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January
17, 2002
Gideon
Levy
Bulldozing
Rafah
Uri Avnery
That
Weapons Shipment
January
16, 2002
John Chuckman
The
Angel and the Pretzel
Lawrence
McGuire
Subverting
the
Geneva Convention
Kathy
Kelly
An
Open Letter to
Richard Perle on Iraq
January
15, 2002
George
Monbiot
Greenpeace,
Lord Melchett
and the Business of Betrayal
Jack McCarthy
Follow
the Pretzel
William
Blum
Atta
and the Times:
Follow the Changing Story
Edward
Said
Emerging
Alternatives
in Palestine
January
14, 2002
David
Vest
Open
Bag. Eat Pretzels.
Patrick
Cockburn
Collapse
of Georgia
Ignored by the World
Mokhiber/Weissman
Enron's
Accountants:
When In Doubt, Shred It
January
13, 2002
C.G. Estabrook
Why
We Kill People
January
12, 2002
Cockburn/St.
Clair
Forbidden
Truths
January
11, 2002
Lee Balllinger/Dave
Marsh
Neil
Young's Duet with Ashcroft
January
10, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Bush,
Enron, UNOCAL
and the Taliban
St. Clair/Cockburn
Greenpeace
to Greenwash?
Hans von
Sponek
Iraq:
Is There an Alternative
to Military Action?
Jim Lobe
Israeli
Human Rights Group Assails Army
Marina Mayakova
Russia's
Top Military Astrologer Predicts More Attacks from OBL
January
9, 2002
David
Vest
The
Super-Burqa
and the Big Tent
ND Jayaprakash
Winnable
Nuclear War?
Rafiq
Kathwari
Kashmir
Will Make Ground Zero Look Like a Bonfire
January
8, 2002
Prudence
Crowther
Sting
Like a B-52
Nelson
Valdés
Al-Qaeda
at Guantanamo Bay
John Chuckman
Dark
Tales from the
Ministry of Truth
Richard
Corn-Revere
Do
We Fear Freedom?
Joan Hoff
The
Nixon You Haven't Heard
January
7, 2002
Lawrence
McGuire
Confusing
Economic Tales About Argentina
Wael Masri
They
Are Taking
Our Rights Away
Philip
Farruggio
Better
Medicine
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
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About 9/11
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Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
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Photos by Allan Sekula
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War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
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and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
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January
18, 2002
Enron at the White
House
A Wealth of Blindness
By Walt Brasch
The farther the Bush administration tries to distance
itself from Enron, the Houston-based energy trader now in bankruptcy,
the more apparent the ties become.
Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill and
Secretary of Commerce Don Evans admitted they talked with Enron
executives who had asked the federal government to keep the company
from filing the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. But, both
claim they didn't interfere to help Enron. At the same time,
neither sensed that investigations were called for.
Vice-President Dick Cheney admits he
or his representatives met with Enron officials six times during
the first half-year of the Bush presidency to help establish
the administration's energy policy. Cheney was CEO of the Halliburton
Co., the world's largest oil-drilling company which has five
of its six divisions in Houston. But, of course, the vice-president-in-hiding
says he did nothing wrong.
Administration officials have claimed
that with its war on terrorism they have had more important responsibilities
than to worry about Enron and its fall-out. The Administration's
spin is a ludicrous display of arrogant insensitivity to the
multi- faceted requirements of the Presidency. Certainly, the
war against Afghanistan doesn't come even close to the overwhelming
responsibilities that consumed other war-time presidents who
didn't ignore the domestic agenda.
O'Neill, in fact, icily told the media,
"Companies come and go . . . That's part of capitalism."
He claimed it's not the federal government's responsibility to
protect the people. The failure to protect the people during
the fall of Enron last year is probably based upon the close
ties between Enron and the Bush administration that go deep and
wide, and begin more than a decade earlier.
James Baker, secretary of state under
President George H. W. Bush, and Robert Mosbacher, the President's
secretary of commerce, were hired by Enron after Bush left office
in 1993. Mosbacher, who lived most of his life in Houston, earned
his first millions in gas and oil exploration.
Harvey Pitt, chair of the Securities
and Exchange Commission (SEC), was once an attorney with Arthur
Andersen, the not-so- independent audit company that admitted
it shredded or deleted thousands of Enron documents. Lawrence
Lindsey, the President's economic advisor, was an Enron consultant.
Former Sen. Spencer Abraham, now the President's secretary of
energy, had received Enron campaign contributions. Karl Rove,
a Bush senior advisor, sold more than $100,000 in Enron stock
in late Spring. Robert Zoellich, U.S. trade representative, was
once on Enron's advisory council. Ed Gillespie, one of Bush's
campaign advisors, is now an Enron lobbyist. Marc Racicot, Bush's
choice to chair the Republican National Committee, is an attorney
for a firm that lobbies on behalf of Enron. Racicot was also
Bush's chief spokesman during the Florida recount.
Attorney General John Ashcroft, in a
failed attempt at re- election in 2000 as U.S. senator from Missouri,
received $57,499 in Enron donations. The recent disclosure forced
Ashcroft and his chief of staff to step down from participating
in investigations of what was once the nation's seventh largest
company. The Justice Department investigation is now under the
direction of Larry Thompson, a Bush-appointed deputy attorney
general, and former partner in a law firm that represents Enron.
The entire office of the U.S. Attorney in Houston has had to
remove themselves from becoming involved in any investigation
since most of its prosecutors have ties to Enron.
Texas Attorney General John Cornyn, a
Houston native whose term began during the last two years of
the Bush governorship, has also had to recuse himself from investigations
since he accepted $158,000 in Enron money since 1997.
President Bush says he "never discussed
with Mr. Lay the financial problems of the company," and
that he last saw Lay at a charity fund raiser in May in Houston.
Lay is Kenneth Lay, Enron CEO who earned more than $42 million
in salary and benefits in 1999, and reaped about $205 million
in stock-option profits during the past four years. He and several
dozen executives made millions while Enron was collapsing; more
than 11,000 workers lost most of their life savings and retirement
plans.
Less than three weeks after the Texas
charity fund-raiser, "Lay joined Bush in Washington DC for
a Republican [political] fund-raiser that topped all previous
records by bringing in a staggering $21.3 million," the
largest one-night fund-raiser in political history, according
to a July 2000 special report published by the non-profit Transnational
Resource and Action Center.
It makes little difference when Bush
last talked with Lay.
Enron contributed about $550,000 to Bush's
gubernatorial and presidential campaigns. The contributions make
Enron Bush's largest contributor, according to the Center for
Public Integrity. Enron also contributed almost $2 million in
soft money, $1.5 million to Republican candidates, but also spread
about one-fourth of it to Democrats.
Enron and other major polluters have
benefited from what CorpWatch calls "sweeping protections
[signed by Gov. Bush] to polluters who perform internal [but
secret] environmental or safety audits." In 1999, Gov. Bush
signed an extension of the state's Clean Air Responsibility Act
of 1971 which allowed Enron and other polluters to be "grandfathered"
into not having to meet stronger environmental protection laws.
CorpWatch notes that had Bush not signed the extension of the
"grandfather" clause, Enron's Houston plant would have
been allowed to release only 250 tons of nitrogen oxide into
the air instead of the 3,500 tons it annually released. Houston,
mostly because of lax pollution laws, is the nation's most polluted
city.
With Gov. Bush's complicity, Enron had
also led the fight for Texas to deregulate electricity. It was
Texas companies which also raked in excessive profits by selling
energy at outrageous prices to California during that state's
recent crisis. Deregulation was also one of the reasons why the
value of Enron stock was able to rise so quickly--then plummet
when the company couldn't sustain itself from its own shell-games
lies.
The Bush administration still has not
yet released e-mail and contacts with Enron.
In a prophetic statement more than a
year before Bush's election as president, Andrew Whent of the
consumer watchdog group, Texans for Public Justice, stated "A
Bush election fueled by Enron dollars could fill the White House
with dangerous levels of Enron gas, and consumers will be burned."
Enron donations allowed it to infiltrate
every part of the government which has a responsibility to oversee
and regulate energy companies and to protect the people from
malfeasance. Those donations, which essentially put the government
on Enron's retainer, assured at best a blindness, at worst a
criminal cover- up.
"We're all tainted by the Enron
contributions," says Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), one of
the nation's leaders for campaign finance reform and integrity
in government. It's time to begin to enact campaign finance reform
to guarantee that the nation's legislators and regulators will
be responsible to the people rather than to special interests.
Assisting was Rosemary R. Brasch. Walt Brasch,
a university professor of journalism, is a former award-winning
newspaper reporter and editor. His latest book is The
Joy of Sax: America During the Bill Clinton Administration.
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