Guardian -- Memo emerges to haunt Bush

George Bush quashed evidence in the insider dealing inquiry he faced a decade ago, it was claimed yesterday, further undermining White House efforts to restore some confidence in Wall Street.

A memo has emerged that was sent by lawyers in 1990 that warned executives of the energy firm Harken, for which Mr Bush was a director, against cashing in stock if they had any negative information about the company.

Harken was undertaking financial engineering to keep it afloat at the time.

A week later the president cashed in $848,000 of shares. The sale triggered an inquiry by the Securities and Exchange Commission which ended in August 1991. No action was taken against the president who claimed to have been unaware of the problems facing the business.

The letter from Haynes and Boone was not given to the SEC until a day after the inquiry ended.


It would be nice if one of the Sunday pundits mentioned this or one of the paper sources of record did a big story on this.