The Enron, Bush, Baker, Rockefeller connection: Oil, pharmaceuticals and
weapons for the New World Order
Here are some interesting quotes and articles from newspapers and financial
publications to supplement your investigations into the Bush-Enron scandal.
Ive juxtaposed them with quotes documenting the Bush families
three-generation connection to the Rockefellers and to their Manhattan
Institute as well as to eugenics, Nazis and pharmaceutical companies. If you
do a Google.com search on any of these individual or company names youll
come up with much more.
Compiled by Robert Lederman http://baltech.org/lederman/
From: What Should a CEO Expect from a Board? By: Kenneth Lay, CEO ENRON
http://www.stthom.edu/cbes/conferences/kenneth_lay.html
In addition to the Enron board and some of our affiliate boards, I have
served on various other corporate boards. I'll be drawing upon those
experiences in my comments. I served on two boards of companies for which I
was a senior manager-Houston Natural Gas and Transco-and on the boards of
several other public corporations-First City Bank (which no longer exists)
and Texas Commerce Bank. I was on the TCB board when the bank was bought by
Chase [David Rockefeller's main bank]. In addition, I served on the
Baker-Hughes board when Baker bought Hughes Tool. So, I've been on rather
different types of boards. I am presently on the boards of Eli Lilly [former
Pres. Bush was director of Lilly in the late 70s] and Compaq, two great
companies that are in totally different industries and face very different
problems. Ken Lay
From: Corporate Affiliations.com http://www.corporateaffiliations.com/
Hughes Tool Co. is a subsidiary of Baker-Hughes Incorporated
From: http://kingpineapple.com/Hughes/apparent.htm
3. Mr. Baker currently is consulting to Enron which is a subsidiary of
Baker-Hughes, which was formerly Hughes Tool Company.
Bloomberg News 1/20/2002 Kenny Boy and I: Enron's clout with Bush came from
more than just money
The two men met in the late 1980s when Lay was a supporter of Bush's
father, President George Bush. When the elder Bush was voted out of office
in 1992, two of his Cabinet members, Secretary of State James A. Baker III
and Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher, worked for Enron.
Newsweek 1/28/2002 Greenspan Told Student During Q&A Session That the Best
Chance of Making Big Success Is to Decide from Square One That You're Going
to Do It Ethically'
NEW YORK, Jan. 20 /PRNewswire/ -- Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan
accepted the Enron Award for Distinguished Public Service last fall. During
the question-and-answer session at the ceremony, Greenspan told a student
who had asked how to succeed in this difficult job market, "The best chance
you have of making a big success in this world is to decide from square one
that you're going to do it ethically," Newsweek reports in the current
issue. The ceremony was held on Nov. 13, a few days after the energy company
admitted that it had filed five years' worth of misleading financial
reports. And it was three weeks after Greenspan had turned down a plea from
Enron chairman Ken Lay to intervene with credit-rating agencies to help the
stricken company survive, report Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff
and Wall Street Editor Allan Sloan in the January 28 issue of Newsweek.
Greenspan, through his spokesman, told Newsweek that he hadn't had Lay in
mind when he gave that answer. Greenspan's press aide says he was at the
ceremony because he had committed a year earlier to former Secretary of
State Jim Baker to accept the honor. The James A. Baker Institute of Public
Affairs awards the prize, which is funded by Enron.
[The Rockefeller and Bush families and their associates control most of the
worlds major drug and chemical companies virtually all of which are
offshoots of I.G. Farben, the industrial base of Nazi Germany. Rockefellers
Standard Oil was 1/2 owner of I.G. Farben. For an entire article on this
connection and how it explains the GW Bush administration see:
http://baltech.org/lederman/ The GW Bush Gang: IG Farben 2000 ]
NY Times November 4, 2001 A Muscular Lobby Tries to Shape Nation's Bioterror
Plan
"Thanks to Washington's well-oiled revolving door between government and
business, the industry is able to claim friends in especially high places.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is the former chief executive of the drug
maker G. D. Searle, for example, and Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., the White
House budget director, is a former Eli Lilly executive."
From a Princeton Alumni magazine 4/4/2001
http://www.princeton.edu/~paw/features/features_24.html
Number-cruncher-in-chief
"At Lilly -- where the board of directors once included the first President
Bush -- Daniels [White House budget director] played a key role in managing
the public-policy issues surrounding Prozac, the company's profitable
antidepressant medication..."His work at Lilly is not to be underestimated,"
Feigenbaum says. "Without being too flip about it, he kept the world safe
for Prozac. He put his neck on the line -- not just the company's -- in
defending Lilly's claims."
[Chase, Citigroup, Bush and ENRON: The right relationship is everything. The
Chase and Citigroup investment banks are the financial cornerstones of the
Rockefeller empire and of Enron.]
London Financial Times
Editorial comment: Enron and the role of the banks
Published: January 16 2002
"The latest concern centers on the role of JP Morgan Chase, one of Enron's
two main bankers. It was involved in an offshore company used by the energy
trader to move risk off its balance sheet. The disclosure of the existence
of such off-balance-sheet arrangements accelerated the downward spiral in
the company's share price and led to its eventual bankruptcy. The Securities
and Exchange Commission is now investigating whether JP Morgan has also
misled its shareholders by making loans to Enron in the form of oil and gas
trading contracts. Insurers who face a claim from the bank on surety bonds
that guaranteed the contracts allege that they were loans dressed up as
trades to keep them off the bank's balance sheet. JP Morgan has already
revised its estimate of its Enron exposure from $900m to $2.6bn (£620m to
£1.8bn.)The SEC probe is adding to the criticism of risk control procedures
at the bank, formed in 2000 by the merger of Chase Manhattan with the
venerable House of Morgan. JP Morgan and Enron's other lead bank, Citigroup,
are the largest of a new generation of banking groups formed by combining
commercial banks and investment banks to provide a one-stop shop for big
corporate clients. The theory is that companies will give the lucrative
investment banking mandates for mergers and acquisitions advice, share
issues and bond finance to the banks that put loans on the table.
Enron was, until the past few weeks, the sort of case study used to justify
the creation of investment banks with big balance sheets. By being prepared
to make hefty loans to Enron, Citigroup and JP Morgan beat less well endowed
competitors in last year's race to advise it on restructuring and
refinancing options. They worked hard - unsuccessfully - to persuade the
credit rating agencies not to downgrade Enron."
SEE: http://www.responsiblelending.org/citidir.htm
For the Citigroup, Inc. Board of Directors
From: http://www.forbes.com/2002/01/15/0115enron.html
Forbes Magazine 1/15/2002 Enron The Incredible by Dan Ackman
NEW YORK - "Most of the attention paid to Enron's finances has focused on
its balance sheet--in particular how it hid debt by allocating it to
supposedly independent private partnerships. But the jet engine of Enron's
share-price rise was not its asset and liability picture, but its
otherworldly increase in revenue: Between 1996 and 2000, Enron reported an
increase in sales from $13.3 billion to $100.8 billion.
To put Enron's (nyse: ENE - news - people) 57% five-year sales growth rate
in perspective, during that same period, Cisco Systems (nasdaq: CSCO - news
- people) enjoyed a 41% sales growth rate. Intel's (nasdaq: INTC - news -
people) rate was 15%. In its creation of revenue, if not profit, Enron was
truly the corporation from another planet.
Enron more than doubled its reported sales between 1999 and 2000. Before it
declared bankruptcy, Enron said it was on track to double revenue again this
year. Had it done so, it would have become the second-largest corporation in
the world in terms of sales. It might even have edged Exxon Mobil [another
Rockefeller company, formerly called Standard Oil] (2000 sales: $206
billion) for the number-one slot. Is it possible that Enron, a relatively
obscure energy-trading company until six months ago, could be the world's
largest by revenue? No. Andrew Fastow, Enron's former CFO, reported numbers
that were out of this world.
Enron's reported revenue was based on its exploitation of a loophole in
accounting rules that allowed it to book revenue from huge energy-derivative
contracts at their gross value, not their net value as is done with other
securities transactions. To be fair, Enron's competitors such as Dynegy
(nyse: DYN - news - people) account for revenue the same way. The tactic may
be legal, but few investors--and few Wall Street analysts--understood how
Enron was booking revenue, even though the distorting technique is what
allowed Enron to be billed as the "seventh-largest company in America."
Compare Enron's method to other traders: When Wall Street sells shares, it
books only a tiny fraction of the revenue Enron and other energy traders
would book. For instance, if a Merrill Lynch (nyse: MER - news - people)
customer sells 10,000 shares of Wal-Mart (nyse: WMT - news - people) stock
through Merrill Lynch for, say, $500,000, Merrill would book the commission
on the sale or the spread between the bid price and the ask price--perhaps
$500. But an energy trader doing the same thing with an energy contract
would book the full half-million, a difference of a thousand fold!*
How Enron appeared to outperform the world remains shrouded in mystery.
Enron earned more than 90% of its revenue from a business it calls
"wholesale services," Enron's euphemism for trading. Here is how its 2000
annual report describes that activity: "Enron builds wholesale businesses
through the creation of networks involving selective asset ownership,
contractual access to third-party assets and market-making activities."
The statement is characteristic. Enron's discussion of its finances reads
like something written in German, translated to Chinese and back to English
by way of Polish.
Enron's reported performance is even more incredible in context. As of 2000,
Enron had 19,000 employees. Per employee, Enron says it generated $5.3
million in revenues. This figure more than triples Goldman Sachs (nyse: GS -
news - people), which generated $1.7 million per employee. The men and women
of Enron made the monopolists at Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people)
(revenue per employee: $610, 256) look like slackers. They put the workers
of Citigroup (nyse: C - news - people) ($469,748 per employee) and IBM
(nyse: IBM - news - people) ($283,333) to shame...
Enron generated huge revenue numbers--but relatively scant profits--by
buying and selling the same goods over and over. "A lot of it is from buying
and selling the same [gas or electricity] multiple times. They might resell
to one customer the same electricity they sold to another," says Charles
Fischman, an analyst at A.G. Edwards who covers Dynegy. Some of this trading
was done between Enron and its supposedly independent partnerships. Each
individual trade was accounted for as revenue at its full value.
But beyond the trading of energy futures contracts back and forth--all with
huge notational values--Enron's sales grew because it was a "market maker,"
serving as the middleman on deals. It would put a buyer together with a
seller, take "delivery" of the contract for one fleeting moment and book the
entire "sale" as revenue to Enron.
Enron was allowed to do this because a task force of the Financial
Accounting Standards Board (FASB) could not decide how energy contracts
should be accounted for, explains Douglas Carmichael, the Wollman
distinguished professor of accounting at Baruch College. The board finally
decided that each company had a "free option" as to how to account for the
deals. Enron, of course, opted for the bigger numbers.
This action by the FASB was "a complete abdication of responsibility,"
Carmichael says. It violates a cardinal principal of accounting called
representational faithfulness. "The notion in accounting is that similar
economic circumstances should be treated the same way," Carmichael says.
This notion was not widely respected at Enron.
Conversations with Wall Street analysts who covered Enron indicate they had
little or no understanding of how Enron reported such huge numbers. Asked to
compare how Enron or Dynegy book revenue with other businesses, most
analysts say Enron was a trading business and that revenue was not
important. Asked to compare the energy traders to securities firms, who are
also engaged in trading, one stumbled for an answer and finally said, "You
know, that's a really good question."
But the answer to the question, while not widely known beyond elite
accounting circles is simple enough. It played its game by dint of trading
for its own sake and accounting rules. This is why Enron's bankruptcy would
have, in the words of Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, no "spillover effect."
An uncritical reading of Enron's inscrutable reports indicates it was
running so much faster than everyone else. If an Olympic track coach hears a
report that an unknown runner had broken the world record for the mile by
two seconds, he might be skeptical or wonder if the runner was on drugs. But
if he had heard that the runner had run a mile in three minutes flat, 45
seconds faster than everyone else, he'd refuse to believe it. He'd say it
was impossible. Or he'd say the watch was broken. When Enron made equally
unlikely pronouncements no one seems to have asked a question or thought
twice."
[The Rockefeller family like the Bush family were major supporters of
eugenics, Hitler and the Nazis. See http://baltech.org/lederman/ for
numerous articles on their connections. Bush gets his ideas and many of his
top advisors from the Manhattan Institute, a eugenics focused think tank
founded by former CIA director William Casey. As just one of many examples,
the Bell Curve - a social science text promoting the idea of Blacks being
genetically inferior in order to justify eliminating welfare and affirmative
action - was written at the Manhattan Institute (MI). MI is funded by
Rockefellers Chase Bank and by pharmaceutical companies with direct ties to
the Bush and Rockefeller families.]
"During the war, Rockefeller [former NY State governor, Vice President and
builder of the WTC with his brother David, Nelson Rockefeller] foreshadowed
the anticommunist policies of the Cold War by cozying up to dictatorial
regimes in Latin America. Niccolà Tucci, head of the State Departments
Bureau of Latin American Research, resigned and asked Secretary of State
Cordell Hull to abolish his bureau. "My bureau was supposed to undo the Nazi
and fascist propaganda in South America and Rockefeller was inviting the
worst fascists and Nazis to Washington." Tucci took his objections to
Rockefeller and was told: "Everybody is useful and were going to convert
these people to friendliness to the United States. And then, Rockefellers
lawyer Larry Levy said to me, Dont worry, well buy those people" (Peter
Collier and David Horowitz, The Rockefellers: An American Dynasty. Holt,
Rine-hart & Winston, 1976, p. 236). From pg. 68 The Belarus Secret by John
Loftus
BOSTON GLOBE 4/23/2001
TRIUMPHS, TROUBLES SHAPE GENERATIONS
PRESCOTT BUSH PAVED MODERATE PATH FOR SON AND GRANDSON;
WOUNDED BY FRIEND'S BETRAYAL, HE PUT HIGH PRICE ON LOYALTY
Author: By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff Date: 04/23/2001 Page: A1 Section:
National/Foreign
AN AMERICAN DYNASTY
"Prescott Bush was surely aghast at a sensational article the New York
Herald Tribune splashed on its front page in July 1942."Hitler's Angel Has 3
Million in US Bank," read the headline above a story reporting that Adolf
Hitler's financier had stowed the fortune in Union Banking Corp., possibly
to be held for "Nazi bigwigs." Bush knew all about the New York bank: He was
one of its seven directors. If the Nazi tie became known, it would be a
potential "embarrassment," Bush and his partners at Brown Brothers Harriman
worried, explaining to government regulators that their position was merely
an unpaid courtesy for a client. The situation grew more serious when the
government seized Union's assets under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the
sort of action that could have ruined Bush's political dreams. As it turned
out, his involvement wasn't pursued by the press or political opponents
during his Senate campaigns a decade later. But the episode may well have
been one of the catalysts for a dramatic change in his life. Just as the
Union Banking story broke, Bush volunteered to be chairman of United Service
Organizations, putting himself on the national stage for the first time. He
traveled the country raising millions of dollars to help boost the morale of
US troops during World War II, enhancing his stature in a way that helped
him get elected US senator. A son and grandson would become presidents."
"The Bush family fortune came from the Third Reich." -John Loftus, former US
Justice Dept. Nazi War Crimes investigator and President of the Florida
Holocaust Museum quoted in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune 11/11/2000
http://www.newscoast.com/headlinesstory2.cfm?ID=35115
4/14/1990 New York Times quotes President George Bush as stating, "Lets
forgive the Nazi war criminals."
NY Times June 12, 2000 Bush Culls Campaign Theme From Conservative Thinkers
"Gov. George W. Bush has said his political views have been shaped by the
work of Myron Magnet of the Manhattan Institute."
From the MI Website: A Weekly Look at Selected Book TV Programs July 30, 2000
Books That Influenced Gov. George W. Bush The Dream and the Nightmare: The
Sixties'
Legacy to the Underclass by Myron Magnet
Author Myron Magnet spoke with Book TVs Doug Johnson about his book The
Dream and the
Nightmare: The Sixties Legacy to the Underclass. First published in 1993,
Mr. Magnets book attracted the
attention of George W. Bush, then in his first race of the Governorship of
Texas. Referring to this book, Gov. Bush has said, other than the Bible,
that it was the most important book he had read..."
NY Times 5/12/97 Manhattan Institute Has Nudged New York Rightward
"...the institute was founded as a free-market education and research
organization by William Casey, who then went off to head the Central
Intelligence Agency in the Reagan Administration." [Rockefeller employee
Casey also funded and armed bin Laden and the entire Afghan terrorist army.]
From The Cultural Cold War by Frances Stonor Saunders, New Press [pg 132]
"The fund raising arm of the Free Europe Committee [a CIA front] was The
Crusade for Freedom for which a young actor named Ronald Reagan was a
leading spokeman and publicist. The Crusade for Freedom was used to launder
money to support a programme run by Bill Casey, the future CIA director,
called the International Refugee Committee in New York [aka International
Rescue Committee], which allegedly coordinated the exfiltration of Nazis
from Germany to the United States where they were expected to assist the
government in fighting Communism...[pg 142]...The Ford Foundation gave
$500,000 to Bill Caseys International Rescue Committee and substantial
grants to another CIA front, the World Assembly of Youth...the convergence
between the Rockefeller billions and the U.S. government exceeded even that
of the Ford Foundation ."
NY Daily News 12/7/98 Chase Banked On Nazis - Report
"The New York-based bank controlled by the Rockefeller family closed Jewish
accounts even before the Germans ordered them to do so and did business with
the Nazis while they were sending Jews to the gas chambers, Newsweek
magazine reports in this week's edition. And while the U.S. was at war with
the Nazis, Chase also apparently helped German banks do business with their
overseas branches, the magazine reported...The relationship between Chase
and the Nazis apparently was so cozy that Carlos Niedermann, the Chase
branch chief in Paris, wrote his supervisor in Manhattan that the bank
enjoyed "very special esteem" with top German officials and "a rapid
expansion of deposits." Niedermann's letter was written in May 1942 five
months after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the U.S. also went to war
with Germany."
[Contrary to the conservative Christian image they falsely project, the Bush
family are major proponents of birth control, Planned Parenthood, forcible
sterilization and eugenics. They have worked with the Rockefeller family -
the world's #1 advocates of eugenics - on these issues for three generations]
From: http://www.population-security.org/rave-91-03.htm
Appendix C World Population Crisis: The United States Response by Phyllis
Tilson Piotrow; Praeger Publishers
Foreword by George H. Bush, Jr. U.S. Representative to the United Nations, 1973
"Few issues in the world have undergone such a rapid shift in public
attitudes and government policies over the last decade as the problems of
population growth and fertility control. My own first awareness of birth
control as a public policy issue came with a jolt in 1950 when my father
[Prescott Bush] was running for the United States Senate in Connecticut.
Drew Pearson, on the Sunday before Election Day, "revealed" that my father
was involved with Planned Parenthood...As chairman of the special Republican
Task Force on Population and Earth Resources, I was impressed by the
arguments of William H. Draper...General Draper continues to lead through
his tireless work for the UN Population Fund. Now the recommendations of the
Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, chaired by John D.
Rockefeller 3rd, have urged many agencies to take on a larger role and have
called for the U.S. government to adopt a national population policy....one
of the major challenges of the 1970s, the Second United Nations Development
Decade, will be to curb the worlds fertility... private organizations, like
the Population Crisis Committee, Planned Parenthood, the Population Council,
the Population Reference Bureau, the Population Institute, Zero Population
Growth, and others, have played a major role in assisting government policy
makers and in mobilizing the United States response to the world population
challenge described in this volume." signed, George Bush
U.S. Representative to the United Nations
From: http://www.kzpg.com/
THE ROCKEFELLER COMMISSION ON POPULATION GROWTH Chapter 2 PART 1 - Index
March 16, 1970. Remarks of President Nixon on Signing Bill Establishing the
Commission on Population Growth and the American Future.
"Ladies and gentlemen:
First, this message is bipartisan in character as is indicated by the
Senators and Congressmen who are standing here today. It is time to set up a
Population Commission such as this does...An indication of that broad
support is that John D. Rockefeller has agreed to serve as Chairman of the
Commission...Of all the people in this nation, I think I could say of all
the people in the world, there is perhaps no man who has been more closely
identified and longer identified with this problem than John Rockefeller."
"A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state to
supplant our democratic government and is working closely with the fascist
regime in Germany and Italy. I have had plenty of opportunity in my post in
Berlin to witness how close some of our American ruling families are to the
Nazi regime. . . Certain American industrialists had a great deal to do with
bringing fascist regimes into being in both Germany and Italy. They extended
aid to help Fascism occupy the seat of power, and they are helping to keep
it there."
William E. Dodd, U.S. Ambassador to Germany, 1937.
Bloomberg News 1/20/2002 Kenny Boy and I: Enron's clout with Bush came from
more than just money
By Glen Justice and Richard Keil, Bloomberg.com
"Washington (Bloomberg) -- Seventy-five individuals gave more money to
candidates in the 2000 elections than Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay. Few had
his access to the Bush administration.
Lay was able to advise President George W. Bush at his economic summit, meet
with Vice President Dick Cheney on energy policy, and talk to several
Cabinet members when he needed them. Others who topped Lay's $387,000 in
donations got less attention.
"I couldn't pick up the phone and call anybody," said Jon Dehaan, a retired
businessman in Florida who gave almost $11,000 more than Lay, all to
Republicans. "If you are concerned about an issue, you can pick up the phone
and call the party chairman, and they have to show you the courtesy of
listening. But not a dammed thing is going to happen."
When it comes to Washington influence, money isn't everything. Charles
Schwab, co-founder of the brokerage that bears his name, gave $6,450 more
than Lay and remains behind the scenes. More than a dozen corporations,
including AT&T Corp. and Microsoft Corp., gave more than Enron.
Enron's clout with the Bush administration was magnified by Bush's personal
friendship with Lay -- whom he nicknamed "Kenny Boy" -- the size of the
company, its ties to other officials, favors such as the loan of a corporate
jet, and a shared Texas heritage and ideological outlook, political analysts
say.
"They used every tool at their disposal, including money," said Trevor
Potter, a former Republican chairman of the Federal Elections Commission.
"They played the game as well as you can play it."...
Bush Senior, Junior
Lay's relationship with Bush predated Enron's rise to the top energy company.
The two men met in the late 1980s when Lay was a supporter of Bush's father,
President George Bush. When the elder Bush was voted out of office in 1992,
two of his Cabinet members, Secretary of State James A. Baker III and
Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher, worked for Enron.
The younger Bush and Lay worked together on the host committee for the 1992
Republican National Convention, held in Houston, and met again later when
they served on the site selection committee for former President Bush's
presidential library, which ultimately was housed at Texas A&M University.
Lay is now a library trustee.
Lay and his company became supporters of the younger Bush and helped
contribute $312,500 for his gubernatorial campaigns in 1994 and 1998 -- more
than any other single backer, according to Texans for Public Justice, which
tracks campaign finance in Texas. Lay himself gave $100,000 of that money.
Lay offered policy advice to then-Governor Bush as a member of the
Governor's Business Council in Texas. In March 1997, Lay wrote Bush to ask
him to contact "each member of Congress in your delegation" to ask them to
support funding boosts for the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and
the U.S. Export-Import Bank. Both organizations helped underwrite Enron
ventures abroad...Last January, after Bush's victory, Lay served on Bush's
Energy Policy Coordinating Group, which helped sketch a rough outline for
administration's energy policy. He also participated in Bush's economic
summit.
Later in the year, Lay got a private meeting with Vice President Cheney to
discuss "the whole issue of making wholesale markets work better," Lay said
in an interview with Bloomberg News last year. He said Cheney made no
commitments, but that he was sympathetic. "He fully understood," Lay said.
Quid Pro Quo
There were other ties between Enron and Bush administration officials.
Larry Lindsey, Bush's chief economic adviser, received $50,000 in consulting
fees from Enron last year. Former Montana Governor Marc Racicot was an Enron
lobbyist before Bush picked him to head the Republican National Committee.
U.S. trade Representative Robert Zoellick served on an Enron advisory
council and Thomas White, Bush's Army Secretary, was an Enron
executive...The bulk of Lay's contributions, more than $300,000, came as
soft money to the Republican Party. About 60 percent of that moved in one
day. The Republican National Committee received $250,000 April 28, 2000, one
day after the Senate Energy Committee -- then under Republican control --
announced its intent to craft an energy deregulation bill. Enron officials
have said that Lay's contributions have no link to the company and that the
timing was a coincidence.
'Fringe Benefits'
Enron often gave support in ways that don't show up in official campaign
contribution totals. For example, Lay was a Bush "Pioneer," committed to
raising at least $100,000 for the campaign, with no way to say how much more
he raised. "They were very good at providing the fringe benefits," said
Andrew Wheat, research director at Texans for Public Justice.
Enron gave $250,000 to fund the 2000 Republican convention in Philadelphia.
It was one of dozens of companies that provided a corporate jet to the Bush
campaign at discount rates. Lay and his wife gave $10,000 to help finance
Bush's Florida operation during the recount after the election. The company
and its employees gave $300,000 to Bush's inauguration bash.
The Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan Washington watchdog group
that tracks campaign money, got attention in January 2000 with a report
showing Enron as Bush's top career patron, with $550,025 given to his
gubernatorial and presidential campaigns through 1999.
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