NEW YORK, Jan. 20 /PRNewswire/ -- Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan accepted the Enron Award for Distinguished Public Service last fall. During the question-and-answer session at the ceremony, Greenspan told a student who
had asked how to succeed in this difficult job market, "The best chance you have of making a big success in this world is to decide from square one that you're going to do it ethically," Newsweek reports in the current issue.
The ceremony was held on Nov. 13, a few days after the energy company admitted that it had filed five years' worth of misleading financial reports. And it was three weeks after Greenspan had turned down a plea from Enron chairman Ken Lay to intervene with credit-rating agencies to help the stricken company survive, report Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff and Wall Street Editor Allan Sloan in the January 28 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands
Monday, January 21).
Greenspan, through his spokesman, told Newsweek that he hadn't had Lay in mind when he gave that answer. Greenspan's press aide says he was at the ceremony because he had committed a year earlier to former Secretary of State
Jim Baker to accept the honor. The James A. Baker Institute of Public Affairs awards the prize, which is funded by Enron. Greenspan turned down the $10,000 honorarium, and the Fed declined the $15,000 sculpture that
accompanies the prize.
In an accompanying article about Enron and its ties to Washington, Chief Political Correspondent Howard Fineman reports that the list of senators who are pledging to return donations from the company, usually to Enron employees' victims' funds, includes Kay Bailey Hutchison, Chuck Schumer, Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain. "No bones about it," McCain tells Newsweek. "I'm tainted by it too."
Last summer, Newsweek has learned, Enron paid one of Al Gore's closest allies, fundraiser Johnny Hayes, to lobby Democratic National Committee Chair Terry McAuliffe. The aim was to indirectly pressure California Gov. Gray Davis
into backing off his attacks on Enron and other out-of-state energy companies. McAuliffe told Hayes to get lost. Enron later gave $100,000 anyway -- an apparent attempt to show ties to both parties, Fineman reports.
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