DRUDGE REPORT
October 24, 1999

Author J.H. Hatfield’s Response to the Controversy Surrounding the Publication and Recall of Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President:

My recently published biography Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President is “scrupulously corroborated and sourced,” as described by my publisher, St. Martin’s Press, in their own press release on October 18. However, when an author writes about the current governor of Texas and the front-runner for the U.S. presidency (whose father happens to have been the former director of the CIA and the president of the United States), it is amazing how quickly the smear campaign and character assassination efforts can be mobilized.

On Monday October 18, I was in New York City promoting Fortunate Son. Although John Murphy, the head of the publisher’s publicity department, had previously promised they could arrange an appearance by me on the Today show, Good Morning America, and interviews with most major news outlets in the country (I even taped a segment for the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather), we quickly found ourselves running into a virtual news blackout and lack of media coverage of the release of my new biography of the leading presidential candidate George W. Bush. St. Martin’s Press, a respectable publisher who had previously published the Barbara Bush’s best-selling memoirs and Monica Lewinsky’s story, were told repeatedly “off the record” by news agencies that the George W. Bush presidential campaign was putting pressure on the news organizations to NOT give my biography any coverage.

Two days after the book tour began, the emphasis of the story changed from presidential front-runner George W. Bush to biographer J.H. Hatfield. From the beginning of civilization, if you wanted to destroy the message, you had to destroy the messenger. And, quite frankly, that has happened this week. Not only have I been attacked repeatedly in the news media and harassed to the point that I was forced to send my wife, and less-than-a-month-old baby girl into hiding, the publisher took the unprecedented step of not only suspending publication of the book (there are 90,000 copies in print), but also recalling it from bookstores because St. Martin’s Press called into question their ability to trust the information provided to them by the author.

From Midland to Dallas to Houston, I spent over a year researching Fortunate Son, interviewing hundreds of George W. Bush’s friends, college classmates, business associates, political colleagues, employees, acquaintances—all who graciously contributed their time, knowledge, and experiences. Thomas Dunne, whose division and imprint published the biography for St. Martin’s Press, told a reporter on Monday, October 18, that the book had been “carefully fact-checked and scrutinized by lawyers.” Actually, during my stay in New York earlier in the week to promote the book’s publication on October 19, my editor Barry Neville, and others, told me that I didn’t realize the extent of this book’s legal review by not only the publisher’s in-house counsel, but also the company’s outside legal firm, Levine Sullivan & Koch of Washington, D.C. Supposedly, I was a “dream author” who kept meticulous notes and background material exhaustively researched. I have been complimented repeatedly for the almost sixty pages of source notes in the last pages of the biography, which, incidentally, the publisher’s legal representatives—both in-house and outside attorneys—reviewed after the manuscript was completed.

The Bush family responded directly to Fortunate Son at least a month ago, when one of their representatives called my publisher in regards to an allegation we made in the book that George W.’s engagement to Cathryn Lee Wolfman in 1967 was called off due to pressure from the elder Bushes because the prospective bride’s stepfather was Jewish. In the interest of balanced reporting, we added a footnote to the book before it went to press that the Bush family “vehemently denied this explanation” for the young couple’s breakup, even though we stood by our sources who stated otherwise.

On Saturday, October 16, my publisher and I were informed that George W. Bush had a copy of Fortunate Son’s twelve-page Afterword, in which we alleged through three informed sources that he had been arrested for cocaine possession in 1972 and had his record expunged by a Houston judge after he worked as a youth counselor for several months at Project P.U.L.L., where his father was a heavy contributor and honorary chairman. Because the word “expunge” is defined as “to blot or strike out; erase,” this created significant problems for me as a biographer. I had to rely on the informed, but confidential testimony of three sources close to the Texas governor who were knowledgeable of the cocaine possession charge against Bush when he was a younger man. In a court of law, attorneys rely on documentary evidence and sometimes more heavily on the testimony of witnesses. The Afterword to the Bush biography relied solely on the irrefutable testimony of three sources close to the governor and because of that proof I came under attack. But these are informed sources who had previously aided with the writing of the biography in other areas of Bush’s life and their testimony was always corroborated by other documentary evidence or other sources.

Cited confidential sources appear every day in newspapers and magazines around the world. While flying to New York, I was reading U.S. News and World Report, a respected weekly newsmagazine, and noted in an article on the current rivalry between the F.B.I and Janet Reno’s Justice Department, that an unnamed White House staffer stated that the FBI had been attempting to damage the Clinton administration for some time. In another article in that same magazine, an unnamed Bush campaign official was quoted as saying that former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney was on the short-list of possible running mates with Bush if he received the Republican presidential nomination. If it wasn’t for that mysterious, shadowy figure, Deep Throat, who assisted Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, we may have never learned the truth about Watergate and Richard Nixon may never have been forced to resign. Because of their proven credibility and close attachment to George W. Bush himself, I stand by my sources and the allegations we make in his biography regarding the cocaine possession charge in 1972 and the subsequent expunging of the arrest after he performed community service. And although my publisher urged me to violate my journalistic principles and confidentiality agreement with my sources and provide their names to various news agencies in hopes of advancing publicity for Fortunate Son, I steadily declined.

I have received hundreds of e-mails this week from concerned Americans questioning why the elder Bush, the former president, felt compelled to give an exclusive interview with the Fox News Channel to discuss my biography and the charges I make, and why the publisher took the unprecedented step of recalling what they termed “furnace fodder” while the book was on the top 10 of Amazon.com’s best-seller list. Although my CHARACTER has certainly been called into question, my CREDIBILITY as a biographer cannot be debated because this “scrupulously corroborated” (the publisher’s own words) biography was exhaustively researched by the author and fact-checked numerous times by several lawyers representing my publisher.

What does Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President contain within its covers that the presidential front-runner, and now evidently my publisher, doesn’t want you to read? It could be any one of the following:

*How George W. avoided the draft at the height of the war in Vietnam and remained stateside in the National Guard through the assistance of a Houston businessman and close Bush family friend;

*Bush's partnerships with controversial Middle Eastern money men (including the family fortune of Saudi terrorist, Osama bin laden), whose enormous financial sources were used to underwrite his oil drilling ventures in Texas;

*How he transformed a $606,000 investment in the Texas Rangers major league baseball team into a multimillion dollar profit in less than a ten years;

*The intimate details behind Rev. Billy Graham’s role in Bush's religious conversion and why he quit drinking alcohol on his 40th birthday;

*Bush's behind-the-scenes role as his father's chief troubleshooter and “loyalty enforcer” during the 1988 presidential race; and the same role in 1992 when the politically instinctive Bush was the first adviser to focus on the seriousness of Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot’s grassroots candidacy, arguing that he was entering the race largely to fulfill his personal vendetta against the president and was “trying to steal away” some key states; along with former president Gerald Ford attempted to persuade his father to dump the seemingly hapless Dan Quayle (“another political liability”) from the Republican ticket; urged his father to bring back media adviser Roger Ailes, and “go ballistic” in negative television ads attacking Clinton like they successfully did against Michael Dukakis in 1988; advised the reelection effort to focus on Perot’s opposition to the Gulf War, his support of abortion rights, and the $146,550 he and his family had given to congressional campaigns since 1978; talked the elder Bush into going to Bentonville, Arkansas, “home of Wal-Mart and Clinton’s own backyard,” to present the company’s founder, the revered and terminally-ill Sam Walton, with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award; and implored his father to “green light” the use of GOP private investigators who wanted to track down rumors of young black women Clinton had allegedly impregnated in south Arkansas while he was the state’s attorney general;

*Charges of insider trading and subsequent SEC investigations after Bush sold almost a million dollars' worth of oil company stock a week prior to the end of a quarter in which the firm posted a $23 million loss;

*Why his business partners have profited enormously while he has served as governor;

*Bush's record as a "compassionate conservative," which has proven to be merely another way of packaging the right-wing agenda and old-fashioned intolerance;

*Details of his well-planned, long-considered strategy to win the White House in 2000.

As pointed out earlier, Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President was fact-checked, corroborated by documentary evidence and the testimony of numerous sources by several in-house and outside attorneys representing St. Martin’s Press, who remarked in their press release upon the book’s publication: “No other book this season will be as balanced or impartial in its portrait of George W. Bush as Fortunate Son. The author’s insights will be invaluable to anyone who wants to make an informed decision come Election Day.”

Thanks to the Dallas Morning News (which ironically employs a reporter who has written the only other competing George Bush biography at this time), my credibility has come under attack this week, but in my defense I must quote my former editor at Kensington Publishing Company, Tracy Bernstein, who edited my first six books and stated in the October 21 edition of the on-line magazine Salon.com: “I found Jim Hatfield to be a tireless worker who I could count on to always deliver, and in every way an easy author to work with,” she said. “Most of the books we worked on concerned pop-culture trivia, but even those books had a certain amount of ‘backstage’ info about the stars, creators or what have you. So those books, as well the Patrick Stewart bio, were vetted by our lawyers and anything that was questioned he had reputable sources for. I thus never had cause to doubt his professionalism or honesty.”

Although, in the span of a few, short days, Fortunate Son rose to the top 10 of the best-seller list, the book’s success certainly took its toll on me personally and my family. My credibility as a biographer and author of eight books was questioned, but worse, my character was fiercely battered and beaten. Was it all worth it? I must answer with a definitive “no.” Keeping that in mind, I will not appear on 60 Minutes or a host of other national television shows or grant interviews to Newsweek or the Wall Street Journal—all who offered me an opportunity to “tell my side of the story.” Simply stated, I don’t have a story to tell. I did not write an autobiography of J.H. Hatfield. I wrote an even-balanced, but unflinching biography of possibly the next president of the United States. That should be the topic of discussion—not me. Please return your attention to Fortunate Son and question why the emphasis shifted from George W. Bush to J.H. Hatfield. As Confederate General Robert E. Lee once said, “When you’re too weak to defend, you must attack.”

Please allow my wife, new baby, and me to continue with our lives because after a family discussion (and against the advice of legal counsel and publicists who wanted to put a successful “spin” on this story), we have decided to take the “high road” and not dignify the press accounts regarding my character. I can provide background material on my life today, tomorrow, and the next day, but it would never be enough to satisfy the media and I would remain the center of the story, rather than George W. Bush. We’re not discussing character. We’re discussing credibility and Fortunate Son, a definitive biography of Bush, speaks volumes about my credibility as an author and, more importantly, his credibility as a candidate for president of the United States. Quite frankly, my family and I are disturbed by the fact that we’re on defensive while no one is questioning the presidential front-runner. Why does he continue to refuse to answer allegations about past drug use? Rather than me, what is George W. Bush hiding in his past? What does that say about this country and the real issues when the media is more obsessed with the life of the biographer instead of the subject of the biography?
Therefore, we will have nothing further to say about this book or the allegations regarding my own past. I am not the one running for office, I am not a presidential candidate, and I am not the subject of a biography. Please refocus your attention on the appropriate person and determine if George W. Bush should be elected to the highest political office in the United States. As I point out in Fortunate Son: “The only thing most voters know for certain about Bush is who his parents are. It’s way past time that, not only Texans, but the rest of America begins to learn more—a lot more—about the younger Bush, the man who would be a second-generation president."