http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/story.html?f=/stories/20000901/386478.html National Post (Canada) September 1, 2000 Questions swirl around wealth of Bush, Gore Both avoiding issue: Texas Governor had connections, Vice-President had close ties to oil firm Jan Cienski National Post WASHINGTON - George W. Bush and Al Gore have spent months revealing detailed plans on education, defence and taxes, but the U.S. presidential candidates haven't spent much time talking about how both of them became wealthy men. "Both candidates have made it clear they don't want to be seen as throwing mud and certainly there are financial questions about both of them," said Peter Eisner, managing director of the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan watchdog organization studying money and politics. "On the one hand you've got George W. Bush, who became a multi-millionaire not on expertise but on connections," he said. "On the other hand you've got Vice-President Gore, who has had a long-term relationship with Occidental Petroleum." Mr. Bush was a famously lucky businessman who dabbled in one failing company after another, always emerging richer from every near-bankruptcy. Even though Mr. Eisner had "questions about the propriety" of Mr. Bush's career, the Texas Governor says it was only a coincidence that he enjoyed business success while his father was head of the Central Intelligence Agency, chairman of the Republican National Committee and later vice-president and president of the United States. Mr. Bush's first company, Arbusto Energy (Arbusto is Spanish for Bush), showed no knack for striking oil but a flair for drilling into investors' pocketbooks. >From 1979 to 1983, Arbusto soaked up US$4.7-million from a blue-ribbon assembly of Bush family backers, while only earning them US$1.5-million, according to The Buying of the President 2000, a book by the Center for Public Integrity. As Bush Exploration (the company name was changed in 1982, two years after Mr. Bush's father became vice-president) tottered near bankruptcy in 1984, it was bought out by Spectrum 7 Energy Corporation, owned by William DeWitt Jr. and Mercer Reynolds, both of whom were later big donors to the elder Mr. Bush's 1988 presidential campaign. After the buyout, Mr. Bush became Spectrum 7's chief executive officer, with a salary of US$75,000 and 1.1 million company shares. When Spectrum 7 in turn started to post big losses, it was bought by Harken Energy Corporation in 1986. Despite Spectrum's negative worth, Mr. Bush got about US$500,000 of Harken stock, was made a director, and was paid US$120,000 in consulting fees and got US$130,000 in stock options even though he spent much of 1987 and 1988 working on his father's presidential campaign. "George was very useful to Harkin," Stuart Watson, a member of the company's board of directors, told the Dallas Morning News. "He would have been more so if he had had funds, but as far as contacts were concerned, he was terrific." In 1990, when his father was already president, Mr. Bush sold US$850,000 in Harken stock just weeks before the price fell following a big loss. Mr. Bush waited eight months before filing a report on the stock sale with the Securities and Exchange Commission, mandatory for executives. An investigation later cleared him. Mr. Bush's golden touch didn't desert him when he left the oil business for baseball. He turned a US$600,000 stake as minority owner of the Texas Rangers in 1989 into US$14.9-million when he sold only nine years later. There have been no serious allegations of impropriety against Mr. Bush, just of cosy connections. Certainly, Mr. Gore, who has his own financial peculiarities, has not raised any. Like Mr. Bush, much of Mr. Gore's wealth has its roots in oil. Mr. Gore's father, Tennessee Senator Albert Gore, cultivated a long and very profitable relationship with Armand Hammer, the businessman who played both sides of the Cold War, drilled for oil in Libya and turned Occidental Petroleum into a behemoth thanks to a tight network of political contacts. The company is one of the younger Mr. Gore's largest campaign contributors. The Vice-President also serves as the executor of a trust fund for his mother that contains Occidental stock valued at between US$500,001 and US$1-million, according to his financial disclosure report. In the 1960s, when a substantial zinc deposit was found near the Gore family farm, Mr. Hammer bought the land, transferred it to Mr. Gore's father and paid him US$20,000 a year for the mineral rights while never bothering to dig up the metal. Mr. Gore bought the land from his father. It was subsequently mined by another company and has brought the Vice-President about US$450,000 in lease payments. Thanks to Mr. Gore's recommendations, the U.S. government sold part of its energy reserve to Occidental in 1997, tripling the company's U.S. oil reserves overnight. Mr. Gore has been plagued in recent months by activists complaining that Occidental wants to drill for oil near land held by a Colombian Indian people called the U'Wa. The tribe has threatened to commit mass suicide if the drilling goes ahead. Despite this seemingly rich vein of material, Mr. Bush has refrained from taking up the cause of the U'wa or from bashing Occidental. "I sense there is a bit of a truce," said Allan Lichtman, a political scientist at American University in Washington, D.C. "I guess they each feel they are vulnerable and I don't blame them." <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! 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