ENRON: WHERE DOES THE BUCK STOP?

The Justice Department and several Congressional committees are starting to look under the Enron rock. Representative Henry Waxman has been shooting some trenchant questions at the company--and getting some answers. So far a prominent name has been missing from the potential witness list--George W. Bush. As is well-known, the company's disgraced chairman, Kenneth Lay, was a prime booster of Bush's political career, and he and other Enron executives greased W's rise with nearly $2 million in contributions. Lay personally gave $326,000. As Robert Scheer has been pounding home in his "Column Left" (which appears on www.thenation.com), Bush was good to Enron in return, starting when he was Texas governor, pushing through tax cuts and deregulation measures benefiting the utility. Then there was that 1997 phone call he made to his buddy Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge at Lay's behest, supporting Enron's bid for entree into the state's tightly regulated electricity market. After Bush moved into the White House, the Enron-friendly actions continued. Curtis Hebert Jr., chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, was given the boot not long after Lay called him to demand a faster track for Enron's access to the national electricity grid. Hebert was replaced by Pat Wood, a Texan Lay approved of. Dick Cheney as well should be coaxed out of hiding and deposed on those six meetings he or his staff held with Enron representatives, some of which were followed by some policy decisions favorable to the company. And how about presidential assistant Karl Rove's owning $68,000 in Enron stock at the time he spoke with Lay about the latter's FERC "problem"? He sold the stock in June, well before the company tanked. Lucky him. Did others in the Administration with previous ties to Enron own stock? What did they know about the company's financial troubles, and did they know it in time to bail out? Make way for Enrongate.

ASHCROFT'S SECRETS

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