1 00:00:37,496 --> 00:00:39,930 What's he building in there? 2 00:00:41,667 --> 00:00:44,636 What the hell is he building in there? 3 00:00:46,939 --> 00:00:49,568 It had taken Enron 16 years to go 4 00:00:49,809 --> 00:00:51,538 from about 10 billion of assets to 5 00:00:51,744 --> 00:00:54,144 65 billion of assets. 6 00:00:54,414 --> 00:00:56,644 It took them 24 days to go bankrupt. 7 00:00:56,849 --> 00:00:59,716 What the hell is he building in there? 8 00:00:59,919 --> 00:01:03,047 This company collapsed so quickly and so entirely. 9 00:01:03,189 --> 00:01:06,215 I mean it was into bankruptcy within a matter of weeks. 10 00:01:06,426 --> 00:01:08,155 It just immediately had 11 00:01:08,361 --> 00:01:11,297 all the makings of a gigantic scandal. 12 00:01:11,498 --> 00:01:14,160 He's hiding something from the rest of us. 13 00:01:14,435 --> 00:01:16,528 The fatal flaw at Enron 14 00:01:16,770 --> 00:01:19,364 if there is one, you say it was pride 15 00:01:19,573 --> 00:01:21,939 but then it was arrogance, 16 00:01:22,209 --> 00:01:24,234 intolerance, greed, 17 00:01:25,112 --> 00:01:27,342 So many of them were blinded by the money 18 00:01:27,614 --> 00:01:28,546 that they didn't see that 19 00:01:28,816 --> 00:01:30,181 they were sinking their own life boat 20 00:01:30,384 --> 00:01:32,249 We have a right to know. 21 00:01:32,953 --> 00:01:35,047 It just got hungrier and hungrier. 22 00:01:35,357 --> 00:01:37,188 Sooner or later they were doomed to go off 23 00:01:37,392 --> 00:01:39,087 that cliff at 90 miles an hour. 24 00:01:40,295 --> 00:01:43,355 It's astounding that they got away with it for so long. 25 00:01:43,965 --> 00:01:46,525 In reality, Enron was a house of cards. 26 00:01:46,835 --> 00:01:48,462 What we didn't know was that the house of cards 27 00:01:48,803 --> 00:01:51,670 had been built over a pool of gasoline 28 00:01:52,507 --> 00:01:55,306 It all sort of became smoke and mirrors. 29 00:01:57,913 --> 00:01:59,904 Committee will come to order. 30 00:02:00,116 --> 00:02:03,643 This is a case of America's largest corporate bankruptcy. 31 00:02:03,919 --> 00:02:05,511 The question here is what happened, 32 00:02:05,755 --> 00:02:07,620 who was responsible for it happening, 33 00:02:07,823 --> 00:02:09,313 and what can we do to prevent this sort of thing 34 00:02:09,558 --> 00:02:10,547 from happening again. 35 00:02:11,861 --> 00:02:14,022 I think the Enron story's so fascinating 36 00:02:14,263 --> 00:02:16,561 because people perceive it as a story 37 00:02:16,766 --> 00:02:17,825 that's about numbers. 38 00:02:18,035 --> 00:02:21,163 That it's somehow about all these complicated transactions. 39 00:02:21,338 --> 00:02:23,169 But in reality it's a story about people 40 00:02:23,340 --> 00:02:25,570 and it's really a human tragedy. 41 00:03:41,988 --> 00:03:43,512 On this date, at 2:23 am, 42 00:03:43,790 --> 00:03:46,350 Sugar Land police discovered John C Baxter 43 00:03:47,261 --> 00:03:48,421 located inside his vehicle 44 00:03:48,662 --> 00:03:50,755 with an apparent gunshot wound to the head. 45 00:03:51,031 --> 00:03:53,625 Ah... at this time there has been a suicide note located. 46 00:03:53,934 --> 00:03:55,799 Sir, can you give us any indication whether 47 00:03:56,103 --> 00:03:58,230 this was related to Enron's bankruptcy. 48 00:03:58,472 --> 00:04:00,201 We do know that he was and Enron employee, 49 00:04:00,341 --> 00:04:02,639 but as far as any other indications of why 50 00:04:02,877 --> 00:04:04,242 he committed suicide, no we do not. 51 00:04:11,253 --> 00:04:11,878 Mr. Skilling, 52 00:04:12,187 --> 00:04:14,212 let me touch on something that's sort of sad 53 00:04:14,456 --> 00:04:17,357 and that's of course the suicide of Cliff Baxter. 54 00:04:17,592 --> 00:04:19,526 And you mentioned he was your best friend 55 00:04:19,728 --> 00:04:21,161 in your opening statement. 56 00:04:21,496 --> 00:04:24,021 Before he died, 57 00:04:24,232 --> 00:04:26,166 did you have many conversations with him? 58 00:04:27,235 --> 00:04:28,224 Yes. 59 00:04:28,470 --> 00:04:31,668 And were any of them relative to Enron? 60 00:04:34,343 --> 00:04:35,708 Yes. 61 00:04:38,080 --> 00:04:39,809 There's no one that knew Cliff, 62 00:04:40,049 --> 00:04:41,380 toward the end, that didn't realize that 63 00:04:41,651 --> 00:04:44,552 he was heartbroken by what had happened. 64 00:04:45,788 --> 00:04:47,881 And Cliff came over to my house 65 00:04:48,491 --> 00:04:51,289 and he said 'They're calling us child molesters.' 66 00:04:51,494 --> 00:04:54,259 He says, 'That will never wash off.' 67 00:04:55,499 --> 00:04:57,296 But Mr. Skilling you don't believe that. 68 00:04:57,501 --> 00:04:58,525 I don't believe what? 69 00:04:58,769 --> 00:05:02,796 You don't believe that the press and everybody 70 00:05:03,307 --> 00:05:06,572 calling Cliff Baxter or yourself or anybody 71 00:05:06,810 --> 00:05:08,505 on the Board of Directors, 72 00:05:08,745 --> 00:05:10,337 denigrating or tainting you, 73 00:05:10,614 --> 00:05:11,808 you don't think it's accurate 74 00:05:12,049 --> 00:05:13,744 is what you're saying to us here today. 75 00:05:13,951 --> 00:05:16,011 I do not believe... 76 00:05:16,387 --> 00:05:20,016 I did not do anything wrong that was not in the interest 77 00:05:20,258 --> 00:05:22,453 In all the time that I worked for Enron Corporation, 78 00:05:22,660 --> 00:05:24,719 it was in the interest of the shareholders of the company. 79 00:05:25,863 --> 00:05:30,061 Ultimately, who was responsible for the downfall of Enron? 80 00:05:34,372 --> 00:05:35,634 Only a few years ago, 81 00:05:35,840 --> 00:05:38,867 Enron was the nation's seventh-largest corporation, 82 00:05:39,078 --> 00:05:41,512 valued at almost 70 billion dollars. 83 00:05:42,214 --> 00:05:45,445 Pundits praised the company as a new business model. 84 00:05:46,619 --> 00:05:50,487 This trading floor was manned by America's best and brightest, 85 00:05:50,689 --> 00:05:53,385 charting the futures of energy and power. 86 00:05:54,493 --> 00:05:57,394 And high above each with a private staircase, 87 00:05:57,630 --> 00:05:59,427 Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling 88 00:05:59,698 --> 00:06:02,224 had built their own plush staterooms. 89 00:06:02,469 --> 00:06:04,699 They were known as the smartest guys in the room. 90 00:06:04,938 --> 00:06:08,874 Captains of a ship too powerful to ever go down. 91 00:06:09,309 --> 00:06:11,641 In the Titanic, the captain went down with the ship. 92 00:06:11,945 --> 00:06:15,711 In Enron, it looks to me like the captain first gave himself 93 00:06:15,915 --> 00:06:17,143 and some friends a bonus, 94 00:06:17,350 --> 00:06:19,614 then lowered himself and the top folks down in the lifeboat 95 00:06:19,853 --> 00:06:20,945 and then hollered up and said, 96 00:06:21,187 --> 00:06:23,156 by the way, everything is going to be just fine. 97 00:06:23,758 --> 00:06:24,690 Like Skilling, 98 00:06:24,959 --> 00:06:27,655 Ken Lay said he hadn't done anything wrong. 99 00:06:28,195 --> 00:06:29,423 Could we have a word with you real quickly? 100 00:06:29,664 --> 00:06:30,631 We're with CNN. 101 00:06:30,898 --> 00:06:32,160 Really not this morning, thank you. 102 00:06:32,366 --> 00:06:33,697 Beyond the financial issues, 103 00:06:33,968 --> 00:06:36,630 some suspected a political conspiracy. 104 00:06:36,904 --> 00:06:39,372 Enron had been the largest corporate contributor 105 00:06:39,573 --> 00:06:43,202 to the first presidential campaign of George W. Bush. 106 00:06:43,577 --> 00:06:46,240 This is not a political issue, it is a business issue. 107 00:06:46,648 --> 00:06:48,707 You know Enron had made contributions to 108 00:06:48,917 --> 00:06:51,351 a lot of people around Washington D.C. 109 00:06:52,220 --> 00:06:54,313 And if they came to this administration looking for help 110 00:06:54,556 --> 00:06:55,682 they didn't find any. 111 00:06:55,924 --> 00:06:58,825 To say no help had is like, 112 00:06:59,261 --> 00:07:01,729 'I did not have political relations 113 00:07:02,064 --> 00:07:04,294 with that man, Mr. Lay.' 114 00:07:04,533 --> 00:07:06,160 What about the fact that George W. Bush 115 00:07:06,368 --> 00:07:08,132 calls Ken Lay, Kenny Boy? 116 00:07:08,371 --> 00:07:09,963 That's my nickname for my husband, 117 00:07:10,173 --> 00:07:11,333 which he overheard. 118 00:07:11,574 --> 00:07:13,132 So it wasn't original, with the President? 119 00:07:13,376 --> 00:07:14,570 It certainly wasn't. 120 00:07:15,078 --> 00:07:16,306 According to published reports, 121 00:07:16,546 --> 00:07:20,346 your husband earned about 300 million dollars in, 122 00:07:20,583 --> 00:07:22,414 in compensation, in stocks 123 00:07:22,618 --> 00:07:24,518 from Enron over the last four years. 124 00:07:24,821 --> 00:07:26,550 What happened to all that money? 125 00:07:26,789 --> 00:07:28,815 It's gone. It's gone. 126 00:07:29,093 --> 00:07:30,253 There's nothing left. 127 00:07:34,298 --> 00:07:37,495 This is the shredded evidence we got that came out of Enron. 128 00:07:38,001 --> 00:07:41,266 We very quickly determined that the insiders had sold off 129 00:07:41,505 --> 00:07:45,168 a billion dollars of their stock in the preceding several months. 130 00:07:45,342 --> 00:07:48,869 Did you convert stock worth 66 million dollars? 131 00:07:50,080 --> 00:07:51,571 I don't know, but... 132 00:07:51,850 --> 00:07:52,407 I don't have the records with me... 133 00:07:52,684 --> 00:07:54,208 Would that be surprising to you to learn that you did that? 134 00:07:54,452 --> 00:07:56,181 No, that would not be surprising. 135 00:07:56,688 --> 00:07:58,178 Mr. Fastow 136 00:07:58,423 --> 00:08:01,620 got only 30 million in stock proceeds from Enron, 137 00:08:01,993 --> 00:08:04,518 but he took another 30 million out, 138 00:08:05,230 --> 00:08:06,891 with his side deals. 139 00:08:07,165 --> 00:08:11,226 I think there was just an immediate sense of outrage 140 00:08:11,536 --> 00:08:15,303 at Lay and Skilling and Fastow 141 00:08:15,541 --> 00:08:18,510 when people realized how much they had profited, 142 00:08:18,744 --> 00:08:20,769 and how completely artificial 143 00:08:21,013 --> 00:08:22,878 the appearance of this company had been. 144 00:08:24,817 --> 00:08:27,547 News of shredding at Enron raised more questions. 145 00:08:28,354 --> 00:08:31,255 What answers were lost in the torn documents? 146 00:08:31,824 --> 00:08:35,021 20,000 employees had lost their jobs. 147 00:08:35,429 --> 00:08:39,593 $2 billion in pensions and retirement funds had disappeared. 148 00:08:40,267 --> 00:08:43,031 Was Enron the work of a few bad men 149 00:08:43,270 --> 00:08:46,171 or the dark shadow of the American dream? 150 00:08:51,578 --> 00:08:56,845 Lay comes to the story of Enron from very humble roots. 151 00:08:59,921 --> 00:09:02,481 My father was a Baptist minister and, 152 00:09:02,790 --> 00:09:04,257 and he was ordained a Baptist minister 153 00:09:04,492 --> 00:09:08,485 while I was very young probably two, three years old. 154 00:09:08,696 --> 00:09:11,130 Ken Lay was a Baptist Preacher's son in a family 155 00:09:11,265 --> 00:09:12,732 that had been poor all it's life 156 00:09:12,967 --> 00:09:16,368 and he, throughout his life, worked several jobs as a kid 157 00:09:16,838 --> 00:09:20,002 and clearly had in mind that things could be better... 158 00:09:20,242 --> 00:09:21,038 and wanted things to be better. 159 00:09:21,310 --> 00:09:24,370 He had a huge ambition to make wealth for himself. 160 00:09:24,613 --> 00:09:27,138 He told a story later about sitting on a tractor, 161 00:09:27,316 --> 00:09:28,840 dreaming about the world of business 162 00:09:29,051 --> 00:09:30,245 and how different it could be from the way 163 00:09:30,486 --> 00:09:31,919 things were for him and his family. 164 00:09:34,356 --> 00:09:36,824 Lay was a PhD in economics and he became, 165 00:09:37,025 --> 00:09:39,425 very early on, a real apostle for deregulation. 166 00:09:39,695 --> 00:09:41,595 He was way ahead of the curve on this. 167 00:09:41,830 --> 00:09:43,355 He was thinking about energy markets 168 00:09:43,600 --> 00:09:45,966 that would be deregulated. And in particular, 169 00:09:46,202 --> 00:09:49,296 the natural gas industry that was shackled by regulation. 170 00:09:49,506 --> 00:09:53,340 And he pushed aggressively in Washington to change all of that. 171 00:09:58,481 --> 00:09:59,072 In Washington, 172 00:09:59,349 --> 00:10:01,249 Lay became part of a new crusade 173 00:10:01,551 --> 00:10:03,644 to liberate businessmen from the rules 174 00:10:03,887 --> 00:10:05,913 and regulations of government. 175 00:10:06,190 --> 00:10:09,421 Government is not the solution to our problem. 176 00:10:09,827 --> 00:10:11,761 Government is the problem. 177 00:10:11,996 --> 00:10:14,396 The societies which have achieved the most spectacular, 178 00:10:14,598 --> 00:10:17,829 broad-based economic progress in the shortest period of time 179 00:10:18,335 --> 00:10:20,166 are not the most tightly controlled, 180 00:10:20,371 --> 00:10:22,566 not necessarily the biggest in size, 181 00:10:22,840 --> 00:10:25,468 or the wealthiest in natural resources. 182 00:10:25,943 --> 00:10:28,811 No, what unites them all is their willingness to believe 183 00:10:29,014 --> 00:10:31,574 in the magic of the marketplace. 184 00:10:39,291 --> 00:10:41,418 The magic power of deregulation 185 00:10:41,660 --> 00:10:44,925 pushed Ken Lay to found Enron in 1985. 186 00:10:45,530 --> 00:10:48,967 Through a merger of vast networks of natural gas pipelines, 187 00:10:49,302 --> 00:10:51,600 Lay thought Enron would be poised to take 188 00:10:51,804 --> 00:10:53,829 advantage of the government's decision 189 00:10:54,073 --> 00:10:57,440 to let gas prices float with the currents of the market. 190 00:10:59,612 --> 00:11:02,809 Ken Lay had a view of deregulation 191 00:11:03,015 --> 00:11:04,346 from the standpoint of all the money 192 00:11:04,584 --> 00:11:06,017 that he thought could be made. 193 00:11:06,252 --> 00:11:07,514 Ken Lay wasn't alone. 194 00:11:07,787 --> 00:11:10,255 A couple of Texas oilmen shared his views 195 00:11:10,489 --> 00:11:13,254 on how to get government out of the energy business. 196 00:11:13,460 --> 00:11:15,621 I think they could sort of understand each other. 197 00:11:15,862 --> 00:11:17,295 It was a professional courtesy 198 00:11:17,564 --> 00:11:20,055 between a sidewinder and a timber rattlesnake. 199 00:11:20,300 --> 00:11:21,961 Lay was closer to the father. 200 00:11:22,235 --> 00:11:24,203 But while he was governor of Texas 201 00:11:24,371 --> 00:11:26,362 George W. Bush was only too happy to 202 00:11:26,573 --> 00:11:28,734 make phone calls for Ken Lay. 203 00:11:29,643 --> 00:11:31,804 This absolutely has no precedent. 204 00:11:32,045 --> 00:11:34,981 This is by far and away the most important, 205 00:11:35,350 --> 00:11:38,410 major relationship of a Presidential family 206 00:11:38,653 --> 00:11:40,917 with a single corporation in American history. 207 00:11:41,255 --> 00:11:42,119 When Rich Kinder, 208 00:11:42,390 --> 00:11:44,722 one of Enron's Executives, left the company, 209 00:11:44,959 --> 00:11:47,519 Lay arranged for a video valentine. 210 00:11:47,829 --> 00:11:51,321 Rich, I've... been asked to think of one thing 211 00:11:51,633 --> 00:11:53,225 I could say to you on your departure from Enron. 212 00:11:53,468 --> 00:11:55,994 It'd be this, 'Don't leave Texas.' 213 00:11:56,305 --> 00:11:59,240 Rich, you have been fantastic to the Bush family. 214 00:11:59,608 --> 00:12:01,235 I don't think anybody did more than 215 00:12:01,443 --> 00:12:02,967 you did to support George and, 216 00:12:03,212 --> 00:12:04,645 of course, in this stage of my life, 217 00:12:04,880 --> 00:12:07,178 and Barbara's too, that's what really matters. 218 00:12:07,416 --> 00:12:09,179 Your family and your friends. 219 00:12:09,885 --> 00:12:11,876 Early on, George Bush, Sr. 220 00:12:12,221 --> 00:12:14,712 Helped secure billions in government subsidies 221 00:12:14,957 --> 00:12:16,447 for Enron International. 222 00:12:16,725 --> 00:12:18,751 And he helped promote Lay as 223 00:12:19,029 --> 00:12:21,497 deregulation's Ambassador-at-Large. 224 00:12:22,232 --> 00:12:23,631 Enron is a company... 225 00:12:23,967 --> 00:12:27,198 that deals with everyone with absolute integrity. 226 00:12:27,404 --> 00:12:29,531 We want people to leave the transaction with Enron 227 00:12:29,773 --> 00:12:31,001 thinking that they've been dealt with 228 00:12:31,374 --> 00:12:33,638 in the highest possible way 229 00:12:33,910 --> 00:12:36,071 as far as integrity and truthfulness. 230 00:12:36,312 --> 00:12:39,213 He always wrapped himself in the cloak of moral rectitude. 231 00:12:39,516 --> 00:12:41,451 But there was one episode, early on, 232 00:12:41,719 --> 00:12:43,710 that raised questions about whether he was actually 233 00:12:43,988 --> 00:12:47,355 walking the walk This was the Enron oil scandal, 234 00:12:47,591 --> 00:12:49,218 also know as the Valhalla Scandal. 235 00:12:50,161 --> 00:12:51,594 While you were at Arthur Anderson, 236 00:12:51,829 --> 00:12:54,662 were you involved in an investigation 237 00:12:54,932 --> 00:12:57,127 at a company called Enron Oil?" 238 00:12:57,702 --> 00:12:58,691 Yes, I was. 239 00:12:58,903 --> 00:13:01,235 The issue with the company in 1997 240 00:13:01,405 --> 00:13:05,001 involved the misappropriation of moneys by two traders. 241 00:13:05,711 --> 00:13:09,613 In 1987 two oil traders made bets for Enron 242 00:13:09,881 --> 00:13:12,315 on whether the price of oil would rise or fall. 243 00:13:13,418 --> 00:13:15,010 Oil trading is like gambling: 244 00:13:15,253 --> 00:13:17,778 Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. 245 00:13:18,223 --> 00:13:21,192 But Enron Oil always seemed to win, 246 00:13:21,359 --> 00:13:23,259 much to Ken Lay's delight. 247 00:13:23,462 --> 00:13:25,192 I tried to explain to Ken Lay 248 00:13:25,364 --> 00:13:28,492 the tremendous risk that you have in that market. 249 00:13:28,701 --> 00:13:29,895 You can lose... 250 00:13:30,236 --> 00:13:32,295 ten times your original investment. 251 00:13:32,772 --> 00:13:34,706 A veteran trader, Mike Muckleroy, 252 00:13:34,907 --> 00:13:38,206 was suspicious of Enron Oil's steady high profits. 253 00:13:38,911 --> 00:13:40,742 Well this oil trading business had profits 254 00:13:40,980 --> 00:13:42,572 that nobody could really understand and in fact, 255 00:13:42,915 --> 00:13:44,849 that many of Ken Lay's lieutenants questioned. 256 00:13:45,118 --> 00:13:46,346 They said this business can't be making 257 00:13:46,552 --> 00:13:47,781 this much money legitimately. 258 00:13:48,021 --> 00:13:49,648 Something weird is going on. 259 00:13:50,057 --> 00:13:52,218 Something weird was going on. 260 00:13:52,693 --> 00:13:54,786 The first hint came from an anonymous tip 261 00:13:55,028 --> 00:13:56,723 about the president of the company, 262 00:13:56,964 --> 00:13:58,261 Louis Borget. 263 00:13:58,499 --> 00:14:01,468 Mr. Borget had taken some three plus million dollars 264 00:14:01,735 --> 00:14:04,932 of corporate funds and put it in a personal account of his. 265 00:14:05,205 --> 00:14:07,799 There were offshore accounts phony books 266 00:14:08,008 --> 00:14:10,204 and a trail that led from the company's treasurer, 267 00:14:10,478 --> 00:14:11,376 Tom Mastroeni, 268 00:14:11,613 --> 00:14:15,014 to a mysterious Lebanese speculator no one could find: 269 00:14:15,250 --> 00:14:16,615 M. Yass. 270 00:14:17,118 --> 00:14:18,608 What name did you suspect that was? 271 00:14:18,853 --> 00:14:20,218 My ass, you know. 272 00:14:20,622 --> 00:14:23,090 And M Smart, well so that's Maxwell Smart. 273 00:14:23,324 --> 00:14:25,053 I mean, these guys are playing games 274 00:14:25,827 --> 00:14:28,295 Borget and Mastroeni were summoned to Houston. 275 00:14:28,830 --> 00:14:31,994 First, they presented falsified bank records to Enron. 276 00:14:32,401 --> 00:14:34,392 Then they admitted they had diverted company 277 00:14:34,637 --> 00:14:36,628 profits to personal accounts. 278 00:14:37,740 --> 00:14:39,298 It was brought to the attention of the Enron Board. 279 00:14:39,508 --> 00:14:41,271 Auditors were brought in as well, 280 00:14:41,510 --> 00:14:42,602 to look at the whole thing. 281 00:14:42,845 --> 00:14:43,812 At the board meeting, 282 00:14:44,013 --> 00:14:46,504 the auditors told Lay that Borget and his traders 283 00:14:46,749 --> 00:14:49,775 were manipulating earnings destroying daily trading records, 284 00:14:50,019 --> 00:14:53,319 and probably gambling way beyond their limits. 285 00:14:53,557 --> 00:14:54,922 The next day we found out that 286 00:14:55,158 --> 00:14:57,854 Lay's decision was to basically change nothing 287 00:14:58,094 --> 00:15:00,062 as far as the operation's concerned. 288 00:15:00,363 --> 00:15:03,059 And the reason he gave was that this was 289 00:15:03,266 --> 00:15:05,166 the only part of the combined company 290 00:15:05,402 --> 00:15:07,768 that was making any money and that he could not, 291 00:15:08,104 --> 00:15:10,334 you know, kill the golden goose. 292 00:15:10,941 --> 00:15:13,705 The traders weren't fired, or even disciplined. 293 00:15:14,077 --> 00:15:16,945 Instead, Enron sent a telex to Borget: 294 00:15:17,315 --> 00:15:20,011 Please keep making us millions. 295 00:15:20,785 --> 00:15:22,878 Instead of reducing Enron's risk, 296 00:15:23,221 --> 00:15:25,712 Lay encouraged his traders to gamble more. 297 00:15:26,424 --> 00:15:28,551 But then their luck changed. 298 00:15:30,027 --> 00:15:30,994 Two months later, 299 00:15:31,229 --> 00:15:33,197 here I got this panic call that they had 300 00:15:33,331 --> 00:15:36,698 drawn down 90 million dollars in the previous five days. 301 00:15:36,901 --> 00:15:38,597 What we could do is just try and find out 302 00:15:38,837 --> 00:15:41,635 what kind of guerilla we had loose up there. 303 00:15:42,407 --> 00:15:44,967 Muckleroy hopped on the next plane to New York. 304 00:15:45,244 --> 00:15:47,838 He knew Mastroeni had another set of books, 305 00:15:48,080 --> 00:15:51,049 and he would do whatever it took to get them. 306 00:15:52,050 --> 00:15:54,109 I basically stood over Tom 307 00:15:54,386 --> 00:15:56,854 and I told him that one of two things was going to happen. 308 00:15:57,055 --> 00:15:58,920 Either one of the trading partners 309 00:15:59,258 --> 00:16:00,726 that was crooked with Borget 310 00:16:00,994 --> 00:16:03,622 who was a German arms dealer was going to kill him, 311 00:16:04,030 --> 00:16:06,430 or I was. I said 'I'll track you down 312 00:16:06,766 --> 00:16:08,825 and find you no matter where you go. 313 00:16:09,202 --> 00:16:10,931 And sooner or later, I'll get you.' 314 00:16:12,105 --> 00:16:15,040 The next day, Mastroeni came in with the real books. 315 00:16:15,308 --> 00:16:18,607 The traders had gambled away all of Enron's reserves. 316 00:16:19,879 --> 00:16:22,747 By acting fast, Muckleroy bluffed the market, 317 00:16:23,017 --> 00:16:25,042 and managed to save the company. 318 00:16:26,820 --> 00:16:29,288 After Valhalla Ken Lay maintained that 319 00:16:29,490 --> 00:16:30,718 he had been shocked that the traders 320 00:16:30,991 --> 00:16:32,185 had gambled so recklessly. 321 00:16:32,359 --> 00:16:33,917 But Ken Lay had known all along 322 00:16:34,228 --> 00:16:35,786 about the risks that were taken. 323 00:16:35,996 --> 00:16:37,861 He had seen the reports warning him 324 00:16:38,065 --> 00:16:39,692 about the traders' behavior. 325 00:16:40,601 --> 00:16:42,899 Since the fall of Enron, Ken Lay has said that 326 00:16:43,103 --> 00:16:44,365 he can't be responsible for things 327 00:16:44,572 --> 00:16:45,800 he didn't know about. 328 00:16:46,041 --> 00:16:47,872 Sounds like what he said about Valhalla. 329 00:16:48,410 --> 00:16:50,207 Do you believe that he didn't know?" 330 00:16:50,445 --> 00:16:53,846 I can answer only for one. I can answer for Valhalla 331 00:16:54,049 --> 00:16:56,210 because Ken Lay did in fact know about this thing. 332 00:16:56,384 --> 00:16:57,612 Because I had told him myself. 333 00:16:57,886 --> 00:17:01,117 The auditors adamantly told Mr. Ken Lay 334 00:17:01,589 --> 00:17:04,820 that the two rogue traders should be fired. 335 00:17:05,193 --> 00:17:07,253 Lay read the report and he read his budget 336 00:17:07,463 --> 00:17:10,899 and estimated how much they, the two rogue executives made 337 00:17:11,200 --> 00:17:13,293 and if they were fired what he could lose. 338 00:17:13,602 --> 00:17:16,469 My conclusion was that this guy is a guy who puts earnings 339 00:17:16,706 --> 00:17:18,173 before scruples rather than reacting 340 00:17:18,374 --> 00:17:20,308 to the dishonesty right in front of him. 341 00:17:20,776 --> 00:17:23,176 Mastroeni received a suspended sentence. 342 00:17:23,379 --> 00:17:26,837 Borget was convicted of fraud, and spent one year in jail. 343 00:17:27,717 --> 00:17:30,209 With his biggest moneymaker now behind bars, 344 00:17:30,487 --> 00:17:31,954 Ken Lay had a problem: 345 00:17:32,222 --> 00:17:34,884 Who could he find to make money for Enron? 346 00:17:36,293 --> 00:17:37,851 Every year, every day, 347 00:17:38,095 --> 00:17:40,290 every week you have to come up with new ideas. 348 00:17:50,073 --> 00:17:52,406 Ken Lay saw in Jeff Skilling the guy who had the answer to 349 00:17:52,610 --> 00:17:55,602 what the future of the natural gas business was supposed to be. 350 00:17:55,880 --> 00:17:58,405 Ken Lay is also a guy who considers himself a visionary 351 00:17:58,683 --> 00:18:01,208 and he liked other people he thought of as visionaries. 352 00:18:01,386 --> 00:18:02,546 He liked people with big ideas. 353 00:18:02,920 --> 00:18:05,889 And Jeff Skilling was a person with the biggest ideas of all. 354 00:18:06,858 --> 00:18:09,520 Jeff Skilling's biggest single idea was find 355 00:18:09,761 --> 00:18:11,729 a new way to deliver energy. 356 00:18:11,963 --> 00:18:15,058 Rather than be bound by the physical flow of the pipeline, 357 00:18:15,367 --> 00:18:18,996 Enron would become a kind of stock market for natural gas. 358 00:18:19,271 --> 00:18:21,262 It was a magical new idea: 359 00:18:21,540 --> 00:18:24,304 Transform energy into financial instruments 360 00:18:24,543 --> 00:18:27,034 that could be traded like stocks and bonds. 361 00:18:27,513 --> 00:18:29,276 So that was the one good idea. 362 00:18:29,548 --> 00:18:31,709 In 1992 using that good idea, 363 00:18:31,917 --> 00:18:34,215 we became the largest buyer and seller of natural gas 364 00:18:34,420 --> 00:18:35,444 in North America. 365 00:18:35,688 --> 00:18:37,053 Jeff was like the prophet. 366 00:18:37,323 --> 00:18:39,985 He came in and said There's a whole new world out there. 367 00:18:40,226 --> 00:18:41,853 Forget about this pipeline stuff, 368 00:18:42,095 --> 00:18:43,687 you know the staid pipeline in the ground and... 369 00:18:43,997 --> 00:18:45,464 gas in and gas out. 370 00:18:45,732 --> 00:18:49,463 We can recreate this entire industry. 371 00:18:50,236 --> 00:18:51,965 An attorney from Vinson & Elkins, 372 00:18:52,272 --> 00:18:55,002 Amanda Martin was one of the first executives hired 373 00:18:55,275 --> 00:18:58,268 by Jeff Skilling and became part of his inner circle. 374 00:18:59,313 --> 00:19:00,871 The excitement was palpable. 375 00:19:01,115 --> 00:19:04,312 You cannot imagine how proud we all were to be there. 376 00:19:04,552 --> 00:19:07,646 And then, of course, we had a leader who imbued us 377 00:19:07,888 --> 00:19:10,288 with a sense of confidence that if we were smart, 378 00:19:10,524 --> 00:19:14,255 anything could be accomplished And then the bottom line 379 00:19:14,495 --> 00:19:16,224 we began to make money. 380 00:19:16,997 --> 00:19:18,897 And that in and of itself, 381 00:19:19,100 --> 00:19:22,593 was a re-affirmation that this could be big. 382 00:19:25,407 --> 00:19:27,932 Skilling saw the opportunity to build an industry new 383 00:19:28,210 --> 00:19:29,734 and to start a business from scratch. 384 00:19:29,978 --> 00:19:32,208 But he had one specific condition 385 00:19:32,447 --> 00:19:34,244 that had to be met before he'd join Enron, 386 00:19:34,483 --> 00:19:36,610 and it was that he be allowed to use 387 00:19:36,818 --> 00:19:39,184 a certain kind of accounting known as mark-to-market. 388 00:19:39,488 --> 00:19:42,082 Arthur Andersen signed off, and the SEC approved it. 389 00:19:42,725 --> 00:19:44,693 I remember walking in and going 'What's going on? ' 390 00:19:44,961 --> 00:19:46,292 And Causey and everybody, 391 00:19:46,496 --> 00:19:48,396 I mean every one was so excited and then came the champagne 392 00:19:48,631 --> 00:19:50,895 and We had got Mark-to-market accounting treatment. 393 00:19:51,234 --> 00:19:54,692 And I often think about how clear my memory was about that event. 394 00:19:54,971 --> 00:19:58,668 And that was the beginning of a major cog 395 00:19:58,875 --> 00:20:00,604 of the downfall ultimately of Enron. 396 00:20:03,513 --> 00:20:05,982 Mark-to-market accounting allowed Enron 397 00:20:06,250 --> 00:20:08,514 to book potential future profits 398 00:20:08,752 --> 00:20:10,617 on the very day a deal was signed. 399 00:20:11,021 --> 00:20:14,013 No matter how little cash actually came in the door, 400 00:20:14,324 --> 00:20:17,293 to the outside world, Enron's profits could be... 401 00:20:17,561 --> 00:20:20,155 whatever Enron said they were. 402 00:20:20,998 --> 00:20:22,795 Very subjective. 403 00:20:24,501 --> 00:20:30,407 And very... it left it open to manipulation. 404 00:20:30,608 --> 00:20:32,337 And they were saying that we're going to sell 405 00:20:32,577 --> 00:20:35,740 power out of this power plant in ten years 406 00:20:35,980 --> 00:20:38,676 for X dollars per kilowatt. 407 00:20:39,417 --> 00:20:42,215 And there was no way anybody could prove that 408 00:20:42,487 --> 00:20:42,953 they could do it. 409 00:20:43,154 --> 00:20:44,018 Well... Hey Reg. 410 00:20:44,222 --> 00:20:44,916 Good morning. How are you? 411 00:20:45,156 --> 00:20:46,487 Finally. Great. Good to see you. 412 00:20:46,691 --> 00:20:48,181 Jeff. Good to see you. Todd, sit down. 413 00:20:48,493 --> 00:20:49,791 We've been working hard on this 414 00:20:49,995 --> 00:20:51,121 and we've really pulled out all the stops. 415 00:20:51,330 --> 00:20:53,127 Look what we got. Origination... 416 00:20:53,365 --> 00:20:54,662 We did 20 million last year, 417 00:20:54,934 --> 00:20:57,164 I think we can do 120 million dollars this year. 418 00:20:57,636 --> 00:20:59,627 Trading we did 10 million last year 419 00:20:59,872 --> 00:21:02,033 we think we can do 64 this year. 420 00:21:02,274 --> 00:21:03,138 This is the key. 421 00:21:03,375 --> 00:21:04,239 We're going to move from 422 00:21:04,443 --> 00:21:06,377 mark-to-market accounting to something 423 00:21:06,579 --> 00:21:09,104 I call H, F, V 424 00:21:09,348 --> 00:21:12,841 Hypothetical Future Value accounting. 425 00:21:13,253 --> 00:21:16,222 If we do that we can add a kazillion dollars 426 00:21:16,456 --> 00:21:17,548 to the bottom line. 427 00:21:17,757 --> 00:21:22,820 Whoa! Jeff... alright! That sounds fantastic. 428 00:21:23,063 --> 00:21:26,897 Oh Jeff, thank you. That's just supurb performance. 429 00:21:27,100 --> 00:21:28,897 And you're going to go far, my boy. 430 00:21:29,135 --> 00:21:30,966 Probably President of the company one day. 431 00:21:31,271 --> 00:21:32,533 You think so? I think! 432 00:21:32,739 --> 00:21:34,799 He really believed that the idea was everything. 433 00:21:35,009 --> 00:21:36,374 And that when you came up with an idea, 434 00:21:36,611 --> 00:21:38,943 you should be able to book the profits from that idea, 435 00:21:39,280 --> 00:21:40,247 right away. 436 00:21:40,448 --> 00:21:42,882 Because otherwise some lesser man was taking the profits 437 00:21:43,117 --> 00:21:44,607 from the idea that some greater man 438 00:21:44,852 --> 00:21:46,513 had come up with in the past. 439 00:21:47,922 --> 00:21:50,413 When Jeff Skilling applied to Harvard Business School, 440 00:21:50,658 --> 00:21:52,785 the professor asked him if he was smart. 441 00:21:53,027 --> 00:21:55,655 He replied, 'I'm fucking smart.' 442 00:21:56,865 --> 00:21:59,993 One of his favorite books was The Selfish Gene, 443 00:22:00,302 --> 00:22:02,964 about the ways human nature is steered by greed 444 00:22:03,205 --> 00:22:05,935 and competition in the service of passing on our genes. 445 00:22:07,042 --> 00:22:07,667 At Enron. 446 00:22:07,943 --> 00:22:10,503 Skilling wanted to set free the basic instincts 447 00:22:10,812 --> 00:22:12,643 of survival of the fittest. 448 00:22:15,517 --> 00:22:18,112 Jeff had a very Darwinian view of how the world worked. 449 00:22:18,388 --> 00:22:20,788 He was famous for saying once in Enron's early years, 450 00:22:21,057 --> 00:22:23,457 that money was the only thing that motivated people. 451 00:22:25,261 --> 00:22:27,388 Skilling's notion of how the world should work 452 00:22:27,664 --> 00:22:28,460 really trickled down, 453 00:22:28,765 --> 00:22:30,960 and affected everything about how Enron did business. 454 00:22:31,267 --> 00:22:32,962 He instituted the system know as the PRC, 455 00:22:33,169 --> 00:22:34,636 or Perfomance Review Committee. 456 00:22:34,871 --> 00:22:37,840 It required that people be graded from a one to a five. 457 00:22:38,041 --> 00:22:40,738 And roughly ten percent of people had to be a five. 458 00:22:40,944 --> 00:22:42,935 And those people were supposed to be fired. 459 00:22:43,180 --> 00:22:45,546 Hence, this came to be know as 'Rank and Yank.' 460 00:22:45,816 --> 00:22:47,147 I, personally, am convinced 461 00:22:48,285 --> 00:22:51,345 that the PRC process is the most important process 462 00:22:51,722 --> 00:22:53,690 that we conduct as a company. 463 00:22:53,891 --> 00:22:55,290 I've never heard of a company yet 464 00:22:55,526 --> 00:22:57,824 that would be successful terminating 15 percent 465 00:22:58,062 --> 00:22:59,461 of their people every year... 466 00:22:59,697 --> 00:23:02,131 just to satisfy the fact that the other employees 467 00:23:02,333 --> 00:23:03,392 had to vote on them. 468 00:23:03,601 --> 00:23:05,501 And so when you're being evaluated by that group, 469 00:23:05,704 --> 00:23:09,105 you are getting direct communication from Ken and me 470 00:23:09,341 --> 00:23:11,309 about what the objectives of the company are 471 00:23:11,509 --> 00:23:13,204 and how you fit with those objectives. 472 00:23:13,445 --> 00:23:15,208 It was a brutal process. 473 00:23:15,447 --> 00:23:18,541 The ability for a 25 year old to go in 474 00:23:18,817 --> 00:23:21,843 and to be reviewed and to be superior... 475 00:23:22,454 --> 00:23:25,891 and as a consequence get a five million dollar bonus. 476 00:23:26,459 --> 00:23:28,222 I don't think that's repeated in many places 477 00:23:28,394 --> 00:23:29,452 in corporate America. 478 00:23:29,695 --> 00:23:31,287 Our culture is a tough culture. 479 00:23:31,530 --> 00:23:34,499 It is a very aggressive culture. 480 00:23:36,836 --> 00:23:37,393 At Enron, 481 00:23:37,670 --> 00:23:40,468 no one was more aggressive than the traders. 482 00:23:41,674 --> 00:23:44,268 If I'm on the way to my boss's office 483 00:23:44,510 --> 00:23:45,909 talking about my compensation. 484 00:23:46,112 --> 00:23:47,910 And if I step on somebody's throat on the way 485 00:23:48,115 --> 00:23:48,877 that doubles it? 486 00:23:49,116 --> 00:23:50,811 Well, I'll stomp on the guy's throat. 487 00:23:51,385 --> 00:23:54,252 You know, that that's how people were. 488 00:23:55,489 --> 00:23:58,549 On the trading side we got to be the biggest, 489 00:23:58,825 --> 00:24:00,918 baddest house in town. 490 00:24:01,294 --> 00:24:02,283 And by necessity, 491 00:24:02,562 --> 00:24:03,995 if you wanted to be in the market, 492 00:24:04,264 --> 00:24:06,698 you had to deal with Enron. 493 00:24:08,902 --> 00:24:12,202 Enron's traders were like the super powerful high school 494 00:24:12,373 --> 00:24:14,864 clique that even the principal doesn't dare to reign in. 495 00:24:15,109 --> 00:24:17,441 They had become the major engine of 496 00:24:17,745 --> 00:24:20,213 at least reported profits at the company. 497 00:24:20,381 --> 00:24:23,077 They took Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay's belief in free markets 498 00:24:23,351 --> 00:24:25,319 and turned it into an ideology. 499 00:24:25,553 --> 00:24:28,954 But they pitch it almost as a new economic religion. 500 00:24:32,261 --> 00:24:34,821 Enron on-line will change the markets 501 00:24:35,063 --> 00:24:36,690 for many many commodities. 502 00:24:36,999 --> 00:24:40,833 It is creating an open transparent marketplace 503 00:24:41,103 --> 00:24:44,231 that replaces the dark blind system that existed. 504 00:24:45,073 --> 00:24:46,665 It is real simple. 505 00:24:47,042 --> 00:24:49,704 You turn on your computer and it's right there. 506 00:24:49,945 --> 00:24:50,570 That's our vision. 507 00:24:50,846 --> 00:24:52,541 We're trying to change the world. 508 00:24:57,720 --> 00:24:59,950 I think Jeff Skilling had a desperate 509 00:25:00,290 --> 00:25:01,917 need to believe that Enron was a success. 510 00:25:02,158 --> 00:25:03,819 I think he identified with Enron. 511 00:25:04,060 --> 00:25:06,551 He proclaimed, at one point,' I am Enron'. 512 00:25:08,131 --> 00:25:09,996 The other thing about people at Enron is, 513 00:25:10,233 --> 00:25:13,430 a lot of them were former nerds and including Jeff Skilling. 514 00:25:13,670 --> 00:25:15,535 He had been paunchy. He had big glasses. 515 00:25:15,773 --> 00:25:17,001 He was losing his hair. 516 00:25:17,241 --> 00:25:19,300 And Jeff Skilling one day kinda woke up 517 00:25:19,543 --> 00:25:20,771 and decided to change himself. 518 00:25:21,011 --> 00:25:23,002 And he started working out, lost a lot of weight. 519 00:25:23,280 --> 00:25:24,611 But he really did remake himself 520 00:25:24,815 --> 00:25:27,909 through sheer will and force of personality. 521 00:25:28,686 --> 00:25:32,213 When Jeff got Lasik on his eyes, everybody at Enron got Lasik, 522 00:25:32,456 --> 00:25:34,617 so nobody was wearing glasses. 523 00:25:36,260 --> 00:25:38,752 I think Jeff Skilling is really a tragic figure, 524 00:25:38,997 --> 00:25:40,259 in a classic sense of the word. 525 00:25:40,532 --> 00:25:43,558 He's a guy that people describe as incandescently brilliant. 526 00:25:43,835 --> 00:25:46,497 But he's also a guy who is radically different 527 00:25:46,705 --> 00:25:47,865 than he at times portrays himself. 528 00:25:48,073 --> 00:25:50,007 He's portrayed himself as somebody who has 529 00:25:50,275 --> 00:25:52,675 very tightly-monitored risk. In reality, he's a gambler. 530 00:25:52,878 --> 00:25:55,870 He gambled away huge sums of money before he was 20 years old, 531 00:25:56,114 --> 00:25:58,309 by making wild bets on the market. 532 00:26:01,454 --> 00:26:03,183 To Jeff Skilling, risk was glamorous. 533 00:26:03,356 --> 00:26:04,550 He was a huge risk taker. 534 00:26:04,757 --> 00:26:07,419 He actually talked about wanting to go on trips that 535 00:26:07,627 --> 00:26:09,652 were so perilous that someone could actually die. 536 00:26:14,267 --> 00:26:17,498 This manifested itself in trips that Jeff Skilling led 537 00:26:17,770 --> 00:26:20,000 for a small group of friends and customers. 538 00:26:24,945 --> 00:26:27,675 A core cadre of Enron guys used to go on 539 00:26:27,948 --> 00:26:29,575 these wild adventures: 540 00:26:29,783 --> 00:26:32,445 Andy Fastow would go; Ken Rice would go. 541 00:26:32,920 --> 00:26:34,444 The trips were legend. 542 00:26:34,655 --> 00:26:37,317 You know, we can sit and think about what strange insecurities 543 00:26:37,591 --> 00:26:39,218 they were trying to overcome. 544 00:26:39,393 --> 00:26:41,452 But it made them feel good as men. 545 00:26:42,329 --> 00:26:44,730 And they took a particularly memorable trip to the Baja 546 00:26:45,033 --> 00:26:47,934 twelve hundred miles of very rugged terrain in Mexico. 547 00:26:51,806 --> 00:26:54,604 This is a trip where people crashed bikes. 548 00:26:54,943 --> 00:26:55,705 Ken Rice was on the trip, 549 00:26:56,010 --> 00:26:59,241 and he busted a lip and required a bunch of stitches. 550 00:26:59,447 --> 00:27:00,778 People broke bones. 551 00:27:00,982 --> 00:27:03,576 One guy flipped a jeep and almost got killed. 552 00:27:04,085 --> 00:27:06,610 Those sorts of stories at Enron became legend. 553 00:27:07,089 --> 00:27:09,580 And it fed the whole macho culture of the place. 554 00:27:19,768 --> 00:27:22,362 Jeff Skilling had a way of describing people that he liked. 555 00:27:22,571 --> 00:27:24,004 He said, 'I like guys with spikes.' 556 00:27:24,239 --> 00:27:26,833 He liked somebody with something extreme about them. 557 00:27:29,779 --> 00:27:31,474 Ken Rice was one of the Men with Spikes. 558 00:27:31,715 --> 00:27:33,410 He was the salesman of the group. 559 00:27:33,617 --> 00:27:36,245 Very amiable, fun, man's man. 560 00:27:36,453 --> 00:27:40,219 And was the guy out selling deals to energy companies. 561 00:27:40,390 --> 00:27:43,086 In the case of Cliff Baxter, the company's chief dealmaker 562 00:27:43,326 --> 00:27:45,851 he was extraordinarily talented at just doing a deal. 563 00:27:46,262 --> 00:27:47,752 But he was a manic depressive. 564 00:27:49,432 --> 00:27:51,332 Baxter was a very bright guy, 565 00:27:51,535 --> 00:27:54,003 very blunt would tell Skilling whatever 566 00:27:54,271 --> 00:27:56,432 he thought was closest to Skilling, personally, 567 00:27:56,641 --> 00:27:57,903 than anyone else in the company. 568 00:27:58,309 --> 00:28:00,004 There was a guy named Lou Pai, 569 00:28:00,277 --> 00:28:01,972 who was a key Skilling lieutenant; 570 00:28:02,179 --> 00:28:03,578 helped build the trading business in the early years; 571 00:28:03,814 --> 00:28:06,044 went on to run Enron's doomed 572 00:28:06,250 --> 00:28:07,774 effort called Enron Energy Services. 573 00:28:08,052 --> 00:28:11,078 What was the job of EES, as you ran it? 574 00:28:11,355 --> 00:28:15,656 Ah, it was to sell energy services to end users, 575 00:28:15,927 --> 00:28:17,394 industrial end users. 576 00:28:17,663 --> 00:28:19,187 Lou Pai is the guy that Skilling 577 00:28:19,331 --> 00:28:20,764 tapped to run the EES business. 578 00:28:20,999 --> 00:28:21,658 Because this was, 579 00:28:21,867 --> 00:28:23,232 this was so important to the company, 580 00:28:23,435 --> 00:28:24,402 and to Skilling's future. 581 00:28:24,636 --> 00:28:26,399 He called Lou Pai 'my ICBM.' 582 00:28:26,872 --> 00:28:28,703 And Lou Pai dispatched his enemies 583 00:28:28,940 --> 00:28:30,601 with incredible skill. 584 00:28:30,809 --> 00:28:33,209 And if that meant leaving bodies behind him, 585 00:28:33,378 --> 00:28:34,845 Skilling was certainly fine about that. 586 00:28:35,313 --> 00:28:37,248 I'm not feeling anything. 587 00:28:37,483 --> 00:28:39,508 Lou Pai was kind of a mysterious figure. 588 00:28:39,719 --> 00:28:42,984 He was kind of like the invisible CEO. 589 00:28:43,256 --> 00:28:45,816 For awhile he was located on the 7th floor. 590 00:28:46,125 --> 00:28:49,993 And there's a long office. 591 00:28:50,263 --> 00:28:53,426 And it was all glass-enclosed, and you would walk by there, 592 00:28:53,666 --> 00:28:56,134 and it was just almost all the time it was empty. 593 00:28:58,004 --> 00:29:00,530 Details didn't interest Lou Pai. 594 00:29:01,108 --> 00:29:03,372 Only two things seemed to motivate Pai 595 00:29:03,677 --> 00:29:07,613 money and a peculiar fascination with strippers. 596 00:29:08,282 --> 00:29:11,274 For Pai, it was all about the numbers. 597 00:29:17,658 --> 00:29:19,182 He was there every night after work 598 00:29:19,326 --> 00:29:21,761 and he usually brought some of the traders along with him. 599 00:29:22,063 --> 00:29:24,190 He spent quite a lot of money there as well. 600 00:29:24,599 --> 00:29:26,931 Much of it charged to the Enron expense accounts. 601 00:29:27,235 --> 00:29:28,862 There were rumors that he brought strippers up 602 00:29:29,070 --> 00:29:30,503 to the trading floor. 603 00:29:30,739 --> 00:29:32,570 Almost everyone knew the story. 604 00:29:32,841 --> 00:29:34,832 The story is that because he's kind of a mild, 605 00:29:35,410 --> 00:29:36,604 soft-spoken, 606 00:29:36,811 --> 00:29:40,269 almost meek individual that maybe these... 607 00:29:40,582 --> 00:29:43,746 these strippers didn't even believe he was the CEO. 608 00:29:43,953 --> 00:29:46,820 So he took them up to his office. 609 00:29:47,022 --> 00:29:47,954 And I guess they, 610 00:29:48,157 --> 00:29:50,318 they put on a little show for him there. 611 00:29:54,997 --> 00:29:56,794 One night he was at a club. And one of the guys said, 612 00:29:56,999 --> 00:29:59,832 you know, Lou, all the rest of us are single. 613 00:30:00,069 --> 00:30:01,229 You know, we don't have any problem. 614 00:30:01,370 --> 00:30:02,428 But how do you keep your wife 615 00:30:02,671 --> 00:30:04,639 from smelling the strippers' perfume on you? 616 00:30:05,108 --> 00:30:06,803 And Lou said, 'oh, I've got a secret'. 617 00:30:07,110 --> 00:30:09,237 He said, 'I stop in at a gas station on the way home. 618 00:30:09,479 --> 00:30:11,208 And I spill a little gasoline on myself 619 00:30:11,515 --> 00:30:12,573 and it kills the scent.' 620 00:30:12,816 --> 00:30:14,647 So the other guy shot back, he said, 'but Lou, 621 00:30:14,885 --> 00:30:15,647 doesn't your wife then think 622 00:30:15,852 --> 00:30:17,615 you're fucking the gas station attendant? ' 623 00:30:17,854 --> 00:30:20,118 In the context of Lou Pai, everyone was horrified, 624 00:30:20,390 --> 00:30:22,756 a pall fell over the table. 625 00:30:22,993 --> 00:30:25,018 Because Lou Pai was not a man to trifle with. 626 00:30:25,295 --> 00:30:27,491 Two days later, the guy who told the joke, 627 00:30:27,732 --> 00:30:28,858 as Enron legend... has it, 628 00:30:29,100 --> 00:30:31,295 was dispatched to Calgary, Canada. 629 00:30:35,706 --> 00:30:38,834 Lou Pai lost all interest in running EES 630 00:30:39,043 --> 00:30:41,375 as soon as the numbers got high enough. 631 00:30:43,347 --> 00:30:47,181 I netted approximately a hundred million dollars. 632 00:30:47,485 --> 00:30:50,046 I don't know if that number is accurate, 633 00:30:50,289 --> 00:30:51,620 plus or minus 20 million. 634 00:30:51,890 --> 00:30:53,949 He actually left Enron with more money than anybody, 635 00:30:54,193 --> 00:30:55,626 250 million dollars, 636 00:30:55,894 --> 00:30:57,657 because he sold all his stock in Enron 637 00:30:57,963 --> 00:31:00,295 after he got a divorce from his wife, 638 00:31:00,532 --> 00:31:02,193 in order to marry his stripper girlfriend, 639 00:31:02,401 --> 00:31:03,663 who had had his child. 640 00:31:07,272 --> 00:31:13,109 His exit from Enron was as mysterious as his presence there. 641 00:31:13,379 --> 00:31:15,040 Just sort of one day, 642 00:31:15,281 --> 00:31:21,015 we all learned that Lou Pai was no longer the CEO of EES. 643 00:31:23,022 --> 00:31:25,047 Though Lou Pai flew away from Enron 644 00:31:25,291 --> 00:31:27,418 with 250 million dollars, 645 00:31:27,627 --> 00:31:29,117 the divisions he left behind 646 00:31:29,395 --> 00:31:31,920 lost a total of nearly $1 billion. 647 00:31:32,398 --> 00:31:35,061 But Enron managed to disguise that fact. 648 00:31:35,469 --> 00:31:39,633 Lou Pai became the second largest landowner in Colorado. 649 00:31:42,810 --> 00:31:43,640 It was the number. 650 00:31:43,844 --> 00:31:45,106 It was always making those numbers, 651 00:31:45,346 --> 00:31:46,938 and looking, you know, it was, to me, 652 00:31:47,314 --> 00:31:49,748 the real mythology is high school mythology. 653 00:31:49,950 --> 00:31:50,348 That, you know, 654 00:31:50,584 --> 00:31:52,677 you wanted to be the most popular guy on Wall Street, 655 00:31:52,887 --> 00:31:56,289 and you were gonna do whatever you had to do to stay there. 656 00:31:56,458 --> 00:31:57,982 And Jeff understood those rules better than, 657 00:31:58,226 --> 00:31:59,386 I think, anyone else. 658 00:32:06,735 --> 00:32:08,726 Americans are making a lot of money in stocks. 659 00:32:08,937 --> 00:32:11,906 The stock market soared to near record highs yesterday. 660 00:32:12,107 --> 00:32:14,735 The stock market continued its bull run Thursday. 661 00:32:14,943 --> 00:32:17,275 The Dow rose nearly 61 points. 662 00:32:17,512 --> 00:32:20,107 Even the person with very little disposable income 663 00:32:20,416 --> 00:32:22,509 all of a sudden began to play in the stock market, 664 00:32:22,752 --> 00:32:23,741 because nobody could fail. 665 00:32:23,986 --> 00:32:26,614 Because stock prices were just going up and up and up. 666 00:32:26,822 --> 00:32:28,380 Another day, another record. 667 00:32:28,658 --> 00:32:30,057 And the internet technology stocks, 668 00:32:30,326 --> 00:32:30,985 just going wild. 669 00:32:31,294 --> 00:32:34,627 Gained more than 100 points to close at 7895.81, 670 00:32:34,864 --> 00:32:36,388 the highest finish ever. 671 00:32:36,732 --> 00:32:39,963 It was a time where we had the biggest bull market 672 00:32:40,303 --> 00:32:41,362 in the history of the world. 673 00:32:41,605 --> 00:32:45,268 Ken Lay was right there, acting as a cheerleader. 674 00:32:45,409 --> 00:32:47,274 Obviously our stock has been doing very well. 675 00:32:47,544 --> 00:32:48,738 I think there's a fairly good chance 676 00:32:48,979 --> 00:32:50,105 we could see the stock price double 677 00:32:50,314 --> 00:32:52,009 again over the next year to eighteen months. 678 00:33:01,325 --> 00:33:02,884 Enron mounted a campaign to capture 679 00:33:03,127 --> 00:33:06,688 the hearts and minds of stock analysts. 680 00:33:06,931 --> 00:33:08,956 The natural gas stocks include Enron... 681 00:33:09,267 --> 00:33:10,234 We're never satisfied 682 00:33:10,401 --> 00:33:12,426 and I don't want us to ever be satisfied 683 00:33:12,670 --> 00:33:14,228 with the stock price. It should always be higher. 684 00:33:14,505 --> 00:33:17,599 Enron posted a 30-percent jump in second-quarter profits, 685 00:33:17,875 --> 00:33:21,140 as Web-based trading boosted its wholesale energy business. 686 00:33:21,379 --> 00:33:23,540 The game was played on Wall Street in such 687 00:33:23,815 --> 00:33:26,478 an established way throughout the 1990's. 688 00:33:26,719 --> 00:33:28,653 As long as a company met or exceeded 689 00:33:28,887 --> 00:33:31,447 the analysts' projections for quarterly earnings per share, 690 00:33:31,690 --> 00:33:32,554 the stock went higher. 691 00:33:32,858 --> 00:33:35,053 The game was called 'pump and dump.' 692 00:33:35,728 --> 00:33:37,662 Top execs would push the stock price up 693 00:33:37,896 --> 00:33:41,457 and then cash in their multi-million-dollar options. 694 00:33:41,734 --> 00:33:44,464 People at Enron got paid, in large part, through stock. 695 00:33:44,770 --> 00:33:47,797 Everyone had a huge stake in seeing the stock price go up. 696 00:33:48,308 --> 00:33:50,037 And it was driven, very clearly, 697 00:33:50,310 --> 00:33:51,937 by the profits every single quarter. 698 00:33:52,178 --> 00:33:53,770 They were exceedingly conscious of that; 699 00:33:54,014 --> 00:33:55,345 Skilling was, and everyone else in the company was. 700 00:33:55,582 --> 00:33:57,379 They posted the stock price in the elevator. 701 00:33:57,617 --> 00:34:00,643 You were surrounded by the health of the company; 702 00:34:00,854 --> 00:34:02,481 what's the stock price doing? 703 00:34:02,822 --> 00:34:03,846 We were consumed by it. 704 00:34:06,693 --> 00:34:10,460 This company was fixated on its stock price 705 00:34:10,698 --> 00:34:15,226 and fixated on a massive public relations campaign 706 00:34:15,736 --> 00:34:19,263 to convince the investment community that they were new, 707 00:34:19,507 --> 00:34:20,769 different, innovative; 708 00:34:21,042 --> 00:34:24,671 almost heralding a new era of... of corporate enterprise. 709 00:34:27,415 --> 00:34:28,939 Come work for us. 710 00:34:29,583 --> 00:34:31,312 We encourage our people to do new things, 711 00:34:31,553 --> 00:34:35,250 try new things, experiment step out. 712 00:34:35,424 --> 00:34:37,051 We begin by attracting the kind of people 713 00:34:37,292 --> 00:34:39,260 that are more comfortable in an environment of change. 714 00:34:40,028 --> 00:34:41,928 You know when you work for Enron 715 00:34:42,164 --> 00:34:43,358 you're gonna see the newest thinking. 716 00:34:43,565 --> 00:34:45,465 You're going to see the newest markets opening up. 717 00:34:45,767 --> 00:34:48,600 Enron on-line, a fabulous, fabulous story. 718 00:34:48,804 --> 00:34:50,897 They were so good at their acting 719 00:34:51,139 --> 00:34:52,902 that they convinced corporate America 720 00:34:53,141 --> 00:34:54,700 that they were smarter than anyone else. 721 00:34:54,944 --> 00:34:57,435 Alan, with our sincere thanks and admiration, 722 00:34:57,914 --> 00:35:01,111 we are pleased and indeed honored to award you 723 00:35:01,317 --> 00:35:04,115 the Enron prize for distinguished public service. 724 00:35:11,094 --> 00:35:12,391 They continued to sell the company 725 00:35:12,628 --> 00:35:14,323 as being a very stable place 726 00:35:14,530 --> 00:35:16,556 where it could predictably increase profits 727 00:35:16,800 --> 00:35:18,131 10 to 15 percent a year. 728 00:35:18,402 --> 00:35:20,529 In fact, to get to those numbers Enron was doing 729 00:35:20,771 --> 00:35:23,239 all sorts of questionable things; 730 00:35:23,440 --> 00:35:24,771 taking enormous risks. 731 00:35:25,008 --> 00:35:26,066 We like risk. 732 00:35:26,343 --> 00:35:28,368 Because you make money by taking risk. 733 00:35:34,685 --> 00:35:37,245 By all accounts, Enron was soaring. 734 00:35:39,824 --> 00:35:42,657 But in reality, profits weren't going up; 735 00:35:42,894 --> 00:35:45,294 they were headed in the opposite direction. 736 00:35:46,064 --> 00:35:50,057 Enron had vast natural gas operations all over the world. 737 00:35:50,368 --> 00:35:52,268 They had cost billions to build 738 00:35:52,537 --> 00:35:54,767 and most were performing terribly. 739 00:35:55,306 --> 00:35:57,365 But in other places in the world, in India, 740 00:35:57,609 --> 00:35:59,873 great quarter and a great year in India. 741 00:36:00,311 --> 00:36:03,804 Phase one of Dabhol is in operation generating power. 742 00:36:04,049 --> 00:36:06,643 Phase two is financed and is under construction. 743 00:36:06,919 --> 00:36:09,945 My experience indicated there were certain places that you 744 00:36:10,256 --> 00:36:12,224 assiduously stayed away from. 745 00:36:12,424 --> 00:36:14,221 And one of them, as an example, was India. 746 00:36:14,393 --> 00:36:15,860 They built this power plant in India. 747 00:36:16,095 --> 00:36:17,687 Nobody else would do that at the time. 748 00:36:17,930 --> 00:36:19,693 They were terrified of investing in India. 749 00:36:19,965 --> 00:36:22,399 Enron did it, and did it in a big way. 750 00:36:23,336 --> 00:36:25,770 But Enron had failed to see something basic. 751 00:36:26,039 --> 00:36:28,405 India couldn't afford to pay for the power 752 00:36:28,675 --> 00:36:30,233 Enron's plant produced. 753 00:36:30,844 --> 00:36:33,278 Now Dabhol is a ruin. 754 00:36:35,048 --> 00:36:37,380 Though it lost a billion dollars on the project, 755 00:36:37,617 --> 00:36:39,710 Enron paid out multi-million dollar 756 00:36:39,920 --> 00:36:41,888 bonuses to executives based 757 00:36:42,122 --> 00:36:44,887 on imaginary profits that never arrived. 758 00:36:45,826 --> 00:36:48,260 Where was the real money going to come from? 759 00:36:49,163 --> 00:36:51,131 Of course the pressure was enormous. 760 00:36:51,332 --> 00:36:52,993 You had to come up with the next idea 761 00:36:53,301 --> 00:36:54,598 that would break through. 762 00:36:54,802 --> 00:36:56,895 Failure was not an option. 763 00:36:57,171 --> 00:36:58,866 A flurry of buy-outs in the corporate world... 764 00:36:59,207 --> 00:36:59,866 the biggest: 765 00:37:00,074 --> 00:37:02,440 Enron announcing a buy out of Portland General. 766 00:37:03,611 --> 00:37:07,446 The merger with PGE put Enron in the electricity business. 767 00:37:07,649 --> 00:37:10,209 And Portland General's position on the west coast 768 00:37:10,452 --> 00:37:14,821 gave Enron access to the newly deregulated market of California. 769 00:37:15,991 --> 00:37:17,015 The merger, we think... 770 00:37:17,259 --> 00:37:19,227 it uniquely positions us to ultimately 771 00:37:19,595 --> 00:37:23,053 become the largest marketer of electricity and natural gas 772 00:37:23,365 --> 00:37:26,232 at both the wholesale and retail level nationwide." 773 00:37:27,536 --> 00:37:29,596 What brought all this on was the deregulation 774 00:37:29,839 --> 00:37:31,568 they said that we would not survive, 775 00:37:31,808 --> 00:37:32,968 unless we joined forces. 776 00:37:33,276 --> 00:37:35,972 Enron, I'd never heard of 'em until they were gonna buy us. 777 00:37:36,279 --> 00:37:38,713 They slid in here, and when they purchased PGE, 778 00:37:39,015 --> 00:37:41,074 all the PGE stock became Enron. 779 00:37:41,384 --> 00:37:43,318 Just went through, stamped every one of 'em. 780 00:37:43,519 --> 00:37:44,247 I looked around me, 781 00:37:44,454 --> 00:37:45,614 and all the guys that were buyin' all this Enron, 782 00:37:45,855 --> 00:37:47,254 they were doublin' their money. 783 00:37:47,423 --> 00:37:49,755 And that whole time since then, I put the maximum 784 00:37:49,993 --> 00:37:52,792 I could into my 401 and savings. 785 00:37:53,030 --> 00:37:56,557 Portland General, again, good earnings and cash flow. 786 00:37:56,867 --> 00:37:59,165 It's what's they call on Wall Street a "trust me" story. 787 00:37:59,370 --> 00:38:00,928 People that had been gas pipeline workers who 788 00:38:01,205 --> 00:38:02,763 for decades kept all their money in the company 789 00:38:03,007 --> 00:38:05,339 because they thought it was this traditional and, 790 00:38:06,443 --> 00:38:08,707 you know, safe investment as it... as it had always been. 791 00:38:08,946 --> 00:38:10,311 And it was... it wasn't anything close to that. 792 00:38:10,581 --> 00:38:13,311 Should we invest all of our 401k in Enron stock? 793 00:38:13,517 --> 00:38:15,782 Absolutely. Don't you guys agree? 794 00:38:30,101 --> 00:38:31,659 Enron is a big winner today 795 00:38:31,903 --> 00:38:33,734 One of the things that fascinated me was that 796 00:38:33,938 --> 00:38:35,701 almost all of the Wall Street analysts 797 00:38:35,974 --> 00:38:37,738 who covered Enron had buy ratings 798 00:38:38,010 --> 00:38:39,637 or strong buy ratings on the company's stock. 799 00:38:39,879 --> 00:38:45,613 Why were the analysts blinded to the company's deceit? 800 00:38:45,818 --> 00:38:48,082 We relied on the information that was available at the time. 801 00:38:48,287 --> 00:38:50,915 I trusted the integrity of the company's certified 802 00:38:51,123 --> 00:38:51,987 financial statements, 803 00:38:52,291 --> 00:38:54,953 and the representations of the company's management. 804 00:38:55,194 --> 00:38:57,128 And we've been absolutely upfront with the analysts. 805 00:38:57,363 --> 00:38:59,696 Jeff Skilling was the critical component 806 00:38:59,900 --> 00:39:01,697 in creating the Enron illusion. 807 00:39:02,135 --> 00:39:04,729 Time and time again when we had a question 808 00:39:04,971 --> 00:39:07,872 to the sell-side analysts that they couldn't answer, 809 00:39:08,241 --> 00:39:10,641 the response was, 'I'll give Jeff a call; 810 00:39:10,911 --> 00:39:12,503 I'll run this by Jeff.' 811 00:39:12,746 --> 00:39:14,407 By giving Jeff a call, 812 00:39:14,614 --> 00:39:16,912 the analysts weren't 'analyzing' at all. 813 00:39:17,150 --> 00:39:18,583 They were willing to believe virtually 814 00:39:18,819 --> 00:39:20,720 anything Enron told them. 815 00:39:25,993 --> 00:39:28,553 Most of the analysts right now have a target price on us 816 00:39:28,830 --> 00:39:31,458 from a hundred to a hundred and fifteen dollars a share. 817 00:39:31,699 --> 00:39:33,599 Any analyst who didn't buy the company line 818 00:39:33,801 --> 00:39:35,792 became an enemy of Enron. 819 00:39:36,037 --> 00:39:38,232 Enron's CFO, Andy Fastow, 820 00:39:38,473 --> 00:39:40,464 had his eye on John Olson 821 00:39:40,742 --> 00:39:43,803 one of the only analysts skeptical of the Enron story. 822 00:39:44,046 --> 00:39:46,913 Enron loved analysts' strong buy recommendations. 823 00:39:47,282 --> 00:39:49,307 Merrill was informed by Fastow, 824 00:39:49,585 --> 00:39:53,521 either you get somebody who is on board with us as a strong 825 00:39:53,756 --> 00:39:57,852 buy recommendation and loves us at the same time 826 00:39:58,394 --> 00:40:00,089 or we don't do any business with you. 827 00:40:00,295 --> 00:40:03,196 I knew that my days were numbered. 828 00:40:03,499 --> 00:40:04,967 This is an abuse. 829 00:40:05,235 --> 00:40:07,601 Merrill Lynch fired John Olson. 830 00:40:07,871 --> 00:40:10,032 Soon after Fastow rewarded the bank 831 00:40:10,306 --> 00:40:12,103 with two investment banking jobs 832 00:40:12,442 --> 00:40:14,171 worth 50 million dollars. 833 00:40:14,411 --> 00:40:16,572 Analysts were routinely getting large bonuses 834 00:40:16,780 --> 00:40:18,543 from the investment banking departments to bring 835 00:40:18,748 --> 00:40:21,808 in investment banking deals. Ah... once that happens, 836 00:40:22,051 --> 00:40:25,077 you know, never was heard a discouraging word. 837 00:40:26,389 --> 00:40:28,824 While Enron's stock kept rising, 838 00:40:29,093 --> 00:40:31,118 its businesses kept losing money. 839 00:40:31,996 --> 00:40:34,658 Looking at the soaring stocks of the dot-coms, 840 00:40:34,932 --> 00:40:38,333 Skilling decided to take Enron into cyberspace. 841 00:40:39,270 --> 00:40:41,067 We're now in the process of seeing 842 00:40:41,305 --> 00:40:43,967 if we can create a bandwidth trading market. 843 00:40:44,208 --> 00:40:46,199 Enron is using its knowledge of trading gas 844 00:40:46,510 --> 00:40:48,569 to barter other forms of energy even space 845 00:40:48,879 --> 00:40:51,178 on the information superhighway called bandwidth. 846 00:40:51,650 --> 00:40:54,585 Ken Rice has worked at Enron for twenty years. 847 00:40:54,820 --> 00:40:57,687 Enron has found a way to stay ahead of the curve. 848 00:40:58,023 --> 00:41:01,288 From 7 PM to 7 AM we're paying for bandwith that 849 00:41:01,493 --> 00:41:03,290 we are not using. Why? 850 00:41:04,062 --> 00:41:05,256 Why? 851 00:41:05,564 --> 00:41:08,362 One of our themes around here is to always be asking why. 852 00:41:08,834 --> 00:41:10,734 Why something's done a certain way 853 00:41:10,969 --> 00:41:12,699 or why it's not done a different way. 854 00:41:13,005 --> 00:41:14,131 There's our market. 855 00:41:14,373 --> 00:41:16,739 Why can't we sell the bandwidth to other companies? 856 00:41:17,043 --> 00:41:20,274 Make it a commodity like a pork belly 857 00:41:28,955 --> 00:41:31,423 Just last week Enron captivated Wall Street 858 00:41:31,691 --> 00:41:33,659 with its bold move into broadband, 859 00:41:33,894 --> 00:41:36,886 teaming up with Blockbuster to deliver movies on demand. 860 00:41:37,197 --> 00:41:41,065 It was like being at a religious cult meeting. 861 00:41:41,335 --> 00:41:43,200 People started jumping up from their seats, 862 00:41:43,437 --> 00:41:45,132 with their cell phones and their Blackberrys, 863 00:41:45,506 --> 00:41:48,441 running out to the halls to call their bosses. 864 00:41:48,909 --> 00:41:50,877 One analyst summed up his recommendation 865 00:41:51,078 --> 00:41:53,046 to investors in one word 866 00:41:53,347 --> 00:41:58,308 Wow! Enron's stock soared 34 percent in two days. 867 00:41:58,853 --> 00:42:01,185 And you can tell from the response of the stock market 868 00:42:01,523 --> 00:42:03,548 that they like the strategy. It makes sense. 869 00:42:03,825 --> 00:42:05,417 They announced that they had developed the technology. 870 00:42:05,660 --> 00:42:07,389 It would be in test markets by the end of the year. 871 00:42:07,629 --> 00:42:08,926 And the technology works. 872 00:42:09,197 --> 00:42:11,688 The quality is great and the customers like this, 873 00:42:11,966 --> 00:42:13,297 so we've made a lot of progress. 874 00:42:13,568 --> 00:42:16,264 The truth was that Enron was just struggling 875 00:42:16,504 --> 00:42:18,871 with the technology for video on demand. 876 00:42:19,108 --> 00:42:21,042 The technology didn't work 877 00:42:21,310 --> 00:42:24,438 and the deal with Blockbuster soon collapsed. 878 00:42:24,747 --> 00:42:27,011 But with the magic of mark-to-market Enron 879 00:42:27,216 --> 00:42:31,812 used future projections to book $53 million in earnings 880 00:42:32,021 --> 00:42:34,387 on a deal that didn't make a penny. 881 00:42:34,590 --> 00:42:36,023 By the end of the year 2000, 882 00:42:36,325 --> 00:42:37,792 Enron was running out of ways to make 883 00:42:38,060 --> 00:42:39,857 the broadband business look successful. 884 00:42:40,095 --> 00:42:43,361 They'd tried every trick in the bag to try to create 885 00:42:43,567 --> 00:42:45,432 the illusion of a business where there was none, 886 00:42:45,635 --> 00:42:46,567 and the people who were working 887 00:42:46,770 --> 00:42:48,431 there were getting increasingly desperate. 888 00:42:48,939 --> 00:42:51,601 The executives started selling their stock. 889 00:42:51,875 --> 00:42:55,811 By Enron's collapse, Ken Rice had sold 53 million. 890 00:42:56,346 --> 00:42:59,042 Ken Lay had sold 300 million. 891 00:42:59,349 --> 00:43:01,408 Cliff Baxter 35 million. 892 00:43:01,651 --> 00:43:04,018 Jeff Skilling 200 million. 893 00:43:04,555 --> 00:43:06,546 As the fraud is perpetuated, 894 00:43:06,791 --> 00:43:09,419 all the various lies and artifices 895 00:43:09,660 --> 00:43:11,685 begin to convince the ringmaster, 896 00:43:11,896 --> 00:43:13,124 if you will, himself 897 00:43:13,431 --> 00:43:16,559 that it's thi own bizarre reality. 898 00:43:16,767 --> 00:43:18,257 That in fact, the fraud is the reality. 899 00:43:18,536 --> 00:43:20,128 The perception is the reality. 900 00:43:20,371 --> 00:43:22,271 As long as you can keep the perception going on, 901 00:43:22,506 --> 00:43:24,030 it really isn't fraud. 902 00:43:24,575 --> 00:43:26,043 You spoke about bandwidth trading, 903 00:43:26,311 --> 00:43:28,279 what about weather options or futures? 904 00:43:28,447 --> 00:43:29,937 How is that market developing? 905 00:43:30,182 --> 00:43:32,514 Yeah, we have a market in weather. 906 00:43:35,320 --> 00:43:38,653 When Enron announced its latest plan to trade weather, 907 00:43:38,890 --> 00:43:40,983 people wondered whether it was good science 908 00:43:41,326 --> 00:43:42,850 or science fiction. 909 00:43:44,529 --> 00:43:46,121 Do the weather guys get punished here 910 00:43:46,365 --> 00:43:47,298 if the weather is wrong? 911 00:43:47,533 --> 00:43:48,090 I mean they predict wrong? 912 00:43:48,334 --> 00:43:49,801 I don't know, do you have any whip marks on your back there? 913 00:43:50,103 --> 00:43:51,968 Well, it's unfortunate. That's a good call. 914 00:43:53,840 --> 00:43:55,000 Jeff, as time went on, 915 00:43:55,341 --> 00:43:57,935 had a harder time admitting things were wrong. 916 00:43:58,878 --> 00:44:01,312 And I have to believe that, 917 00:44:01,481 --> 00:44:04,473 you know, when the lights went out at night, 918 00:44:04,717 --> 00:44:06,685 he knew what was coming. 919 00:44:11,425 --> 00:44:13,154 I would liken it to the Titanic, 920 00:44:13,394 --> 00:44:14,986 when you've got a captain who's saying, 921 00:44:15,295 --> 00:44:16,284 'maintain full speed' 922 00:44:16,530 --> 00:44:17,861 and they bump into a couple of icebergs, 923 00:44:18,165 --> 00:44:20,793 and then they still keep full speed going. 924 00:44:22,803 --> 00:44:25,101 The captain of this ship, Enron, 925 00:44:25,339 --> 00:44:27,068 he ignored all the warning signs. 926 00:44:27,307 --> 00:44:29,002 And there were plenty of them. 927 00:44:29,209 --> 00:44:30,437 And the captain of the ship was? 928 00:44:30,644 --> 00:44:31,805 Kenneth Lay 929 00:44:42,957 --> 00:44:45,289 It was one of the bloodiest days in Wall Street history. 930 00:44:45,794 --> 00:44:47,625 Shares plummeted thirty one percent. 931 00:44:47,896 --> 00:44:49,830 High tech stocks led Friday's fierce sell-off 932 00:44:50,031 --> 00:44:51,862 This is really a great wake-up call. 933 00:44:52,100 --> 00:44:54,035 Millions of nervous investors following 934 00:44:54,236 --> 00:44:56,397 the huge drop on Friday. The Dow Jones 935 00:44:56,639 --> 00:44:59,164 Enron was especially a big deal by the end 936 00:44:59,375 --> 00:45:01,104 of the year 2000 because by then, 937 00:45:01,343 --> 00:45:03,436 most Internet companies had already begun to fall, 938 00:45:03,646 --> 00:45:06,114 and everybody on Wall Street was looking for the next big thing. 939 00:45:06,382 --> 00:45:07,349 And here you had Enron, 940 00:45:07,616 --> 00:45:09,846 which appeared to be this shining star 941 00:45:10,086 --> 00:45:11,246 of a new-economy company. 942 00:45:11,387 --> 00:45:14,288 Its stock price went up 90 percent in the year 2000, 943 00:45:14,490 --> 00:45:17,153 and had gone up over 50 percent the year before that. 944 00:45:17,494 --> 00:45:19,291 It was an it' stock on Wall Street 945 00:45:19,496 --> 00:45:21,896 one of those companies that can seemingly do no wrong. 946 00:45:23,800 --> 00:45:25,893 We were the poster child for the new economy. 947 00:45:26,136 --> 00:45:28,969 We had this culture that had a lot of focus on 948 00:45:29,206 --> 00:45:31,140 reminding us how good we were. 949 00:45:31,408 --> 00:45:32,898 And as that culture emerged, 950 00:45:33,143 --> 00:45:35,077 then we get to Fortune magazine telling us 951 00:45:35,312 --> 00:45:37,280 we were the most innovative corporation in America. 952 00:45:37,481 --> 00:45:40,110 Then we really began to feel good about ourselves. 953 00:45:40,785 --> 00:45:42,377 Well, you all did it again. 954 00:45:42,887 --> 00:45:46,050 Enron was just recently chosen, again, 955 00:45:46,324 --> 00:45:48,121 for the sixth year in a row 956 00:45:48,359 --> 00:45:50,987 in the most-admired-company survey 957 00:45:51,229 --> 00:45:55,495 by Fortune magazine as the most innovative company in America. 958 00:45:56,534 --> 00:45:58,468 Well deserved. Well deserved. 959 00:45:59,337 --> 00:46:01,499 The sales pitch still sounded good. 960 00:46:01,774 --> 00:46:04,743 But one investor saw something in Enron's numbers 961 00:46:04,943 --> 00:46:07,241 that the stock analysts had missed. 962 00:46:07,579 --> 00:46:09,376 By and large, the analysts admitted to us, 963 00:46:09,581 --> 00:46:12,072 in person, 'it's a black box. You have to take it on faith. 964 00:46:12,284 --> 00:46:13,273 'Who knows where the earnings come from? 965 00:46:13,552 --> 00:46:14,382 They just pop out. 966 00:46:14,586 --> 00:46:15,951 And all we know is, they're always good.' 967 00:46:16,488 --> 00:46:18,149 And I kept pointing out, well, 968 00:46:18,357 --> 00:46:19,517 yeah, isn't that the whole point of... 969 00:46:19,825 --> 00:46:23,057 if the black box is there to fool you, 970 00:46:23,296 --> 00:46:24,263 the numbers are always going to be good, 971 00:46:24,430 --> 00:46:25,488 until they're not. 972 00:46:25,865 --> 00:46:27,093 I'm not a beat reporter, 973 00:46:27,367 --> 00:46:29,494 so I would have had no reason to look at Enron. 974 00:46:29,736 --> 00:46:32,364 But Jim Chanos mentioned to me that I should take a closer 975 00:46:32,572 --> 00:46:34,096 look at Enron's financial statements. 976 00:46:34,340 --> 00:46:36,672 And it wasn't clear from Enron's financial statements that 977 00:46:36,910 --> 00:46:38,036 there was fraud here. 978 00:46:38,344 --> 00:46:41,438 But what was clear is that something didn't add up. 979 00:46:41,714 --> 00:46:44,080 In March 2001, Bethany Mclean, 980 00:46:44,350 --> 00:46:46,046 a reporter with Fortune magazine, 981 00:46:46,320 --> 00:46:49,346 first raised questions about Enron's financial condition. 982 00:46:49,623 --> 00:46:50,920 She asked a simple question 983 00:46:51,158 --> 00:46:53,558 in the article that no one could seem to answer, 984 00:46:53,861 --> 00:46:57,456 'how exactly does Enron make its money? ' 985 00:46:59,333 --> 00:47:00,891 You got very upset with her, didn't you? 986 00:47:01,168 --> 00:47:05,036 I very specifically remember the telephone conversation 987 00:47:05,272 --> 00:47:07,605 that I had with... the Fortune reporter. 988 00:47:07,909 --> 00:47:10,241 She called up and started asking some very, 989 00:47:10,478 --> 00:47:13,345 very specific questions about accounting treatment on things. 990 00:47:13,582 --> 00:47:16,050 I am not an accountant. And I could not answer them. 991 00:47:16,284 --> 00:47:18,115 He became really, really agitated. 992 00:47:18,420 --> 00:47:20,650 He said that people who raise questions like this 993 00:47:20,889 --> 00:47:22,413 were just trying to throw rocks at the company. 994 00:47:22,624 --> 00:47:24,455 And that I was not ethical 995 00:47:24,726 --> 00:47:26,250 because I hadn't done enough homework. 996 00:47:26,461 --> 00:47:27,792 And if I had done enough homework, 997 00:47:27,996 --> 00:47:30,124 I would understand how off-base my questions were. 998 00:47:30,466 --> 00:47:32,297 Mr. Skilling, it appears as 999 00:47:32,535 --> 00:47:35,299 if you were trying to bully someone 1000 00:47:35,605 --> 00:47:39,268 who was asking very basic questions about Enron. 1001 00:47:39,508 --> 00:47:40,805 I said... said to her 1002 00:47:41,010 --> 00:47:42,875 I have got six minutes left 1003 00:47:43,312 --> 00:47:44,677 before I have to be in a meeting. 1004 00:47:44,981 --> 00:47:46,812 And I can't get into the details. 1005 00:47:47,049 --> 00:47:48,277 And I'm not an accountant.' 1006 00:47:48,584 --> 00:47:49,710 And she said, 'well, that's fine. 1007 00:47:49,919 --> 00:47:51,011 We're going to do the article anyway.' 1008 00:47:51,320 --> 00:47:52,879 And I said, 'if you do that, 1009 00:47:53,123 --> 00:47:54,920 I personally think that's unethical.' 1010 00:47:55,125 --> 00:47:56,149 And then the next day... 1011 00:47:56,393 --> 00:47:57,621 Let me interrupt you. Our chief financial officer 1012 00:47:57,861 --> 00:47:59,294 and our chief accounting officer 1013 00:47:59,496 --> 00:48:02,294 flew to New York at Enron's expense, to sit down, 1014 00:48:02,532 --> 00:48:03,464 not with the editors, 1015 00:48:03,734 --> 00:48:06,430 but to sit down with the reporter on that story, 1016 00:48:06,670 --> 00:48:09,230 and help her understand the questions that she was asking. 1017 00:48:09,439 --> 00:48:11,066 And the next day we sat in this small, 1018 00:48:11,308 --> 00:48:13,435 dark, windowless conference room for about three hours, 1019 00:48:13,677 --> 00:48:16,613 going through the various aspects of the company's business. 1020 00:48:16,814 --> 00:48:18,042 And I'll never forget this. 1021 00:48:18,283 --> 00:48:19,910 When the interview was over, 1022 00:48:20,118 --> 00:48:21,050 the other two executives packed up 1023 00:48:21,352 --> 00:48:22,614 their things and had left the room, 1024 00:48:22,820 --> 00:48:25,482 and Andy Fastow turned around and looked at my editor and me, 1025 00:48:25,690 --> 00:48:27,920 and said, 'I don't care what you write about the company, 1026 00:48:28,126 --> 00:48:29,957 just don't make me look bad.' 1027 00:48:30,361 --> 00:48:34,957 And Fastow had good reasons for not wanting to look bad. 1028 00:48:36,100 --> 00:48:39,036 There were these partnerships that were run by Andy Fastow 1029 00:48:39,305 --> 00:48:40,829 that were doing business with Enron. 1030 00:48:41,073 --> 00:48:42,597 And these were disclosed 1031 00:48:42,808 --> 00:48:43,797 in the company's financial statements. 1032 00:48:44,009 --> 00:48:45,840 But I didn't mention them in the story I wrote, 1033 00:48:46,045 --> 00:48:46,568 because I thought, 1034 00:48:46,812 --> 00:48:48,006 well, the accountants and the board of directors 1035 00:48:48,213 --> 00:48:49,544 have said that this is okay. 1036 00:48:49,815 --> 00:48:52,682 So I must be crazy to think there's anything wrong with this. 1037 00:48:53,385 --> 00:48:55,319 The story I ran was actually pretty meek. 1038 00:48:55,587 --> 00:48:57,578 The title was 'ls Enron Overpriced? ' 1039 00:48:57,890 --> 00:49:00,189 But in the end, I couldn't prove that 1040 00:49:00,393 --> 00:49:02,122 it was anything more than an overvalued stock. 1041 00:49:02,329 --> 00:49:04,661 And I was probably too naive to suspect that it was anything... 1042 00:49:04,864 --> 00:49:06,024 anything more than that. 1043 00:49:06,266 --> 00:49:07,790 And was her article critical? 1044 00:49:08,101 --> 00:49:09,363 Yes it was. 1045 00:49:09,736 --> 00:49:12,330 The Fortune magazine article that's out the headline is, 1046 00:49:12,539 --> 00:49:14,234 'ls Enron's Stock Overvalued? ' 1047 00:49:14,507 --> 00:49:16,907 The gist of the article is that 1048 00:49:17,377 --> 00:49:19,402 Enron is sort of a black box... 1049 00:49:19,679 --> 00:49:21,079 which, sorry, it's true. 1050 00:49:21,282 --> 00:49:22,772 I mean, it's just difficult for us 1051 00:49:23,017 --> 00:49:26,680 to show people the specifics of how money flows through, 1052 00:49:26,887 --> 00:49:28,149 particularly the wholesale business. 1053 00:49:28,389 --> 00:49:30,949 The entire reason that this analysis 1054 00:49:31,192 --> 00:49:32,352 was done by Fortune magazine 1055 00:49:32,593 --> 00:49:34,823 is because Business Week had a favorable article 1056 00:49:35,062 --> 00:49:37,326 about Enron the week before. 1057 00:49:37,565 --> 00:49:39,294 And there's this competition with the news... 1058 00:49:39,533 --> 00:49:42,434 the news magazines have, where one says something good, 1059 00:49:42,636 --> 00:49:44,104 the other one has to come and find something bad. 1060 00:49:44,306 --> 00:49:46,274 So I think that was kind of the genesis of it. 1061 00:49:46,408 --> 00:49:49,400 So the criticism, I think, is kind of ridiculous. 1062 00:49:49,611 --> 00:49:52,603 When Bethany McLean at Fortune 1063 00:49:53,048 --> 00:49:54,675 started analyzing cash flows, 1064 00:49:54,916 --> 00:49:56,383 and she had this wonderful article saying, 1065 00:49:56,651 --> 00:49:59,085 'take a look at first quarter, second quarter, third quarter, 1066 00:49:59,321 --> 00:50:01,516 and end of year cash flows.' 1067 00:50:01,790 --> 00:50:03,382 There's a reason she didn't invest in Enron 1068 00:50:03,658 --> 00:50:05,593 'cause the financials didn't make sense. 1069 00:50:05,862 --> 00:50:07,853 But you have to be willing to say 1070 00:50:08,131 --> 00:50:09,894 that the emperor doesn't have any clothes. 1071 00:50:10,099 --> 00:50:13,330 And this emperor was pretty powerful. 1072 00:50:13,803 --> 00:50:15,862 We are going to unveil this morning 1073 00:50:16,105 --> 00:50:17,697 a new corporate vision. 1074 00:50:18,074 --> 00:50:21,441 Okay, you ready? One, two, three. 1075 00:50:24,180 --> 00:50:25,442 How's this? 1076 00:50:28,886 --> 00:50:29,910 It's really hard to know 1077 00:50:30,220 --> 00:50:33,747 when Enron first crossed the line into outright fraud. 1078 00:50:34,058 --> 00:50:35,150 But there isn't any doubt 1079 00:50:35,392 --> 00:50:37,189 about who the guy was who led them there. 1080 00:50:37,394 --> 00:50:39,021 It was a protege of Jeff Skilling's 1081 00:50:39,229 --> 00:50:41,026 by the name of Andy Fastow. 1082 00:50:48,639 --> 00:50:51,973 Andy Fastow was Enron's chief financial officer. 1083 00:50:52,277 --> 00:50:54,177 His job was to cover up the fact 1084 00:50:54,479 --> 00:50:57,937 that Enron was becoming a financial fantasyland. 1085 00:50:58,216 --> 00:51:00,684 Enron essentially was losing money on a cash basis, 1086 00:51:00,885 --> 00:51:01,943 year after year. 1087 00:51:02,253 --> 00:51:03,845 And yet it was reporting profits. 1088 00:51:04,122 --> 00:51:06,283 So it was defying laws of financial gravity. 1089 00:51:06,491 --> 00:51:07,480 And the way he was doing it 1090 00:51:07,792 --> 00:51:09,760 was with something called structured finance. 1091 00:51:10,061 --> 00:51:13,327 And the maestro of all that at Enron was Andy Fastow. 1092 00:51:13,833 --> 00:51:15,300 Andy was very young. 1093 00:51:15,568 --> 00:51:18,503 He was hired by Jeff Skilling probably before he was even 30 1094 00:51:18,804 --> 00:51:21,637 and he idolized Jeff Skilling. 1095 00:51:21,874 --> 00:51:24,934 And he certainly wanted to please the boss. 1096 00:51:25,478 --> 00:51:26,775 To please the Boss, 1097 00:51:27,012 --> 00:51:30,539 Fastow had to figure out a way to keep the stock price up 1098 00:51:30,783 --> 00:51:32,717 by hiding the fact that Enron was 1099 00:51:32,918 --> 00:51:35,012 thirty billion dollars in debt. 1100 00:51:35,755 --> 00:51:39,748 People pressured by the need to keep the stock price up 1101 00:51:39,993 --> 00:51:41,426 begin to cheat a little bit. 1102 00:51:41,661 --> 00:51:43,629 But then the next quarter comes along 1103 00:51:43,864 --> 00:51:45,729 and you have to cheat a little more to 1104 00:51:46,233 --> 00:51:50,431 do the new cheating to make up for the old cheating. 1105 00:51:50,704 --> 00:51:52,729 And before long, 1106 00:51:53,106 --> 00:51:58,409 you've created a momentum that now you can't stop. 1107 00:51:58,946 --> 00:52:01,471 Fastow created hundreds of special companies 1108 00:52:01,716 --> 00:52:03,377 to perform a magic trick... 1109 00:52:03,618 --> 00:52:07,076 prop up Enron's stock by making its debt disappear. 1110 00:52:07,955 --> 00:52:09,286 To outsider investors 1111 00:52:09,490 --> 00:52:11,515 it looked like cash was coming in the door. 1112 00:52:11,726 --> 00:52:15,787 In fact Enron was just stashing its debt in Fastow's companies 1113 00:52:15,997 --> 00:52:17,828 where investors couldn't see it. 1114 00:52:18,834 --> 00:52:20,893 It was black magic. It really was. 1115 00:52:21,136 --> 00:52:23,070 You were pulling some rabbits out of a hat. 1116 00:52:28,110 --> 00:52:30,908 They could bury debt; they could bury losses. 1117 00:52:31,146 --> 00:52:33,546 Many of the companies had exotic names: 1118 00:52:33,782 --> 00:52:36,649 Jedi, Chewco Raptors. 1119 00:52:37,052 --> 00:52:40,317 LJM was Fastow's most ambitious creation. 1120 00:52:40,455 --> 00:52:42,151 It would work magic for Enron 1121 00:52:42,458 --> 00:52:44,449 and it would allow Fastow to conjure 1122 00:52:44,694 --> 00:52:47,686 45 million dollars for himself. 1123 00:52:51,834 --> 00:52:53,495 Andy, in many ways, 1124 00:52:53,703 --> 00:52:57,571 was someone we all knew didn't have a strong moral compass. 1125 00:52:57,840 --> 00:52:59,535 It's almost like Jeff Skilling said, 1126 00:52:59,742 --> 00:53:01,676 'okay, we're hitting some troubled times. 1127 00:53:01,911 --> 00:53:04,779 Let's set up Andy so we can fill the earnings' holes 1128 00:53:05,049 --> 00:53:05,777 when we need to', 1129 00:53:05,983 --> 00:53:09,544 knowing that Andy would probably skim a little bit 1130 00:53:09,853 --> 00:53:12,287 off each transaction for himself. 1131 00:53:12,489 --> 00:53:16,186 There's a 'Body Heat' kind of angle to this, 1132 00:53:16,460 --> 00:53:19,293 you know, where Skilling is Kathleen Turner 1133 00:53:19,496 --> 00:53:21,293 and Andy is William Hurt. 1134 00:53:21,565 --> 00:53:22,589 You know, in the end, 1135 00:53:22,833 --> 00:53:25,701 he got suckered into helping all the executives 1136 00:53:25,937 --> 00:53:27,097 meet their earnings. 1137 00:53:27,339 --> 00:53:28,966 What I wish, I, you know, in retrospect? 1138 00:53:29,207 --> 00:53:30,538 I wish I'd never heard of LJM. 1139 00:53:30,775 --> 00:53:32,402 Is it your contention that you knew of it 1140 00:53:32,611 --> 00:53:33,134 and it was appropriate? 1141 00:53:33,345 --> 00:53:34,573 Arthur Andersen and our lawyers 1142 00:53:34,813 --> 00:53:36,872 had taken a very hard look at this structure 1143 00:53:37,082 --> 00:53:38,174 and they believed it was appropriate. 1144 00:53:38,383 --> 00:53:41,648 If the theory is that Fastow went rogue somewhere deep 1145 00:53:41,853 --> 00:53:43,377 in the jungles of Enron 1146 00:53:43,655 --> 00:53:46,351 and was the sole agent of the apocalypse, 1147 00:53:46,658 --> 00:53:47,956 I just don't buy it. 1148 00:53:48,261 --> 00:53:50,627 Skilling, Lay, and the Enron board 1149 00:53:50,863 --> 00:53:53,730 had signed off on Fastow's LJM funds. 1150 00:53:54,100 --> 00:53:56,193 They saw the benefits of letting Fastow 1151 00:53:56,469 --> 00:53:58,061 do deals with himself. 1152 00:53:58,437 --> 00:54:00,132 It is in Enron's best interest, 1153 00:54:00,373 --> 00:54:01,965 because Enron needs the capital, number one. 1154 00:54:02,208 --> 00:54:05,302 In a secret video tape that surfaced after the bankruptcy, 1155 00:54:05,511 --> 00:54:08,105 Fastow can be seen selling LJM 1156 00:54:08,381 --> 00:54:10,680 to a group of Merrill Lynch bankers. 1157 00:54:10,917 --> 00:54:13,351 He pitches them on the benefits of investing in a fund 1158 00:54:13,620 --> 00:54:15,986 that only buys assets from Enron. 1159 00:54:16,223 --> 00:54:18,851 Remember, I'm not sellling the assets to myself. 1160 00:54:19,126 --> 00:54:22,493 They own the assets. They're selling them to LJM2. 1161 00:54:22,863 --> 00:54:27,323 Fastow knew what kind of deal he was offering as Enron's CFO. 1162 00:54:27,668 --> 00:54:30,831 He could guarantee profits for LJM. 1163 00:54:31,238 --> 00:54:33,833 I think this is an extraordinary opportunity. 1164 00:54:34,108 --> 00:54:36,872 He has a sort of Cheshire Cat grin on his face as he talks 1165 00:54:37,078 --> 00:54:39,308 about all the ways that the fund is gonna profit. 1166 00:54:39,480 --> 00:54:41,311 And he talks about the informational advantages 1167 00:54:41,616 --> 00:54:45,211 that he is gonna have in his dual role as Enron's CFO 1168 00:54:45,453 --> 00:54:46,943 and as the head of these funds. 1169 00:54:47,255 --> 00:54:48,916 Isn't there a question of conflict of interest? 1170 00:54:49,157 --> 00:54:50,146 There is never any question that 1171 00:54:50,391 --> 00:54:52,120 I will be on both sides of the transaction. 1172 00:54:52,393 --> 00:54:54,555 I will always be on the LJM side of the transaction. 1173 00:54:54,830 --> 00:54:57,390 He was general partner of LJM, while at the same time, 1174 00:54:57,666 --> 00:54:58,963 being CFO of Enron. 1175 00:54:59,168 --> 00:55:00,396 You know, that's a whole 'nother ball of wax 1176 00:55:00,602 --> 00:55:02,365 when you want to talk about that conflict of interest. 1177 00:55:02,571 --> 00:55:07,167 Because no human being should be put in a situation where, 1178 00:55:07,710 --> 00:55:09,075 you know, every single transaction, 1179 00:55:09,311 --> 00:55:10,505 they decide whether they're looking 1180 00:55:10,713 --> 00:55:14,149 after Enron's best interests or their limited partners. 1181 00:55:14,416 --> 00:55:17,318 Because this LJM partnership existed 1182 00:55:17,554 --> 00:55:18,953 solely to do business with Enron. 1183 00:55:19,756 --> 00:55:21,087 As you would expect, 1184 00:55:21,324 --> 00:55:23,292 Andy as Chief Financial Officer of Enron, 1185 00:55:23,560 --> 00:55:26,757 is heavily banked, so to speak. 1186 00:55:27,030 --> 00:55:29,430 And as a result, 1187 00:55:29,699 --> 00:55:33,396 there are five or six of the name brand banks 1188 00:55:33,670 --> 00:55:36,195 who have stepped up and said they'll commit to this. 1189 00:55:36,740 --> 00:55:38,834 Commit they did. And why not? 1190 00:55:39,343 --> 00:55:42,540 Fastow was letting them gamble with Enron's chips. 1191 00:55:42,913 --> 00:55:45,507 Fastow was using Enron's stock 1192 00:55:45,750 --> 00:55:48,150 as collateral for a lot of these things. 1193 00:55:48,352 --> 00:55:50,343 They were betting their own company on the transactions. 1194 00:55:50,955 --> 00:55:52,718 With the prospect of returns 1195 00:55:52,957 --> 00:55:54,857 that would exceed two thousand percent, 1196 00:55:55,159 --> 00:55:58,788 96 individual bankers invested in LJM. 1197 00:55:59,029 --> 00:56:03,091 And America's major banks put up as much as $25 million each. 1198 00:56:03,301 --> 00:56:06,134 It's sort of the Who's Who of Wall Street: 1199 00:56:06,338 --> 00:56:11,002 JP Morgan Chase CS First Boston Citibank 1200 00:56:11,309 --> 00:56:14,904 Merrill Lynch, DeutscheBank... 1201 00:56:15,313 --> 00:56:19,750 These are some of the premier investment banks in the world. 1202 00:56:20,085 --> 00:56:22,280 It's hard for us to poke holes in this. 1203 00:56:22,421 --> 00:56:23,286 Good. 1204 00:56:25,725 --> 00:56:27,750 It's just amazing how skilled Enron 1205 00:56:27,994 --> 00:56:30,861 and Andy Fastow were at working Wall Street, 1206 00:56:31,097 --> 00:56:32,621 playing on Wall Street's greed, 1207 00:56:32,865 --> 00:56:34,799 in order to get money out of them. 1208 00:56:35,034 --> 00:56:38,128 To quote Lenin, 1209 00:56:38,538 --> 00:56:42,440 they were the investment bankers useful idiots. 1210 00:56:45,512 --> 00:56:47,571 As disturbing as Enron's own misconduct, 1211 00:56:47,815 --> 00:56:49,908 is the growing evidence that 1212 00:56:50,117 --> 00:56:52,210 leading U.S. Financial institutions 1213 00:56:52,486 --> 00:56:56,115 not only took part in Enron's deceptive practices, 1214 00:56:56,557 --> 00:57:00,891 but at times designed, advanced and profited from them. 1215 00:57:01,161 --> 00:57:05,257 The Enron fraud is the story of synergistic corruption. 1216 00:57:05,466 --> 00:57:08,265 There are supposed to be checks and balances in the system. 1217 00:57:08,470 --> 00:57:10,495 The lawyers are supposed to say no. 1218 00:57:10,738 --> 00:57:12,706 The accountants are supposed to say no. 1219 00:57:12,974 --> 00:57:14,805 The bankers are supposed to say no. 1220 00:57:15,043 --> 00:57:17,739 But no one who was supposed to say no said no. 1221 00:57:17,946 --> 00:57:19,504 They all took their share of the money, 1222 00:57:19,714 --> 00:57:21,545 from the fraud and put it in their pockets. 1223 00:57:21,749 --> 00:57:23,774 Enron paid its advisers well. 1224 00:57:24,052 --> 00:57:27,351 In 2001 the accounting firm Arthur Andersen 1225 00:57:27,589 --> 00:57:29,318 received one million a week. 1226 00:57:29,725 --> 00:57:31,955 Enron's law firm, Vinson & Elkins, 1227 00:57:32,328 --> 00:57:33,886 did nearly as well. 1228 00:57:34,330 --> 00:57:38,096 Everyone had their hand out at the table. 1229 00:57:38,334 --> 00:57:40,029 They were all being paid. 1230 00:57:40,336 --> 00:57:42,395 And as long as Enron continued, 1231 00:57:42,705 --> 00:57:44,570 they received their fees. 1232 00:57:45,007 --> 00:57:47,475 They were a part of the process. 1233 00:57:47,810 --> 00:57:49,300 So it's hard now to say, 1234 00:57:49,578 --> 00:57:51,136 'oh, we didn't know anything.' 1235 00:57:51,413 --> 00:57:54,679 Had we known then what we know now about Enron's practices, 1236 00:57:54,985 --> 00:57:57,613 we would not have engaged in these transactions with Enron. 1237 00:57:57,888 --> 00:58:00,083 The facts that we now have come to light about Enron, 1238 00:58:00,357 --> 00:58:01,824 however, were not known at the time. 1239 00:58:02,058 --> 00:58:03,685 I believe that the Citigroup professionals 1240 00:58:03,960 --> 00:58:06,827 involved with these transactions acted in good faith. 1241 00:58:07,097 --> 00:58:12,626 I'd like you here to look at one Citi email, 1242 00:58:12,702 --> 00:58:16,264 The email trail here is all too lurid. 1243 00:58:16,507 --> 00:58:18,532 Oh, for instance, one email I remember, 1244 00:58:18,743 --> 00:58:22,645 where the banker writes, 'Enron loves these deals. 1245 00:58:22,947 --> 00:58:24,278 They produce cash, 1246 00:58:24,515 --> 00:58:26,710 but they don't have to show the debt on the balance sheet.' 1247 00:58:26,951 --> 00:58:28,851 Now, a high school student can figure out that. 1248 00:58:29,086 --> 00:58:33,546 The banks were all knowing articipants in this wrong-doing. 1249 00:58:34,592 --> 00:58:37,653 Meryll Lynch assisted Enron in cooking it's books 1250 00:58:37,996 --> 00:58:41,397 by pretending to purchase an existing Enron asset 1251 00:58:41,633 --> 00:58:44,898 when it was really engaged in a loan. 1252 00:58:45,871 --> 00:58:48,396 The accounting sham involved the sale of an interest 1253 00:58:48,607 --> 00:58:50,404 in three Nigerian barges 1254 00:58:51,343 --> 00:58:53,971 Nigeria is a long way from Manhattan. 1255 00:58:54,212 --> 00:58:55,008 Yet for some reason, 1256 00:58:55,247 --> 00:58:58,307 toward the end of the fourth quarter in 1999 1257 00:58:58,483 --> 00:59:00,315 Merrill Lynch suddenly decided to buy 1258 00:59:00,587 --> 00:59:03,784 three Nigerian power barges from Enron. 1259 00:59:04,090 --> 00:59:06,285 Nigerian power barges have nothing to do 1260 00:59:06,526 --> 00:59:07,891 with Merrill Lynch's business. 1261 00:59:08,127 --> 00:59:10,118 It was a blatantly illegal transaction. 1262 00:59:10,697 --> 00:59:12,096 It was just taking the barges, 1263 00:59:12,365 --> 00:59:14,265 getting them off of Enron's books, 1264 00:59:14,467 --> 00:59:16,526 having Merill Lynch, if you will, 1265 00:59:16,803 --> 00:59:20,261 warehouse them for five months and then buying them back. 1266 00:59:20,440 --> 00:59:22,466 Mr. Martin, you... you've testified here today 1267 00:59:22,776 --> 00:59:26,268 that there was no guarantee. And you said that under oath. 1268 00:59:28,115 --> 00:59:29,639 Here's a document, 1269 00:59:29,883 --> 00:59:32,477 saying that the head of your whole division here 1270 00:59:32,953 --> 00:59:37,117 was going to confirm that understanding. 1271 00:59:40,828 --> 00:59:42,090 Over the year 2001, 1272 00:59:42,329 --> 00:59:44,560 Skilling became increasingly despondent. 1273 00:59:44,833 --> 00:59:46,300 He'd always been a moody guy, 1274 00:59:46,468 --> 00:59:47,935 but people who knew him said he became 1275 00:59:48,203 --> 00:59:50,171 just increasingly volatile. 1276 00:59:50,372 --> 00:59:52,431 Show up for work unshaven, looking blurry-eyed. 1277 00:59:52,674 --> 00:59:54,107 And I think it was the battle of holding these 1278 00:59:54,342 --> 00:59:57,505 two totally disjointed thoughts in his mind at... 1279 00:59:57,712 --> 00:59:58,474 at the same time. 1280 00:59:58,680 --> 01:00:00,614 One is Enron a super-star company 1281 01:00:00,849 --> 01:00:03,682 and the other of feeling like it was all crumbling away. 1282 01:00:04,452 --> 01:00:07,047 The first cracks in Skilling's public image 1283 01:00:07,289 --> 01:00:08,847 appeared in a conference call with 1284 01:00:09,091 --> 01:00:11,355 analysts in April, 2001. 1285 01:00:11,594 --> 01:00:13,323 And then Jeff Skilling took questions. 1286 01:00:13,796 --> 01:00:16,162 And about mid-way through the session... 1287 01:00:16,399 --> 01:00:17,627 there was a question. 1288 01:00:17,833 --> 01:00:21,997 It was sort of aggressively wondering out loud 1289 01:00:22,204 --> 01:00:23,466 why it was that Enron, 1290 01:00:23,739 --> 01:00:26,003 as a financial services company in effect, 1291 01:00:26,275 --> 01:00:28,574 could not release a balance sheet 1292 01:00:28,779 --> 01:00:30,041 with its earning statement, 1293 01:00:30,247 --> 01:00:32,010 like most financial institutions do. 1294 01:00:32,249 --> 01:00:34,547 You're the only financial institution that can't produce 1295 01:00:34,751 --> 01:00:37,049 a balance sheet or a cash flow statement with their earnings 1296 01:00:38,955 --> 01:00:40,889 Well, you, you... 1297 01:00:41,291 --> 01:00:45,557 Well, thank you very much. We appreciate it, asshole. 1298 01:00:46,930 --> 01:00:48,261 And then quite audibly 1299 01:00:48,498 --> 01:00:50,592 you could here Skilling say asshole! 1300 01:00:50,968 --> 01:00:52,731 And then he said, 'asshole'. 1301 01:00:52,970 --> 01:00:55,336 As I understand it, you called him an asshole. 1302 01:00:56,107 --> 01:00:58,075 And this just caused unbelievable 1303 01:00:58,309 --> 01:00:59,867 amounts of consternation all across Wall Street 1304 01:01:00,111 --> 01:01:01,203 because people thought, 1305 01:01:01,412 --> 01:01:03,903 'A Fortune 500 CEO losing it like this, 1306 01:01:04,115 --> 01:01:07,175 calling publicly an investor an asshole? ' 1307 01:01:07,418 --> 01:01:09,181 If I could go back and redo things, 1308 01:01:09,387 --> 01:01:13,620 I would not now, have used the term that I used. 1309 01:01:13,826 --> 01:01:15,885 Mark Palmer, Enron's chief PR guy, 1310 01:01:16,095 --> 01:01:18,359 Even ran a note up to Skilling, telling him to apologize. 1311 01:01:18,630 --> 01:01:20,325 And he just took the piece of paper 1312 01:01:20,466 --> 01:01:22,525 and tucked it under the pile of papers on his desk. 1313 01:01:22,801 --> 01:01:23,358 And afterwards, 1314 01:01:23,602 --> 01:01:25,160 Enron's traders who had erupted in cheers 1315 01:01:25,370 --> 01:01:27,838 when Skilling called this guy an asshole made him a sign. 1316 01:01:28,107 --> 01:01:29,506 It was a play off Enron's motto 1317 01:01:29,742 --> 01:01:32,176 'Ask Why' and the sign said 'ask why asshole.' 1318 01:01:34,280 --> 01:01:37,545 My personal feeling was that Jeff looked at the numbers 1319 01:01:38,184 --> 01:01:43,349 and he knew that we were in a massive hole. 1320 01:01:43,890 --> 01:01:46,381 It was the only time that I saw him truly, 1321 01:01:46,593 --> 01:01:50,085 truly worried about keeping the stock price up. 1322 01:01:50,296 --> 01:01:51,729 And he just kept saying to me, 1323 01:01:51,931 --> 01:01:54,092 'I don't know what the hell I'm going to do.' 1324 01:01:57,738 --> 01:02:00,036 The broadband business was in complete meltdown. 1325 01:02:00,407 --> 01:02:02,238 And there were all sorts of other problems 1326 01:02:02,476 --> 01:02:04,034 that Jeff Skilling as the company's Chief 1327 01:02:04,245 --> 01:02:05,837 Operating Officer was wrestling with. 1328 01:02:06,080 --> 01:02:07,479 And in the middle of all this, 1329 01:02:07,748 --> 01:02:10,046 Ken Lay walks in Jeff Skilling's office holding up 1330 01:02:10,351 --> 01:02:14,014 fabric swatches for the new G5 45 million dollar corporate 1331 01:02:14,221 --> 01:02:15,188 jet he wanted to buy. 1332 01:02:15,489 --> 01:02:17,423 And he said to Jeff, 1333 01:02:17,691 --> 01:02:19,125 asked him a very important question, 1334 01:02:19,394 --> 01:02:20,827 'which of these cabin configurations 1335 01:02:21,129 --> 01:02:22,323 do you like best, Jeff? ' 1336 01:02:23,698 --> 01:02:27,134 While Ken Lay was stressing over the corporate jet, 1337 01:02:27,469 --> 01:02:29,903 EES was headed for a crash landing. 1338 01:02:30,238 --> 01:02:32,798 Facing 500 million in losses, 1339 01:02:33,074 --> 01:02:35,235 Lou Pai's top leuitenant, Tom White, 1340 01:02:35,544 --> 01:02:37,944 wondered how EES could show a profit 1341 01:02:38,280 --> 01:02:39,747 by the end of the quarter. 1342 01:02:40,382 --> 01:02:43,614 One of the things that was always a strange 1343 01:02:43,853 --> 01:02:44,945 occurrence at Enron was 1344 01:02:45,988 --> 01:02:49,355 for weeks before a quarterly report 1345 01:02:50,092 --> 01:02:52,492 we would be under the impression that 1346 01:02:52,728 --> 01:02:54,457 we weren't going to make our numbers. 1347 01:02:54,730 --> 01:02:56,220 But then somehow, miraculously, 1348 01:02:56,699 --> 01:02:59,759 we always made the numbers, and then some. 1349 01:03:00,002 --> 01:03:03,268 But then a question was asked to Tom White, 1350 01:03:03,440 --> 01:03:06,102 'how is it that we made the numbers? ' 1351 01:03:06,410 --> 01:03:11,177 And his answer was, 'One word, California.' 1352 01:03:19,756 --> 01:03:22,122 The first clues to Enron's new strategy 1353 01:03:22,359 --> 01:03:24,327 hit California with a jolt. 1354 01:03:25,563 --> 01:03:27,997 It started at Noon rolling across the state. 1355 01:03:28,199 --> 01:03:30,497 Sacramento, San Francisco, Beverly Hills, 1356 01:03:30,735 --> 01:03:32,066 Long Beach, San Diego 1357 01:03:32,370 --> 01:03:35,669 Twenty six thousand miles of California power lines. 1358 01:03:35,974 --> 01:03:37,373 Enough to circle the Earth. 1359 01:03:37,742 --> 01:03:39,209 But for the second day in a row, 1360 01:03:39,444 --> 01:03:42,242 not enough electricity for America's largest state, 1361 01:03:42,480 --> 01:03:44,573 and the world's sixth largest economy. 1362 01:03:44,849 --> 01:03:46,339 The first thing we heard about this energy crisis is well, 1363 01:03:46,517 --> 01:03:48,076 our lights are going to go off in the middle of winter 1364 01:03:48,287 --> 01:03:49,720 when we're using half the electricity 1365 01:03:49,922 --> 01:03:51,253 we normally use during the summer. 1366 01:03:51,557 --> 01:03:53,149 The Bay Area got hit by not one, 1367 01:03:53,425 --> 01:03:54,983 but two rolling blackouts. 1368 01:03:55,227 --> 01:03:57,627 We only need twenty eight thousand 1369 01:03:57,830 --> 01:03:59,127 to thirty thousand megawatts in December. 1370 01:03:59,398 --> 01:04:02,060 We have an installed capacity in California at the time 1371 01:04:02,301 --> 01:04:03,791 forty-five thousand megawatts. 1372 01:04:04,003 --> 01:04:06,733 Plenty o' power to meet our electric demand. 1373 01:04:06,972 --> 01:04:09,031 Of course, we had blackouts in December. 1374 01:04:09,375 --> 01:04:11,844 The people who control California's power grid 1375 01:04:12,045 --> 01:04:14,206 say once again they're worried about having to blackout 1376 01:04:14,414 --> 01:04:16,006 the Northern half of the state. 1377 01:04:16,349 --> 01:04:18,317 When the rolling blackouts started hitting California 1378 01:04:18,518 --> 01:04:20,145 there was definitely a lot of excitement in the air. 1379 01:04:20,453 --> 01:04:21,545 It was something new. 1380 01:04:21,755 --> 01:04:23,416 It was something that hadn't been encountered before. 1381 01:04:23,623 --> 01:04:26,319 It was, 'how is this event going to 1382 01:04:26,493 --> 01:04:27,425 effect the price of power? ' 1383 01:04:27,661 --> 01:04:29,629 Control's rotating attitudes are being implemented. 1384 01:04:29,896 --> 01:04:30,828 I knew. 1385 01:04:31,097 --> 01:04:34,090 I knew that there was illegality going on. 1386 01:04:34,368 --> 01:04:35,596 I could feel it. I could smell it. 1387 01:04:35,803 --> 01:04:36,428 I could sense it. 1388 01:04:36,704 --> 01:04:37,966 And there was no other explanation. 1389 01:04:38,172 --> 01:04:40,003 Because the numbers just didn't add up. 1390 01:04:40,207 --> 01:04:41,765 We had enough power in California. 1391 01:04:42,043 --> 01:04:43,943 It was never about lack of supply. 1392 01:04:44,178 --> 01:04:45,475 When I ran for Governor in 1998, 1393 01:04:45,746 --> 01:04:48,214 not one human being asked me about electricity. 1394 01:04:48,416 --> 01:04:50,008 This thing kind of came out of the woods, 1395 01:04:50,217 --> 01:04:51,047 as far as I was concerned. 1396 01:04:51,285 --> 01:04:52,343 And I was trying in the early days 1397 01:04:52,586 --> 01:04:55,454 to learn what was happening; how we could fix the problem. 1398 01:04:58,193 --> 01:05:00,457 California was selected by Enron 1399 01:05:00,729 --> 01:05:02,856 as the prime place to experiment 1400 01:05:03,131 --> 01:05:05,531 with this new concept of deregulated electricity. 1401 01:05:05,734 --> 01:05:08,168 Reducing electricity cost is only one benefit 1402 01:05:08,770 --> 01:05:10,397 from choice and competition. 1403 01:05:10,739 --> 01:05:13,572 In 1996, under pressure from energy companies, 1404 01:05:13,842 --> 01:05:16,106 Governor Pete Wilson and the California legislature 1405 01:05:16,378 --> 01:05:20,076 passed a bill allowing for the deregulation of electricity. 1406 01:05:20,416 --> 01:05:22,714 I wasn't in the Legislature in 1996, 1407 01:05:22,952 --> 01:05:25,716 but I can tell you that there isn't a legislator alive 1408 01:05:25,922 --> 01:05:28,482 that can tell you with any sophistication 1409 01:05:28,791 --> 01:05:31,760 how a deregulated electricity market ought to work. 1410 01:05:32,061 --> 01:05:33,119 Not a one. 1411 01:05:33,863 --> 01:05:37,128 California's deregulated system was a bizarre compromise 1412 01:05:37,367 --> 01:05:40,064 between legislators and free-market advocates. 1413 01:05:40,371 --> 01:05:42,931 The rules were complicated and hard to follow. 1414 01:05:43,841 --> 01:05:45,138 Inside Enron, 1415 01:05:45,409 --> 01:05:48,003 California's system was little more than a joke. 1416 01:05:48,278 --> 01:05:49,472 And once in place, 1417 01:05:49,780 --> 01:05:53,841 Enron made sure that the joke would be on California. 1418 01:05:54,184 --> 01:05:56,152 I remember the conversation I had with Ken. 1419 01:05:56,387 --> 01:05:57,877 At the end of it he says 'Well, 1420 01:05:58,155 --> 01:05:59,087 Dave, old buddy, let me just tell you. 1421 01:05:59,423 --> 01:06:01,654 It doesn't matter really to us 1422 01:06:01,893 --> 01:06:04,623 what kooky rules you Californians put in place. 1423 01:06:04,896 --> 01:06:06,659 I got a bunch of really smart people down here 1424 01:06:06,931 --> 01:06:08,865 who will figure out how to make money anyhow.' 1425 01:06:10,735 --> 01:06:13,863 One of the smartest guys at Enron was Tim Belden, 1426 01:06:14,105 --> 01:06:16,198 who ran the west coast trading desk. 1427 01:06:17,042 --> 01:06:18,771 Tim Belden was a fervent believer 1428 01:06:19,010 --> 01:06:20,500 in the idea of free markets 1429 01:06:20,745 --> 01:06:23,306 and as such he spent hours poring over the new rules 1430 01:06:23,516 --> 01:06:25,916 for the deregulation of California's energy industry, 1431 01:06:26,352 --> 01:06:29,321 looking for loopholes that Enron could exploit to make money. 1432 01:06:29,889 --> 01:06:32,323 He found plenty. After the bankruptcy, 1433 01:06:32,491 --> 01:06:34,652 a confidential memo surfaced revealing the names of 1434 01:06:34,894 --> 01:06:38,523 Belden's strategies to game the California market 1435 01:06:38,931 --> 01:06:42,128 Wheel Out, Get Shorty, Fat Boy 1436 01:06:42,902 --> 01:06:46,703 Recently, audio tapes of the Enron traders were discovered. 1437 01:06:46,973 --> 01:06:48,201 What do you want to call this project? 1438 01:06:48,809 --> 01:06:50,071 Probably have a catchy name for that. 1439 01:06:51,044 --> 01:06:52,011 How about, you know, 1440 01:06:52,212 --> 01:06:54,146 something friendly like 'Death Star'? 1441 01:06:58,985 --> 01:07:01,112 The tapes revealed Enron's contempt 1442 01:07:01,388 --> 01:07:04,619 for any values except one, making money. 1443 01:07:07,527 --> 01:07:08,654 Hey John, it's Tim. 1444 01:07:08,896 --> 01:07:10,454 Regulatory's all in a big concern 1445 01:07:10,731 --> 01:07:13,097 about is we're wheeling power out of California. 1446 01:07:13,334 --> 01:07:14,858 He just steals money from California 1447 01:07:15,103 --> 01:07:16,695 to the tune of a million Can you rephrase that? 1448 01:07:16,938 --> 01:07:19,338 Okay, he arbitrages the California market 1449 01:07:19,574 --> 01:07:21,303 to the tune of a million bucks or two a day. 1450 01:07:27,348 --> 01:07:29,680 An arbitrage opportunity has been defined to me 1451 01:07:29,918 --> 01:07:31,977 as any opportunity to make abnormal profits. 1452 01:07:32,187 --> 01:07:33,882 So an abnormal profit would be 1453 01:07:34,356 --> 01:07:37,553 returns above and beyond the norm. 1454 01:07:37,793 --> 01:07:40,557 I was told that a good trader is a creative trader. 1455 01:07:40,796 --> 01:07:42,627 And a creative trader is a trader 1456 01:07:42,831 --> 01:07:45,459 that can find arbitrage opportunities. 1457 01:07:46,235 --> 01:07:48,897 One of those opportunities was called Ricochet. 1458 01:07:49,438 --> 01:07:51,838 I'll see you guys. I'm takin' mine to the desert. 1459 01:07:52,208 --> 01:07:54,768 In the midst of energy shortages Enron's traders 1460 01:07:55,178 --> 01:07:57,738 started to export power out of the state. 1461 01:07:58,148 --> 01:08:00,912 When prices soared, they brought it back in. 1462 01:08:01,251 --> 01:08:03,617 So we fuckin' export like a motherfucker. 1463 01:08:03,920 --> 01:08:05,785 Getting rich? Trying to. 1464 01:08:09,325 --> 01:08:11,589 Traders would stay after a twelve hour shift 1465 01:08:11,928 --> 01:08:14,955 and pour over maps of the western energy grid. 1466 01:08:15,199 --> 01:08:17,497 What are the permutations and combinations of ways to 1467 01:08:17,735 --> 01:08:19,930 move power around the west. 1468 01:08:20,204 --> 01:08:22,502 And I think that's something that Enron knew better 1469 01:08:22,740 --> 01:08:25,573 than any other Energy marketer in the country, period. 1470 01:08:25,876 --> 01:08:28,572 We know all of the California imports. 1471 01:08:28,946 --> 01:08:31,107 We know all of the California load. 1472 01:08:31,382 --> 01:08:33,077 We're getting' pretty spoiled with all this money. 1473 01:08:33,350 --> 01:08:34,408 You said you were getting a little scared 1474 01:08:34,618 --> 01:08:36,849 we're making a little too much. And I tend to agree with you. 1475 01:08:39,057 --> 01:08:42,618 These are two traders, t-r-a-d-e-r-s. 1476 01:08:42,861 --> 01:08:44,055 This is what they say. 1477 01:08:44,362 --> 01:08:46,728 'What we did was overbook the transmission line 1478 01:08:46,998 --> 01:08:49,796 we had the rights on and said to California Utilities, 1479 01:08:50,035 --> 01:08:52,333 'lf you want to use the line, pay us.' 1480 01:08:52,804 --> 01:08:55,170 By the time they agreed to meet our price, 1481 01:08:55,440 --> 01:08:57,874 rolling blackouts had already hit California 1482 01:08:58,143 --> 01:09:00,408 and the price for electricity went through the roof.' 1483 01:09:00,680 --> 01:09:02,910 Did you have any knowledge that this was happening? 1484 01:09:03,182 --> 01:09:05,275 The only thing that I'm aware of Senator, 1485 01:09:05,484 --> 01:09:06,644 is there was a, 1486 01:09:06,886 --> 01:09:08,649 there was a difference of opinion 1487 01:09:08,921 --> 01:09:10,946 on the rules of the independent system operator. 1488 01:09:11,190 --> 01:09:13,988 It was just set up, the rules weren't quite clear. 1489 01:09:14,193 --> 01:09:16,491 We have traders here from Enron 1490 01:09:16,696 --> 01:09:18,027 who were saying they did something wrong. 1491 01:09:18,331 --> 01:09:19,355 But you don't see anything wrong. 1492 01:09:19,632 --> 01:09:22,067 I have one last question and then I am done. 1493 01:09:23,670 --> 01:09:27,299 Traders soon discovered that by shutting down power plants, 1494 01:09:27,541 --> 01:09:29,941 they could create artificial shortages 1495 01:09:30,177 --> 01:09:32,475 that would push prices even higher. 1496 01:09:35,515 --> 01:09:37,574 Hey, this is David up at Enron. 1497 01:09:38,352 --> 01:09:40,479 There's not much demand for power at all here. 1498 01:09:40,721 --> 01:09:41,551 If we shut it down, 1499 01:09:41,755 --> 01:09:43,553 can you bring it back up in 3 or 4 hours? 1500 01:09:43,858 --> 01:09:44,552 Oh, yeah. 1501 01:09:44,792 --> 01:09:46,123 Why don't you just go ahead and shut her down then, 1502 01:09:46,361 --> 01:09:47,623 if that's ok? Okay. 1503 01:09:47,862 --> 01:09:50,422 When you see two or three energy companies 1504 01:09:50,732 --> 01:09:54,099 with 30, 35 percent of their entire capacity down 1505 01:09:54,369 --> 01:09:55,961 for maintenance on a single day 1506 01:09:56,371 --> 01:09:59,966 and as a result the price of electricity is 1507 01:10:00,208 --> 01:10:01,573 skyrocketing three or four hundred percent 1508 01:10:01,843 --> 01:10:03,470 and then a week later someone else does it up 1509 01:10:03,678 --> 01:10:05,009 in Northern California 1510 01:10:05,246 --> 01:10:07,613 you begin to believe something's not smelling right here. 1511 01:10:07,916 --> 01:10:10,248 We want you guys to get a little creative. 1512 01:10:10,486 --> 01:10:10,781 Okay. 1513 01:10:11,053 --> 01:10:12,111 And come up with a reason to go down. 1514 01:10:12,354 --> 01:10:13,685 Like a forced outage type thing? 1515 01:10:13,989 --> 01:10:14,717 Right. 1516 01:10:15,024 --> 01:10:16,924 Those guys at the flip of a switch 1517 01:10:17,159 --> 01:10:18,888 could just yank the California economy 1518 01:10:19,194 --> 01:10:20,593 on it's leash whenever they wanted to. 1519 01:10:20,829 --> 01:10:21,727 And they did it, and they did it, 1520 01:10:21,930 --> 01:10:23,261 and they did it. And they made so much money. 1521 01:10:23,532 --> 01:10:26,433 The heart of it is that an industry 1522 01:10:26,669 --> 01:10:30,231 that went for a hundred years from the days of Edison built 1523 01:10:30,540 --> 01:10:32,974 the best electrical system in the world, 1524 01:10:33,310 --> 01:10:35,608 sold the power at reasonable prices to consumers 1525 01:10:35,812 --> 01:10:38,781 and was very reliable was all of a sudden 1526 01:10:39,082 --> 01:10:40,640 turned into a casino. 1527 01:10:43,920 --> 01:10:46,616 These strategies made some money for Enron. 1528 01:10:46,856 --> 01:10:48,824 But the real money was made by betting 1529 01:10:49,125 --> 01:10:51,094 that the price of energy would go up 1530 01:10:51,462 --> 01:10:52,360 It did. 1531 01:10:52,596 --> 01:10:54,086 And the West Coast traders made 1532 01:10:54,298 --> 01:10:56,766 nearly two billion dollars for Enron. 1533 01:11:02,707 --> 01:11:05,676 You can't treat electricity like you treat oranges. 1534 01:11:05,943 --> 01:11:07,808 It's the lifeblood of the society. 1535 01:11:08,045 --> 01:11:08,602 It can't be stored. 1536 01:11:08,846 --> 01:11:10,336 You can't turn these people loose 1537 01:11:10,548 --> 01:11:13,814 and let them just have a quote free market 1538 01:11:14,019 --> 01:11:16,351 because a free market is God 1539 01:11:16,555 --> 01:11:18,580 Damn expensive to the customers. 1540 01:11:19,091 --> 01:11:20,991 There would be ample supply available 1541 01:11:21,226 --> 01:11:22,488 at the right fuckin' price. 1542 01:11:22,728 --> 01:11:23,387 Oh, sure there would. 1543 01:11:23,628 --> 01:11:24,117 It wasn't just Enron 1544 01:11:24,396 --> 01:11:27,160 "Every company traded according to the rules 1545 01:11:27,432 --> 01:11:29,525 that California put up there. 1546 01:11:29,968 --> 01:11:31,731 We're the future of Enron. 1547 01:11:32,003 --> 01:11:35,838 And we're fucking making half a billion dollars for Enron. 1548 01:11:36,142 --> 01:11:37,234 Can you believe that? 1549 01:11:37,777 --> 01:11:40,268 We'll definitely retire by the time we're 30. 1550 01:11:40,613 --> 01:11:42,376 We're talking about a commodity that 1551 01:11:42,582 --> 01:11:43,708 normally trades in the thirty-five, 1552 01:11:43,916 --> 01:11:45,008 forty-five dollar range. 1553 01:11:45,218 --> 01:11:46,776 High prices are when it gets into the fifties. 1554 01:11:47,887 --> 01:11:49,650 A thousand dollars? 1555 01:11:50,156 --> 01:11:53,648 Prices aren't going to stay at 1,000 bucks forever. 1556 01:11:54,427 --> 01:11:56,122 It weeds out the weak people in the market. 1557 01:11:56,730 --> 01:11:58,129 Get rid of them and you know what, 1558 01:11:58,432 --> 01:12:00,400 the people who are strong will stick around. 1559 01:12:00,734 --> 01:12:03,294 And the Enron traders never seemed to step back and say, 1560 01:12:03,537 --> 01:12:05,471 'Wait. Is what we're doing ethical? 1561 01:12:05,672 --> 01:12:07,333 Is it in our best long term interests? ' 1562 01:12:07,608 --> 01:12:10,202 'Does it help us if we totally rape California? ' 1563 01:12:10,444 --> 01:12:13,607 'Does that advance our goals of nation-wide deregulation? ' 1564 01:12:13,881 --> 01:12:16,042 Instead they sought out every loophole 1565 01:12:16,383 --> 01:12:19,148 they could in order to profit from California's misery. 1566 01:12:20,088 --> 01:12:23,785 Temperatures in California are hitting higher than 100 degrees 1567 01:12:24,058 --> 01:12:27,892 fueling wildfires and fears that California's strained power grid 1568 01:12:28,163 --> 01:12:30,154 could once again near collapse. 1569 01:12:31,399 --> 01:12:32,093 What's happening? 1570 01:12:32,500 --> 01:12:33,865 There's a fire under the core line. 1571 01:12:34,135 --> 01:12:37,468 It's been de-rated from 45 to 2100. 1572 01:12:38,039 --> 01:12:40,473 Burn, baby, burn. 1573 01:12:40,775 --> 01:12:42,209 That's a beautiful thing. 1574 01:12:45,147 --> 01:12:48,378 I was never comfortable on the trading floor at Enron. 1575 01:12:49,218 --> 01:12:51,914 And if I had questions, I didn't ask them, 1576 01:12:52,154 --> 01:12:54,247 because I didn't want to know the answer. 1577 01:12:55,458 --> 01:12:56,652 You know, I didn't want confirmed 1578 01:12:56,959 --> 01:12:59,689 what I suspected might be true. 1579 01:12:59,995 --> 01:13:02,828 That what I was doing was, in fact, 1580 01:13:03,132 --> 01:13:08,765 unseemly or was, at least, unethical, 1581 01:13:08,972 --> 01:13:10,530 if not worse. 1582 01:13:12,409 --> 01:13:14,707 Why did the traders do what they did? 1583 01:13:15,045 --> 01:13:17,605 Was it their multi-million dollar bonuses 1584 01:13:17,848 --> 01:13:20,544 or had Enron found a way to exploit 1585 01:13:20,750 --> 01:13:23,048 the darker side of human behavior? 1586 01:13:24,554 --> 01:13:26,716 In the early 60's Stanley Milgram 1587 01:13:26,991 --> 01:13:29,118 tried to figure out what characteristics 1588 01:13:29,427 --> 01:13:30,553 there were of evil people. 1589 01:13:30,795 --> 01:13:33,628 Was there an evil strain or could normal people 1590 01:13:33,831 --> 01:13:35,162 do really bad things? 1591 01:13:35,399 --> 01:13:37,094 And so he set up this experiment. 1592 01:13:37,301 --> 01:13:39,826 In the experiment he had an actor playing 1593 01:13:40,037 --> 01:13:43,438 an experimental subject and a real experimental subject. 1594 01:13:44,075 --> 01:13:45,736 Want to step right in here and have a seat? 1595 01:13:45,977 --> 01:13:48,572 They went into this room and he had an experimenter say, 1596 01:13:48,981 --> 01:13:51,245 'we're going to see if mild electric shocks 1597 01:13:51,483 --> 01:13:53,383 will help people memorize lists. 1598 01:13:54,186 --> 01:13:58,247 Incorrect... You'll now get a shock of 75 volts. 1599 01:13:59,258 --> 01:14:00,953 Soft air. 1600 01:14:01,827 --> 01:14:03,419 He kind of did some yelling in there. 1601 01:14:03,662 --> 01:14:05,994 The Milgram Experiment has a lot to say about Enron 1602 01:14:06,231 --> 01:14:10,532 because I think people lost their sense of morality. 1603 01:14:10,837 --> 01:14:12,464 Like Milgram, once you accepted the idea 1604 01:14:12,739 --> 01:14:14,730 that behaving inhumanly was okay, 1605 01:14:14,974 --> 01:14:15,906 you could do anything. 1606 01:14:16,175 --> 01:14:17,767 And the shocks increased with the number 1607 01:14:18,044 --> 01:14:19,341 of mistakes that they made. 1608 01:14:19,646 --> 01:14:21,671 I can't stand the pain! Let me out of here! 1609 01:14:21,915 --> 01:14:24,076 He can't stand it. I'm not going to kill that man. 1610 01:14:24,417 --> 01:14:26,044 The subject, the real subject is begging 1611 01:14:26,252 --> 01:14:28,447 the scientist-looking person to stop too. 1612 01:14:28,688 --> 01:14:30,178 And the scientist only says 1613 01:14:30,490 --> 01:14:32,823 'the experiment requires that you continue. 1614 01:14:33,127 --> 01:14:34,492 Please continue. Go on, please. 1615 01:14:35,262 --> 01:14:37,127 You accept all responsibility? 1616 01:14:37,398 --> 01:14:39,127 The responsibility is mine, correct. 1617 01:14:39,400 --> 01:14:39,923 Please go on. 1618 01:14:40,234 --> 01:14:42,998 In a way, Skilling was almost like the guy 1619 01:14:43,237 --> 01:14:44,431 telling those people below him 1620 01:14:44,705 --> 01:14:47,230 it was okay to up the power. 1621 01:14:49,076 --> 01:14:51,135 California's Electric Utilities 1622 01:14:51,412 --> 01:14:53,471 may have to pull the plug on millions of customers. 1623 01:14:53,781 --> 01:14:56,774 It's the fucking coolest thing I've done in a long time. 1624 01:14:57,018 --> 01:14:58,576 Holy fuck, yes. You gotta love the west. 1625 01:14:58,920 --> 01:14:59,443 Oh. 1626 01:15:02,424 --> 01:15:04,324 During the height of Wednesday's blackout, 1627 01:15:04,559 --> 01:15:07,357 fire crews had to free people trapped in elevators. 1628 01:15:07,929 --> 01:15:09,863 All that money you guys stole from those 1629 01:15:10,065 --> 01:15:11,327 poor grandmothers in California. 1630 01:15:11,633 --> 01:15:13,225 Yeah, Grandma Millie, man. 1631 01:15:13,468 --> 01:15:15,459 She's the one who couldn't figure out how to fucking vote 1632 01:15:15,704 --> 01:15:16,763 on the butterfly ballot. 1633 01:15:17,006 --> 01:15:18,871 Now she wants her fucking money back for all the power 1634 01:15:19,075 --> 01:15:20,736 you've charged right up her ass. 1635 01:15:29,652 --> 01:15:31,085 You must continue. Go on, please. 1636 01:15:31,487 --> 01:15:34,513 You're gonna keep giving him what... 450 volts every shot now? 1637 01:15:34,757 --> 01:15:36,384 That's correct. Continue. 1638 01:15:36,592 --> 01:15:38,184 It's kinda hard to say well we should be, 1639 01:15:38,394 --> 01:15:40,158 you know we shouldn't do this even though it's allowed 1640 01:15:40,397 --> 01:15:43,628 because you know. I mean, that's what we do. 1641 01:15:43,867 --> 01:15:44,697 Right. 1642 01:15:45,135 --> 01:15:47,262 Best thing that could happen is fucking an earthquake. 1643 01:15:47,504 --> 01:15:49,096 Let that thing float out to the Pacific. 1644 01:15:49,406 --> 01:15:50,373 Put up fucking candles. 1645 01:15:53,944 --> 01:15:56,037 Milgram's discovery was disturbing. 1646 01:15:56,279 --> 01:15:57,678 Fifty percent of the subjects were 1647 01:15:57,881 --> 01:15:59,644 willing to shock to the death, 1648 01:15:59,916 --> 01:16:01,384 so long as the commands came 1649 01:16:01,619 --> 01:16:03,985 from a seemingly legitimate source. 1650 01:16:12,964 --> 01:16:14,659 Tonight I'm declaring a state of emergency 1651 01:16:14,899 --> 01:16:16,992 in California to give the state 1652 01:16:17,201 --> 01:16:19,101 the authority and the resources to 1653 01:16:19,370 --> 01:16:20,632 keep the lights on in California. 1654 01:16:20,838 --> 01:16:22,237 The Governor, who's been basically 1655 01:16:23,007 --> 01:16:24,999 capitulating to the demands of the energy 1656 01:16:25,210 --> 01:16:27,906 companies and utility companies, needs to put his foot down. 1657 01:16:28,113 --> 01:16:30,343 We wanted the Governor to send in the state police 1658 01:16:30,482 --> 01:16:33,110 or the National Guard to seize control of the power plants 1659 01:16:33,385 --> 01:16:34,352 and put it back on-line. 1660 01:16:34,586 --> 01:16:35,883 And I thought we didn't have to take over every plant, 1661 01:16:36,121 --> 01:16:37,554 we really only had to take over one. 1662 01:16:37,823 --> 01:16:39,450 'Cause then they would know he meant it. 1663 01:16:39,658 --> 01:16:41,649 I'm going to get the nine billion dollars 1664 01:16:41,927 --> 01:16:42,825 back that Enron, 1665 01:16:43,028 --> 01:16:46,590 Dynergy and Reliant stole from us and get it back to you. 1666 01:16:46,833 --> 01:16:48,357 Despite what the people of California 1667 01:16:48,501 --> 01:16:51,834 think Enron's making money despite California, 1668 01:16:52,038 --> 01:16:53,665 not because of California. 1669 01:16:54,140 --> 01:16:56,199 The year-long energy crisis would cost 1670 01:16:56,443 --> 01:16:59,105 the state of California $30 billion dollars. 1671 01:17:01,147 --> 01:17:04,913 The markets in California are the most regulated market 1672 01:17:05,185 --> 01:17:07,210 in North America today. 1673 01:17:07,454 --> 01:17:09,787 And that's what's causing the problem. 1674 01:17:10,191 --> 01:17:12,489 California, it never deregulated. 1675 01:17:12,760 --> 01:17:14,751 Enron, buy stock today. 1676 01:17:15,963 --> 01:17:17,555 Thank you very much. 1677 01:17:17,832 --> 01:17:19,026 We are doing the right thing. 1678 01:17:19,366 --> 01:17:20,731 You're the good guys. 1679 01:17:21,001 --> 01:17:23,561 We are the good guys. We are on the side of angels. 1680 01:17:24,371 --> 01:17:25,338 Oh, I can't help myself. 1681 01:17:25,573 --> 01:17:26,505 You know what the difference is between 1682 01:17:26,707 --> 01:17:28,800 the state of California and the Titanic? 1683 01:17:32,781 --> 01:17:34,772 This being a web cast, I know I'm going to regret this. 1684 01:17:35,050 --> 01:17:36,745 At least when the Titanic went down, 1685 01:17:37,018 --> 01:17:38,349 the lights were on. 1686 01:17:41,923 --> 01:17:45,586 Jeffery Skilling, how's it feel to make a killing? 1687 01:17:45,794 --> 01:17:48,160 A top executive at one of America's biggest power 1688 01:17:48,396 --> 01:17:52,162 companies received a raucous welcome in San Francisco tonight. 1689 01:17:52,401 --> 01:17:54,926 Protestors heckled Enron's CEO, 1690 01:17:55,138 --> 01:17:57,368 Jeffery Skilling outside and inside 1691 01:17:57,507 --> 01:17:59,407 during his appearance at Commonwealth Club. 1692 01:17:59,675 --> 01:18:01,870 One of the protestors even brought a blueberry pie 1693 01:18:02,078 --> 01:18:03,511 and delivered it herself. 1694 01:18:05,414 --> 01:18:06,312 Police! 1695 01:18:07,250 --> 01:18:10,310 A hundred and thirty two million dollars is what he made. 1696 01:18:10,520 --> 01:18:13,887 We had a fifty percent hike in utility rates. 1697 01:18:14,090 --> 01:18:16,025 Consumers in California are angry. 1698 01:18:16,360 --> 01:18:17,327 And they should be. 1699 01:18:17,528 --> 01:18:18,722 And if we had anything to do with this, 1700 01:18:18,929 --> 01:18:21,420 then we are the stupidest people in the world. 1701 01:18:21,932 --> 01:18:23,627 I work for an organization. 1702 01:18:23,867 --> 01:18:25,232 Every day people call saying 1703 01:18:25,502 --> 01:18:27,129 they can't pay their electricity bills! 1704 01:18:27,371 --> 01:18:30,238 You made millions of dollars off of California... 1705 01:18:30,474 --> 01:18:31,202 Get out! Go to jail. 1706 01:18:31,408 --> 01:18:33,399 When the tidal wave of public anger 1707 01:18:33,677 --> 01:18:35,975 started to grow Ken Lay flew out here 1708 01:18:36,180 --> 01:18:38,046 and convened a meeting of friends 1709 01:18:38,383 --> 01:18:40,681 and I guess he had a little more foresight than we did. 1710 01:18:40,919 --> 01:18:43,080 He, he invited Arnold Schwarzenegger. 1711 01:18:43,388 --> 01:18:44,650 Brought them together at the Peninsula Hotel 1712 01:18:44,889 --> 01:18:45,719 and had a lunch meeting. 1713 01:18:45,957 --> 01:18:49,358 The notes from that meeting really still have never surfaced, 1714 01:18:49,561 --> 01:18:51,688 but we know that Ken Lay's pitch was 1715 01:18:51,996 --> 01:18:53,156 we've got to stay the course 1716 01:18:53,398 --> 01:18:55,889 with deregulation and the market will correct itself 1717 01:18:56,134 --> 01:18:57,761 and everything will turn out fine. 1718 01:18:58,403 --> 01:19:00,133 Now at... at the time we didn't understand 1719 01:19:00,406 --> 01:19:01,771 really why he was so concerned. 1720 01:19:02,041 --> 01:19:02,632 But now we do. 1721 01:19:02,942 --> 01:19:04,136 The fact is that Ken Lay was out here 1722 01:19:04,410 --> 01:19:05,741 because he understood that 1723 01:19:06,011 --> 01:19:07,774 Enron itself was a house of cards 1724 01:19:08,013 --> 01:19:10,948 And if deregulation were to collapse, 1725 01:19:11,183 --> 01:19:12,844 then Enron itself would collapse. 1726 01:19:13,719 --> 01:19:15,482 But Ken Lay had a trump card. 1727 01:19:15,788 --> 01:19:18,052 In the midst of the energy crisis his friend, 1728 01:19:18,357 --> 01:19:20,917 George W. Bush, became president 1729 01:19:21,261 --> 01:19:24,196 I, George Walker Bush, do solemnly swear. 1730 01:19:24,464 --> 01:19:26,455 I, George Walker Bush, do solemnly swear. 1731 01:19:26,666 --> 01:19:28,224 Ken Lay's going to be Secretary of Energy. 1732 01:19:29,369 --> 01:19:30,529 Get out of here. 1733 01:19:31,071 --> 01:19:33,232 How great would that be for all the players in the market? 1734 01:19:33,506 --> 01:19:34,029 Lt'd be great. 1735 01:19:34,374 --> 01:19:36,501 I'd love to see Ken Lay be Secretary of Energy. 1736 01:19:36,843 --> 01:19:40,370 Ken Lay did have easy access to the Bush administration. 1737 01:19:40,647 --> 01:19:41,545 On April 17th, 1738 01:19:41,748 --> 01:19:43,649 he met with Vice President Dick Cheney, 1739 01:19:43,985 --> 01:19:46,078 and strongly argued against the imposition of 1740 01:19:46,454 --> 01:19:48,513 Federal price caps in California. 1741 01:19:48,756 --> 01:19:50,587 We're doing everything we can to help in California 1742 01:19:50,892 --> 01:19:52,723 on the short term basis. There's not a lot you can do. 1743 01:19:52,960 --> 01:19:54,518 You can't manufacture kilowatts 1744 01:19:54,729 --> 01:19:55,855 in the West wing of the White House. 1745 01:19:56,063 --> 01:19:58,031 We're fighting with both hands tied behind our back. 1746 01:19:58,266 --> 01:19:59,824 We no longer have the power to stop this. 1747 01:20:00,101 --> 01:20:01,432 If the federal government doesn't help us, 1748 01:20:01,669 --> 01:20:02,601 we're a dead duck. 1749 01:20:03,137 --> 01:20:05,663 At the time, Gray Davis was a likely candidate 1750 01:20:05,908 --> 01:20:07,102 to run for president. 1751 01:20:07,342 --> 01:20:09,970 Ken Lay knew that might give his friend George Bush 1752 01:20:10,245 --> 01:20:12,736 a political reason to oppose California's 1753 01:20:12,981 --> 01:20:15,415 appeals for federal price controls. 1754 01:20:15,684 --> 01:20:18,448 They know full well my administration's belief 1755 01:20:18,654 --> 01:20:22,112 that price controls will not solve the problem. 1756 01:20:22,424 --> 01:20:24,324 His view was that the Federal government 1757 01:20:24,559 --> 01:20:26,584 really shouldn't get involved. This is California's problem. 1758 01:20:27,262 --> 01:20:29,288 And I'm saying, 'with all due... due respect, 1759 01:20:29,499 --> 01:20:31,933 Mr. President, our law said 1760 01:20:32,168 --> 01:20:34,033 the Federal government regulates this, 1761 01:20:34,270 --> 01:20:35,430 so it is your problem. 1762 01:20:35,705 --> 01:20:37,605 And you make appointments to the Federal Deregulatory Commission. 1763 01:20:37,840 --> 01:20:40,240 So, we had a polite, but spirited discussion on that. 1764 01:20:40,543 --> 01:20:40,975 And he says, 1765 01:20:41,210 --> 01:20:42,199 'I just can't be of help to you on that.' 1766 01:20:42,445 --> 01:20:44,310 As I said from the very beginning of my administration, 1767 01:20:44,514 --> 01:20:46,038 we'll work to help California, 1768 01:20:46,349 --> 01:20:47,873 in any way we can. 1769 01:20:48,284 --> 01:20:50,981 And the best way we can is to be good citizens. 1770 01:20:52,456 --> 01:20:55,857 FERC, the federal agency which regulates energy in America, 1771 01:20:56,093 --> 01:20:57,583 refused to intervene. 1772 01:20:58,362 --> 01:21:01,763 What was FERC doing and why was it not taking action? 1773 01:21:01,999 --> 01:21:04,092 The chairman of FERC was Pat Wood, 1774 01:21:04,401 --> 01:21:07,859 the man Ken Lay had personally recommended for the job. 1775 01:21:08,138 --> 01:21:10,436 It was easy for FERC to do Enron's bidding 1776 01:21:10,674 --> 01:21:12,164 because all it had to do was do nothing 1777 01:21:12,410 --> 01:21:13,570 which they did very well. 1778 01:21:13,878 --> 01:21:15,869 Federal Regulators are being pressured to act 1779 01:21:16,147 --> 01:21:18,615 by the now Democratic controlled Senate where here... 1780 01:21:18,850 --> 01:21:22,843 A Democratic Senate forced FERC to impose regional price caps. 1781 01:21:23,088 --> 01:21:26,524 That ended the energy crisis, but not the political one. 1782 01:21:26,791 --> 01:21:29,385 Did Ken Lay and George Bush have a political agenda to 1783 01:21:29,627 --> 01:21:31,424 blame the energy crisis on Gray Davis? 1784 01:21:31,763 --> 01:21:33,924 Oh hello. 1785 01:21:34,633 --> 01:21:37,397 It's one of those 'only in California' stories. 1786 01:21:37,603 --> 01:21:39,195 The state's unpopular Governor, 1787 01:21:39,438 --> 01:21:41,929 Gray Davis, beset by an ailing economy 1788 01:21:42,174 --> 01:21:44,404 and thirty eight billion dollar budget deficit, 1789 01:21:44,577 --> 01:21:46,306 faces possible recall. 1790 01:21:46,645 --> 01:21:49,614 And rumored as a possible replacement for Davis, 1791 01:21:49,849 --> 01:21:51,976 movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger. 1792 01:21:52,351 --> 01:21:53,613 The Terminator? 1793 01:21:53,886 --> 01:21:55,581 We'll see whether he's back or not. 1794 01:21:55,821 --> 01:21:57,619 Gray Davis has terminated opportunities 1795 01:21:57,891 --> 01:22:00,018 and now it's time we terminate Gray Davis! 1796 01:22:00,794 --> 01:22:04,161 No Recall! No Recall! 1797 01:22:07,401 --> 01:22:09,869 Could I predict a phony energy crisis 1798 01:22:10,137 --> 01:22:11,161 as a result of deregulation? 1799 01:22:11,505 --> 01:22:14,167 Yes. Could I predict that Arnold Schwartzerneger 1800 01:22:14,441 --> 01:22:16,671 would be our Governor as a result of deregulation? 1801 01:22:17,310 --> 01:22:18,368 Never would have come up with that. 1802 01:22:18,578 --> 01:22:19,841 That's like a bad science fiction movie. 1803 01:22:20,114 --> 01:22:22,275 Apparently we have all been wrong, 1804 01:22:22,650 --> 01:22:25,414 it is pronounced Caly-forn-ya. 1805 01:22:25,753 --> 01:22:26,742 Ladies and gentlemen, 1806 01:22:26,954 --> 01:22:29,149 the Governor of the great state of California, 1807 01:22:29,424 --> 01:22:30,891 Arnold Schwarzenegger! 1808 01:22:46,575 --> 01:22:48,566 We could just hear rumbles all the way up and down 1809 01:22:49,578 --> 01:22:51,569 Main Street here and all throughout the city 1810 01:22:51,780 --> 01:22:54,772 that things were very difficult at Enron. 1811 01:22:55,017 --> 01:22:57,645 One guy who a year before had come to me and said, 1812 01:22:57,853 --> 01:22:58,581 I'm working for Enron, 1813 01:22:58,787 --> 01:23:01,017 and was very excited but within a year 1814 01:23:01,290 --> 01:23:03,349 was waking up every night with nightmares. 1815 01:23:03,526 --> 01:23:05,391 'I've got no life left 1816 01:23:05,662 --> 01:23:07,857 and I feel like I'm being consumed by this company.' 1817 01:23:08,731 --> 01:23:11,199 As doubts began to surface about the company 1818 01:23:11,434 --> 01:23:13,800 and the erratic behavior of its CEO 1819 01:23:14,070 --> 01:23:16,402 Enron's stock began to fall. 1820 01:23:17,040 --> 01:23:18,564 I remember one of the most poignant meetings 1821 01:23:18,775 --> 01:23:19,833 I'd ever had with Jeff. 1822 01:23:20,043 --> 01:23:21,169 I had left Enron 1823 01:23:21,478 --> 01:23:23,173 and I had come over to talk about whether or not 1824 01:23:23,413 --> 01:23:24,607 I would return to Enron. 1825 01:23:24,881 --> 01:23:26,679 And I said, 'Jeff, you've got a real problem. 1826 01:23:27,017 --> 01:23:29,485 The traders, they will cut your throat, 1827 01:23:29,753 --> 01:23:32,381 if they think it will get them to the trough sooner.' 1828 01:23:32,923 --> 01:23:34,390 Jeff was silent. 1829 01:23:34,692 --> 01:23:36,990 And he looked out the window 1830 01:23:37,428 --> 01:23:39,396 and he looked back at me and he said, 1831 01:23:39,597 --> 01:23:42,760 'Yeah Amanda, you're most likely right.' 1832 01:23:44,135 --> 01:23:47,002 By the end, the traders ran Enron. 1833 01:23:47,271 --> 01:23:49,399 You know, the inmates had taken over the asylum. 1834 01:23:52,444 --> 01:23:55,709 All through the summer, the stock continued to decline. 1835 01:23:56,148 --> 01:23:58,844 There was a buzz that a major 1836 01:23:59,084 --> 01:24:00,949 announcement was going to take place. 1837 01:24:01,219 --> 01:24:05,485 But we all thought that Ken Lay was leaving 1838 01:24:05,957 --> 01:24:08,118 Enron and that he had been 1839 01:24:08,460 --> 01:24:13,364 asked by the Bush administration to join his administration. 1840 01:24:13,666 --> 01:24:15,531 But that wasn't the case at all. 1841 01:24:15,768 --> 01:24:17,258 It was Jeff Skilling announcing that 1842 01:24:17,537 --> 01:24:19,767 he was stepping down as the CEO. 1843 01:24:20,039 --> 01:24:22,735 And that took everyone by surprise. 1844 01:24:23,009 --> 01:24:24,567 No one could believe that. 1845 01:24:25,444 --> 01:24:27,105 CEO's generally, 1846 01:24:27,313 --> 01:24:29,372 don't just resign out of the blue 1847 01:24:29,682 --> 01:24:33,278 without a well orchestrated PR campaign beforehand 1848 01:24:33,587 --> 01:24:35,817 to pave the way so there's no disruptions, 1849 01:24:36,023 --> 01:24:38,184 there's no questions, there's no front page stories, 1850 01:24:38,425 --> 01:24:40,723 which is, of course, exactly what happened. 1851 01:24:42,663 --> 01:24:44,631 It was at that point that I knew, 1852 01:24:44,965 --> 01:24:46,523 the architect of the disaster knows that 1853 01:24:46,800 --> 01:24:50,133 it's crumbling and the rat is leaving the sinking ship. 1854 01:24:51,605 --> 01:24:54,803 Two days later I met with him and Ken Lay 1855 01:24:55,043 --> 01:24:56,067 because I had informed the company 1856 01:24:56,311 --> 01:24:57,539 that I was going to downgrade the stock 1857 01:24:57,812 --> 01:24:59,939 on Skilling's resignation. 1858 01:25:00,181 --> 01:25:01,170 I asked Jeff Skilling, 1859 01:25:01,449 --> 01:25:03,076 'are there any more shoes to drop. 1860 01:25:03,318 --> 01:25:04,444 Have we seen the worst of it.' 1861 01:25:04,652 --> 01:25:06,449 And I was concerned about the energy crisis 1862 01:25:06,654 --> 01:25:08,349 that was occurring in California. 1863 01:25:09,724 --> 01:25:12,887 Well, Skilling convinced me that it was for personal reasons. 1864 01:25:13,161 --> 01:25:16,494 I left his meeting feeling sort of emotional 1865 01:25:16,698 --> 01:25:19,167 because of the concern that he seemed to be 1866 01:25:19,401 --> 01:25:22,268 showing about the relationship he had with his family. 1867 01:25:22,571 --> 01:25:24,232 He appeared to be distraught. 1868 01:25:24,440 --> 01:25:26,101 And I remember saying to an investor 1869 01:25:26,775 --> 01:25:28,970 'lf he's not telling the truth, 1870 01:25:29,245 --> 01:25:31,179 then it's a good thing he quit his day job 1871 01:25:31,413 --> 01:25:32,880 because he needs to go to Hollywood. 1872 01:25:33,249 --> 01:25:34,910 I left Enron on August fourteenth, 1873 01:25:35,117 --> 01:25:37,244 2001 for personal reasons. 1874 01:25:37,586 --> 01:25:40,021 Mr. Skilling a massive earthquake 1875 01:25:40,991 --> 01:25:43,016 struck Enron right after your departure. 1876 01:25:43,627 --> 01:25:48,189 And people in far inferior positions to you 1877 01:25:48,732 --> 01:25:50,529 could see cracks in the walls, 1878 01:25:50,800 --> 01:25:53,735 feel the tremors, feel the windows rattling, 1879 01:25:54,237 --> 01:25:55,704 and you want us to believe 1880 01:25:56,006 --> 01:25:58,201 you sat there in your office and didn't... 1881 01:25:58,441 --> 01:26:00,306 and had no clue 1882 01:26:00,543 --> 01:26:01,909 that this place was about to collapse? 1883 01:26:02,446 --> 01:26:05,347 On the day I left, on August fourteenth, 1884 01:26:05,549 --> 01:26:08,347 2001, I believed the company was in strong, 1885 01:26:08,519 --> 01:26:09,417 financial condition. 1886 01:26:09,620 --> 01:26:11,212 I think he was smart enough 1887 01:26:11,455 --> 01:26:12,581 and he didn't even have to be that smart, 1888 01:26:12,790 --> 01:26:16,089 he had seen documents that I think predicted the future. 1889 01:26:16,394 --> 01:26:18,157 I think he was smart enough to think 1890 01:26:18,429 --> 01:26:20,363 I can get out now and this company 1891 01:26:20,598 --> 01:26:23,659 isn't going to collapse for a year, 1892 01:26:23,869 --> 01:26:27,202 maybe a year and a half, so I won't get the blame. 1893 01:26:27,439 --> 01:26:29,930 It was working fine when I left, guys. 1894 01:26:31,543 --> 01:26:34,068 After Skilling resigned, Enron's chairman, 1895 01:26:34,313 --> 01:26:36,508 Ken Lay took over as CEO. 1896 01:26:43,522 --> 01:26:45,251 Boy, I didn't expect that. 1897 01:26:47,226 --> 01:26:48,386 But thank you. 1898 01:26:48,528 --> 01:26:49,620 Thank you very much. 1899 01:26:49,962 --> 01:26:51,725 Well, I'm delighted to be back. 1900 01:26:52,432 --> 01:26:54,627 I'm sorry Jeff did resign. 1901 01:26:54,901 --> 01:26:56,892 It was a stunning announcement, 1902 01:26:57,236 --> 01:26:59,898 that he was stepping down as CEO. 1903 01:27:00,173 --> 01:27:01,834 And I think the flags 1904 01:27:03,643 --> 01:27:05,941 started going up at that point for everybody. 1905 01:27:06,212 --> 01:27:07,645 We are facing a number of challenges, 1906 01:27:07,847 --> 01:27:09,543 but we're managing them. 1907 01:27:09,850 --> 01:27:12,478 Indeed I think the worst of that's behind us. 1908 01:27:13,053 --> 01:27:15,112 And the business is doing great. 1909 01:27:15,622 --> 01:27:17,112 We're not the only stock 1910 01:27:17,391 --> 01:27:18,858 that's decreased in value this year. 1911 01:27:19,093 --> 01:27:20,685 It's just that we've been hit a little harder than... 1912 01:27:20,928 --> 01:27:21,860 than many others. 1913 01:27:22,096 --> 01:27:24,223 If a few of these other problems disappear, 1914 01:27:24,598 --> 01:27:26,532 like California, like India. 1915 01:27:26,867 --> 01:27:29,233 I think the worst is over. 1916 01:27:29,670 --> 01:27:31,195 And I'm excited. 1917 01:27:31,506 --> 01:27:33,440 August fourteenth 2001, 1918 01:27:33,875 --> 01:27:35,570 Jeff Skilling abruptly resigns. 1919 01:27:35,877 --> 01:27:37,174 And that made me angry. 1920 01:27:37,412 --> 01:27:39,744 It made loads of employees angry. 1921 01:27:40,148 --> 01:27:42,241 I mean, there was a real sense of betrayal 1922 01:27:42,517 --> 01:27:44,451 by the employees. I mean, this was, you know, 1923 01:27:44,819 --> 01:27:46,844 Jim Jones feeding us the Kool-Aid 1924 01:27:47,055 --> 01:27:48,989 and then deciding not to drink it himself. 1925 01:27:53,696 --> 01:27:55,391 The day after Skilling resigned, 1926 01:27:55,664 --> 01:27:58,531 Sherron Watkins sent a letter to Ken Lay. 1927 01:27:58,801 --> 01:28:00,632 We will begin with Ms. Watkins. 1928 01:28:00,903 --> 01:28:02,200 I am Sherron Watkins. 1929 01:28:02,438 --> 01:28:04,429 Would you identify your counsel for the committee. 1930 01:28:04,940 --> 01:28:06,999 Yes. My counsel is Mr. Philip Hilder. 1931 01:28:07,476 --> 01:28:09,205 When you hear the story for the first time, 1932 01:28:09,478 --> 01:28:11,139 it's unbelievable. 1933 01:28:11,380 --> 01:28:14,748 What Sherron was telling me it was more than accounting 1934 01:28:14,985 --> 01:28:16,111 irregularities, as such. 1935 01:28:16,386 --> 01:28:20,049 I mean, it was a massive fraud of enormous proportions. 1936 01:28:20,390 --> 01:28:22,585 In mid to late June of 2001, 1937 01:28:22,859 --> 01:28:25,384 upon the resignation of Cliff Baxter, 1938 01:28:25,629 --> 01:28:27,790 I went to work directly for Mr. Fastow. 1939 01:28:27,998 --> 01:28:31,798 It has evolved to the corporate crime of the century. 1940 01:28:32,068 --> 01:28:35,196 I was highly alarmed by the information I was receiving. 1941 01:28:36,540 --> 01:28:38,008 What Sherron Watkins discovered 1942 01:28:38,276 --> 01:28:41,712 began the unraveling of Fastow's complex partnerships. 1943 01:28:42,079 --> 01:28:44,809 Andy put me in charge of this asset listing. 1944 01:28:45,183 --> 01:28:49,916 And there were about a dozen assets that had been hedged 1945 01:28:50,154 --> 01:28:53,453 with one of Andy's entities, the Raptors. 1946 01:28:53,791 --> 01:28:56,259 So I was working with this spreadsheet and, 1947 01:28:56,661 --> 01:28:58,788 you know, the math just didn't add up. 1948 01:28:59,063 --> 01:29:00,588 It didn't make sense to me. 1949 01:29:00,799 --> 01:29:02,664 I mean, accounting doesn't get that creative. 1950 01:29:02,935 --> 01:29:04,061 You know, I couldn't believe that 1951 01:29:04,269 --> 01:29:05,429 Arthur Andersen had signed off on it. 1952 01:29:05,771 --> 01:29:08,672 I couldn't believe that so many people were going along. 1953 01:29:09,842 --> 01:29:11,537 Behind Fastow's partnerships 1954 01:29:11,877 --> 01:29:14,869 were enormous guarantees of Enron's stock. 1955 01:29:15,280 --> 01:29:17,714 Fastow had gambled Enron's future 1956 01:29:17,916 --> 01:29:20,885 on the hope that its stock would never fall. 1957 01:29:21,286 --> 01:29:25,246 My first reaction was that I should warn Ken Lay. 1958 01:29:25,725 --> 01:29:27,090 The day after Skilling left, 1959 01:29:27,293 --> 01:29:29,488 I sent this one page anonymous letter. 1960 01:29:29,762 --> 01:29:31,923 But within a week I was meeting with Ken Lay. 1961 01:29:32,165 --> 01:29:33,632 I identified myself 1962 01:29:33,900 --> 01:29:35,925 in the hopes of really making my point 1963 01:29:36,202 --> 01:29:38,193 that Enron really needed to address this situation. 1964 01:29:38,438 --> 01:29:40,804 Companies rarely get away with cooking the books. 1965 01:29:41,074 --> 01:29:43,440 But when they do survive, it's when they come clean. 1966 01:29:43,677 --> 01:29:46,271 Not when they're exposed from the outside. 1967 01:29:46,647 --> 01:29:48,478 Ms. Watkins, I went through... 1968 01:29:48,716 --> 01:29:50,411 Ms. Watkins did not talk to me, Senator. 1969 01:29:50,684 --> 01:29:54,085 Well, Ms. Watkins said Clifford Baxter told her 1970 01:29:54,421 --> 01:29:57,982 that he met with you repeatedly to express his concern. 1971 01:29:58,292 --> 01:30:01,386 Cliff and Andy have had a... they didn't like each other. 1972 01:30:01,695 --> 01:30:04,459 They had a very strained personal relationship 1973 01:30:04,798 --> 01:30:07,495 and Cliff's issue had nothing to do 1974 01:30:07,836 --> 01:30:09,030 with the appropriateness 1975 01:30:09,271 --> 01:30:10,568 or inappropriateness of the transactions 1976 01:30:10,805 --> 01:30:14,206 I mentioned Cliff Baxter in these memos. 1977 01:30:14,409 --> 01:30:16,343 And I remember I made the comment to him, 1978 01:30:16,878 --> 01:30:18,436 'you're one of the good guys, 1979 01:30:18,713 --> 01:30:19,611 you know, you're one of the people 1980 01:30:19,814 --> 01:30:23,614 fighting against this. And it'd be alright.' 1981 01:30:23,852 --> 01:30:24,944 And he said, 1982 01:30:25,186 --> 01:30:26,210 'oh I don't think it's going to be alright 1983 01:30:26,454 --> 01:30:28,389 for any of us involved.' 1984 01:30:31,694 --> 01:30:33,662 When I started working on the book with Sherron, 1985 01:30:33,963 --> 01:30:35,726 I was interested in writing about a whistleblower. 1986 01:30:35,965 --> 01:30:38,160 People don't really appreciate 1987 01:30:38,801 --> 01:30:42,032 what she did and the bravery that it took in that company. 1988 01:30:42,305 --> 01:30:44,830 Andy Fastow would not have put his hands 1989 01:30:45,107 --> 01:30:47,803 in the Enron candy jar without an explicit 1990 01:30:48,010 --> 01:30:50,980 or implicit approval to do so by Mr. Skilling. 1991 01:30:51,214 --> 01:30:53,614 I can't for the life of me see what basis she 1992 01:30:53,817 --> 01:30:55,978 would have for suggesting that I would know some... 1993 01:30:56,219 --> 01:30:58,119 I mean, how would she know that? 1994 01:30:58,322 --> 01:31:00,085 And I don't see that it's at all inconsistent that 1995 01:31:00,290 --> 01:31:02,155 there would be some things that I don't know 1996 01:31:02,426 --> 01:31:05,725 if some people purposely kept me from knowing some things 1997 01:31:06,029 --> 01:31:09,556 I felt like I was one lone voice within Enron saying, 1998 01:31:09,766 --> 01:31:11,529 'look, we've... we've committed horrible fraud.' 1999 01:31:11,735 --> 01:31:13,067 And of course all hell broke loose. 2000 01:31:13,271 --> 01:31:16,763 Within six short weeks Enron was spinning out of control. 2001 01:31:21,646 --> 01:31:23,170 Probably in more normal circumstances 2002 01:31:23,448 --> 01:31:24,938 I would have a few more words to say 2003 01:31:25,183 --> 01:31:26,707 about September the eleventh. 2004 01:31:26,985 --> 01:31:30,113 Just like America is under attack by terrorism, 2005 01:31:30,855 --> 01:31:33,449 I think we're under attack. And of course. 2006 01:31:34,726 --> 01:31:39,926 Now we've got the SEC inquiry, informal inquiry... 2007 01:31:40,766 --> 01:31:42,734 The SEC launched an investigation 2008 01:31:43,002 --> 01:31:44,492 When the Wall Street Journal published 2009 01:31:44,770 --> 01:31:47,762 articles revealing Fastow's murky deals. 2010 01:31:48,107 --> 01:31:50,871 Enron announced massive financial restatements. 2011 01:31:51,477 --> 01:31:53,445 Investors began to worry that billions 2012 01:31:53,679 --> 01:31:57,013 in mark-to-market profits were really losses. 2013 01:31:59,552 --> 01:32:01,213 As you can see foresee, 2014 01:32:01,488 --> 01:32:06,050 the underlying fundamentals of our businesses are very strong. 2015 01:32:06,426 --> 01:32:08,451 Indeed the strongest they've ever been. 2016 01:32:09,729 --> 01:32:11,458 But regrettably, 2017 01:32:12,165 --> 01:32:14,258 that's not what Wall Street is focusing on. 2018 01:32:15,101 --> 01:32:17,399 And I doubt that's what you're focusing on. 2019 01:32:17,637 --> 01:32:19,765 This inquiry will take a lot of time 2020 01:32:20,174 --> 01:32:22,972 on the part of our accountants and lawyers and others. 2021 01:32:25,246 --> 01:32:28,181 But it will finally put these issues to rest. 2022 01:32:29,817 --> 01:32:32,809 At the very moment Ken Lay was talking to employees, 2023 01:32:33,087 --> 01:32:36,113 only a few blocks away, Enron's accounting firm, 2024 01:32:36,357 --> 01:32:37,289 Arthur Andersen, 2025 01:32:37,491 --> 01:32:39,891 had begun destroying its Enron files. 2026 01:32:40,861 --> 01:32:42,454 On October 23rd, 2027 01:32:42,731 --> 01:32:45,791 Andersen shredded more than one ton of paper. 2028 01:32:48,470 --> 01:32:50,802 Despite the rumors, despite the speculation, 2029 01:32:51,073 --> 01:32:54,736 the company is doing well both financially and operationally. 2030 01:32:54,943 --> 01:32:56,535 He was making all kinds of statements. 2031 01:32:56,812 --> 01:32:58,837 Reassuring employees and not just employees, 2032 01:32:59,081 --> 01:33:00,548 reassuring investors, 2033 01:33:00,782 --> 01:33:04,617 'we have no accounting irregularities, 2034 01:33:04,821 --> 01:33:06,482 the company's in the best shape it's ever been in' 2035 01:33:06,723 --> 01:33:08,384 From the standpoint of Enron stock, 2036 01:33:08,558 --> 01:33:09,855 we're going to bring it back... 2037 01:33:10,126 --> 01:33:11,491 we're going to bring it back. 2038 01:33:11,728 --> 01:33:13,696 Alright, we're down to questions. 2039 01:33:13,930 --> 01:33:15,397 I've got a few of them here. 2040 01:33:15,565 --> 01:33:17,829 'I would like to know if you are on crack? 2041 01:33:21,637 --> 01:33:23,127 If so, that would explain a lot. 2042 01:33:23,439 --> 01:33:24,701 If not. You may want to start 2043 01:33:24,941 --> 01:33:26,432 because it's going to be a long time 2044 01:33:26,677 --> 01:33:28,144 before we trust you again.' 2045 01:33:28,846 --> 01:33:30,780 It certainly wasn't clear to anyone at Enron, 2046 01:33:31,048 --> 01:33:32,242 much less anyone outside of Enron 2047 01:33:32,483 --> 01:33:35,941 it wasn't really clear what was going on or... 2048 01:33:36,220 --> 01:33:37,687 what was going to happen. 2049 01:33:37,921 --> 01:33:39,252 I know this is a lot... 2050 01:33:39,556 --> 01:33:42,116 There is a lot of speculation about Andy's involvement 2051 01:33:42,459 --> 01:33:45,087 I and the board are also sure that 2052 01:33:45,329 --> 01:33:48,231 Andy has operated in the most ethical 2053 01:33:48,500 --> 01:33:50,468 and appropriate manner possible. 2054 01:33:51,069 --> 01:33:53,799 The next day, Andy Fastow was fired 2055 01:33:54,139 --> 01:33:55,834 when the Enron board discovered that 2056 01:33:56,141 --> 01:33:58,268 he had made more than $45 million dollars 2057 01:33:58,510 --> 01:34:00,444 from his LJM partnerships. 2058 01:34:00,845 --> 01:34:03,439 The question, Mr. Fastow, is how could you believe 2059 01:34:03,882 --> 01:34:07,010 that your actions were in any way consistent 2060 01:34:07,252 --> 01:34:09,379 with your fiduciary duties to Enron 2061 01:34:09,654 --> 01:34:12,215 and its shareholders or with common sense 2062 01:34:12,458 --> 01:34:15,586 notions of corporate ethics and propriety? 2063 01:34:16,295 --> 01:34:17,091 How do you answer, sir? 2064 01:34:17,329 --> 01:34:19,729 Mr. Chairman on the advice of my counsel, 2065 01:34:19,999 --> 01:34:22,024 I respectfully decline to answer the questions 2066 01:34:22,568 --> 01:34:24,297 based on the protection afforded me 2067 01:34:24,570 --> 01:34:26,595 under the United States Constitution. 2068 01:34:30,676 --> 01:34:32,405 Andy, in many ways, 2069 01:34:32,679 --> 01:34:34,909 I think he was set up as the fall guy. 2070 01:34:35,215 --> 01:34:38,776 All of the Enron executives were saying, 2071 01:34:38,985 --> 01:34:41,283 'there's your man, Andy Fastow. He's the crook. 2072 01:34:41,555 --> 01:34:43,318 You know, he's the one that stole from Enron, 2073 01:34:43,557 --> 01:34:44,421 stole from LJM. 2074 01:34:44,624 --> 01:34:45,955 He's the one that cooked the books. 2075 01:34:46,226 --> 01:34:47,318 Go after him.' 2076 01:34:47,894 --> 01:34:49,418 How will you plead, Mr. Fastow? 2077 01:34:50,163 --> 01:34:52,222 I've thought about this and thought about this. 2078 01:34:52,465 --> 01:34:55,492 And it couldn't have just been a few executives 2079 01:34:55,736 --> 01:34:58,136 at Enron that made this happen. 2080 01:34:58,372 --> 01:35:02,502 If you think of the banks involved Chase, 2081 01:35:03,411 --> 01:35:05,743 Morgan, Citibank 2082 01:35:07,715 --> 01:35:11,617 the billions in loans Arthur Andersen... 2083 01:35:11,886 --> 01:35:13,376 What about Vincent and Elkins, 2084 01:35:13,621 --> 01:35:16,784 the lawyers that represented us? 2085 01:35:17,059 --> 01:35:19,857 There had to have been complicity across the board. 2086 01:35:20,429 --> 01:35:22,556 Because it was all too easy; 2087 01:35:22,931 --> 01:35:25,126 all too easy. 2088 01:35:29,638 --> 01:35:32,129 The Enron collapse was an enormous tragedy. 2089 01:35:32,908 --> 01:35:36,469 This is a company that had over thirty thousand employees, 2090 01:35:36,845 --> 01:35:38,506 and clearly with a company that size 2091 01:35:38,780 --> 01:35:40,408 you have a lot of senior officers 2092 01:35:40,583 --> 01:35:43,711 that have a lot of authority in which you place enormous trust. 2093 01:35:43,987 --> 01:35:46,421 But in the case there was at least one, 2094 01:35:46,789 --> 01:35:49,622 Andy Fastow, that betrayed that trust 2095 01:35:50,193 --> 01:35:51,421 to the extent that 2096 01:35:51,628 --> 01:35:53,220 I did not know what he was doing, 2097 01:35:53,463 --> 01:35:55,522 he obviously didn't share with me what he was doing, 2098 01:35:56,266 --> 01:35:59,861 then indeed I cannot take responsibility for what he did 2099 01:36:00,103 --> 01:36:01,092 I never heard him say, 2100 01:36:01,304 --> 01:36:02,602 'I take responsibility' for a thing. 2101 01:36:02,806 --> 01:36:06,207 It sounded to me like the wonderful movie, 'Chicago'. 2102 01:36:06,844 --> 01:36:09,108 I was reminded of the puppet strings 2103 01:36:09,413 --> 01:36:11,381 and the dancers and the tap dancing 2104 01:36:11,548 --> 01:36:13,243 and pointing at the gun, the gun, the gun. 2105 01:36:13,550 --> 01:36:17,384 I mean. Everybody's in step with Johnny. 2106 01:36:17,655 --> 01:36:21,250 I continue to grieve, as does my family, 2107 01:36:22,126 --> 01:36:23,992 over the loss of the company. 2108 01:36:24,262 --> 01:36:26,423 Linda and I saw our net worth reduced 2109 01:36:26,631 --> 01:36:28,599 from several hundred million dollars down to 2110 01:36:28,934 --> 01:36:30,629 something less than twenty million dollars 2111 01:36:30,869 --> 01:36:31,893 on a net worth basis. 2112 01:36:32,137 --> 01:36:33,069 And of course, as... as you said, 2113 01:36:33,271 --> 01:36:36,069 about a million dollars or less in liquidity. 2114 01:36:37,709 --> 01:36:40,940 I don't know whether I'd rather be shot as a crook 2115 01:36:41,212 --> 01:36:43,510 or as an idiot. 2116 01:36:44,015 --> 01:36:48,749 I believe the only venue for me is the 'Ride of Broken Dreams.' 2117 01:36:49,021 --> 01:36:50,454 Oh, you mean the Enron ride! 2118 01:36:50,723 --> 01:36:51,189 Let's go! 2119 01:36:51,490 --> 01:36:52,855 Enron hit the National psyche. 2120 01:36:53,092 --> 01:36:55,788 It hit it as sort of, the time-tested lesson. 2121 01:36:56,062 --> 01:36:57,893 And that is, if it looks too good to be true, 2122 01:36:58,197 --> 01:36:59,562 sometimes it is. 2123 01:37:02,234 --> 01:37:03,826 We're all going to be rich! 2124 01:37:06,472 --> 01:37:07,769 We broke even. 2125 01:37:16,683 --> 01:37:18,583 It is my belief that Enron's failure was 2126 01:37:18,785 --> 01:37:21,253 due to a classic run on the bank. 2127 01:37:23,056 --> 01:37:24,887 Don't look now but there's something funny going on 2128 01:37:25,125 --> 01:37:26,387 over there at the bank, George. 2129 01:37:26,560 --> 01:37:27,492 I've never really seen one, 2130 01:37:27,694 --> 01:37:29,662 but that's got all the earmarks of being a run. 2131 01:37:38,139 --> 01:37:40,004 On December 2nd 2001, 2132 01:37:40,308 --> 01:37:43,141 less than four months after Skilling's resignation 2133 01:37:43,478 --> 01:37:45,571 Enron declared bankruptcy. 2134 01:37:47,715 --> 01:37:50,878 I remember it was just a strange, 2135 01:37:51,119 --> 01:37:52,518 kind of surreal day. 2136 01:37:52,755 --> 01:37:55,849 We learned around nine thirty about the bankruptcy 2137 01:37:56,158 --> 01:37:58,183 and that we were all being let go. 2138 01:37:59,695 --> 01:38:02,425 We all felt like we were on the Titanic 2139 01:38:02,731 --> 01:38:05,564 and the last lifeboats had long gone 2140 01:38:05,801 --> 01:38:09,396 and we were just now on the sinking ship. 2141 01:38:10,806 --> 01:38:13,104 We had thirty minutes to leave the building 2142 01:38:13,308 --> 01:38:15,277 and at that point it was no longer 2143 01:38:15,545 --> 01:38:17,479 like being on the Titanic. 2144 01:38:17,814 --> 01:38:20,374 It was kind of like being on the Lusitania. 2145 01:38:20,517 --> 01:38:21,677 The torpedo had hit 2146 01:38:21,985 --> 01:38:24,783 and there's twenty minutes to get out. 2147 01:38:27,757 --> 01:38:29,884 There's a lot of disbelief. 2148 01:38:30,160 --> 01:38:33,823 Very few of the rank and file people ever dreamed that 2149 01:38:34,064 --> 01:38:36,055 Enron would actually go bankrupt. 2150 01:38:40,905 --> 01:38:42,873 Then all of a sudden, it was like a ghost town. 2151 01:38:45,309 --> 01:38:47,800 I can remember going into the old building, 2152 01:38:48,045 --> 01:38:50,411 on certain floors, ah, late in the, 2153 01:38:50,614 --> 01:38:52,741 afternoon or evening. And it was scary. 2154 01:38:53,150 --> 01:38:54,742 There'd be like paper blowing around, 2155 01:38:55,019 --> 01:38:55,951 and nobody there, 2156 01:38:56,253 --> 01:38:58,915 and it was just... it was very eerie. 2157 01:39:05,497 --> 01:39:07,863 Mr. Skilling, your opening statement was 2158 01:39:08,100 --> 01:39:11,092 extremely compassionate to the employees. 2159 01:39:11,536 --> 01:39:13,800 And I want to show you a tape. 2160 01:39:14,039 --> 01:39:15,973 And I believe we have it ready to go. 2161 01:39:16,274 --> 01:39:17,639 Listen to this. 2162 01:39:17,943 --> 01:39:20,173 Should we invest all of our 401k in Enron Stock? 2163 01:39:20,412 --> 01:39:23,211 Absolutely. Don't you guys agree? 2164 01:39:27,120 --> 01:39:30,283 Why is it that you had begun unloading your stock? 2165 01:39:30,623 --> 01:39:33,217 Pretty heavily before that date 2166 01:39:33,459 --> 01:39:35,484 and yet led the employees to think that 2167 01:39:35,695 --> 01:39:37,595 they should keep buying stock? 2168 01:39:39,532 --> 01:39:40,055 Ms. Senator, 2169 01:39:40,333 --> 01:39:44,270 I have been a major shareholder in Enron Corporation 2170 01:39:44,505 --> 01:39:45,972 and you can take the videotape to mean 2171 01:39:46,173 --> 01:39:47,140 what you want it to mean. 2172 01:39:47,341 --> 01:39:49,070 I was a supporter of Enron Corporation. 2173 01:39:49,276 --> 01:39:50,607 You know what happened to those people. 2174 01:39:50,878 --> 01:39:51,902 They lost everything. 2175 01:39:52,146 --> 01:39:56,014 I feel terrible about what happened to the employees. 2176 01:39:58,051 --> 01:40:01,020 Oh at one time, things were really rosy for us. 2177 01:40:01,922 --> 01:40:04,220 And we all had some really nice-looking 401ks 2178 01:40:04,458 --> 01:40:06,825 and pensions and then it peaked. 2179 01:40:07,028 --> 01:40:08,791 And then it just started going down, 2180 01:40:09,063 --> 01:40:10,690 and it went lower and lower and lower. 2181 01:40:10,999 --> 01:40:13,763 At the peak I had about 348 thousand. 2182 01:40:14,102 --> 01:40:16,332 I sold it all for 1200 dollars; 2183 01:40:16,571 --> 01:40:18,334 was what I got for it, when it was done. 2184 01:40:22,744 --> 01:40:24,609 While Enron's stock was plummeting, 2185 01:40:24,913 --> 01:40:26,813 the retirement accounts of Enron's rank 2186 01:40:27,081 --> 01:40:29,073 and file workers were frozen. 2187 01:40:29,385 --> 01:40:30,852 We were frozen out of our accounts. 2188 01:40:31,120 --> 01:40:33,588 It was right about thirty two dollars, I believe. 2189 01:40:34,023 --> 01:40:35,581 And over that time, 2190 01:40:35,824 --> 01:40:37,485 from when it was frozen to when it opened up, 2191 01:40:37,760 --> 01:40:39,091 I think it went down to nine. 2192 01:40:39,328 --> 01:40:40,590 And we could not access it. 2193 01:40:40,829 --> 01:40:42,228 And what came out later that was so bad, 2194 01:40:42,431 --> 01:40:45,628 was the fact that Ken Lay and Skilling 2195 01:40:45,834 --> 01:40:48,359 and all the top people were movin' their money then. 2196 01:40:49,171 --> 01:40:50,469 But we couldn't. 2197 01:40:52,609 --> 01:40:56,409 The insiders had sold off a billion dollars of their stock. 2198 01:40:56,680 --> 01:40:59,911 Compare that to the lineman who worked for a staid, 2199 01:41:00,150 --> 01:41:02,448 old utility company for most of his life; 2200 01:41:02,686 --> 01:41:04,551 put away money each month. 2201 01:41:04,788 --> 01:41:07,154 And what's he have to show, at the end day, 2202 01:41:07,457 --> 01:41:09,857 for his years of hard and decent labor? 2203 01:41:10,093 --> 01:41:11,424 He gets a big goose egg. 2204 01:41:12,028 --> 01:41:14,827 And Pai is out in Hawaii somewhere, 2205 01:41:15,099 --> 01:41:17,192 with 350 million dollars in the bank. 2206 01:41:17,468 --> 01:41:18,833 That's wrong. 2207 01:41:26,143 --> 01:41:30,204 There is still to this city a layer of anger and upset. 2208 01:41:30,948 --> 01:41:32,575 I am still doing counseling, 2209 01:41:32,883 --> 01:41:34,748 three years later, with some families. 2210 01:41:37,389 --> 01:41:40,085 Where some of those who are most reflective, 2211 01:41:40,325 --> 01:41:41,656 it's gone to a deeper layer. 2212 01:41:41,860 --> 01:41:44,522 And they are looking at the corporate culture itself 2213 01:41:44,830 --> 01:41:45,888 in this country. 2214 01:41:46,198 --> 01:41:47,961 You know, you can gain the whole world 2215 01:41:48,500 --> 01:41:49,933 and all the trinkets 2216 01:41:50,168 --> 01:41:51,226 and all the trophies of the world, 2217 01:41:51,503 --> 01:41:53,903 the corner office, and all the perks 2218 01:41:54,172 --> 01:41:57,472 and you really can lose your soul in the midst of this. 2219 01:41:58,845 --> 01:42:01,279 On January 25th, 2002, 2220 01:42:01,514 --> 01:42:03,846 seven weeks after the Enron bankruptcy, 2221 01:42:04,083 --> 01:42:06,415 Cliff Baxter committed suicide. 2222 01:42:06,753 --> 01:42:08,550 With the media hounding him 2223 01:42:08,855 --> 01:42:10,948 because he was mentioned in my memos 2224 01:42:11,157 --> 01:42:13,148 and the fact that he'd been sued civilly 2225 01:42:13,459 --> 01:42:15,484 because he'd cashed in for about 2226 01:42:15,695 --> 01:42:17,026 thirty million dollars worth of stock 2227 01:42:17,263 --> 01:42:19,425 I guess it all came crashing down on him. 2228 01:42:20,100 --> 01:42:22,864 I think Cliff's suicide note tells it all. 2229 01:42:23,070 --> 01:42:25,903 You know, Where there was once great pride, 2230 01:42:26,206 --> 01:42:27,605 now there is none. 2231 01:42:31,545 --> 01:42:33,536 It's very hard for me to talk about Cliff. 2232 01:42:33,781 --> 01:42:35,544 We were very close for many years. 2233 01:42:37,484 --> 01:42:40,544 And he was a wonderful, wonderful man. 2234 01:42:40,888 --> 01:42:44,848 But a lot of who Cliff was tied up in how 2235 01:42:45,093 --> 01:42:47,118 he had succeeded at Enron. 2236 01:42:47,629 --> 01:42:50,564 It is hard to look at your life's work and say 2237 01:42:51,700 --> 01:42:53,065 it's failed. 2238 01:42:53,368 --> 01:42:57,566 But you have to take a long, cold look at yourself and say, 2239 01:42:58,273 --> 01:43:00,969 'who was I? Who did I become? ' 2240 01:43:02,410 --> 01:43:06,313 And realize that you may have seen your shadow. 2241 01:43:08,351 --> 01:43:12,412 Andy Fastow pled guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. 2242 01:43:12,655 --> 01:43:16,022 He agreed to forfeit 23 million dollars in assets. 2243 01:43:16,559 --> 01:43:19,153 His sentence was reduced to ten years 2244 01:43:19,462 --> 01:43:23,762 in exchange for testifying against other Enron executives. 2245 01:43:25,568 --> 01:43:26,297 Why Enron? 2246 01:43:26,603 --> 01:43:29,834 Why not Worldcom or Tyco or Global Crossings? 2247 01:43:30,073 --> 01:43:34,840 Ultimately in Enron the fatal flaw was a sense that brains 2248 01:43:35,479 --> 01:43:38,141 and wiliness could out-think the way 2249 01:43:38,382 --> 01:43:39,940 that the system will eventually work. 2250 01:43:40,350 --> 01:43:44,286 In 2004, Jeff Skilling was indicted for insider trading 2251 01:43:44,554 --> 01:43:46,715 and conspiracy to defraud investors. 2252 01:43:47,190 --> 01:43:48,157 Pleading innocent, 2253 01:43:48,493 --> 01:43:50,256 he paid his attorneys a retainer of 2254 01:43:50,495 --> 01:43:53,055 23 million dollars to defend him. 2255 01:43:53,765 --> 01:43:57,929 Enron should not be viewed as an aberration, 2256 01:43:58,169 --> 01:44:00,262 something that can't happen anywhere else. 2257 01:44:00,505 --> 01:44:03,269 Because it's all about the rationalization 2258 01:44:03,841 --> 01:44:05,399 that you're not doing anything wrong. 2259 01:44:05,643 --> 01:44:08,407 We've involved Arthur Andersen, we've involved the lawyers. 2260 01:44:08,613 --> 01:44:10,205 The bankers know what we're doing. 2261 01:44:10,649 --> 01:44:13,709 There's a sense the diffusion of responsibility. 2262 01:44:14,052 --> 01:44:15,781 Everyone was on the bandwagon. 2263 01:44:16,555 --> 01:44:17,954 And it can happen again. 2264 01:44:19,858 --> 01:44:21,257 Enron's accounting firm. 2265 01:44:21,460 --> 01:44:22,449 Arthur Andersen, 2266 01:44:22,661 --> 01:44:24,822 was convicted of obstructing justice. 2267 01:44:25,764 --> 01:44:28,324 With its reputation for honesty destroyed, 2268 01:44:28,634 --> 01:44:32,570 America's oldest accounting firm fell along with Enron 2269 01:44:32,806 --> 01:44:36,105 and twenty nine thousand people lost their jobs. 2270 01:44:36,476 --> 01:44:38,706 Enron's shareholders are suing Enron 2271 01:44:38,978 --> 01:44:41,538 and its banks for 20 billion dollars. 2272 01:44:45,585 --> 01:44:48,918 Ken Lay was also indicted for conspiracy to commit fraud. 2273 01:44:49,222 --> 01:44:52,316 His attorney maintains that no one has been hurt more 2274 01:44:52,592 --> 01:44:55,323 by the Enron bankruptcy than Ken Lay. 2275 01:44:56,363 --> 01:44:58,297 Nice of all of you to show up this morning. 2276 01:44:58,499 --> 01:45:00,262 With today's arrest of Ken Lay, 2277 01:45:01,402 --> 01:45:03,870 the top echelon at Enron 2278 01:45:04,238 --> 01:45:07,571 has now been called to account for their crimes. 2279 01:45:07,875 --> 01:45:09,536 Mr. Lay, do you have anything to say, sir? 2280 01:45:09,810 --> 01:45:11,402 A little later today I will. 2281 01:45:11,712 --> 01:45:12,679 Looking at Enron is like 2282 01:45:12,913 --> 01:45:15,438 looking at the flip side of so much possibility 2283 01:45:15,683 --> 01:45:18,050 because like most things that end terribly, 2284 01:45:18,286 --> 01:45:19,446 it didn't start out that way. 2285 01:45:19,654 --> 01:45:21,645 It started with a lot of people who thought 2286 01:45:21,890 --> 01:45:23,050 they were changing the world. 2287 01:45:23,358 --> 01:45:26,293 And over time they became victims of their own hubris, 2288 01:45:26,528 --> 01:45:27,756 victims of their own greed 2289 01:45:28,029 --> 01:45:30,463 and so it's like taking so much promise and possibility 2290 01:45:30,665 --> 01:45:32,189 and looking at it in a mirror and seeing 2291 01:45:32,467 --> 01:45:34,435 the flip side reflected back at you. 2292 01:45:36,471 --> 01:45:38,701 I think the larger lesson was 2293 01:45:38,940 --> 01:45:43,207 what Enron asked of its employees which was ask why. 2294 01:45:44,480 --> 01:45:48,507 And you know I didn't ask myself why enough; 2295 01:45:48,751 --> 01:45:50,309 I didn't ask managers why enough, 2296 01:45:50,553 --> 01:45:53,989 I didn't ask my colleagues why enough.