Come on out of your bunker and TALK to us, Tricky Dick. You know, us, the taxpayers, the voters.
The ones paying your salary (at least the on-balance sheet portion ! )
observer.co.uk
Enron spotlight falls on Cheney
The Bush files - Observer special
Ed Vulliamy, New York
Sunday January 20, 2002
The Observer
The Enron scandal was set to deepen yesterday as
congressional investigators considered legal action that will
force Vice-President Dick Cheney to disclose the agenda of
talks he held with the bankrupt company.
The chairman of Enron, Kenneth Lay, faced fresh allegations
that he deliberately urged employees to buy doomed stock in
his company, knowing that its books had become 'an
accounting hoax', and after selling off his own shares.
Democrats Henry Waxman and John Dingell are proposing civil
litigation to break Cheney's silence on six meetings he held with
Lay and other Enron executives to discuss America's
emergency energy plan.
The plan, they say, contained 17 detailed points, all 'virtually
identical to positions Enron advocated' - mostly concerned with
deregulation and increased capacity, rather than conservation.
Cheney has refused to disclose the contents of the meetings,
citing executive privilege. There is furious debate in the White
House over whether the Vice-President should remain silent or
obey the normal rule of wise scandal management in
Washington: full and fast disclosure.
Cheney took office amid concern that he was too close to the
energy industry. He left the government of Bush's father to
become chairman of Halliburton, the world's biggest oil drilling
equipment manufacturer, and later returned to politics declaring
a personal fortune worth tens of millions.
On Friday, it was revealed that Cheney stepped in to try to help
Enron collect a $64 million debt from a giant energy project in
Dabhol, near Bombay, owned primarily by Enron. The highest
level contact was at a meeting between Cheney and the leader
of India's opposition, Sonia Gandhi, on 27 June.
Emails obtained by investigators show that Lay was expected in
Washington about that time, but they do not specify whether the
visit coincided with one of his meetings with Cheney.
The White House counters that it is not unusual for Presidents
to make such representations, citing contacts between the
company and Bill Clinton's trade secretary, Ron Brown. But
documents and emails show that Cheney's meetings not only
wentwell beyond trade department duty, but also were
co-ordinated with the President's National Security Council. An
incriminating email of 28 June, written by an aide to the NSC,
reads: 'Good News is that the Veep [Vice-President] mentioned
Enron in his meeting with Sonia Gandhi yesterday.'
As late as November, President Bush was ready to urge the
cause of Enron at a meeting with the Indian Prime Minister, Atal
Bihari Vajpayee. But, suddenly, the plan was scrapped.
'President Bush cannot talk about Enron,' reads an email, the
sender and recipient of which have been blacked out. On the
same day, 8 November, Enron filed documents with the
Securities and Exchange Commission revising its financial
statements to account for $586m in losses.
It was also the day the company decided it could no longer hide
the dirty secret that it had been slushing millions of dollars to
tax havens offshore, and Lay called Treasury Secretary Paul
O'Neill to plead for help. |
