Bush's SEC Choice Hyped 'Chinagate'

By Robert Parry

June 9, 2005

George W. Bush’s nominee to oversee Wall Street produced a congressional report in 1999 that laid the principal blame for China’s alleged theft of nuclear secrets on the Clinton administration when the primary rupture of secrets actually could be traced to the Reagan-Bush administration of the 1980s.

Last week, Bush picked the report’s author, Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., to become chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which regulates stock trading in the United States. Bush’s choice of Cox, a self-described “free market” advocate, is seen as a possible retreat from a period of aggressive SEC enforcement that followed scandals at Enron Corp., WorldCom Inc. and other major companies.