But it got a shot in the arm when, perhaps out of allegiance to Bush's Arab-friendly father and then president, the country of Bahrain awarded Harken an exclusive contract to explore a new oil field in the Persian Gulf despite its lack of international experience. The billionaire Bass brothers of Texas also chipped in, to subsidize the drilling.
As expected, Harken's stock, of which Bush Jr. owned a sizeable share, took off. Yet, in June 1990, though the ceiling seemed to be nowhere in sight, he decided to unload 212,010 shares ostensibly to buy a new house, though he used it instead to pay off a loan he'd taken out when buying a stake in the Texas Rangers baseball team.
Harken attorneys warned Bush that he was liable to be scrutinized for possession of "material non-public information." As a board member, he was not only privy to Harken's problems, he himself put forth the motion for the off-the-books partnership with Harvard. With characteristic defiance, Bush went ahead with the deal anyway. His insistence that the buyer remain anonymous didn't help allay suspicions.
Though unexplored by the SEC, there was another dimension to the insider trading charge –- the imminence of the Gulf War. Had the White House leaked news of its planned attack to Bush? Perhaps more to the point, could the White House not have let him in on it? Sure enough, when Iraq actually invaded Kuwait, Harken's shares, in part because of concern about the difficulties of drilling for oil during war-time, decreased 25%.
In any event, the Securities and Exchange Commission's investigation came to a premature end. Though no evidence of impropriety was found, it should be borne in mind that the SEC chairman at the time was a friend of the Bush family who had been nominated by Bush Sr. Still, the SEC said that closing the case "must in no way be construed" as an indication that "the party has been exonerated or that no action may ultimately result."
In retrospect, the SEC's statement resembles a cry for help from its rank and file. Will someone out there whose hands aren't tied please re-open the case? Ironically, it's in Harvard's SEC filing of its Harken transactions where evidence of Bush's wrongdoing can be found hiding in plain sight.
All that's known of the purchaser of Bush's stock is that it was institutional. Was it Harvard again? There's no mention in Harvard's SEC filing that it took Bush's Harken stock off his hands. And what if it did?
Since Harvard was already enmeshed with Bush and Harken, it would be difficult for it to claim it was unaware of Bush's rush to dump his stock before Harken's inevitable reversal of fortune. Harvard might then have been required to reveal that knowledge, thus not only hanging Bush out to dry, but also implicating itself in insider trading.
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