Robert Bryce writes, "Lay could dish the dirt on several important topics: the Karl Rove-brokered push that resulted in Enron paying Christian conservative turned super-lobbyist Ralph Reed $300,000; Lay's dealings with secretary of state turned super-lobbyist James Baker; why Enron hired Ed Gillespie, the man who now heads the Republican National Committee; the reason for Lay's decision to allow the Bushes to use Enron's fleet of airplanes as their own; what happened in those meetings with Dick Cheney and his energy task force; and what really happened with the California energy crisis." Now wouldn't that be fun?

BBC: "Federal prosecutors have been trying for over two years to prove that corruption at Enron went to the top. If found guilty of the criminal charges, Mr Lay could go to jail for many years. He was also charged on Thursday with fraud and insider trading in a civil lawsuit filed by the US financial regulator, the Securities & Exchange Commission The criminal charges listed in the 65-page indictment relate to the fraud at Enron, and there may be additional civil charges over Mr Lay's share dealings. Prosecutors indicted the 62-year-old former Enron chairman on Wednesday, but papers detailing the charges stayed sealed until Thursday's court appearance, at which photography was banned. The case has political significance since Mr Lay and George W Bush are known to be close friends." Wanna know Kenny Boy's lame protest? That he's only being prosecuted because he's Dubya's friend and it's all Andrew Fastow's fault anyway. LOL!

William Rivers Pitt writes: "Ken Lay gave the White House a list of his personal recommendations for key federal energy posts. Lay pushed his list of suggested members of the federal energy regulatory commission in the spring of 2001. Two of the people he suggested - Pat Wood and Nora Brownell - were appointed by Bush to positions that would directly affect the fate and fortunes of Enron... The infamous secret energy policy meetings run by Vice President Dick Cheney, the substance of which he still refuses to reveal, were riddled with Enron officials and Enron priorities. It has been speculated that one of the reasons Cheney refuses to divulge the elements of those meetings is that Enron was wielding the drafting pen as Bush's energy policy was created. It has also been speculated that the secrecy surrounding these meetings is due to the fact that the not-yet-begun Iraq war, and the resulting petroleum/pipeline profits to be reaped, played a large role in the discussions."

The timing of Lay's indictment couldn't be worse for Bush. Even if coincidental, it makes it seem like a media-attention-grabbing ploy - worse, a lame and way, way after the fact effort by the justice dept. to APPEAR to be doing something for real about corporate crime.Just as Edward's bright, fresh face appears on TV screens across the nation, the specter of Lay also appears, a devastating comparison that forces Americans to remember that Lay was one of Bush's top donors in 2000 and, some say, a top name on the secret Cheney energy task force list. To follow this Bush debacle will be Martha Stewart's sentencing - which will remind Americans how swiftly Bush justice went after a liberal $275,000 offender, and how SLOW it was to pursue a Bushie multi-BILLION-dollar scammer. Sometimes the ole karmic wheel comes around with a giant crash and merciless timing!

Reuters: "Former Enron Corp.Chairman Ken Lay is expected to be indicted next week over his role in the scandal that rocked corporate America, sources familiar with the matter said on Friday. While a last-minute delay was still possible, federal authorities involved with the U.S. Justice Department's Enron Task Force expect a federal grand jury next week will return an indictment of Lay, the sources said... Lay's lawyer, Michael Ramsey, told Reuters the government lacked the evidence to win an indictment from a grand jury, and said an internal dispute at the Justice Department had triggered the recent leaks about impending charges. 'I don't think there's going to be an indictment. I think the Task Force is leaking in order to put pressure on Washington' to seek charges, he said. Ramsey said he met with Enron Task Force officials last week to discuss media reports that an indictment would be handed down soon, but he declined to comment on the specifics of the meeting."

"'The brewing irritation between a judge and the lawyer for the wife of former Enron Corp. finance chief Andrew Fastow flared up Wednesday,' the Associated Press reports, 'after Lea Fastow was assigned to serve time at an urban high-rise rather than the minimum-security women's prison camp she wanted.' The judge was already peeved with Lea Fastow's lawyer. Last month, the lawyer sent a confidential court report to the Federal Bureau of Prisons with a letter that noted her family hoped she would serve her year in prison at the camp in Bryan. What a shame - no posh prison terms for Enron crooks."

On audiotapes obtained by CBS News, Enron traders can be heard "gloating and praising each other as they helped bring on, and cash-in on, the Western power crisis." Officials with the Snohomish Public Utility District near Seattle... say this is the smoking gun they've hoped for. More from the tapes: "They're f------g taking all the money back from you guys?" complains an Enron creepo. "All the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?" "Yeah, grandma Millie, man" "Yeah, now she wants her f------g money back for all the power you've charged right up, jammed right up her a------ for f------g $250 a megawatt hour." The tapes link Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling to these callous manipulation schemes. The Enron creeps were rooting for Bush in the 2000 election: "It'd be great. I'd love to see Ken Lay Secretary of Energy," says one slimebag. These worms were sure Bush would fight any limits on sky-high energy prices. Which, of course, he did.

Unbelievable! While even the judge in the Martha Stewart case says the prosecutors are stretching for a case, the same justice dept. has so far REFUSED to seriously go after Ken Lay. "Former employees said Thursday they'd like to see prosecutors bring charges against Lay, too, But legal experts and those who worked for Lay agree it is unlikely Skilling will toss aside his innocent plea, cooperate with prosecutors and help them pursue a case against Lay. " In short, the big-time criminals - Skilling, Lay and their protector Bush- are all sticking together like fungus under a rotten log. Yet Bush has the unabashed hypocrisy to accuse Kerry of having corporate ties? Funny, we don't hear Kerry pleading Ken Lay or Halliburton's case!

"Jeffrey Skilling, the former Enron chief executive who resigned months before the company shattered in scandal, surrendered Thursday and pleaded innocent to three dozen federal charges in the company's collapse. The 42-count superseding indictment unsealed Thursday accused Skilling and Richard Causey, Enron Corp.'s former chief accounting officer, of participating in widespread schemes to mislead government regulators and investors about the company's earnings. Causey was indicted a month ago and is free on $500,000 bond... Prosecutors said he faced a maximum total of 325 years in prison and over $80 million in fines if convicted of all the counts. Another court appearance for Skilling was set for March 11. Flanked by a pair of lawyers, Skilling turned himself in at the Houston FBI offices just before daybreak. About 15 minutes later, his hands behind him in cuffs, he was placed in a car for the trip to the federal courthouse in downtown Houston." Will Kenny Boy be next?

Why are we hearing only about Martha Stewart and Jeffrey Skilling when Bush friend and "science advisor" John Mendelsohn was involved in both the Imclone AND Enron debacles?! Mendelsohn, developer of the drug Erbitux, failed to inform cancer patients in the drug trials that he had a huge financial stake in the drug. While on Imclone's board, he was also on Enron's board, where he was charged with guaranteeing the integrity of the company's financial statements and partnership arrangements. "The corporate leaders he was supposed to be overseeing were dumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into the doctor's cancer center while they were looting hundreds of millions from the stockholders and employees. It was a good deal for the looters."

The Financial Times reports: "US federal prosecutors plan to bring criminal charges against Jeffrey Skilling, the former chief executive of Enron, as the probe finally reaches the very top of the Houston-based energy group. Details of the charges could be revealed by next Thursday, people close to the case said, though they warned that delays are possible... Investigators have shown particular interest in Mr Skilling's involvement with Enron's broadband division, where several ex-executives have already been charged with securities fraud. They have scrutinised a conference in January 2001 when Mr Skilling made bold predictions about plans to transmit content directly to customers although - it is alleged - Enron executives knew the technology was not operational, and that a crucial partnership with the Blockbuster video chain had unravelled. Mr Skilling may also be vulnerable over financial and accounting irregularities that arose from the 2001 California energy crisis."

From WSJ: "Federal officials are exploring whether there are grounds to bring criminal charges against former Enron Corp. chairman Kenneth Lay regarding what he knew about the energy company's festering, yet still largely secret, financial problems in the months before its collapse, Monday's Wall Street Journal reported. The critical period under examination began in August 2001, when Mr. Lay's longtime lieutenant, Jeffrey Skilling, unexpectedly quit as Enron's chief executive after only six months in the top job. Mr. Lay resumed the chief executive post that he had held for some 15 years and remained there through the company's collapse in the fall of 2001 and eventual bankruptcy-court filing that December. Federal officials are comparing what Mr. Lay knew in those final months to his upbeat public remarks about the company's condition, said people familiar with the probe." Yeah! Make Ken do the perp walk!

AP: "Former Enron finance chief Andrew S. Fastow and his wife have agreed to plead guilty for their roles in a massive accounting scandal that brought down the energy giant in 2001, sources told The Associated Press on Tuesday. The two sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said an impasse that erupted last week over a judge's refusal to give Lea Fastow only a five-month prison sentence had been resolved. Fastow will become the highest ranking executive to plead guilty in the federal government's criminal investigation into the Enron collapse. It wasn't immediately clear whether Fastow's negotiated plea involves an agreement to help the government develop cases against Enron's former top executives, Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. Neither Lay nor Skilling has been charged; both maintain their innocence." Two years later -- and still no charges against Kenny Boy and Skilling?

AP: "A federal judge in Houston has rejected a plea agreement for the wife of former Enron finance chief Andrew Fastow. Ex-Enron assistant treasurer Lea Fastow is accused of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, money laundering and filing false tax returns. A judge threw out the deal that would have given her a five-month prison term. Husband Andrew Fastow, the former finance chief of the energy giant, is facing 98 counts of fraud, money laundering, insider trading and related charges. He's also reportedly trying to put together a plea agreement. The Fastows had pleaded innocent. Meanwhile, Enron's former chief accounting officer is expected to surrender tomorrow to face charges over the company's collapse. A source close to the case told The Associated Press of plans for Richard Causey to turn himself in."

"Former Enron Corp. Chairman Kenneth Lay is asserting his constitutional right against self-incrimination in a court fight against a Securities and Exchange Commission request for documents it wants for its probe of the bankrupt energy trader. Lay's lawyers said in an Oct. 21 federal court filing that they were concerned the items sought were 'personal rather than corporate' and the SEC would not guarantee Lay immunity from prosecution over the documents. Lay has been ordered to appear at a Nov. 7 hearing before U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth to answer the SEC's complaint that he is withholding documents. Lawyers for Lay said their client has already produced more than 23,000 pages of documents for the SEC's probe, but was withholding 870 pages, asserting his Fifth Amendment right. The SEC said last month it was looking at whether Lay knew of, or was involved in, fraudulent activity at Enron." Hey Kenny Boy - are you protecting Bush or Schwarzenegger?

Jason Leopold writes: "Did bankrupt energy company Enron Corp. influence a controversial decision federal energy regulators made in November 2000, saying California wasn't entitled to more than $3 billion in refunds from power companies who allegedly gamed the state's wholesale electricity market? About two dozen of the more than one million Enron emails dealing with California's energy crisis, recently released by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), appear to make a strong case that the one-time high-flying energy company had some role in influencing the FERC decision three years ago... Utilities in California lost billions of dollars buying high-cost power on the wholesale market and selling it at a loss under a state mandated rate freeze. The issue is of particular importance now because California's newly elected Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has indicated through aides that he would try to quickly settle a number of the lawsuits the state has pending."

To: Ken Lay and Steve Kean
From: Enron governmental affairs executives Rick Shapiro and Linda Robertson
Date: June 1, 2001
Subject: The President's Dinner, A Congressional Salute Honoring President Bush and Vice President Cheney, June 7, 2001

With the assistance of... Tom DeLay, we were able to apply our previously contributed soft money toward this dinner. Consequently, we will be credited as giving $250,000 to this event, even though we are being asked to give only $50,000 in new soft money... Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison has requested that Enron give her some credit for raising the money.

...In addition, ...Tom DeLay has asked Enron to contribute $100,000 to his leadership committee, ARMPAC, through a combination of corporate and personal money from Enron's executives. ARMPAC funds will be used to assist other House Members as well as the redistricting effort in Texas. We will be meeting this request over the course of this calendar year.

Houston Chronicle reports: "Indicted ex-Enron Treasurer Ben Glisan Jr. is negotiating a plea bargain and cooperation agreement with federal prosecutors. Glisan, one of the highest ranking Enron officials before he was fired for his involvement in a side-deal, is charged with two dozen counts of money laundering, fraud and conspiracy. His charges are part of a 109-count indictment against Glisan, former Enron Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow and former Enron executive Dan Boyle. 'When Glisan flips, this could be a bloodbath,' said one lawyer familiar with the Enron investigation. Glisan was installed as Enron treasurer in 2000 and was known as a protege of both Fastow and ex-CEO Jeff Skilling."

"Amid ongoing investigations by the Justice Department and the SEC, more than a dozen former Enron employees have been indicted but none has gone to jail yet, and neither Ken Lay nor Jeff Skilling has been charged with any crime. So it seemed especially dramatic when, in late July, J.P. Morgan Chase and Citigroup agreed to pay a combined $286 million to settle charges with the SEC and the Manhattan district attorney over their 'facilitation of the Enron fraud,' as D.A. Robert Morgenthau put it. In truth, the banks got off easy. Neither Chase nor Citi admitted guilt, and both the firms and individual employees appear to have escaped criminal charges... The banks weren't just at the edges of the Enron deception but central to it. Without Citi and Chase, Enron wouldn't have had enough cash to keep itself going, much less dazzle Wall Street the way it did. In the decade before Enron collapsed, the two banks helped it obtain some $9 billion, which was, in substance, actually debt."

William Greider: "The $300 million Enron 'settlement' government regulators worked out with the nation's two largest banks smells so bad that even Wall Street Journal editorial writers gagged on the rank odor. What Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase did, remember, was to design the funny-money financial deals that directly pumped up Enron's profits and stock price. When Enron's fraudulent scheme unraveled and the stock collapsed, the nation's pension funds lost somewhere between $25 billion to $50 billion. And these two famous banks each profited mightily from their role as financial architects for the great swindle. The pay-up costs will not even require an asterisk on their balance sheets."

Newsday reports: "More shockwaves from the collapse of Enron Corp. hit Wall Street yesterday as the nation's two largest banks agreed to pay a total of $308 million to settle federal and state charges that they helped Enron manipulate financial statements. Most of yesterday's settlement was to end investigations into $8.3 billion in disputed loans made to Enron by Citigroup Inc., the largest bank by assets in the United States, and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., the second-largest bank... Yesterday's agreements ended probes by the SEC and Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau of what regulators said were loans to Enron that were falsely booked as complicated commodities transactions. The disguise, they said, allowed Enron to fraudulently account for the money as cash flow from operations, and hide billions of dollars in debt from investors, regulators and credit-rating agencies."

Robert Scheer writes: "The other day a woman asked me to sign a petition calling for the recall of California Gov. Gray Davis. Why, I asked. Because he bankrupted the state, she said. When I begged to differ that it was the Bush administration and its buddies at companies like Enron that had put the state into an economic tailspin, she said she was being paid according to the number of petitions signed and didn't really care. But voters should care because Davis is being used as a fall guy for problems that are beyond his control... It is absurd to blame current difficulties on any state's governor, Republican or Democrat. It is the Bush administration that has mismanaged a successful economy inherited from Bill Clinton. It is the Bush administration that should bear responsibility for the difficulties being experienced by state governments -- and it should at least help California as much as it is helping our newest state, Iraq."

Ellen Florian writes for Fortune: "Sam Waksal recently became the first post-Enron corporate headliner to get hard time (over seven years, if you're counting). But the ImClone imbroglio made us wonder: What is happening at Enron, the company whose death spiral kicked off the corporate crime crackdown more than two years ago? Investors first raised eyebrows about the company's off-balance-sheet partnerships in October 2001; three months later the Justice Department formed the Enron Task Force to investigate. After sorting through reams of criminal complaints, indictments, plea agreements, civil complaints, and other public documents, we introduce a must-read for corporate crime voyeurs: our Scandal Cheat Sheet, a tally of which company insiders have thus far been linked to the debacle."

From Reuters: "A former top Enron energy-trading executive was arrested by federal agents on Tuesday on charges stemming from the company's manipulation of power markets during California's energy crisis. John Forney, 41, is the third former Enron Corp.executive charged with a federal crime in connection with Enron schemes to manipulate energy prices during California's 2000-01 energy crisis, which cost the state an estimated $42 billion... Forney, freed after securing a bail bond, will go before an Ohio judge June 9 who will likely order him to face charges of wire fraud and conspiracy at San Francisco federal court, the U.S. Attorney's office said. No trial date has been set... In another scheme, know at Enron as 'Forney's Perpetual Loop,' traders would send fictitious megawatts across the grid and then accept payment from California's grid operators to relieve the artificial congestion they created on the lines."

From Reuters: "Brazil on Wednesday vowed to investigate allegations U.S. energy firm AES Corp. struck a deal with Enron that allowed it to snap up a top local power distributor in 1998 at a giveaway price. The Financial Times reported AES convinced Enron not to bid for Eletropaulo Metropolitana -- Latin America's biggest power distributor in revenue terms -- on the eve of its privatization auction in exchange for some lucrative contracts."

The Sacramento Bee reports: "The Enron Corp. scandal is touching, in an indirect way, a small, eco-friendly corner of the energy industry: California wind farms. The latest round of indictments against Enron insiders accuses former Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow and his wife Lea of participating in a scheme to mask Enron's illegal ownership in a group of California wind farms -- and then siphoning off tens of thousands of dollars in farm profits for themselves. The charges are part of a broader set of accusations filed recently in U.S. District Court in Houston against the couple and other one-time employees in connection with Enron's collapse."

From Business Week: "The Justice Dept.'s net is drawing in a growing cast of characters from the Enron collapse. The latest: Lea Fastow, the wife of Andy Fastow, Enron's former chief financial officer. But indictments made public on May 1 only highlight the difficulties of the government's cases and the fact that prosecutors have yet to snag the biggest fish. 'Because the Justice Dept. had to reach to its superweapon -- charging the spouse -- that suggests they have made little or no progress whatsoever against charging [former CEOs] Jeff Skilling or Ken Lay,' says former federal prosecutor Jacob Frenkel. An Enron employee from May, 1991, to May, 1997, Lea Fastow was charged separately from her husband with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, money laundering, and filing false income-tax returns as part of schemes allegedly masterminded by her spouse."

No charges, No wrongdoing, No comment. No jail time, No probation, No restitution. Write off the $80 Million 'settlement' on last quarter's expenses. End of story. Nothing else to see here folks, move along... Merrill Lynch and other banks had taken part in an Enron scheme helping set up fraudulent off-shore companies and participate in fraudulent loans disguised as 'energy trades'. Thereby fraudulently boosting Enron's profits and masking billions in debt. Which allowed Dubya's buddy 'Kenny Boy' to mis-represent Enron's financial condition. That ended up costing thousands of Enron employees' their pensions while the corporate executives cashed out and made gazillions. Not to mention many other thousands of investors' 401k's plus hundreds of pension and mutual funds losing billions of dollars of value as well.

Matt Bivens writes, "Americans have forgotten Enron. We're too busy duct-taping our windows shut against the possibility of a chemical, biological or nuclear attack... With no one watching, it's back to business as usual and the Bush administration is eager to do the bidding of the oligarchy - sorry wrong country, of its favorite 'campaign contributors.' Reliant traders who thought themselves so 'cool' earned their company a playful wrist slap: Their $13.8 million fine equals 0.03%of Reliant's (rape-of-California) 2001 revenues of $40.8 billion. The fine was set by FERC - and for anyone who missed the point, the White House just appointed a new FERC commissioner: Joseph Kelliher, a former aide to VP Dick Cheney. Kelliher was the Enron go-to guy - he was once handed Enron's 'dream list' of government policies and dutifully relayed it to Boss Cheney. Meanwhile, the man who used to run Enron's corrupt energy trading division is not only not in trouble, he's secretary of the U.S. Army."

"A crucial report into the collapse of disgraced energy giant Enron has discovered the firm's executives bribed tax officials. The outraged committee's chairman, Charles Grassley (R-IA), described a week-long programme of wining and dining, tennis, fishing and golf as part of Enron's strategy to get its own way. Mr Grassley also said the report called into serious doubt the ethics of tax advisers and the 'desperate' bankers, accountants and lawyers who helped Enron. 'The report reads like a conspiracy novel, with some of the nation's finest banks, accounting firms and attorneys working together to prop up the biggest corporate farce of this century,' he said."

Enron used complex transactions that served no business purpose to avoid taxes and pump up reported profits, while paying 200 executives more than $1 million a year through equity-laden pay packages, according to a congressional report released Thursday. Enron reported net income of $2.3 billion, but tax losses of $3 billion, for 1996 through 1999... the company's 200 top-paid employees received a total of $1.4 billion in compensation in 2000, with $1.2 billion coming from stock options or restricted stock. "This report may be viewed by some as a road map for abusing the tax code. Rest assured that it is not a road map. This is the end of the road," said Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT). How long's Kenny Boy been in jail now? Oh, that's right - no charges filed!

Jonathan Hutson offers a Show Me the Money! Quiz: 1. Which of the following paid the SMALLEST PERCENTAGE OF INCOME in federal income taxes from 1996 through 1999?
(a) A U.S. Army Corporal deployed overseas
(b) Enron
(c) A public high school teacher

2. Which of the following paid THE FEWEST DOLLARS in federal income taxes from 1996 through 1999?
(a) A Legal Aid lawyer
(b) Enron
(c) A homeless woman receiving minimum wage in a welfare-to-work program.

Get them all right and win dinner with Kenny Boy Lay!

The scandals tying the White House to the current crisis of corporate malfeasance seem to have no limits. Recent disclosures show that former Enron Vice Chair and current Bush administration Secretary of the Army, Thomas White Jr. was the likely architect for Enron's manipulation of the California Energy market. The resultant energy "shortages" left Californians struggling to cope with electric brownouts and exponential increases in the wholesale rate of electricity. White also cashed in his Enron stock before the price dropped from around $90 to a few cents per share. More recently in his new position at the Pentagon, White has been lobbying to privatize energy systems at military bases, a move which would have allowed Enron to do to the military what it did (under White's leadership) to California.

Enrongate is a Republican Party scandal that goes right to the highest level - Bush and Cheney. But as soon as a prominent Democrat was linked to the scandal - former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin - Republicans and the media went on a rampage to blame everything on HIM. After a thorough investigation, a bi-partisan Senate investigation has cleared Rubin of wrongdoing. When will the investigation of Republicans begin? When will Cheney turn over the records of the Energy Task Force so Americans can see exactly how Bush and Cheney sold the entire US government - not a White House bedroom - to its biggest donors? Where is the outrage over the continuing stonewalling of Enrongate???

'Tis the season for embarrassing political videos! Houston Chronicle reports on a newly-found tape, "made for the January 1997 going-away party for former Enron President Rich Kinder, [which] features nearly 30 minutes of absurd skits, songs and testimonials." In one skit, Jeff Skilling explains how he would reach 600% growth targets. "We're going to move from mark-to-market accounting to something I call HFV, or hypothetical future value accounting. If we do that, we can add a kazillion dollars to the bottom line." Later, then-Gov. George W. Bush pleads with Kinder: "Don't leave Texas. You're too good a man." Former President George Bush thanks him for helping his son reach the Governor's Mansion. "You have been fantastic to the Bush family," he says. "I don't think anybody did more than you did to support George." Click below "see it now" to watch - just more evidence of the intimate ties between Bush and Enron.

NYTimes.com reports: "Some of the nation's largest energy traders appear to have reported false data about the price of natural gas to one of the industry's leading publications, according to a researcher who once tracked the data. The researcher, Michele Markey, the former director of energy research at Gas Daily, a leading trade publication, told California state lawmakers yesterday that she had long suspected that the prices she had received in the last few years were erroneous...Ms. Markey also told a state select committee investigating price manipulation during the California energy crisis that she pushed her publisher in 2001 to audit the trading books of Enron, one of the companies suspected of submitting false data. 'I was trying to show that the emperor's clothes were not there,' she said....But she testified that the effort to audit Enron's online trading operation was scrapped, two weeks after Gas Daily was acquired by Platts, a division of the McGraw-Hill Companies."

Forbes.com reports: "Bankrupt Enron Corp. said it is the target of 25 governmental investigations and does not have time to dig up documents about the multimillion-dollar bonuses it paid to star traders. Enron told a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission administrative law judge that it opposed a request by the city of Tacoma for documents about the $8 million and $5.2 million bonuses paid to Enron's two top traders last year....The information could show whether Enron traders had an incentive to not cooperate with FERC's investigation, Tacoma said. The newest case...will decide whether Enron and its Portland General Electric affiliate deliberately inflated wholesale electricity prices during the California power crisis of 2000-2001. Ripple effects from the crisis affected the entire Western region....Former Enron trader Timothy Belden, who was paid a $5.2 million bonus, pleaded guilty last month to conspiring to artificially boost prices during the California power crisis."

ABCNews.com reports: "Former Enron Corp. chief financial officer Andrew Fastow pleaded innocent Wednesday to a 78-count federal indictment...ousted a year ago as Enron spiraled toward bankruptcy, (he) was initially charged Oct. 2 and indicted on Halloween on various counts of fraud, money laundering, conspiracy, obstruction of justice and other charges. Fastow entered his plea Wednesday afternoon in federal court in Houston...Fastow's attorneys have said top Enron executives approved his work and that Fastow did not believe he committed any crimes. Former chief executive officers Jeffrey Skilling and Kenneth Lay were Fastow's immediate superior at different times....Prosecutors have said Fastow has not cooperated as the Enron Task Force further pursues the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Weissmann has publicly left the door open to a deal, noting last month the charges against Fastow 'carry significant jail time.'"

"We lost a big battle last night. Now an even more important battle is in front of us. That's the thing about politics and democracy: There are no permanent victories or defeats. If you care about what kind of country we have, you have to keep fighting. Sometimes you win, [but when you're knocked on your butt, you have no choice -- except to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and come back with more determination, creativity, and energy than ever before.] The candidates in close races who did the best yesterday tended to be those who were fighters who were unafraid to take Bush on... It's time we re-evaluated our strategy and created a message that shows voters what we stand for and why Democrats would serve them better than Republicans. In these next 2 years, [let's] show America that there is a strong and sensible alternative."

"Former Enron Corp. chief financial officer Andrew Fastow was indicted Thursday on 78 federal counts alleging he masterminded a scheme to artificially inflate the energy company's profits. He is the highest-ranking Enron official to be charged in the federal probe. Enron, No. 7 on the Fortune 500 list two years ago, filed for bankruptcy last year after revealing a $618 million loss and eliminating $1.2 billion of shareholder equity. Fastow is the most prominent Enron figure targeted so far by the Justice Department. Prosecutors are expected to pressure him to find out what he might say about his former colleagues, including former Enron chairman [Kenny Boy] Lay and former chief executive Jeffrey Skilling."

SFGate's David Lazarus writes, "Sources close to the matter say Timothy Belden, who previously ran Enron's trading office in Portland, Ore., is prepared to implicate a number of other industry players in what could shape up to be one of the biggest conspiracies in U.S. corporate history" - the $30 billion ripoff of California energy consumers. "I'm told that last week's resignation of Dynegy President Steve Bergstrom was directly related to the looming prospect of Belden naming names. Dynegy also said it will exit the energy-trading business. Dynegy is being investigated by the Justice Department and already has agreed to pay $3 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission to settle fraud charges...ChevronTexaco owns about 26.5 percent of Dynegy and is the Houston firm's largest shareholder." Is it time for a Special Prosecutor for former ChevronTexaco director Condi Rice? Stay tuned!

MSNBC.com reports: "In 2000, 15 of Enron's 17 board members were outside directors. A report commissioned by the company itself found that directors 'failed, in our judgment, in...oversight duties.'...the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said directors 'witnessed numerous indications of questionable practices by Enron management over several years, but chose to ignore them,' instead approving 'high-risk accounting, inappropriate conflict-of-interest transactions, extensive undisclosed off-the-books activities and excessive executive compensation.'...The Senate report on Enron noted that its outside directors were seasoned executives and accountants unlikely to be easily misled. Enron had a number of prominent outside directors, including...Wendy L. Gramm, the wife of Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX) and a former chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission,...(who was) a member of Enron' audit committee...SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt's (has) close ties to Sen. Gramm."

MSNBC.com reports: "Federal prosecutors are expected to announce an indictment of former Enron Corp. Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow as early as next week, USA Today reported Wednesday, citing two legal sources close to the investigation. One of the sources was quoted as saying the government had already secured a sealed grand jury indictment with fraud charges and other allegations against Fastow and subordinates who allegedly enriched themselves through Enron's questionable partnership deals.... Fastow's one-time protege, former Enron executive Michael Kopper, pleaded guilty on Aug. 21 to money-laundering and fraud charges and agreed to cooperate with authorities, helping prosecutors to close in on higher-ranking executives."

Not everybody is distracted from the real issues by the constant pounding of war drums. Rep. John LaFalce (D-NY) is demanding that Army Secretary Thomas White respond to evidence that he helped cook the books at Enron. The smoking gun (first reported in a Salon Premium article, http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/2002/08/29/white/index.html) is a terse memo responding to news that White's division was losing money: "Close a bigger deal to hide the loss."

"Mr. Cheney supposedly chose Thomas White for his business expertise. But when it became apparent that the Enron division he ran was a money-losing fraud, the story changed. We were told that Mr. White was an amiable guy who had no idea what was actually going on, that his colleagues referred to him behind his back as 'Mr. Magoo'... But he was no Magoo [and was] fully aware of what his division was up to... The biggest of several deals that allowed Mr. White to 'hide the loss' - a deal in which the documents show him intimately involved - was a 15-year contract to supply electricity and natural gas to the Indiana pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly. Any future returns from the deal were purely hypothetical. Indeed, the contract assumed a deregulated electricity market, which didn't yet exist in Indiana. Yet without delivering a single watt of power - and having paid cash up front to Lilly, not the other way around - Mr. White's division immediately booked a multimillion-dollar profit."

The Daily Enron reports that the cozy relationship between Harvard Management and Harken mirrors the relationship between Alliance Management Capital and Enron." Alliance was the largest single institutional holder of Enron stock. Alliance's CEO at the time, Frank Savage, also held a seat on Enron's board. When Enron insiders wanted to bail out of doomed Enron stock in late 2001, it was Alliance that arranged the sale of $300 million in Enron shares to the Florida public employees retirement fund which it managed for the state. [We mention this] because curiosity about these two facilitating investment funds seems to have all but disappeared. Harvard Management has clamed up and federal investigators seem to have no desire to disturb the ivy. Same goes for Alliance Capital Management and its role devastating Florida's public pension fund."

The Daily Enron reports: "Since Enron was [the scandal] that blew the lid off the corporate cesspool in the first place, one has to wonder why things are moving at such a glacial pace. 'People forget that within the ranks of the Bush administration there are no fewer than 50 [Enron connected officials]' said Mike Lux... 'it goes to reason that any Justice Department probe of Enron has to be conducted in such a way that it does not cause collateral damage to the administration. The last thing they need is for witnesses before a grand jury to start spouting stuff off under oath that's going to embarrass the administration or get one of its officials indicted'... while other high profile corporate crime cases are moving swiftly to indictments of top executives, the Justice Department's Enron probe has yet to show such prosecutorial vigor. [Experts say it's] because the Justice Department has been timid in its use of its most powerful weapon - the grand jury."

Salon's Jason Leopold writes: "Three months before he was nominated as secretary of the Army by President [sic] Bush, Thomas White faced what surely was the most difficult task in his 10-year career as an Enron executive: Helping hide the hundreds of millions of dollars in losses from Enron Energy Services, the retail division he had headed since 1998. It was February 2001 and it was imperative that EES find ways to inflate its first-quarter earnings and hide what was becoming a black hole of losses. But after White had left to pursue his Army post, the company was boasting a record quarter for EES, with a remarkable 18-percent increase in earnings over the previous year... Presiding over and even encouraging EES's accounting was Tom White." We Demand a Special Prosecutor!

Enron's Michael "Kopper will surrender $12 million of illegally obtained money and plead guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering... The SEC is expected to file a civil fraud complaint against Mr. Kopper, a former managing director in the company's global finance unit... [Kopper] was a primary participant in establishing and running the off-the-books partnerships that investigators have said Enron used to hide debt and improperly increase earnings... Because of the potential significance of Mr. Kopper in the continuing investigation, enormous pressure will now be brought to bear on other potential defendants to negotiate their own deals." Are you listening, Kenny Boy?

The AP reports: "A senator leading an investigation of Enron asked the Justice Department on Friday to explain why it hasn't prosecuted executives of the energy company that collapsed in December. Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-ND. [asked] Ashcroft in a letter 'why no action has been taken against those who were responsible for illegal activities at the Enron Corp.' Dorgan noted that in recent weeks, the Justice Department has filed criminal charges against top executives of several big companies, some of whom have been led away in handcuffs. 'These arrests have been arranged to allow the American public to see corporate executives taken away in handcuffs,' Dorgan wrote Ashcroft. 'The Enron scandal was the corporate scandal first to be uncovered. Yet the investors, the employees and the American public have seen no action taken against those who were involved,' Dorgan said."

NY Times reports, "Desperate to meet a year-end profit target, the Enron Corporation struck a sham energy deal with Merrill Lynch that let Enron book a $60 million profit in the final days of December 1999... the energy deal, a complex set of gas and power trades, was intended to inflate Enron's profits and drive up its stock price. Enron and Merrill Lynch, they said, agreed that the deal would be canceled after Enron booked the profits; it later was. By allowing the company to meet its internal profit targets, the power deal unleashed the payment of millions of dollars in bonuses and restricted stock to high-ranking executives, including Kenneth Lay, then CEO, and Jeffrey Skilling, then Enron's president... The deal was five times as big as Enron's sale of a Nigerian power barge to Merrill Lynch the same month, a transaction that a Senate panel denounced last week as evidence that the Wall Street bank helped Enron inflate its profits and cook its books." Who will go to the pokey?

Reuters reports, "Federal investigators appear to have widened an inquiry into U.S. energy trader Enron Corp, probing whether the company or its executives committed accounting fraud by borrowing $1 billion in a last-minute bid to stave off bankruptcy, the Wall Street Journal reported. The paper cited lawyers close to the case in its report on Wednesday that the Justice Department and the SEC are investigating the transactions around the unsuccessful attempt. Enron could not immediately be contacted for comment. The paper said the investigators were trying to determine if Enron improperly used two of its publicly-regulated pipeline subsidiaries to secure the loans and then transfer the money to Enron's accounts, with no plans to repay the companies. An Enron spokesman defended the transactions to the Journal as 'common' and 'an acceptable practice,' and said they were fully disclosed at the time. He declined to discuss the loans or their accounting treatment in detail."

"Federal prosecutors are investigating whether Enron Corp. for years bribed foreign government officials to win contracts for its far-flung operations abroad, underscoring the sweep of the U.S. government's probe into Enron's collapse. The U.S. Justice Department's Enron Task Force is examining the energy company's overseas operations for possible criminal violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, according to government officials and lawyers close to the case. The previously undisclosed inquiry is examining Enron's efforts to win foreign pipeline, power and water-privatization projects, some reaching as far back as the mid-1990s, they said. In some countries, projects were awarded to Enron without competitive bidding, or assets were acquired at below-market values, amid allegations by the World Bank and others of government favoritism." What about Enron's bribes to US officials - like Bush and Cheney??? We demand a Special Prosecutor for Enrongate!

The Daily Enron writes "Despite all the recent tough talk and chest thumping from the Bush administration and its Department of Justice, even the highest profile examples of corporate malfeasance remain unmolested by federal asset seizure. We need only look to the people who started all this to see what I mean: [Ken Lay -- Jeff Skilling -- Andy Fastow] Today's arrest of former Alephia CEO John Rigas was a rare but welcome change of pace. But let's not stop there. Enron's Gang of Three remains loose. Each is in a known location. Between them they have more money than al-Qaeda; they are living well and are 'reviewing new opportunities.' We understand it is harder to arrest friends and seize their assets. But, they'll understand it's nothing personal -- it's just business."

Remember when Bush tacked course from "Kenny Boy" to "Mr. Lay?" TheSmokingGun.com obtained a variety of Kenny-Georgie correspondence showing that they were indeed good friends. Whether George was wishing Kenny a happy 55th birthday ("Wow! That is really old!"), or Kenny was lobbying support for the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the Export-Import Bank, the cordiality of their relationship is apparent. The collection includes a note about Enron's joint venture to develop Uzebekistan's natural gas and transport it to European markets. See the redacted draft for a legislative gathering at "Enron Field" changed to "Houston's new major league ballpark." Read Kenny's note of appreciation to George for calling Governor Tom Ridge on Enron's behalf as a potential power supplier to Philadelphia "to make it possible for open and fair competition."

"The culture of scandal that dominated political Washington in the 1980s and 1990s has undergone a swift and radical shift. Under George W. Bush, acts that not long ago would have constituted firing offenses can now be ridden out... What has changed isn't so much the conduct of officials, but the standards by which they're judged. The 'new tone' that George W. Bush brought to Washington isn't one of integrity, but of permissiveness...Besides being Army secretary, ['Tommy Boy'] White is the Defense Department's point man on homeland security programs ['securing' the Power Grid, eh?]...One reason for the recent criticism of White is that EES had a practice of booking the profits from these multi-year deals up front, allowing executives like White, whose bonuses were tied to performance, to collect millions of dollars before the company had realized any actual profit."

Dan Ackman of Forbes.com writes: "But still there are no charges against Enron principals. If the president [sic] wants to make the case that his administration will not tolerate corporate wrongdoing, what better way than to indict his old friend and former Enron CEO, Kenneth Lay? Indicting Lay and other Enron executives may have a few pitfalls. First, one of Enron's main tricks--boosting its revenue by reporting its energy trades at their gross value--was mimicked by the entire energy-trading sector. Second, putting Lay or Jeffrey Skilling, Enron's former president and briefly its CEO, on trial would bring back into the headlines Enron's ties with Bush, Congress and the government of Texas. But the cost of not doing it seems even higher… there are existing laws about the fraudulent sale of securities waiting to be enforced... The laws are there. The question is who will use them."

This week, Bush plans to address Wall Street, pledging to "crack down" on corporate American. But American Family Voices isn't fooled by this empty posturing. Bush's phony concern is little more than the fox pledging to watch the chickens better. On July 9, American Family Voices will launch a television advertisement in Washington, D.C. and New York, N.Y., that exposes Bush's insider trading at Harken Energy, Vice President Cheney's shady dealings while CEO at Halliburton, and the fact that Harvey Pitt was the accounting industry's top lawyer before taking the helm at the SEC. Here's a special sneak preview of the video.

"A Senate subcommittee released a report Sunday holding Enron's board of directors directly accountable for the energy giant's collapse… The report cites numerous failures by the board, including the failure to stop Enron from using misleading accounting, the failure to ensure the independence of the company's auditor, Arthur Andersen, and the failure to protect shareholders from unfair dealings in an outside partnership run by the company's chief financial officer… The board knew Enron engaged in high-risk accounting, inappropriate conflict-of-interest transactions, extensive undisclosed off-the-books activities, and excessive executive compensation, but chose to ignore the practices. The board's independence was compromised by financial ties between the company and certain board members. The board also failed to ensure the independence of Andersen, which provided internal services while serving as Enron's outside auditor." So when will Bush put Ken Lay in jail???

As Wall Street totters on the brink of a credibility gap with a magnitude unequalled since the Great Depression, the Enron debacle is being scrutinized. As well it should be, for a wide variety of reasons, including the fact that since 1993 Enron and its employees gave G. W. Bush more than $736,000 in contributions. And all that cash sure did buy access, as just one document prepared for Rep. Waxman shows: over 40 contacts arranged chronologically between Enron and White House officials including Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Lawrence Lindsey and energy task force director Andrew Lunduist. Researchers, legislators, legal scholars and journalists will find a wealth of Enron-related resources at Stephanie J. Burke's "The Collapse of Enron: A Bibliography of Online Legal, Government and Legislative Resources," but so will concerned, inquisitive citizens. Regularly updated, this is a resource to revisit as the "pie grows higher!"

"A settlement has been reached in the legal fight preventing the release of the complete police report on the suicide of former Enron executive J. Clifford Baxter. The report, nearly 900 pages long, was released earlier this month, but photographs of the scene, including those of Baxter's body, were withheld. The proposed settlement, between Baxter's widow, the Texas attorney general, the city of Sugar Land, and the Houston Chronicle, would allow the release of most of the photographs and video. 'The only ones to be withheld are the ones the family considers to be the most disturbing,' Deputy Attorney General Jeff Boyd said Saturday...The dispute over the release of the report began almost immediately after his body was found on Jan. 25, in his car with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head." Dark questions still remain about the autopsy and its findings. (Enter 'baxter' in our website's search engine).

"Criminal investigators examining the Enron debacle have expanded their inquiry to focus on activities at the commercial banks that provided billions of dollars in loans and other financial services to the company [including hidden loans from Barclays and J P Morgan Chase. Enron] used natural gas trades with a series of offshore companies linked to Morgan to move hundreds of millions of dollars in loans off its books. [Enron and Morgan intentionally misrepresented the deals to obtain insurance]. The transactions involved a web of corporations... that at first blush seem independent but whose records show are linked companies with ties to Morgan. The companies traded gas in a circle, with Enron both being required to deliver the commodity on a future date and being owed the same amount of gas for delivery on the same date at the same price." Citigroup is implicated in similar illegal transactions that were not disclosed on Enron's books.

"Since Enron Corp. plunged into bankruptcy six months ago, George Bush's defenders have said the administration's refusal to bail out the sinking energy trader is proof of Bush's integrity... Growing evidence, however, shows that this Bush-can't-be-bought story line isn't true. It is now clear that prior to Nov. 8, when the SEC delivered subpoenas to Enron, the Bush administration did what it could to help Enron... Ken Lay got Bush's help in three principal ways: [1] Bush personally joined the fight against imposing caps on the soaring price of electricity in California [while Enron was gouging] hundreds of millions of dollars from California's consumers. [2] Bush granted Lay broad influence over the administration's energy policies. [3] Bush had his National Security Council staff organize an administration-wide campaign to pressure the Indian government to accommodate Enron. [The threats] against India on Enron's behalf didn't stop until Nov. 8."

During the Bush-Cheney supported energy shakedown in California, Enron and other energy traders stole $30 billion - and denied it, of course. Still, those stolen funds should have appeared on the books of the energy traitors. But Enron hid its stolen money in "reserves." We have tens of thousands of Americans in jail for stealing comparatively tiny sums - when will the Bush administration put Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, and Andrew Fastow in jail???

Frank Rich writes that on the 30th anniversary of Watergate, the energy expended searching for Deep Throat "might be better spent trying to crack the Watergate under way right now. This time the cancer is [on the economy, where the malignancy is a flood of corporate scams that exceed anything since the years preceding the Great Depression. The New York Post praised Mafia don John Gotti] by saying that at least the mob didn't come near 'your wallets,' as 'the Enron sissies did.' The new Watergate [is still early in its timeline - even though some] reassure us that the story is almost over. [Dick Cheney] achieved a trifecta through his official dealings with Enron, his stewardship of Halliburton during alleged accounting irregularities, and his on-camera appearance in a 1997 Andersen promotional video touting the firm's 'good advice.' It's too late to find a Rosemary Woods who might erase it."

Salon's Jason Leopold writes, "Now that federal prosecutors have secured a guilty verdict against accounting firm Arthur Andersen for shredding crucial documents related to Enron's finances, the Department of Justice is expected to turn its attention to Enron, with possible indictments against former executives coming soon for violating federal fraud statutes. According to sources close to the Justice Department's probe, former Enron president Jeffrey Skilling is facing particular scrutiny. And Exhibit A against him could be testimony he gave before Congress in February, when he claimed he knew little about one of Enron's byzantine partnerships."

Federal prosecutors believe Enron could have survived the losses racked up by its Raptor subsidiaries, if proper accounting was followed. But Enron's chief financial officer, Andrew Fastow, personally owned the Raptors - thanks to an arrangement approved by Enron's Board of Directors. Proper accounting would have cost Fastow millions of dolllars, so Fastow insisted on fraudulent accounting, which he created with the help of Andersen's local accountants. Fastow may be the first Enron executive to be prosecuted - but his conflict-of-interest was approved by the Board - led by Ken Lay. Everyone involved shares in the blame - and deserves time behind bars.

Numerous proposals have been floated in Congress to fix the many problems exposed by the collapse of Enron. But George Bush and his fellow Texan, Senator Phil Gramm, have worked hand in glove to quietly kill each of these proposals. Senate Democrats, led by Paul Sarbanes (D-MD), continue to fight to clean up corporate corruption. But with Republicans saying "over our dead bodies," there is only one solution - defeat ALL Republicans!

Salon's Jason Leopold reports that the Bush administration was tipped off "last August about [Enron's] impending financial problems. Enron lobbyist Pat Shortridge met with White House economic advisor Robert McNally Aug. 15, the day after Enron president Jeff Skilling resigned, to alert the White House that Enron could face a financial meltdown that could possibly cripple the country's energy markets... If McNally was tipped off to Enron's troubles it would mean that the White House had been warned several months earlier than it has previously acknowledged... It would also mean the White House received such a warning even before Sharon Watkins delivered her famous memo to then Enron chairman Kenneth Lay... It also fuels the most common question plaguing the administration these days: What did Bush know, and when did he know it?"

"An Alabama pension fund won a victory Friday when a federal judge ruled its Enron-related lawsuit should be tried in state court there. Blocking a request to move the case to Texas is significant because several lawyers have attempted to gain a leg up in negotiating with Enron-related plaintiffs by trying to stay out of the conglomeration of cases in U.S. District Judge Melinda Harmon's court in Houston… Alabama laws...unlike the federal law, include cases of those who aid and abet in a securities fraud. That would make it easier to make a case against accountants, lawyers and financial institutions that worked with Enron… Retirement Systems of Alabama sued in state court in March over the $65 million it said it lost in the "death spiral" of Enron Corp… The defendants include Arthur Andersen; Enron executives Kenneth Lay, Andrew Fastow and Jeff Skilling; and Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Credit Suisse First Boston and Bank of America."

The former chairman of an institutional investment firm, Alliance Capital, that continued to buy Enron stock as it tanked last year, and which oversees the Florida state pension fund, resigned from the Enron Board of Directors last week. Alliance Capital was recently sued for $280 million in losses by the Florida state agency responsible for administering the state employee pension fund. The Enron Director who resigned, Frank Savage, began his board tenure in October, 1999. Even if the state is successful in the suit, it can only expect to recover 30 to 50 cents on the pensioners' dollar. Alliance Capital maintains that it was holding on to the Enron stock expecting a merger to bolster the stock value.

"Investigators recovered more than 29,000 electronic files and e-mails deleted from Arthur Andersen computers before a federal probe was launched, a FBI agent testified Friday. Paula Schanzle, an FBI white-collar crime specialist who is believed to be the last prosecution witness in the obstruction of justice trial against the audit firm, said the documents filled 26 boxes after being recovered and printed...Schanzle also testified that Andersen partner Thomas Bauer was uncooperative during questioning by authorities, but that other employees at the Andersen offices in Houston interpreted his remarks as an order to destroy Enron documents. She testified that two other Andersen staffers had asked Bauer about their priorities in the jobs and that Bauer 'said that is was very apparent that they needed to get into compliance with the firm's document retention policy.' Andersen's defense is based on the assumption that documents were routinely destroyed under this policy."

Matier & Ross report, "Enron's 'Death Star' and 'Fat Boy' schemes to fleece California got a lot of press, but they're going to seem positively G-rated compared with the sex and anti-Semitic revelations that may come out as the Enron investigations go deeper, says [CA] Attorney General Bill Lockyer... 'There was this whole Texas macho corporate mentality at work here - one that included a lot of sex and anti-Semitism.' The 'Animal House'-style sex antics were recreational - seems one Enron exec had quite the reputation for after-hours parties. The anti-Semitism, believe it or not, was business. 'Apparently, there was this one energy trading group that Enron worked with that was predominantly Jewish,' Lockyer said. 'When the group didn't sell enough, they would get slammed with anti-Semitic jabs. 'You haven't heard any of this yet,' Lockyer said. 'But when you do, there won't be any doubts that the Enron higher-ups were truly evil people'" - including 51 in the Bush administration...

"Prior to Nov. 8, when the SEC delivered subpoenas to Enron, the Bush administration did what it could to help Enron replenish its coffers with billions of dollars. Enron desperately needed that money to prevent the exposure of mounting losses hidden in off-the-books partnerships... Ken Lay got Bush’s help in three principal ways: (1) Bush personally joined the fight against imposing caps on the soaring price of electricity in California at a time when Enron was artificially driving up the price of electricity by manipulating supply... (2) Bush granted Lay broad influence over the administration’s energy policies, including the choice of key regulators to oversee Enron’s businesses... (3) Bush had his National Security Council staff organize an administration-wide campaign to pressure the Indian government to accommodate Enron, which wanted to sell its generating plant in Dabhol, India, for $2.3 billion." So writes Sam Parry in Consortiumnews.com. We demand a Special Prosecutor!

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) produced a fact sheet comparing the policy recommendations made by Enron Chairman Ken Lay for national energy policy and the White House Energy Plan. "The analysis below describes Enron's positions outlined in Mr. Lay's memo. Contrary to the White House claim, the White House energy plan incorporates the vast majority of Mr. Lay's policy recommendations… to increase federal control over transmission lines, to exercise federal eminent domain authority to override state decisions on siting of transmission lines, to reject price controls on electricity as a way to mitigate the California energy crises, and to speed permitting of new energy facilities… The White House energy plan adopts all or significant portions of Enron's recommendations in seven… (of eight) areas. Enron representatives had six meetings with the White House energy task force, including four meetings that occurred before release of the final report." We demand a Special Prosecutor for Enrongate!

"Enron and Global Crossing used a complex deal brokered by a third company to sidestep accounting rules in a March 2001 transaction that was designed to help Global Crossing disguise a loan and allow each company to book revenue, according to executives and traders involved in the transaction... A swap of fiber optic network capacity and services, was brokered by Reliant Resources, one of the nation's biggest traders of energy contracts, which had expanded into the network-capacity trading market. The transaction helped disguise what was essentially an exchange of long-term services and a $17 million loan to Global Crossing by Enron." Earlier, the GOP tried to tar Clinton and Terry McAuliffe for getting contributions from Global Crossing. But it turned out that in '89 the BushDaddy gave GC Chairman Gary Winnick immunity for testifying against Michael Milken. After leaving office, Bush I received GC stocks apparently as speaking fees -- that he ultimately cashed in for $4.5 million.

References to Secretary of the Army Thomas White's Enron tenure in his official biography have been minimized, but that hasn't affected his bottom line. "Research by the Nader-affiliated Public Citizen shows that during the first three months of 2001, Enron Energy Services traded millions of megawatts of electricity with other divisions of Enron, artificially jacking up the prices to as much as $2500 per megawatt hour (compared to the average price of $340 at the time). 'As vice chairman,' the nonprofit watchdog notes, 'White was in charge of running day-to-day operations, including managing and signing retail energy contracts.' The results for California were rolling blackouts and sky-high prices. The results for White were much better. 'As a direct result of his division's fraud, White is a multimillionaire,' says Public Citizen." Why hasn't Bush fired White yet???

"When Connecticut Gov. John G. Rowland became chairman of the Republican Governors Association (RGA) last fall, he knew it would be a tough assignment. In 2002, Republicans would be defending 27 governorships, the Democrats only seven... The board of the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority, an autonomous agency whose directors are appointed by the governor and legislature, unanimously approved a contract in which the CRRA advanced $220 million to Enron and in return Enron committed to buying energy from the CRRA's trash-to-energy facility for about $2 million a month over the next 11 years. When Enron collapsed, the $220 million in public funds was lost, and the CRRA was forced to raise the rates it charges towns for trash disposal to make up the loss... Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (D) ruled that the CRRA deal with Enron was not an investment but an illegal, unsecured loan... It turned out that Enron had made an $80,000 soft-money commitment to the RGA."

"As Enron Corp. slid toward a bankruptcy filing, the White House's top economic, policy and communications officials mobilized to minimize the damage to financial markets and to the Bush administration... In the days before Enron filed the largest bankruptcy case in history, Karen P. Hughes, Bush's counselor, talked to press secretaries throughout the executive branch about how to handle news media calls about the company. Weeks before that, Deputy Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten had spoken to an assistant treasury secretary about how Enron's failure could affect the energy and financial markets.. When White House press secretary Ari Fleischer was asked about Enron on Nov. 28, four days before the bankruptcy filing, he brushed off the question... In fact, eyes throughout the White House had focused on Enron since President [sic] Bush's inauguration. [Enron] pursued a broad agenda with the administration that ended only after its huge losses and accounting irregularities became public."

"Four hours after the subpoenas were delivered, the White House faxed Lieberman a 6-page letter showing that Enron executives were granted numerous previously undisclosed meetings and phone calls with White House officials, including three phone calls between former chairman Kenneth L. Lay and Bush's senior adviser, Karl Rove… The issue of contacts between Enron and the White House is sensitive because the company's executives were among Bush's most generous backers… The letter…detailed a meeting that Bush held in the Oval Office on Feb. 7, 2001, with Lay and 19 other business leaders… Lay held a 30-minute meeting with… Cheney and a private meeting with his energy task force director, …spoke a few times with chief economic adviser Lawrence B. Lindsey, 'most likely about the California energy shortage.' Lay recommended 21 people for White House appointments and three of them were appointed… Lieberman asserted that the committee was 'being slow-walked at least and stonewalled at worst.'"

"The difference in behavior of the Democrats and Republicans during the hearing was incredibly clear - and that difference will not be lost on the public. While the Democrats stayed focused on the ISSUE AT HAND, which is Enron, and upon their reponsibility to the American taxpayers/voters, who lost BILLIONS at the hand of Enron, the Republicans focused on irrelevancies, fanning their smokescreen, while serving up a tedious litany of shopworn GOP spin lines. Not one Republican made a real statement on the impact that ENRON had on the people of their home states or expressed concern for the thousands of elderly people now without retirement money. Their sole focus was, in true drone-ant style, to protect 'queen bee Bush,' the American public be damned." So writes Cheryl Seal.

Reuters reports, "A Senate committee Wednesday authorized the first congressional subpoenas to the Bush White House [about] government contacts with now-bankrupt energy giant Enron Corp. In a 9-8 vote along party lines, the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee approved a request for subpoenas by its chairman, Sen. Joseph Lieberman... Lieberman's committee first requested the White House contact information in March, saying it wanted to determine the federal government's role in the chain of events that led to the collapse of Enron, a major Bush campaign donor. But starting early this month, Lieberman has expressed increasing concern that the White House is dragging its feet in gathering the information despite an exchange of letters and meetings with White House officials. 'This back and forth has continued, which has ultimately frustrated the committee's work and exhausted my patience,': Lieberman said. Joe - you've been WAY too patient with these CROOKS. Make them lie under oath!!

"What money has done. It's produced the fusion of money and government. And that is plutocracy," says Kevin Phillips, author of the new book 'Wealth and Democracy' … The entrenchment of money in ways you can't even begin to count. It used to be that when a… new wave politically came to Washington they swept it out… Keep fighting. I think there are signs that it's turning now. To me one of the most important milestones will be if people, and I include the media here, have the courage to document and put on the front page what they won't really touch now, which is... All the examples of the Bush family's role in the rise of Enron. Here, we're running around… tricksters that were in Enron, but George W. and George H.W., his father, were very much involved in the whole rise of Enron's influence and power… But you... you don't see that. People in the press have a lot of trouble touching these issues right where the rubber hits the road." Phillips told Bill Moyers in a PBS interview.

The "Enron Family Bush" exposes lesser known facts about their symbiotic relationship, including: Ken Lay's $50K donation to Poppy Bush's Presidential Library, where Kenny Boy is a trustee; Wendy Gramm's 6 month tenure as head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission during which she pushed through a measure that allowed Enron to trade risky energy derivatives, after which she became an Enron board member; James Baker's retention by Enron as an overseas mergers and acquisitions advisor; and much more. See for yourself how the Enron Family Bush grows!

Ellen Nakashima writes in the Washington Post, "A Senate Commerce panel yesterday called on Army Secretary Thomas E. White, a former Enron Corp. executive, to testify within the next two weeks on Enron's role in the California energy crisis... Memos written by Enron lawyers... described how Enron traders manipulated California's energy market during the state's power crisis last year, boosting company sales and profits. One memo referred specifically to Enron Energy Services, a division of which White was vice chairman, and which provided energy and energy services to California customers. [White said] last week that his firm was not involved in any manipulation of the California power market. He suggested that if there was any intervention, EES was an unwitting pawn." Indict Thomas White! Impeach Bush Now!

CBS Marketwatch reports, "Two days of rolling blackouts in June 2000 that marked the beginning of California's energy crisis were directly caused by manipulative energy trading, according to a dozen former traders for Enron and its rivals. The blackouts left more than 100,000 businesses and residential customers in the dark for parts of two days, trapped people in elevators and shut down some offices of high-tech companies such as Cisco Systems and Apple Computer, as well as chipmaking plants, costing millions of dollars in lost revenue. The traders said that Enron's former president, Jeff Skilling, pushed them to 'trade aggressively' in California and to do whatever was necessary to take advantage of the state's wholesale market to boost the price of Enron's stock." And we urge prosecutors and legislators to do "whatever is necessary" to put Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay away for life, and to put energy "traitors" - and their Republican sponsors - out of business!

Joe Conason writes of "Mr. Energy himself, Vice President Dick Cheney, who sternly lectured the California Democrats as they pleaded for relief from the federal government. 'We get politicians who want to go out and blame somebody and allege there is some kind of conspiracy, whether it's the oil companies or whoever it might be, instead of dealing with the real issues,' he groused. (To Mr. Cheney the 'real issues' were not Enron’s market-rigging, of course, but the industry’s demands for more tax breaks, further deregulation and permission to drill wherever they please.) A more cheerful dismissal was heard from Kenneth Lay, then still revered in the Oval Office as 'Kenny Boy.' Brimming with hubris, the Enron chairman patronized his [victims] -- 'Every time there’s a shortage or a little bit of a price spike, it’s always collusion or conspiracy or something. I mean, it always makes people feel better that way.' "

"Bush received hundreds of thousands of dollars in political contributions from Enron interests in recent years...[he has] resisted calls to contribute the money to charity, to Enron employees or back to the bankrupt company. 'The president [sic] is looking forward and not backward,' White House spokesman Taylor Gross said. He added that Bush supports 'tough enforcement laws to protect consumers' but declined to say whether returning the money was possible. Bush received more than $400,000 in Enron donations for his gubernatorial and presidential bids, the most of any candidate by far, records show… 'To me, from day one, it' (giving their contributions to charities helping Enron employees) 'was just common sense,' Rylander said. 'There are Enron employees who are hurting out there.'" So why doesn't Bush contribute his Enron takings to their employees? Has he no compassion? Or, common sense? Isn't it the right thing to do? Doesn't he know right from wrong?

"In light of a memo indicating that Army Secretary Thomas White's former Enron division was involved in market manipulation and price-gouging during the California electricity crisis, Public Citizen… called for White to resign immediately and the Justice Department to initiate a criminal probe. The internal company memo describes how White's division, Enron Energy Services, lied to California officials, enabling the company to charge prices far higher than should have been allowed. As a direct result of his division's fraud, White's a multimillionaire and California consumers still are paying far too much for their electricity... Enron Energy Services, which was colluding with other Enron divisions, deceived the state into thinking that transmission capacity was full, enabling Enron to charge prices far higher than if capacity was not full."

Robert Scheer writes, "Now that the Enron culprits have been caught red-handed, might not the media inquire of the president [sic] whether he takes any responsibility for nearly bankrupting California by refusing to come to the state's aid in a timely fashion? Forgotten in all the excitement of the damning revelations of [Enron memos] is the apparent stupidity, if not complicity, of the Bush administration that made Enron's chicanery possible. [Could] Bush himself not have guessed that his Texas buddies were gaming the market?... During its first year, the younger Bush's administration catered to every whim of Enron chief and Bush family sponsor Kenneth Lay. [Enron] deliberately denied Californians energy needed to sustain life while Bush blithely covered for them... When the mob does things like this, we call it blackmail and extortion. Now that a glossy corporate giant cozy with the president [sic] has done such things, what does the Justice Department propose we call them?"

Molly Ivins writes, "less than staggering is the news Enron execs were 'gaming the system' (isn't that a lovely euphemism?) during the California 'energy crisis' last summer. I like the con they named 'Death Star,' where they started by deliberately overscheduling the state's power grid, threatening to overload it, so they could charge the state for delivering the 'excess capacity' out of state, where the Californians couldn't keep track of it. They got so good at this they finally never even bought the 'excess energy' they were charging California NOT to deliver. Isn't that a great scam?"

Following the revelation of the now-famous "Fat Boy" memos, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) didn't mince words. "These Enron memos makes it clear that California consumers were robbed last year by the big energy companies... It is obvious to me that what we had was a premeditated, deliberate crisis, and to add insult to injury the energy companies used their political influence to keep the Bush administration and the congressional Republicans from protecting California families." But GOP collusion with the electricity thieves has not ended. Asked about a House investigation, Rep. Billy Tauzin's (R-LA) spokesman said, "What are you going to accomplish? Enron for all practical purposes is dead. Unfortunately, for political reasons, some people want to drag the bodies through the streets." That DOES have its appeal, but we'll settle for much less: the whole truth, prison time for those who stole $30 billion, a refund to CA consumers, and the impeachment of the Bush-Cheney administration.

The AP reports: "Tom Daschle said Thursday he believes Enron Corp. broke laws while manipulating electricity supply and prices during the California energy crisis. 'I don't think there's any doubt that somebody ought to go to jail and that we ought to find a way through public policy to fix a system that needs to be addressed,' said Daschle, D-S.D... 'The Bush administration and congressional Republicans sided with the energy companies and did nothing to help,' said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif. At a news conference, Democrats from California, Washington state and Oregon also criticized the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, saying it waited months to impose price caps to address the California crisis. 'We told them Enron and others were gaming the system. So my question to FERC is, 'What took you so long?' said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif."

Paul Krugman writes "there is powerful circumstantial evidence that market manipulation played a key role in [California's electricity crisis]. Energy companies had the motive, the means and the opportunity to drive prices sky-high... Yet federal officials, from George W. Bush on down, offered California nothing but sermons on the virtues of the free market... The great risk now is that this will be treated purely as an Enron story [which] shows just how easy it is for companies to cover their tracks, especially when the regulators are in their corner... And I'm sure that there will be a determined effort to ignore even these latest revelations. After all, why let facts get in the way of a beautiful, and politically convenient, theory?"

Following the discovery of internal Enron memos documenting price-gouging schemes with names like Fat Boy, Death Star, and Get Shorty, Senate Democrats want to know WHO IS RESPONSIBLE. Senate Commerce Subcommittee chair Senator Byron L. Dorgan (D-ND) said, "We want to have these witnesses appear before the committee so we can learn who in the company knew of these strategies, who in the company approved of these strategies, and we'll take it from there." Will this lead to Bush's Army Secretary Thomas White? To Bush's single biggest career donor, "Kenny-boy" Lay? Once again, we demand a Special Prosecutor to get to the very bottom of Enrongate!

Richard Oppel writes in the New York Times, "Fat Boy. Death Star. Get Shorty. These were the cocky nicknames that Enron traders gave the complex trading strategies they employed in 2000 and 2001 to maximize gains in California's wholesale electricity market. Enron is no longer in the trading business, and today its interim chairman, Norman P. Blake Jr., condemned the company's old tactics as 'seemingly gaming the system' and 'very offensive,' in testimony before a Senate panel. But documents released this week by federal regulators and interviews with California officials indicate that when Enron was flying high, its trading tactics exploited weaknesses in the state's energy markets to the hilt." This leads to another question -- did Dubya's Oil Bid'ness Buddies create the Fall 2000 Oil Price Spike to keep the Smirk from tanking?

Corpwatch writes, "The US Government and other public agencies continued to advocate for Enron, threatening poor countries like Mozambique with an end to aid if they did not accept Enron's bid on a natural gas field… Only when Enron's scandals began to affect Americans did these same government officials and institutions hold the corporation at arm's length. And only when Enron leadership revealed their greed on home turf did it became the biggest corporate scandal in recent US history… Although Enron-related projects obtained more than $7 billion in public financing from all over the world from 1992 to 2001, US Government agencies (the US Overseas Private Investment Corporation, Export-Import Bank, the US Maritime Administration Trade and Development Agency) lead the way with $3.4 billion in support of Enron-related projects abroad… Enron's collapse calls into question the policy of energy deregulation that Enron, together with its partners…have advocated domestically and worldwide."

"White House Counsel Al Gonzales has asked dozens of staff members to complete a questionnaire on communications between the administration and Enron Corp. in the months leading up to the company's collapse. The White House undertook the survey Monday at the request of Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee... 'This is an obvious delaying tactic,' Lieberman spokeswoman Leslie Phillips said of the White House action, and 'unacceptable' to omit two subjects from the questionnaire: national energy policy and presidential appointments… Phillips said using yes-or-no answers is 'totally insufficient' and an inefficient way of doing it and the administration is continuing a pattern 'of refusing to provide any information to the American public.' Gonzales set a May 10 deadline for returning the completed forms. Lieberman had sought a response from Card by April 12." Once again, we demand a Special Prosecutor for Enrongate!

Enron revised the estimated value of its assets downward by $24 billion, placing it at $38 billion in a Security and Exchange Commission filing. The devaluation means that stockholders will receive nothing out of the bankruptcy case. "Andrew Entwistle, a lawyer who represents one creditor, the Florida State Pension Fund, said the filing was further proof that Enron executives could not have acted alone. 'It would be absolutely impossible to perpetrate a fraud of this magnitude without the assistance of analysts, lawyers and accountants,' he said, referring to some creditors' efforts to go after a broad range of others for liability in the Enron collapse."

Tamara Baker writes in American Politics Journal, "It turns out that the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority, the entity responsible for regulating Caymans monetary matters, is in fact more than willing to assist any official US group or individual who makes, in an official capacity, a request to examine any and all financial matters pertaining to the Enron partnerships that were set up in the Caymans. They've said so, in very clear terms, as this February 8, 2002 press release shows. Call the Majority (meaning Democratic) phone number for the Senate Finance Committee at (202) 224-4515 and tell them you want the truth about Enron's Cayman partnerships!

In February, the Government of the Cayman Islands confirmed "its ability to respond to requests for assistance from the United States government in its ongoing Enron investigation… To date, no formal request has been made by U.S. authorities for information on the Enron matter." Why is that? In a speech last November, U.S. Treasury Secretary remarked, "The Cayman Islands has a long-standing relationship with the United States, including partnering with the United States in a mutual legal assistance treaty effective since 1990 under which we've already been cooperating in the hunt for terrorist assets." Secretary O'Neill added, "We commend the Cayman Islands for emphatically demonstrating that those who seek to engage in tax evasion or other financial crimes are not welcome within its jurisdiction." So, the Caymans are able to provide information, and Mr. O'Neill commends them for not welcoming criminal funds, but no one has asked for Enron related info? Don't you want to know?

Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, has once again written to Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson demanding a Special Prosecutor for Enrongate. Conyers cited conflicts he raised previously, including Bush's receipt of $2 million from Enron, plus another $145,650 from Arthur Andersen. He cited White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez's former partnership in Vinson & Elkins, Karl Rove's criminal consulting arrangement with Ralph Reed, and Thompson's own ties to Enron through his partnership in King & Spaulding. Finally, Conyers added new revelations that "Secretary of the Army Thomas White, a former high ranking Enron executive, was under federal investigation for insider trading involving the sale of more than $12 million in Enron stock." All of this adds up to a MASSIVE conflict of interest, and we join Rep. Conyers in once again DEMANDING A SPECIAL PROSECUTOR!

Do you believe in the tooth fairy? You might as well! Enron maintains there is no evidence "to show the company manipulated prices" of California energy, despite charging prices that ranged from 63%-185% higher than competitors. Enron also maintains it "was not a significant player in CA," while controlling about 30% of the electricity traded at 4 Western electricity clearinghouses with contracted megawatt amounts more than 10 times larger than their competitors; that amounted to roughly 80% of Enron's overall power sales during that time! By trading contracts with its competitors and itself, investigators believe Enron was able to drive prices up, and each trade gave them a cut; large amounts traded = large cuts. How large? Sales prices per megawatt hour rocketed from $37.93 in the first quarter to $264.59 in the fourth quarter! THAT sure beats a buck under the pillow!

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), Ranking Minority Member of the House's Committee on Government Reform, is questioning J. P. Morgan Chase's "close relationship to Enron," noting that it is "named as a co-defendant in two consolidated class-action lawsuits filed on behalf of Enron employees and shareholders." The lawsuits allege that Enron spin-offs, termed "special purpose entities" (SPE's) allowed Enron to inflate its reported earnings by more than $1 Billion, enriching CFO Andrew Fastow and his (unknown) co-investors by tens of millions of dollars at Enron's expense. But Rep. Waxman didn't stop there! He continued "(Sequoia) transactions do not appear to have served a legitimate economic purpose." Instead, to avoid reporting the transactions as debts, they flip-flopped their appearance on the balance sheets of loans and repayments on the last and first days of the month. Waxman concludes by asking "a number of troubling questions." Quite troubling, indeed!

Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) recently upset Republicans by charging, "Most have already figured it out that the reason the president and the Republicans don't want to get tough with white-collar criminals is because they are their friends, they work together and they go to the same country clubs." Two days later, the NY Times reports that the FBI and SEC are investigating an aspect of the Enron debacle called "Grayhawk," named after the Grayhawk Gold Club in AZ, where the scheme was hatched. "Grayhawk was a concerted effort by senior managers to increase profits by funneling inside information about the company to an affiliated partnership" which used the information to profit. It sounds like John knows the course, doesn't it?

CNN reports on the Democratic Weekly Radio Address by John Conyers (D-Spine), who "accused the Bush administration of looking the other way regarding white-collar crime. 'The (Enron pension looting 401-K loophole) amendment that the Republicans rejected in Congress this week in a straight party-line vote would have closed the loopholes that exist in current law,' he said. 'Most have already figured it out that the reason the president and the Republicans don't want to get tough with white-collar criminals is because they are their friends, they work together and they go to the same country clubs.'" You got that right, John!

The Sugarland, Texas, Police Department, has released the suicide note of former Enron executive, John Clifford Baxter. The note, addressed to Cliff Baxter's wife, stated: "I am so sorry for this. I feel I just can't go on. I have always tried to do the right thing but where there was once great pride now it's gone. I love you and the children so much. I just can't be any good to you or myself. The pain is overwhelming. Please try to forgive me." It was signed, "Cliff." The note was handwritten in all capital letters on a blank sheet of paper. An attorney for the family stated the note was found in Carol Baxter's car in the garage of the family home. Baxter's alleged "suicide" has been the subject of controversy and still remains an open case. How strange that Baxter would write a suicide note to his family in all capital letters (which just happens to be the most difficult type of handwriting to do an analysis of!)

Just before his death, Enron Executive Cliff Baxter had agreed to testify before Congress to provide evidence against others. Two months after police were criticized for calling the death a suicide before investigating, the case remains open. And for good reason: irregularities and unanswered questions abound. Among them: Did a last note contain mention of Enron? Why was peculiar ammunition, "rat-shot" used? What caused mysterious wounds on one hand? Why weren't his hands protected for further examination? What about the glass shards on his shirt? Was the body removed and returned to the vehicle? Why won't the police say who handled and saw the body before its arrival at the coroner's? Though legally required, why wasn't an autopsy ordered? What was Cliff Baxter about to divulge to Congress about history's biggest corporate scandal?

The Institute for Policy Studies has issued a report called "Enron's Pawns: How Public Institutions Bankrolled Enron's Globalization Game." "Researchers from the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network (SEEN), a project of IPS, have discovered that over the past decade, 21 agencies representing the U.S. government, multilateral development banks, and other national governments helped leverage Enron's global reach with $7.2 billion in public financing approved for 38 projects in 29 countries... The global strategy of privatizing these countries' energy sectors has its origins in the Reagan Administration, and became a major priority of international financial institutions in the 1990s. The end results were not reliable energy at an affordable price, but rather, price hikes, blackouts, shady deals cut by government officials, and street riots in which people died. Enron's infamous partner in crime, accounting firm Arthur Andersen, also played a role in this global drama."

An L.A. Times editorial points out that -- as if it wasn't bad enough that Army Secretary Thomas White was part of an elaborate, deceptive plot to deceive Wall Street analysts while working at Enron - his post-Enron conduct has also been a scandal. He has lied about the nature of and the number of contacts he had with Enron officials since joining the administration, and he even had the nerve to apply for retirement benefits after Enron tanked! The editorial sums it all up: "The secretary of the Army needs to be like Caesar's wife--beyond suspicion. White's conduct during and after his tenure at Enron does not meet that standard. He should resign." Meanwhile, Arthur Andersen shredder-in-chief David Duncan will plead guilty to obstruction of justice.

CBS Marketwatch's David Galloway wonders what the administration is hiding in its heavily edited energy task force papers but recognizes that the administration's secretiveness is "part of a pattern of holding back information that not only taints the administration with Enron, but leads to skepticism about any of its other motives, such as its messing with the Clean Air Act or its developing a shadow government in case of attacks on Washington." Unlike much of the mainstream media, which prefers to position the Enron debacle as a "business scandal" to protect Bush, Gallaway tells it like it is: "From the very beginning, the Enron story has been much more than a business story about a failed company. It has been a story of greed and corruption on such a scale that both Washington and Wall Street have had to make changes to the way they operate that would have been unthinkable a year ago." Yeah, but unfortunately, there haven't been enough changes: Shrub hasn't been impeached yet!

PoliticalAmazon.com has extensive information about the unethical behavior of "Enron Whore Army Secretary Thomas White", including recent news about his dozens of phone calls to Enron. Political Amazon neatly documents his "little White lies" and hammers home the hypocrisy of the right-wing, who pushed for Clinton's impeachment on the flimsiest of charges yet now let Shrub's corrupt cabal get away with murder!

In response to a second request by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Ca.), Army Secretary Thomas White (who was one of the architects of Enron's sleaziest off-the-books partnership before joining Shrub's crew) on March 22nd revealed significantly more contacts with Enron than his January response to Waxman's original request had indicated. ("Uh, you mean you wanted details about ALL my calls, not just the ones I made from the Pentagon?" D-uh. Perhaps White doesn't understand the meaning of the word EVERY.) Bush administration officials sure are an arrogant bunch. Despite the fact that most of them are drenched in Enron mud, they refuse to apologize or even admit any wrongdoing - heaven forbid they should go so far as to do the right thing and resign, upholding Bush's promise to run the "most ethical government in history" (ROTFL!).

Stockbroker "Chung Wu, of PaineWebber's Houston office, sent a message to clients early on Aug. 21 warning that Enron's 'financial situation is deteriorating' and that they should 'take some money off the table.' That afternoon, an Enron executive in charge of its stock option program sent a stern message to PaineWebber executives, including the Houston branch office manager. 'Please handle this situation,' the newly released message stated. 'This is extremely disturbing to me.' PaineWebber fired Mr. Wu less than three hours later. That evening, the firm retracted Mr. Wu's assessment of Enron's stock — then about $36 — by sending his clients an optimistic report that Enron was 'likely heading higher than lower from here on out.' A few months later, the stock was worthless, and the company was in bankruptcy court." So reports the NY Times.

Washington Post reporter Ellen Nakashima writes, "Last October, Army Secretary Thomas E. White, a former Enron Corp. executive, met or phoned former colleagues at the energy company as many as 13 times prior to his decision to sell more than 200,000 Enron shares at the end of that month, according to information he has provided a House committee. A letter hand-delivered Friday to the office of Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), the ranking member on the House Government Reform Committee, lists 44 calls White made from his home to former Enron colleagues since taking office last May. They do not include calls he may have received on that phone. These calls are in addition to 29 calls to and meetings with Enron colleagues that White disclosed in January. Those calls, he specified in the letter Friday, were made or received in his Pentagon office... One former Enron employee who White called said the FBI has inquired about the nature of the calls." We demand a Special Prosecutor for Enron!

Online Journal's Larry Chin writes, "In portraying Enron as a 'scandal,' and as an isolated case of overheated capitalism and 'unusual political influence,' the American corporate media and congressional investigators are studiously avoiding the truth: Enron, like many multinational corporations, has functioned as an operational arm of the US government, and as a weapon of economic, political, and territorial hegemony. The case exposes an almost unspeakable and terminal malignancy at the heart of world politics, and global capitalism itself." Not only is Bush destroying our constitution in terms of civil liberties, the powers of the president, and secrecy, we also have an administration that is selling out our government to a select few corporations and individuals. Abraham Lincoln said, "Government for the people, by the people and of the people", which no longer applies to this administration. It is now "government for the corporations, by the corporations and of the corporations."

When former Enron executive Thomas White became Army Secretary, he promised to bring private-sector "efficiency" to the Army. He sure did - ENRON style. White rigged a $25 million contract to provide power to Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, NY, so that only Enron would bid. This contract is under investigation by Rumsfeld's Defense Department - but WE DEMAND A SPECIAL PROSECUTOR!

The Bush administration's investigation of Enron's crimes was further tainted by the revelation that FBI Director Robert Mueller worked for Enron in 1993. Mueller was hired by Enron to investigate an extortionate payment of $603,680 by an Enron subsidiary for a small property in Massachusetts assessed at $41,200. Mueller gave the deal a green light, causing a private investigator also examining the deal to resign in protest. Nevertheless, "Mueller decided after consulting with the FBI's general counsel that his prior legal work was not large or long enough to cause him to step down." Say what??? And who else approved Mueller's conflict? "Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson concurred with Mueller's decision" - yes, the SAME Larry Thompson who HIMSELF worked for a law firm that represented Enron. We DEMAND a Special Prosecutor for Enrongate!

Geoff Dougherty of the Chicago Tribune writes, "Bush had business ties with Enron and its predecessor companies, and first met Kenneth Lay, its chairman, sometime in the late 1980s, according to public records and interviews. Previously, the president [sic] had not mentioned his business dealings with Enron and had said that he got to know Lay after he was elected governor of Texas in 1994... [Bush] 'does not recall specifics' of the first time he met Lay, [Dan] Bartlett said. 'He met him through his father and through his father's political activity.' Despite those contacts, Bartlett said, Bush 'didn't get to know him well,' until after Bush was elected governor in 1994. [Bush] also does not recall specifics of his dealings with Enron, Bartlett said, and was unaware his oil company had joint ventures with Enron." Bush is lying - we demand a Special Prosecutor!

On 3-6-02, Bu$h fired Army Corps of Engineers head Mike Parker because he refused to go along with a $2 billion cut in the Army corps. Environmentalists were quietly pleased, because former Rep. Parker (R-MS) was the environmental-reviews-be-damned-send-in-the-bulldozers type. But Parker's temporary replacement was expected to be Dominic Izzo, who is no environmentalist himself. Izzo was previously the senior director of Enron Engineering and Construction Co. and project manager for power plant construction at the controversial operation in Dabhol, India. The word now is the Army undersecretary Les Brownlee will head the Corps - until his own Enron paycheck is discovered, no doubt.

The AP reports, "Senators are pressing Army chief and former Enron executive Thomas White to cut all financial ties to the bankrupt energy company, saying he did not fully disclose them as required. At issue are some 50,000 shares of Enron stock that White, former chairman of Enron Energy Services, contributed to the WSW 1996 Exchange Fund, a pool of stocks. Under a partnership agreement, the shares -- worth roughly $1 million when White contributed them -- could be returned to White if their value dropped. The Senate Armed Services Committee first learned of that financial interest in late February... In addition, the committee learned only in January that White had accepted an annuity paid in part by Enron. White had not purchased a surety or insurance policy as required by the committee to free him of any reliance on Enron's ability to pay, they wrote. 'We do not believe that your actions satisfied the requirements of this committee,' the senators told White."

Democrats.com has obtained an exclusive copy of Paul Begala's memo listing the various actions taken by President Bill Clinton that could have prevented the Enron disaster. Begala's memo was cited by Dana Milbank of the Washington Post on 3-4-02. Begala cites Clinton's efforts to stop auditor-consulting conflicts by accountants; greater disclosure of derivates; CFTC oversight of energy traders; cracking down on tax havens; protecting 401(k) plans; protecting investors and shareholders. Naturally the GOP blocked all of these efforts.

The NY Times reports, "Enron executives made millions on fraudulent trades, and this was followed by SEC investigations. And top Enron officials said they knew nothing. It all happened 15 years ago in an inconspicuous office park in Westchester County, N.Y. An Enron subsidiary, the Enron Oil Corporation, set up its office in Valhalla, N.Y., in 1985. By October 1987, the S.E.C. had begun investigating the two top executives there, and the office was shut... In October 1987, the S.E.C. accused Louis J. Borget, then the unit's president, and Thomas N. Mastroeni, its secretary-treasurer, of executing sham oil trades over those years. The two men, court documents show, set up fake offshore companies to disguise the trades and falsified records to conceal them from company officials in Houston. The two executives pleaded guilty in federal court in White Plains to fraud-related charges and tax evasion." Was Ken Lay really "out of the loop" then? Did Bu$h Sr.'s SEC really investigate?

Karl Rove is SERIOUSLY spooked about David Corn's expose in The Nation that Bu$h and Enron were partners in an oil well in 1986. Rove is SO spooked that he actually told the NY Times (through AWOL scrubber-in-chief Dan Bartlett) the story is true. But Bartlett says Bu$h "has no recollection of this specific deal." Read Bu$h's lips carefully - "no specific recollection." Ignoring the fact this is a pure Clintonian evasion, it's also lawyerese for "I remember it as clear as day - but if I admit it I'll be impeached." Bush is trying to escape justice in Enrongate the exact way his dad did in Iran-Contra - by claiming he was "out of the loop." We demand a Special Prosecutor!

Lay, Skilling and Fastow haven't changed. They are still trying to pawn off the same corporate cons they always have. "Kenneth Lay, the former chairman of the bankrupt energy trader, has decided he can plausibly cast himself as a stupid person taken advantage of by brighter underlings," observes Michael Lewis of Bloomberg News. "Jeffrey Skilling, the chief executive who quit before the final collapse, believes he can set himself up as the guy who wasn't around when anything bad happened and who 'got off in Ireland' before the ship went down. Andrew Fastow, the chief financial officer who profited from partnerships with Enron Corp., clearly thinks if he lays low like Brer Rabbit, the public inquiry will focus on other, more senior people and bigger, more systematic problems -- and that he will be allowed to play the role of an underling who was simply doing what his bosses told him to do." In short, once a con artist, always a con artist.

American no longer has muckrakers exposing corporate corruption, nor a strong leader like Teddy Roosevelt to bust up their ruthless control. "Swollen corporations rule more or less unchallenged. When a big one falls as Enron fell, it's like a missing tooth in the blinding corporate smile that mesmerizes America. For a moment, anyone who cares to look can see all the infection and corruption in the hungry mouth that threatens to swallow us whole. Expect only a brief glimpse before the Big Smile is repaired by the best oral surgeons money can buy. But what we see, and the way we respond to what we see, is more critical to America's survival than the fate of a million Islamic terrorists." So writes Hal Crowther in the Durham Independent.

Florida's state pension fund lost $328 million on Enron stock - much of which was bought AFTER Enron began disclosing its massive problems in October 2001. The investment manager who lost all of this money was Alfred Harrison of Alliance Capital. Was Harrison trying to prop up Enron's stock, and did Jeb Bush let him? Harrison met with Enron's top executives at least 10 times - was he conned or bribed? Jeb denies any involvement, but Jeb's appointees oversaw the investments - including Coleman Stipanovich, brother of 'Mac' Stipanovich – the Tallahassee lobbyist who masterminded Katherine Harris' theft of Election 2000. (The NY Times left Stipanovich's name out of its story - e-mail wayne@nytimes.com to ask why.) We demand a Special Prosecutor!

Our research on Enron scrubber-in-chief Pug Winokur turned up this fascinating revelation: key evidence about Enron's crimes is now in the hands of Lawrence Weinbach, who was Managing Partner and CEO of Andersen Worldwide until 1997. Weinbach is now Vice Chairman of the audit committee of Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS), one of Enron's leading lenders, which bought Enron's trading operation in January. The business value of this acquisition was questionable at the time, and is even more questionable now as the firm's leading traders are in the news looking for greener pastures elsewhere. "With the purchase of Enron Online, UBS not only takes control of the trading operations but of the trading records — crucial evidence in the investigation. Given the limbo between UBS and Arthur Andersen, many in the financial community wonder if investigators should subpoena the whole package to ensure against further destruction of records." We demand a Special Prosecutor!

In the Nation, David Corn writes: "Did George W. Bush once have a financial relationship with Enron? In 1986, according to publicly available records, the two drilled for oil together--at a time when Bush was a not-too-successful oil man in Texas and his oil venture was in dire need of help. Bush's business association with Enron, it seems, has not previously been reported. As the details of the Spectrum-Harken acquisition--which Bush badly needed--were being finalized, Enron Oil and Gas Company... announced on October 16, 1986, that it had completed a well producing both oil and natural gas in Martin County, Texas... Enron held 52% interest in the well... 10% belonged to Spectrum 7. At that point, Spectrum 7 was still Bush's company... To spell it out: George W. Bush and Enron Oil and Gas were in business together in 1986--when Ken Lay was head of Enron... Calls placed to both the White House and Enron have not yet been returned." We demand a Special Prosecutor!

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) has been politely asking the administration tough questions about Enron - and getting nothing back the back of BushCheney's hand. As the ranking Democrat on the Committee on Government Reform, Waxman cannot issue subpoenas or call hearings - he must rely on Chairman Dan Burton (R-IN). During the Clinton years, Burton "issued 1,048 subpoenas and received 1.3 million pages of documents from the White House." Waxman's letter to Burton highlights the most important POLITICAL aspects of the Enron scandal.

Everyone knows about Unocal's efforts to build a $2 billion pipeline through Afghanistan, which included bringing top Taliban officials to their HQ in Sugarland TX (Tom DeLay's home town!) in 1997. Supposedly, Unocal's efforts ended after Al Qaeda bombed US embassies in Africa, which was followed by Bill Clinton's cruise missile attack on 8/20/98. But did ENRON carry on where Unocal left off? The National Enquirer quotes an FBI source who says, "When Clinton was bombing Bin Laden camps in Afghanistan in 1998, Enron was making payoffs to Taliban and Bin Laden operatives to keep the pipeline project alive. And there's no way that anyone could NOT have known of the Taliban and Bin Laden connection at that time, especially Enron who had CIA agents on its payroll!" The Enquirer quotes a CIA source who says Enron kept lobbying the Taliban for the pipeline even AFTER 911! Is this true? Why is the corporate media ignoring these disclosures? We demand a Special Prosecutor!

DC Dave and a team of Internet investigators have been poring over the autopsy of former Enron executive J. Clifford Baxter, and they are finding plenty of cause for doubt. "1. Although the 'Manner of Death' on page 1 is given as 'suicide,' no effort is made in the autopsy to support that conclusion, and, indeed, there is no supporting evidence for suicide in the autopsy... 2. The strongest evidence in the autopsy report is most consistent with murder. Under EVIDENCE OF INJURY on numbered page 3 we find, 'The defect is stellate and, when the wound edges are repositioned, measures 7.2 centimeters in the horizontal direction and 4.5 centimeters in the vertical direction.' This suggests a wound inflicted by a starburst of rat shot pellets which were far enough from the muzzle of the weapon to have separated from one another by as much as 2.83 inches before striking the head. Who would, or could, shoot themselves in the temple like this?" Conspiracy theorists, fire away!

What is Dick Cheney hiding in his adamant refusal to turn over the records of his Energy Task Force? Journalist Ron Callari asks: "Could the Big Secret be that the highest levels of the Bush Administration knew during the summer of 2001 that the largest bankruptcy in history was imminent? Or was it that Enron and the White House were working closely with the Taliban -- including Osama bin Laden -- up to weeks before the Sept. 11 attack? Was a deal in Afghanistan part of a desperate last-ditch 'end run' to bail out Enron?" Read this explosive analysis.

"Enron stole billions from the public, from its employees, and from its investors, while fattening the campaign coffers of the Bush administration and its friends. Today the administration is trying to hide its Enron ties instead of coming clean, forcing the GAO to sue for records of White House policy meetings with Enron. We believe that Congress must call on the Bush administration to appoint a Special Counsel to investigate Enron and restore public trust." Sign the petition at MoveOn.org.

In this video tape of an October 2000 Enron company meeting obtained by US Representative Henry A. Waxman, chairman Kenneth Lay speaks directly about his support for George W. Bush and Republican candidates, who got 60-65% or Enron's bribes according to Lay - actually 74%, according to opensecrets.org. This tape also features Jeff Skilling defending Enron's "mark to market" accounting. You can even watch thousands of Enron employees doing the wave!

Once again, the National Enquirer has scooped the corporate media with real investigative reporting. "The corruption at Enron went far beyond unbridled greed and rampant sex- it also involved international espionage and electronic spy warfare, the Enquirer has learned... 'There have been at least 20 CIA agents on the payroll of Enron in the past eight years [training] Enron employees in intelligence gathering and security, [helping Enron] get billions of dollars in lucrative contracts in Asia, South America and Europe. 'Basically what the CIA operatives were able to provide was detailed information on bids made by foreign companies on projects of interest to Enron. 'They used human intelligence and also info gleaned from a satellite project called 'Echelon.' The satellites intercepted e-mails, phone calls and faxes with detailed business information... 'Pure and simple, U.S. intelligence agents were involved in corporate espionage.'" We demand a Special Prosecutor!

"Thomas White, the former Enron vice chairman appointed by George W. Bush to be Secretary of the Army, should resign immediately. The case against White is self-evident. Touted as 'one of the most outstanding managers in corporate America' by Enron's favorite senator, Phil Gramm, he was named Army Secretary, promising to bring 'sound business practices' to the Pentagon. But White's entire business experience was at Enron, where he participated directly in the lies and mismanagement that resulted in its bankruptcy and the betrayal of investors and employees. Enron's business practices generally, and White's in particular, are the last thing that should be inflicted upon the Department of the Army." So writes Robert Borosage in The Nation.

Ken Lay, Enron scrubber-in-chief Pug Winokur, and Arthur Andersen shredder-in-chief David Duncan were all involved in the "American Council for Capital Formation" - a front group for corporate super-thieves who want to steal YOUR money by the TRILLION. Other ACCF members include Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, and Economic Advisor Lawrence Lindsay. ACCF's agenda includes repealing the corporate alternative minimum tax, privatizing Social Security, reducing capital gains rates for corporations and the rich, and eliminating the estate tax. This class-warfare agenda went straight from ACCF to Bush (via Mitch Daniels) and Congressional Republicans (via Tom DeLay). Just one more reason why we demand a Special Prosecutor for Enrongate!

Fake trading floor, fake "partnerships," faked reports ...was there ever ANYTHING real about Enron? Or was it all just one big front designed to make a huge killing for a few, then let the chips fall where they may - and let the little guy and gal take their chances? This new revelation that Enron actually had a Hollywood-like set complete with "stand in" traders in the form of on-call employees is disturbing not just because of the colossal dishonest and arrogance it represents but because it echoes the Bush administration's modus operandi. Just like Enron, the Bush administration is being run like a front operation, with a glitzy, convincing Hollywood set up front for the public to see, but all the real information as to what is truly going on kept under lock and key to protect a few. Sadder still, Ken Lay has one up on Bush - at least he obtained his position honestly.

Here's a deal that will make you laugh - if you live OUTSIDE of Connecticut. Enron conned the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority into handing over $220 million in CASH in return for an IOU of $2.4 million per month until 2012. Where is the collateral, you ask? Don't bother asking - this was a REPUBLICAN deal, approved by Gov. John G. Rowland's Chief of Staff, Peter Ellef, who also serves as chairman of the trash authority. We'll add Rowland to the ever-growing list of Republicans whose careers will go down the tubes with Enron - joining Jeb Bush (FL), Rick "Goodhair" Perry (TX), and ultimately the Commander-in-Thief Himself.

Enron's massively fraudulent partnerships were the brainchild of CFO Andrew Fastow, the current frontrunner in the "Enron Pokey" contest. But which Enron director did the most to promote Fastow's fraud? According to the NY Times, "In October 1999, Herbert S. Winokur Jr., a longtime Enron director who is chairman of the finance committee, presented the case for the second [much larger] partnership at a meeting of the full board... The board approved the partnership, with Mr. Fastow at the helm, and waived Enron's code of ethics a second time." Winokur is now in charge of "scrubbing" the Enron investigation; here's how NY Times columnist Frank Rich described his testimony to Congress. "Appearing before the House Commerce Committee with condescension in his voice and a flag pin in his lapel, he contradicted himself so much under questioning that one member, Bart Stupak of Michigan, told me he had 'impeached his own testimony.'" We demand a Special Prosecutor!

According to Online Journal's Larry Chin, Herbert 'Pug' Winokur is one scary dude. Winokur is a key board member of DynCorp, which has huge contracts with the U.S. government to wage "privatized" war. For example, "DynCorp is the leading corporate mercenary behind the Plan Colombia, or 'Andean Initiative.' The company has a $600 million contract with the State Department to carry out 'defoliation' in Colombia, Bolivia and Peru. In Colombia, DynCorp works closely with the US-backed and US-funded narco-trafficking right-wing Colombian military, paramilitary death squads, and the CIA." (The spotters on the Peruvian plane that killed an American missionary and her infant worked for DynCorp.) DynCorp also manages the records of 30 govt agencies, including the FBI, DoJ, and DoD. Winokur also serves on Enron's board, and he's in charge of preventing investigators from learning the truth - and punishing the guilty. This is one more reason we need a Special Prosecutor!

According to the American Prospect, the Washington Post's "editorial-page editor Fred Hiatt and company have relentlessly beat the drums against major investigations into Enron and its connections to the Bush administration." On 1-13-02, they declared there was "no evidence that the Bush team was improperly embroiled in the firm's deceptive schemes... Then, on January 23, the Post took a gratuitous swipe at the General Accounting Office for its lawsuit against the White House... But perhaps most astounding is a Post editorial from February 9" opposing a special prosecutor because "nobody has credibly alleged a crime by a member of the administration." The Post took the OPPOSITE position on 1-5-94 when it demanded a Special Prosecutor for the GOP's bogus charges in Whitewater - leading to a $60 million investigation that ultimately exonerated the Clintons, but only after Ken Starr permanently trashed the Constitution.

Here's a bombshell: a former computer programmer at Enron has written a letter to Senator Barbara Boxer, claiming "Enron congested the state's transmission lines and then resold the power in the state's wholesale electricity market at skyrocketing rates." "David Fabian [is] a former employee for Enron's trading unit who wrote the company's trading software for electricity and natural gas sales." "I never witnessed this but this is what the traders talked about," Mr. Fabian told Dow Jones Newswires. "I spent a lot of time with traders writing the software programs and they discussed how they could use tricks to get high prices for electricity." "California is seeking $9 billion in refunds from generators, including Enron, for allegedly gouging utilities. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is investigating Enron's role in California 's power crisis and expects to issue a decision on the refund case in the summer."

Once again, the Bush administration has released White House documents - from the CLINTON administration. These documents reveal Ken Lay's efforts to influence Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and his successor, Larry Summers. Lay offered Rubin a seat on Enron's board; Rubin refused, as he did with 30-40 offers from other companies, and there is no hint that Rubin did Lay's bidding. (Rubin did lobby for Enron in 2001, but that was to protect his current employer - Citibank, which lent billions to Enron - not Clinton.) Lay also complained to Summers after Assistant General Counsel John Yetter suggested the White House might recommend regulation of derivatives. That proposal was never made, but no one has alleged that Lay's lobbying was the cause. Obviously, Bush is AGAIN trying to shift blame to Clinton for his own misdeeds. We demand the immediate release of Cheney's Task Force records - and a Special Prosecutor!

"Former Enron Corp. chairman Kenneth L. Lay engaged in an extensive, friendly correspondence with then-Texas Gov. George Bush covering everything from holiday greetings to legislation and deals important to Lay's company, according to documents released under the state's open records law yesterday. Nearly once a month Lay wrote to Bush, urging him to support laws that would benefit his company, mainly utility deregulation, which would allow Enron to enter a larger share of the energy market; tort reform, making it more difficult to sue corporations; and a law that would reduce Enron's corporate taxes…In a letter dated Oct. 27, 1997, Lay thanked Bush for calling then-Gov. Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania, where Enron was engaged in an unsuccessful high-profile struggle with a local utility company for an electricity contract. In another letter, dated April 3, 1997, Lay confirmed a meeting with Bush and Uzbekistan's ambassador to the United States. Enron was negotiating a $2 billion joint venture to build a pipeline."

"While the White House has repeatedly described former Enron chairman Kenneth Lay as simply a 'supporter' of George W. Bush, extensive correspondence between the two men paints a far cozier picture of their relationship, according to copies of letters obtained this afternoon (2/15) by The Smoking Gun. The pages of correspondence, exchanged during the years Bush served as governor of Texas, were released today in Austin by the state archives in response to Freedom of Information requests filed by TSG and other news organizations."

According to the NY Times, "Democratic Senate leaders have put Wall Street's relationship with Enron and potential financial conflicts of interest at the top of a broad Enron-related legislative agenda that was announced last week... 'We're trying to understand whether Wall Street firms had a vested interest to pump up Enron stock,' said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat and chairman of the Senate Commerce subcommittee investigating Enron. 'Even as Enron was collapsing, analysts were pushing a strong buy. Did investment banks have an interest in trying to keep the stock from falling too far and was there an attempt to deceive investors?' Washington University Law School dean Joel Seligman offered an obvious remedy: 'There should be a systematic prohibition on a firm recommending a stock while it is being underwritten. Perhaps we should go further and have investment banks chose whether to provide brokerage or underwriting, but not both.'"

"As an Enron Corp. division vice chairman, Thomas E. White was responsible for the nuts-and-bolts performance of big energy-management contracts with an impressive roster of customers…How well White did that job has now become an issue in the aftermath of Enron's collapse, as investigators try to determine whether White's unit, Enron Energy Services (EES), contributed to the massive misstatement of Enron's profits over the past four years. White, who retired in 1990 from the Army as a brigadier general, returned to the Pentagon last year as…Bush's choice as secretary of the Army -- an appointment for which his business expertise was highly touted…One source of concern is whether White violated his Senate ethics agreement to sever all financial ties to Enron when he elected to receive an annuity payment, part of which came from Enron." White has pushed for privatization of military base utility services. He was also appointed as liaison to the Office of Homeland Security. To 'secure' the Power Grid?

"Just before the last presidential election, Bush campaign adviser Ralph Reed offered to help Enron Corp. deregulate the electricity industry by working his 'good friends' in Washington and by mobilizing religious leaders and pro-family groups for the cause. For a $380,000 fee, the conservative political strategist proposed a broad lobbying strategy that included using major campaign contributors, conservative talk shows and nonprofits to press Congress for favorable legislation. Reed said he could place letters from community leaders in the opinion pages of major newspapers, producing clips that Reed would 'blast fax' to Capitol Hill. 'We are a loyal member of your team and are prepared to do whatever fits your strategic plan,' Reed wrote in an Oct. 23, 2000, memo obtained by The Washington Post. 'In public policy,' he wrote, 'it matters less who has the best arguments and more who gets heard -- and by whom'...[Reed] was first recommended to the company in 1997 by [Bush's current senior adviser] Karl Rove."

"Kelly Fero is a top Democratic strategist in Texas. As Director of Texas '02, he is helping lead a comprehensive communications campaign to get the Democratic message out to state voters. Faced with a legal ultimatum from the Texas GOP claiming trademark infringement, he vows to BuzzFlash.com that his site will not be silenced. After all, he argues, it is hard to distinguish Enron's goals from the goals of many Texas GOP office holders. One need only look to the White House to test the validity of Fero's allegation."

Have you noticed how Senator Fritz Hollings (D-SC) is coming under attack? Here's why - Hollings is determined to learn the truth about Enrongate, which ultimately leads to George W. Bush. An attentive reader at BuzzFlash caught Hollings in the act of exposing the Enron board's scrubbing of the notes of its investigation of Ken Lay. We can only IMAGINE what critical information the Board scrubbed to protect the powerful, including George W. Bush...

Citing Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s strong ties to Enron and his extensive entanglements with the company, Public Citizen called on Bush to recuse himself from all actions relating to investigations into the state pension fund's losses in Enron stocks and bonds. The organization also called on Bush to refrain from taking an active role in any lawsuits against Enron, Arthur Andersen or other entities related to Enron. In a letter sent to Bush, the consumer advocacy organization urged Bush to disclose all his contacts with Enron executives since he was elected governor and to tell the public whether he knew anything about Enron's shaky financial condition when the pension fund was buying Enron shares last fall that were plummeting in value. Public Citizen also asked Bush to outline what steps he plans to take to shield the pension fund from a similar loss in the future.

"Thousands of Enron workers have lost their jobs without receiving adequate severance payments in the wake of the bankruptcy filing by the company. Most of these workers also lost thousands of dollars--their life savings--in their 401(k) plan. At the same time, other executives and 'valued' employees received more than $100 million in bonuses. In past years, Enron executives netted hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation. This outrage should be corrected. I am writing to support the demand of Enron's laid-off workers for full severance packages for employees laid off before and after Enron declared bankruptcy. I urge you not to oppose their petitions they make in court on this matter." Send this fax to Enron's new CEO, Stephen Cooper.

"The GOP spin doctors, seeking to distract attention from the Siamese-twin linkages connecting Enron to the Bush crowd, are floating the spin balloon that another recently-bankrupted company, Global Crossing, had given support to former President Bill Clinton, as if to imply nefariousness on Clinton's part. Now, I could demolish this distraction merely by mentioning the monies given by Global Crossing to both George W. Bush and his father, George Herbert Walker Bush, over the past three years, but that would be too easy...Instead, let's go over this point-by-point:...5) Thomas White, Bush's Secretary of the Army, was working at Enron at this time last year -- and at least three of his former Enron employees have now come forward to say that the profits of the Enron unit that White ran were 'illusory' -- and that White had to have known this. Meanwhile, no one from Global Crossing was ever appointed to any Clinton Administration cabinet." So writes Tamara Baker for American Politics Journal.

We recently reported that White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales - Bush's dream nominee for the US Supreme Court - worked for Enron's law firm, Vinson & Elkins, from 1982-1992. This creates one more conflict for the Justice Department in its investigation of Enrongate. Now we learn that during Gonzales' term as a Texas Supreme Court Justice (appointed by Shrub in 1999), he took $100,000 in legal bribes (a.k.a. "campaign contributions") from Texas' energy industry. Enron and V&E were the largest contributors to his 2000 campaign, giving $35,450. According to the NY Daily News, "In May 2000, Gonzales was author of a state Supreme Court opinion that handed the energy industry one of its biggest Texas legal victories in recent history" - and the Petroleum Club paid for a reception for Gonzales that very afternoon! "Now Gonzales is the White House advocate for keeping secret the roster of people who helped VP Cheney devise the administration's energy policy." We DEMAND a Special Prosecutor!

Enron dreamt up corrupt partnerships to hide its losses, and Arthur Andersen blessed its fraudulent accounting - but it took LAWYERS to create these criminal enterprises. Enron's internal report ignored the roles of Enron's lawyers, but the wheel of justice will soon turn in their direction. Here's the early list of potential victims: Vinson & Elkins, Kirkland & Ellis, and Milbank Tweed Hadley McCloy. Are these the "major figures" Kent Conrad alluded to? Stay tuned...

On CNN's Capital Gang, Kent Conrad (D-ND) dropped an Enrongate bombshell. "This is corporate scandal of enormous dimension. It may become a full blown political scandal. Goodness knows there's tremendous amounts of money that Bush -- the administration got the greatest level of financial support from Enron people... The thing that I think is going to turn this into a scandal of even greater dimension is when the partners are revealed. Who was at the trough? Who had the advantage of these partnership agreements that enriched themselves at the expense, its shareholders and its creditors?... Those names have not yet been revealed, but I've been told by those who are hot on the trail, that there's going to be some very, very embarrassed major figures in the days ahead." Naturally, Bob Novak went into orbit over this bombshell. Stay tuned - this should be VERY interesting!

The Teapot Dome scandal of the 1920's, which tarred the Republican administration of Warren Harding, involved "loans" and "gifts" under $1 million total. By comparison, "If you combine what the multiple Bush generations received with what loyalists Vice President Dick Cheney, Baker, Mosbacher, political advisor Karl Rove, economic advisor Lawrence B. Lindsey and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick got, you certainly have $6 million to $8 million, and depending on the success of the Baker-Mosbacher-Enron joint investments, perhaps $20 million to $30 million." According to Kevin Phillips, "the collapse of Enron may, like Teapot Dome, come to symbolize an era of financial and political excess. If so, there is even some chance that it could do for the memory of Bush what those California and Wyoming oil leases did for the memory of Harding." Hey George, repeat after us: "I am NOT a crook! I am NOT a crook!" Very good - keep practicing!

Molly Ivins writes, "You can't have a scandal in this country without some special input from Texas, that famous je ne sais quoi for which we are so noted. We offer the following delicious details for your delectation. Last June, Gov. Rick 'Goodhair' Perry (he has very good hair) appointed an Enron executive to be chairman of the state Public Utility Commission. This is Texas, and whom else would you put on the commission that regulates energy companies but an energy company executive? The next day, Perry got a $25,000 donation from Ken Lay. We might have worried about this, but Perry has cleared up the whole thing. The timing, he said, was 'totally coincidental.' We were all greatly relieved to learn this, since some with dirty minds might have thought there was a connection. We are also pleased with the fresh nuances in 'totally coincidental.' Just the other day, my dog got into the garbage and ate chicken bones; then, totally coincidentally, she barfed on the living room rug."

"In 1999... leaders of an Enron Corp. subsidiary called Azurix Corp. made Gov. Jeb Bush an extraordinary offer: They would help pay Florida's multibillion-dollar share of the effort to replumb and revive the Everglades -- if they could then sell water captured by the project." The author shows his bias here. "Democrats were quick to put a nastier spin on his Azurix flirtation. They noted that Bush and his aides have expressed sympathy for the concept of privatizing water. In fact, the think tank Bush started after losing the 1994 gubernatorial race, the Foundation for Florida's Future, published a paper endorsing the idea in 1997 -- and the author later went to work for Azurix... 'We almost sold out Florida's water to a company that was falling apart,' said Nancy Brown, president of the Florida League of Conservation Voters. 'Jeb is lucky we didn't, because he was totally behind it.'" Hey, why did Jeb REALLY want to inject untreated water (containing human and animal waste) into Florida's aquifers last year?

Florida's pension fund lost a staggering $334 million due to Enron's collapse. Now a preliminary investigation indicates that the loss was largely due to pension funds being lavishly thrown at Enron, even as the company was KNOWN to be failing. In addition, the ties between Enron and Jeb are being shown to be deeper, closer, and more entwined than anyone ever dreamed. The evidence points to a scary conclusion: Did Jeb use pension funds to try to bail the sinking Enron ship out? Read this document from Public Citizen and YOU decide!

When Bu$h left office as governor of Texas, he broke Texas law by shipping his official records to Poppy's presidential library at Texas A&M University. Why? "Who needs a shredder when you have Daddy's presidential library?" said James Newcomb, an official with the Better Government Association. "In the meantime, news organizations and a public interest group, Public Citizen, have petitioned the Bush library for the 60 or so Enron- related documents believed to be in the governor's files, many dating from 1997 to 1999 when Texas was debating utility deregulation." Hey guys, you'd better get the FBI to protect those records before Bush's scrubbers get their hands on them!

"While the Bush administration was drafting its national energy policy, a leading lobbyist for Enron Corp. was plotting strategy to turn the plan into a political weapon against Democrats, according to a newly obtained memo... [Bush Strategist] Edward Gillespie said he never shared his memo with the White House, and his thoughts on political strategy, offered in informal conversations with administration officials, were never taken. But within weeks, Gillespie's recommendations surfaced in advertising promoting Bush's energy plan... The ad was sponsored by a collection of conservative groups, operating as the 21st Century Energy Project. Gillespie was the group's director. Under the murky federal laws governing such 'independent expenditure' campaigns, its funding source remains secret." Gillespie is extremely close to Karl Rove and Mary Matalin (see below), so the White House's fingerprints are ALL over this outrageous affair. We demand a Special Prosecutor!

One of the most deceitful strategies being used by Bush defenders right now is the claim that Ken Lay gave money to both parties in near equal amounts and Lay had no real "personal" interest in Bush's campaigns. Well, Texans for Public Justice and the Texas Ethics Committees have stats proving this isn't just an exaggeration - it's one big fat lie. In Congressional races in Texas in 1994 and 1998, Lay gave ALL Democrats running a total of $39,000 (see http://www.tpj.org/pioneers/dems.html) However, during those same years, Lay gave BUSH ALONE over $122,000 to help grease his way into the governor's mansion! Gee, we thought the "righteous rightwingers" in Congress HATED liars...but, funny, we don't seem to be hearing any complaints.....!

Bush's Enron defense is that the Bush administration did nothing to help Enron collapse into bankruptcy in the fall of 2001. But as this NY Times chronology of Enron's last year documents, Enron was in deep doo-doo in January 2001, just as Bush occupied the White House. A crucial meeting took place on Feb 5 at the Houston offices of Arthur Andersen. "For a significant amount of time, according to notes of the meeting, the Andersen accountants debated a critical point: What should they do about two partnerships - called LJM1 and LJM2 - that had been set up 18 months earlier by Enron's chief financial officer, Andrew S. Fastow?" Ultimately, the efforts to prop up these corrupt partnerships brought about Enron's collapse. And ultimately, Bush's lies about his administration's corrupt efforts to promote and protect lucrative deals for Enron will bring about Bush's collapse.

On Feb. 4, Ken Lay was in DC - yet his DC lawyer said he couldn't accept a subpoena because he didn't know where Lay was. "BuzzFlash's speculation is that Lay might have been meeting with emissaries from the White House to establish a consistent cover story before Lay 'testifies,' which is now scheduled for the week of February 11. Remember that there are certainly grounds to suspect that a Justice Department 'investigation' is aimed at keeping the White House from being tainted by the scandal, rather than getting to the bottom of the truth. Can you imagine a John Ashcroft Justice Department actually bringing information to a Grand Jury that might be damaging to the White House? Dream on. The right wing Federalist clique has always applied one standard of justice to Democrats and another, more lenient one, to Republicans. And remember that Papa Bush saved his neck from a potential criminal charge by pardoning his administration's participants in the illegal Iran/Contra activities."

According to the NY Times, "The bulk of the money feeding charitable funds for former Enron employees has come from politicians anxious to purge themselves of what Mary Matalin, the counselor to Vice President Dick Cheney, termed 'guilt by contribution,' or who simply feel that it is appropriate to return donations from people who have fallen on hard times. The two largest funds here swelled to more than $700,000 last week... The largest individual donor was Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, who gave $100,000 to one fund and $500 to another. Some politicians, notably Representative Billy Tauzin, Republican of Louisiana, and Representative Tom DeLay, Republican of Texas, have said they will not give back campaign contributions because the money did not influence their decisions." That's great - we can't WAIT to see the TV ads their Democratic opponents will run this fall!

Ken Lay was subpoenaed to testify before two Congressional committees on Tuesday, but now he will take the 5th. "Mr. Lay's decision today follows the hostile questioning last week of Jeffrey K. Skilling, his successor as Enron's chief executive. Three lawmakers involved in Congressional investigations into Enron said today that they had doubts about whether Mr. Skilling's testimony was true. One lawmaker, the chairman of a committee investigating Enron, said that Mr. Skilling might be in jeopardy of perjury charges." According to former (?) Enron lackey Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-LA), Skilling's testimony "was totally incredible. I mean, he was out of the room, the power was out, he never got the memo?"

First Jeb Bush denied talking to Enron, then it was revealed that Jeb spent a 1/2 hour on the phone with Ken Lay. Then Jeb's spokeswoman said Enron "never had any visible interest" in Jeb's specially created "Energy 2020 Commission." But according to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Jeb created the Commission after the legislature blocked a bill backed by Enron. Once empanelled by Jeb, the Commission rushed to produce an interim report that was written ENTIRELY for Enron's benefit by Chairman William Revell. "The Energy 2020 interim report that the Bush administration was trying to push through the Legislature last spring would have answered Enron's prayers, if it had been passed." We demand a Special Prosecutor!

At Enron, "the ingrained philosophy was, me first, money counts and the government should eliminate my taxes," said [a] former manager. "That's all they cared about -- what impacted them personally." And to get their way, Enron bribed not only politicians, but also media whores like Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard ($100,000) and Larry Kudlow of CNBC and the National Review ($35,000). Enron also bought policy whores like Paul Portney and Robert Grady of Resources for the Future, not to mention the right wing think tank the American Enterprise Institute, former home of Cheney. The only Washington figure who said NO to Enron was James Carville. In fact, Enron reduced its whoremongering to a science through a computer program called "the matrix", which calculated the market price of every politician in DC - and probably the world. Will Enron's Republican whores vote for campaign finance reform this week, or do they want to keep America's government in the hands of its corporate madames? Stay tuned...

KHOU Houston reports, "There are new revelations about some Enron money. Ken Lay's sister, Sharon, owns Alliance Worldwide. That's a travel agency that had offices right inside Enron Headquarters. The company received millions in guaranteed commissions. And because of that, the AFL-CIO has raised concerns about possible conflicts of interest. The AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer, Richard Trumka said, 'We started first in 1997 when we saw the family dealings first come to surface. We questioned them at a board meeting, and we were told not to worry, everything will be just fine.' But there may have been a problem. The register shows payments from Enron to the travel agency ranging from $29 to several hundred dollars. But suddenly, less than three weeks before bankruptcy, a huge check for $350,000 was paid to the travel agency." That's Republican family "values" at work: enriching their families, while shafting everyone else's.

"Enron Corp.'s close ties with the Bush administration have prompted a call for Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Pat Wood to resign because of the alleged influence the failed energy trading company had over his appointment. Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell said on Saturday he had urged Wood to quit as the commission begins an investigation into whether Enron manipulated energy markets last year to raise electricity prices under long-term power supply contracts with California. 'Sadly, the integrity of the commission has been irreversibly compromised due to the circumstances surrounding your appointment and the FERC's intimate relationship with Enron, and as such I urge you to resign as chairman,' the New Jersey lawmaker said in a letter to Wood on Friday." So reports Reuters.

"We need to name a special counsel... because conflicts of interest abound in this case, particularly at the Justice Department... A special counsel can also be appointed if there are 'extraordinary circumstances'... What could be more extraordinary than the largest bankruptcy in American history? When was the last time a corporate collapse had Wall Street so jittery, with investors questioning the accounting practices of every company and so many ripples spreading out through the economy? I also find it to be 'extraordinary circumstances' when a top executive commits suicide, voluminous documents are shredded and witness after witness takes the Fifth Amendment. And in my 35 years in the Senate, I have never witnessed a corporation so extraordinarily committed to buying government. In the last decade, Enron gave campaign contributions to 186 House members and 71 senators, including $3,500 to me." So writes Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-SC). Urge your Senators (202-224-3121) to join him!

According to the NY Times, "Lobbying the Pennsylvania legislature was also the stated reason that Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's political adviser, recommended that Enron give Ralph Reed, a Republican strategist with ties to religious conservatives, a consulting contract, which it did. Mr. Reed never had to lobby in Pennsylvania — his hiring came after a deregulation bill was passed." So why did Enron pay Reed hundreds of thousands of dollars? To pay for his consulting services to the Bush campaign. This served two purposes: 1) it was an extremely valuable - and absolutely ILLEGAL - corporate contribution to Bush; and 2) it concealed Bush's relationship with the radical rightwinger Reed, so Bush could pretend to be a "moderate". This crime should be investigated by the Justice Department, but guess who picked John Ashcroft - Reed's mentor, Pat Robertson. We demand a Special Prosecutor!

BuzzFlash writes, "Political battles are often won or lost depending upon who defines the terms of the debate ... Right now the White House has successfully argued that Bush Incorporated is innocent of wrongdoing because they did nothing for Enron after being notified of its impending bankruptcy last fall. But that is the wrong lens through which to judge their Enron complicity: the question is what did the Bush administration do to help Enron try to avoid bankruptcy from January 20th until the fall of 2001? ... As soon as Bush raised his right hand at his inauguration, it was hard to tell whether the White House was a subsidiary of Enron or Enron was a subsidiary of the White House... The press and the Senate Democrats are debating the wrong point. They are looking for a smoking gun after Enron's autumn calls to Bush administration officials. But the smoking gun has been right there for them to see all along. It was an Enron starter's gun fired off on Inauguration day."

"Cable network FX and Artisan Television are teaming up to make a TV movie about the Enron debacle. The telefilm will chart the Houston-based corporation's web of secret partnerships that made company execs fabulously wealthy, drove up stock prices, hid Enron's debt and ultimately collapsed like a house of cards, costing company employees their jobs and life savings. While an expose of some deep-pocketed, deeply corrupt bean counters might not sound like gripping entertainment, at its heart, the Enron fiasco has elements of such films as Silkwood, The China Syndrome, Wall Street and Erin Brockovich, according to producers of the in-development teleflick... 'We want to create a story that echoes powerful ideas and images in the same vein as such seminal productions as Barbarians at the Gate, And the Band Played On and All the President's Men,' says executive producer Bob Cooper, who just happened to produce Barbarians and Band." So reports E! Online.

This week, CNN ran a "Quick Vote" whether a Special Prosecutor should be appointed to investigate Enrongate. The results were overwhelming: Yes 73% (92393 votes), No 27% (34812 votes). So why has CNN scrubbed this poll from its site? Send your complaints to cnn@cnn.com - and tell them to report on Democrats.com's campaign for a Special Prosecutor at http://democrats.com/enron

"'Who cares if there were a hundred meetings?' sniffed Mary Matalin, chief spokesperson VP Dick Cheney. In one phrase, she summed up the White House arrogance: It's a financial scandal, not a political one. It has nothing to do with the Bush administration. It doesn't matter how much money Enron gave George W. Bush, how many former Enron officials work in the White House, or how many secret meetings Cheney held with Enron executives in putting together his energy plan. Because there's no proof that Enron ever got anything for its money or access. Wrong. Maybe there was no proof before, but there is now; a secret memo -- personally handed to Cheney by Ken Lay, which helps explain why the White House is so skittish about Enron and why Cheney and Bush stubbornly refuse to release the records of those energy task force meetings... Up until the very end, when it was too late to help, everything Enron asked for from the Bush White House, Enron got." So writes CNN's Bill Press.

Apart from Enron itself and Arthur Andersen, the firm whose actions were most critical to Enron's massive fraud was its law firm, Vinson & Elkins. So where did White House Counsel Al Gonzales learn his trade? You guessed it - V&E! That is where Gonzales was "discovered" by the Bush crime family, which elevated him from the rank of ordinary attorney into the stratospheric job of White House Counsel. While serving as Shrub's counsel in Texas, Gonzales' most noteworthy action was to keep Bush from serving on a DUI trial, where he would have been forced to disclose his OWN DUI - something the voters learned about only 3 days before Election 2000. Now Gonzales is being groomed for - you guessed it again - the Supreme Court. Some V&E attorneys belong in jail for their Enron crimes, but that will NEVER happen while the Justice Department is reporting to the White House Counsel. Once again, we demand a Special Prosecutor!

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) is a member of the Senate Commerce Committee, and she is VERY disappointed Kenny Boy Lay cancelled his appearance at the last minute. "Deregulation kept the cash flowing while insiders unloaded and unsuspecting employees who worked for Enron lost their jobs, their pensions, and their dreams. Meanwhile, California faced the prospect of old people dying from lack of air conditioning, agriculture businesses losing everything due to loss of refrigeration and families having to choose between soaring energy costs and food for the table. This was a secret market. And Enron's friends in high places let the games continue. Ken Lay has left us in the dark once more, but my colleagues and I will make certain that the facts in this case see the light of day with or without his cooperation." You GO, Barbara!

The LA Times reports: "Nearly half said that the Bush administration's actions in regard to Enron have been at least unethical (35%) if not outright illegal (12%) while only a quarter think the administration did nothing wrong... Cynicism on this subject is running high. Two-thirds agree with those who allege that Enron's contacts with the Bush administration and the company's abundant campaign contributions, mainly to Republicans, gave it more influence over national energy policy than is usual for a major corporation... The survey found strong public support for independent oversight of investigations into the Enron collapse. After being told that Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself because of having accepted campaign contribution from Enron, six out of ten said that the Justice department cannot be trusted to be impartial in this issue, and that a special prosecutor should be appointed to oversee the case." We demand a Special Prosecutor!

"Liberals have acquiesced in letting conservatives paint them as libidinous traitors and moral relativists for three decades, and have only occasionally, and tremulously, defended their values. Those values -- more central to the task of governing than the realm of personal mores -- have brought the nation the 40-hour work week, the G.I. Bill, civil rights, Social Security, Medicare, cleaner rivers, lower poverty rates and the first federal budget surplus in a generation (now gone), among many other benefits. I'll go out on a limb here: I daresay most Americans find these gains rather useful in their day-to-day lives... If liberals want to win this argument, they'll turn 'values' into an offensive weapon here at home, reminding the country of what their values have done for it, and what conservative values, in the case of the Enron affair, did to it." So writes columnist Michael Tomasky.

"Oh Kenny Boy, the jails, the jails are calling,
From state to state, and through the world so wide.
The money's gone, and all the chips are falling,
'Tis you, 'tis you must go and you must hide.
" So begins the song by humor columnist Madeleine Begun Kane.

"Managers for pension funds that lost $1.5 billion from their Enron investments called on the chairman of the SEC, Harvey L. Pitt, today to recuse himself from all decisions that affect Enron and its auditor, Arthur Andersen, a former client. Officials from the Council of Institutional Investors, which represents 250 funds, also expressed concern at a news briefing this morning about the Bush administration's intention to fill two of the vacant seats on the five-member S.E.C. with two representatives of the accounting industry, Paul Atkins, a partner in PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Cynthia Glassman of Ernst & Young... Before being appointed to the S.E.C., Mr. Pitt was a well-known lawyer in Washington who had all the Big Five accounting firms, including Andersen, as clients. He also represented the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the trade and self-regulatory group." So reports the NY Times.

According to the NY Times, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) "plans to ask Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, to provide any information that would link Bush campaign officials to the Enron Corporation... Conyers said he was spurred by reports that in 1997 Mr. Rove recommended that Enron hire Ralph Reed, a political strategist and former executive director of the Christian Coalition, as a consultant... Mr. Conyers plans to request a list and description of Enron officials or representatives whom Mr. Rove contacted on behalf of Mr. Reed, a list of contacts between Mr. Rove and Mr. Reed concerning his consulting agreement with Enron, and a list of contacts between Mr. Rove and other current members of the White House staff about Enron. 'If Enron did indeed pay funds to Mr. Reed on behalf of the Bush campaign,' Mr. Conyers wrote, 'it may well violate the Federal Election Campaign Act.'" Which would mean big-time trouble for Rove, Reed - and Bush.

If there was ever any doubt that the Bush administration and Enron were one and the same, Bush himself recently removed all doubts. On January 28, Bush defended his refusal to turn over records of Cheney's Energy Task force to the GAO. "We're not going to let the ability for us to discuss matters between ourselves to become eroded," he declared. As Mark Crispin Miller points out in his book "The Bush Dyslexicon", Bush's "bloopers" inevitably reveal Bush's true thoughts. Hey George - why don't you go before Congress to explain yourself, and provide a little more details about your intimate relations with "Kenny Boy"?

Ken Lay cancelled his planned appearance before the Senate Commerce Committee, so the committee will be forced to issue a subpoena. "The committee chairman, Sen. Ernest [Fritz] Hollings, D-S.C., focused blame on the Bush administration, declaring, 'We've got an Enron government.' Hollings ticked off names of top Bush administration officials, some incorrectly, with ties to the Houston-based company and listed benefits he said Enron received such as loosened energy regulation. Hollings said a special prosecutor was needed because the Bush Justice Department could not be relied on to investigate objectively." You said it, Fritz! Call your Senators and Representatives to demand a Special Prosecutor!

According to From the Wilderness, "In July [2001], Justice and FBI officials revealed that more than 400 weapons and 180 laptop computers – including some holding sensitive and classified information – were missing from the agency." In response, AG John Ashcroft created a commission to investigate FBI lapses. To conduct the investigation, the commission then hired - you guessed it - Arthur Andersen! Now the Justice Dept is investigating Andersen for shredding documents relevant to an investigation of Enron by the SEC. Nevertheless, Andersen remains in charge of the FBI investigation. Could the conflicts get ANY worse? We demand a Special Prosecutor!

Jan Weaver has 23 years of savings in the Texas retirement system. In BuzzFlash, Weaver writes: "Enron announced $600 million losses on October 16, 2001, and Enron publicly acknowledged a SEC inquiry October 22. The very next day on October 23, TRS bought $2.2 million worth of Enron stock. October 24 the Employee Retirement System bought $10 million worth of stock... On October 31, SEC announced a formal investigation into Enron. On November 6, Enron stock dropped, and on November 8, Enron increased its debt by $2.5 billion. Despite this very bad news, on November 9, TRS bought $4.3 million of Enron stock, and on November 12, TRS bought $4.7 million more. Is it possible that Texas retirement funds were being used in an attempt to shore up a failing Texas company which had donated heavily to state officeholders charged with overseeing Enron? Why did TRS buy risky stock three times after it was known that Enron was in serious trouble?" We demand a Special Prosecutor!

Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) recently wrote Deputy AG Larry Thompson, who spent his career at a law firm that represented Enron. Conyers told BuzzFlash: "Mr. Thompson has not responded to my letter asking him to recuse himself of the Enron investigation. Their hope is that this will all go away... A special counsel is appropriate when the investigation presents a conflict of interest, such as Mr. Thompson in heading the investigation of Enron. I'm trying to figure out how Larry Thompson doesn't think that he and his firm representing the company being investigated, isn't a serious conflict of interest... The fact that a firm that has paid him money, may be paying him benefits, may be holding his retirement funds in escrow, is an issue. I don't know what Mr. Thompson's relationship is with his former law firm. But the impression that we need Larry Thompson with these connections to conduct the investigation of Enron, staggers the imagination." We demand a Special Prosecutor!

"What would Jesus do? It's a no-brainer; he would leave the Christian Coalition, take a consulting job with Enron and then use his divine power to make George W. Bush president. Read that way, there's nothing sinister in the recent revelation that it was Bush's top political advisor, Karl Rove, who in 1997 hooked up former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed with Enron. After eight years of making Pat Robertson look good, Reed was exhausted and ready for a career change. The private sector is even more lucrative than televangelism, and Enron was just one of many fat consulting contracts that was Reed's for the asking... So, what would Jesus do? Heck, according to the teachings of the Rev. Pat Robertson, he'd be out there just like Ralph Reed and George Bush serving God and greed--or rather Mammon--in the same moment. But what would he really do, faced with all those employees who lost their pensions? Jesus would cry." (As an aside -- while a Bush campaign advisor, Reed was hired by Microsoft to lobby Bush!)

"Why should the Bush White House have sought advice from Enron? The company was more a paper tiger than an energy policy pioneer. It made its phony billions by recording as revenue the total value of the goods it traded -- say, electricity, gas and other energy commodities -- not by calculating the profit or loss from each transaction. Sell $10 million worth of natural gas? Who cares if it cost $10.1 million? You have $10 million in revenue... The reason for letting Enron in the door at 1600 Penn was corporate-political camaraderie that was greased by Enron's past contributions and payments to assorted Bushies. Rather than being granted audiences with Cheney's energy team, Enron should have been hauled in before the Securities and Exchange Commission -- and the IRS. The firm paid no income taxes in four of the past five years, via the use of hundreds of overseas tax havens and other trickery." So writes David Corn in TomPaine.com.

Enron blames Andersen - Andersen blames Enron - and the fun is just beginning! Hey TV fans, here's your chance to play the home version of "Corporate Survivor"! Who will be driven out of business by the ever-widening Enrongate Scandal? Your choices are: Enron... Arthur Andersen... Vinson & Elkins... the Bush/Cheney Administration... the Republican Congress... or All of the Above. Vote early and often! (Registration required)

"Andersen declined to discuss its Enron work at a news conference yesterday, but it issued a statement saying the Enron report was an effort 'to shift blame to others.' Andersen said Enron's demise resulted from its own bad business decisions... [But] the report is so critical of Andersen that it seems to obligate Enron's board of directors to sue Andersen 'on the grounds that it was not simply negligent, but it was designing these transactions with an interest in hiding the economic results'... The report portrayed Enron as addicted to accounting ruses and Andersen as its enabler." Television fans, welcome to the first episode of "Corporate Survivor!"

The massive frauds perpetrated by Enron would have been impossible without the collusion of Enron's outside auditors (Arthur Andersen) and lawyers (Vinson & Elkins). While lawsuits against Enron itself are on hold because of Enron's bankruptcy, lawsuits against Andersen and V&E are just beginning. Even though the Enron board's report is not exhaustive, it provides important evidence for those secondary lawsuits. Like Enron, Andersen and V&E were the very biggest financial supporters of George W. Bush.

"The original raptors were fierce creatures that hunted in packs and managed to bring down larger dinosaurs, which they then devoured. Now the special report of the Enron board committee has clarified just how four entities known as Raptors played an essential role in destroying Enron... that smokescreen would have been completely unsuccessful had auditors from Arthur Andersen forced the company to disclose what was happening, as they should have done... The accounting fiction of the Raptor enterprises stemmed from having the partnerships agree to assume the losses if some Enron investments lost value, as they did. The Raptors could stand the losses only because they had profits on investments in Enron stock, which was transferred by the company to them at a discount. It was an accounting hall of mirrors, and those involved knew it." So reports the NY Times.

"After a weekend of sharp criticism for his stewardship of Enron, Kenneth L. Lay, the company's former chief executive, abruptly reversed course and told Congress he would refuse to testify before two committees preparing to hear his testimony, starting today. The Senate Commerce Committee canceled today's hearing, at which Mr. Lay was to have been the sole witness. 'I don't think he would have expected an appearance before Congress would be a walk in the park,' Senator Byron L. Dorgan, who would have presided over the hearing, said today... [An aide to House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Billy Tauzin (R-LA) said: 'I can only tell you that if Mr. Lay spurns our committee, Mr. Lay will be subpoenaed. And if he ignores the subpoena, we'll pursue all our options, including the possibility of a contempt of Congress' citation.'" So reports the NY Times.

"The report released Saturday evening by a special committee of the Enron Corporation's board clearly raises the specter that at the foundation of the company's downfall was a series of multimillion-dollar crimes, legal experts and former prosecutors said yesterday. Until now, much of the investigation into Enron's free fall has been focused on complex transactions that, while suspicious and poorly executed, appeared to fall within the framework of workaday corporate finance... But with the committee's report, if it proves accurate, investigators into the company's collapse will seek to pinpoint whether the same kinds of fraudulent acts that were at the foundation of the savings and loan scandals of the late 1980's and early 1990's occurred at Enron, too. These include false valuation of assets, bogus deals between related parties, and millions of dollars pocketed by participants along the way." So reports the NY Times.

Reports O'Dwyer's PR Daily: "A former Hill and Knowlton staffer orchestrated the tearful appearance of Linda Lay, wife of embattled former Enron CEO Ken Lay, on NBC's 'Today' program yesterday in which she said the family was financially ruined by the collapse of Enron. M.A. Shute, who once ran H&K's Houston office and handled Enron, was contacted by Sharon Lay, Ken sister's, to spearhead the family PR offensive. Linda told NBC's Lisa Myers her husband was a victim of devious Enron executives whose financial shenanigans led to Enron's ruin. [Lay was warned by a whistle-blower in August that the company could implode because of accounting scandals. While unloading stock, he continued to tell employees Enron was on the comeback trail.]" Hill and Knowlton was hired by Kuwait in the build-up to the Gulf War. They created the bogus media story that Iraqi soldiers had pulled Kuwaiti babies from incubators and left them out in the cold to die.

Discussing the "suicide" of Enron's Clifford Baxter, the Guardian's Greg Palast writes:"You want to cry for a power industry exec who came to an early, violent, end? Then let me suggest to you Jake Horton, late senior vice-president of Gulf power, a subsidiary of Southern Company... Horton apparently knew about some of his company's less-than-kosher accounting practices; and he had no doubt about its illegal campaign contributions to Florida politicans - he'd made the payments himself. But unlike Baxter, who took the money and ran, in April 1989, Horton decided to blow the whistle, confront his bosses and go to state officials. He demanded and received use of the company's jet to go and confront Southern's board of directors. Ten minutes after take-off, the jet exploded. While the investigation into the plane crash was inconclusive, the company's CEO believed his death was suicide. He told the BBC: 'I guess poor Jake saw no other way out.'"

"What shame do you feel tonight, George, for the lies you have told? What shame do you feel using the dead of 9-11 as a cover for your actions, hoping that our sorrow for those lost souls and our fear of being killed by terrorists would distract us from what your boys and Kenny Boy were up to during those horrific weeks in September and October? ... The country was behind you when you said you were fighting the evildoers who did this. In fact, all the while, the real fight your friends at Enron were conducting was the fight against the clock, to see how fast they could transfer all the loot to their personal accounts and run away. Those were the evildoers, George, and you knew it. And because you, by design or negligence, allowed this to happen, it is time for you to resign. The cock has crowed for the last time." So writes filmmaker Michael Moore.

"While the White House insists that details of its talks with Enron officials remain secret, a memo outlining those discussions reveals the extent to which the Houston energy giant lobbied to influence government policy. The memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Chronicle, was handed by former Enron Chairman Ken Lay to Vice President Dick Cheney last April when the two met to discuss the administration's response to California's energy crisis. The White House acknowledged last night that aspects of the memo resembled elements of Cheney's energy plan, but it refused to say whether the document was included in notes that Cheney now refuses to divulge to congressional investigators... It's extraordinary for a private company, particularly one accused by California officials of having gouged the state with wildly inflated energy prices, to have played such a prominent role in the White House's response to the crisis." So writes the San Francisco Chronicle.

In the LA Times, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) describes how Bush refused to meet with her three times during California's electricity crisis. "Throughout the crisis, I was not allowed a private interview with the president or vice president--even though such a talk may have helped California. Now we learn that Kenneth Lay, then the chief executive of Enron, had several meetings with Cheney over that same span. He was not the only energy company executive who met with the vice president.Something is wrong when a senator representing 35 million Californians is not able to talk personally to the president or vice president in the midst of a crisis, but executives from a company that contributed millions of campaign dollars have complete access and significant influence. We need to enact safeguards to ensure that companies cannot use undue influence to reap extraordinary benefits during a crisis." Absolutely - starting with the impeachment of George "Kenny Who?" Bush.

"Last spring, VP Dick Cheney closed the doors of the meetings of the energy policy task force [in] a signal of the spirit our new 'CEO president' wanted to bring to the executive branch: To hell with 'sunshine laws' and public accountability; the new administration was going to Get Things Done like a Fortune 500 company, and [not] be bothered with public oversight. A lot has happened in the year since. If there was any doubt that big corporations operating without sufficient public accountability can run off the rails and cause a lot of damage, Enron has sealed the case. This sea change in perspective does not seem to have penetrated the bunker Dick Cheney has been inhabiting... While the collapse of Enron is giving the nation a dramatic lesson in the importance of conscientious public disclosure, Cheney is still manning the barricades, pinstripes waving, defending the Bush team's dearly held principle: 'Damn the public -- secrecy first!'" So writes Scott Rosenberg in Salon.

NBC was a major player in stealing the Presidency for Bush and Enron - by calling Florida for Bush at 2 am on Election Night right after FOX, even though the election was still WAY too close to call. So it comes as no suprise that NBC is using its massive propaganda power to whitewash Ken Lay's theft of billions from Enron's employees, consumers, and stockholders. Lisa Myers' interview with Linda Lay was pure propaganda, failing to ask a single tough question. Why did Myers ignore Enron's millions of victims? "You cannot go into all the minutiae." Hey Lisa - tell that to Bill Clinton and all of the other victims of Ken Starr's $60 million "minutiae" maraud!

NY Times columnist Paul Krugman says that for politicians, "What will matter is not what they did but what they do. Do they act as if they get it - that they understand that the old laxity is no longer acceptable? Clearly, Dick Cheney doesn't get it: He thinks, after all that has happened, that we should just trust his assurance that energy companies did not distort his energy plan. Clearly, Harvey Pitt, chairman of the [SEC], doesn't get it: [everyone] regards his supposed reform plan as ludicrous. Clearly, Marc Racicot doesn't get it: He thinks that we should just trust him when he says that he won't lobby as chairman of the Republican National Committee, even though his former lobbying firm will pay his salary. Does Tom Daschle get it? Will George W. Bush get it? The answers to those questions may well decide their, and the country's, political future. Enron, I predict, will turn out to have changed everything."

Newsweek's Jonathan Alter writes, "Another angle that seems ripe for investigation involves the Bush transition team in late 2000 and early 2001. Curtis Hebert, the former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, confirmed for me last week that he was 'interviewed' by Ken Lay for his job. I later learned that at least three other candidates for commissioner were also 'interviewed' by the man they were supposed to be regulating, presumably at the direction of someone in the Bush personnel office. Who decided on that? And where else was this favor extended? Did the heads of big telecommunications companies get to vet candidates for the FCC? How about agribusiness executives handpicking USDA officials or drug companies staffing the FDA?" We demand a Special Prosecutor!

"Americans perceive Republicans as far more entangled in the Enron debacle than Democrats, and their suspicions are growing that the Bush administration is hiding something or lying about its own dealings with the Enron Corporation before the company filed for bankruptcy protection, the latest New York Times/ CBS News Poll shows." 45% said Enron executives had closer ties to the GOP, while 10% said Democrats. "Republican Congressional candidates begin this midterm election year with the albatross of being considered far more tied to Enron than their Democratic rivals." As the abominable Chris Matthews declared, Democrats should "shoot to kill" on Enrongate, because the public supports us.

"In May [2001], Gillespie launched the 21st Century Energy Project, financed by such pro-Bush conservative groups as Americans for Tax Reform and Citizens for a Sound Economy. Ostensibly, the group's aim is to advance Bush's energy plan. But its other mission is to kill any attempt by Democrats to institute price caps to alleviate the energy crisis in the West. Which also happens to be the main goal of one of Gillespie's newest clients, Enron--the energy behemoth with closer ties to the Bush administration than perhaps any other corporation... Last week the project ran its first round of ads, which will neatly complement the series of town meetings the White House is conducting on energy policy. With the energy project, which expects to spend $500,000, Gillespie not only helps Enron but also serves as the 'bad cop' attacking the Democrats on energy policy while the White House remains above the partisan fray." So reported The New Republic.

"Enron underreported its lobbying expenditures by more than 50 percent in the first half of 2001, an analysis by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics has found. The company reported spending $825,000 on lobbying in the first six months of 2001, according to its mid-year report. However, 13 outside lobbying firms reported income from Enron totaling at least $1,785,000 over the same period, a discrepancy of $960,000." Enron's lobbying in 2001 was twice the amount it spent in the two previous years - yet more evidence that Enron was pulling political strings to stave off bankruptcy.

NY Post's Terry Keenan writes, "In the sordid saga of Enron, the story of Rebecca Mark and Azurix, a water utility company that she headed, when it was spun off from Enron is particularly enlightening... With Mark at the helm, Enron took Azurix public in June 1999. The IPO prospectus reads like a who's who of Enron insiders: The same auditors, lawyers and, incredibly, the same board of directors... In June 1999, Enron and two partnerships identified in SEC documents only as 'Marlin Trust' and 'Atlantic Water Trust' took Azurix public raising $800 million. One month later, with Azurix trading right near an all-time high, these same insiders sold more stock to the unsuspecting public, raking in another $140 million. But when Azurix failed to live up to the hype, the stock plunged - giving the company an opening to buy back shares from the public for a steal. The cost to shareholders for this 18-month round trip to the NYSE and back - nearly $500 million." Why wasn't Enron stopped then?

"Former Enron executives disclosed yesterday that a top Bush campaign adviser, Edward Gillespie, served as the company's key conduit to the White House and House leaders. Gillespie's firm received $525,000 over nine months last year from Enron for lobbying that included the energy task force and economic stimulus legislation with tax provisions that would have helped Enron." So reports the Washington Post. Gillespie is a key witness to Enron's bribery of Bu$h and Congressional Republicans, and MUST be called to testify under oath. This is ANOTHER reason we demand a Special Prosecutor.

"Ken Lay is investigating himself. He has assigned his Enron Corp. subsidiary at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to conduct the investigation. His friend and financial beneficiary George W. Bush is in control of said investigation. Sure, Attorney General John Ashcroft declared he will recuse himself from the investigation because of Enron campaign contributions, but the Justice Department which is probing whether any crimes were committed is still under the auspices of President Bush. Who knows what any of them are doing behind the scenes?... It is a no-brainer: A special prosecutor who is free of any conflicts of interest must be appointed. If we can spend $60 million on a prosecutor to investigate another president's sex life, we can afford an investigator who will probe a bankruptcy which put 21,000 employees on the street and deprived lower-level stockholders of their fortunes." So writes Bruce Ticker in The Bush Syndrome.

The parallels between Enrongate and Funeralgate are stunning, and this page presents them all. For example, both scandals involve a Houston business owned by GW Bush friend and campaign contributor. Both involve unanswered questions about the company's relationship with George W. Bush. And in both cases, a central figure and key witness in investigation died from "apparent suicide." Now that Enrongate is front page news, will the media EVER notice its twin scandal, Funeralgate?

Bu$h adamantly denies he gave a single "quo" in return for Enron's MILLIONS of "quids". But the clearest evidence that Bu$h is LYING is former FERC chairman Curtis Hebert's insistence that Bush hired and fired FERC commissioners at the instruction of Ken Lay. In the Online Journal, Mike Hersch writes: "Enron gave Bush millions to sponsor his rise from a losing candidate for the US House to the 'leader of the free world.' In return, Bush gave Enron 'hire and fire' authority over the FERC, and performed other favors in return for money. This directly and personally ties Bush to the Enrongate scandal in all its illegality." We demand a Special Prosecutor - both for Enron's bribery of the Bu$h administration, and for Bu$h's LIES!

Ken Lay's influence-buying schemes did not end with politicians. He also funded two right-wing think tanks, Resources for the Future and the American Enterprise Institute. Think tanks like these have been crucial in the 2-decades-old corporate campaign for deregulation, which led directly to Enrongate, and continues to block government efforts to protect the environment, workers, and consumers. "AEI is the intellectual home of Lynne V. Cheney, wife of Vice President Cheney and an AEI senior fellow. The vice president and Lay were on a panel together at AEI's World Forum on June 24, the White House said in a letter to Congress," according to the Washington Post.

The death of Cliff Baxter was declared a suicide by Dr. Joye M. Carter, Chief Medical Examiner for Harris County, Texas. But questions are being raised about Dr. Carter, whose career includes alleged cover-ups. Recently, Harris County paid Dr. Elizabeth Johnson $375,000 to settle a whistleblower lawsuit against Dr. Carter. Every way you turn, the Enron investigation reeks of conflicts of interest and cover-ups. We demand a Special Prosecutor!

As reported in the Washington Post recently, George W. Bush used to be proud of his nickname for Kenneth Lay, "Kenny Boy." This familiarity certainly befits the position of a loyal long time family friend, visitor to the Lincoln Bedroom during one's father's White House occupation, business partner of one's brother, employer of many of one's father's former staffers, employer himself of former Enron execs, and largest contributing Bush Pioneer in his presidential campaign, but not a mere acquaintance, and best buddy to the Democratic Party that the Bush Super Spin Cycle is attempting to portray him now. This spin cycle needs a good wash first.

According to a story buried deep inside the NY Times, "Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, formally asked the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to investigate Enron, arguing the case 'represents one of the largest corporate frauds in the nation's history' and citing the large campaign donations Enron has provided to President Bush over the years and the large number of senior administration officials who worked for or invested in the company." This explosive news is going unreported in Washington, because a Special Prosecutor who fully investigated the massive Enron scandal would bring down the entire Bush administration - and the Republican Party. You, the members of Democrats.com, helped make this an important enough issue for Rep. Conyers to act upon. Now it is up to YOU, the members of Democrats.com, to bring this issue before the American people by picking up the phones and call C-SPAN and every talk show in the country to demand a Special Prosecutor for Enrongate. Do it today!

Four powerful Democratic Senators - Joe Lieberman (D-CT), Carl Levin (D-MI), Byron Dorgan (D-ND), and Fritz Hollings (D-SC) - put their weight behind the GAO's efforts to force Dick Cheney to reveal the secret meetings of his energy task force. In the letter, the four senators said "the American public deserves answers" to whom the Bush White House met with and what the business leaders asked for. Ari Fleischer continued to stonewall, insisting he was "protecting the rights of Americans" - a concept that is beyond laughable for an administration that has embraced secret military tribunals and given the FBI, CIA, and NSA unlimited power to spy on American citizens. Hey Ari - you can catch as many spears as you like for Cheney, but sooner - not later - the American people will see those documents, unless you, Dan & Karl start shredding, in which case you'll end up in that cell with Ken Lay, David Duncan, and the tatooed guy named "Spike".

After corrupting the greatest Democracy in the world - not to mention a few dozen states and smaller countries - and bankrupting the 7th largest company in the US - Kenneth Lay agreed to step down as CEO on Wednesday. Lay is gearing up for a massive legal battle to stay out of jail, to protect the $300 million he pocketed from Enron since 1989, and to prevent his global network of political lackeys - including the Bush administration and the entire GOP - from getting swept out of power. The final push came from Enron's creditors, led by Citibank and J.P. Morgan, who are owed billions. In Dante's Inferno, there is a special ring for powerful evildoers like Kenneth Lay.

No matter which way you turn, you can find Enron's evil influence on every action by Republicans, both in Bush's White House and Tom DeLay's Congress. Last March, when the GOP controlled both the Senate and the House, Republicans passed a bankruptcy bill to increase the legal power of rich lenders and further impoverish poor borrowers. Tucked away in this wretched bill was a special provision for - you guessed it! - Enron. This sweetheart deal "would make it impossible for assets shifted off a company's balance sheet to a separate entity to be pulled back into a company's estate in a bankruptcy." Thus, Enron could not only hide its debts through off-balance-sheet accounting scams, but also its assets! 35 law professors have sounded the alarm to Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT), chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Citing "the lessons to be learned from the Enron experience," Leahy is gearing up to block this corrupt provision - and hopefully the whole rotten bankruptcy bill.

"A five-member board that oversees ethics and disciplinary issues for the accounting profession announced today that it had resigned as a group after the chairman of the [SEC] proposed creating another body that... would appear to supplant the Public Oversight Board, which is already composed of outside experts. The board is led by Charles A. Bowsher, a former comptroller general of the US, who won praise for his independence as the head of the General Accounting Office during the S&L collapse... Mr. Bowsher called Mr. Pitt's proposals a sham intended to give the industry more power to discipline itself rather than submit to outside scrutiny. He said the effect would be to put the oversight board more under the control of the industry's main trade association, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. That association and all of the Big Five accounting firms are former clients of Mr. Pitt, who left his law practice last year for the S.E.C." So reports the NY Times.

"Since 1998, Andersen and its employees have contributed $212,825 to Bush, including $25,000 in donations to Bush's inaugural celebration when he was governor of the state of Texas. The total makes Andersen one of Bush's biggest financial backers. Overall, since 1998, Andersen has spent $8.1 million to influence the federal government, including $6 million on lobbying expenditures. Like its client Enron, Andersen had strong ties to the Bush campaign and administration. Two former lobbyists for the firm now occupy high-level positions in the administration... They contributed $27,000 to Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La.) over the last three years. Tauzin, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is currently leading one of the congressional investigations of Enron and Andersen. Over the last three years, he's been the top congressional recipient of Andersen political action committee contributions, according to the Center for Responsive Politics." So reports the Public I.

The Nation's David Corn writes, "Several years ago, says Rodolfo Terragno, a former Argentine Cabinet Minister, he received a telephone call from George W. Bush, son of the then-Vice President. When he hung up, Terragno was annoyed, he recalls, for the younger Bush had tried to exploit his family name to pressure Terragno to award a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Enron... [In 1994], replying to a list of questions from The Nation asking whether George W. Bush spoke to Terragno about the pipeline project and whether he had any business relationship with Enron, Bush's gubernatorial campaign issued a terse statement: 'The answer to your questions are no and none. Your questions are apparently addressed to the wrong person.'" Bu$h lied about Enron then, and he's lying now - and the American people know it.

Media Whores Online reports, "The lid has just about blown off this already tense capital city with breaking news of the possible impending collapse of Vice-President Cheney's old firm, Halliburton Company of Dallas, Texas. With its stock value in free fall for months, Halliburton is reported on the edge of doom, thanks to a mountain of asbestos lawsuits linked to its 1998 acquisition, under then-CEO Cheney, of Dressler Industries. The company has paid out more than $150 million in recent damages for asbestos cases -- and has about 260,000 related lawsuits still pending. More than $19 billion in Halliburton shareholder value has vanished since the summer of 2001 -- an undisclosed amount of it in employee 401(k) plans and other pension funds." Halliburton's earnings reports are due Wednesday. Guess who's auditing them? Arthur Andersen, of course!

"The spectacular failure of the Enron Corporation, already the largest corporate bankruptcy ever, may have had as much to do with Kmart's failure as skittish suppliers and hard-nosed bankers. Kmart relies on surety bonds, essentially agreements by insurance companies to continue financing in case of a default, to back its workers' compensation program and to cover liabilities arising from its sales of guns and liquor, advisers and executives close to the company said. Enron depended on such bonds, too, and after it went bankrupt, leaving insurance companies to cover its liabilities, insurers drastically raised prices for surety bonds. In Kmart's case, insurers were requiring cash collateral for the securities. That placed a large, unanticipated drain on Kmart's cash flow that, coupled with supplier demands for payment on delivery and the company's weak performance during the crucial holiday period, drove it to seek court protection." So reports the NY Times.

According to the NY Times, "Enron employees were shredding documents at the company's Houston offices as recently as last week, a former executive said [January 21]. Her statement was the first indication that documents were destroyed at Enron amid investigations of the company's collapse by Congress and the Justice Department and followed reports of document shredding by accountants at Enron's auditor, Arthur Andersen." Why hasn't the Justice Department sent US Marshals to Enron, Arthur Andersen, Vinson & Elkins - and the WHITE HOUSE - to secure all Enron-related documents? Is the Justice Department part of a massive coverup? We demand a Special Prosecutor!

Arundhati "Roy is an unlikely rebel. A drop-out architectural student and a one-time aerobics instructor, she comes from a middle-class family in the southern state of Kerala. She enjoys a global reputation for her fiction yet she is now a committed activist who has campaigned against nuclear testing, the war in Afghanistan and the construction of the controversial Sardar Sarovar dam in the Narmada valley in central India. And in taking on Enron, whose Dabhol Power Corporation produced one of the biggest corruption scandals in Indian history, she showed that she was not afraid of standing up to the might of international big business backed by international power politics." So writes James Hamilton in Scotland's Sunday Herald.

"One of the major falsehoods being bandied about by apologists for the Bush administration is that while Enron may have bankrolled much of the president's political career it got nothing for those bucks once George W. occupied the White House. That is nonsense. The administration's energy program, developed by Vice President Dick Cheney in secret meetings--six of them with Enron officials--could have been written by lobbyists for the now failed company. At the behest of Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles), the minority staff of the House Committee on Government Reform has prepared a devastating analysis of 17 major concessions made to Enron that gave Kenneth L. Lay, Bush's intimate friend and Enron chief executive, just about everything he wanted. The report concluded that 'it is unlikely that any other corporation in America stood to gain as much from the White House plan as Enron.'" So writes LA Times columnist Robert Scheer.

"In 1998, the Clinton administration began making moves to crack down on countries whose lax banking regulations permit U.S. companies to hide money in offshore tax havens... But on Feb. 17, 2001, O'Neill announced that the Bush administration was going to review the matter, effectively delaying it. As a result, Enron and other companies could continue to hide money in the Cayman Islands and other offshore accounts. Enron has 874 subsidiaries registered in the Cayman Islands and other nations with weak bank disclosure laws... O'Neill's efforts must be viewed in the context of the more than $1.1 million Enron contributed to Bush's presidential campaign and inauguration, [Public Citizen's Joan] Claybrook wrote. She noted that O'Neill's responsibility is to collect owed taxes - not to facilitate tax avoidance - and that if Enron and other companies are hiding money in the Cayman Islands, he has an obligation to end that abuse." We demand a Special Prosecutor!

"Whatever the value of Pitt's proposals, the striking thing is what he doesn't propose... 'We have had far too many financial and accounting failures,' he said darkly. But asked later whether the SEC needed more staff to go after auditing fraud, Pitt suggested it might be a mistake to throw money at the problem... Pitt also said nothing about the rules that make audit failure so endemic. Enron's accounts were meaningless because managers hid risks in separate shell companies, a practice that is illegal in Britain and should be prevented here. Other recent audit scandals have come about because companies booked earnings that they hadn't received yet; again, the auditing guidelines do not require the profession to target this deception. To fix this kind of idiocy, the rule-writing bodies need to be made independent from the industry. Not a peep from Pitt on this matter." So writes Sebastian Mallaby in the Washington Post.

"Twenty eight years later the ghosts of Watergate have returned to the Oval Office with a vengeance. Now, as then, it will all come down to two small but very terrifying questions: What Did He Know and When Did He Know It? In the beginning, as the first reports of a break-in at the Watergate complex surfaced, the White House took a firm stand: no one connected to the Administration would have been involved. But, day by day, first with one revelation, then another, Nixon's inner circle began to crumble, and the core of the White House defence strategy emerged. It was based on one premise that had to be defended at all costs: "the President had no prior knowledge of any crime." Clearly, Karl Rove, Karen Hughes and Ari Fleischer will employ the same strategy... In the end Nixon was never directly implicated -- the tide just rose around him. Now twenty eight years later as Mr. Bush stands on the beach, he too must ponder a tide that is rolling in." So writes Marc Ash in Truthout.

In BuzzFlash.com's Media Watch, Gloria Lalumia described Tim Russert's interview with James Carville and Paul Begala. Russert accused Democrats of being as guilty as Republicans on Enrongate, but Carville & Begala beat the daylights out of Russert. "'It's NOT an equivalency situation,' [Carville] lectured Russert-and again threw in the 73-27 split and the invitation to investigate, just to rub salt into Russert's wounds. Remember that line, folks-'It's not an equivalency situation' -anytime someone tries to tell you it is. Begala then re-entered the discussion by saying that there was 'No need for Bush to lie about his relationship with Ken Lay,' calling it 'very foolish.' And Carville specifically called the Ann Richards contributions story a lie and mentioned a couple of others, too." With Carville & Begala leading the charge on Enrongate, Bush is toast!

The Enrongate scandal is barely 10 days old, but Americans have quickly figured out that Bush is NOT telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth - not by a mile. Already, 19% think Bush is simply lying, and 44% think he's hiding something. Also, a majority said Enron influenced the Bush administration's energy policy, and even more said the influence was inappropriate. Considering that the media has been portraying Bush as only slightly below God in character and integrity, this clear-sightedness by the American people is amazing. Of course, Bush didn't help his case by pretending he'd hardly met "Kenny Boy," his single largest donor. And there isn't a person on the planet who believes a single word spoken by Ari Fleischer. If Bush STARTS Enrongate with such a huge credibility gap, he'll be the nation's laughingstock in two months. Hey George, repeat after us: "I am not a crook. I am not a crook. I am not a crook..."

"To George W. Bush: Congressman Henry Waxman (D) of California has requested that your administration release any and all documents related to your Energy Task Force, including members of that committee. As a Candidate for President you promised the American people that you would restore confidence, honesty, and dignity to the White House. Now is your chance, sir. Senator John McCain (R) of Arizona has also requested the release of this information. Now is the time, sir, to display those qualities that you so proudly championed during the Presidential Election of 2000. Complete compliance with Congressman Waxman's request is the only option that you, as our Commander In Chief, have available. Anything less will be considered a violation of your oath of office." Sign the petition!

Republicans are insisting that Enrongate is a business scandal, not a political one. But Salon's Scott Rosenberg writes, "If Enron isn't a political scandal then we might as well retire the phrase from our vocabularies... What did Enron get for its money? We're only beginning to unravel the full list, but from what's already known, the answer is: plenty. Enron's political contributions weren't made out of charity or friendship; they were quid pro quos." The quos included 1) shaping Bush's energy policy; 2) having Bush replace chairman Curtis Hebert of the FERC; 3) having Bush push for repeal of the Alternative Minimum Tax; 4) having Wendy & Phil Gramm block regulation of Enron's derivative trading; 5) having Lawrence Lindsey monitor Enron's collapse. All of this was legal - but that just makes the scandal even worse.

Salon's Jake Tapper reports that a mid-level Enron attorney, Jordan Mintz, secretly hired the New York law firm Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson to review the legality of partnerships created by Enron's CFO, Andrew Fastow. FFHS&J urged Mintz to stop Enron from creating such partnerships, and Mintz succeeded. This appears to be the cause of CEO Jeffrey Skilling's mysterious departure on 8/14/01 - he must have figured that without these debt-hiding partnerships, Enron's ponzi scheme was finished. Before he left, Skilling demoted Treasurer Jeff McMahon, who probably secretly approved Mintz's hiring of FFHS&J, and demanded that Skilling take corrective action. McMahon replaced Fastow as CFO in October, when Fastow was finally fired. McMahon is now desperately trying to keep Enron from liquidation, as previously secret debts continue to be revealed.

Tom DeLay, the vicious Republican who organized the criminal Miami-Dade election riot, was on Enron's payroll big-time. Besides taking $28,900 in over-the-table bribes (i.e. campaign contributions), DeLay also took vast untold sums in secret bribes through his racketeering enterprise, the Republican Majority Issues Commission. (In April, RMIC settled a racketeering suit filed by the DCCC, after running up $450,000 in legal fees.) RMIC, a notorious "527" organization, was finally forced to report its donors in 2000, revealing $75,000 from Enron execs that year alone; the Devil and his spawn Tom DeLay only know how much was laundered through those accounts previously. DeLay's PAC, Americans for a Republican Majority, got another $57,250.

Last year, Enron put nearly $1 Billion into a massive tax loophole called "trust-preferred securities." This obscene corporate tax giveaway lets a company borrow from itself, and write off the "interest payments" as tax-deductible expenses. (Try doing THAT on your 1040, and see how fast you go to jail!) In 1996 and 1997, President Clinton urged the Republican Congress to close the loophole, but Republicans gave Clinton the finger, as they ALWAYS did. Defeat ALL Republicans!

NY Times columnist Paul Krugman writes, "Capitalism as we know it depends on a set of institutions — many of them provided by the government — that limit the potential for insider abuse. These institutions include modern accounting rules, independent auditors, securities and financial market regulation, and prohibitions against insider trading. The Enron affair shows that these institutions have been corrupted. None of the checks and balances that were supposed to prevent insider abuses worked... And nobody I know in the financial community thinks Enron was an isolated case." In other words, Enron is just the tip of the iceberg. And what is Bush doing to expose other massive financial frauds like Enron? Nothing at all! The last time Capitalism collapsed was also during a do-nothing Republican administration - Herbert Hoover.

One year ago, in a country with non-stop business news, how many reporters were doing serious reporting about Enron? 100? 10? 5? The answer is: 1! Bethany McLean of Fortune was the ONLY reporter interested in the truth behind Enron's glowing (and, we now know, fraudulent) financial statements. And how was this inquiring reporter treated? "The CEO, Jeffrey Skilling, called her unethical and hung up on her. The chairman, Kenneth Lay, called Fortune's managing editor to complain. The chief financial officer, Andrew Fastow, flew to New York to tell McLean and her editors that Enron was in great shape." According to Steve Shepard, editor-in-chief of Business Week, "Enron was really a systemic failure of all the checks and balances we have on corporate governance: integrity of management, board of directors, audit committee of the board, outside accounting firm, Wall Street analysts and ultimately the press. And all of us failed." Boycott the corporate media - it's all corrupt!

One major reason why Arthur Andersen overlooked Enron's fraudulent financial reports was because Andersen was making MORE money doing consulting work for Enron than for auditing them - creating a monumental conflict of interest. But SEC Chair Harvey Pitt, who previously represented Andersen, is utterly blind to this unmistakeable conflict. Today, he "dismissed suggestions that he take steps to keep auditors from performing other work for the same clients. 'Auditor independence is not the cause of the problems that we are witnessing,' he said." Moreover, Pitt wants to make things worse by ending the independent disciplinary review of accountants. Harvey Pitt must be replaced!

The White House insists that despite receiving MILLIONS of dollars in contributions from Ken Lay and Enron, they did NOTHING in return. So here's another smoking gun: "Vice President [sic] Cheney tried to help Enron collect a $64 million debt from a giant energy project in India, government documents obtained by the Daily News show. 'Good news is that the veep mentioned Enron in his meeting with [Indian opposition leader] Sonia Gandhi yesterday,' a National Security Council aide wrote in a June 28 e-mail." Cheney's chief liar, Mary Matalin, doesn't deny that he performed this private collection service for Enron; she just says, "The vice president didn't remember that topic at all. I asked him directly." Who cares if he remembers? All that matters is he DID it! We demand a Special Prosecutor!

"A deep and abiding connection exists between a party's constituents and its positions. Bush and Cheney are oil and gas guys who feel at ease among oil and gas guys. Cheney views an alternative to oil as something of a joke. Bush, like his father, views the Saudi Arabian peninsula as an extension of the Texas and Oklahoma oil patch; in other words, it's ours. In the case of Enron, we are seeing that oil connection in full view, and we're learning the dangers of keeping fast company. After all, wasn't Bush the President who wanted to encourage stock ownership? Wasn't he the candidate who wanted us to tie up our Social Security in stocks? So what's he doing hanging out with Kenny Boy and the other looters?" So writes Chris Matthews.

"Enron fired accounting firm Arthur Andersen on Thursday as the feuding corporations both came under growing scrutiny for their roles in the collapse of the world's largest energy trading company. Enron cited Andersen's destruction of thousands of documents and its accounting advice. For its part, Andersen said its relationship with Enron ended in December when the company filed for bankruptcy... During a high-level meeting in early February, Andersen executives expressed concern about Enron's off-the-books accounting of profits from its partnerships, especially one headed by Andy Fastow, at the time also Enron's chief financial officer... However, Andersen decided to continue to serve Enron, noting that the fees from the Enron account could reach $100 million a year and that the risks posed by Enron's business practices could be managed." NOT!

Houston's biggest law firm, Vinson & Elkins, gave its seal of approval to Enron's scandalous accounting procedures, brushing aside Sherron Watkins' warnings to Ken Lay. "The expanding Enron scandal also is putting political heat on...Bush and his inner circle. Along with Enron, Houston's Vinson & Elkins has been among the big Texas businesses that have been his biggest political patrons. Of the firm's 341 partners, 165 contributed about $204,000 to Mr. Bush's 2000 campaign, according to Thomas Marinis Jr., a firm partner and boyhood friend of the president's [sic]." And two senior V&E partners were Bush Pioneers ($100K fundraisers) -- Joe Allen and Robert Whilden. But "White House spokesman Dan Bartlett says he is unaware of any contacts between Vinson & Elkins attorneys and administration officials about Enron. 'One thing is clear,' he adds. 'This administration has taken no action to benefit or to attempt to help the Enron company.'" That is an UTTER LIE, and the media should make Bartlett eat his words!

Bill Clinton's SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt writes: "It's important to recognize that this is not just about Enron and its auditor, Arthur Andersen. We need to look at the entire system of gatekeepers — auditors, corporate boards, analysts, ratings agencies, investment bankers, lawyers and accounting standard-setters — who operate and regulate our financial markets. The confidence of individual investors depends on honest, independent gatekeepers. Sadly, the collapse of Enron shows this system urgently needs reform." Levitt walks through the corruption of each of these gatekeepers, and maps out a set of rules to clean up America's financial system. Let's see if Bush implements ANY of them!

"David Duncan, the lead auditor of Enron who was fired by Andersen on Tuesday, went on the offensive on Wednesday, pinning the blame for his actions on the firm's head office. Mr Duncan, who was in charge in Houston of the audits of the collapsed energy trader, was accused by Andersen of organising destruction of thousands of Enron documents. Andersen said the disposals took place after he knew investigators had started their probe. Some appear to have been destroyed after the [SEC] issued a subpoena on November 8. But a lawyer for Mr Duncan said his client had been working closely with an Andersen in-house lawyer at the head office in Chicago...On [Oct] 12, Nancy Temple, a lawyer with Andersen in Chicago, emailed Michael Odom, an Andersen partner in Houston...'It might be useful to consider reminding the engagement team of our documentation and retention policy,' the email read. The email included a link to Andersen's policy that prohibits document destruction under some circumstances and allows it under others."

In Fox's new "game" show "The Chamber," "contestants are strapped inside a high-tech torture chamber and must answer a barrage of rapid-fire questions while being subjected to 'distractions' such as 150-degree heat, earthquake-level vibrations, hurricane force winds, and intermittent zaps of electricity. Imagine 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire' with Regis replaced by the Marquis de Sade." That gave Arianna Huffington an idea: "Why not move the show to Sunday morning and roll our political leaders into 'The Chamber,' forcing them to answer not silly game show questions but questions vital to our democracy? Can't you picture Don Evans strapped into 'The Chamber,' blasts of scorching wind pelting his face, fire singeing the hair on his legs, sweat dripping off his brow as the temperature soars past Death Valley levels, all while being peppered with pointed questions and knowing that he must answer forthrightly or be subjected to ever-greater torments?"

"The state Board of Administration fired Alliance Capital Management Corp. last month, saying it was troubled by the New York financial adviser's decision to continue buying Enron shares for the fund after indications of the company's financial problems became public. One of Alliance's executives, Frank Savage, was also a board member of Enron and a major contributor to political campaigns…'We've been investigating,'' said Coleman Stipanovich, deputy executive director of the State Board of Administration, which oversees the pension fund. 'If Alliance did anything improper or was unduly influenced by Savage, we could sue Alliance, but we have made no decision on that'… Stipanovich said state officials did not learn until late last year of Savage's tie to Enron." Hold the phone! A Jeb Bush appointee -- Coleman is the brother of 'Mac' Stiponovich – the Tallahassee lobbyist who masterminded Katherine Harris' moves to steal the election. Both brothers served key roles in Jeb's campaigns.

One by one, the officials responsible for investigating Enron's collapse are being challenged to recuse themselves. Rep. John Conyers is leading the charge against Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson, whose former law firm represented Enron - but Thompson adamantly refuses to step aside. SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt, who previously represented Arthur Andersen, is under attack from Sen. Jon Corzine (D-NJ), Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND), Common Cause, the Center for Public Integrity. "In Houston, federal judge Lee Rosenthal recently removed herself from all Enron lawsuits - three days after denying a motion to freeze assets held by Enron executives and board members."

Not only did Enron screw its employees and shareholders - it also screwed the taxpayers. "Enron paid no income taxes in four of the last five years, using almost 900 subsidiaries in tax-haven countries and other techniques, an analysis of its financial reports to shareholders shows. It was also eligible for $382 million in tax refunds. The company used strategies common among businesses to avoid taxes. It also used some unusual methods, among them the creation of 881 subsidiaries abroad, including 692 in the Cayman Islands, 119 in the Turks and Caicos, 43 in Mauritius and 8 in Bermuda." An NY Times editorial on 5/26/01 stated, "the Bush administration is backing away from a three-year effort by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to crack down on tax havens. The administration's decision to withdraw American support for essential elements of the effort undermines what had been a successful international campaign." How con-veen-yent! Congress must close offshore tax loopholes now!

No two people played a greater role in Enron's massive fraud than Phil and Wendy Gramm. "In December 2000 Mr. Gramm was one of the ringleaders who engineered the stealthlike approval of a bill that exempted energy commodity trading from government regulation and public disclosure." Wendy "was chairwoman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 1988 until 1993. In her final days with the commission she helped push through a ruling that exempted many energy futures contracts from regulation, a move that had been sought by Enron. Five weeks later, after resigning from the commission, Wendy Gramm was appointed to Enron's board of directors." Together, Phil & Wendy enacted the laws and regulatory policies that let Enron get away with financial murder. They belong in jail - after they turn over their Enron profits to Enron's employees.

Last weekend, Don Evans and Paul O'Neill insisted they had no inside information about Enron's impending collapse when Ken Lay called them last October. But now it turns out that Lawrence Lindsey, Bush's economic advisor, "directed a review of the broad economic effects of a potential collapse of the company." Did Lindsey share his report with Evans and O'Neill - OF COURSE!! They all met for lunch every Monday. Did he share it with the employees and stockholders of Enron, so they could sell their shares before they became worthless? OF COURSE NOT!! Worse yet, Lindsey had a total conflict of interest, since he worked as a consultant for Enron the year before. For his services, Enron paid him $50,000. We demand a Special Prosecutor!

What did Bush really choke on? Visit here to find out...

In the rogue's gallery of Enron thieves, only one figure stands out as a hero: Sherron Watkins, who warned Ken Lay last August that "improper accounting practices threatened to destroy the company." So how did the NY Times introduce Watkins to its readers on its front page? "In the cutthroat business culture of the Enron Corporation, where toughness and a sharp tongue were often prerequisites for success, Sherron S. Watkins could be noticeably tough and sharp. One former colleague described her as 'a bull in the china shop' at times. Others mistook the Texan Ms. Watkins for a brusque New Yorker." Here's the English translation: Watkins is a "bitch." These days, the Times seems entirely about manipulating our perception of the characters in our national political drama - most especially Bush, through the unceasingly sycophantic pen of Elisabeth Bumiller - rather than presenting readers with the facts. Send your complaints - especially our wonderful feminists! - to letters@nytimes.com

According to Salon's Anthony York, "The real smoking gun for Enron could be its role in the California energy deregulation debacle. Vice President Cheney has already admitted that he and Enron CEO Ken Lay discussed the California situation in some of their six meetings last year, leading some critics to believe that Bush's hands-off policy toward the Golden State's energy meltdown was adopted at the bidding of Enron, whose profits soared during the crisis. Lay was also instrumental in replacing the chairman of the federal commission that regulates energy issues with his own nominee, after the original chairman refused to kowtow to Enron's wishes on electricity deregulation. A California state Senate committee is currently calling for depositions of Enron and Arthur Andersen officials to find out if the former energy giant or its auditors willfully destroyed documents that were under subpoena from the committee." And there's more - better keep those pretzels away from Cheney!

From the AP: "An auditor said to have led a hurry-up effort to destroy documents in the Enron case was cooperating with congressional investigators a day after his accounting firm fired him, his attorneys said. David Duncan, who oversaw Enron's audits from the Houston office of Arthur Andersen LLP, was to be interviewed Wednesday by staff from the House Energy and Commerce Committee." In another development, "A law firm representing Enron employees in a lawsuit said the company incorrectly told its employees in September that they would be barred for about a month starting Oct. 19 from selling Enron stock in their 401(k) retirement accounts. The stock price plummeted during that period. The company says the actual period was a week, but the law firm said employees didn't realize that because Enron didn't send out a correction to its initial erroneous e-mail."

"Enron Corp. employees were so nervous about the energy trader's murky finances last summer that they wished they 'would get caught' for using shaky accounting methods, a company vice president wrote to Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay in a letter released in its entirety on Tuesday. Whistle-blower Sherron Watkins, an Enron Global Finance vice president, wrote in August -- months before Enron's stunning collapse -- that she had heard one senior Enron manager say, 'I know it would be devastating to all of us, but I wish we would get caught...a lot of accountants including AA&Co. (Arthur Andersen & Co.) have blessed the accounting treatment. None of that will protect Enron if these transactions are ever disclosed in the bright light of day.' [House Energy and Commerce Committee] Spokesman Ken Johnson said Watkins has agreed to be interviewed by the committee...[He] called her letter 'the first real smoking gun that showed company officials had some knowledge, or at least were warned of a potential problem in advance.'"

"As Enron Corp.'s collapse has mushroomed into a major political issue, pressure appears to be growing on Vice President Dick Cheney to fully disclose the Houston company's role in developing President Bush's energy plan last spring... 'Politically, they [the vice president's office] are going to do this,' one prominent Republican consultant said. 'They may be stalling this, but ultimately ... they are going to provide that information. They can make it fairly painful by delaying. But the longer you wait, the worse it gets...' 'The vice president may have to emerge from an undisclosed location soon to face some uncomfortable questions on a well-connected constituent,' said Larry Markinson, senior fellow at the Center for Responsive Politics. 'We do know that it sounds like Enron had some input in development of the energy policy. But we don't know where, how, what they got and what language got changed.'" So reports the Chicago Tribune.

C-Span is running an Enron show every night this week starting at 8 pm ET, repeated at 11 pm ET. Here's the rest of the week's schedule: Wednesday January 16- Politics and Lobbying - Review the Opening Statement by Rep. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) on December 12. Thursday January 17- Government Oversight - Review testimony by Robert K. Herdman, Chief Acct., SEC on December 12. Friday January 18- Stockholders - Review testimony by 401k Victims on December 18.

Bush claims he was out of the loop as Enron spiraled into bankruptcy. In particular, he claims Paul O'Neill and Don Evans did not tell him about Ken Lay's desperate phone calls in October. "Neither O'Neill nor Evans said they informed President Bush of the telephone calls. But Evans said he frequently discussed Enron's situation during general meetings with the president in November and December. The tone of those conversations was 'how sad it was to see what was happening to that once great company,' Evans said on NBC." So now we know that Evans DID discuss Enron's death spiral. Exactly WHAT did they discuss? What did Bush know, and when did he know It?

If there's a Bu$h scandal, you can be sure that Little Brother Jeb is involved. So it comes as no surprise that Florida's pension fund lost $300 million in Enron's collapse. Jeb claims to be a hero because he recently fired the pension fund manager, Alliance Capital Management. But why did he hire the firm in the first place? The chairman of Alliance is Frank Savage. Savage is on the board of directors of - you guessed it - Enron. So why did Jeb give his state's pension funds to a director of Enron in the first place, and why did he wait until he lost $300 million before firing him? Could a $6,500 contribution from Enron to Jeb in 1998 have influenced him? Jeb's campaign manager, Karen Unger, says "Gov. Bush has never been swayed on an issue by a campaign contribution. He cannot be bought." Hey Karen - tell that to a judge!

"Even as...Kenneth Lay boasted to employees of the company's growth, one of them privately warned him in August of the reckless practices that eventually brought down the energy-trading giant. 'I am incredibly nervous that we will implode in a wave of accounting scandals,' the employee told Lay in a letter. A 'veil of secrecy' surrounded Enron's partnerships, which were keeping huge amounts of Enron debt off the company's books, she said. 'It sure looks to the layman on the street that we are hiding losses,' wrote the employee, who was identified by her Houston attorney as Sherron Watkins, Enron's vice president of corporate development. She said several senior Enron employees 'consistently and constantly' questioned the corporation's accounting methods to senior Enron officials, including CEO Jeffrey Skilling. Skilling resigned in August". After Lay phoned them, "the White House should have disclosed the Enron phone contacts to the news media immediately, [the Brookings Institution Paul] Light suggested."

"Accounting firm Arthur Andersen LLP said Tuesday it is firing the lead auditor of collapsed Enron Corp. and is putting three other auditors on leave as part of its inquiry into the destruction of Enron-related documents... [Andersen] said it was firing the lead Enron auditing partner, David B. Duncan, and placing Enron auditors Thomas H. Bauer, Debra A. Cash and Roger D. Willard on administrative leave. Partners removed from the Houston office are D. Stephen Goddard Jr., Michael M. Lowther, Gary B. Goolsby and Michael C. Odom." Goddard was a Bush Pioneer. One individual not mentioned is Andersen lawyer, Nancy Temple, who ordered auditors to destroy documents on October 12. In any event, this is all too little, too late for Andersen. First Sunbeam, then Waste Management, and now Enron - three strikes and you're out!

On the Sunday shows, Commerce Secretary (and chief campaign fundrai$er) Don Evans focused on his conversation with Ken Lay on October 29. But Congressional investigators have learned that Evans called Lay TWO WEEKS EARLIER on October 15, ONE DAY BEFORE Lay told Wall Street the shocking news that Enron lost an astounding $618 million in the third quarter. Evans says they talked about a problem in India - yeah right! What did Evans know, and when did he know it?

"Why did the administration dissemble so long about its contacts with Enron? Why did George W. Bush make the absurd claim that... Kenneth Lay, opposed him in his first run for governor, and that the two men got to know each other only after that race? ... Because the administration fears... that the latest revelations in the Enron affair will raise the lid on crony capitalism, American style... The real questions about Enron's relationship with the administration involve what happened before the energy trader hit the skids. That's when Mr. Lay allegedly told the head of [FERC] that he should be more cooperative if he wanted to keep his job. (He wasn't, and he didn't.) And it's when Enron helped Dick Cheney devise an energy plan that certainly looks as if it was written by and for the companies that advised his task force. Mr. Cheney, in clear defiance of the law, has refused to release any information about his task force's deliberations; what is he hiding?" So writes Paul Krugman.

Arthur Andersen is in BIG trouble for its apparently criminal role in cooking Enron's books, and then scrubbing the evidence. And guess who supervised the Enron account at Arthur Andersen? "The head of the Anderson office in Texas that supervised the Enron account -- D. Stephen Goddard -- is a Bush 'pioneer' having raised or contributed in excess of $100,000 for the Bush presidential campaign." So reports CBS Marketwatch. We demand a Special Prosecutor!

Democrats.com, which was the first group to call for a Special Prosecutor for the Enron investigation, announced the launch of a special Enrongate Web site and an Internet advertising campaign to build public support for a Special Prosecutor. The efforts by Democrats.com include posting an Internet petition for a Special Prosecutor, which has garnered over 2,700 signatures in three days; creating an in-depth Enrongate Web site at http://democrats.com/enron ; and launching an Internet advertising campaign. The animated banner ad uses tongue-in-cheek humor to highlight Mr. Bush's relationship to Ken Lay. "Enron gave $574,550 to George W. Bush. Bush says, 'I did not have business relations with that man, Kenneth Lay!' Sound familiar? America needs a Special Prosecutor!" The ad will be viewed by 1 million Internet users on 7,000 web sites in the coming days. Democrats.com has also appealed to its supporters to donate additional funds to reach millions of additional Internet users.

"Somewhere in the Atlantic, Captain Edward J. Smith receives word that his ship, the R.M.S. Titanic, is on an inevitable collision course with an enormous iceberg... Captain Smith activates the ship's public address system: 'This is Captain Smith. I want to assure you that I have never felt better about prospects for the ship.' Captain Smith switches off the microphone and presses a button on the bridge. Suddenly, every door on the mammoth ship slams shut, locking passengers and crew in their cabins, staterooms, and work stations... Captain Smith and his officers rush to the valuables vault... To Enron's 'Captain' Kenneth Lay, I say.. Your poor judgment steered her into an iceberg. Unlike the gallant captain of the Titanic, however, you did not go down with your ship. You plundered her and escaped, leaving your crew and passengers to slowly sink beneath the waves. If Enron were a seagoing vessel instead of a corporation, you'd be swinging from a yard arm." So writes the Angry Liberal.

Appearing on the Sunday gabfests, Commerce Secretary Don Evans and Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill chose their words with extreme care - as is appropriate for two men who will soon be answering subpoenas and hiring lawyers. To put it plainly - they both lied. Evans & O'Neill claim Ken Lay did not ASK for any specific favors - which is ludicrous, since Lay was obviously in complete panic as his company headed into a nosedive. Lay didn't call to have a friendly chat - he called to scream for help. So what did Evans & O'Neill do? Absolutely nothing, they say - and they most certainly did not TELL Bush, whose political career was bankrolled by Lay. Sure they didn't! So the Bush defense boils down to this - DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL. Ahhh, we're SOOOO glad Bush has restored Honesty and Integrity to the White House!

Bush Sr. escaped prosecution for his role in the Iran-Contra scandal by falsely claiming that he was "out of the loop." This had only a shred of plausibility because Bush was Vice President, not President. Now it's Shrub's turn to face a scandal, and - surprise! - he's making the identical claim. Today's revelation is that Commerce Secretary Donald Evans - Shrub's very best friend - told Shrub's Chief of Staff, Andrew Card, about the call he received from Ken Lay on 10/29/01. Evans says Card did not tell Bush - but what does Card say, and what will he say under oath? What Did Bush Know, and When Did He Know It?

NY Times reports, "Other bombs like Enron's may be ticking, but investors will have little help in spotting them before they blow. The combination of aggressive accounting - like Enron's method of shifting big obligations off its balance sheet - and a conflicted auditing firm... are not limited to Enron. Aggressive accounting has become much more common in recent years, and as auditors have increased their consulting business among the companies whose books they vet, their willingness to sign off on debatable practices has grown... Analysts on Wall Street cannot be relied upon to dig deeply into companies' books. Eager to help their firms generate business selling securities to investors - and reap their own rewards in bonuses - Wall Street analysts have made a habit of missing corporate misdeeds altogether ... 'Enron proves how meaningless financial statements have become... Until someone makes sure that financial statements have meaning, we will never get this problem behind us.'"

"Democrats want to use Enron as a vehicle for a broader indictment of the White House. They hope to link people's perceptions of the company--a secretive, arrogant, anti-worker institution that hid its cooked budget numbers with good p.r.--to their perceptions of the Bush administration. And in that way, Democrats hope to cast the White House as beholden to corporate fat cats once again--a perception they think was catching on before September 11. If democratic investigators do find a Bush-Enron smoking gun, it will probably be that someone in or close to the administration was part of one of Enron's 33 secretive partnerships, which the company apparently used to hide billions of dollars in debt from its balance sheets." So writes Ryan Lizza in the New Republic. We hope that the Dems will take their cue from the chorus at the end of the Enron commercials and keep asking, "Why...Why...Why?"

"As Enron stock climbed and Wall Street was still promoting it, a group of 29 Enron executives and directors began to sell their shares. These insiders received $1.1 billion by selling 17.3 million shares from 1999 through mid-2001, according to court filings based on public records. They continued selling just before Enron's stock started to tumble early last year and the company began its slide into bankruptcy protection. One of the biggest sellers was Kenneth L. Lay, who became prominent as the company's chairman and a leading contributor to President Bush. He was among more than a dozen Enron executives who received $30 million or more, including one who sold shares valued at $353.7 million." So reports the NY Times.

"The cozy yet ruthless Texas business culture that produced Enron also produced our president. Bush takes pride in working like a CEO, and if you study his behavior, you find him duplicating, almost exactly, the culture of Enron. He displays the same obsession with loyalty (his number-one virtue), the same habit of dishonest, short-term accounting (think of his lies about those tax cuts), the same blithe disregard for ordinary workers (his post–September 11 economic proposals all aimed at helping corporations) and the same pitiless certainty he's on the side of the free-market angels. What may be the scariest about Enron's disastrous failure is that neither Bush nor other professional free marketeers seem to find anything scary about America's seventh biggest company being a hollow shell - and nobody having a clue. Not the investors, not the media, not the government overseers, not even (if you believe him) Kenneth Lay." So writes LA Weekly's John Powers.

The Boston Globe is the first mainstream media outlet to notice our press release about Larry Thompson's conflict of interest that disqualifies him from overseeing the Enron investigation. (Of course, the Globe refuses to acknowledge our existence, like the rest of the American corporate media.) The Globe reports: "Although Thompson's firm was employed by Enron, 'he did not personally do any work for Enron,' said a Justice Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity. 'The issue has been reviewed. My understanding is that is not a matter for which he would need to recuse himself.'" The ANONYMOUS official is absolutely wrong. Larry Thompson's conflict is fatal because he SHARED IN THE PROFITS from his former firm's Enron work. He cannot be objective in his investigation of Ken Lay. Imagine if one of Hillary's former partners at the Rose law firm had been the Whitewater investigator! Call the media and your Senators and Representatives and demand a Special Prosecutor!

Time magazine reports, "Just four days before Enron disclosed a stunning $618 million loss for the third quarter - its first public disclosure of its financial woes - workers who audited the company's books for Arthur Andersen... received an extraordinary instruction from one of the company's lawyers. Congressional investigators tell Time that the Oct. 12 memo directed workers to destroy all audit material, except for the most basic 'work papers.' And that's what they did, over a period of several weeks. As a result, FBI investigators, congressional probers and workers suing the company for lost retirement savings will be denied thousands of e-mails and other electronic and paper files that could have helped illuminate the actions and motivations of Enron executives." Why did Bush's SEC wait until Nov. 8 to subpoena Arthur Andersen's documents? Why did they not secure the office to stop further destruction? Did Harvey Pitt participate in the coverup? We demand a Special Prosecutor!

Gee, we don't remember prominent stories back during the Chinese fundraising brouhaha with headlines charging that "Chinese Ties Extended to Republicans." (Haley Barbour, anyone?) Enron was a huge corporation that gave to both parties, a symptom of our corrupt campaign finance system. But it was under Bush's watch that his best pal Ken Lay pressured FERC chair Curtis Hebert to resign. Lay had allegedly the greatest input on Cheney's Secret Energy Task Force from which Cheney still won't release documents. Bush did nothing while Enron gouged Californians during the pseudo-energy crisis. Bush Administration officials had advance knowledge of Enron's collapse, but still let 4,500 employees lose their pensions while the Enron brass bailed out. Bush appointed Enron Vice Chairman Thomas White as Secretary of the Army and the top Defense official on Homeland Security (that includes the Energy grid). White held $100 million in Enron stocks and options. Will the Media let Bush and Phil Gramm get away with this?

On 1/10, Bush told a flat-out LIE. Bush said "[Lay] was a supporter of Ann Richards in my run in 1994... that's when I first got to know Ken." When challenged, the White House stuck to its lie. "Mister Lay was a supporter of Ann Richards during the 1994 races. The public campaign records clearly reflect his support. Any other suggestion is revising history," Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said [on 1/11]. As evidence, McClellan cited the dates of the campaign filing reports showing that Lay gave Richards a $10,000 contribution in October 1994, shortly before the November election. He also gave her a $2,500 contribution in July of that year. However, the reports also show that Ken and Linda Lay gave Bush a $25,000 contribution in January 1994. But McClellan said that was during the primary season. However, Bush faced no primary opponent that year. Linda Lay also gave Bush a $12,500 contribution during the general election in October." So reports the Houston Chronicle.

On Thursday, Texas AG John Cornyn (a Republican, natch!) insisted he had no conflicts preventing him from investigating Enron. Then it was revealed that Cornyn took "$180,000 in campaign donations from Enron officials - including a $25,000 donation from Enron CEO Ken Lay in June." Ooops! Cornyn withdrew from the investigation, but not from the race for U.S. Senator to replace Phil Gramm, whose wife Wendy Lee Gramm was on Enron's Board of Directors! In the midst of this scandal - with thousands of Texas who used to work for Enron having lost their jobs and their pensions - the idea that Texas would elect a Senator who has received $180,000 from Enron is beyond obscene. Conryn should withdraw from the race IMMEDIATELY!

According to the Washington Post, Ashcroft's "Deputy Chief of Staff David Israelite and new Communications Director Barbara Comstock came to Justice after working at the Republican National Committee, which received more than $700,000 from Enron and its executives in 1999 and 2000, records show." A clear conflict of interest, you say? Not for Ashcroft! "It was determined that all the people [from] RNC, including David and Barbara, had no involvement with Enron," an ANONYMOUS official said. We demand a Special Prosecutor!

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is supposed to PREVENT securities fraud. But Bu$h's SEC chair, Harvey Pitt, is the leading advocate for scrubbing incriminating documents! In 1994, he wrote: "Corporate counsel must take every available opportunity to imbue company executives with the understanding that their documents will take on separate lives when they enter the treadmill of litigation... Ask executives and employees to imagine all their documents in the hands of a zealous regulator or on the front page of the New York Times." According to Mokhiber & Weissman, "The SEC has the accounting industry's pit bull as its chair. In addition, Bush has nominated two new SEC commissioners, both of whom are former partners of big five accounting firms -- Paul Atkins, a partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Cynthia Glassman of Ernst & Young. That gives the accounting industry absolute control over what was once the top cop on the corporate crime beat. Get ready for more Enrons."

Hours after Democrats.com called for a Special Prosecutor for Enrongate, right wing watchdog Judicial Watch also demanded a Special Prosecutor to investigate contacts between Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay and Vice President Cheney, Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, and Commerce Secretary Donald Evans. "The Bush Justice Department, despite the recusal of John Ashcroft, is hopelessly conflicted in investigating White House and Cabinet-level contacts with Enron representatives. A special counsel can begin to assure the American people that a thorough investigation is conducted," stated Judicial Watch Chairman Larry Klayman. "Enron's Kenneth Lay was a major donor to the Bush campaign. Lo and behold, it is reported he calls up Don Evans, Commerce Secretary and former Bush fundraiser, to ask that the government intervene with a private ratings service to help Enron. This contact in particular seems improper on its face and deserves an independent investigation," Klayman concluded.

Writes Joshua Michah Marshall: "Wondering how many Bush administration (Senate-confirmed) appointees owned stock in Enron? Or how much they owned? Or what business relationships they had with the company? Well, hey, you came to the right place! Now it's important to keep in mind that most of these folks listed below just owned stock in the company, which probably only means they got suckered and cleaned out by the company brass like a lot of other people. But then if some of them cashed in their stock a few months ago (which next year's disclosures will tell us) based on inside information ... well, that would be another matter entirely." Those listed include Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Zoellick, Charlotte Beers, and, of course, Secretary of the Army Thomas White. White was the Vice Chairman of Enron Energy Service, who held in the neighborhood of $100 million Enron stocks and stock options. White was also appointed as the Defense Department's top official on Homeland Security, to work with Tom Ridge.

"From 1995 to 1999, Mr. Thompson was the independent counsel investigating favoritism in contracts awarded by the Reagan administration's Department of Housing and Urban Development. In that role, he negotiated an agreement that allowed former Interior Secretary James G. Watt to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor charge of trying to influence a federal grand jury. Mr. Watt had originally been charged with 25 felonies related to influence- peddling in his role as a private housing consultant." So reports the NY Times. Yet another reason why Thompson should be removed from the investigation and replaced with a Special Prosecutor!

"According to 'Strange Justice,' an account of the nomination battle written by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson, Mr. Thompson was among those who devised a strategy to portray Judge Thomas's accuser, Anita F. Hill, as suffering from erotomania, an abnormality related to sexual delusion. To counter Ms. Hill's passing a polygraph test on her claims of sexual harassment, Mr. Thompson issued a statement saying it was possible both to lie and to pass such a test 'if a person suffers from a delusional disorder.' When the statement was read into the Senate record, Mr. Thompson was identified only as a former United States attorney, not as a member of Judge Thomas's legal team." So reports the NY Times. Thompson must be replaced with a Special Prosecutor for Enrongate!

According to People for the American Way, Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson is no truth-seeking prosecutor. Instead, he's one more right-wing ideologue in a right-wing Administration. "Larry Thompson, also a member of the Federalist Society, served as an adviser and witness for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas during his Senate confirmation hearings. For nine years, Thompson was on the board of the Southeastern Legal Foundation, one of a network of legal organizations pushing a far-right agenda in the courts." Thompson must be removed from the Enron investigation!

One day after John Ashcroft recused himself from the Enrongate criminal investigation and handed it to Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson, Democrats.com has learned that Thompson himself had financial ties to Enron. Thompson was a partner at the law firm of King & Spalding from 1986 until his appointment as Deputy AG in 2001. "King & Spalding has represented numerous subsidiaries of Enron, including Enron Global LNG, Enron Global Markets, and Enron Energy Services," according to Democrats.com co-founder Bob Fertik. "As a former law partner, Larry Thompson profited personally from the firm's work for Enron. Even if Thompson did not work directly on Enron matters - information which is not publicly available - Thompson cannot avoid the 'appearance of impropriety' which is fatal for such an important investigation," Fertik said. Democrats.com is calling upon George W. Bush to go outside his conflict-ridden Administration to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate Enrongate.

"The collapse of Enron was the largest bankruptcy in American history. Thousands of Americans - including many Enron employees - were financially devastated. But Enron's executives got rich. A shareholder lawsuit alleges that the 29 executives and directors dumped $1.1 billion worth of stock while knowing the company was in danger of collapse. Enron's collapse is the subject of a criminal investigation by the Justice Department of the Bush Administration. However, the Bush administration and Enron are so closely connected as to be virtually indistinguishable." We demand a Special Prosecutor for Enrongate - sign the petition!

Big 5 accounting firm Arthur Andersen is in "deep doo-doo", as Bush the Smarter would say, because of its role in aiding and abetting Enron's massive financial reporting fraud. To make matters worse, AA has now been caught scrubbing its Enron files, no doubt to protect top officials of the Bush administration. Given this situation, every client of AA should immediately find a new auditor, and put AA out of business. In a vain attempt to preserve its completely destroyed credibility, AA has turned to yet another right-wing Republican - former Senator John Danforth. Danforth, whom the media likes to portray as a paragon of virtue - just like those two sultans of sleaze, Ken Starr and William Bennett - was the evangelical hardball player who pushed Clarence Thomas through the Senate, despite Thomas's vicious lies about Anita Hill. Sorry, John, your pathetic reputation can't save AA - and you'll be going down with the ship.

"The U.S. Justice Department, which is investigating Enron Corp., said on Thursday that Attorney General John Ashcroft has removed himself from the case after receiving campaign contributions from the fallen energy giant. Enron and its employees contributed $57,499 to campaign committees for Ashcroft, previously a Republican senator from Missouri, in 1999-2000, according to Holly Bailey, researcher for the Center for Responsive Politics. This included a $25,000 donation from Enron chief Kenneth Lay, she said. Most of the rest of the money came from the corporation, although there were small amounts from other employees. Ashcroft took the action the same day U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, a Democrat from California, sent him a letter saying Enron had been one of Ashcroft's largest contributors." Sorry Ashcroft, this just isn't good enough - we DEMAND a Special Prosecutor!

"The firm that audited the books of collapsed Enron Corp., Arthur Andersen LLP, disclosed Thursday that a 'significant but undetermined' number of documents related to the company had been destroyed. Federal law enforcement agencies and congressional investigators are seeking the documents as part of their inquiries into the failure of the giant energy-trading company, which left countless investors burned and employees out of work with billions of dollars of losses in their Enron-heavy retirement accounts. The Big Five accounting firm said in a statement that in recent months, electronic files and other documents related to its auditing of Enron had been destroyed or deleted." This is EXACTLY how the Bush organized crime family and its corrupt cronies operate - by scrubbing the evidence. We demand an investigation!

"What it is about... is how business gets done down in Texas. How a small group of business leaders exert enormous clout over Bush and his team in getting the rules changed to their benefit. It will explain why Bush has locked up presidential records, locked out any voices opposed to his pro-business agenda and rammed through an expensive economic plan that wiped out the budget surplus but to date hasn't had any positive effect on the economy. It will explain what influence Enron Chief Executive Ken Lay and his advisers had with Cheney and his energy task force when they met six times last year while the vice president was putting together the administration's energy policy. And it will explain why Bush is now thinking about acting on a proposal from that very task force that seeks to roll back a key provision of the Clean Air Act that helps keep factory pollution down by requiring new controls when old plants are upgraded." So writes CBS.MarketWatch.com Editor David Callaway.

"So now we know why the White House has spent the better part of a year fending off congressional efforts to find out who Vice President Cheney met with for input on his Energy Task Force. Turns out the VP and his staff had at least six meetings with representatives from Enron - including one with Chairman Kenneth Lay - the last of which occurred just six days before the company revealed that it had vastly overstated its earnings, signaling the beginning of the end for the energy giant... This new information proves... that Lay and his company's sizable political contributions had bought what Rep. Henry Waxman has termed 'extensive access' to the epicenter of American political power. It's Teapot Dome, the Sequel... Not that long ago, Bush was vowing to battle domestic suffering with 'armies of compassion.' Instead, he and his cadre of Enron Conservatives are adding to the carnage." So writes Arianna Huffington.

On Wednesday, Ari Fleischer said the White House did not discuss Enron's impending bankruptcy in the fall. One day later, Ari was forced to admit that Enron chairman Ken Lay called Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and Commerce Secretary Don Evans just before Enron collapsed. The White House's current story is that O'Neill and Evans flatly refused to help Lay, despite his vast contributions to Bush. But why didn't Bush warn Enron's employees that Enron executives were making off with $1 billion while their life savings were about to be wiped out? "Fleischer also brushed aside talk of any conflict in the Justice Department investigation and said there was no reason to turn the probe over to a special counsel." Baloney! Everyone in the Bush administration is up to their ears in this massive scandal. We demand a special prosecutor!

According to Riverfront Times (MO) columnist Ray Hartmann, "Ashcroft did receive $50,000 in campaign contributions from Enron CEO Kenneth Lay and Enron just over a year ago for his unsuccessful U.S. Senate race here in Missouri. That's no mean feat, seeing as how our state doesn't exactly abound in oil wells. To put this sum in perspective, consider that at $50,000 the Lay/Enron combo was among the top five contributors to the Ashcroft Victory Committee and among the top two from out of state, according to campaign-finance numbers reported by the Center for Responsive Politics. Conversely, Ashcroft's committee was by far the top recipient (other than the RNC) of a single donation from Lay. What's more, in 1998, when he was running for the Republican presidential nomination, Ashcroft went right into the heart of hostile Bush country and had a major fundraiser, hosted by none other than Lay himself." How can Ashcroft investigate Enron? We demand a special prosecutor!

In December, "Public Citizen called on Congress to force Wendy and Phil Gramm and Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill to testify under oath about their knowledge of Enron's alleged accounting fraud and use of offshore tax and bank regulation havens. Public Citizen also said that President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and political adviser Karl Rove should also be required to answer questions about whether administration officials discussed policies involving energy price controls, other energy regulations or tax havens with Enron representatives. Bush adamantly resisted price controls even though California's wholesale energy costs had almost quadrupled in 2000; at the same time, Enron's trading revenues nearly tripled." Read the Public Citizen report: Blind Faith: How Deregulation and Enron's Influence Over Government Looted Billions from Americans.

From Texans for Public Justice: "In the Bush White House, Enron Chair Ken Lay reportedly is the only executive who got a private audience to discuss the administration's energy policy with Vice President Dick Cheney. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chair Curt Hebert also resigned shortly after he said that Lay told him that he would lose Enron's support in the White House if he kept opposing open access to privately owned power lines. Bush promptly replaced Hebert with Texas Public Utility Commissioner Pat Wood, who had Enron's blessing. Governor Rick Perry, who received the next largest chunk of Enron money, appointed former Enron de Mexico President Mario Max Yzaguirre as Public Utility Commission chair in June 2001." The Houston Chronicle reported on Dec. 19 that Perry defended his choice of Yzaguirre against charges that he was ineligible. He also denied that the appointment was a quid pro quo for a $25,000 political contribution made by Ken Lay the next day.

"The media, which had hounded Bill Clinton on his Whitewater connections, have allowed Bush to maintain the fiction that his--and his father's--administration had nothing to do with the debacle that is Enron. Given the intense interest in the list of those who slept over in the Clinton White House, it's odd that no attention has been paid to Kenny Boy's sleepover in the early years of the senior Bush's White House. Those early Bush years were crucial for Enron, beginning with the passage of the 1992 Energy Policy Act, which forced the established utility companies to carry Enron's electricity sales on their wires... There is a cancer growing on the presidency, but in this case it's name is Enron, and it won't go away by being ignored." So writes LA Times columnist Robert Scheer.

"Bush's good friend, ex-Montana Gov. Mark Racicot–just installed by Bush as [RNC] chairman–worked for Enron (and will continue his job as a corporate lobbyist while he is RNC chairman). White House adviser Karl Rove owned up to $250,000 in Enron stock–which he sold back when it was $50 a share (it's now 36 cents a share)...Kenneth Lay, is a buddy of Bush's, and he and other Enron execs donated almost $2 million to Bush's campaigns over the last eight years. Lay and other Enron officials were also in on meetings Cheney held to map out energy policy. Rove was in on those meetings too, which occurred back when he was still a shareholder. It's hard to believe that people high up in the Bush administration weren't privy to indications that Enron was in trouble well before the rest of us found out–and well before it was known to the company's employee-shareholders, many of whom even took their Christmas bonuses in company stock, now worth practically nothing."

"A week before filing for bankruptcy protection, energy giant Enron Corp. donated $100,000 to the Democratic Party committee that helps Senate candidates...The company, which had given 90 percent of its money to Republicans this year [since 1989, 73 percent of Enron's $5.8 million in contributions went to Republicans] before the Democratic donations, also has hired high-profile Washington lawyer Robert Bennett, whose past clients include President Clinton." Bennett also represented Iran-Contra figure, Caspar Weinberger, Reagan's Defense Secretary. "Tovah Ravitz-Meehan, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Senate fund-raising committee, said the head of the organization, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., has asked that Enron's money be given to a charitable organization helping laid-off Enron workers. She said the charity hasn't been chosen. 'It wasn't right to keep it and it wasn't right to give it back to Enron so we're looking for charitable options."

"One place to start untangling the Enron tale might be the moment in early 1993 when Bush appointees on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission voted to exempt energy traders from its anti-fraud regulations. The commissioner who initiated that convenient rule-making process, following a post-election request from Enron and several similar companies, was Wendy Gramm, wife of the Texas Senator. She left the CFTC just before the actual vote and, five weeks later, joined the Enron board of directors. This was merely a coincidence, as she and her benefactors in Houston later explained. Coincidence or not, that decision pulled open the 'regulatory black hole' in which Enron thrived and connived. It also represented the beginning of an unwholesome pattern that culminated earlier this year, when Enron’s generosity to the Bush-Cheney campaign evidently won its executives the right to choose their own regulators in Washington." So writes Joe Conason.

"When Enron laid off more than 4,500 people, it created a community that is using the initiative, innovation and technological savvy its employees were famous for to bite back, help each other out and move on. In the interconnected world of the laid-off, some ex-Enron employees have set up charities to help former co-workers, stores are offering special discounts and several Web sites are busily providing everything from job-hunting tips to customized T-shirts and sardonic humor… A site called www.thecrookedE.com started raising money this week, collecting contributions and selling T-shirts with such slogans as 'Enron: The corporation that stole Christmas' and 'I got laid off from Enron and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.'." How many of these people will vote for Bush in 2004? After all, Bush has a troubling quid pro quo relationship with Enron Chairman Ken Lay – his close friend and the number one financial backer of Bush's political career.

"Enron is Whitewater in spades. This isn't just some rinky-dink land investment like the one dredged up by right-wing enemies to haunt the Clinton White House--but rather it has the makings of the greatest presidential scandal since the Teapot Dome...[Chairman] Kenneth L. Lay, was a primary financial backer of...Bush's rise to the presidency...So greedy was Enron that it locked its own workers into a pension plan based on inflated company stock values and suspect hidden partnerships, while the top leadership led by Lay made out like bandits. Bush should be called as a witness in the congressional hearings scheduled to unravel this mess. One thing that should come up in the hearings is then-Gov. Bush's October 1997 telephone call on behalf of Lay to then-Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge to help Enron crack into the [state's] tightly regulated…electricity market...What was Lay's role in the sudden replacement of Curtis Hebert Jr. as" FERC chair?

"If Senate Democrats wanted to spend all their time investigating their opponents like another political party I could name, the Bush administration provides a growing list of suspects. The spectacular collapse of the Houston-based Enron Corp., whose stock was valued as high as $63 billion last spring when California officials accused it of rigging a phony 'energy crisis' to drain hundreds of millions from that state's electrical ratepayers, could keep an infinite number of congressional committees busy indefinitely." So writes Gene Lyons.