James Hatfield

James Hatfield  link (Journalist)
File:James Hatfield.webp
Born	January 7, 1958
Died	July 18, 2001
Cause of death	overdose
Victim of	premature death
Interests	George W. Bush
US author who wrote a biography of George W. Bush, published in the run-up to the 2000 presidential election

James Howard Hatfield was an American author who wrote a biography of George W. Bush, which was published in 1999 in the run-up to the 2000 presidential election. Hatfield, a paroled felon, might have been selected to write it as an insidious campaign trick by the Bush camp to make specific allegations implausible in the mind of the public.

Fortunate Son

The book Fortunate Son was a clip job (a summary of publicly available information). It contained a story about George W. Bush's cocaine use in younger years; that story was put in the book at the request of the initial publisher (St. Martin's Press), who pulled the book within days of publication. It had other information that was not known to a wider audience at the time but the cocaine aspect got almost all media attention. Soon after initial release, The Dallas Morning News reported that Hatfield was a paroled felon who had been convicted in 1988 of paying a hit man $5,000 to murder his former boss with a car bomb. Hatfield (who wrote the unofficial biography of Patrick Stewart before) and his lawyer in the documentary Horns and Halos speculate that he was set up with the contract for writing the book.

On Drudge Report he wrote:

"When an author writes about the current governor of Texas and the front-runner for the U.S. presidency (whose father happens to have been the former director of the CIA and the president of the United States)," Hatfield wrote, "it is amazing how quickly the smear campaign and character assassination efforts can be mobilized."

Death

On the inlet for Horns and Halos, the film makers noted:

When we heard that Jim had passed away, we couldn't believe that he had taken his own live. However, upon seeing the suicide note and looking back at some of our footage it became clear to us that Jim was more depressed than he let on. It's also clear from the interview that his financial problems were very difficult for him to deal with. We hoped that we put enough of the suicide note in the film to dispel the idea that he had been killed while still protecting the privacy of him and his family.

Sander Hicks wrote on his website:

Although this investigation has to conclude that Hatfield most likely committed suicide alone, the two years that lead up to this were not all Hatfield's doing. At lunch with Lou, I practiced telling Jim's story without the tangents: Rove set Hatfield up and then Rove broke him. The blood of a good writer is on his hands.