Security team leaves Enron to form firm
Group to continue working through consulting contract
By ALAN BERNSTEIN
Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle
Enron's top security team, including four former CIA officers and and ex-FBI agent, has left the company to form a private consulting firm.
An Enron spokesman said Tuesday the move is unrelated to allegations that executives hid financial problems from investors and that employees shredded documents after the company filed for bankruptcy.
The new firm, Secure Solutions International, will continue security work for Enron through a consulting contract, which enables it to work for other clients, spokesman Vance Meyer said.
He said that after Enron filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Dec. 2, the security officers were at risk of being laid off and suggested they form an independent firm with Enron as a client.
Enron expected a lot in exchange for political gifts
By JOE STEPHENS
Washington Post
WASHINGTON --
They called it "the matrix," a computer program that brought a scientific dimension to Enron's effort to seduce politicians and sway bureaucrats.
With each proposed change in federal regulations, lobbyists punched details into a computer, allowing Enron economists in Houston to calculate just how much a rule change would cost. If the final figure was too high, executives used it as the cue to stoke their vast influence machine, mobilizing lobbyists and dialing up politicians who had accepted some of Enron's millions in campaign contributions.
"It was a new thing to be able to quantify the regulatory risk," said economist Gia Maisashvili, who helped Enron develop the system. "We were the pioneers."
The matrix illustrates the brash, calculating methods that Enron managers used to play Washington politics. The company that made headlines by erasing rules and ignoring convention in the business world applied the same principles in Congress, state capitals and the administration, bragging that its shrewd political tactics blew past customary constraints.
Enron's lobbying techniques grew so aggressive that a key congressman -- Rep. Joe Barton, R-Ennis -- reportedly exploded in anger when the CEO Jeff Skilling pressed him on deregulation matters. They began, however, with a vigorous application of the most time-proven method: lavishing campaign money on politicians.
At Enron, it was understood that executives receiving astronomical salaries would turn part of the money back to the company's smooth political operation. Executives raised vast sums through tactics that some considered subtle coercion; the cash went to the campaigns of President Bush and a slew of Republican and Democratic lawmakers willing to help Enron bulldoze regulatory barriers.
In Washington, Enron relied on high technology while planning its attacks on Capitol Hill and executive agencies.
"I would tell (senior executives), "This is your exposure. You decide whether it is worth it to use the lobbying machinery,' " Maisashvili said.
But Enron's tenacious approach ultimately backfired with many key figures inside and outside corporate headquarters, according to interviews with more than two dozen former and current Enron executives and with Capitol Hill staffers. The rise and collapse of Enron's political machine parallels the arc of the corporation's financial fortunes.
Maisashvili blames Enron's political arrogance for his decision to leave the company last year.
"They could have cared less if that was a good thing (for the public) or not. They cared only if this was good for Enron," he said.
Sally Ison didn't realize the presidential race had begun until April 1999, when a letter arrived bearing the signature of Enron Corp. Chairman Ken Lay. The letter asked for contributions to the Bush campaign and included what she recalls as a menacing reference to her husband Jerry's compensation as a highly paid vice president.
"We didn't even know if we liked this guy," she said, referring to Bush. "I didn't know if I was going to vote Republican."
Yet there was no debate. Nearing 50, Jerry Ison felt vulnerable in Enron's crushingly competitive culture. The Isons gave $2,000.
More than 100 other Enron executives, and many spouses, also gave "hard money" contributions to Bush, much of it during the campaign's critical early money phase. Some acknowledged in interviews that they gave solely because they got Lay's pointed letter.
An Enron spokesman said there was nothing unethical in the solicitations. Fred Wertheimer, head of a nonpartisan watchdog group, Democracy 21, disagreed, saying such a pitch left workers and their spouses little choice.
"It is symbolic of the incredibly aggressive approach that Enron and Ken Lay took to playing the political money game -- and to building influence," Wertheimer said. "It is wrong. You are crossing the line from voluntary contributions to implicit coercion."
The contributions helped Lay fulfill his commitment as a Bush "Pioneer," the campaign's term for its rainmakers. Bush collected nearly $114,000 in individual and political action committee contributions from Enron in 1999-2000, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
At Enron, senior managers understood that "donations mean access," acknowledged one former Enron executive who contributed to Bush. Said another: "Everybody knows that's what you make contributions for."
Cheney met 6 times with Enron execs
Talks centered on Bush energy policy was focus of talks
By DAVID IVANOVICH
Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON --
Enron Corp. officials had six meetings with Vice President Dick Cheney and his aides over an eight-month period to discuss the nation's energy policy, Cheney's office revealed in a letter released Tuesday.
In an indication of just how much political influence Enron Chief Executive Ken Lay wielded at the Bush White House, Cheney attorney David Addington said his boss met with Lay for about half an hour April 17.
That was at a time when Cheney was busy crafting the administration's national energy strategy and California regulators were battling with Enron and other independent power producers over that state's electricity woes.
"They discussed energy policy matters, including the energy crisis in California, and did not discuss information concerning the financial position of the Enron Corporation," Addington wrote in a letter to Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., dated Jan. 3 and released by Waxman's office Tuesday.
The two met again in June when they were participating in an energy forum in Colorado, although that was not considered an official administration meeting.
Cheney staffers doing the legwork on the energy policy proposal met more frequently with Enron officials, in five meetings starting in February and continuing until Oct. 10. That last meeting was held just six days before Enron managers revealed that $1.2 billion worth of shareholder equity had been lost in off-balance-sheet transactions, a revelation that ultimately led to the company's bankruptcy filing.
When tied together, it is obviously insane to assume that such things could occur in America. I plead insanity.
www.stewwebb.com
Enron, investment espionage and the White House
It is yet to be determined if Congress or Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will publicly question CIA Director George Tenet or FBI Director Robert Mueller as to specifically confirm whether CIA and FBI employees were "loaned" to Enron's corporate espionage program, involved in personal pre 9/11 insider trading, or merely relaying sensitive insider political information to others involved in prior knowledge of the attacks.
Fraud-racked Enron has had at least 20 CIA agents on the payroll in the last eight years. But while the Houston Chronicle reported the operatives as “former” CIA, a February 26, 2002 National Enquirer story quoted a top Washington insider familiar with several secret investigations into Enron as reporting that they were active CIA—given “leaves of absence without pay and put on the Enron payroll.”
The source added that Enron’s CIA members used “info gleaned from a satellite project called ‘Echelon,’ which intercepted emails, phone calls and faxes with detailed business information,” adding that “pure and simple, [taxpayer-funded] U.S. intelligence agents were involved in corporate espionage.”
Another Enquirer source with ties to the CIA revealed that "the cozy deal between Enron and the CIA allowed the 'on-loan' undercover operatives to return to the Agency's payroll before Enron's collapse."
CIA links to the U.S. financial community traverse a curious variety of unexamined threads; and mega-money conglomerate Citigroup has allegedly been repeatedly charged with money laundering, while its board of directors includes John Deutch, former CIA Director, Robert Rubin, former Treasury Secretary and intimate friend of Enron’s Ken Lay, and former CIA Executive Director Nora Slatkin.
It's just so easy to buy the FOX News version of reality, isn't it?
The politicians are every bit as liable as Lay and Skilling for enabling everything that went down, all so they they could get a piece of the action.
RIP, you little Pioneer....
http://www.tpj.org/pioneers/kenneth_lay.html
