about what happened."

Bush flip flops on the drug use question only heightened the mystery and invited deeper scrutiny by the media. On August 25, the online magainze Salon reported on allegations that "back int he '60s or '70s," Bush "was ordered by a Texas judge to perform community service in exchange for expunging his record showing illicit drug use and that this service was performed at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Servie Center in Houston.


Then Hatfield cites replies from one of his sources as he pursued the line about Bush's community service:

This is from one of Bush's former Yale classmates:

I was wondering when someone was going to get srounud to uncoverig the truth," he replied, surprisingly unruffled by my direct approach. "Evidently, you kind of glossed over in the book like a lot of other rporters have done in their newpaper and magazine articles. It doesn't fit, does it?"

"George W. was arrested for possession of cocaine in 1972, but due to his father's connections, the entire record was expunged by a state jusdege whom the elder Bush helped get elected," he explained. "It was one of those 'behind closed doors in the judge's chambers' kind of thing betweenthe old man and one of his Texas cronies who owed him a favor. In exchange for successfully completing communtiy service at Project P.U.L.L., where Bush senior was a heavy contributor and honorary chairman, the judge purged Gorge W.'s record. "
Can you tell me more about the incident involving his arrest of give me a name of the police officer or, better yet, the judge?" Hatfield asked.

"I've told you enough already," he replied, sounding unchracteristically apprehensive. "There's oly a handful of us that know the truth. I'm not even sure his wife knows about it." Then he paused and added, "Just keep digging, But keep looking over your shoulder."

From another source "a longtime Bush friend":

"Take this anyway it sounds, but do you think George would take time out from speeding around town in his TR-6 convertible sports car, bedding down just about every single woman--and a few marrie ones--and patying like there's no tommorrow to go work full-time as a mentor to a bunch of streetwise balck kids? Get real, man, this ia a white bread boy fromt eh tother side of town wer're talking about. " (page 300--05)



Although Texas requires renewal of a driver's license every four years on one's birthday, Bush obtained a new number (a nine digit 000000005) on March 31, 1995 as a renewal instead of on his birthday, July 6, which the texas Department of Motor Vehicles called "highly unusual". Online Journal correspondents Bev Conover and Linda L. Starr also noted in their investigation that in Texas, "every infraction of the law--from a parking ticket to homicide--appears on you Texas Driver's License Detail. It was publicly reported that George W. shot and killed a protected species while bird hunting in 1994 and paid a fin of $130 on September 2,1994. That is the sort of thing that gets listed on a Texas Driver's License Detail, bu it doesn't show up on George W's because when he received a new license in March 1995, the record of paying the fine--along with anything else that was cited--was deleted with his old license number". Ironically, the Texas Department of Public Safety (which issues state driver's licenses is headed by James Byrne Francis, Jr. one the governor's closest friends and fundraisers. (Fortunate Son, Hatfield. FN page 303)






APRIL 20TH 2001 ACTION ALERT FROM HATFIELD

On April 20--exactly 3 months to the day since Dubya was appointed president by his ring-wing buddies on the Supreme Court--I want you to inundate the White House switchboard, bombard the "contact" e-mail section of www.whitehouse.org, <http://www.whitehouse.org,> call or e-mail your congressional representatives, get online with various political chat groups, telephone all the ultra-conservative radio talk show hosts (Rush Limbaugh, G. Gordon Liddy, Oliver North, and their ilk), etc. and tell them, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore."
Be meaner than a Texas rattlesnake going through menopause and say, "Enough is enough" with Dubya's opinion that we should "get over it" and accept the results of the stolen Y2K election; his strategic assault on our fragile environment; the paybacks to his corporate and conservative GOP sugar daddies; his right-wing agenda; a string of broken campaign promises; his lack of bipartisanship efforts in dealing with an almost equal division of Democrats in Congress; canceled formal press conferences; his reluctance to endorse campaign finance and election reform; his war on women and their right to choose; the tax cut plan that will only favor the rich and set this country back a decade economically; his phony energy crisis; talking down the economy; his stubborn-as-a-jackass determination to get America into a war; and that idiotic $100 billion planned Son of Star Wars defense shield (which is like laying out $100 billion to build a picture frame even before you've found the picture to put in it).
Thanks,
Jim Hatfield, Author of "Fortunate Son"

Reuters - July 20, 2001
Writer of Recalled Bush Biography Apparent Suicide
By Steve BarnesLITTLE ROCK, Ark. (Reuters) - James Howard Hatfield, whose biography of President Bush won national attention before its publisher withdrew it over the author's criminal past, died in an Arkansas motel in what police on Friday called a suicide. Police said Hatfield, 43, died of an apparent drug overdose. His body was found by a maid on Wednesday, the day after he checked into the motel in Springdale, near his native Bentonville and about 200 miles northwest of Little Rock. Detective Sgt. Mike Shriver of the Springdale PD said there was no question it was a suicide. ``He left a note and everything,'' Shriver said of Hatfield. ''It's really cut and dried.'' Hatfield's unauthorized biography, ``Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President,'' made headlines in October1999 when Bush was campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, with allegations based on unnamed sources that Bush had a record of cocaine use in the 1970s. Bush declined to comment directly on the cocaine allegations, saying only that he had made mistakes in his youth but had not used illegal drugs since at least 1974. No witnesses came forward to support the allegations. Bush's father denied the book's allegations that his son was arrested for cocaine possession in 1972 and that a Texas state judge wiped the arrest off the younger Bush's record in return for political favors. Hatfield's credibility was quickly called into question and publisher St. Martin's Press recalled all unsold copies after revelations that Hatfield had pleaded guilty in 1988 and served time in Arkansas for attempted murder. Hatfield denied he was the ex-convict with the same name, but Arkansas parole officials said he was the same man. Shriver said Hatfield had checked into the motel the night before his body was found. He said a suicide note near the body referred to financial problems, and that friends had told investigators Hatfield was becoming increasingly depressed in his last days. Hatfield lived in nearby Bentonville, where he was born. Shriver said prescription drug bottles were found at the scene, but declined to identify the pharmaceuticals pending a toxicology report from the Arkansas medical examiner that could require three months to complete.
Posted: 2001-07-20 11:53
Author of Bush biography commits suicide
SPRINGDALE, Ark. (AP) - The author of a book about George W. Bush has killed himself, police said.
James Howard Hatfield, 43, wrote Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the making of an American President in 1999.
The unauthorized biography accused Bush of covering up a cocaine arrest. But during interviews about the book, Hatfield lied to reporters about his own criminal past.
A hotel housekeeper discovered the man's body about noon Wednesday, Springdale police Detective Al Barrios said Thursday. Barrios said the man apparently overdosed on two kinds of prescription drugs.
Police don't suspect foul play.
Well the police may not suspect foul play but I will consider this MUCH too suspicious to be suicide until proven otherwise.