Hennessy was a Treasury Department assistant secretary in the early ‘70s. He became managing director of First Boston Corp. in ’74 and chair of CS First Boston in ’89. He retired as chair at the end of ’96. He then became one of a dozen elite GOP fundraisers who anointed Bush as their candidate after a ’98 hunting trip at a Texas ranch owned by Pioneer Heinz Prechter. First Boston has been involved in “pay-for-play” scandals, in which the firms that receive lucrative contracts to issue government bonds underwrite the campaigns of the politicians who award these contracts. In ’93, then-Illinois Gov. Edgar received $16,500 from First Boston Corp. and $19,000 from Donaldson Lufkin (see Pioneer Patrick Durkin). Both firms were then underwriting major bond issues for the state, which had no bidding process to govern these contracts.