[Threat to Bush in Enron inquiry, Matthew Engel in Washington and David Teather in New York, Friday January 11, 2002. The Guardian]
``President Bush moved rapidly yesterday to distance himself from the collapsed Enron Corporation as speculation grew that the bankruptcy of the giant energy trading company could turn into his administration's most dangerous scandal...''
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Do the phrases like `damage control,' `plausible deniability', ring a bell?
So, the real question isn't if Bush and top executive branch officials including the Attorney General and secretaries of Treasury, and Energy were up to their ears in probably fifteen or twenty different inter-related criminal felonies, including conspiracy, and probably right now engaged in withholding evidence, thwarting a criminal investigation, and very soon to be lying about it all to Congress, but how to regain control over this unravelling.
Justice will re-focus on the business executives, who will all blame it on the accounting firm. The accounting executives will blame it all on mis-communication with middle managers. Instead of pursuing the investigation up the ladders of political power, the FBI/Justice will move down the ladder into the business realm. There will be calls for legislative reform, but for the sake of bi-partisanship, congressional Democrats will do nothing. Hearings will proceed and various boards and commission will promise to do better. Calls for a special prosecutor will be met with charges of typical Democrat partisan bickering.
Meanwhile the whole relationship between Enron and the PG&E suit filed today by the California Attorney General will probably move up the same ladder that Justice and the FBI are moving down, and they will meet in the middle somewhere far below the probable culpability of the Bush administration. Never mind the billions that went out of California to pay for the last ditch efforts of Enron to keep its house of cards going. And certainly don't expect anything, but kisses from the Bush administration for the hundreds of Enron employees left with nothing.
And in the background, with the Republican National Committee chairman, (former Enron lobbyist) Racicot now with his hands on audit free money, you can bet the Republican candidate for governor of California (?), will be on the administration fast track to pin it all on Davis. It was all Davis. That's the ticket.
This ain't no blow job cover-up. This is the real McCoy---big pig capital with big pig government at their neoliberal free market finest, right smack in the middle of schemes to privatize the public of its goods. It works just like those IMF/WB austerity measures did for the Russian oligarchs we've read about.
I would expect that as the investigation heats up, we should anticipate more nationwide terrorist alerts, a new twist in the war for Enduring Justice, and maybe some Easter or May Day bombs for Iraq. Whatever, gas prices should be heading further south. We might even get meat prices down.
So the answer as to when Bush bombs Iraq, is whenever the Enron investigation starts up the ladder, instead of down. If I were in Iraq, I would pray they pin it all on some Egyptian bookeeper in a temp-agency.
The conspiracy presses should be near melt-down by mid-February on this one.
Chuck Grimes