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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sylvester80 who wrote (5056)	8/22/2002 1:26:21 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Slow Pace of Enron Probe Yields First Results. 8/22/02 The Daily Enron thedailyenron.com When the Justice Department decided to get tough on domestic terrorists Attorney General Ashcroft warned suspects that he would not wait to build a terrorism case against them. The DOJ, he said, would be proactive, not reactive. "If you so much as spit on the sidewalk we will arrest you...," Ashcroft warned. Since Ashcroft announced his get-tough-on-terrorists policy the authorities have arrested and detained hundreds of suspects on various charges other than terrorism. But, apparently the standard is different for corporate evildoers. While by anyone's figuring the damage suffered by the US economy because of corporate shenanigans has been in the hundreds of billions of dollars, only 19 executives have been charged so far. As of today, only one mid-level executive from the company that started it all, Enron, will plead guilty. That executive is Michael Kopper, 37, who served as the executive assistant of Enron's CFO, "special purpose entity" wizard Andrew Fastow. Under the plea deal Kopper will plead guilty to conspiracy to launder money and forfeit the $12 million he raked in for his part in the deals. Not to be left out, the Securities and Exchange Commission said yesterday it too would now file a complaint against Kopper charging him with securities fraud. Meanwhile, Enron's Three Amigos, Kenneth Lay, Jeffery Skilling and Andrew Fastow, remain free and uncharged - much to the consternation of Enron shareholders and creditors who worry that the three maintain full control over the assets they acquired from Enron. "These are individuals who have already shown both the talent and inclination for hiding assets offshore," said one creditor source. "With hundreds of millions of dollars in claims stacking up and the feds breathing down their necks you would have to be a fool not to believe that they are using this window of opportunity to shelter or hide as much of their ill-gotten gains as they can before someone freezes or seizes them." But, rather than apply the kind of "out of the box" aggressive actions the DOJ justifies for terrorist suspects, its corporate crime investigations have stuck to traditional white-collar crime investigation methods that take months, even years to yield single indictments. Not that they can't move faster when they want to. When the DOJ decided it needed to arrest some corporate scofflaw - any corporate scofflaw - to show it was on the job it promptly indicted former Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski - not for what he may have done wrong at Tyco, but for using high-priced art work to evade taxes. It will take months to unravel Tyco's inner workings but, in the meantime, Kozlowski - and his assets - will be tied up in court on the tax charges. The theory goes like this: if a person is suspected of committing massive financial frauds logic tells you that they probably also could not resist easier to prove petty crimes - the financial equivalent of "spitting on the sidewalk." So, hit them there first, put them and their assets on ice and then you take all the time you need to figure out and prove how they pulled off the big capers. The Kozlowski case proves they can do it when they want to. So, why don't they "want to" in the Enron case? Does anyone out there want to bet real money against the idea that Lay, Skilling and Fastow didn't fib on their taxes or lie in a business communication using a telephone (wire fraud) or the US Mail (mail fraud)? If so, step right up. I'll take your money ------------------------------------------------------ Quote of the Day "To Wall Street, I say, look beyond the latest quarter. Punish those who rely on deception, rather than the practice of openness and transparency…. Today, American markets enjoy the confidence of the world. How many half-truths, and how much accounting sleight-of-hand, will it take to tarnish that faith?" -SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt, Sept. 28, 1998

To: sylvester80 who wrote (5056)	8/22/2002 6:20:28 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

U.S. walking Saudi-Israel tightrope BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST August 22, 2002 Two weeks after the revelation of the extraordinary briefing on Saudi Arabia to the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, the Saudi government is still upset. It in no way is satisfied with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's disavowal of responsibility for the bizarre incident. The Saudis see a Bush administration sharply divided about them, as with much else in Middle Eastern policy. Senior Saudi officials had hoped that Rumsfeld would unequivocally reject and apologize for the briefing by Rand Corporation analyst Laurent Murawiec, which described longtime ally Saudi Arabia as a terrorist nation that is ''the kernel of evil'' and the United States' ''most dangerous opponent'' in the Middle East. Instead, Rumsfeld separated himself from the affair, characteristically indicating what bothered him most was that contents of the briefing were leaked. Few accounts of the incident paid much attention to the centrality of former Assistant Defense Secretary Richard Perle, the Rumsfeld-appointed policy board chairman and a staunch friend of Israel. Perle's arrangement of the briefing is seen in Washington and Riyadh as part of a campaign to recast longstanding U.S. policies with strong, though certainly not unanimous, support in the White House and the Defense Department. Ever since the Sept. 11 attacks, conservative journalists and politicians have pounded on Saudi customs and mores that had not seriously disturbed a relationship between the two dissimilar countries over the last 60 years. Beneath that buzz was a proposed new strategic concept: forcible removal of Iraq's Saddam Hussein, which in turn would undermine the Saudi regime--the domino theory in reverse. The proposed American imperium would produce a democratic Middle East, safe for Israel. As a step toward this grand design, Murawiec's briefing of July 10 lacked Perle's usual sophistication. Murawiec, a French national who was for many years associated with the extremist Lyndon LaRouche's organization, is no Middle Eastern specialist and has never visited Iraq. Yet, his identification of Saudi Arabia as the leading terrorist state drew criticism from only one policy board member, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The private briefing became public Aug. 6 in the Washington Post. The briefing's intent became clear with the comment by former U.S. disarmament chief Kenneth Adelman, a member of the policy board who was not present July 10. ''I think it is a mistake to consider Saudi Arabia a friendly country,'' said Adelman, who is on close terms with both Rumsfeld and Perle. Indeed, there are high-level Saudis who do not want to be friendly to the United States. The Murawiec briefing helped not only Perle and fellow American conservatives but also anti-American elements in Saudi Arabia, whose popularity is growing. After the briefing, the mass circulation publication Okaz described the Pentagon as filled with ''either Jews or allies of the Zionist lobby.'' Saudi officials then reiterated refusal to permit the Kingdom's use for an attack on Iraq. Israeli-Palestinian violence has undermined old U.S.-Saudi ties. Ghazi Algosaibi, Saudi ambassador to Britain, raised an international uproar last April when he released a poem praising a female Palestinian suicide bomber. Adel al-Jubeir, Saudi foreign policy adviser, was in Washington last week denying allegations that he represents a terrorist nation as alleged in a $116 trillion damage suit filed by families of Sept. 11 victims. ''The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia absolutely does not fund terrorism,'' he said on CNN. ''We have done everything we can in this war on terrorism.'' Al-Jubeir specifically denied Saudi funding of Hamas suicide bombings against Israel. ''We have done everything we can to try to clamp down on any money going to any evildoer, including Hamas,'' he said. Israeli accusations of Saudi complicity in suicide bombings have been spread through Washington, but they are not substantiated by U.S. intelligence. A succession of American presidents, dating back to Harry Truman, have balanced support for the state of Israel with friendship for Arab nations headed by oil-producing Saudi Arabia. George W. Bush faces a choice of whether he wants to continue that policy or venture down the road charted by Perle. suntimes.com