Posted on 01/11/2002 4:26:46 PM PST by Pokey78
THE White House response to the collapse of Enron, a Texas-based energy company with strong links to the Bush administration, has "shades of Bill Clinton", a conservative watchdog said yesterday.
Judicial Watch, a legal group that pressed Mr Clinton in the latter years of his presidency by investigating every aspect of his personal and professional life, called for a special counsel to investigate the Enron case.
Tom Fitton, the group's president, said: "The White House has a nice little scandal on its hands with Enron and they have only themselves to blame. Their reaction certainly has shades of Bill Clinton." The criticism is an indication of the potential risks of the Enron controversy.
Judicial Watch would normally support a conservative president such as Mr Bush. Enron applied for bankruptcy protection last November after overstating its profits by more than £400 million by hiding huge debts in the accounts of subsidiaries.
Its board is being investigated over allegations that 29 current or former members sold their shares for a total of £785 million in the months before the collapse. Thousands lost jobs and money when the Enron share price collapsed from almost £65 to only a few pence in less than a year.
The Houston-based company has close links to the Bush White House. Kenneth Lay, its chairman, is a friend of both President Bush and his father and was one of the principal fundraisers for the Bush-Cheney election campaign in 1999-2000.
Dick Cheney, the vice-president, had close contacts with Mr Lay when Halliburton, another Houston-based energy company of which he was formerly chief executive, built a baseball stadium for Enron.
Two senior members of the administration, Larry Lindsey, the President's chief economic adviser, and Robert Zoellick, the US trade representative, worked as consultants with Enron before Mr Bush recruited them.
The White House said on Thursday that Mr Lay called on Paul O'Neill, the treasury secretary, and Don Evans, the commerce secretary, to help the company in the days before it collapsed, but added that they had turned him down, despite his close links to the president and his party.
But Mr Fitton yesterday called on the White House to be more open. "Conservatives are very uncomfortable about the relations between the Bush White House and Enron and I doubt you will see many coming forward to defend the conduct, at least so far."
He was particularly critical of Mr Cheney's efforts to prevent the release of the minutes of meetings he and his staff held with Mr Lay and other Enron executives in the process of formulating the administration's energy policy.
The dishonesty and unscrupulousness of Judicial Watch are more reminiscent of Clinton's tactics, actually, but thanks for your concern, Tom and Larry.
You knew him, he telephoned you, you must be guilty!
What morons: had the Bush Administration bailed out Enron like Clinton and Rubin bailed out Long Term Capital Management (with taxpayer dollars) to save Rubin's partners at Goldman Sachs millions, then the Democrats and Klayman, I guess, would have howled insider-dealing and cronyism to high heavens. Since they didn't lift a finger to help Enron when Lay called in the week before bankruptcy, they are guilty because they were once in the same business, came from the same state, had talked to them on occasion in the past, and like multitudes of Democrats took campaign contributions (sorry, Enron, money wasted).
Nice trick for Democrats and Klayman scandal mongers: It's a scandal if you do help them and it's a scandal if you don't help them. You are guilty because of who you are. It's all your fault because you haven't spent your entire life sucking from the government teat like good people should.
Klayman gave the impression he was after the clintons but I firmly believe nothing came out that wasn't going to come out anyways, but they used Klayman to get it out there, he made tons of money off conservatives, and did absolutely nothing to bring down the clintons. In allowing Klayman to get the information out, the vast right wing conspiracy could be blamed. Note how he does press releases now against the Bush Administration to make headlines! Something is rotten and I believe it is JW!
As they say -- that's my story and I am sticking to it until someone proves otherwise because it is the only thing that makes sense!
Were all the people at JW thrown from the same horse?
Way to many quick-on-the-draw judgements from JW. . .too bad.
Larry Klayman is to conservatives as Pee Wee Herman is to wholesome children's television.
The administration's energy policy has done wonders for Mr. Lay, who will now never be in the business again. How opining on long-term policy options equals insider action to prop up a company going bankrupt in the short term escapes me entirely. Particularly when the company in question never got propped up.
Had something been going on behind the scenes, Enron would never have collapsed and Mr. Lay's name in the business world would not now be the equivalent of Medusa's gaze.
If we are at the place where it becomes too inherently dangerous to utilize the opinions of people in the business in long-term policy deliberations (because they might be bad businessmen), then time has arrived where only bureaucrats can have input on such decisions. And the five year plans will be so glorious.
What can you say about a man who would sue his own mother?
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