Washington ? Former President Clinton says the bull market of the 1990s bred corporate corruption but that President Bush’s laying blame on his predecessor twists the truth.

“There was corporate malfeasance both before he took office and after,” Clinton told a Washington television reporter. “The difference is I actually tried to do something about it, and their party stopped it” in Congress.

“And one of the people who stopped our attempt to stop Enron accounting was made chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission,” Clinton said. “That is a fact, an indisputable fact.”

Bush was asked at a July 8 news conference whether Clinton had contributed to corporate excesses of the 1990s that have shaken the stock markets and slowed the nation’s economic recovery. “No,” Bush said. Asked later about controversies surrounding his new SEC commissioner, Bush said: “I think Harvey Pitt was put in place to clean up a mess.”

Other White House officials have criticized the Clinton administration for letting underhanded corporate practices flourish.

Clinton said he began warning in 1998 about a gathering problem with corporate accounting practices, and when his SEC “tried to stop the Enron accounting practice of accountants being the consultants, the other party stopped us. And their main lobbyist was Harvey Pitt.”