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HOUSTON - After exchanging some parting shots with his prosecutor, Kenneth Lay finished six days of testimony at his federal fraud and conspiracy trial Tuesday by professing love for Enron Corp., the company he founded, and the people who worked there. "I loved Enron very much," Lay said in a brief response to the final question from his lawyer, George Secrest. "And I loved Enron's employees very much. I spent half my professional life running Enron. I think we built a great company. We changed energy markets around the world. "I think the most painful thing in my life was...

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Former Enron CEO Ken Lay sold $70 million in Enron shares back to the company to pay for personal luxuries such as renting a yacht for a birthday party, even as the company headed toward bankruptcy, prosecutors said on Monday. Lay, on trial for fraud and conspiracy along with former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling, has said most of the stock sales were made to pay off his millions of dollars in debts. Under cross examination by prosecutor John Hueston, Lay admitted he and wife, Linda, lived the good life and had trouble giving it up, despite Enron's...

HOUSTON - Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay was expected to charm jurors the same way he spent decades charming politicians, analysts, investors and employees. But when he took the witness stand this week in his fraud and conspiracy trial, the ever-smiling diplomat and philanthropist morphed into a scrappy fighter. First he tried to take control of questioning by his own lawyer. Then he repeatedly bristled, snarled and quarreled on cross-examination with the federal prosecutor who had secured the indictment against him. His transformation was in stark contrast to that of his co-defendant, former Enron Chief Executive Jeffrey Skilling, whose lengthy...

HOUSTON - Federal prosecutors sought Thursday to torpedo Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay's image as a company champion, trying to show he used the ailing energy giant to bail himself out of personal financial woes in 2001. Lay obtained more than $70 million in loans from Enron throughout 2001 and repaid most with company stock, even as he encouraged employees to buy more shares. Lay didn't disclose those stock sales publicly because regulations required that sales of shares back to a company be reported only in the year after they occur. Unlike his co-defendant in his fraud and conspiracy trial,...

HOUSTON - Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay dropped his famous affable persona as his cross-examination began Wednesday, snarling at a prosecutor who accused him of witness tampering when the ex-chairman and chief executive called several potential witnesses during his own fraud and conspiracy trial. Jurors who had been listening impassively snapped to attention. "Did you have any conversations to get your story straight for trial?" asked prosecutor John Hueston, equally primed for battle. "Can you elaborate on that Mr. Hueston?" Lay shot back. "I'm not sure what story you're talking about." The prosecutor noted that Lay called two Goldman Sachs...

HOUSTON – Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay declared his innocence Monday on the witness stand, somberly saying the company's legacy of lost jobs and wrecked retirement savings pained him even more than the loss of a loved one. Lay blamed the implosion of Enron, once the nation's seventh-largest company, on a series of devastating circumstances that included theft by the chief financial officer, negative press, a bear market and investor anxiety after the Sept. 11 attacks. “I don't think there ever was a conspiracy of any kind,” he said. His testimony, defending against criminal fraud and conspiracy charges that could...

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Government star witness Andrew Fastow repeatedly admitted during cross-examination on Thursday he was a liar and a cheat as the defense tried to refute his testimony that former Enron Corp. chief executives Jeffrey Skilling and Ken Lay covered up their company's crumbling finances. He said he had no written documents to back up his allegations against his former bosses, but said they were part of a broad conspiracy among Enron executives to mislead investors while enriching themselves. "I was suggesting the senior management at Enron, not only Mr. Skilling, engaged in a pattern of actions that painted...

The former head of Enron's broadband business told jurors Tuesday that his mentor and friend Jeff Skilling pressured him to make his division appear to the public to be growing, even while the unit was in fact laying people off and had no revenues. Ken Rice, a 47-year-old Houstonian, said he repeatedly misled investors about the financial health of the company's Internet business. And he walked the jury through a March 2001 analyst conference call in which he said Skilling also repeatedly misrepresented the faltering division's health. On questioning by Enron Task Force Director Sean Berkowitz, Rice painted a picture...

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Former Enron Corp. Chairman Ken Lay on Tuesday said he was the victim of a "wave of terror" by prosecutors and blamed his former chief financial officer for the energy company's spectacular downfall. In a preview of his defense at his criminal trial next month, Lay, in a speech to a Houston group, said he was only to blame for trusting Andrew Fastow, Enron's CFO, who has pleaded guilty to charges and will be the government's key witness against Lay and co-defendants. "We did trust Andy Fastow, and sadly, tragically, that trust turned out to be misplaced,"...

My favorite supporting character in the legendary strip, “Peanuts,” is Pigpen. His unique trait is raising a cloud of dirt everywhere, even on a clean, dry sidewalk. Pigpen came to mind when I saw the White House Press Corps’ question President Bush Wednesday on his nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. First, the status of the nomination. Monday afternoon, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid held a nearly unprecedented press conference with Harriet Miers, just hours after her nomination. Reid said that she was an “exceptional” candidate, and “the sort of person who should be nominated.” In short, the...

In the morning of March 11, 2004, Susan Lindauer woke to find five F.B.I. agents at her front door. After reading her her rights, the agents took Lindauer from her home in Takoma Park, Md., to the F.B.I. field office in Baltimore, where she was charged with having acted as an unregistered agent of Saddam Hussein's Iraqi government and otherwise having elevated the interests of a foreign country above her allegiance to the United States. ''The only visible sign of stress is that I'm chain-smoking,'' she said when I met with her recently. Forty-one and free on bail, she wore...

Kenneth Lay, the disgraced former boss of Enron, is the first exec to pay for his website to pop up on Google and Yahoo websites in America. Lay is splashing out "no more than $3,000 a month" to appear alongside the results for anyone searching for his name or "Enron fraud". Click on his ad, and you can read stirring stuff about his philanthropy and good deeds.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 - Tickets to all official inaugural events, including an "elegant" candlelight dinner with a special appearance by President Bush: $100,000. Tickets to all official inaugural events, two additional tickets to an "exclusive" lunch with Mr. Bush and Vice President Cheney, plus an all-access pass to any inaugural ball: $250,000. Telling your friends, "As I explained to the president just the other day... .": priceless. Mr. Bush's inaugural committee, seeking to raise more than $40 million, a record, sent out hundreds of solicitations to the president's biggest campaign contributors this week offering packages of party benefits and access...

Heinz-Kerry & Enron December 11, 1995: The H. John Heinz III Marital Trust purchased $250,001 - $500,000 in Enron stock. See John F. Kerry 1995 Senate personal financial disclosure. http://www.johnkerry.com/pdf/FD_95.pdf December 14, 1995: Teresa Heinz announces a $20 million grant to the Heinz Center in Washington, DC; Enron CEO Ken Lay will be among the Board members. Pittsbugh Post-Gazette, 12-15-1995: "The H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment holds special significance for Teresa Heinz. ... 'This has been important to do for quite awhile. [Late Sen. John Heinz] was pushing it so hard, and this is...

Website posts emails from Teresa Heinz's non profit charity and the Kerry campaign. Incriminating emails show collusion between the charity and the Kerry campaign that violates FEC and IRS statutes. Newest emails released show how the Kerry campaign contacted the Heinz Foundation about Kerry's dinner with Ken Lay. Everyone from Stephanie Cutter, Kerry's communications director, to the President of the Heinz Center are involved. Dinner with Ken Lay emails and more are at: http://kerrywaffles.net/enron.html

Terasa (Terry) Heinz and Kenneth L. Lay, formerly of Enron, are both Trustees of "The H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment," 1001 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Suite 735, Washington, DC 20004.This foudation is required to file a non-profit tax return (IRS Form 990) part of which is available to the public. Forms 990 for the years 1997 through 2001 are available on the internet at "www.Guidestar.org".These reports indicate that Terry and Ken have had a professional relationship from at least 10/1/97 through 9/30/02. In fact, after years of reporting Houston as his address, the 990 for...

  Still in the Closet — Democrats Getting LayedJuly 15, 2004  “Outing” Democrats is such child’s play.  Surrounded by shards of the smashed cookie jar, Moore-ish-faced Democrats just keep pointing fingers...as they just keep chewing.  It’s like Teddy Kennedy supporting the Anti Saloon League.  But, since John Kerry believes that “The value of truth is one of the most central values in America”, let’s serve up some truth. In a never ending Democratic mantra, Kerry (yet again) blasted the President for failing to aggressively pursue Kenneth Lay.  As we all know from such unbiased media sources as the AP, “Lay clearly favored...

AP) John Edwards, the newly-named Democratic vice presidential candidate, suggested that President Bush's administration dragged its feet in prosecuting alleged "corporate crooks" such as former Enron chief executive Kenneth Lay. "It took three long years to see Ken Lay handcuffed and indicted for what he did," the North Carolina senator said Saturday in the weekly Democratic radio address. "In November, middle-class families will be able to rest assured that John Kerry will look out for their interests, restore corporate responsibility and put our economy back in line with our values." He said Kerry understands that families are struggling to stay...

DeLay's Corporate Fundraising Investigated Money Was Directed to Texas GOP to Help State Redistricting Effort By R. Jeffrey Smith Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, July 12, 2004; Page A01 In May 2001, Enron's top lobbyists in Washington advised the company chairman that then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) was pressing for a $100,000 contribution to his political action committee, in addition to the $250,000 the company had already pledged to the Republican Party that year. DeLay requested that the new donation come from "a combination of corporate and personal money from Enron's executives," with the understanding that it would be...

ENRON DOCUMENTS SHOW TOM DELAY'S REDISTRICTING EFFORTS... MORE... WASH POST PLANNING FRONT PAGE SPLASH, NEWSROOM SOURCES TELL DRUDGE. 3,200-WORD STORY...