BUSH ACCUSER DIES OF DRUG OVERDOSE

Discredited Author Faced Financial Woes

The troubled author of a biography accusing President Bush of hiding a
three-decade-old cocaine arrest committed suicide Wednesday. James
Howard Hatfield, 43, was found in a hotel room in Springdale, Ark., and
appeared to have died from a overdose of prescription drugs, police
said.

Hatfield wrote "Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an
American President" in 1999. The book cited unnamed sources in claiming
that Bush was arrested in 1972 but that his case was expunged. Bush, who
was campaigning for president when the book was published, denied the
allegations.

Soon after "Fortunate Son" was released by St. Martin's Press, the
company discovered that Hatfield had been convicted in 1988 of attempted
murder of his former supervisor. It recalled 70,000 copies in October
1999 and left an additional 20,000 books in storage.

Police went to Hatfield's house Tuesday morning to arrest him on charges
of credit card fraud, but Hatfield wasn't home, said Detective John
Hubbard of the Bentonville, Ark., Police Department.

His body was found around noon Wednesday by a hotel housekeeper.
Hatfield left notes for his family and friends that listed alcohol,
financial problems and "Fortunate Son" as reasons for killing himself,
police said. He is survived by a wife and daughter.

After the book had been dropped by St. Martin's, it was picked up a
month and a half later by Soft Skull Press, a small publisher on New
York's Lower East Side. Sander Hicks, the head of Soft Skull, said
yesterday that he joins the family "in feeling this deep loss."

"He did have a past that he was working very hard to put behind him,"
Hicks said.

In "Fortunate Son," Hatfield said three unnamed sources claimed a judge
had expunged Bush's case and given him community service as a favor to
his father, who was ambassador to the United Nations at the time. The
incident raised questions of how well publishers screen the credentials
of authors and check facts in their books.

Hatfield was convicted in 1988 of paying a hit man $5,000 to murder his
former boss with a car bomb. Both passengers in the vehicle, the
intended victim and a colleague, escaped unharmed when the bomb
malfunctioned. After news of that conviction surfaced, it was also
discovered that Hatfield had pleaded guilty to embezzlement in 1992.