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Today's
Stories
June
7, 2004
Bill
Blum
The Myth of the Gipper: Reagan Didn't
End the Cold War
Ben
Tripp
What I Owe Reagan: the Brylcreemed
Bullshitter
Susan
Davis
Reagan, In a Nutshell
Phil
Gasper
Reagan: Goodbye and Good Riddance
June
5 / 6, 2004
C.
Douglas Lummis
Toward a Universal Declaration of
Human Wrongs
Saul
Landau
Five Cubans in Prison, Victims of Bush's Obsession
Dave
Lindorff
John Walker Lindh, Revisited
Brian
Cloughley
Apologies, Please, From Those Who Got It Wrong
Rich
Gibson
The Grenada 17: the Last Prisoners of the Cold War are Black
Elaine
Cassel
A Sorry FBI
Cathrin
Schütz
On the Ruins of Yugoslavia
Ben
Tripp
Call Me, Mr. Cassandra
Kurt
Nimmo
The Madness of King George
Ron
Jacobs
They Ain't Goin' Nowhere (Unless We Make It So)
Laura
Flanders
The Lynne Cheney Show?
Lenni
Brenner
Renaissance Noir: Caravaggio at the Met
Abigail
Jones
Whatever Happened to Lori Berenson, President Toledo's Trophy
Prisoner?
Mark
Latham
Nothing Bush Said Has Changed Our Hopes
Gerry
Adams
I Was Photographed While Tortured, Too
Toni
Solo
Venezuela 2004, Nicaragua's Contra War Reprised
Derek
Seidman
Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old
M.
Junaid Alam
Torture is Just the Symptom
Matt
Siegfried
An American Way of War
Dave
Zirin
The Politics of Charles Barkley
Poets'
Basement
Albert, Krieger, St. Clair
Website
of the Weekend
Overnight Sensations
June
4, 2004
Chris
Floyd
Masked and Anonymous: Inside America's
Animal House
Cornwell
/ Penketh
Exit Tenet: the Fall of a Fall Guy
Wayne
Madsen
Apprehension & Frustation: Neo-Cons on the Brink
Greg
Moses
Agitating for Workers' Rights in Iraq
Yitzak
Laor
Before Rafah
Ghali
Hassan
Ambassador to Death Squads: Who is Negroponte?
Jane
Stillwater
God, the Rapture and Vera Casey
CounterPunch
Wire
D-Day Reconsidered: Was It Really Worth the Carnage?
John
Borowski
Woo-Wooism v. Meteorites: Why the Dems Are No Match for Bush
Mike
Griffin
Caterpillar's Assault on the UAW
Alexander Cockburn
Has Bush Gone Over the Edge?
Website
of the Day
Aquae Urbis Romae:
Water and Empire
June
3, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Iran's Nuclear Dilemma
Dr.
Susan Block
America in tha Hood
Michael
Donnelly
The Bully and the Brahmin
John
Chuckman
Insanity in America: US Ranks Number
One in the Deranged
Christopher
Brauchli
The Return of Cardinal Law: Rome
on $12,000 a Month
Samia
Nassar Melki
Caravaggio in Iraq
Mike
Whitney
Subverting Justice: Pre-Trial Ruminations in the Padilla Case
Diane
Rejman
Memorial Day Isn't Just About the Dead
Scott
Morris
"WMDs" in Cuba
Paul
de Rooij
Palestinian Misery in Perspective
June
2, 2004
Brian
Cloughley
The Liars are Winning
Ray
McGovern
How Far Would They Go? Beware "Credible
Intelligence"
Josh
Frank
The Anybody But Bush Offensive
Mike
Whitney
The Afghanistan Failure: Bush's Warlord Patriots
Jackie
Corr
Iraq and Ireland: Three Tales from Butte, Montana
Robert
Jensen
The US Lost the Iraq War...and It's a Good Thing, Too
Alexander
Cockburn
"Bye, Bye Boonville!"
June
1, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Instant Karma: Bush's Sins Catch Up
with Him
William
A. Cook
Manufacturers of Fear and Loathing in
Rafah
Dave
Lindorff
Will the Times Clean House?
Kevin
Zeese
Inside the Kerry / Nader Meeting: Did
the Kerry Campaign Lie About What Was Discussed?
Jacob
Levich
Coming Soon: Return of the Draft,
a Bipartisan Production
Kathy
Kelly
Voices in the Wilderness v. the US
Government
Website
of the Day
Remind Us
May
29 / 31, 2004
Lee
Ballinger / Dave Marsh
The Origins of Memorial Day
Janine
Pommy Vega
Memo for Memorial Day
Mike
Ferner
On Their Way to Abu Ghraib
Alfred
W. McCoy
The Cruel Shadow: the Long History of CIA Torture Research
Douglas
Valentine
An Open Letter to the NYT: Questions, Questions, Questions
Chris
White
First to Fight Culture: a Former Marine on the Marine Motto
Bruce
Anderson
The Awful Injustice to Tai Abreu
David
Vest
Get Ready for Kerry's War: the 100 Year Quagmire
Saul
Landau
Torture: the Logical Outcome of Bush's War for Democracy?
Kurt
Nimmo
Abu Hamza al-Mazri, Made in the USA
Elaine
Cassel
The Secrets of Surveillance: Ashcroft, Snoops, and Gag Orders
Will
Potter
The New War on "Terror": Protest the Torture of Chimps;
Get Arrested as a "Terrorist"
Ben
Tripp
They Fiddled While Nero Got the Matches
Dr.
Susan Block
Save Abu Ghraib!
Kia
Kojouri
Nukes, the US, Israel and Iran: an
Interview with Sasan Fayazmanesh
Mickey
Z
D-Day: 60 Years is Enough!
Jon
Brown
Correcting the Correction at the Times
Patrick
B. Barr
Pre-emptive War Insurance
Stephen
Gowans
Bad Apples in a Bad Barrel
Tom
Gorman
Gore on Bush in Iraq: the Approach May be Exotic, But It's Hardly
New
Dave
Zirin
Fighting for Boxers' Rights: an Interview with Eddie Mustafa
Muhammad
Gregory
Weiher
Bush to Arabs: "Go Get Yourself Some Democracy"
Erik
Cummings
Jung Meets Bush
Poets'
Basement
Davies, Ford, Kearney, McLellan and Albert
May
28, 2004
Rafael
Rodriguez Cruz
Curtain of Silence on the Cuban 5
Greg
Moses
Bush's Misleading Speech on Abu Ghraib
Dave
Lindorff
Dissing Independent Contractors:
Those Who Do the Dirty Work
Norman
Solomon
Leaping for Lies at the Times
Rep.
Bill Delahunt
Bush's Cruel New Rules on Cuba
Paul
McGeough
Chalabi Baba and the 40 Thieves
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
India and Nehru: 40 Years After
Alexander
Cockburn
NYTs: "Maybe We Did Screw Up...a
Little"
May
27, 2004
Amy
Goodman / David Goodman
Fatal Errors: the Lies of Our Times
Douglas
Valentine
Ragging the Dogs of War at the
NYTs
John
L. Hess
The Times Confesses...Kind Of
Stew
Albert
Dellinger, the Wrestling Pacifist
Dave
Dellinger
a 1993 Interview
Christopher
Brauchli
Tax Breaks for Scions...to Hell with Poor Kids
Rampton
/ Stauber
Banana Republicans: Pumping Irony
May
26, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Goodbye, David Dellinger: He Was a
Friend of Ours
Robert
Fisk
The Things Bush Didn't Say in His Speech
Zeynep
Toufe
New Draft UN Resolution Permits Perpetual Occupation
Conn
Hallinan
Bush and Sharon: the Oil Connection
Tom
Stephens
2 + 2 is On My Mind: More Morons
and War Crimes
Derek
Medley
Protesting Gov. Bigot
CounterPunch
Wire
FBI Abducts Artist; Seizes Art
Andrew
Cockburn
The Trail to Tehran
May
25, 2004
Joe
Bageant
The Covert Kingdom: On Earth as It
is in Texas
Col.
Dan Smith
A Question of Human Dignity
Gary
Handschumacher
Visiting Lori Berenson: Time to Bring Her Home
Toni
Solo
A Developing War in the Andes
Marc
Estrin
September Song: Disturbing Questions
About 9/11
Stephen
Banko, III
A Vietnam Vet on "Supporting the
Troops"
Website
of the Day
The Wizard of Whimsy
May
24, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Dan Senor is Safe!
Kurt
Nimmo
Dirty Tricks & TortureGate: the
Missing Taguba Pages
Sam
Hamod
Gen. Zinni: "Wrong War, Wrong
Place, Wrong Time"
Mike
Whitney
The Wedding was a Bomb
Stan
Goff
Open Season on MAMs
Image
of the Day
A Photo from Abu Ghraib We Didn't See on the Front Page of the
NYTs
May
22 / 23, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
Colin Powell, a Political Obituary
Jeffrey
St. Clair
When War is Swell: Bush and the Carlyle Group
Elizabeth
Weill-Greenberg
Her Son Was Told He Wouldn't See Combat; Now He's Dead: an Interview
with Sue Niederer
Brian
Cloughley
America is Committing War Crimes in Iraq
Saul
Landau
Democracy in Latin America: Great for Investors; Not So Good
for People
Brandy
Baker
Feminists Stand By Their Man: Abortion, Judges and Kerry
Randall
Robinson
Bushwhacked in the Caribbean
Uri
Avnery
The Rape of Rafah
Ben
Tripp
Assume the Worst
Bruce
Anderson
News from Ecotopia: the Truth About the Wine Business
Josh
Ruebner
Why I Burned My Israeli Military Papers
Peter
Wolson, Ph. D.
Exhibitionistic Revenge at Abu Ghraib
Chloe
Cockburn
In Defense of "Troy": What Hector Could Teach Rummy
Linda
Burnham
Sexual Domination in Uniform: an American Value
Adrien
Rain Burke
War of the Necrophiliacs: Spc. Sabrina Harman and Her Corpse
David
Krieger
Charting a New Course for US Nuclear Policy
Ron
Jacobs
Turnaround
Poets'
Basement
Ford, Albert & LaMorticella
May 21, 2004
Ray
Close
The Canards of the Apologists
Christopher
Brauchli
"The Object of Torture is Torture"
Amira
Hass
Darkness at Noon
Jack
McCarthy
Camilo Mejia: Can the Son of a Sandinista Get a Fair Trial from
the US Army?
Bill
Kauffman
Nader v. Bush
Omar
Barghouti
No More Tears for America
Ghali
Hassan
Moral Failure of the "Free World" in Gaza
Christopher
Reed
How the CIA Taught the Portuguese to
Torture
Website
of the Day
Eric Idle on the Bush Administration: Fuck You, So Very Much
May
20, 2004
Andrew
Cockburn
The Truth About Chalabi
Kathy
Kelly
A Visit from the FBI
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Brown and Bored of Education in India
Tom
Stephens & John Philo
The War Crimes of Bush, Cheney & Co.
Sam
Bahour / Michael Dahan
Genocide by Public Policy
Robert
Ovetz
Ending the Race for the Last Turtle
Billy
Wilson
The Most Important Thing I Learned at School This Year
Website
of the Day
Rafah Today
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
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Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
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Click
Here for More Stories.
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June
7, 2004
New
Enron Documents
Lay,
Skilling and Enron's Washington Lobbyist Knew About Company's
Trading Schemes in California
By
JASON LEOPOLD
Federal energy regulators have just
released more than 400 pages of documents that suggest former
Enron chairman Ken Lay and former chief executive Jeff Skilling
were aware that Enron's west coast traders may have broken the
law by using manipulative trading tactics in California to boost
Enron's profits during the height of that state's power crisis.
Moreover, one of Enron's most
powerful Washington, D.C. lobbyists, who met with several members
of the Bush administration in the spring of 2001 about Enron's
opposition to price controls on electricity sales in California,
was told by Tim Belden, the mastermind behind Enron's notorious
trading scams, less than a year earlier that Belden and other
traders working at the company's West Coast trading desk in Portland,
Ore., spent the better part of 2000 and 2001 breaking the rules
governing California's power market "when opportunities
presented themselves to make money."
"There's really two--two
things that happened--two areas... in terms of things blowing
up," Belden told Shapiro, Enron's vice president of regulatory
affairs and one of the company's lobbyists, in August 2000. "One
is our day-ahead scheduling practices and then the other is our
real-time operations. Um, we've been doing and have been doing
for two years a lot of activity in, you know, there's black,
there's white and there's gray. Um, we have been endeavoring
into the gray area when opportunities present themselves to make
money. We have now moved out of the gray area into the clearly
what's legal area... not even legal, but what's, um, there's
like the letter of the law, the letter of the rules and the spirit
of the rules. Um, we've been exploiting the letter of the rules--or
literally interpreted--interpreting the rules, um, in California
when we can make money..."
The documents released by FERC--more
than 400 pages of transcripts of recorded conversations between
Enron traders, company attorneys and Enron's public and governmental
affairs departments that took place at the height of the California
electricity crisis in 2000 and 2001--provide the most vivid portrait
to date of the company's questionable trading practices that
set off California's power crisis.
California's electricity crisis
wreaked havoc on consumers and businesses from the summer of
2000 to June of 2001, resulting in three days of rolling blackouts,
hundreds of emergency power alerts and forced the state's largest
utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, into bankruptcy. The crisis
cost the state more than $70 billion.
State Attorney General Bill
Lockyer said last week that he expects to file a multibillion
lawsuit against Enron as a result of the company's manipulative
trading practices detailed in the transcripts..
California is also seeking
$9 billion in refunds from a handful of energy companies for
overcharging the state during the power crisis. That issue is
expected to be taken up by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in
San Francisco because FERC said California was only entitled
to roughly $3 billion in refunds.
In the conversation between
Shapiro and Belden, Shapiro urged Belden to pull back on his
trading schemes in California, such as artificially clogging
transmission lines, sending power out of state and submitting
false data to the state's grid operator, and to begin working
more closely within the law because of the severe political risk
associated with Enron and the billions of dollars the company
reaped from California's electricity crisis to fill its coffers.
But despite the fact that Shapiro
was in the know about Enron's questionable trading practices,
he continued to lobby powerful Washington lawmakers urging them
not to fix the market problems in California saying the crisis
was the state's fault for not building enough power plants, according
to public documents from the House Governmental Affairs Committee.
Belden, however, told Shapiro
that he would continue to exploit the rules in California, believing
that he may be breaking the law as a result, as long as it didn't
cause the lights to go out in the state. He added that if Skilling
were forced to testify before a commission about the inner workings
of the West Coast trading desk that it could hurt Belden's career.
"I know there's a lot
of political risk and I know that we got a ton of money in our
book and then -- if Jeff Skilling ah, has to go in front of some
commission and explain the activities of the West Power Group,
that's probably not so great for my career," Belden told
Shapiro, according to the transcripts.
This is the first revelation
that an Enron lobbyist was briefed on the company's manipulative
trading practices and it appears likely that other executives
were also in the know. Shapiro wielded enormous influence with
members of the Bush administration. On May 23, 2001 he met with
White House economic adviser Robert McNally and Energy Secretary
Spencer Abraham's chief of staff about Bush's National Energy
Policy and Enron's opposition to price controls in California.
The meeting between Shapiro
and McNally came at a crucial time for Enron. The company's most
senior executives recognized that Enron stood to lose hundreds
of millions in profits and its standing on Wall Street if California
lawmakers were successful in getting federal energy regulators
to rewrite the rules in California's power market. Judging by
the events that followed, it appears that Bush and Cheney were
in Enron's corner.
Four days before Shapiro met
with McNally and Abraham's staff, on May 17, 2001, Vice President
Dick Cheney was interviewed by the television news program Frontline.
When asked if companies like Enron were behaving like a "cartel"
and manipulating the California power market Cheney responded
with a resounding "no."
"The problem you had in
California was caused by a combination of things_an unwise regulatory
scheme, because they didn't really deregulate. Now they're trapped
from unwise regulatory schemes, plus not having addressed the
supply side of the issue. They've obviously created major problems
for themselves . . ."
That same day, May 17, 2001,
Cheney and Bush unveiled the details of the National Energy Policy,
in which Cheney adopted seven of Ken Lay's suggestions, according
to published reports. Had the intimate details of Enron's trading
schemes been known to California officials it most certainly
would have derailed Bush's energy policy, which called for keeping
many of deregulation's key components in place, and forcing key
players, like Cheney, to return to the drawing board to draft
a new policy.
But there's more.
On May 17, 2001, Enron Chairman
Ken Lay called a secret meeting at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly
Hills, Calif., in an effort to get some of the state's rich and
famous to lobby the California Legislature about getting "deregulation
right this time." LLay apparently paid close attention to
Enron's trading profits. A few months earlier, Sue Mara, an Enron
governmental affairs employee phoned Bob Badeer, an Enron trader,
with a question from Ken Lay. Following public comments by Davis
about the state of California's energy crisis, Mara said Lay
personally wanted to know if Davis's comments had affected the
price of power in the forward market, That Lay would be interested
in such minute details contradicts the former chairman's public
statements that he had no idea about the shenanigans taking place
inside of Enron.
California's current Governor,
Arnold Schwarzenegger, who unseated Davis in a contentious recall
election last year, attended the meeting at the Peninsula Hotel
with Lay as did former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and
junk-bond king Michael Milken and other luminaries. Lay handed
the attendees a seven-page document that contained so-called
solutions to the state's electricity crisis.
Twelve days after Lay met with
Schwarzenegger and Cheney was interviewed by Frontline, and eight
days after Shapiro met with McNally, President Bush agreed to
meet with Gray Davis at the Century Plaza Hotel in West Los Angeles
to listen to Davis's plea for much-needed price controls on soaring
power prices. Bush refused saying the free-market would eventually
correct the problems.
But it was already clear within
Enron that the company would no longer be able to earn, in what
Enron governmental affairs employee referred to on the transcripts
as "bucketloads of cash," from California. Weeks earlier,
California, under Davis, signed $42 billion in long-term electricity
contracts with more than two-dozen energy companies and no longer
bought the bulk of its power needs in the open market, where
earned its biggest windfall.
In June 2001, shortly after
the details of the long-term contracts were revealed, Skilling
and Lay summonded Belden to Houston to discuss the company's
West Coast trading division, which Belden said in one recorded
conversation accounted for 80 percent of Enron's profits in 2000
and 2001, to determine if anything could be done to salvage the
operation, according to one person working with the Justice Department
on the investigation.
It's unclear what came out
of that meeting, but two months later Jeff Skilling resigned
from Enron. Just three months earlier, on March 9, 2001, he flew
to Portland to take Belden and other senior traders out to dinner
at Higgins restaurant to celebrate Enron's successful first quarter
earnings. On the transcripts released by FERC, traders said they
made upwards of $10 million a day in 2000 by utilizing many of
the trading scams developed by Belden.
What's surprising about those
scams Enron traders pulled in California is how well-known it
was within the company's Houston headquarters, according to the
transcripts. Indeed, one public affairs official at Enron instructed
a trader based in the company's Portland, Oregon trading division
to lie to a Wall Street Journal reporter who wanted to write
a story about Enron's lucrative trading desk.
"The thing is anything
they'd ask you, you'd have to lie because you wouldn't want to
tell them the truth...," an unidentified Enron employee
in the company's governmental affairs department said to an Enron
trader. The governmental affairs employee then attempts to talk
the trader out of doing the interview with the Journal. "I
wouldn't do it (the interview). 'Cause first of all, you'd have
to tell 'em a lot of lies, cause if you told 'em the truth..."
"I'd get in trouble,"
the trader says, interrupting the governmental affairs employee.
"You'd get in trouble,"
the governmental affairs employee said.
Still, on July 18, 2000, The
Wall Street Journal printed a story under the headline Energy
Traders Reap Big Profits on High Prices, which explained the
excitement of being an energy trader during a period of volatile
energy prices, apparently the same story that was discussed between
the Enron trader and the governmental affairs employee. It's
now known, according to the transcripts, that skyrocketing power
prices discussed in that story were directly caused by Enron's
manipulative tactics. and was not a result of regulatory restrictions
that were left in place in California's wholesale electricity
market.
What's more, the documents
provide the complete blueprints for manipulating the California
power market, including instructions on how to artificially clog
the state's transmission lines and get paid to remove the bogus
congestion and details on how to send power out of state and
resell it to California at ten times the price the company would
have received if it kept the power in California.
Perhaps the most prescient
part of the transcript is when John Forney, a senior Enron trader
who worked closely with Belden and was indicted on conspiracy
charges, fears that he may be sent to jail. In a conversation
Forney had with Belden, Forney seems to have misgivings about
one scheme he just pulled that involved California and Canada.
Belden seems to brush off Forney's
concerns, according to the transcripts, and Forney says he can't
believe that none of his Enron colleagues seem to be concerned
about the possibility of going to jail as a result of the schemes
he and other traders have pulled.
"I only want to go to
jail once," Forney says.
"Yeah," Belden says.
"Once in this country."
Forney is expected to appear
in federal court in San Francisco in October.
Jason Leopold is the former Los Angeles bureau chief
of Dow Jones Newswires where he spent two years covering the
energy crisis and the Enron bankruptcy. He just finished writing
a book about the crisis, due out in December through Rowman &
Littlefield.
Weekend Edition
Features for June 5 / 6, 2004
C.
Douglas Lummis
Toward a Universal Declaration of
Human Wrongs
Saul
Landau
Five Cubans in Prison, Victims of Bush's Obsession
Dave
Lindorff
John Walker Lindh, Revisited
Brian
Cloughley
Apologies, Please, From Those Who Got It Wrong
Rich
Gibson
The Grenada 17: the Last Prisoners of the Cold War are Black
Elaine
Cassel
A Sorry FBI
Cathrin
Schütz
On the Ruins of Yugoslavia
Ben
Tripp
Call Me, Mr. Cassandra
Kurt
Nimmo
The Madness of King George
Ron
Jacobs
They Ain't Goin' Nowhere (Unless We Make It So)
Laura
Flanders
The Lynne Cheney Show?
Lenni
Brenner
Renaissance Noir: Caravaggio at the Met
Abigail
Jones
Whatever Happened to Lori Berenson, President Toledo's Trophy
Prisoner?
Mark
Latham
Nothing Bush Said Has Changed Our Hopes
Gerry
Adams
I Was Photographed While Tortured, Too
Toni
Solo
Venezuela 2004, Nicaragua's Contra War Reprised
Derek
Seidman
Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old
M.
Junaid Alam
Torture is Just the Symptom
Matt
Siegfried
An American Way of War
Dave
Zirin
The Politics of Charles Barkley
Poets'
Basement
Albert, Krieger, St. Clair
Website
of the Weekend
Overnight Sensations
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