Enron's secrets are safe
San Francisco Chronicle
Ruth Rosen
Monday, January 28, 2002
IN THE INTEREST of full disclosure, I
must confess that I once met Ken Lay,
but all he gave me was a big headache.
At the height of the energy crisis, he
addressed The Chronicle editorial board
where he explained, with a smug smile,
why California deserved its precipitous
decline.
Much of what he said about the sale of
energy went over my head. Now I know
why. I only launder clothes, not money.
So I quietly passed the time fantasizing
about what kind of comeuppance he
deserved.
That said, I'd like to point out that the
ultimate scandal is that no one will ever
fully grasp the extent of Enron's
corrupting influence over government
officials and policies.
First, employees at Arthur Andersen
destroyed crucial accounting records.
Then, although congressional
investigations had begun, Enron
employees shredded even more
documents.
The Bush administration, moreover,
clearly intends to distance itself from the
Enron scandal. Vice President Dick
Cheney, for example, still won't reveal
who attended his secret energy policy
task force meetings.
The corruption is widespread. While
building its financial empire, Enron
showered campaign contributions on
hundreds of elected officials, Democrat
and Republican alike. Critics who now
regard our government as a wholly
owned subsidiary of Enron aren't
completely daft. Nor are they wrong to
doubt Congress' political will to do little
more than grandstand and march Enron
and Andersen executives in and out of
committee hearings.
So is the Rise and Fall of the Enron
Empire likely to remain a secret? Quite
probably. In the name of national
security, the Bush administration has
stripped us of our right to scrutinize the
public records that could unravel this
sordid story.
First, the administration scuttled the
Freedom of Information Act. On Oct. 12,
Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a
memo to all federal agencies urging
them to resist new FOIA requests. When
investigative journalists and watchdog
groups request public records that might
implicate government officials, they may
discover that their applications are
indefinitely stonewalled.
Then the administration tried to overturn
The Presidential Records Act, which
allows public access to all presidential
papers. On Nov. 1, 2001, President Bush
issued an executive order that gave
himself the power to seal all presidential
records since 1980. Although historians
and journalists are fighting Bush's order
in federal court, it may take years before
the judiciary strikes down this executive
violation of congressional legislation.
Ever since the Watergate scandal, the
Freedom of Information and Presidential
Records acts have allowed us to hold our
government accountable. Even though
classified documents are never released
to the public, the Bush administration is
now using the war on terrorism as a
pretext for preventing disclosure of all
public records.
Fast forward to the year 2025, when
historians and journalists will still be
struggling to document and analyze the
Enron scandal. Even now, we know that
they will have to rely on whatever
documents have survived shredding or
will have escaped the clutches of the
Bush administration.
Enron's secrets are safe. Future
researchers will never gain access to the
whole truth. And neither will we.
Ruth Rosen is a Chronicle editorial writer. |
