AUTHOR ALLEGING BUSH DRUG ARREST REPORTEDLY FELON

The author of a book alleging that Gov. George W. Bush covered up a 1972
cocaine arrest is himself a felon on parole, convicted in Dallas of hiring
a hit man for a failed attempt to kill his employer with a car bomb in
1987, records show.

James Howard Hatfield, 41, was convicted of solicitation of capital murder,
served five years of a 15-year sentence in a Texas prison and was paroled
in 1993, records show. Author J.H. Hatfield flatly denied in an interview
that he is that man. But a parole officer in Arkansas confirmed Wednesday
that Mr. Hatfield the author is Mr. Hatfield the ex-convict, who is serving
parole from Texas through April 2003.

In his new book, Fortunate Son, George W. Bush and the Making of an
American President, Mr. Hatfield quotes three anonymous sources saying that
Mr. Bush was arrested for cocaine possession but that Mr. Bush's father
arranged for the charges to be dropped and expunged. The Bushes and Houston
courthouse insiders have denounced the account as false. The Bush campaign
had no comment on the revelations about Mr. Hatfield's past, said
spokeswoman Mindy Tucker.

Reached this week in New York during a book tour, Mr. Hatfield insisted
that any link to the convicted man was a case of mistaken identity and that
his middle name is Hathaway, not Howard.

"If I've got a secret past, I'm damn sure not going to be going all over
the country plastering myself all over the newspapers or TV, or attacking
the man who may be the next president of the United States," he said. "It's
not me, and we're supposed to be pursuing the governor of Texas."

When questioned further, Mr. Hatfield refused to give his birthday, Social
Security number or any other information to distinguish him from the
convicted man.

Told of Mr. Hatfield's background, an attorney for the book's publisher
said the company had no knowledge of the criminal history.

"If it's true, we're going to be shocked," said David Kaye, general counsel
for St. Martin's Press, after the conviction was confirmed late Wednesday.
He declined to comment further.

Dallas court records show that in July 1988 Mr. Hatfield pleaded guilty to
paying another man, Charles Ray Crawford, $5,000 to bomb the car of a
manager at a financial firm for which he had recently quit working.

The bomb exploded in the parking lot of the Cotton Exchange Building in
Dallas in February 1987, but the two people in the car were not injured.

Sentenced to 15 years in prison, Mr. Hatfield earned extra credit for time
served and was released in April 1993. State records show that he was
briefly sent to a federal penitentiary in Oklahoma to serve time for a
charge related to the bombing, but details were not available.

By 1994, he was paroled to Benton County, Ark., where state officials
oversaw his Texas parole under an interstate pact that requires them to
annually report Mr. Hatfield's status to Texas.

The most recent report in his file confirms he is an author but does not
specifically link him to the Bush book or any other works by J.H. Hatfield.

But, Eddie Cobb, the official overseeing the parole confirmed Wednesday
that records show his parolee is the author of Patrick Stewart, a biography
of the Star Trek actor written by Mr. Hatfield and touted in the
promotional materials for his Bush biography. Saying he could only comment
on matters in the official record, Mr. Cobb would not comment on the Bush
book or on whether Mr. Hatfield had requested permission to leave the state
for his book tour.

Mr. Hatfield's other books were "unauthorized" TV and science-fiction
trivia books,

Even as Mr. Hatfield denied he was the man in the Dallas case, he said it
would not be newsworthy if he were that man.

And, he suggested that any records showing him to be a convict were not to
be trusted.

"Doesn't it sound a little bit weird to you that all of a sudden, the guy
that's accusing potentially the next president of the United States of
having hs record expunged, all of a sudden miraculously has a record
himself in the state of Texas?" he said. "This is just a little bit too
bizarre."