President G.W. Bush and Enron.

Will Bush be tarnished by Enron's collapse?
The crash of his top corporate backer should discredit the 
president's anti-regulation economic policies, but it's unlikely to 
lead to reform.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Andrew Leonard


Nov. 30, 2001 | When President Bush surveys the wreckage that 
currently goes by the name of Enron, he must feel something akin to 
the discomfort of a lover looking to get out of a relationship 
suddenly gone sour. Has a president of the United States and a single 
corporation ever been locked in a tighter embrace than Bush and 
Enron? 

As anyone who has glanced at the business pages this week is aware, 
Enron, once the darling of Wall Street, is now a synonym for 
corporate catastrophe. The SEC is investigating a series of private 
partnerships set up by Enron executives that allowed the company to 
keep at least half a billion dollars worth of debt off its books. In 
the past two months, the company has fired its CFO, treasurer and top 
lawyer, and is facing a flood of class action suits from both 
investors and employees. And after the failure of its last-gasp 
merger attempt with competitor Dynegy, Enron is now frantically 
struggling to set up a bankruptcy plan that will allow it to keep 
some semblance of its operations intact. Its stock, which traded at 
$85 a year ago, is now at 26 cents. 

So what does any of that have to do with Bush? Well, it's not just 
that the Houston-based energy trader has been the primary bankroller 
of Bush's political aspirations, back to his first run for Texas 
governor. The current Bush administration is also studded with Enron 
connections. Secretary of the Army Thomas White is a former high-
ranking Enron executive, and Robert Zoellick, the U.S. Trade 
representative, was a paid member of Enron's advisory board. The 
Washington consulting firm run by Lawrence Lindsey, the White House's 
top economic advisor, worked for Enron. And other top officials, 
including Karl Rove, Bush's chief political strategist and I. Lewis 
Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, both owned huge 
chunks of Enron stock when they joined the Bush administration. It's 
also worth remembering that at the end of the first Bush 
administration, Enron hired chief of staff James Baker and Commerce 
Secretary Robert Mosbacher. 

Current CEO Ken Lay was also widely rumored to be a possible pick as 
either Bush's treasury secretary or energy czar, although in 
retrospect, given the huge profits Enron was raking in during the 
California energy crisis just as Bush took office, such an 
appointment might have been politically problematic. 

Given all those links, it's fair to think Enron's collapse, at the 
very least, raises questions about the Bush administration's energy 
and economic policies, given that much of the administration shares 
Ken Lay's oft-stated views on promoting deregulation and allowing 
markets to rage unchecked by any government meddling. 

But some Bush critics are going one step further, succumbing all too 
easily to the proposition that Bush is somehow culpable for Enron's 
misdeeds, or at least a co-conspirator. The argument appears to be 
this: If, as it seems increasingly clear, Enron's executives are 
guilty of cooking their books, defrauding investors and ruining the 
lives of thousands of their employees, shouldn't Bush come in for 
criticism too, given his close ties to the company? And isn't it even 
possible some administration figures, past or present, might be 
involved in Enron's misdeeds? Some are even whispering "Teapot Dome" -
- as if the current situation were analogous to the Warren G. Harding 
administration scandal in which Secretary of the Interior Albert B. 
Fall leased oil reserves to private companies in return for 
kickbacks. 

It's too soon to say, of course, whether any smoking gun linking the 
Bush administration to Enron's woes or Enron's previous actions will 
ultimately emerge. Given the scope of the company's meltdown, 
anything seems possible -- though it is worth noting that the 
irregularities being investigated by the SEC in Enron's financial 
filings mostly occurred on Clinton's watch, not Bush's. But in any 
case, to look for Bush culpability is to miss the true significance 
of Enron's catastrophic implosion. 

The list of guilty parties in the Enron debacle is not limited to 
Enron executives or Bush administration officials. It includes the 
fawning business press that lauded Enron as the most "innovative" 
company in America, the Wall Street analysts who shrugged off Enron's 
incomprehensible financial statements, and Arthur Andersen, the 
accountancy that signed off on those same statements. 

But Enron's roller coaster ride is not as astounding as everyone 
would like to believe. It is, instead, exactly the way capitalism 
works when government is asleep at the wheel and greed is allowed -- 
nay, encouraged -- to be the primary operator in the marketplace. 

Forget about the Teapot Dome. This is more like the South Sea Bubble 
of the early 18th century, when the failure of the South Sea Trading 
Company to make good on its promises of huge profits from New World 
trading led to the ruination of thousands of investors. As a result, 
unincorporated joint stock corporations were forbidden -- a reform 
that was the legacy of a company whose "negligence, profusion and 
malversation," in the words of Adam "invisible hand" Smith, resound 
down through history as a case study in what governments should not 
allow companies to get away with. 

Will energy trader Enron spark a legacy like its slave-trader 
forbear, and usher in new regulations? Don't hold your breath. 
Instead, just watch as Enron's failure is placed at the doors of 
specific Enron officials, while everyone else scurries around noting 
how "unprecedented" and "unparalleled" the meltdown is. Try to keep 
your patience as years and years of legal wrangling attempt to sort 
out the bankruptcy mess and class action accusations that will keep 
Enron's name in the papers long after the company itself stops 
functioning. 

But come on. What could possibly be more business as usual than high-
ranking executives cashing out at the top of the market, as Lay did, 
while employees are left holding the bag? What could possibly be more 
standard practice than jiggering the books to make your numbers look 
good every quarter? What could possibly be more ordinary than 
accountants, analysts and investors ignoring what they can't 
understand, as long as the profits accumulate? 

It would seem fair that the Bush administration pay some sort of 
political price for Enron's woes, given its close ties to the 
company. And this would no doubt be a bigger headache for Bush if 
there wasn't the convenient distraction of a war on terrorism right 
now. After all, it's just a tad embarrassing when one of your closest 
allies turns out to be a house of cards operated by wheeler-dealers 
whose rise and fall will be a staple of economic textbooks and 
business school seminars for at least the rest of this century, if 
not the millennium. 

Even if it turns out Ken Lay wasn't primarily responsible for, or 
even aware of, the shenanigans being conducted by his once-anointed 
successor Jeffrey Skilling and his cadre of cutthroat traders, it 
still doesn't say much for Bush's judgment that his reputed No. 1 
pick for treasury secretary is now a figure who, at best, let the 
company fall apart on his watch, and at worst bears some 
responsibility for its legal and economic woes. 

But it's still probably too much to hope that as a result of Enron's 
collapse, other companies will come in for closer scrutiny or 
regulation, or that any systemic changes will result to prevent the 
future fleecing of the many for the profit of the few. And you don't 
have to look for any conspiracy between Bush and his energy buddies 
to prove that. Enron and Bush are business as usual in the 21st 
century. You'd think that we might have learned something in the 
centuries since the South Sea Bubble, but in fact, we actually appear 
to be headed backwards. 
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About the writer
Andrew Leonard is a senior editor at Salon.com and author of Salon's 
Free Software Project, an online book-in-progress exploring the 
history and culture of the free software movement. 

*****

The ENRON Black Magic - Part One
By Sherman H. Skolnick
skolnick@ameritech.net
http://www.skolnicksreport.com
 
12-2-1

In the often evil world of oil and natural gas, and other energy, 
they became the seventh largest of the Fortune 500. What has happened 
to put them as the largest of the No Fortune 100? How did they 
become, so far, the biggest loser? 
  
  
The real operators of Enron Corporation are, to some, great 
sorcerers. They have waved their magic wand, and turned paper 
promises into black gold and vice versa. Sort of latter day 
alchemists. Later in this series we will explore the role of Dick 
Cheney and George W. Bush. Now just look at some of the other names. 
  
  
A Director of Enron has been Wendy Gramm, wife of U.S. Senator Phil 
Gramm [R., Texas]. A former Professor, supposedly adept in economics 
and banking, Senator Gramm has been the Chairman of the Senate 
Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, and member of the 
Budget and the Finance Committees. He has blocked laws against money 
laundering. Convenient to the Enron mess, he decided ahead of time 
not to run for re-election. 
  
  
For some twelve years during the Reagan/Daddy Bush Administrations, 
Wendy was Chairperson of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. As 
a highly corrupt federal regulatory agency, CFTC wields great power 
and influence over markets, often little understood by common 
Americans. 
  
  
Spreading out in the 1980s worldwide was the Bank of Credit and 
Commerce International, BCCI. Some called them, with their hundreds 
of branches round the world, the Bank of Crooks and Criminals 
International. They were actually a huge money laundry for political 
assassination and dirty tricks funding, as well as espionage 
proprietaries, for the American CIA, British MI-6, French CIA, and 
The Mossad of Israel. 
  
  
BCCI had or were planning some five branches in the U.S. For their 
U.S. agenda, they needed to put the arm on the U.S. government. 
Elsewhere in the world, BCCI had already honed the real world 
specialty of buying and bribing public officials. 
  
  
BCCI as a foreign entity not only dealt in secret transactions in 
banking but were a highly mostly covert player on the world markets, 
particularly the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the Chicago Board of 
Trade, and on markets such as LIFFE in London. Through six La Salle 
Street brokers, BCCI bribed and blackmailed its way into the U.S. 
House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. Key law-makers were 
invited to come to Chicago, all expenses paid, to supposedly give a 
speech for the CME, or "Merc" as some call it, and the CBOT. While in 
the Windy City, the law-makers were informed that their hosts, the 
market honchos, were opening "courtesy" accounts for them. And, that 
they would be informed of the good results that developed. In some 
instances, the so-called "courtesy" account was not told to the 
Representatives and Senators, but was set up in their name anyway as 
a blackmail device on the date of their Chicago visit. 
  
  
Through a hocus-pocus series of transactions, the Chicago accounts 
showed a supposed loss while the London acounts showed a huge profit. 
In the lingo of the markets, it was called a "straddle". The Senators 
and Congressmen themselves, or most often their known agents, from 
time to time personally picked up the huge profits in London. On 
other occasions, someone identifying themselves with credentials as 
their known agents, likewise picked up the heavy profits from 
the "courtesy" accounts, in the British money center. It was either a 
direct provable bribery payment to the law-makers or verifiable 
record-kept blackmail. Either way, twenty five per cent of both 
houses of the American legislature were "hooked". 
  
  
By the time BCCI supposedly collapsed in the summer of 1991, some 
five billion dollars had disappeared. It was used in great part to 
buy, that is, to bribe, 28 U.S. Senators and 108 members of the U.S. 
House of Representatives. The Bank of England, by a series of 
circumstances, became the kingpin in supervising and overseeing the 
supposed demise of BCCI. [BUT, see Foonote One, how BCCI rose from 
the ashes under another name.] 
  
  
Notice the strange happenings. For only thirty days, the Bank of 
England had as an open record, the list of those bought and bribed, 
whether directly or through the blackmail devices, of the legislative 
branch of the U.S. Government. A major media correspondent got wind 
of this and before secrecy was clamped on the records, got a copy of 
the entire list of bribery/blackmail. 
  
  
Part of one of the largest media operations worldwide, he went to his 
media editor with the details. The editor was thunder-struck. Here 
was documented proof that twenty five per cent of the House and 
Senate were bribed. "We cannot publish the list and the details that 
go with it", the journalist was told. The media mogul added the 
obvious, "It would cause the scandal downfall of the American 
Government", as the journalist later related the editor's statements 
to an independent-minded confidant. 
  
  
As a last resort, the journalist gave the list and the corroborating 
details to our group. [This type of thing has happened again and 
again during the forty years our group has operated to open up deeply 
censored stories. I as head of the group have been jailed some eight 
times for contempt of court, wheelchair and all, for refusing to 
divulge witnesses and sources.] 
  
  
Using the list and substantiating details, we began directly 
confronting members of the House and Senate. We began receiving 
threats of great harm to us after the time when we confronted Senator 
Phil Gramm, who was on the list and we brought up about the apparent 
bribery cover up of his wife Wendy, as head of the CFTC. 
  
  
In going over the specifics, we discovered that BCCI was a sizeable 
secret funder of Ted Turner, making possible his idea for a 
television super-station via satellite from Atlanta, Georgia. And, 
that this was done through part-owner of Turner's empire, the then 
cable monster, TCI of Denver. In an interview with the former chief 
accountant of one of the La Salle Street brokers arranging the 
bribery, we learned that TCI also owned part of the brokers fronting 
for BCCI in Chicago. 
  
  
We learned plenty in the process of exploring the details. We found 
out, for example, that BCCI, through their Chicago branch, greatly 
funded the television campaign commercials for the 1988 Presidential 
campaign for Democrat candidate Michael Dukakis. To cut off money for 
the badly needed television ads for Dukakis, his opponent, GOP 
Presidential candidate George Herbert Walker Bush, at the time Vice 
President, arranged on a holiday, Columbus Day, right before the 
Election, to mysteriously close up BCCI's Chicago branch, source of 
the tv money for Dukakis, claiming "corruption" but not disclosing 
details. 
  
  
In putting the complex matter together, we found out about the threat 
of an internatinal scandal. GNP Commodities, headquartered in 
Chicago, wanted to merge with French entity, Bank Indo-Suez. The 
merger was opposed by CFTC Chairperson, Wendy Gramm, and the head of 
the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan. At a hearing in Chicago as to 
the merger, an attorney for GNP was heard hollaring outside the CFTC 
office, that if Wendy Gramm and the Fed do not get off GNP's back, 
there would be an "international incident". GNP, then headed by the 
former chieftain of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, was reportedly 
in a position to know about the BCCI bribery of both houses of 
Congress covered up not only reportedly by Wendy Gramm but by Alan 
Greenspan as well. 
  
  
A watered down version of the GNP Commodities incident was published 
in the Wall Street Journal in November, 1989. 
  
  
>From long past experiences, I knew only one publication would run my 
exclusive story about the BCCI bribery of Congress. I turned it over 
to the populist paper, Spotlight, headquartered in the nation's 
Capitol. I gave them the Bank of England BCCI bribery list. In 
October, 1991, they ran my story minus the list which they had but 
the list nevertheless began circulating elsewhere anyway. 
  
  
Here are some of the names from the Bank of England's reported BCCI 
bribery list, that included 108 members of the House and 28 U.S. 
Senators: 
  
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
  
Congressman DAN ROSTENKOWSKI (D-Illinois) Two of his daughters 
supposedly worked in the Chicago markets although apparently not 
doing much actual work. Rosty as he was called for many years headed 
the House tax-writing committee and put through a near-private law 
for the markets as a tax-loophole as to "straddles". He has been a 
major owner of Garfield Ridge Trust & Savings Bank of Chicago, a 
reputed transit point for CIA dope money from Mena, Arkansas, headed 
for laundering disguised as soybean and currency trading through the 
Chicago markets. Rosty was later sent to federal prison for 
defrauding the private bank of the House of Representatives. 
  
  
Cong. MARTY RUSSO (D-Illinois) 
  
Cong. THOMAS FOLEY (D-Washington) 
  
Cong. GLENN ENGLISH (D-Oklahoma) 
  
Cong. CARDISS COLLINS (D-Illinois) As to her, see our website series 
on the "Secret History of Airplane Sabotage". She reportedly went 
along with the cover up of the Watergate Plane Crash, Chicago. 
  
Cong. E (Kika) de la GARZA (D-Texas) 
  
Cong. RICHARD GEPHARDT (D-Missouri) For 2004, is he planning to run 
for President? What does HE know about the murder of Mel Carnahan on 
the eve of the year 2000 Election debate? Carnahan had records that 
would have scandalized Presidential Candidate George W. Bush at a 
presidential candidate debate in St. Louis. 
  
Cong. JAMES WRIGHT (D-Texas) He left Congress later in another 
scandal. 
  
Cong. DAN GLICKMAN (D-Kansas) In the Clinton administration he became 
head of the Department of Agriculture. BCCI/Banca Nazionale del 
Lavoro were implicated in a huge Atlanta scandal where billions of 
U.S. dollars disguised as "Agriculture" loans, were used by Daddy 
Bush to supply weapons to Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein. Glickman 
was reportedly part of the coverup. 
  
Cong. ROBERT MICHEL (R-Illinois) When faced with an apparent Chicago 
U.S. Bankruptcy scandal also involving his son, he left Congress. 
  
Cong. RICHARD DURBIN (D-Illinois) 
  
  
  
U.S. SENATE 
  
Senator THOMAS DASCHLE (D-South Dakota) Does HE plan to run for 
President in 2004? 
  
Sen. JAMES JEFFORDS (R-Vermont) In 2001, he changed from Republican 
to Democrat, upsetting the GOP control of the U.S. Senate. 
  
Sen. LLOYD BENTSEN (D-Texas) Big-time bank owner leading up to Enron. 
  
Sen. ALFONSE D'AMATO (R-New York) Law enforcement personnel contended 
D'Amato was the mafia's man in the Senate. 
  
Sen. JESSE HELMS (R-North Carolina) Records reportedly seem to 
support the claim that Sen. Helms receives funding from international 
terrorist groups. 
  
Sen. RICHARD LUGAR (R-Indiana) 
  
Sen. ROBERT BYRD (D-West Virginia) There is strong reason to believe 
that he and some of his staff members know a lot about the murder in 
1991 of Journalist/Author Danny Casalaro in West Virginia, also about 
the apparent frame-up of computer wizard Michael Riconosciuto. 
  
Sen. DONALD RIEGLE (D-Michigan) 
  
Sen. PATRICK LEAHY (D-Vermont) He has been the long-time Chairman of 
the Senate Agriculture Committee. See BCCI/BNL details at listing of 
Cong. DAN GLICKMAN. 
  
Sen. ALAN DIXON (D-Illinois) He previously had been Illinois 
Secretary of State, issuing auto and drivers licenses. Some of his 
family members allegedly ran stolen auto parts businesses, 
called "chop shops" which were covered up by fake auto registrations 
and such. Dixon also arranged for the mafia to slow down FBI 
investigations in that mafioso, through Dixon, got untraceable auto 
tags. 
  
  
Reputed experts on covering up high crimes have been Federal Reserve 
Commissar Alan Greenspan (we call him REDSPAN) and former CFTC 
Chairperson Wendy Gramm, a Director of Enron. Through complicated 
dealings, were billions sucked out of Enron to try to prop up the 
failing U.S. Stock Markets? 
  
  
FOOTNOTE ONE - Bank of Credit and Commerce International, BCCI, did 
NOT actually disappear despite monopoly press accounts stating so. 
BCCI re-emerged as PINNACLE BANC GROUP, with their flagship the 
highly corrupt, gangster-linked FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF CICERO (Cicero 
being the long-time mafia-enclave adjoining Chicago, known as Al 
Capone Land.) Lots of details about this on our website in prior 
stories. For example, dominating the bank in Cicero has been Bishop 
Paul Marcinkus, until 1991, head of the Vatican Bank, recently 
identified as a major criminal money laundry for mafia/CIA and 
others. To confuse matters, the bank in Cicero has changed their name 
several times since 1991.] 
    
More coming.  Stay tuned.