Bush to Lay: What Was Your Name Again?
January 15, 2002
Los Angeles Times
By Robert Scheer:
If you believe President Bush, Kenneth Lay--one of
his top financial backers and his "good friend"--was
merely an equal-opportunity corrupter of our
political system, buying off Democrats and
Republicans as needed. It is a convenient claim
designed to unlink Bush from the biggest
bankruptcy in U.S. history.
But, as the good ol' boys in Texas--and now Bush
spokesman Ari Fleisher--like to say, "That dog
won't hunt."
On Friday, Bush attempted to distance himself from
the Enron scandal by stating that CEO Lay "was a
supporter of Ann Richards in my run in 1994,"
obscuring the fact that Lay gave Bush three times as
much money as he did the Democratic
gubernatorial incumbent whom Bush was trying to
unseat. Bush added that he really did not get to
"know" Lay--the man he nicknamed "Kenny
Boy"--until after he won the governor's race. I can't
speak to the varying levels of intimacy of their
relationship, but Bush had considerable contact
with Lay two years earlier when the Enron leader
served as the chair of the host committee for the
1992 Republican convention in Houston, where
Bush the senior was nominated for his second term as president.
At that time, Investor's Daily reported that "recently, Lay has turned Enron into
a corporate bastion for the GOP." After the elder Bush's defeat, the Bush
family switched its political ambitions to George W.'s prospects for governor,
and Lay came up with the first of many contributions to that effort.
Lay's loyal support of the Bushes may have been gratitude for the decisive role
that the first Bush administration played in Enron's meteoric rise. Building on the
Republican-engineered deregulation of the electricity industry that began in the
1980s, Enron got a huge boost during the first Bush administration with
passage of the 1992 Energy Act, which forced utility companies to carry
Enron's electricity on their wires.
In fact, Lay publicly thanked Bush with a column in the Dallas Morning News a
week before the 1992 election. Calling Bush "the energy president," Lay wrote
that "just six months after George Bush became president, he directed Energy
Secretary James Watkins to lead the development of a new energy strategy."
That resulted in the legislation making Enron's exponential growth possible.
Lay was effusive in expressing his gratitude, writing that the Bush "strategy is
the most ambitious and sweeping energy plan ever proposed."
That gift to Enron was coupled with a major exemption granted by Wendy
Gramm, then chair of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission in the
Bush administration, an exemption that permitted Enron to begin lucratively
trading energy derivatives. Gramm then joined the board of directors of Enron
and served on its auditors committee, where much of the false reporting now
being exposed seems to be centered. Her powerful role in the company did not
stop her husband, Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas), from pushing through legislation
that further weakened government oversight of Enron's activities.
After Bush the elder's defeat in 1992, the ties between Enron and the Bush
camp grew even stronger. In March 1993, Enron hired Bush's Commerce
secretary, Robert A. Mosbacher, and his secretary of State, James A. Baker
III, to line up contracts for Enron around the world. As Enron's representative,
Baker--later George W.'s Florida election strategist--even went on a trip
accompanying the ex-president to Kuwait to do big business in the nation Bush
had fought the Gulf War to save.
The trip was criticized by Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, who said that he had
turned down millions in proffered deals to do business in Kuwait after the war.
"I represent 540,000 American men and women, not some private company,"
said Schwarzkopf. "They were willing to die in Kuwait. Why should I profit
from their sacrifice?"
A decade later, the new Bush administration turned immediately to Lay to get
his bearings on an energy policy. Lay met with Vice President Dick Cheney's
energy group six times. This was no surprise, given the close ties between Lay
and Bush during the latter's days as Texas governor. Consider, for example,
that as governor, Bush did not hesitate to call then-Pennsylvania Gov. Tom
Ridge and assure him that Lay--then eager to deregulate Pennsylvania's
electricity market--was the finest of men, representing the most worthy of
companies.
Keeping true to family traditions, the president has always aggressively
supported far-reaching deregulation of utilities--it is, in fact, his political
mantra--and Enron appears to be the biggest benefactor of that philosophy.
Whether the contacts between them were actually illegal and not merely an
egregious betrayal of Enron's employees, shareholders and consumers, it
remains for the eight investigations planned or underway to reveal what Bush
and White House insiders knew, and when they knew it.
latimes.com. |
