EDITORIAL
The Los Angeles Times
Resist Revenge
The Bush administration faces the possibility of a
full-scale scandal in the Enron bankruptcy. It can be
dealt with quickly or drawn out painfully. What will
decide this is how fast and how thoroughly the
administration comes clean on all of its ties to
Enron, and whether Democrats can avoid the
temptation to pay back the Republicans for their
long campaign against Bill Clinton. White House
forthrightness and Democratic restraint are the
winning combination here.
It is now clear that Bush administration contacts
with Enron were not confined to Vice President
Dick Cheney's task force; they went deep into the
Cabinet. White House Press Secretary Ari
Fleischer and other officials are trying to spin their way out by dismissing all
questions as partisan politics, but the only way for the administration to clear
itself is to open up its records, starting with the secretive energy task force.
That means minutes of meetings, phone logs, notes, e-mails, everything.
Otherwise, the White House will feed the perception that it is trying to cover up
involvement in a scandal that led to the collapse of one of the biggest corporate
donors to the Bush campaign--the largest corporate bankruptcy in the nation's
history. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, who received $25,000 from Enron CEO
Kenneth L. Lay a week before being defeated in the 2000 U.S. Senate race in
Missouri, has acted appropriately in recusing himself from the Justice
Department's criminal investigation. But contacts between Enron and Treasury
Secretary Paul H. O'Neill and Commerce Secretary Don Evans also need to
be explored fully.
The Treasury Department added Friday that Enron President Lawrence "Greg"
Whalley asked Undersecretary Peter R. Fisher for help in getting banks to
extend more credit and that the two men spoke six or eight times in October. If
the administration did have extensive contacts with Enron and knew that the
company was about to collapse, why did it do nothing to protect the
employees who eventually lost their retirement savings, locked up in Enron
stock? Exactly how many officials met with or had e-mail communications with
Enron employees? Was the president aware of what his officials were doing?
Until recently, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) was almost alone in
demanding that the administration produce records of its contacts with Enron.
He shrewdly avoided stepping from demands for information to allegations of
wrongdoing. Now that five congressional committees have issued subpoenas
concerning Enron, other Democrats should find strength to resist the innuendo
and partisanship that marked Republican investigations of the Clinton White
House.
Rumblings are also starting, though not yet on the record, among congressional
Republicans who seem as alarmed as Democrats about Enron's ties to the
White House. When Congress reconvenes, perhaps supporters of campaign
finance reform will whisper "Enron" in the ears of members who refuse to
petition for a vote on the languishing reform bill.
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), who heads the Senate Governmental
Affairs Committee, will need to walk a line between tough questioning and
needlessly heated rhetoric when he chairs the first hearing Jan. 24. The
administration will do itself a favor by cooperating fully. It may well turn out that
there is nothing to hide. But first the administration has to open its books on its
dealings with Enron.
latimes.com |
