Your tar and feathers ready? Mine are.
Jan. 10, 2002, 6:23PM
Houston Chronicle
By CRAGG HINES
Ari Fleischer, that simpering twit of a White House spokesman, urged
Thursday that the Enron debacle not be turned into a partisan witch hunt.
OK, Ari, let's make it a bipartisan witch hunt.
But all the news seems so Republican-specific at the moment. You know
they're getting edgy at the White House when both President Bush and
Fleischer -- within about 30 minutes of each other -- try to blame Enron
Chief Executive Officer Ken Lay (the single largest contributor to Bush's
political career) on Ann Richards. Whoever wrote that talking point needs
to be sent to the correspondence pool. It, at least, was not a good day to try
the line.
Let's wade right in on the Justice Department's criminal investigation.
That would be the same Justice Department headed by Attorney General
John Ashcroft, who it seems was one of many politicians who benefited
from the largesse of Lay, other Enron executives and the company's
political action committee.
In addition to some other contributions sent Ashcroft's way, Lay gave
$25,000 to a political action committee that Ashcroft headed when he was
a U.S. senator from Missouri (before he was defeated in 2000 by a dead
Democrat). Ashcroft recused himself Thursday (and his top Justice aide
followed suit) from the Enron investigation, but only after the contributions
were cited by the Center for Public Integrity.
Fleischer, even before the recusals, did the usual tap dance: "The
president has full faith and confidence in the professional prosecutors of
the Department of Justice and in the attorney general to do what is right.
" Prosecutors, sí; Ashcroft, no.
Now back to Fleischer and the witch hunt. The spokesman's latest whining
came as the Bush administration battled to stay centimeters ahead of the
Enron conflagration (an effort manifested by Bush's announcement of a
federal study of bankruptcies and pensions. Duh.)
And just moments later -- this is rich -- Fleischer himself had to correct
(he'd say "clarify") the record regarding administration contacts with
Enron.
On Wednesday, Fleischer said he was "not aware of anyone in the White
House" who discussed Enron's troubles with company executives. (That's to
separate company-specific contacts from Enron's six meetings over the last
year with the office of Vice President Dick Cheney about supposedly
strictly energy-biz stuff. The veep's staff finally disclosed those sessions to
Congress this week.)
Unless you take a narrow, quibbling (Nixonian? Clintonian?) view of what
constitutes "the White House," Ari's knowledge was severely limited about
administration contacts.
As it turns out, and as Fleischer disclosed Thursday, two Cabinet
secretaries -- Paul O'Neill at Treasury and Donald Evans at Commerce --
were telephoned last fall by Lay about the coming implosion.
Fleischer said Lay told O'Neill about Enron's impending bankruptcy and
"wanted the secretary to be aware so that the Long Term Capital
experience could be a guide."
What is Fleischer telling us? That Lay was looking for a bailout, such as
the one Long Term Capital Management got in the 1990s? The hedge fund
received a private-sector bailout organized by the Federal Reserve Bank of
New York.
At any rate, Fleischer said Evans and O'Neill agreed that "no action should
be taken" to intervene. At least they seem to have gotten that part right.
Fleischer said neither O'Neill nor Evans mentioned the Lay calls to Bush.
Only refracting that claim through what we've learned over the last quarter
century about "plausible deniability" does that seem at all, well, plausible.
It was very thoughtful of Lay to be in touch with the administration, and
possibly to be shopping for a bailout. But due diligence only goes so far. I
bet that a lot of Enron employees and shareholders would have liked a
similar ringy-dingy about Oct. 28 or Nov. 8 (the dates that Treasury
spokeswoman Michelle Davis said Lay called O'Neill).
But don't you have a teeny wonder about how many corporate chief
executives get through to the Treasury and Commerce secretaries to give
them a heads-up that their company is tanking?
The answer, of course, is almost any executive who, along with his fellow
officers and company PAC, had given millions of dollars to the right
political campaigns.
Robert Bennett, the Washington attorney representing Enron in the
criminal investigation, has urged that, "We should wait until the facts are
out."
That may be true in a narrow, legalistic sense -- such as whether any
Enron officials get to make extended visits to Leavenworth. But that does
not apply to making some clear, caustic judgments about what is already
known about this mess.
chron.com
Hines is a Houston Chronicle columnist based in Washington, D.C.
(cragg.hines@chron.com) |
