Sales of Book Alleging Bush Drug Arrest Halted

The credibility of the author who accused Texas Gov. George W. Bush of having once been arrested on cocaine charges came under fire Thursday, and his publisher halted sales and promotion of the book.

The author, James H. Hatfield, is a felon who was convicted 11 years ago in an attempt to kill his ex-boss with a car bomb, according to an Arkansas parole officer. The news stunned his publisher, St. Martin’s Press, which Thursday halted publication of the Bush biography “Fortunate Son.”

Hatfield denied to the Dallas Morning News that he has a criminal record, calling it a case of mistaken identity. But the parole officer, Eddie Cobb, told the paper that J.H. Hatfield, the author who previously wrote a biography of “Star Trek” actor Patrick Stewart, is the same man who remains on parole through 2003. Cobb confirmed the account Thursday to the Washington Post.

St. Martin’s said it is halting all sales and promotional activity because the report, “if true, calls into serious question our continued ability to trust the information provided to us by Mr. Hatfield.”

John Murphy, a St. Martin’s spokesman, said the company had shipped 70,000 copies to stores and has 20,000 in storage. “Their future is up in the air,” he said. Murphy said the firm’s lawyers are “trying to get to the bottom of it” but said he did not know if they had questioned Hatfield.

The revelation is the latest bizarre twist in the media’s handling of a charge, based on three anonymous sources, that lacks any independent corroboration. Bush’s presidential campaign flatly denies that the Texas governor was arrested in 1972 or that a judge expunged the record in exchange for Bush performing community service, as Hatfield claims.

Campaign spokeswoman Mindy Tucker declined to discuss Hatfield’s past but said: “He should have stuck with science fiction. He’s obviously trying to sell books by peddling something that’s false and untrue.”

James Howard Hatfield pleaded guilty in 1988 to paying another man $5,000 to bomb the car of a manager at a financial firm he had recently quit, according to Dallas court records cited by the Morning News. Hatfield served five years and was paroled in 1993.