[Dog Gone]

Wait. We're missing some important details here. In all fairness, discussions about destroying documents, by itself, is not a crime or even suspicious behavior. Every major company has discussions along these lines, and it doesn't mean there's a coverup. It's a matter of keeping business private and away from competitors. It's about control and keeping documents in a central location where one verified document exists.

On the other hand, these guys were quite possibly discussing ways to cover up unethical and criminal activities at a corporate level. If I had to guess, that's exactly what they were doing. But we don't know that from what has been revealed here.

[gov_bean_ counter]

I am amazed at how quickly the camera was taken off the politicos and on to the bean counters. As you stated, document destruction is not in and of itself a bad thing. The Congressional investigators have found more than enough damaging evidence in the correspondence. Strange since the first thing an independent audit team looks at are the Director's minutes and internal correspondence. You would think that a coordinated effort to hide evidence would include parts of the afore mentioned information.

[JustTheTruth]

You wrote: "In all fairness, discussions about destroying documents, by itself, is not a crime or even suspicious behavior."

Discussions by top officials leading to the deliberate destruction of documents for the purpose of hiding the truth about fraudulent accounting practices which are under criminal investigation is both suspicious and criminal.

[Timesink]

We're missing some important details here. In all fairness, discussions about destroying documents, by itself, is not a crime or even suspicious behavior.

a) It depends on just what sorts of documents they are. Some financial documents can be shredded at will, and some must be saved for a lengthy period of time. b) Shredding any documents as part of an intentional plan to destroy evidence of a crime is absolutely illegal. c) This article doesn't even seem to be referring to the legalities (or lack thereof) of the matter, but rather the damage to Andersen itself. They were trying to say "Oh, it's just our Houston office, which got out of control." Now it appears the coverup went right up to headquarters.