Waxman’s Enron Attack
Why does Henry Waxman get so much attention?
January 14, 2002 12:20 p.m.
t's not hard to imagine a scene like this, late last week in the office of California Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman:
"Turns out Lay called O'Neill and Evans in late October when Enron was going down," a staffer says. "Then Whalley called Fisher a bunch of times, clearly wanting help. We've got a statement ready to go hitting the White House for granting special favors to a big campaign contributor. We'll quote the congressman saying it's 'deeply troubling.'"
"Yeah, but the problem is, it looks like nobody did anything," another staffer says. "Treasury and Commerce didn't make the calls Enron wanted them to."
"So what do we do?" asks the first staffer. "You want to hold the press release?"
"How about this," says Waxman. "We issue a statement denouncing them for standing by and doing nothing. As a matter of fact, that's deeply troubling, too, don't you think?"
"Deeply!" say the staffers.
To many Republicans and Democrats, Henry Waxman's strategy of blaming the Bush administration if it intervened on Enron's behalf and blaming the administration if it didn't intervene might seem audacious. But so far, it's getting lots of press. A search of the Nexis database finds 232 news stories in the last week that mention Waxman and Enron — compared to 94 stories that mention Senate Governmental Affairs committee chairman Joseph Lieberman, and 61 that mention Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
The impressive thing about those numbers is that Lieberman and Levin, Democrats in the Democratically controlled Senate, actually have the power to investigate Enron and the Bush administration. Over the weekend, in fact, Levin sent 51 subpoenas to Enron and the accounting firm Arthur Andersen. On the other hand, Waxman, a Democrat in the Republican-controlled House, has no power at all. As the ranking minority member, he can't begin a committee investigation and can't issue a single subpoena. Instead, Waxman has simply written a series of letters to major players in the story, demanding information. At the same time, he has given the letters to the press and posted them on his website — and, in no time at all, Waxman's words began showing up in press reports.
Why is he receiving so much attention? First, says one GOP congressional source, "he's willing to make the allegations that others aren't." Given the lack of evidence suggesting any Bush White House special treatment of Enron, other members of Congress, in more responsible positions, have not been willing to climb out onto a limb and allege wrongdoing. Secondly, say Republicans, Waxman has always enjoyed good relations with a number of important media figures. "He has a lot of friends, and I mean personal friends, in television, in Hollywood, and on the editorial boards of some of the major papers," says the GOP source. "He's able to reach out in a way that other members of Congress, Democrat or Republican, are not."
One indicator of Waxman's influence is that he has been able to command attention in the Enron story without attracting scrutiny of his actions in the recent past, when he actively blocked investigations of the Clinton campaign finance scandal. "He spent eight years saying Republicans were on a partisan witch hunt when there were serious allegations of wrongdoing on the part of government officials, when you had the Justice Department conducting the largest investigation in its history prior to September 11, when you had special counsels being urged by the FBI director and by two of the prosecutors who were appointed to head the campaign finance task force," says the GOP source. "Yet to this day Henry Waxman will say it was all a figment of [committee chairman] Dan Burton's imagination."
Especially rankling to Republicans was Waxman's behavior in the matter of Johnny Chung, the White House booster who was later found to have funneled money from the Chinese government into Democratic campaign coffers. According to Chung, when Burton was working to have Chung testify before the committee, Waxman's staff actually sent Chung a package of materials that included information on how to plead the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying. "My attorney's office received the package," Chung told Fox News in August 1999. "It say how you can plea — how you can take a Fifth in the United States Congress." When asked who sent him the package, Chung answered, "Government Reform Committee, Democrat side." (Waxman's aides denied the allegation.)
Now Henry Waxman is taking a leading role in demanding information from administration officials about Enron. His statements stand in marked contrast to those of some of the Democrats who have the real authority to investigate the matter. For example, on ABC Sunday, Carl Levin said repeatedly that his investigation is targeting not the White House but Enron, where there appears to be significant evidence of massive fraud. "What we're focusing on...are the deceptive practices of Enron, and the failure of the auditors, Arthur Andersen, to try to block those deceptive practices," Levin said. When pressed to tie it all to the Bush White House, Levin said, "But it's the actions of Enron, the improprieties, the false statements....That is the major concern of my subcommittee."
In public at least, Levin was judicious, balanced, and determined to get to the bottom of the Enron story. Perhaps soon the press will pay more attention to him than to Henry Waxman. |
