|
March
8, 2002
John B.
Kelly
Michael
Moore and Me:
Disability Rights and
a Big Stupid White Guy
March
7, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Congressman
McInnis Equates Enviros to al-Qaeda
Mike Rogers
Will
the Battle of Shah-i-Kot Become the Taliban's Alamo
Walt Brasch
Patriot
Act and Free Speech
John Jonik
Insurance
Scams:
Who Are the Scofflaws?
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Bumper
Crop: The Politics
of Afghan Opium
March
6, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
A
Beautiful Mind:
Another Dangerous Lie?
Tom Turnipseed
War
Is Wrong
David
Vest
Billy
Graham and Nixon:
Tangled Up in Tape
Patrick
Cockburn
The
Bombings That
Made Putin a Hero
CounterPunch
Wire
Berezovsky
Fingers Putin
in Bombings
Edward
Said
Thoughts
About America
March
5, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Ann
Coulter At It Again:
Race-Baiting Norm Mineta
Bill Christison
A
Former CIA Officer
Explains Why the War
on Terror Won't Work
Delkhasteh and Wright
What
Should We be Fighting For? An Open Letter
to Pro-War Academics
Mariya
Tsvekova
Putin's
Georgian Gambit
March
4, 2002
Ralph
Nader
Dick
Cheney: A Dinosaur
in the Age of Mammals
Uri Avnery
How
Israel Will Torpedo
the Saudi Peace Plan
Southern
/ Kubrick
Stangelove
Scenario
for Shadow Govt. Bunker
David
Vest
Grammy's
of Constant Sorrow
March
3, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
War
on Terrorism for Dummies
Paul Cox
Boycott
Mel Gibson's
"We Were Soldiers"
Frederick
Hudson
Toward
a Nonviolent Africa:
Bill Sutherland's Quest
Eric Schaeffer
Dear
Christie Whitman:
Take This Job and Shove It
John Chuckman
Why
the Rest of Planet is Unnerved by America
March
2, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
Sweat,
Sex, Feet and
the Working Class
March
1, 2002
Brendan
Sexton III
What's
Wrong With Black Hawk Down: an Actor Speaks Out
David
Krieger
Nuclear
Terrorism
and US Nuclear Policy
February
28, 2002
James
T. Phillips
Baghdad,
Spring 1992
Gideon
Samet
Sharon
Must Go
Rep. Ron
Paul
Before
We Bomb Iraq
M. Shahid
Alam
Samuel
Huntington:
Peddling Civilizational Wars
St. Clair
/ Cockburn
Rumble
from the Jungle:
Ecuadorian Farmers Fight
DynCorp's ChemWar
February
27, 2002
Eric Hobsbawm
The
Future of War and Peace
John Troyer
About
that WTC Memorial
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Wired
for Democracy
or Business?
Alexander
Cockburn
Daniel
Pearl: Should His
Editors Have Sent Him There?
February
26, 2002
Jonathan
Steele
Kabul's
Loss
Vasily
Streltsov
The
Pentagon in
the Transcaucusas
CounterPunch
Wire
How
Corporations Use Shadowy "527" Groups to Influence
Politicians
Lt. Col.
Robert Bowman
ABM
Treaty: Alive or Dead?
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
A
Prayer for America
February
25, 2002
John Clarke
Interrogated
at US Border
Blankfort,
Poirier, Zeltzer
ADL
Blinks, Settles Spying Case
Alex Lynch
Naked
from Sin:
The Ordeal of Nahla
and Sami Al-Arian
John Chuckman
Ashcroft
Speaks in Tongues
February
24, 2002
David
Vest
Skate
Date
February
23, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Axis
of Evil and
Media Monopolies
Bahour/Dahan
Cracks
in the Occupation
February
22, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
Axel
of Evil: Sex Crimes
and the Constitution
February
21, 2002
Gary Leupp
The
Philippines: Second Front in US's Global War
David
Vest
Reagan
Clone Project?
Mokhiber
and Weissman
Chicago
School and Corporate America: Rotten to the Core
February
20, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
The
Shallow Throat Document
Kay Lee
The
Prison Guard Who Never Owned Up to His Crimes
February
19, 2002
David
Orr
Waylon
Jennings, the Duke,
and the Navajo
John Chuckman
The
Devil and Georgie Bush
Prudence
Crowther
Giblet
Gravitas
Ramzi
Kysia
Caught
in the Iraq DMZ
February
18, 2002
Ron Jacobs
The
US and Iran
George
Lewandowski
Empire
in Declline
Lenni
Brenner
Life
and Death of a Folk Hero
February
17, 2002
Robert
Fisk
Lost
in a Pit of Desperation
February
16, 2002
Phillip
Cryan
Colombia
in War Time
February
15, 2002
C.G. Estabrook
From
New York to Porto Alegre
Robert
O'Brien
The
View from Porto Alegre
Mokhiber/Weissman
Resisting
the Assassins
February
14, 2002
Levy and
Easton
Ante
Pavelic
Real Butcher of the Balkans
Joan Claybrook
Dear
Jeb Bush,
About You and Enron
John Chuckman
Time
for a Woman Prez
Alexander
Cockburn
Banning
the Koran
February
13, 2002
Sen. Russ
Feingold
War
Powers and
the War on Terror
Tom Turnipseed
Bush's
Folly
George
Monbiot
American
Imperialism
February
12, 2002
Uri Avnery
The
Great Game:
Oil, Sharon and Iran
Tommy
Ates
Black
Land Loss
February
11, 2002
Walt Brasch
The
Synergizing of America
John Troyer
Enron's
Deep Throat?
February
9, 2002
John Blair
Criticize
Cheney, Go to Jail
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
INSIDE
EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
Published Oct. 15, 2001
8-Page Special Issue
War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
Search
CounterPunch
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
|
March 8, 2002
CounterPunch Exclusive
Enron and the Spooky
Image Consultant
CounterPunch
Staff Report
In the wake of the California electricity "crisis"
last year, Enron hired a Washington, D.C., consultancy, headed
by a former Clinton administration official, to improve the
public image of the giant energy trader. From early last summer
until Enron filed for bankruptcy on Dec. 2, 2001, Intellibridge
Corp. essentially served as an independent "propaganda"
arm for Enron, developing a news Web site and organizing conferences,
which brought regulatory, political, media and business leaders
together to discuss the merits of Enron's vision for restructuring
the electric power industry across the United States.
Prior to the revelations of its off-balance-sheet
partnerships last October, Enron's biggest concern had been
fallout from California and how other states may become scared
to enact their own forms of electric and gas restructuring programs
that possibly would benefit Enron and other non-utility energy
marketing companies. Through its connections in D.C.'s closely
tied political and international business world, Intellibridge
landed the multi-million dollar contract with Enron.
David Rothkopf, deputy undersecretary
of commerce for international trade during Clinton's first term,
founded Intellibridge_originally called the Newmarket Company_in
the late 1990s after serving for two years as managing director
of Kissinger Associates, Inc., the geo-political consulting
group chaired by the former U.S. Secretary of State. In launching
Intellibridge, Rothkopf had the help of several former government
officials and spooks, including former National Security Advisor
Anthony Lake and former Central Intelligence Agency director
John Deutch, who was accused in 2000 of mishandling sensitive
data while serving at the CIA and previously as an under-secretary
at the Defense Department.
Even before these Intellibridge officials
joined the Clinton administration, Enron had succeeded in developing
a strong lobbying apparatus inside the Beltway during the first
Bush administration. And the Clinton administration did little,
if anything, to stand in the company's way. Plenty of good
material has been written about how Enron wooed both Democrats
and Republicans to help it with regulatory matters and risky
investments (most recently, the March 4, 2002 issue of The Nation
contains a comprehensive analysis of government favors for Enron
in Texas as well as on the domestic and international fronts).
For example, during both the Clinton
and the current Bush administrations, government officials helped
Enron with its investment in the Dabhol power plant in India.
During the Clinton administration, the Overseas Private Investment
Corp. and the Export-Import Bank of the United States provided
a total of $460 million in loans to Enron for the Dabhol project.
Vice President Dick Cheney went to bat
for Enron last summer when he met with Sonia Gandhi, wife of
the slain Indian Prime Minister and current president of the
opposition Congress party, to persuade her to help force the
Indian state of Maharashtra to pay Enron for power it had received
from the plant.
In a well-researched news article, The
Washington Post on Jan. 20, 2002, highlighted how Enron garnered
U.S. government support for its Dabhol project. The Post even
found a former Clinton administration official_Intellibridge's
Rothkopf_still willing to argue, more than a month and a half
after Enron filed for bankruptcy, the benefits of the U.S. government
using its citizens' money to support Enron's position in India.
"There is an appropriate role for
the U.S. government to step in on behalf of U.S. companies when
foreign governments are treating them unfairly," Rothkopf
told the Post reporters. "Enron, just like any other company,
was entitled to that support," Rothkopf added. Curiously,
the Post reporters_White House correspondent Dana Milbank and
national correspondent Paul Blustein_failed to mention to the
paper's readers the former connection between Rothkopf's Intellibridge
and Enron.
As part of the contract with Enron, Intellibridge
had the mandate to help stop the spread of the energy industry's
equivalent of the "rotten apple theory" through a
public image enhancement campaign. Enron wanted to make sure
negative perceptions about the company did not spread to segments
of the American public that would hear about the company only
in terms of the California energy crisis.
After winning the contract, Intellibridge
quickly discovered who Enron considered its friends_certain
conservative economists, the Wall Street Journal editorial page
and large industrial companies_and who Enron viewed as its enemies_New
York Times columnist Paul Krugman, then-New York Times editorial
page editor Howell Raines, who late last summer moved into the
top editorial position at the paper, and consumer advocacy groups.
Enron also wanted Intellibridge to create
an advisory committee to help guide the public image campaign.
Candidates for the committee included Cambridge Energy Research
Associates Chairman Daniel Yergin, New York Times columnist
Thomas Friedman, Economist magazine energy and environmental
reporter Vijay Vaitheeswaran and Wall Street Journal columnist
Rebecca Smith.
Intellibridge unveiled its Enron public
image campaign at an Enron-sponsored conference early last October
at a Ritz Carlton hotel in the Washington area. Attending the
conference were business leaders, politicians and regulators
from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, excluding former
FERC Chairman Curt Hebert, who had left FERC in August 2001
after learning that the Bush administration, based on discussions
with Enron officials, had named former Texas Public Utility
Commission Chairman Pat Wood to take over as FERC chairman.
Soon after Intellibridge organized the
conference in October, though, Enron' s fortunes began to crumble
and the company then had too much damage for Intellibridge to
control, thus putting an end to the relationship and forcing
Intellibridge to focus once again on the geo-political side
of its consulting business. CP
|