"Good evening. We begin tonight with a CBS News exclusive. You are about to hear the shocking words of Enron employees as the company was boldly ripping off the state of California and consumers high and low, manipulating gas, oil and electricity markets. Market manipulation in this country and elsewhere is at the heart of criminal charges still pending against former Enron executives, the first of whom go on trial next week in Houston. CBS News investigative correspondent Vince Gonzales obtained the audiotapes the U.S. government had kept under wraps hoping, along with Enron, that you would never hear them."
Audio clip of employee #1 [Text on screen, with ---- and parts of words bleeped, over video of electricity meter]: "He just f----- California. He steals money from California to the tune of about a million."
Audio clip of employee #2 in the recorded phone call: "Will you rephrase that?"
Employee #1: "Okay, he, arbitrages the California market to the tune of a million bucks or two a day."
Gonzales: "The tapes, from Enron's West Coast trading desk, also confirm what CBS News reported years ago. In secret deals with power producers, traders deliberately drove up prices by ordering power plants to shut down."
Audio clip of employee #3 [Text over picture of power plant]: "If you took down the steamer, how long would it take to get it back up?"
Audio clip of employee #4: "Oh, it's not something you want to be just be turning on and off every hour. Let's put it that way."
Employee #3: "Well, why don't you just go ahead and shut her down?"
Gonzales: "Officials with us in Snohomish public utility district near Seattle received the tapes from the Justice Department."
Eric Christensen, Snohomish County Public Utility District: "These tapes prove beyond a doubt that Enron was engaged in a massive criminal conspiracy to defraud the rate payers of the entire West Coast."
Gonzales: "That utility, like many others, is trying to get its money back from Enron."
Audio clip of employee #5 [Over picture of power lines]: "They're f------ takin' all the money back from you guys? All the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?"
Audio clip of employee #6: "Yeah, grandma Millie, man."
Employee #5: "Yeah, now she wants her f------ money back for all the power you've charged right up, jammed right up her ass for f------ $250 a megawatt hour."
Gonzales: "And the tapes appear to link top Enron official Jeffrey Skilling and Ken Lay to schemes that fueled the crisis."
Audio clip of unidentified female “executive”: "Government affairs has to prove how valuable it is to Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling."
Audio clip of employee #8: "Okay."
Same unidentified female executive: "Do you know when you started over-scheduling load and making buckets of money on that?"
Gonzales, over video of balloons dropping on George and Laura Bush at the 2000 Republican convention: "Before the 2000 election, Enron employees pondered the possibilities of a Bush win."
Audio clip of employee #9: "It'd be great. I'd love to see Ken Lay be Secretary of Energy."
Gonzales: "That didn't happen. But they were sure President Bush would fight any limits on sky-high energy prices."
Employee #9, with “Enron Phone Recordings, CBS News Exclusive” on screen and text of audio over a shot of Bush on a dais: "When this election comes, Bush'll f------ whack this s---, man. He won't f------ play this price-cap bull----."
Gonzales: "Crude, but true."
George W. Bush in a speech, May 29, 2001: "We will not take any action that makes California's problems worse. And that's why I oppose price caps."
Gonzales concluded: "Both the Justice Department and Enron tried to prevent the release of these tapes. |
