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CBS News Transcripts
SHOW: 60 MINUTES (7:00
PM ET)
February 13, 2000,
Sunday
TYPE: Profile
LENGTH: 2512 words
HEADLINE: UNFORTUNATE
AND UNTRUE?; UNFOLDING OF AUTHOR JAMES HATFIELD'S
CRIMINAL PAST AFTER HIS BOOK "FORTUNATE SON" ON
GEORGE W. BUSH WAS PUBLISHED
ANCHORS: LESLEY STAHL
BODY:
UNFORTUNATE AND UNTRUE?
LESLEY STAHL, co-host:
How did a biography
of George W. Bush, containing the explosive charge
that not only had he been arrested for cocaine
possession, but that his father had pulled strings
with a Republican judge to get him off--how did
that book, entitled, "Fortunate Son," get published?
How did a respectable publishing house like Saint
Martin's Press go ahead with the book, when the
author couldn't offer proof that the charge was
true?
(Footage of Hatfield;
Stahl and Hatfield)
STAHL: (Voiceover)
When the author, J.H. Hatfield, first proposed
his book to Saint Martin's Press, he billed himself
as a Texas journalist with enough good old boy
connections to get the inside story on George
W. It was late in the writing process when he
came up with the story about the cocaine arrest
and the cover-up. He says he got the information
from three confidential sources close to Bush.
Mr. J.H. HATFIELD (Author,
"Fortunate Son"): One is a close friend, one is
a college roommate, and one I really don't want
to...
STAHL: All three are
hearsay cases. Not one was a witness to anything.
You don't even get close to a direct witness.
Mr. HATFIELD: But why are all three telling the
same story, essentially?
(Footage of Hatfield;
Slover)
STAHL: (Voiceover)
If an author uses anonymous sources, he's asking
his readers to rely on his credibility, his reputation
for truthfulness. Since Hatfield was an unknown,
reporters scrambled to verify his charge that
Texas Governor George W. Bush had used cocaine
as a young man. Pete Slover of The Dallas Morning
News was one of the reporters who looked into
it.
Mr. PETE SLOVER (The
Dallas Morning News): We've been alert to this
issue and this area. We'd looked at some of the
same ground where he said he found these drug
charges, and had not found anything.
(Footage of "Fortunate
Son" cover; George W. Bush)
STAHL: (Voiceover)
If the charges in the book were true, Slover says,
there would have been some paper trail of an arrest.
There wasn't. And not one reporter was able to
confirm the allegations. While Mr. Bush has declined
to answer questions about drug use before 1974,
he did say the story about the cocaine arrest
was totally ridiculous and not true. And many
of the people Hatfield claims he interviewed for
the book denied they ever spoke to him. The whole
story seemed fishy. There were no dates, no policemen's
names, no Republican judge's name.
Former President GEORGE
BUSH: Oh, yes, he had three sources. Who are they?
Couldn't say. Who was this judge that supposedly
was bribed by me? Well, he couldn't say. It was
a Republican judge.
(Footage of Texas capitol
building; Slover)
STAHL: (Voiceover)
In fact, there were no Republican judges in Texas
back then. All this got Pete Slover to thinking,
'Just who was this J.H. Hatfield?'
Mr. SLOVER: I came
across an intriguing record. I found that there
was a James H. Hatfield who had had a conviction
in Dallas.
(Footage of Slover
and Stahl)
STAHL: (Voiceover)
A conviction involving a serious crime. But he
had to determine if the James Hatfield with the
record was the same James Hatfield who had written
the book. So he called the author.
Mr. SLOVER: And I said,
'Well, could you tell me, please, your date of
birth or some part of your Social Security num--number
or something that would distinguish you from this
person who's accused of this crime?' And he refused.
Mr. HATFIELD: I--I
played stupid, and I did deny it. And...
STAHL: Vehemently.
Mr. HATFIELD: Vehemently,
yes, very much so.
STAHL: So you lied
to him.
Mr. HATFIELD: Yeah.
STAHL: What exactly
were you convicted of?
Mr. HATFIELD: Solicitation
of capital murder.
STAHL: You paid someone
to murder someone.
Mr. HATFIELD: Well,
it's a very complicated story.
(Vintage footage of
crime site)
STAHL: (Voiceover)
Complicated all right. It involved the attempted
car bombing of a female co-worker in 1987. The
bomb went off, but the intended victim walked
away unharmed.
You hired a man named
Charles Crawford, paid him $ 5,000...
Mr. HATFIELD: Right.
STAHL: ...to have her
killed.
Mr. HATFIELD: Yes.
STAHL: Wow.
Mr. HATFIELD: I'm not
proud of it. Not proud of it at all.
STAHL: Here's--here's
an irony. You've been saying that George Bush,
according to you, committed a crime.
Mr. HATFIELD: Yeah.
STAHL: He should own
up to it.
Mr. HATFIELD: Right.
STAHL: So here you
are, a guy who committed a crime, and isn't owning
up to it. You were running away from it.
Mr. HATFIELD: But I'm
here today, and that's what we're...
STAHL: Yeah, you're
here today because you got caught.
Mr. HATFIELD: Well,
don't you think some things in the past should
stay in the past? I mean, I served my time.
(Police photos of Hatfield)
STAHL: (Voiceover)
Hatfield served five years of a 15-year sentence,
but that wasn't his first run-in with the law.
As a teen-ager you
were arrested for writing bad checks.
Mr. HATFIELD: That's
not true.
STAHL: Not true?
Mr. HATFIELD: What
is the definition of teen-ager?
STAHL: Oh, so were
you arrested as a young man?
Mr. HATFIELD: Yes,
I was.
STAHL: How old were
you?
Mr. HATFIELD: Probably
19.
STAHL: In 1978, you
were convicted of burglary and served seven months
of a five-year sentence.
Mr. HATFIELD: That's
correct.
STAHL: You worked for
a company that managed a large HUD-subsidized
apartment complex in Dallas, and you embezzled
funds for personal use.
Mr. HATFIELD: Yes.
STAHL: And you also
took payoffs from the construction company.
Mr. HATFIELD: Yes.
STAHL: What I'm looking
at is a pattern that starts when you were 19.
Mr. HATFIELD: I think
I did a--a good job at the company, even though,
yes, I had sticky fingers.
STAHL: Somebody could
look at this record and--and say, 'Well, he's
a con man.'
Mr. HATFIELD: But you
can also look at the last five or six years. St.
Martin's was happy with me.
(Photo of Dunne; footage
of "Goebbels" cover; photo of Dunne; footage of
Fitzgerald)
STAHL: (Voiceover)
That's because Saint Martin's editor Thomas Dunne,
under whose imprint "Fortunate Son" was published,
knew nothing of his felonious past. This is not
the first time Dunne had to pull a book because
he didn't know about an author's background. Just
four years ago Dunne was forced to cancel a biography
of Hitler's propaganda minister, Josef Goebbels,
because he didn't know the author was one of those
who denied the Holocaust had ever happened. Thomas
Dunne would not speak to us on camera. Jim Fitzgerald,
a literary agent who worked at Saint Martin's
as an editor for 10 years, did.
How is it possible
that a big publishing house like Saint Martin's
and the Thomas Dunne imprint published this book
and didn't know the background of its author,
didn't know he'd been in jail?
Mr. JIM FITZGERALD:
Well, I think it probably was they never asked.
They never asked.
(Footage of Fitzgerald
and Stahl)
STAHL: (Voiceover)
And, Fitzgerald says, that's not unusual.
Mr. FITZGERALD: There's
not a dictate by any house to check the backgrounds
of authors.
Mr. DAVID ROSENTHAL
(Simon & Schuster): If your author really
spent some time in the penitentiary, how could
you, kind of, not know that?
(Footage of Rosenthal)
STAHL: David Rosenthal,
publisher of Simon & Schuster, says he checks
the backgrounds of his authors.
Mr. ROSENTHAL: You
want to know where they've been working for the
last few years. You want to know their bona fides.
You want to know that, basically, on weekends
they haven't been working as an ax murderer or
something. You've got to know a lot.
STAHL: You go through
that?
Mr. ROSENTHAL: Oh,
absolutely.
Mr. FITZGERALD: I don't
know what that has to do with it, to tell you
the truth, the background of the author. I mean,
there are other authors--I'd work with authors
that had been in prison. I'd worked with authors
that had done all sorts of things. What's before
me is what I work with, not what his past is.
(Footage of Hatfield;
book covers)
STAHL: (Voiceover)
All Saint Martin's knew about James Hatfield was
that he had written trivia books and biographies
on actors Ewan McGregor and Patrick Stewart, cut-and-paste
jobs culled mainly from movie magazines.
Mr. ROSENTHAL: This
is a biography of a guy who is running for president
in a serious way. You don't give a writer, who
has basically just done a Patrick Stewart biography,
George Bush.
Mr. FITZGERALD: Yes
and no. Depends on the price. They didn't exactly
break the bank when they bought this book. This
book was bought for a small amount of money, and
they were going to capitalize, I believe, on just
the phenomena.
(Footage of several
books)
STAHL: (Voiceover)
Saint Martin's has a reputation for aggressively
jumping on sensational stories. They're the ones
that published Monica Lewinsky's biography. They're
willing to be controversial.
Mr. FITZGERALD: Years
ago there was a book on Teddy Kennedy that Putnam's
was to have published, and Putnam's got skittish
about some of the information about Chappaquiddick
and they dumped the book.
STAHL: Oh.
Mr. FITZGERALD: And
Saint Martin's picked the book up.
STAHL: And published
it?
Mr. FITZGERALD: And
published it. The facts were the same facts that
were in the Putnam's book. Now how do we explain
that?
STAHL: Were they true?
Mr. FITZGERALD: Who
knows?
STAHL: But this case
was different because when Saint Martin's finally
learned about Hatfield's past and asked him about
it, he lied, flatly denying he had a criminal
record. They then took the unusual and expensive
step of recalling "Fortunate Son" and asking stores
to return unsold copies, calling the book 'furnace
fodder.'
Mr. HATFIELD: They
pulled the book because I have a criminal background,
and that doesn't have anything to do with the
price of eggs in China.
STAHL: You lied to
them. That's not the same as just having a criminal
record. They asked you about it, and you denied
it.
Mr. HATFIELD: Yes,
after it came out.
STAHL: So why isn't
that why they pull the book? You lied to them,
and they felt they couldn't believe you.
Mr. HATFIELD: Well,
that's their definition of it. They said, 'It
destroyed his credibility,' and that's my argument.
It doesn't have anything to do with my credibility.
STAHL: Your--your lying
to them doesn't have anything to do with credibility?
Mr. HATFIELD: They
never asked me before the book came out.
(Footage of Hatfield)
STAHL: (Voiceover)
Hatfield says his credibility should not have
been an issue once Saint Martin's lawyers, who
combed through his manuscript, including the chapter
with the cocaine charges, gave it the go-ahead.
Mr. HATFIELD: Well,
it was vetted in-house and outside by one of the
best law firms in Washington, DC.
STAHL: What is vetted?
What does that mean?
Mr. ROSENTHAL: It means
somebody, a lawyer assumedly, has read the book
and has essentially made sure that the book will
not get you sued. Being--having a book vetted
does not necessarily mean that the book is accurate.
Whether it's true or not, that's really the editor
and the author's problem.
STAHL: Who does fact-checking
then?
Mr. ROSENTHAL: Fact-checking
should be done by the author.
(Footage of "Fortunate
Son" cover; press release)
STAHL: (Voiceover)
While Saint Martin's never claimed the book was
fact-checked, they did put out a press release
saying it was 'scrupulously corroborated and sourced.'
What kind of proof
did they ask for to confirm, verify the cocaine
charges in the book?
Mr. HATFIELD: Nothing
actually. We discussed who they were, not their
identities. Th--even the lawyer didn't ask me
who they were, and I started to--to offer it to
her because I knew we would have attorney-client
confidentiality. She said, 'I don't want to know.'
STAHL: Would you have
told her?
Mr. HATFIELD: I would
have told her.
STAHL: But she never
asked.
Mr. HATFIELD: But she
never asked.
STAHL: You know, if
I came in with a story to my bosses at 60 MINUTES
with anonymous sources, they'd want to know who
the sources were; we'd have to triple-check, quadruple-check.
Mr. FITZGERALD: There's
a difference between journalism and publishing.
There is a big difference. I think that journalism
is far more fact-check driven.
STAHL: The publisher
is--is depending on the author, but if you don't
trust the author anymore, if you think he's a
liar...
Mr. FITZGERALD: There's
problems. There's problems, and that's what resulted
here.
(Footage of Hatfield;
"Fortunate Son" cover published by Soft Skull
Press; book party)
STAHL: (Voiceover)
Hatfield was devastated at losing his publisher,
but within days he had a new one, an outfit called
Soft Skull Press. They introduced their new edition
of "Fortunate Son" at a book party.
Mr. SANDER HICKS (Publisher,
Soft Skull Press): We are printing 45,000...
Unidentified Man: Whoo!
Mr. HICKS: ...and we
will not be silent in the face of injustice.
(Footage of Hicks)
STAHL: (Voiceover)
Soft Skull publisher Sander Hicks, who started
his business at a copying machine at Kinko's,
contacted Hatfield's agent.
Mr. HICKS: I was like,
'Um, you know, you don't know me, sir, but maybe
you've read about the--the punks of publishing?'
And instead of saying, 'Who are you, kid?' he
said, 'That's good. I'm looking for a punk.'
STAHL: Did you have
it vetted? Did you have your own lawyers vet the
book?
Mr. HICKS: We didn't
have our own lawyers actually vet the book, mainly
because Saint Martin's lawyers gave the book a
full vetting, both in Washington, DC, and in New
York, and they both said, 'We had no problems
with this book.'
(Footage of Hicks and
Stahl; Fitzgerald)
STAHL: (Voiceover)
Hicks first heard that he could buy the rights
to the book from none other than Jim Fitzgerald.
In fact, Fitzgerald went so far as to help Hicks
publish the book as an unpaid consultant.
Mr. FITZGERALD: Well,
it had been through legal. It was fine. It was
fine as far as that was concerned. The cocaine
charge...
STAHL: It had been
through legal. That's always the bottom line.
It had been through legal. You, personally, knowing
now what you know...
Mr. FITZGERALD: Right.
STAHL: ...'it had been
through legal' is enough?
Mr. FITZGERALD: If
it's been through legal and I'm hired by a house
that has a legal department that says, 'That's
enough,' that's enough.
(Footage of "Fortunate
Son" cover published by Soft Skull Press; Hatfield
and Stahl)
STAHL: (Voiceover)
And it was enough for the new publisher who, without
any further checking, put all the old charges
in the new book. Hatfield says he stands by what
he wrote, and incredible as it seems, can't understand
why he's not more in demand.
Mr. HATFIELD: I've
lost two contracts recently because of all this.
I guess you could say I'm blacklisted. I'm just
kind of dead meat.
(Footage of Hatfield)
STAHL: (Voiceover)
Well, not exactly. Tomorrow he starts a book tour.
(Announcements)
LOAD-DATE: February
15, 2000
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