Bush Still Won't Release Documents

Enron and the Bushes:

by Robert Scheer
Enron Got Its Money's Worth

One of the major falsehoods being bandied about by apologists for the Bush Administration is that while Enron may have bankrolled much of the President's political career it got nothing for those bucks once George W. occupied the White House.

That is nonsense.


The Administration's energy program, developed by Vice President Dick Cheney in secret meetings--six of them with Enron officials--could have been written by lobbyists for the now failed company. At the behest of Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles), the minority staff of the House Committee on Government Reform has prepared a devastating analysis of 17 major concessions made to Enron that gave Kenneth L. Lay, Bush's intimate friend and Enron chief executive, just about everything he wanted. The report concluded that "it is unlikely that any other corporation in America stood to gain as much from the White House plan as Enron."

Those Bush Administration concessions to Enron included finishing the job of deregulating the electricity market begun by Bush's father. The senior Bush's actions had paved the way for the company's meteoric growth.

George W.'s energy plan also made it even easier for Enron to sell energy derivatives in the commodity market and pursue other financial shenanigans that had been a major source of profit. The unregulated selling of energy derivatives, an Enron specialty, was celebrated in the Bush energy plan as "sophisticated and customizable." We now know that practice was so sophisticated that it was the major source of Enron's paper profits.

Oddly, given that Republicans are presumed to favor leaving power with the states, the Bush energy plan emphasized increased federal power over utility pipelines that forced local utilities to carry Enron's product. This was an expansion of the "open access" powers granted in the 1992 Energy Policy Act, passed in the first Bush Administration. That law undermined the power of local authorities and regional utility companies for the benefit of Enron. In 1999, Enron had defined "open access" as the company's "single-most important initiative."

Two years later, George W. delivered. Fortunately this subversion of the political process had a short life because Enron went belly up before Bush could save the company from itself.

But the question remains why Bush, as governor and President, wanted to foist the example of such a despicable corporate player upon the American people as a model for business behavior.

Surely the Enron alums who occupy key positions in the Administration knew that the President's model corporation had avoided paying federal income taxes for four out of the past five years.

Enron even claimed $382 million in government refunds. How dare this President collect taxes from ordinary Americans after touting a company that created 881 offshore dodges to avoid taxes. Few taxpayers can open subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands pretending to do business, but Enron had more than 700 there.

The IRS and Treasury Department under the Clinton Administration had attacked the use of such tax dodges and attempted to eliminate them. Bush, however, sought to reward a company that, far more than any of its competitors, took advantage of offshore loopholes. Dynegy, Enron's lead competitor, had no offshore tax havens, suggesting that it is possible to do business honestly.

But how would Bush know of his pet company's chicanery, his apologists howl--particularly the talk radio right-wingers who spent eight years skewering Bill Clinton over the most minor transgressions? Bush should have known because his top economic advisor, Lawrence B. Lindsey, who was paid $50,000 in 2000 for consulting work for Enron, went straight from that gig to being head of the White House's National Economic Council. In the latter capacity, Lindsey wrote a rosy report on Enron's emerging problems and presented it to the President shortly before the company's collapse.

Were he and the other Enron alum who hold high positions in the Administration lying to the President, or did Bush not want to hear any bad news about his once-favorite company? Either way it smells.

 

More fun Enron stuff... This one is actually several years old, I believe.

<I>David Corn
Business & Economics
George W. Bush


Several years ago, says Rodolfo Terragno, a former Argentine Cabinet Minister, he received a telephone call from George W. Bush, son of the then-Vice President. When he hung up, Terragno was annoyed, he recalls, for the younger Bush had tried to exploit his family name to pressure Terragno to award a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Enron, an American firm close to the Bush clan.


During this past year, as George W. campaigned across Texas to replace Governor Ann Richards, he portrayed himself as a successful businessman who relied on "individual initiative," not his lineage. Contacted in Buenos Aires, Terragno, now a member of the Chamber of Deputies, offered an account that challenges Bush's campaign image.

In 1988, Terragno was the Minister of Public Works and Services in the government of President Raúl Alfonsín. He oversaw large industrial projects, and his government was considering construction of a pipeline to stretch across Argentina and transport natural gas to Chile. Several US firms were interested, including the Houston-based Enron, the largest natural gas pipeline company in the United States. But Terragno was upset with the corporation's representatives in Argentina. They were pressing Terragno for a deal in which the state-owned gas company would sell Enron natural gas at an extremely low price, and, he recalls, they pitched their project with a half-page proposal--one so insubstantial that Terragno couldn't take it seriously. Terragno let the Enron agents know he was not happy with them.


It was then, Terragno says, that he received the unexpected call from George W. Bush, who introduced himself as the son of the Vice President. (The elder Bush was then campaigning for the presidency.) George W., Terragno maintains, told the minister that he was keen to have Argentina proceed with the pipeline, especially if it signed Enron for the deal. "He tried to exert some influence to get that project for Enron," Terragno asserts. "He assumed that the fact he was the son of the [future] President
would exert influence.... I felt pressured. It was not proper for him to make that kind of call."


George W. did not detail his relationship with the pipeline project or with Enron, according to Terragno. The Argentine did not know that Enron and the Bush set are cozy. President Bush is an old friend of Kenneth Lay, Enron head for the past ten years and a major fundraiser for President Bush.

After the 1992 election left Secretary of State (and Bush pal) James Baker jobless, he signed as a consultant for Enron. An article by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker last year disclosed that Neil Bush, another presidential son (the one cited by federal regulators for conflict-of-interest violations regarding a failed savings and loan), had attempted to do business with Enron in Kuwait. The Enron company and the family of its top officers have donated at least $100,000 to George W. Bush's gubernatorial
campaign.


Shortly after Terragno's conversation with George W., more Bush-related pressure descended on him, the former minister claims. Terragno says he was paid a visit by the US Ambassador to Argentina, Theodore Gildred. A wealthy California developer appointed ambassador by President Reagan, Gildred was
always pushing Terragno to do business with US companies. This occasion, Terragno notes, was slightly different, for Gildred cited George W. Bush's support for the Enron project as one reason Terragno should back it. "It was a subtle, vague message," Terragno says, "that [doing what George W. Bush wanted] could help us with our relationship to the United States."


Terragno did not OK the project, and the Alfonsín administration came to an end in 1989. Enron was luckier with the next one. The pipeline was approved by the administration of President Carlos Saúl Menem, leader of the Peronist Party and a friend of President Bush. (The day after Menem was inaugurated, Neil Bush played a highly publicized game of tennis in Buenos Aires with Menem.) Argentine legislators complained that Menem cleared the pipeline project for development before economic feasibility studies were prepared.


Replying to a list of questions from The Nation asking whether George W. Bush spoke to Terragno about the pipeline project and whether he had any business relationship with Enron, Bush's gubernatorial campaign issued a terse statement: "The answer to your questions are no and none. Your questions are apparently addressed to the wrong person." This blanket
denial covered one question that inquired if George W. Bush had ever discussed any oil or natural gas projects with any Argentine official. George W.'s response on this point is contradicted by a 1989 article in the Argentine newspaper La Nacion that reported he met that year with Terragno to discuss oil investments. (The newspaper noted that this meeting took place in Argentina, but Terragno says he saw Bush in Texas.)


Theodore Gildred, a private developer again, is traveling in Argentina; his office says he is unavailable. An Enron spokesperson comments, "Enron has not had any business dealings with George W. Bush, and we don't have any
knowledge that he was involved in a pipeline project in Argentina."


In late August, several members of the Chamber of Deputies--Terragno not among them--submitted a request for information, calling on President Menem to answer dozens of questions about the business activities of the Bush family in Argentina. (In 1987, Neil Bush created a subsidiary of his oil company to conduct business there. In early August, a Buenos Aires newspaper reported that on a forthcoming trip to Argentina the former
President would lobby the Menem government to allow a US company to build a casino there. The onetime President said this was not true.) One of the deputies' queries was, Does Menem know whether George W. Bush attempted to capitalize in Argentina on his father's position? So far Menem has not
responded.</I>

 

The energy plan was written by ENE? BS. Why would the other major energy suppliers allow this to happen?

The Sierra club got 11 of its 12 recomendations added to the plan. Are they in bed too?